Reimann - Lear (Munich, 2021)

Aribert Reimann - Lear

Bayerische Staatsoper, 2021

Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Christoph Marthaler, Christian Gerhaher, Angela Denoke, Ausrine Stundyte, Hanna-Elisabeth Müller, Georg Nigl, Andrew Watts, Matthias Klink, Edwin Crossley-Mercer, Ivan Ludlow, Jamez McCorkle, Brenden Gunnell, Graham Valentine, Dean Power, Marc Bodnar

Bayerische Staatsoper TV - 30 May 2021

There aren't many late 20th century operas that have made such an impact as Aribert Reimann's Lear, a modern opera that has had around 30 productions since its creation in the 1978. And impact is an appropriate and apposite word to describe this extraordinary and still most challenging of operas, a work that is nothing less than an assault on the senses. Some might find that true of most modern opera, but when it comes to adapting this darkest and most violent of Shakespeare's plays - one that Verdi had ambitions to write but never achieved - it's an opera should shake you to the core. Reimann's Lear is indeed - in the best possible meaning of the term - an assault on the senses.

What is also extraordinary about the opera is how much it remains close to the original in text, tone and theme, a challenging work with a diverse cast of characters each with their own motives, character and personality. It retains as much as possible of the two almost distinct story-lines, Lear and his daughters on one hand Gloucester and his sons on the other, each one informing and enhancing the themes of the other. It's all there in the opera, right down to all the notable lines straight out of the play and, in this concentrated form, you'd be hard pressed to think of anything significant that has been cut.

What is even more extraordinary is how Reimann's music enhances the dramatic intensity of the original. In the play, much depends on a director's or actor's interpretation on how the characters come to life, how they interact, what they generate between them. Reimann is wholly the director here and scores those personalities even more intensely into the vocal lines. Few characters are more formidable in drama than Regan and Goneril, and in Reimann's version they are even more stridently terrifying creations, made all the more so by the layering of vocal lines in a way that cannot be done in the theatre, doubling the voices and thereby concentrating and intensifying the drama.

Given all that, Shakespeare and Reimann combined on a work as dark, dramatic and powerful as Lear, is it any wonder that director Christoph Marthaler decides that it needs no further dramatic intervention from him. Although that does seem to be a guiding principle for this director, preferring to offer a contrasting new element on top of the work rather than seek to provide mere dramatic illustration, he's not wrong with adopting that approach in this work. Whether what he brings to it has any merit or indeed interest is a matter of taste and interpretation, but you would hope at least that it doesn't get in the way of the inherent force of the work.

Some might think however that he does fail to adequately present the work on the stage, but at the very least one thing you could count on with Marthaler is that it would not be like any other production and be completely unpredictable, if not even barely comprehensible. He doesn't disappoint on that front. If you can reduce the concept down to a brief description, Anna Viebrock’s stage set is based on the Museum of Natural History in Basel, and Lear is a collector of insects who likes to preserve the past, viewing his own subjects and family as if they were exhibits pinned to a board.

Hence at the start of the Bayerische Staatsoper's 2021 production - with a live audience back after the most recent Covid-19 lockdown - we see a museum guide or scientist showing a small group of visitors the exhibits of the Lear family all mounted in glass display cases in a room of the museum. Other eccentric ways of complementing the drama follow, but hardly bear up to any real scrutiny or commentary. In the first half, Goneril and Regan's dismissal of Lear and his retinue is done by opening boxes of perfume and spraying it in their direction, while in the second half the cast are largely confined within transport cases and cupboards.

If Marthaler doesn't directly engage with the opera however, Reimann's score is certainly capable of presenting the subject on its own terms. It's the sound of a world descending into disorder and madness. Not just one old man's personal decline but all the beliefs, certainties and securities that we have held - even the order of tonality - being cast aside and utterly destroyed in halftones, quartertones and a barrage of thunderous percussion. It's literally the end of the world as we know it; the destruction of hope, of faith in humanity, the sound of despair and regret at the realisation of the reality, the truth about the nature of people revealed, the horror that people can inflict on one another and the depths to which they will stoop out of greed and self interest. It's the nature of the modern world laid bare.

Sadly there is little evidence of that in Marthaler's production, which actually seems to go out of its way to lessen the impact. Fair enough, you might not need to see the gory detail of Gloucester's bloody eye sockets, but putting two glass spheres onto Georg Nigl's eyes does not provoke the essential visceral response that the situation - and Reimann's scoring of it - uses to demonstrate the horrors that man (and woman) are capable of inflicting on one another. There might not be a whole lot Marthaler has to say about Lear, and there may indeed not be a whole lot more that anyone can add that isn't already there to its fullest in Shakespeare and Reimann, but interpretation is of course still an essential part of any opera performance and I was particularly looking forward to hearing the fine cast assembled for this production.

