Manon Lescaut Munich Kaufmann Opolais

Puccini Manon Lescaut at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich. Some will scream in rage but in its austerity it reaches to the heart of the opera. What is Manon Lescaut really about? The Abbé Prévost's 1731 narrative was a moral discourse. Unlike many modern novels, it wasn't a potboiler but a philosphical tract in which the protagonists face moral dilemmas. In this production,  key excerpts from Prévost are shown at critical points, not just during the Intermezzo. These are important because they underline the origin of the opera, and its deepest values. The staging is black and white, lit like an interrogation room, for such is its fundamental rationale. It's not a potboiler, not sentimental. but an uncompromising warning against the seduction by false values like wealth, glitz and short term shallowness.  It says much about some audiences that they'd prefer things the other way round.

 Hans Neuenfels's  production, with designs by Stefan Meyer, captures the spiritual state of flux that is so much part of Puccini's opera. The action moves from place to place but the underlying theme is bleak. The journey starts at Amiens, a faceless place where everyone's en route to somewhere else. One characteristic of Neuenfels's style is the way he uses crowds.. In his Lohengrin for Bayreuth (read more here), the people of Brabant were shown as rats, since rats conform, but Neunefels treated them not as vermin but with sympathy and warmth.  In Manon Lescaut, the townsfolk have garish makeup suggesting Georg Grosz-like malevolence beneath their well-padded uniforms. Anonymous figures appear, zipped up in body bags.  Not "belle, brune et blonde" but dehumanized creatures, being trafficked, presumably to America. Suddenly, the casual, flirtatious bantering feels dangerous.

Neunfels's use of crowds also serves to highlight the central characters. Des Grieux (Jonas Kaufmann), Manon (Kristine Opolais) and Lescaut (Marcus Eiche) stand out, in sharp black and white, in full focus. This is absolute luxury casting, and so they should shine. Kaufmann and Opolais "own" these roles these days  If anything, they were singing with even greater intensity than they did at the Royal Opera House production last year (read more here).  Kaufmann's portrayal was exceptionally deep, enhanced by Neuenfels's emphasis on the moral and philosophical basis of Des Grieux's dilemmas, which are inherently dramatic in themselves. 

In most productions, Manon's beauty steals the show. When Anna Netrebko pulled out of the part, many sighed with relief, since Opolais has the artistic courage not to need to be seen at her finest. When she sings, she creates a real Manon with all her insecurities and complexities. She dares depict Manon's inner ugliness, because she can also show her true beauty. Opolais may look tense in the first act and ravaged in the last, but that's all the more reason to admire her integrity. As she lies on the hard, bare stage that depicts the spiritual desert that is New Orleans, (where physical deserts don't exist), with her face gaunt and the dark roots in her hair showing, Opolais's voice transcends her surroundings. Manon is a true hero because she changes, develops and learns true meaning.

The staging of the Paris Act makes or breaks any production, since it confronts the obscenity of Manon's situation as, frankly,  a one-man prostitute. The stage shrinks, lit by a frame of light suggesting a prison without bars, with cut glass objets de luxe symbolizing hard but fragile transparency.  All is delusion, the makeup, the madrigals, the dancing. Geronte (Roland Bracht) fancies himself an artist. His friends and Abbé's aren't fooled. They've come to perve at Manon's body.  In London, many in the audience were aghast that the scene was shown as live porm, but that's exactly what it is, a rich man showing off to dirty old men like himself. It's not meant to be pretty, as any reading of Puccini's score makes clear (Read more here). Neuenfels shows Geronte kissing Manon's naked leg. The Dancing Master is depicted as an ape, which adds even more horror. Yet Neuenfels also shows that the Dancing Master and Manon have much in common, both reduced to performing animals by the corruption of wealth. Geronte's friends and, signifcantly, Abbés, supposedly celibate holy men, are dressed as cardinals in fuschia pink. This is not casual detail, for it connects the brutality of a society that reveres woman as virgins, but objectifies them as sexual creatures to be abused and disposed of. 

At Le Havre, Manon is seen in anonymous grey. The gloating crowd with their red wigs now seem demonic,as they are indeed, since they've come to enjoy seeing the degradation of women as prisoners. In contrast, the Sergeant seems more human, since he lets Des Grieux slip aboard, no doubt breaking rules. By the time we reach the all-important final act, all external trappings are disposed of, too.  Manon and Des Grieux are alone, in almost cosmic isolation. All distractions stripped away, Kaufmann and Opolais can release emotions through the sheer power of their singing. Divested of material things  they transcend the world itself.

Superlative conducting from Alain Altinoglu, too,  leaner than Pappano, but more suited to this elegant, austere conception.  Of the three Manon Lescauts in the last two years London, Baden Baden and Munich, this new production is by far the most incisive and intelligent. Good opera goes far beyond the first line in a synopsis. As Manon learns, life isn't about glitzy trappings, but about human emotion.

