Friday, 3.30.07, 2:06 pm
Classical Performances
A Helen for all Ears, if not all Eyes
In bringing the rarely performed Richard Strauss opera Die Ägyptische Helena (“The Egyptian Helen” – last at the MET in 1928) back to the stage, the Metropolitan Opera is doing opera lovers a great favor. The music of this opera is marvelous, as most of even neglected Strauss is, and the opera’s story/libretto, maligned for being silly, incoherent, and whatever other damning thing one can throw at it, might just be worth our time, too. Nine years ago, Bernhard Holland wrote in the New York Times that “Richard Strauss gave ”Die Ägyptische Helena” so many reasons to fail that its best qualities are neutralized, held hostage by its worst instincts. … [T]here exists so much in the opera’s favor, yet so much that almost guarantees its doom.” That was by way of introducing concert performances of the American Symphony Orchestra under Leon Botstein with – then as now – Deborah Voigt as Helena at Avery Fisher Hall that were widely considered a success, in part because they were not staged.
From the same venue and team, but five years later, comes the finest available recording of the opera. (By my count there are five performances on record – in various editions – only the 1970 RCA live recording from Vienna with Josef Krips, Edita Gruberova, Jess Thomas, Gwyneth Jones, and Peter Schreier is a serious alternative; Dorati / Detroit with Jones and Hendricks on Decca is oop.) The rest of the cast featured on that Telarc live recording, if more or less anonymous in late 2002, has all made their name in opera, since. Celena Shafer surely impressed everyone who heard her in the Washington Concert Opera’s performance of Massenet’s Esclarmonde two years ago. Carl Tanner – he’s been Samson for the WNO – has established himself firmly on the world’s opera stages (no more truck-driving and head-hunting for him…), Eric Cutler has since issued his debut recital on EMI, Jill Grove is in very good company as an ARIA winner (including Ms. Shafer and Mr. Cutler).
| The Operas of Richard Strauss – and recommended recordings | |
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Guntram, op.25 (1894) Gala, 1985 BBC SO, John Pritchard, William Lewis, Henry Newman, Carole Farley et al. |
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Feuersnot, op.50 (1901) Arts Music, 1985 Munich RSO, Heinz Fricke, Julia Varády, Bernd Weikl, Manfred Schenck et al. |
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Salome, op.54 (1905) Deutsche Grammophon, 1990 Deutsche Oper Berlin, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Cheryl Studer, Bryn Terfel, Leonie Rysanek, Horst Hiestermann et al. |
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Elektra, op.58 (1909) Decca, 1967 Wiener Philharmoniker, Georg Solti, Birgit Nilsson, Regina Resnik, Gerhard Stolze, Tom Krause et al. |
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Der Rosenkavalier, op.59 (1911) EMI, 1956 Philharmonia Orchestra, Herbert von Karajan, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Christa Ludwig, Eberhard Wächter, Otto Edelmann, Ljuba Welitsch, Teresa Stich-Randall, Nicolai Gedda, Paul Kuen et al. |
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Ariadne auf Naxos, op.60 (1912) Deutsche Grammophon, 2000 Staatskapelle Dresden, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Deborah Voigt, Ben Heppner, Klaus Florian Vogt, Anne Sofie von Otter, Natalie Dessay, et al. |
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Die Frau ohne Schatten, op.65 (1919) Deutsche Grammophon, 1977 Wiener Philharmoniker, Karl Böhm, Birgit Nilsson, Leonie Rysanek, James King, Walter Berry, et al. |
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Intermezzo, op.72 (1924) EMI, 1980 Bavarian RSO, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Gabriele Fuchs, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Lucia Popp, Kurt Moll et al. |
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Die ägyptische Helena, op.75 (1928) Telarc, 2002 American SO, Leon Botstein, Deborah Voigt, Celena Shafer, Carl Tanner et al. |
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Arabella, op.79 (1933) Decca, 1957 Wiener Philharmoniker, Georg Solti, Lisa Della Casa, Otto Edelmann, Ira Malaniuk, Hilde Gueden, George London et al. |
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Die schweigsame Frau, op.80 (1935) Orfeo, 1971 Bavarian State Opera, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Reri Grist, Martha Mödl, Barry McDaniel, Kurt Böhme, Donald Grobe et al. |