The singing at least tries its best to deliver the magnificent dark poetry of the text and the music that maximises its impact. Christian Gerhaher as Lear and Hanna-Elisabeth Müller as Cordelia are both excellent, doing their best to overcome the largely neutral inexpressive stage direction. Gerhaher manages to be typically lyrical while still describing the horror of his experience, but is still somewhat held back by the direction. Rather more successful since they have great roles to sing no matter what, Ausrine Stundyte is typically impressive as Regan and Angela Denoke suitably dramatic as Goneril, her unsteady and erratic pitch actually suiting Reimann's slides into horrific dissonance. Matthias Klink is outstanding as Edgar/Poor Tom.

Links: Bayerische Staatsoper TV

Dusapin - Macbeth Underworld (Brussels, 2019)

Pascal Dusapin - Macbeth Underworld

La Monnaie-De Munt, 2019

Alain Altinoglu, Thomas Jolly, Magdalena Kožená, Georg Nigl, Ekaterina Lekhina, Lilly Jørstad, Christel Loetzsch, Kristinn Sigmundsson, Graham Clark, Christian Rivet, Elyne Maillard, Naomi Tapiola

La Monnaie MM Channel - October 2019

Shakespeare continues to be a source of inspiration for opera but it still remains a challenge for any composer not just to approach the greater plays but tread in the footsteps of previous opera adaptations as well. To take on King Lear (which Verdi never managed to complete) you not only have to live up to Shakespeare but also Aribert Reimann's thunderous epic opera version, Lear. Brett Dean however was successful in the unenviable task of adapting Hamlet for opera, drawing more intensely from the original than other adaptations. It's hard to imagine how Verdi's Otello or Falstaff could be bettered but arguably Macbeth could be improved with greater fidelity to the source than Verdi, even though his opera is superb in its own right. That's not the approach that Pascal Dusapin takes however in his reworking of Shakespeare for Macbeth Underworld.

What Dusapin attempts is respecting fidelity to the work while also attempting to bring it to life through his own interpretation; a Macbeth Underworld related the events of Shakespeare's Macbeth through a glass darkly, so to speak. In the opera, the ghosts of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Duncan/Banquo and the Weird Sisters are brought back during the prologue by Hecate to relive their crimes and perhaps reflect on them. In order for this not to appear as Shakespeare at a remove, Dusapin employs a similar technique to Reimann in terms of amplification and concentration of the drama. It's a technique that applies to opera in general of course, heightened through music and singing, but there are other means available and Dusapin uses those as well.

There's good justification for this technique of examining Macbeth at a remove and from the grave; the Weird Sisters in a way already have the ability to see what will happen, so to them Macbeth is already a ghost, dead to them, the future laid out and unchangeable. The notion of Time is very much a thing in Macbeth (see the recent RSC theatrical production) and here it's Hecate who controls time, using the witches as a chorus to taunt and torment Macbeth, as their constant chorus of "fair is foul and foul is fair" emphasises. They appear in various guises throughout, a host of holy horrors, the witches the multiple guests at the dinner where Banquo appears, Hecate also playing the Gatekeeper and in a way the Fool, quoting Corinthians 'Death where is thy victory, o death where is thy sting' even though strictly of course there isn't a Fool in this play.

It's proposed in Macbeth Underworld (and of course indicated in Shakespeare's Macbeth) that it's a ghost who also haunts Lady Macbeth and drives her ambition to murder in the play; the ghost of a dead child. Dusapin makes this child one of the agents of the underworld who make them re-enact their crime, and in the same way, Duncan and Banquo are blended together as a ghostly representation of murder and guilt, one that can also stand for all the other deaths that occur under Macbeth's bloody reign, there to present him with a constant reminder of his crimes while he suffers torment in the underworld.

Elsewhere the drama doesn't entirely work, the libretto relying on recital of the most famous lines of the play in a cut-and-paste way without succeeding in tying them together into a fluid through-narrative, even though it largely follows the linear path of the original drama. Arguably it's not the narrative that is important in this version however since it's intended to be a shadow version of the play, the events blending into a dreamlike succession of horror. The emphasis is placed strongly on the iconic scenes which it manages to compress and amplify effectively; the apparition of the Weird Sisters, Lady Macbeth's 'unsex me' monologue, the chilling 'Is this a dagger I see before me?' build-up to the killing of Duncan, the appearance of Banquo's ghost, Lady Macbeth's 'Out damned spot' and 'Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him', and crucially as far as this Underworld version goes, 'What's done cannot be undone'.

Getting all that in is one thing, but as an opera it needs a little more to engage with in order to have its own voice. That is partly supplied by the music which is moody and effective, much as it was in Dusapin's 2015 adaptation of Heinrich von Kleist's Penthesilea. Reimann certainly comes to mind in moments of loud dark dissonance here but Dusapin also, like Verdi, uses a chorus of Weird Sisters to multiply the horror (albeit pitched at Reimann levels, strikingly so during the Requiem sung at the burial of Duncan/coronation of Macbeth) and in a finale that matches the thunder of Reimann's storm scene in Lear. The combination of means is highly effective. Magdalena Kožená is magnetic in terms of delivery and performance, and as Lady Macbeth she gets all the best Shakespeare lines in this version. Georg Nigl gets the 'Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow' soliloquy of course but his role appears to have rather more spoken delivery of Shakespearean lines in English, so it's not quite as lyrical.