Munich Manon Lescaut Kaufmann Opolais listening LINK

Highlight of the Munich season, Puccini Manon Lescaut with Jonas Kaufmann and Kristine Opolais. Saturday's performance was screened live on NDR, but you can catch the FULL audio-only transmission on BR Klassik HERE (click on the tiny little window). The Bayerischen Staatsoper pulled the video off their livestream programme at the last minute, but the film is in the can: perhaps we can hope for a DVD  According to Die Welt, it's pretty good.  Anna Netrebko pulled out at the last minute too, but her absence is no great loss: Opolais is sublime, even freer and more passionate than in London.

The same stars in two very different productions, which will be compared with each other for years to come (Rattle's Baden-Baden Manon Lescaut, despite an excellent Eva Maria Westbroek (reviewed here), doesn't come close). Antonio Pappano has the edge over Munich's Alain Altinoglu, though the latter is much more impressive in Puccini than he was in Don Giovanni (more here). Kaufmann and Opolais, however, are now confirmed as the dream pairing. Not only do they sing gloriously, but they respond to each other so well that the dynamic relationship seems extraordinarily real and personal. There's more to opera than good singing and acting: Kaufmann and Opolais stimulate each other, inspiring each other to ever greater heights. Netrebko is excellent, but she's also artist enough to know how well matched Kaufmann and Opolais are together.

The biggest difference is in the staging. The London production was directed by Jonathan Kent, who also created the ROH's very retro Tosca, and isn't a director known to shock. Yet it was attacked  because it showed Manon in the sex trade. But what were they expecting?  The whole premise of Abbé Prévost's plot is that she goes wrong because she sells sex for money and doesn't value love until it's too late. Please read my review of the London production HERE In Opera Today. 

I haven't seen Hans Neuenfels' production yet, but he, too, is a director whose ideas come direct from the score itself, unorthodox as they may seem at first. Please see my piece on Neuenfels' Lohengrin. Everyone who reads a score "interprets" if they are making any kind of effort at all. The better the composer, the better the opera, the greater the potential for greater understanding. "Trust the composer" anti-moderns wail, but it is they who should trust the music and artistry. From stills (not the best guide to any production) Neuenfels' production seems austere, maybe a good thing since musically it's so strong. Most reports i've read so far are very positive. But some focus mainly on Kaufmann's beard.  In real life, Kaufmann's very sexy and fairly hairy, so why shouldn't he have a beard when he's playing a character with intense sexual feelings?

Bayerische Staatsoper Broadcast schedule

At the start of the Bayerische Staatsoper 2014-15 season,  dates for online broadcasts are announced.

 NB the schedule's been changed - see latest here

NEW  Strauss Die Schweigsame Frau (Barry Kosky) 5th October

Leoš Janáček ~ The Makropoulos Case - 19 October 1st November


Giacomo Puccini -  Manon Lescaut 15th November

Petipa  (Ratmansky) - Pacquita - 11th January

Donizetti  -  Lucia Di Lammermoor - st February 2015

Rossini -- Le comte d'Ory - 12 April

Ballet by Richard Seigal - 18 April

Alban Berg - Lulu - 6th June

Debussy - Pelléas et Mélisande - 28th June

Strauss : Arabella - 25th July

Richard Strauss Die Frau ohne Schatten Munich Warlikowski

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Lulu WNO

It was good that Welsh National Opera brought Alban Berg's Lulu to Milton Keynes on a snowy evening. The colours in this staging were so lurid that the London scene came as a relief. That would be an interesting idea to develop, since in some ways Lulu has been seeking death all along.  A much more obvious reason for the bright colours was that David Pountney and his design team (Johan Engels and Jeanne-Marie Lecca) were being faithful to the circus theme which sets the tone for the opera. "Hereinspaziert in die Menagerie". Actors with realistic looking animal masks filled the stage among uprights that looked like reels of film.  This was a good reference to the theme of cinema, for film, even more so than circus, deals with illusion. And Lulu is an opera about illusion, where nothing is quite what it seems.

"There's so much to look at" exclaimed a lady behind me. "Good " said her husband, "we don't have to listen to that music" Again that's a valid point, for this Lulu was a good way of bringing modern music to audiences who think modern music is dangerous. They loved the show, which proves it was a success. Seduced by the colours, the animals, corpses hanging from meat hooks, girl on girl action and two scenes of in your face full frontal nudity, West End audiences would have loved this too. There's something to be said for that.

Because this Lulu is touring together with Janáček The Cunning Little Vixen and Puccini Madama Butterfly, it's not unreasonable to seek a common thread between the three operas.  In his introduction, Pountney makes his concept clear. Berg and Janáček were writing in the same period, when proto-feminist ideas were gaining ground, and sexual freedom provoked challenge. Certainly this is the case with The Cunning Little Vixen, where Janáček explicitly equates the Vixen's personality with natural urges, justifying his own longing for Camila Stosslova who in real life held him at arm's length.  I've written extensively on Janáček 's Dangerous Women and their subversive challenges. I like my Vixens with fangs! Yet Janáček's heroines are ultimately projections of the composer's own fantasies.