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Friedenstag, op.81 (1938) Deutsche Grammophon, 1985 Staatskapelle Dresden, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Albert Dohmen, Alfred Reiter, Deborah Voigt, Jochen Kupfer, Johan Botha et al. et al. |
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Daphne, op.82 (1938) Deutsche Grammophon, 2005 West German RSO, Semyon Bychkov, Renée Fleming, Anna Larsson, Johan Botha, Michael Schade, Eike Wilm Schulte, Kwangchul Youn et al. |
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Die Liebe der Danaë, op.83 (1940) Telarc, 2000 American SO, Leon Botstein, Lauren Flanigan, Peter Coleman-Wright, Hugh Smith et al. |
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Capriccio, op.85 (1942) EMI, 1957 Philharmonia Orchestra , Wolfgang Sawallisch, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Nicolai Gedda, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Eberhard Wächter, Hans Hotter, Christa Ludwig, Anna Moffo et al. |
Story & Meaning
But about that story: Poseidon’s mistress Aithra awaits her sea-ruling lover for dinner – in vain. (Poseidon is currently in Ethiopia.) Her omniscient clam (or mussel, although “mussel” and the German “Muschel” are not the same; the latter refers to the entire phylum of Mollusca, not just the class of Bivalvia) tells of a ship where a beautiful woman (the most beautiful woman, in fact) is about to be murdered by her jealous husband.
Aithra is appalled and prevents the murder by having the sea wreck the ship and the couple washed ashore. She receives Helen (just back from a ten-year stint with Paris in Troy) and her Spartan husband Menelas (just back from an equally long stint of destroying Troy and Paris) in her abode and sets about to fix that troubled marriage for Helen’s sake. The latter still loves Menelas, even if Aithra can’t understand what the woman finds in the aggressive boor.
Potions calm Menelas down – but he is haunted by visions of his less-than-ideally faithful wife (Menelas didn’t know Leonard Cohen, but he would have sympathetically hummed along to: Everybody knows that you love me baby / Everybody knows that you really do / Everybody knows that you’ve been faithful / give or take a night or two * / Everybody knows you’ve been discreet / But there were so many people you just had to meet / Without your clothes / And everybody knows) and promptly runs amok. Aithra’s fairies distract him and, confused, Menelas thinks he is killing Paris and Helen all over again as he stabs at the conjured spirits.
(* or 3652, as it were)
Now Aithra tells him that Helen was never actually in Troy – but that a spirit had been created in her image to protect the real Helen who was sound asleep all that time, safely tucked away in Egypt. (This is actually one of the variations of the myth, but with Hofmannsthal and Strauss it’s just that: a cockamamy scheme to help Menelas reconcile Helen’s true love for him with her alleged (actual, but now appearing never to have happened) marital transgressions. (After Paris’ death she was handed from brother to brother… “A sister-in-law unlike any other” Menelas points out, with sarcastic disdain.)
That seems to be the solution at first, and Helen asks to be ferried (fairied, to be precise) away to a secluded place where she can sort things out with her hubby. Soon she realizes that Menelas’ forgetting the past (supported by more potions) does not actually help. Now the quarrels are just different – and the newly reunited couple finds itself in a union that is not really themselves. A foreign prince and his rash son (Altair and Da-ud) crash the party, create diversion, but don’t propel the drama. Helen decides that to save her real marriage she must risk having Menelas remember everything – and gives him a potion to that effect. With that act she also allows Menelas to come to the difficult terms of how his beautiful loving wife could be the same one that ran away with Paris, leaving him with their daughter behind and causing a long, bloody war. In overcoming this discrepancy, an actual reunion is possible and the opera ends on this hopeful, but unresolved, and hardly definitively happy, note – not unlike Così, Der Rosenkavalier, or Capriccio.
If this (and numerous fairies and acts of magic and some summoned sea-warriors of Poseidon) sounds ludicrously “out there”, it’s probably because the surface of the story can all too easily detract from its substance. At the heart of Die ägyptische Helena is a (nearly) as domestic a story as in Intermezzo (another obscure opera of his – see table to the left) or, non-operatically, in the Sinfonia Domestica.