The other element that certainly contributes to the success of the opera as a whole is the direction of Thomas Jolly. Jolly is known in France for directing Shakespeare in the theatre and, whether you consider it appropriate or not, his characteristic slightly camp dark Gothic feel certainly has style in a colour scheme of predominately black, white and red. A large part of Bruno de Lavenère's impressive set design is a moving tangle of roots, branches and twisted tree-trunks that house the Weird Sisters in wispy costumes. The ghost of Duncan/Banquo walks around with a dagger in his back, the blood jewelled in crystals that down his back and across his head. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are ghostly white, wearing white robes, their hair and faces whitened. Lighting is used effectively, a flash of red in dark from Duncan's room during the killing of the King, an eerie blue light as Birnam Wood closes in. It looks great, visually stunning in fact, and it matches the mood that Dusapin's ominous score evokes, as well as the nightmarish ways that scenes and characters blend together.

In collaboration with Jolly's direction, Dusapin's Macbeth Underworld does look and have the mood of a true Macbeth, even if it doesn't hit the same points as Shakespeare. As a Macbeth Underworld however the intention is clearly to be more of a Macbeth experience, and from a musical, theatrical and operatic viewpoint, with Alain Altinoglu marshalling the forces of the music through the orchestra of La Monnaie, it's a very striking work in its own right.

Links: La Monnaie, La Monnaie Streaming

Mozart - Die Zauberflöte (La Monnaie, 2018)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Die Zauberflöte


La Monnaie-De Munt, Brussels - 2018

Antonello Manacorda, Romeo Castellucci, Ed Lyon, Sabine Devieilhe, Sophie Karthäuser, Georg Nigl, Elina Galitskaya, Gábor Bretz, Dietrich Henschel, Tineke van Ingelgem, Angélique Noldus, Esther Kuiper

ARTE Concert - 27 September 2018

As if you couldn't already guess from the fact that it's Romeo Castellucci at La Monnaie, the opening pre-musical sequence alerts you pretty quickly to the fact that this is not going to be a 'traditional' Magic Flute by any means. A man walks onto the empty stage and throws a steel bar at a glowing glass neon tube until it breaks plunging the stage into darkness. Yeah, you think, it's The Magic Flute, we get it; light/darkness, enlightenment/obscurantism, a lot of ritual and symbolism. If you think Castellucci is going to be that obvious, you quickly realise that you're going to have to think again.

But yes, certainly Castellucci tends to find the big underlying contrasts or forces in conflict within an opera and brings them to the fore to the point where they are what the opera is all about. The actual stage directions and dramatic narrative are soon left behind as Castellucci usually starts to push those ideas even further into god knows where. (See his recent Moses und Aron or Tannhäuser). You might take for granted that Die Zauberflöte is all about masonic rituals with fairy tale characters and situations, but you're not going to see any of that in a Castellucci production. Doesn't that mean you lose something of the essential character of Mozart? Unquestionably yes, but can we trust Castellucci to give back something of equal worth?

Maybe not of equal worth, but there is something here in the La Monnaie production, no matter how obscure it gets, that approaches Mozart's work in a new way and provides a commentary on it as well as interacting and highlighting less familiar aspects of the work. There are perhaps no major new revelations and it might not all fit together in any way that is entirely comprehensible, but Castellucci does relate Mozart's Magic Flute to our experiences of the world today and that is bound to be more meaningful than any play on ancient masonic rituals, magic and obscure symbolism (not that Castellucci doesn't have even more obscure symbolism of his own).

So no, there's no serpent slain by Tamino and there's no traditional depiction of the three ladies. There's actually four here in the first Act and four boys too which totally screws up the numerology which is often considered to be important in the work. But is it really? By changing the numbers, Romeo Castellucci is able to steer the work in a new direction, one where symmetry and mirroring takes its place. There is certainly this contrasting of two sides of one human nature (an important aspect that Castellucci takes pains later to ensure is not neglected) in the divisions of the Königin/Sarastro, Tamino/Pamina, Papageno/Papagena, in male/female, in lightness/darkness, in rationalism/obscurantism, in good/evil.

It's also there in the division and structure of the opera itself and Castellucci contrasts the two Acts in a way that highlights aspects of the opera quite unlike anyone else has done before. Act I is all elegance, beauty, balance and symmetry in a uniform haze of brilliant white; by no means the obvious way to reflect this half of the opera, but if you like you can see it as a visual representation of Mozart's music itself. That's emphasised by the costumes which are period 18th century frock coats and powdered wigs. Papageno is indistinguishable from Tamino in identical elaborate costumes and there isn't a single scene, action or gesture that reflects the familiar course of the opera's dramatic action. You can be damned sure that there's going to be no actual magic flute or glockenspiel.