Lulu definitely has a liberation context, for women's rights were very much a part of the Munich Secessionist zeitgeist which was much more radical than the softer focus Viennese Secession. Read about Franziska zu Reventlow and follow the labels below for "Munich" and "women, feisty".  This was the world that inspired Wedekind, Franz von Stuck, and later Strauss and Brecht. Without Munich, we would not have Weimar Berlin. Lots on this site about Weimar, too, and the connections between Brecht and Berg.  Plenty on Weimar film, too, which is relevant in any consideration of Lulu.  See Mädchen in Uniform here. So I'm more than sympathetic with  Pountney's basic approach.

Lulu does say she found herself while she was in prison without men, and Countess Geschwitz talks of studying law and helping women. Berg, whose own sister was a lesbian and a rebel, could have been tongue in cheek quoting quite a few women in that period.  But is Lulu a real person or a projection of other people's fantasies? Is she even a sexual being ? She's had a traumatic life on the streets since she was 12.  She is like an abused child who has learned that sex is a means of survival, not a pleasure. Her seductions are a form of aggression, not lust.  She doesn't trust enough to love.What is her relationship to the decrepit Schilgoch, who like Berg is asthmatic? Not for nothing did the composer double Schilgoch with the Animal Tamer, and write in many references to composing and music.

Given Berg's obsessive compulsive fascination with patterns and secret clues, we can't take anything too literally. Lulu can be interpreted as a cryptic drama arising from musical abstraction.  Krzysztof Warlikowski's recent Lulu with Barbara Hannigan and Christof Loy's much misunderstood ROH production access levels in this amazingly complex opera beyond anything in this WNO production. 

Helene Berg may have guessed at the real danger in Berg's Third Act, which to my mind marks an almost revolutionary new phase in Berg's writing.The Paris scene, for example, starts with the "circus" imagery, but now extends to a wider political sphere. It doesn't depict prostitution per se, but the way society prostitutes itself in pursuit of illusion.  The stock market scenario is central to meaning. Everyone trades, no-one escapes. Lulu is not a free spirit at all.  Some dislike the Paris scene because it's so diverse, but the real meaning is in the music, which spirals in concentric circles.  Is Berg entering new territory where the idea of narrative becomes supplanted by musical drama?  When Berg brings the men back in new guises, he's extending the idea of illusion still further. Jack the Ripper, for example, bears little resemblance to the "real" Jack the Ripper.  The London scene brings Dr Schõn back, which is good symmetry. When I first heard the Third Act soon after its its completion, I couldn't make head or tail of it.  One of the insights of Loy's production is that it takes away the obvious markers in terms of costume, and makes you think about the rarified inner logic. 

The two act version ends with Lulu's escape from prison and her seduction of Alwa on the same sofa on which his father bled to death.  This would have felt right until the full extent of Berg's work was revealed.  According to Douglas Jarman, "Of the 1326 bars only 87 were not fully notated in Berg's short score and with one exception, all these "problematic passages" could be completed with Berg's intentions either by following the indications provided in the score or by doubling the instrumental parts". The exception he mentions is the barrel organ music in scene two, but Jarman says "an indication ...is to be found at the end of the Variation movement of the Symphonic Variations where the first four bars appear...in Berg's own orchestration".  So the Paris scene is true Berg almost in entirety and the barrel organ music is Cerha. Would we reject Mozart's Requiem or Deryck Cooke's performing version of Mahler 10 because they aren't 100% ? Earlier this year Daniel Barenboim conducted a "new" version of Lulu with major cuts, eliminating the Paris scene and the Animal Tamer, and adding spoken texts from Kierkegaard. The WNO production apparently uses a new edition prepared by Eberhard Kloke which changes the Paris Act which was original Berg. The emphasis seems to be to spotlight the prostitution dialogue between Lulu and pimp. Perhaps the WNO Lulu would have worked better in the two act version.

Sensation but no scandal - Munich Eugene Onegin

Near hysteria in some circles over Munich Opera's Tchaikovsky Eugene Onegin, the notorious "Brokeback Mountain" production. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised given that some audiences think Dvořák based Rusalka on The Little Mermaid.  But the production isn't scandalous, unless you're disturbed by homosexuality (and alas, many people are). On the contrary, this Eugene Onegin is thought provoking. Which to many is the biggest danger of all.