It’s a beautiful and sensitive problem and predicament that Strauss and Hofmannsthal tackle: That of the difficulties of reconciling the seeming inconsistencies and contradictions of reality (in spouses or elsewhere); the reality of the people we interact with and the ideal we may hold of them. Often we simply deny this discrepancy; others react with violent outbursts to them. (A rather crass label for this conflict is the “Virgin Mary / Whore complex”.) Anyone who has ever been in a relationship will have done or thought something they know is better not shared with the respective partner. (“Your thighs are fat”, “That guy is really hot”, “I wish your mother finally died”, “No, actually the soup is execrable”, “You’re not the best I’ve had” etc.) At the same time we run around denying our partners might think similar thoughts or do similar deeds. When we can’t brush that inconsistency under the carpet anymore, we might be in trouble, just like Menelas who can’t deny that half the Trojan royal family had a go at Helen. (What kind of a role model would she be to our daughter, he thinks.) Understandably it takes him a while to integrate that person with the Helen he loves and knows and who loves him… and then accept her as that, in all her complexities.
Even if you don’t buy that the glaring discrepancy between the two acts of Strauss’ opera – the comedic, silly first act and the relatively serious drama of the second act – represent in form the very psychological discrepancies the characters have to overcome, the subject matter alone deserves more benevolent attention than the easy mockery that it usually meets. Sure, it’s easy to claim silliness starts with the first line, “Dinner is served” (it’s actually “The meal is prepared” or “The feast awaits… night is falling”) but that is in any case no less meaningful than to start an opera with the lines: “Five… Ten… Twenty… Thirty… Thirty-six… Forty-three” – and little more than taking potshots at poor Helena. Most of the absurdity in it merely serves to illustrate this very human, very bourgeois and near-universal condition.
Staging
If taken as the silly, hopelessly weird opera that it is generally thought of, a new production might well be tempted to go all-out absurd and completely ignore or obscure the central theme. David Fielding, who updated his 1997 staging from the Garsington Festival for the MET, does not fall victim to that temptation. His set is wild, abstract, and a good many of those things that have MET patrons cringe, but it never distracts, often adds subtly to the drama (while looking unsubtle on the outside – not unlike the opera itself). Acts I and II are visual inversions of each other – what is white in act I is black in act II, what was stage left in act one is now stage right. The sets are gorgeous, skewed and abstract contraptions of oversized doors and walls. A number of inspired touches makes this opera a visually most arresting feast for the eyes of those that don’t expect traditional settings. But why would anyone care about representational sets when the story of the opera has so little to do with the actual drama, anyway? The direction of the green fairy-chorus (a weird alienesque bunch of glittering things, somewhere between lions and Liszt-monkeys, in mint-mouthwash colored vinyl dresses) is delightful and surprisingly in line with the text. (When they can’t take the radiance of Helen’s beauty, why shouldn’t they take out their glacier-glasses?)
The Music
Helen might be Clytemnestra’s sister (both hatched from eggs after Zeus raped – or seduced – their mother with at least one of them having been in the form of a swan… the accounts vary on this) – but Strauss’ 1928 opera sounds much more like Salome than Elektra, shot through with the harmonic and orchestral language we might know from later works like Die Frau ohne Schatten (1919) and Arabella (1933). The music is gorgeous far beyond what one might expect for an opera of such ill repute (even if, admittedly, no one ever claimed that it was neglected because of the music). Hugo von Hofmannsthal, who wrote the libretto for Helene (as he did for Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne auf Naxos, Die Frau ohne Schatten, Arabella, and Die Liebe der Danaë) wanted Strauss to get away from Wagnerian “erotic screaming” (Frau ohne Schatten, anyone?), and while that goal was achieved, there are still a couple of orchestral moments in Helene that bring Die Walküre and Das Rheingold to mind. This is music to indulge in and it gives the two leading sopranos more wonderful opportunities to show off their ability (athletic and bel canto, alike), sensitivity, and vocal voluptuousness than other composers manage to offer in their entire œvre’s output.
The Singing
The Met cast offers several reasons to tune in on Saturday, but none greater than the spectacular Diana Damrau and Deborah Voigt. The latter sang more than admirably despite having been announced “ill” by Peter Gelb. A speckle on the very first note and slight metallic restriction that loosened as the opera went on were the only notable results of that illness in the first act. An odd, but isolated, metallic buzzing (like a blown tweeter) when she was at her most forceful in the “Zweite Brautnacht, Zaubernacht” opening of act II was the only other moment when her ‘incapacitation’ called attention to itself. Her Helen was still a vocal feat and feast, and to hear her – hopefully – in full health on Saturday (1.30PM) should prove even more rewarding. Sadly not visible on the radio, she now even believably looks the part of “most beautiful woman in the world”!