Instead figures move around in an elaborately choreographed display of symmetrical precision, with rotating patterns of white masked dancers, some topless with feather headdresses and fans like something out of the Crazy Horse in Paris. Architect Michael Hansmeyer's set designs however continue to accumulate detail, building up into an elaborate wedding cake or the stucco interior of some impossibly grand white cathedral. It is an extraordinary display, utterly beautiful, daring to ignore adherence to any traditional depiction of the drama in favour of just highlighting the elegance and beauty and symmetry in Mozart's music. It's something that is enhanced - or works both ways - with the nimble musical performance from the orchestra pit under Antonello Manacorda emphasising the melodic brilliance and effervescence with a wonderful lightness of touch.

As extraordinarily beautiful as it all looks, it's also a very cold and sterile way to approach Mozart and The Magic Flute, but of course that's only half the story. In direct contrast to elaborate representation of the music in Act I, Castellucci brings the work down to earth in Act II with a depiction of the human reality that can also be found in Die Zauberflöte which might otherwise be lost amidst all the comedy, symbolism and ritualism. Similar to his last production at La Monnaie, Orphée et Eurydice, Castellucci brings the experiences of real ordinary people in to highlight the underlying human reality of the questions of the trials endured by Tamino and Papageno. A group of six women talk about their personal experience of blindness and living in darkness, and a group of six men talk about surviving horrific burns in a 'trial of fire'.

In contrast to Act I the second half is depicted in mundane real-world terms in a warehouse environment, the glamorous fairy-tale white period costumes swapped for identical yellow-brown factory worker overalls and yellow-blond wigs. The performances are more dramatically realistic, you can at least sometimes tell characters apart from the labels on their back and there's even an actual flute! Inevitably there's a lot more than this in the production and as is often the case with Castellucci it goes off in all kinds of weird directions. Mirroring/contrasting the opening of the first Act, for example, the second part opens with lactating mothers pumping breast milk - for real - into it bottles that are subsequently emptied into another glass tube by the Queen of the Night, the action accompanied by some obscure text that presents a different perspective on the less than flattering idea of motherhood traditionally represented by Königin der Nacht in the opera.

In this way, Castellucci actually deconstructs Die Zauberflöte entirely, separating the work down into its component parts, none of which on their own are convincing or satisfactory but which when played through to the end do nonetheless still manage to capture the totality of what is in the opera. It's highly doubtful that the work needs to be deconstructed in this manner or even benefits from it in any way when it's all there already in the genius of Mozart's blending of all its elements, but it does highlight aspects that we (or other directors) might neglect though familiarity. The 'real-people's lives' human element while looking initially like a frustrating diversion, turns out to be very moving, so there is a case to be made for it.

Evidently as far as stage direction, concept and interpretation go this is not a Magic Flute for everyone and, despite its fidelity to the themes in the work and its underlying humanity, it can't be said that it respects Mozart's intentions. In terms of musical and singing performances however it's hard to fault. The orchestra highlight that compositional and melodic brilliance in the first half and seem to find the human warm in the opera in the second half. The casting is an outstanding collection of lyrical Mozartian voices with Ed Lyon as Tamino, Sabine Devieilhe a lighter than usual but eminently capable Königin der Nacht, Gábor Bretz a fine Sarastro, Sophie Karthäuser an impressive Pamina, Georg Nigl and Elena Galitskaya fulfilling the roles of Papageno and Papagena well, each of them at least brilliantly distinguishable from their voices if not always in appearance or role-playing.

Links: La Monnaie-DeMunt, ARTE Concert

Dallapiccola - Il Prigioniero / Rihm - Das Gehege (Brussels, 2018)

Luigi Dallapiccola - Il Prigioniero
Wolfgang Rihm - Das Gehege

La Monnaie-De Munt, Brussels - 2018

Franck Ollu, Andrea Breth, Ángeles Blancas Gulín, Georg Nigl, John Graham-Hall, Julian Hubbard, Guillaume Antoine

La Monnaie MM Streaming -  January 2018
 
The challenges of writing an opera in the serial music form could perhaps be measured by how few actually make it to completion and by the shortness of length of those that are actually finished. Even Schoenberg, the inventor of the twelve-tone dodecaphonic system only completed one short opera in this form, Von Heute auf Morgen, and left his one longer masterpiece Moses und Aron unfinished. Berg likewise left his the troubled Lulu unfinished at the time of his death, while Wozzeck only has twelve-tone elements. There are however other notable extended operas that are largely written in the serial form including Bernd Alois Zimmerman's Die Soldaten and Ernst Krenek's Karl V. As Wozzeck, Lulu and Moses und Aron testify however, while the composition of such complex works presents considerable and sometimes insurmountable challenges, they also bring specialised demands for staging, performance and use of musical resources.