Kryzysztov Warlikowski and his set designer Malgorzata Szczescinak scare away the easily scandalized with a luridly psychedelic first act. But as Anna Netrebko says "I'm from Krasnodar where everything's so grey. We need bright colours".  Life in this provincial community is drab but the locals cheer themselves up by dressing up and having parties. Like the Larin community, they're in a time warp but too unworldy to know. The 1970's costumes evoke a period where people conformed, even when they thought they were hip. Although we don't see trees and nature, it must be Spring since the locals are enacting a kind of mating ritual. Girls preen like exotic birds, ogling the boys. The text keeps referring to marriage, as the basis of social order. So we don't see cartoon Russian caricatures? Instead, we get to see the people on the estate as human beings.

Tatiana (Ekaterina Scherbachenko) stands out even more as an individual than if she were styled in white dimity. The other women exaggerate their femininity, but Tatiana appears in blouse and trousers. It's not just that she reads and dreams, she's fundamentally not part of the pack. Larina (Heike Grotzinger) is particularly moving because she's not idealized Happy Mum, but a faded former beauty, keeping up pretences. Larina and Tatiana are personalities. Olga (Alisa Kolosova) is blandness in big wig and silly dress. She doesn't get to sing much because she has so little to say for herself. Tchaikovsky disappears her as soon as she doesn't fit the narrative.

This set makes you care about the people. In their cheap, tawdry finery they're trying to make something of their lives. The effemininate MC and the tacky male strippers - is this the best life offers these poor souls? And yet like millions of women they settle for what they can. This Eugene Onegin is about a whole lot more than the sexuality of the two men. The tragedy is far wider.

When Tatiana is alone, the gaudy set disaapears, replaced by atmospheric blueness. This austerity reflects her true character, When she writes the letter, she strips down, just as she's stripping off convention and propriety. Nice girls don't write compromisng letters to strange men, but Tatiana can see no other escape. Her long monolgue is directed with great subtlety. Scherbachenko moves with each nuance in the music, expressing it through her body as well as her voice. This is Regie made by someone who understands music, text and meaning.

Tchaikovsky makes a point of Lensky and Olga having been childhood friends. She's clearly less of a challenge than Tatiana, and we know from Kibbutzers that people raised as siblings often don't marry. Pavol Breslik is an outstanding Lensky. He sings with gravity and colour, so he doesn't feel like a baby-faced ingenue but more like a real man. Interestingly, when Breslik has to throw dopey kisses at Olga, Scherbachenko stand between them her features sharpened with contempt.  Tatiana's smart enough to size Lensky up, but even she gets Onegin wrong. Just as Taiana decides Onegin should be what she thinks he is, Lensky thinks Olga should be what he wants, even after he's dead.

There's a lot of dance in this opera, but Warlikowski understands that it's also in the singing parts. Again and again, pairings and reversals, carefully blocked movements and images. Scherbachenko and Onegin (Simon Keenlyside) waltz as if they're stalking each other. Later the scene between Onegin, Tatiana and Gremin (Ain Anger) is also tautly choreographed to express the tension in their relationships. Anger also plays Saretski, the second during the duel. It's not accidental. Warlikowski doesn't treat Gremin as plot device but makes the character potent, and provocative, in every way. Some Gremins are so geriatric that Onegin only has to wait til he drops dead. This Gremin strokes Tatiana's feet and legs. Thus when Onegin realizes that he's lost Tatiana, the element of sexual rivalry makes the tragedy more intense.

Significantly, Tchaikovsky doesn't write all that much for Onegin to sing, reserving the big arias for Tatiana and Lensky. Onegin is the man onto whom they project themselves. Both are jealous where he's concerned. Onegin's emotionally honest. He doesn't let Tatiana draw him into her plans, but neither does he denounce her publicly (which would have ruined her). Lensky, though, is more difficult to read. He and Onegin have been best friends for years, so how come he gets so upset by Onegin paying attention to Olga? Why is he willing to risk his life, and his friend's life, for a fairly minor misunderstnding? Even brainless Olga thinks he's "strange".  Breslik's Kuda, Kuda is elegaic, as if he's looking forward to death for some reason.

Although the duel scene takes place in an anonymous hotel room, it's lit in surreal pale blue. You feel the frozen emotional wasteland and hear it in the music. Seeing it is largely irrelevant. Rigidity (Saretsky's rules) contrasted with confusion and fear. Onegin and Lensky's final duet is heart rending.What are these two feeling? Breslik paces the room, then removes his shirt and gestures towards his belt. It could be as innocent as Onegin's dancing with Olga. Onegin panics and shoots him dead.  Tchaikovsky's stage directions make it clear that Lensky hasn't a chance and doesn't fire, so the shooting itself is no big deal.