Her Helen was bettered only by Aithra with her more agile part – brought to life in every way by the German soprano Diana Damrau. With diction as perfect as her natural pronunciation, she also added a theatrical element to her use of language. An actor could not have treated language more appropriately than she. And while this might be a detail lost on all but those who follow the libretto by listening to it, her vocal contribution escaped no one in the house, which went (comparatively) wild at curtain call. Indeed, Ms. Damrau must have momentarily forgotten that she was not the top-billed singer and last to take a bow, because she started to order her colleagues together for the group-bow before realizing that Ms. Voigt and Torsten Kerl (Menelas) had yet to appear. A very cute (and on that night truly forgivable) faux pas.
Under Fielding’s direction, said Torsten Kerl came across like Alec Baldwin in one of his slightly absurd, over the top performances. He lacked the power to compete with the ladies, seemed at his limit throughout the first act (never strained but never easily cutting across the orchestra, either) – but came to life mid-second act. Jill Grove repeated her clam/mussel from the 2002 performance and recording with maturity and a deep, molluscan beauty. Wolfgang Brendel brought his veteran but unreliable baritone to the part of prince Altair and surprised with a big and round, largely wobble-free delivery that belied recent experiences I have had with him. Altair’s son, Da-ud, was sung by Texan tenor Garrett Sorenson and it was never in question why he had previously been given seven other roles at the MET. He’ll get more, still, judging by what he made of this small part. The chorus was fine – but acted even better. Only the Met orchestra under Fabio Luisi (who so had magnificently conducted Simon Boccanegra) left something to be desired. Best when sweeping and impetuous, there were some problems in the delicate (and already oddly tuned) string passage accompanying Aithra’s “Ihr grünen Augen” and the ensemble seemed to drift apart a little in the first act.
Wednesday, 3.21.07, 8:50 pm
Classical Performances
Blasphemous Dogs, Recovering Catholics, and a Rediscovered American Gem
The The Feast of Reformation (on October 31st) is not a much celebrated holiday, probably not even in Protestant Germany. But in the 17th and 18th centuries, when religious denominations of entire fiefdoms and countries were still being determined by the sword (or inheritance), the celebration of ones own denomination was as important a side for its vitality as was the ardent, tenacious, and generally bloody struggle against the ‘other’ creeds. Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) – praise be to (whichever) God – took part in this battle of beliefs on the celebratory and creative side. Born only thirty-seven years after the Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years’ War, Bach contributed much more to Protestantism with his quill than he ever could have with a musket or pike. One such contribution, among 200 sacred (extant) cantatas, is Gott, der Herr ist Sonn und Schild (“The Lord God is our Sun and Shield”) BWV 79 which celebrates this “Feast of Reformation” – as does its more famous sibling-cantata, Ein fest Burg ist unser Gott (“A mighty fortress”) BWV 80 – and Bach took unusual care in crafting it, allowing himself an unusually generous half year to compose the cantata.
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That cantata is endowed with such a splendid, quasi-processional first movement for strings, horns, oboes, flutes, drum and chorus – bucolic, jubilant and promising – that it more than merits its un-seasonal inclusion in The Choral Arts Society of Washington’s performance this Sunday, March 25th, at the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall. The much simpler sounding second movement for alto and oboe-obbligato ends on an obscure reference to a “barking, blasphemous dog” (“…und ein Lästerhund gleich bellt.”) which may have been more commonly understood by its protestant 1725 Weimar audience: One night Martin Luther found a big black dog in his bed in his exile on the Wartburg. Luther quickly identified the barking beast as the Devil himself and allegedly threw the sorry creature out the window. (“Das also war des Pudels Kern…” from Goethe’s Faust, written in Weimar less than half a century later, comes to mind. With the proclamation of “that’s what’s at the heart of the poodle” Faust discovers here that the black stray that had been trailing him is actually Mephistopheles.) The cantata’s brief final chorale Erhalt uns in der Wahrheit (“Sustain us in the Truth”) seems like a serene afterthought, over before even properly appreciated; rather a premature exit after such a glorious beginning… but no less beautiful for it.