As formidable as they often appear to be however there is nothing limiting about the works in terms of musical expression, and Luigi Dallapiccola's Il Prigioniero finds a terrific range of expression even within the limitations of a 50 minute work set almost entirely within the confines of a prison cell. Just as Schoenberg was able to extend the situation of a biblical story to explore more personal ideas and obsessions, the richness and uniqueness of the musical language available permits Dallapiccola to delve more deeply into the themes that arise for a political prisoner in relation to freedom, political expression, hope and disillusionment, and apply it to greater concerns in the troubled times of the 1940s.

Il Prigioniero opens then with a dramatic soprano voice, the mother of the prisoner, speaking out at the horror of the regime that has led to her son being held and tortured in prison. Dallapiccola follows this cry of despair with a lament from a large chorus, "Lord have mercy on us. Our hope lies in you". It's in this state that we find the prisoner about to give up all hope until a single word changes his outlook and insinuates itself into the mood of the whole piece; "fratello" - brother. The jailer who offers this lifeline to grasp follows it with another word, "spera" - have faith. Finding the door left open, one perhaps more metaphorical than real considering the developments, the prisoner follows the path of hope down the corridor outside his cell.

The chorus fill in again, their lament turned to praise for the light, which brings an "Alleluia" out of the prisoner for freedom, but it's premature and illusory, as the path is one that leads to his execution. The fullness of expression, the use of words, the chorus, as well as the post-romantic sweep of the score in the dynamic between the dark and the light is one that recalls a similar use of these elements in Moses und Aron. It's brought out fully in Dallapiccola's score, given wonderful expression in Franck Ollu's direction at La Monnaie in Brussels, and in the writing for the contrasting voices of Ángeles Blancas Gulín as the mother, Georg Nigl as the prisoner and John Graham-Hall offering hope in the form of the jailer only to take it away as the Grand Inquisitor.

Andrea Breth's direction also tries to give as much expression as can be found in the work, in the darkness, in the cage of a cell, opening it up with light, bringing sudden cuts to black, stripping the stage bare at the conclusion when all hope is gone and opening the back of the stage to a blinding heavenly light that shines out on the emptiness within. It was Andrea Breth who worked with Franck Ollu (and Nigl and Graham-Hall) to similarly striking effect on Wolfgang Rihm's Jakob Lenz at La Monnaie in 2015 and the collaboration reunites to present another Rihm short opera that is paired brilliantly with Dallapiccola's Il Prigioniero.

Although deriving from the other half of the twentieth century, Rihm's Das Gehege (The Enclosure) also has roots in the post-Romantic, in Richard Strauss rather than Schoenberg, although not so much the lush orchestrations of latter-day Strauss as the jagged rupturing of post-Romanticism in the expressionism of Salome and Elektra. In the expression of a woman who has captured an eagle and sets it free only to kill it when she realises that it no longer has the vitality and strength to survive, Das Gehege bears a similar tone of intense dark eroticism, with even a hint of the fantasy world symbolism of Die Frau ohne Schatten.

Breth's direction draws out the Salome-like underlying erotic fascination in a woman who is filled with dark desires and ends up killing the thing she professes to love by having the woman in the cage, the enclosure, joined by a series of men with bird heads and wing attachments in a dance of death. Outbursts of anguished singing are broken up with brief instrumental expressions of lust and fury that are accompanied in the darkness by disorientating strobe lighting that leaves behind a trail of bodies. More than just in the use of the same cage that held the prisoner - the woman likewise a prisoner of fatal unquenchable urges - there are other visual cross-references and correspondences made with Il Prigioniero, notably Georg Nigl playing one of her avian victims and a staircase that offers a descent as much as a way out.

As explosive as the musical expression is, its fractured structure carrying an underlying tug of lyrical romanticism, a considerable amount of responsibility for carrying the force of the whole of Das Gehege lies with the soprano singing the Frau, the only singing role in the opera. Ángeles Blancas Gulín, already showing stamina and ability to meet the highly pitched demands of the mother in Il Prigioniero, gives another impressive performance here that is electrifying and terrifying, striking that balance between being derangedly in thrall to her passions, but tempering any over-intensity with a seductive lyrical tone. She has to do that while climbing the cage, hanging upside down over the shoulder of one of her paramours or sprawled in one shape or another and somehow never falters a note.