This is when Warlikowski's production becomes truly controversial. Second and Third Acts are bridged seamlessly, so Onegin visualizes dancers in the Overture, which merges into the ballroom scene where he confronts Tatiana and Gremin.  Bare chested dancers, wth leather gilets, jeans and cowboy hats, cavorting on the bed. Not quite Sugar Plum Fairies. Onegin is profoundly distraught, not just by Lensky's death but by what the dancers imply. Perhaps he wasn't so innocent when he danced with Olga. Perhaps he was jealous she was marrying Lensky?  He feels guilt, for many reasons. He holds the gun to his head, and it's gently removed by a chambermaid.  This is good, because she's the same woman who sang Fillipievna (Elena Zilio), who had no time for romantic extremes. Onegin's confused dream sequence leads him to the final confronation, with Tatiana and Gremin.

Onegin and Lensky aren't gay so much as men questioning their identity. Orientation isn't necessarily hard wired from birth, but can be suppressed and change. Warlikowski connects the bargains the women on the Larin estate make so they can survive in the real world to the compromises men made in those days when heterosexuality was enforced. Being gay was treason because it defied the "natural" order, again symbolized by the fruitfulness of the Larin estate. Onegin is an outsider, and doesn't do the marriage game, but he's not against society per se. It's society that doesn't make room for him. It's not invalid to read homosexuality into Eugene Onegin because it's a way of explaining Onegin's isolation. Besides, Tchaikovsky himself was homosexual, and there was no way he would have been able to deal with the topic expliciutly. While it's not good to read too much autiobiography into his setting of Pushkin's story, it's likely that he could see connections. Madam von Meck, for example, wrote letters rather than have flesh and blood relationships, and Tchaikovsky had a fake marriage that didn't fool those who knew where his real interests lay. Pushkin of course died in a duel about women, but Tchaikovsky was creating a new work of art.

For my review of the Kaspar Holten Eugene Onegin at the Royal Operas Housde, pleas see here. 

Eugene Onegin Munich live stream

Tchaikovsky Eugene Onegin live stream from Munich, Saturday night 24/3 at 7pm German time (6pm UK)  Watch it free on this link here. See the video trailer HERE and enjoy production photos HERE. The video shows the original cast from 2007 (Michael Volle!). This is the famous and controversial Krzysztof Warlikowski production. "Warlikowskis Interpretation, die den Titelhelden als Gefangenen seiner unterdrückten Homosexualität porträtiert, wird seit der Premiere viel diskutiert, hat sich aber mittlerweile zu einem Publikumsmagneten entwickelt." Is Onegin in the closet? That would explain a great deal. It also puts his feelings for Tatiana into context. He doesn't love her as a woman but as an idea of something vaguely female, which could be as nebulous as Mother Russia. And why does Lensky make such a big deal about a silly non-issue? What's he trying to suppress?  (Shades of Ken Russell Women in Love?) .You can just bet that this will probe a lot deeper into the opera than Deborah Warner's ENO version (Please read my "Applauding the scenery")  So they're not wearing Pushkin costumes?  (the picture is Pushkin's own drawing of himself and Onegin on the banks of the River Neva). (anyone who can decipher Pushkin's handwriting might know what the pair are up to).  Fact is, Tchaikovsky was gay and couldn't very well be open about it then. At the very least this should start people thinking about the composer, the music and why he might have written what he did. This revival stars Simon Keenlyside, Pavol Breslik, Ekaterina Scherbachenko.

Krauss Strauss Ariadne auf Naxos

IMPORTANT Broadcast ! Clemens Krauss conducts Strauss Araiden auf Naxos, Berlin, 1935. This is historically significant. The conductor is Clemens Krauss who knew Strauss well. The cast is historic too -Viorica Ursuleac (who later married Krauss), Erna Berger and Helge Rosvaenge. It's been in circulation for several years, available from several different sources incl mp3 from amazon and HERE.

The picture above is  Ariadne auf Naxos by Lovis Corinth, the Munich artist, who was part of the Munich Secession, which predated the Vienna Secession which gets all the publicity because it's more commercially exploitable. This illustration was completed 1913, the year after Strauss completed his opera, so Corinth might have known of it, at least by repute. Notice how Corinth sends up classical antiquity and the conventions of formal art.  Ariadne's lying in an explictly sexual position, but unconscious, while Bacchus and his merry band look like they're about to trample her. And that "island", geologically impossible!

Franziska zu Reventlow, queen of the Secession

Radical mother? Franziska, Gräfin zu Reventlow (1871-1918), Queen of the scene in Schwabing, heart of vibrant Secessionist Munich. She hung out with artists, writers and thinkers, but her art was life itself.

Reventlow's father was a Graf (prince) from Husum in North Frisia, where the flat landscape opens out to the sea, like Holland, only colder. The family was ancient and aristocratic. The name still opens doors today. Had Fanny (as they called her) chosen, she could have led a grand, comfortable life. Instead, she rejected it all at a very early age. No Romantic "New Woman" role model to follow, and a society much more repressed than most. Reventlow had to invent herself.