(On well aimed tug from the ridiculously inexpensive (yet invaluable) “Bach-Box” by Brilliant produces a fine version of BWV 79 with the Holland Boys Choir and the Netherlands Bach Collegium under Pieter Jan Leusink. Alas, anyone who owns the deliciously well produced volume 10 of the “Soli Deo Gloria” Bach Cantata series under John Elliot Gardiner’s label will find a resplendent, finer and more securely performed version, still.)
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There is more of a link between J.S.Bach and Amy Mary Cheney Beach than their similarish last names or the number of letters in their full names. Amy Beach’s opus 123, the “Canticle of the Sun”, not to be mistaken with the more widely known contemporary work of the same name by Sofia Gubaidulina, is an orchestra-choral treatment of Saint Francis of Assissi’s “Laudes Creaturarum” which received its premiere in 1930 in Chicago and has been brought (back) to a wider audience through a Washington DC performance with the Capitol Hill Choral Society at the 1996 annual meeting of the Sonneck Society for American Music. (The recording of this performance is available on the American composer label Albany Records.)
There is a humble simplicity to Beach’s work and it has long been neglected because it was unsuitably beautiful for a 20th century of classical music that only dare championed music that was consumed by the brain, not the ears… (and the more “difficult” the better). There are moments in this work that sound not unlike the enormously popular John Rutter’s choral musings… but minus the terrifyingly second-rate triteness of Rutter. For anyone who clamors for more American music in the region, Beach’s inclusion in the CASW’ program should be heaven-sent. And despite being “20th century”, it won’t scare the children, either.
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The most interesting piece on the program on March 25th is undoubtedly Francis Poulenc’s Stabat Mater for orchestra, soprano, and chorus. Poulenc is one of the most amiable and least pretentious 20th century composers. His transformation from witty absurdist and lighthearted musical sparkplug into a composer of great, but never portentous, profundity is fascinating. With the vocabulary attained in his youth, he continued to compose religious works later in life. Claude Rostand memorably characterized him “part monk, part guttersnipe”. The transformation was triggered by a friend of Poulenc’s fatally being second winner in an automobile accident; the religion he turned to was the neglected Catholicism of his childhood. The result, to quote Robert R. Reilly from “Surprised by Beauty – A Listener’s Guide to the Recovery of Modern Music”, is “no irony, no facetiousness, no nonsense syllables—mostly traditional Latin texts set to music with great spiritual purity, with both austerity and tenderness, and, in certain cases, great power. While modern, his idiom is thoroughly tonal, beautifully melodic, occasionally archaic, with dissonance used expressively.”
In 1949, another friend’s death inspired Poulenc to write the Stabat Mater. A longer work than the Bach cantata, it took Poulenc less than three months to compose what many critics consider his most profound and moving choral work. As long as Georges Prêtre’s recording with Regine Crespin hides in EMI’s vaults, the second Prêtre recording with Barbara Hendricks (also EMI) or Serge Baudo’s (with Michele Lagrange, HMU) will best convey the spirit and pain of this work. Robert Shaw’s Atlanta recording (Telarc) aims for sheer beauty and comes with the most interesting coupling in the form of Karol Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater. Better yet, still, would be the live experience, of course – as to be witnessed when Norman Scribner leads his forces into this Lutheran-Catholic Lenten celebration of great choral music this Sunday.
Thursday, 3.15.07, 12:54 pm
Classical Performances
Wagner’s Ring: Tension and Delight
Wagner is, like few other composers, the subject of controversy, emotions, and ideological battles. And that’s just among those who already proclaim to be fans. In heated discussions over whether Hagen should be more Sprechgesang or rather approached with Bel Canto in mind, small arms fire is a distinct possibility. Stage direction and design are perennially contested.
Perhaps no other composer’s work asks more for constant renewal and innovation than Wagner’s – and among his works none more so than the tetralogy that is Der Ring der Niebelungen. And yet, for no other works will you find more fanatics that ardently condemn even the smallest changes.
Washington will have the opportunity to see its opera-inclined citizens invigorated and split into factions as the Washington National Opera presents the second installment of its “American Ring” this month when the curtain to an all-new Walküre rises on March 24th. Directed by WNO favorite, Francesca Zambello, the Washington Ring Cycle (co-produced with San Francisco, who get second dibs) opened to a cautiously positive, if mixed, reaction with the Rheingold last year. Chock-full of ideas and iconography – much of it good, some of it superfluous, a few bits distracting – it promised that this Ring Cycle should be the catalyst for much debate and discussion on the highest level.