Links: La Monnaie,

Dusapin - Penthesilea (La Monnaie, 2015 - Webcast)

Pascal Dusapin - Penthesilea

La Monnaie-De Munt, 2015

Franck Ollu, Pierre Audi, Natascha Petrinsky, Marisol Montalvo, Georg Nigl, Werner Van Mechelen, Eve-Maud Hubeaux, Wiard Witholt, Yaroslava Kozina, Marta Beretta

La Monnaie Web Streaming - April 2015

The story of the Amazonian Queen Penthesilea, who launches her troops into the middle of the epic battle ensuing between Greece and Troy, is one of the stranger and lesser known of characters in Greek mythology. It was the German poet and dramatist Heinrich von Kleist who elaborated on the myth and the particular nature of her love of war and her love for Achilles in a High Romantic manner in 1808, and his version has been the inspiration for a number of operas in the modern age. Like the other composers who have approached the subject Pascal Dusapin's version, newly commissioned by La Monnaie in Brussels and premiered in March/April 2015, finds the dark contradictory sentiments fertile ground for musical exploration.

Long before Richard Wagner's Late Romantic exploration of the Liebestod theme in Tristan und Isolde, and three years before the author shot himself in a double suicide with Henriette Vogel, Heinrich von Kleist explored the same complex Romantic notions conflating love and death in 'Penthesilea'. Here the epic battle between two great warriors, Achilles and the Amazon Queen Penthesilea, is taken to such extremes and all the fears of defeat, capture and hatred become so overpowering that they transform into an almost erotic desire for submission that can only be satisfied in a carnal lust for death. It's the struggle between male and female desires on an epic scale of life and death.

The problem with this is that, quite apart from the warnings of their respective captains - Ulysses on the side of Achilles, Prothoe on the part of Penthsilea - and their duty as leaders over their troops, the desire to be torn apart by the arms of their beloved goes against not only the natural order of things, but it's also complicated by the laws governing their behaviour in war. As somewhat unwelcome forces in the bigger battle between Greece and Troy, not on either side (Kleist introducing a Rose Festival as the rationale for their involvement, where the Amazons capture great warriors to use in the procreation of their race) a love-struck Penthesilea has rescued the supreme figure of Achilles in battle but has then in turn been captured by the Greek warrior.

Since this would mean disgrace to Penthesilea, and since Achilles's feelings for the Amazon are no less overwhelming, the Greek warrior allows Penthesilea to think that she has actually captured him, so that they can be together. When Penthesilea finds out the truth however, she is appalled at the situation she finds herself in, and is helped escape by her warriors. Unable to give her up, Achilles has no option but to challenge her to a duel, to which he turns up unarmed and allows himself (in a reversal of the original myth) to be killed by the Amazon Queen. In a bloodlust of fury and hatred mixed with love, Penthesilea even launches herself at Achilles, tearing him apart with her teeth and devouring him along with her hounds.

Heinrich von Kleist's treatment of the Penthesilea myth is a powerful and disturbing one, and clearly tied up in his own complex Romantic notions of the purity of love in death. It's the kind of subject that calls out for a similar High Romantic treatment in an opera, but all the modern versions of the subject that I am familiar with tend to find a more modern musical language essential to the expression of the darkness of the mood and the nature of the subject. By the time Othmar Schoeck came to compose his 1927 one-act opera Penthesilea, he had already moved away from the lush post-Wagnerian symphonic scores towards the more suitably darker expression of Strauss' Elektra. René Koering's faithful setting of Kleist's text in his haunting 2008 opera Scènes de Chasse contrasts the contradictory sentiments with sung German dissonance in the conflict and a more lyrical flow to the spiritual evocations in Penthesilea's softly murmured French dialogue passages.

Dusapin's Penthesilea is very much in the same place as Schoeck and Koering, a dark and menacing place where emotions are laid bare and filled with violent intent. It even comes with an introductory preface note quoting Christa Wolf's warning that it's the beginning of the modern age, and it's not pretty ("Ce n’est pas un beau spectacle, l’ère moderne commence"). Dusapin is not particularly concerned with narrative drive and direction, nor - even though the libretto is in German - in working directly with Kleist's text, but rather it explores the extreme emotional states within the drama. The music is accordingly haunting, slow and steady, holding long sustained notes with occasional flurries and percussive blasts.  The singing is impassioned but rarely strained to wild abandon, supported and lifted rather by the music to a level that indicates the nature of the underlying sentiments, and how disturbing they are to mental stability of the singer. Which is usually Penthesilea, putting one in mind of Elektra.

It's difficult then to find any narrative progression through the work. In line with Kleist's lyric drama, the main action and the battles take place off stage, observed and commented on by the principals. The real battle however is very much a matching of wits between two forces greater than any army, a battle of personalities and two huge personalities at that. What ought to be a romantic interlude in the middle of the Trojan war should perhaps not distract such great warriors from their duty, but consume them it does. Dusapin's Penthesilea explores an intermediate state between two vast forces, striving to find a common denominator between innumerable indeterminate and contradictory impulses; between love and the desire to destroy, the will to dominate and conquer conflicting with the temptation to surrender and find peace. How does one separate the warrior impulse from the human desire to love, acknowledging the inevitability of death at the end of it all? Where does real triumph lie and true fulfilment?