Gravitating to Munich in 1896, Reventlow landed smack in the middle of the hippest scene in Europe at the time. Jugendstil, and the first Secession, was invented in Munich a decade before it hit Vienna. Simplicissimus, the satire magazine, had just been founded, and the atmosphere was irreverent, progressive, innovative. Reventlow wrote for the magazine and others. But then as now, there wasn't any money in  journalism, especially the  avant garde who prided themselves in not playing money and status games. Besides, she was penniless, having lost her inheritance in a bank collapse. She wrote books, too, but also had to scramble a living selling other things, like milk, insurance (new industry) and herself. Prostitution, she reasoned, was no different from marriage, and didn't tie you down as long. Reventlow lived on the edge, scam marriages and all. Famously she posed nude for arty photos. On a beach, not in a studio, in 1900!

Soon after arriving in Munich she gave birth to a son called Rolf, father irrelevant. Most of Reventlow's friends weren't hands on parents or even hetero but Bubi the Baby became the mascot of their lives. Reventlow held breast feeding parties so they could watch in awe, the spectacle of The Eternal Feminine in action. Rolf was brought up free range. He didn't go to school, but had a good education from the adults around him. From photos it seems he stayed up nights at wild, drunken parties, but looked  right and fresh. Perhaps the photos were posed to look wilder than they were and Bubi was protected as fiercely by his mother as a tigress protects her cubs. In 1914, Reventlow helped him escape conscription by rowing him across Lake Constance into Switzerland. Four years later, Franziska was dead, from injuries sustained in a bicycle accident. Read more HERE. 

For all the freedom he was raised in, Rolf wasn't a typical hippie child. The circles he grew up in preached free love and sedition, but also valued committment.. During the Weimar period, Rolf worked as a left wing journalist with his wife Else Reimann.  Rolf became a target for the Nazis who tried to assassinate him within weeks of coming to power. He fled, first to Vienna, then Russia and later to Algeria where he worked in newspapers, not returning to Germany til the mid 1950's.

Else had a rougher time. Forbidden to work by the Nazis, she returned home to Elbing in  Prussia, now part of Poland. As a girl in 1917, she'd been a refugee from the Russian invasion. In 1945 she had to escape again, this time crossing the Haf (the huge lagoon near Danzig) in midwinter. Eventually she made her way back to Munich. Rolf is buried in Locarno with his mother but I suspect Franziska would recognized something of herself in formidable Else.

Strauss Salome Royal Opera House David McVicar

In principle, the idea of Salome as victim of child abuse is perfectly reasonable. Herod and Herodias were not nice people (and were uncle and niece, moreover - they "kept it in the family")

The pictures here are by Franz von Stuck, leader of the pioneering Munich Secession that started ten years before the Vienna Secession. Stuck lived in a bizarre palace he designed himself, filled with creepy painting and objects. Art nouveau and decadence are closely related.

So why was I so disappointed in David McVicar's production at the Royal Opera House? Nowadays nudity doesn't shock so there's no reason why Salome's Dance of the Seven Veils needs to be "exotic" per se. But McVicar redirects the emphasis, instead,  to the physical mechanics of stagecraft, so Salome herself becomes largely irrelevant among the props..

Massive, complicated machinery which moves across the stage, overwhelming all else. The action's heavy handed, too. Isn't it obvious when Salome sits with a toy on Herod's knee ? And what's the point of the wardrobe of dresses and so on?  The most effective part of the whole opera was when Salome was simply left to dance, a golden filigree object projected on the wall behind her.

If the drama iasabout Salome, and not the machinery, why is she such a cipher? I don't think the fault lies with Angela Denoke, who sings well, but doesn't convey any of the complexity of Salome's character. Sure, she holds Jokanaan's head between her legs, and blood flows from her private parts rather than from what's left of him, but it's curiously sedate.  Salome-as-psychological-Chernobyl needs to be directed more tightly, and take over the stage, by the intensity of her performance. Denoke's good, but it would take a very unusual person to pull this off.  Salome's like Lulu, child-like outside, volcano within.

It also doesn't help that Denoke has to compete with a railway station full of extras. So it's a palace? We don't need to see so many maids and factotums, standing around, contributing little, that's not all what palaces are. What's the point of the naked girl, or rather, girl in body suit ?  Or the upstairs dining room? We know palaces have dungeons below. So why ? The banquet background of Christof Loy's Tristan und Isolde emphasized the political horse trading that created the situation in the first place.  McVicar's  banquet's just there, it does nothing after having made its point in the first two seconds. Nice staircase, though.

Strauss's groups operate in blocks - holy men for pressure, soldiers for menace. But when they're spread all over, and not defined by action (as opposed to costume) the impact is diffused. Compare Laurent Pelly's use of groups in Manon, concentrated and operating as a unit.  It's these pressures that pile up on Herod, forcing him into a quandary. Though you'd need to know the opera (or Wilde, or the Bible) because it's hardly noticeable in this production.  The story entered the Bible because it's a conflict between Jews and Nazarenes, old authority versus new. A few prayer shawls don't make formidable opposition.