Does Mme. Zambello ravage the master’s work to force her own agenda upon it, or does she free the Ring’s inherent messages for consumption by the Washington audience (especially those not already obsessed with Wagner) by translating them into a symbolic and visual language that we, 21st century Americans and Washingtonians, speak? No one will seriously argue that that language is a different one than the one spoken and understood by the audience that Wagner had in 1876 Bayreuth, Bavaria.
Language never stays the same, ideas do. (Those ideas could also be called “truths”.) And more amenable to change than spoken language still, is visual language. If no one but a handful of scholars read Shakespeare in the actual original, should it be surprising that a work like the Ring, in sum much more complex a work than even King Lear (with all due respect to the great bard), gets – theatrically or visually – heaved into the 20th or 21st century every so often? And yet, “deviation from the original” is tantamount to capital crime for many a self-declared “Wagnerian”.
‘Wagnerianism’, like any ‘-ism’ is an ill, albeit less harmful than, say, Fascism or Communism, or Protectionism, or Militarism. But unlike ‘isms’ that do ill by radicalizing an inherently noble aim (like Pacifism, for example), Wagnerianism is the radicalization of a fictitious ideal muddled by “tradition” which, in this case, is the accumulation and reinforcement of bad habits, intellectual laziness, and little else. Wagnerians, although by and large unaware of their malaise, don’t love Wagner, per se, but their own idea of Wagner. That idea more or less corresponds to how Wagner was performed 50 years ago in America, or between the wars in Germany and is often justified with the claim of truly harking back to Wagner’s time.
This brand of ‘operideology’ is best described as “traditionalist”. The traditionalist glorifies the past, reminisces about the last “Golden Age” of whatever is his or her particular obsession, which, roughly goes back 50, 60 years prior to that person’s artistic conscience maturing. Most knowledge about that Golden Age is, not surprisingly, anecdotal. Wagnerian traditionalists (today, at least – “traditionalism” by its nature is subject to cyclical changes) like to claim to seek a pure, ‘original’ version of the art Wagner created… in accordance to the wishes and intentions of the artist himself. That claim alone is untenable, but it also misleads one to think that the traditionalist is in fact an “originalist” who seeks out the actual state of creation of a work, no matter when that took place. Indeed, they are very distinct. The latter would make up the “Historical Performance Practice” crowd which stages the St. Matthew Passion with two singers to a part and ‘original instruments’. In comparison, the traditionalist – Wagnerian or not – generally prefers his Bach à la Solti or Weingartner. Telling, indeed.
“Traditionalism” contrasts with two other easily generalized approaches to opera in general and to Wagner in particular: the “Modernist” and the conservative approach. In its simplest form, modernism is just the rejection of tradition… practically it involves a (willful) reinterpretation of the given material, the introduction of wholly new elements to a work, and the recasting of an opera in the image of its director. The conservative approach, in contrast, entails preserving the core idea (call it the ‘essence’ or ‘truth’, if you wish) and adjusts the outer form (staging, design, direction) to that effect.
An opera that has a message that goes beyond the literal story it tells (and all great operas do), needs to be allowed to get that message across. And whatever means conveyed that message three-, two-, or one-hundred years ago are not likely the means that convey it nowadays. Points of reference change, symbols and conventions change. Scenery depicting a depraved society in 1850 looked different than such scenery would look in 1980 or 2007. An audience today would merely see costumes and conclude: “pretty” – but hardly register a social critique.
It is any good director’s job to identify the message(s) of the opera at hand, and then find a way to translate this into a language that is understandable to the audience. To merely re-create a version of the past, making sure not to introduce any new idea and add new fancy trims is the traditionalist’s choice; insufficient to anyone who wishes opera to be more than merely a museum of former art. To treat opera this way may have its justifications for works that have little meaning at heart to begin with, and are mostly appreciated for musical (or sentimental), not theatrical value. To treat Wagner this way would be highly inappropriate and unfortunate. Similarly it wouldn’t do to force alien or scantly related elements into the structure, although that’s very tempting, apparently.