Pierre Audi's stage direction seeks to find a place for these abstract concepts on the stage at La Monnaie. The stage is dark, the landscape one of dust, rocks, shields and armour - solid, bleak and elemental. Combined with Dusapin's score, the mood is heavy and oppressive, with occasional abstract projections offering another dimension above the physical representation. The love of Penthesilea and Achilles however finds no spiritual uplift here, or at most only a brief moment or two of abandonment to those passions. Most of the time their passions torment the two lovers and it comes out in the tortured singing as they attempt express the impossibility of their situation, control, direct and vent the terrible impulses that this gives rise to. It's hugely challenging for the singers not only to push to those limits, but identify with the dark place those sentiments come from, but Natascha Petrinsky is utterly convincing - and terrifying - as Penthesilea, with Georg Nigl a most steadfast and determined Achilles, and Marisol Montalvo the distraught Prothoe.

Pascal Dusapin's Penthesilea is currently available to view for free via La Monnaie's web-streaming service. The next opera to be streamed is Verdi's UN BALLO IN MASCHERA, directed by Àlex Ollé of La Fura dels Baus (reviewed here at Opera Australia), and conducted by Carlo Rizzi. It can be viewed for one month from from 29 May.

Links: La Monnaie streaming, RTBF Musiq 3

Rihm - Jakob Lenz (La Monnaie, 2015 - Webcast)

Wolfgang Rihm - Jakob Lenz

La Monnaie-De Munt, 2015

Franck Ollu, Andrea Breth, Georg Nigl, Henry Waddington, John Graham-Hall, Irma Mihelic, Olga Heikkilä, Maria Fiselier, Stine Marie Fischer, Dominic Große, Eric Ander

La Monnaie Streaming - March 2015
 
It's not difficult to see the commonality between Wolfgang Rihm's 1979 opera Jakob Lenz and Alban Berg's masterpiece, Wozzeck. Both operas come from works written by Georg Büchner, both are fairly intense episodic expressionist pieces that deal with mental disintegration, and both are composed in a variety or totality of styles that takes in tonality, atonality, formal traditional structures and occasional gestures that push at the limits of what music can express.

That is evidently the kind of music that is called out for by the nature of the subject itself. Jakob Lenz was an 18th century German poet in Goethe's circle of writers who suffered from bouts of mental illness and died in 1792 at the age of 41. Concerned about his state of mind, Lenz is invited by a sympathetic pastor, Oberlin, to stay at his house in the country in the year 1778. He hopes that in taking Lenz away from the stresses of his life and bringing him closer to nature that he might help ease his problems and inspire him in other ways. The stay however only seems to make matters worse for the troubled poet.
 

The difficult nature of the subject itself - the work essentially entering into the head of a man who is going insane - inevitably means that the musical expression in Rihm's opera can itself be very difficult to grasp. The music has to respond to some extreme emotions and go to unrecognisable and uncomfortable places that aren't commonly explored by an audience. As well as expressing those extreme states, even including a harpsichord in the orchestra for 18th century authenticity, the use of a small chamber orchestra also allows the composer to express little intimate details, making those feelings discernible and tangible.

It's not all full-blown insanity however, and a little less challenging than another experimental work in this field, Peter Maxwell Davies' Eight Songs for a Mad King. As well as showing us the inner turmoil, the music of Jakob Lenz also deals with the external reality, otherwise the work would surely be unlistenable. It's still difficult enough since it as to function on multiple levels, dramatically, narratively and musically, not only depicting inner and outer states, but developing a less than obvious connection that lies between them. If it makes sense at all, it's only within the head of Jakob Lenz, for whom this is all "Logical", as he repeats in the final words of the opera.

The challenge of putting on a stage production of Jakob Lenz is surely no less challenging than the musical performance, as the work alternates between the inner mind and outer reality. It needs to throw you straight in there at the start, experiencing the working of a tortured mind, before showing you the reality of the poet's position. Although the split and distinction between the two is a feature of the set design, it doesn't get any easier to distinguish thereafter the boundary of reality lies and where it breaks down, whether it's little bits of madness that are infecting the view of reality or indeed whether it's only a few moments of lucidity that creep into the poet's prolonged and increasingly disturbed bouts of madness.

With streams of water running down the stage and rocky landscapes intruding into the pastor's house, Andrea Breth's direction and Martin Zehetgruber's set designs tend to suggest that even reality is very much subjective here in terms of how Lenz sees the world. In terms of narrative, you can still discern that Lenz is at the home of Pastor Oberlin, that he is visited by his friend Kaufmann, and that in those rare periods of lucidity Lenz debates with them the difficulty of deriving inspiration or even any kind of joy from nature or from pretty words. He is looking more and more inward, retreating into solitude, like Wozzeck, disappointed with life and being gradually broken down by his own torments.

