I had never heard before this evening that Anton Webern actually enjoyed it when he saw Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West – and one can see why in a performance such as this evening’s, where almost everyone involved has at some point been part of a production of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck. It is not a favorite of mine – I have listened at home to a whole recording only once in my life when I bought the Matacic CDs with Birgit Nilsson and João Gibin. To be honest, this is the second time I see it live in the theatre (although I’ve watched both the Met’s and La Scala’s DVDs with Plácido Domingo). Even if the libretto is unconvincing and the music is elusive in its only occasional use of melody, live in the theatre it grabs your attention somehow by the way the story moves forward and the score always takes unexpected turns.
Maybe it is not a coincidence that both times I’ve attended a performance of Fanciulla there was a German orchestra on duty. This evening, a world-class one in the Staatskapelle Berlin. Conductor Massimo Zanetti seems to know how lucky he is to have deluxe forces at his disposal and gave them all the time of the world to employ their complete tonal palette. Not only because the house’s next Brünnhilde and a consummate Wotan were on stage, the performance moved almost at Wagnerian pace – densely, richly, with singers piercing through the orchestral tapestry rather than taking pride of place.
My single Puccinian experience with Anja Kampe and Michael Volle took place with this very company when I saw them as Tosca and Scarpia. Kampe isn’t a singer one can call foolproof in terms of technique, but the resources are all there and she has a je ne sais quoi that puts you on her side. She did part of her studies in Italy and, although there is nothing Italianate in her singing., she knows the style and handles the text adeptly in Dante Alighieri’s language. As Tosca, she was quite persuasive if you overlooked the taut high register. Since then, even if the tension is still there, she has developed a new reliability with her extreme high notes, which are all of them big, firm and penetrating. And there’s a lot of truly exposed acuti in the part of Minnie. What one still misses is a sense of focus and flow in the not-só-high notes, which can soube hard-pressed and colorless. As it was, act 1 was the one which agreed the most with her voice. Her warm middle register made all the conversational passages appealing and colorful. Laggiù nel Soledad had a real sense of story telling and she could scale down to mezza voce for her scenes with and about Johnson. Second act exposed her Achilles’ heel more often than one would wish. In those moments, she could be overshadowed by the orchestra and grey in sound. All that said, she has the right personality for the role and embraced it wholeheartedly, making it far more believable than one could expect.
I was less enthusiastic about Volle’s Scarpia back then. At some point he was overcome by fatigue and made do until the end of the opera. That is not what happened this evening. Mr. Volle retained his vocal health throughout; yet there were patches of rust here and there. And his Italian is a tad accented. The tonal quality is pleasant as always – and he can fill the hall when he needs to. At least in Berlin. He doesn’t seem very dangerous, but there is something of the small-town sheriff in him.
Marcelo Álvarez has been singing roles too heavy for his voice for a while with variable success. I would say that Johnson/Ramerrez is probably the less suitable in the list. It is impossibly low for him – he practically spoke his low notes – and he has to brace for every dramatic outburst. Again, in terms of personality he is ideal for the part and acted convincingly. All small roles were competently handled if none of these performances stood out in any way.
Having an American director for The Girl of the Golden West is always a good idea, and Lydia Steier did a good job in finding the right slot between authenticity and stylization. In a way it looks like what Nevada or New Mexico was in the 60’s or 70’s – and at the same time it doesn’t in its impression of a DDR TV western. There is some effort to avoid cliche – Wowkle and Billy are not native Americans but drug addicts instead who behave oddly because they’re high – and there is some kind “discussion” about violence in society on top of everything. Act 3 becomes here the cowboy version of an auto-da-fé in the old old scenic trick of having the last act set in a messy and dirty version of the sets of the opening act. In terms of Personenregie, this was truly commendable – all characters sharply defined, all singers comfortable with what they had to do and even the fight scenes realistic.
I HEAR VOICES 
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