Bedřich Smetana Die verkaufte Braut (the Bartered Bride) livestreamed by the Bayerische Staatsoper. German language versions of this opera have been around for over 100 years, andd some have been very good indeed. So no reason to dismiss this on language grounds. With a strong cast headed by Pavol Breslik, Günther Groissböck, Selene Zanetti and Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke this should have been a treat ! Deprived of real music during the Christmas-New Year season, I was so looking forward to this. The singing was fine, especially the principals, and Tomáš Hanus is a good conductor. But this was disappointing because of the production, directed by David Bösch. This is the sort of vision-free mishmash that happens with the new fashion for performance that doesn't make us listen or think. But it would give pleasure to those who take delight in knocking all productions on principle, without really engaging with what a production might have to say about the music. So we end up with the worst of worlds, a production that doesn't stimulate thought but reinforces non-thought.
Nothing wrong with setting the scene in an industrial farm : that's the premise behind the opera, that people can be sold and bred like animals. Those who think in such terms have ugly minds, so if the set was prettied up, it would only weaken the drama. The key, I think, is to take the cue from the music - listen to that Overture ! Of course Smetana uses speech patterns and roughly "folk" allusion, but what makes the music work with the drama is its energy and vigour. Farmers grow crops, they live in tune with Nature or they don't survive. Fertility means renewal : people get married to propagate. Marie's love for Hans is natural genetic selection. Hans, an outsider, represents hybrid vigour, while Wenzel's probably inbred. Love and fidelity do matter, but no smart farmer can ignore practical things. Hans turns out to be rich after all. And fertility, in humans, means sex. hence the thrusting, spiky rhythms in the music and its bouncy liveliness. Making the erotic elements in the opera more explicit would not bea mistake , even if modern audiences aren't grown enough anymore to deal with it. A really strong orchestral performance can create the right atmsphere. Hanus is good enough but wasn't really on fire. I enjoyed listening to the main singers - Breslik's naturally sexy, Groissböck a born actor and Ablinger-Sperrhacke one of the finest character singers in the business. But something is wrong when you get distracted by the live pig snuffling about in the background, presumably gobbling treats hidden in the clutter on stage. Or maybe that's a metaphor for fashionable taste.
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