Those torments are not only difficult to comprehend, they are inevitably difficult to express on stage. Principally, much of the madness and the breakdown between the mind and reality is expressed in the form of Lenz's beloved Friedericke. Here, Lenz's obsession with the image of Friedericke becomes entwined with that of a young child who has drowned in a neighbouring village, with even Oberlin appearing wearing tresses at one point. All this further becomes combined in a strange mix of religious rites that suggest questions of death and rebirth.

It's all fairly bleak stuff, and even quite harrowing in places. Franck Ollu however approaches the work with a calm solemnity and precision, allowing the music to be expressive without becoming too harsh and unlistenable. Much like Wozzeck, the singing also needs to be just on the right side of unrestrained. It doesn't do the listener or the singer any favours to push the madness too far. The playing of the role of Jakob Lenz is of course all-important, and Georg Nigl maintains the intensity throughout while having to act in some very unpleasant positions. Henry Waddington's Oberlin is also well sung, with John Graham-Hall bringing equal intensity as Lenz's increasingly exasperated friend, Kaufmann.

Links: La Monnaie

Monteverdi - L’Orfeo

Claudio Monteverdi - L’Orfeo

Teatro alla Scala, Milan, 2009

Rinaldo Alessandrini, Robert Wilson, Georg Nigl, Roberta Invernizzi, Sara Mingardo, Luigi de Donato, Raffaella Milanesi

Opus Arte

The minimalist staging of Robert Wilson’s opera productions is not something that is to everyone’s taste, but it is certainly unique and idiosyncratic, and no matter how familiar you are with a particular opera, you can be sure that Wilson’s stage direction will provide a new way of looking at a piece and bring out elements or propose ideas that you might never have considered before. It is however not suited to every kind of opera. His production for Aida several years ago at the Royal Opera House was visually striking in its beauty and in the wondrous and carefully considered colour-coded light schemes, but the static nature of the production simply sucked the life out of one particular opera that merits a slightly more vibrant approach, if not necessarily always quite as flamboyant as Zeffirelli’s.

On the other hand, the stripped-down staging works better, it seems to me, when applied to more abstract subjects or at least the more archetypal matters of Greek mythology in opera seria and Baroque opera. Wilson’s work for the Paris Châtelet productions of Alceste and Orphée et Eurydice, for example, is appropriate and perfectly in accordance with Gluck’s reforming of over-elaborate and long-winded opera. The same should apply, one would think, to Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, the work that is considered the first opera proper - first performed in Mantua in 1607 - and, for many, the model to which opera should aspire. All the huge archetypes are there in its mythological subject - Heaven and Hades, with Eros, Fate, Hope and, most significantly, Music itself personified and indeed the main narrative force who introduces and tells the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, as well as the means by which the opera expresses itself.

This is the kind of material that is perfect for Robert Wilson’s interpretations, and all the familiar characteristics of his approach are here in this production for La Scala in 2009 - static figures making strange poses with enigmatic hand movements, stage props reduced to geometric shapes, the colour scheme a limited palette of greys, pale blues and pale green. In contrast to his non-specific approach to Orphée et Eurydice, L’Orfeo is practically period - in the period of Monteverdi, that is - inspired by Titian’s Venus with Cupid and an Organist (1548), with Thrace a Renaissance version of the Garden of Eden, by way perhaps of Gainsborough. On a first viewing, I’m not convinced that such a staging brings anything new from Monteverdi’s famous opera this time, but it is interesting and worth considering.

 

As for the opera and its performance, well, L’Orfeo is a masterpiece that does indeed wield a heavy influence over the artform, or for at least a hundred and fifty years afterwards. It’s a celebration of man’s ability, intellect and ingenuity, taming nature and the seas, speaking with the voice of the Gods through music and, through Orpheus, even challenging Death itself through his singing and its expression of the finest human passions and sentiments. It’s a worthy subject for what is generally considered the first opera - an artform that would unite so many artistic qualities, not least of which is music and singing. Monteverdi’s opera accordingly lives up to the high standards it sets.

L’Orfeo is more detailed in its scoring and specification of instruments than Monteverdi’s final opera Il Ritorno di Ulisse in Patria, for example, but how it is performed is highly interpretative nonetheless. Early music specialist Rinaldo Alessandrini’s conducting of the opera of La Scala is therefore not for me to criticise, but I would find it hard to find any serious fault with it other than the actual sound mix not quite having the transparency of other versions I’ve heard - notably the Pierre Audi 1997 recording for DVD at the Muziektheater in Amsterdam. I would however state a preference for John Mark Ainsley’s lyrical Orpheus in that version over the rather deeper tenor of Georg Nigl. The contrasts and differences should be appreciated however, as it is through them that new thoughts and ideas still arise out of an opera that is now over 400 years old - and on that basis, this is a fine production.

The quality of the presentation on the Opus Arte Blu-ray is as good as you would expect, with a clear 16:9 High Definition transfer, PCM Stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 mixes. The only extras on the disc however are a Cast Gallery and an Illustrated Synopsis. The thin booklet presents some background on the history of the opera, but there is no information at all on the production itself.