Without conflicts pulling Herod apart, he's neutered, too. Gerhard Seigel's performance is masterful,. He paces himself with steady authority, nice, resonant lower register. As a king, he's totally believable. But as child molester?  Curiously unconnected to Salome for good or ill. As for Jokanaan, one of the reasons Salome wants his head is because he's wild, completely different to the world in the palace. Johan Reuter's improved lots over the years, but hasn't much chance to stand out in this circus of a production.

Fundamentally, singers sing. Acting is where directors come in, to motivate and develop.

Meanwhile, Richard Strauss's music whips itself into neurotic frenzy, exuding unsettling, poisoned perfumes. This music is so thrilling it survives the production. Hartmut Haenchen's experience in modern German repertoire makes his Strauss disturbing, shaping colours languidly, legato curling like a snake. This was excellent playing, and made the evening worthwhile. A good musical experience, good singing all round, even the cameos.

Pity, though, the singers weren't stretched as actors. Irina Mishura has the vocal potential to do more, but here she's merely the inhabitant of a green dress.  Andrew Staples's Nabbaroth is sung with such assurance, you wish more was made of him. And it's worrying when all eyes are on a non-singing part, the naked executioner. Why he's naked I don't know, but he's great to look at. The trouble is, it's Salome we should be looking at, because it's really her show.

Hartmann Simplicius Simplicissimus

An anti-fascist, anti-war opera written in Germany while the Nazis were in power? K A Hartmann's Des Simplicius Simplicissimus Jugend was a brave act of conscience, even though the opera wasn't publicly performed until 1948.

Simplicius Simplicissimus is loosely based on H J Chr Grimmelshausen's 1669 book, the frontispiece pictured here. The original was set in the Thirty Years War, a defining trauma in German history, barely appreciated in the English-speaking world. "Anno Domini 1618 wohnten 12 millionen in Deutschland" goes Hartmann's introduction. "Da kam der grosse Kreig". Thirty years later, only 4 million remained. Hartmann uses an alt Deutsch idiom but it's obvious what he really means.

There's a new edition, recently recorded by the Münchner Rundfunkorchester conducted by Ulf Schirmer. The singing too is way above average, which in itself makes this a top recommendation : Michael Volle, Christian Gerhaher, Camilla Nylund and Will Hartmann. It's live, too, recorded in a small theatre, which adds to the atmosphere. This performance is vividly dramatic. Even if you don't understand a word of German, the impact is clear.

Like the 1669 original, Hartmann sets the opera in tableaux, each act divided into different Bild or Speil subsections, like a series of stylized woodcuts. This formality creates an otherworldy edge to the horrific tale within. A thundering, brooding overture sets the mood of overwhelming chaos. Hartmann's orchestration is spartan: simple trumpets, drums, pipes, a modernist battaglia. From this the male voices develop, chanting in goose-step rhythms.

Simplicius appears. Ein kleiner Bub bei den Schafen, kannte weder Gott noch Menschen, weder Himmel noch Hölle, weder Engel noch Teufel. Notice the pattern of opposite images, which flows throughout the opera. The text is set in rhyming couplets, typical of German tradition, and the music moves in a similar grave two-step.

Simplicius is a "Holy Innocent", so pure he knows nothing of heaven or hell. In Tarot the Fool signifies someone who goes forth into the world without fear, facing danger but protected by his purity. Siegfried without the selfishness. Hartmann sets the part for high soprano though the role is male: Nylund's lucid, clear tones are perfect.

"Beware of the Wolf" warns the farmer (Michael Volle, with solemn bucolic gravity). Wolf of course was Hitler's nickname. Simplicius doesn't know what a wolf is. so when the Landknecht (Gerhaher) appears he thinks the Horseman is the vierbeiniger Schelm und Dieb the farmer warned about. "Weiss nit, Herr Wolf" cries Simplicius but the Landknecht attacks the farm and kills the Knän, die Meuder und das kleine Ursele (these archaic words give the piece a deliberate old world air). Nylund sings a long passage describing the horrors of war, which ends with O armes geknechtetes Deutschland.

Now Simplicius has wised up and heads into the forest where he meets a Hermit (another Tarot figure). The Hermit (Will Hartmann) sings music like stylized monastic chant, wavering weirdly. He teaches Simplicius to sing Unser Vater (Our Father). Give us our daily bread". Simplicius, incorrigibly naive, asks auch Käs dazu? (and cheese, too?) Eventually the Hermit dies, leaving Simplicius to face the world alone. Provocatively, Hartmann writes into the death music an echo of the Kaddish.

Another powerful intermezzo, swirling strings, plunging brass, depicting storm clouds perhaps, as Simplicismus is flown into the Governor's mansion. The soldiers boast of their tyranny and blaspheme. This chorus sound like drunken communal singing in a beer cellar, also a reference perhaps to the Nazis. This time Simplicius pipes up "that's no way to speak". "Can you hear the Mauskopf piepsen shouts the Governer. And of course, Simplicius's music is flute and clarinet. The Governer (Volle) recites rather than sings, not Sprechstimme but oddly discordant. He can't figure the simpleton out.