The difficultly for a director who wishes neither to embalm the opera, nor to impose him- or herself on it, lies in translating the core elements of the opera into a modern language without making the latter dominate the meaning. Different interpretations of an opera’s core and meaning meet different attempts to interpret them and various different nuances and accentuations that give it a particular flavor. These legions of possibilities are exactly what make opera so attractive and exciting, even if only a few of them actually work well. This challenge is only more attractive (and perilous) in the most demanding and complex of operas, the Ring.
Francesca Zambello sets out to meet this challenge with her “American Ring” in a particularly daring and reasonably novel way. Instead of trimming localisms away in order to hone in on the message, alone, she aims at presenting the Ring’s truths in a new, familiar localism, a quintessentially American vernacular. This should be less daring than it may seem at first, given that the Ring is much less quintessential German than it is universal, even if the Rhein flows prominently through it, everywhere. (The supertitle translation by Cori Ellison takes care to remove all mention of Rhein/Rhine, often replacing it with “pure” which in German – “rein” – is homophone to the river.)
The themes of power (and its abuse), love (and its abuse), wealth (and its abuse) and social rules (and their violations) that run through the Ring are universal enough to survive a trip into outer space (Bavarian State Opera, David Alden) and they are certainly universal enough to survive a trip to the Yuba River Valley. Of course, mere survival is not the issue that concerns opera goers. The strength of Wagner’s music and drama is so great that it would survive even the most hackneyed and intrusive approach. Zambello’s goal is to clarify, not confuse. Dressing some of the references to no longer familiar Norse myths in an native garb with images and symbols of the American past (or, as Mme. Zambello adds), “present, and – God forbid – future”, is supposed to make accessible the obscure and stimulate thought, debate, and possibly controversy. In short: the stuff that living art is made of, and that which, if without it, makes it appear stuffed. Since theater must not be relegated to an expensive form of taxidermy, this is to be appreciated in principle, regardless of whether the result is deemed an unqualified success or ambitious failure.
George Bernard Shaw interpreted the ring as a socialist allegory over 100 years ago, and directors still find this an appealing idea around which to stage the ring. (This is Patrice Chéreau’s approach in his Bayreuth production from 1976-80; to this day the best acted opera performance available on DVD.) In a 1989 Washington Post editorial, Fred Smith and Mark Jones vividly paint the Ring as a “Free Market Classic”, a cautionary tale on the importance and social necessity of rules and contracts. The “American Ring”, curiously, takes more from Shaw’s interpretation than the free market spin. The reminders of Slavery, industrial exploitation, “American fascism” (whatever exactly that may be; “abuse of power”, presumably), the subjugation of native Indians, and the ‘pillaging’ of the environment are always close by.
There are a great many opportunities to disagree with this approach. Are these really the core ideas of the Ring? If they are, do we agree with the chosen analogies? But the point of a direction like Zambello’s is not whether we agree with all the points she makes, but whether she makes those points well and congruently as part of the opera. Do her chosen images and narrative strengthen, correspond with, and support the story Wagner tells?
Certainly a few particular political ideas that are on Mme. Zambello’s mind (even if not all make it directly into the opera) might ruffle some feathers. When talking to her after the WNO roundtable at the Goethe Institut last week she cast Wotan in a particularly bad light, accusing him of being “like Bush; a hideous leader, someone who destroys his society, destroys his family, sacrifices his children…” (Although both have fathered twins who occasionally act out, some viewers in Washington might be uncomfortable with taking such analogies too far.) That “the gold can be seen as a metaphor for oil” is almost too obvious to be spelled out… but barring heavy-handed hints like oil derricks in the first act of Siegfried it may well make a point we can well relate to. (Especially with that SUV parked in the Kennedy Center garage.) If all of Mme. Zambello’s modern-day analogies can be achieved while sticking to her dictum that there will be no “imposing [of] any extraneous agenda” remains to be seen on any of the seven dates between March 24th and April 17th. Meanwhile her remark that as a director “you need to be consistent in your storytelling and you need to be clear about what conceptual path you’re following” already points to the most important aspect of any successful Ring. It will be put to the test in the 2009/10 season when the WNO stages the complete tetralogy, of which Die Walküre is but the second step.
With a cast that was wonderful in the (different) 2003 WNO production (Alan Held – Wotan, Elena Zaremba – Fricka, Anja Kampe – Sieglinde, Plácido Domingo – Siegmund all return), this Walküre is bound to offer something to everyone, taken as separate from the complete cycle or part of a greater project. (Traditionalists might want to close their eyes, though.)