Then Nylund's tour de force. Words pour out of her at a shrill rapid pace, almost no time to take a breath. Using speech instead of song was a deliberate device by Hartmann to confront the audience. Simplicius harangues the listeners, without music to soften the effect. As she finds her strength her words are supported by drums. A militant but not military march? Then suddenly her voice rises in song. Es dröhnt die Stadt, es stapft daher, schäumende bitt're Jammersg'walt. She's joined by the chorus now representing farmers, the victims of the Thirty Years War. Gepriesen sei der Richter der Wahrheit! sings Simplicius, now transformed into a symbol of hope. Behind her muffled drums and cymbals, the choir now softly humming, and the Specher reminds us that by 1648, 8 million Germans were killed.

Significantly, Hartmann dedicated the 1955/6 revision to Carl Orff whose Carmina Burana used a similar fake medieval context, which the Nazis loved, though they missed the subversive undercurrents. Hartmann knew what it was like living in a police state. More double-edged meaning. Simplicissimus is also the title of a magazine that satirized all abuses of power, military, political and religious. It was based in Munich, where Hartmann lived. While the stylized formality presages Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, Simplicius Simplicissimus stems from the Weimar tradition of political theatre.

As a plus,there's a half hour discussion with recordings of Hartmann's voice on the second CD in this set. As a minus, this set falls down as there's no translation. One might think that an opera where German-language speech rhythms are so important won't need translation because anyone listening will be fluent. But many of the words are archaic, not that easy for non-native speakers to follow. And non-Germans need to know this opera, to better understand Germany, the experience of war and the role of modern music. Get it HEREHartmann: Des Simplicius Simplicissimus Jugend

Vienna to Weimar -Study Day, New Directions arising

The mark of a good conference is the amount of new ideas it generates. The Vienna to Weimar study at Kings Place on Saturday 30/1 should keep anyone interested in the period busy for ages.

As Prof Erik Levi said in his opening speech, the period was marked by many new directions and possibilities. Just as society was adjusting to change, so did music. Douglas Jarman spoke about the new mood in Vienna at the turn of the last century. He elucidated the relationship between Schoenberg and Eisler. Peter Franklin focused on three depictions of Paradise in opera of the period: Korngold's Das Wunder der Heliane , Pfitzner's Das Herz and Schreker's Der Schmeid von Gent. Racism is nuts because it pigeonholes composers by their origins, not their music. Then, Gudo Heldt showed clips from various films (including Kuhle Wampe) to illustrate different ways of writing music for film. Watch the bicycle symphony in part 1, where the men stand still in expectation while the music whizzes madly. Once they start off: silence. The music's not background but commentary.

What are the directions I'm thinking in terms of ? For one, the role of Munich, whose Secession movement started five years before Vienna. Indeed the very term Jugendstil derives from the radical Munich magazine Jugend. (as does the word kitsch!) More artists, designers radical social politics and writers in Munich but that's where the aesthetic developed. And remember there were almost as many articles about music in the journal of the Blaue Reiter movement as about painting. And of course Schoenberg was heavily involved. Lots of reasons why Vienna captures the public imagination but it wasn't the full story.

Over Xmas I spent ages listening to K A Hartmann's Simplicissmus. See analysis HERE. Hartmann sends up Nazism while ostensibly writing "medieval" music that should have appealed to retrogressive tastes. Subversive! This puts Carmina Burana into a different context: the jury's still not completely out on Carl Orff. And the idea of Hollywood arising from Weimar. Franz Waxman, for example who conducted The Blue Angel and went on to write the music for The Bride of Frankenstein. (1935). He was both jazz and classical: blending genres and stereotypes long before Korngold, Eisler and the post Anschluss emigration. See "David Weber". And then: the whole effect of American and Anglo culture. Brecht and his "international" names, exotic themes injected into Germanic culture. Even the hero of The Testament of Dr Mabuse bears the incongruous name of "Tom Kent". (I'll upload the movie soon as it's the best of the Lang Mabuse triology)

The photo shows Hannah Hoch's 1919 collage Cut with the Dada Kitchen knife, the Weimar Photomontage. Hoch, who was an all-round remarkable character. really unusual personality, disrupts the idea of"formal" painting. She's using the idea of disconnected images to create a new whole. Think musique concrète, think Varèse. To understand the future of classical music, it's essential to properly understand the past. And that won't happen if the 20th century is ignored. PLease see my other posts about Vienna-Wrimar, including a way of recreating the song recital for yourself, a comparison of Weimar and Chinese films and a detailed review of Hartmann's Simplicius Simplicissimus. PLus lots and lots of related topics -- use search facility.