Wednesday, 3.7.07, 8:33 pm
Classical Performances
Race to the Finnish: Osmo Vänskä in Sibelius
Hallmark & Co. have not discovered March 8th, International Women’s Day, with the same commercial vigor they have descended upon Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day. That may be in part to its political (socialist) origins, or because the Soviet Union decreed it an official holiday in the 1960’s. (It had originated in the United States and for a while commemorated the victims of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.) It is possibly unpopular, because the affixed slogan of that decree is difficult to fit on a small card: March 8th is to be celebrated “in commemoration of outstanding merits of the Soviet women in communistic construction, in the defense of their Motherland during the Great Patriotic War, their heroism and selflessness at the front and in rear, and also marking the big contribution of women to strengthening friendship between peoples and struggle for the peace.”
Still, if you have someone dear, who has shown selfless heroism in the front and rear, or who struggles for (domestic) peace, it is as good an excuse as any to think of inviting them to the National Symphony Orchestra’s concert on Thursday, March 8th (or one of the two following days) when Osmo Vänskä will lead the orchestra in works from composers of his native Finland: Sibelius (1865–1957) and Kalevi Aho (*1949).
 J. Sibelius, Violin Concerto (original and revised versions), Lahti SO, Vänskä, Kavakos |
Part of the excitement of any concert is the element of unpredictability. Even if you have heard a particular work more often than you care to remember, a happy “confluence of joy in music making” can delight anew or even change long held believes about works, or composers, or bring out new aspects to a work that had long seemed discovered and, indeed, exhausted. But while a concert that seems lackluster on paper can turn out inspired – and vice versa, there is merit to recommending concerts on anticipated quality all the same. And no concert in the NSO’s season recommends itself more than that Vänskä-led concert with the brilliant, if not overtly famous, Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos.
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Two years ago, everyone who attended (critics included) the Finnish conductor’s showing at the Kennedy Center was unequivocally enthusiastic about the results that Vänskä had achieved with the NSO. (Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony, his Oceanides, and Brahms’ Violin Concerto were played, Lisa Batiashvili was the soloist.) Osmo Vänskä has since established himself in Minnesota, where he is Music Director, as little short of a miracle worker. His love’s labor also shows on record: With Minnesota he is about to create one of the most exciting Beethoven Symphony cycles (if you think you have heard the Fourth often enough, just give the BIS recording – Symphonies Four and Five – a try and you will hear the new benchmark). With the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and Thursday’s soloist, Leonidas Kavakos, he also recorded the Gramophone “Record of the Year” and “Best Concerto Recording” disc of the Sibelius Violin concerto (in its original and revised forms)… and all his other, numerous Sibelius recordings are found in every serious Sibelius-lover’s collection, too.
Early in 2005 ECM released a Stravinsky/Bach recording of Kavakos’ that brought this superb musician, belatedly, to my attention. I quickly followed up on this discovery with his aforementioned Sibelius concerto(s) and his BIS recording of Eugène Ysaÿe Sonatas for Solo Violin – both of which are among the finest versions made and on the top of my personal list. (Right next to Anne-Sofie Mutter’s (DG) and the classic Heifetz (RCA Living Stereo) for Sibelius and Thomas Zehetmair (ECM) for the Ysaÿe.) To hear this supremely tasteful and gifted violinist together with Vänskä, a proven winning combination in the Sibelius concerto, is a chance that should not be missed.
The combination of Sibelius and Aho will make for an evening of Nordic (de)light. The Sibelius concerto is the coolest and least showy (but most difficult) among the great romantic violin concertos. And Kalevi Aho’s music, which has moved from neoclassical to modern and again to a form that is neither, or both – presenting outside musical influences in a refracted light, goes particularly well with classical and romantic music. (Much like a well considered modern architectural wing can harmonize with a classicist building it adds to.) His current style, juxtaposition of wildly varying emotional states, is likened to that of Mahler or Schnittke, and even if it has a 2001 composition tag, Sinfonisia tansseja – Hommage à Uuno Klami (Vänskä conducted the first performance of these symphonic dances for strings, piano and celesta the same year) should not scare anyone who finds Sibelius attractive and is interested in discovering the latter’s rarely played, fragile and graceful string suite Rakastava (The Lover).