Stefan Herheim's Wagner Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in Salzburg will transfer to the Met. Will audiences collapse in hysteria? Not if they know and care about the opera or about Wagner. Herheim focuses on Hans Sachs himself, as individual and artist, not the "public" displays of civic pride. This Meistersinger is exceptionally werktreue and perceptive. It engages with Wagner's ideas on creativity and the purpose of art. Herheim deals with the true meaning of "die heil'ge deutsche Kunst" and with Wagner in the context of German tradition.
The Overture unfolds showing Sachs (Michael Volle) in nightcap and gown, surrounded by relics of his long dead family. Herheim shows us Sachs the man who was once happy with a wife and children. Perhaps that's why he acts as father figure to others. But it also shows how "Wahn, Wahn, überall Wahn" grows from deep emotional scars. Life is short, and unfair. It shouldn't be wasted on things that don't really count. There's nothing silly about seeing Sachs playing with toys. This gives depth to Sachs's personality, and also connects to the idea that creativity is instinctive. References to youth and renewal run throughout the opera. The congregation in church are witnessing a baptism. Herheim's toys remind us to play with our imagination. Beckmesser thinks art comes from rigidly following rules. Sachs doesn't. Do we approach Herheim's Meistersinger as Beckmessers or as Sachs?
Throughout the opera, there are references to craftmanship and the process of creation. "Schuhmacherei und Poeterei", as David says. Understanding Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg as a work about art and the making of art can't surely be too difficult a concept to grasp. So there's no need to sneer when the set turns into a giant desk. So the characters in the narrative spring to life on Sachs's workstation. The Meistersingers make much fuss about proper seating. Herheim has them sit on upturned giant thimbles, which are later revealed as empty buckets. When Walther (Marcus Werba) sings his first "Fanget an!", the Meistersingers collapse like skittles. It's funny but also very apt.
By defining the concept of art as imagination, Herheim is able to release much more esoteric levels. The imagery of sleep is important, too. By day, Sachs is busy making shoes. At night he's alone. Sleep releases the unconscious, creative mind. Sachs solves the dilemmas in his art as a craftsman, just as he fixes shoes so they function properly. In Act Two, the desk is shrouded in darkness. We catch a brief glimpse of the lilac tree through Sach's window, but we don't need to see it again on the desktop "stage". Its fragrance perfumes the music. Johannistag coincides with Mid Summer Night's Eve, the shortest night in the year when magical things can happen. When the townsfolk awake, they're literally surrounded by "Gespenstern und Spuk". Fairy tales, as Bruno Bettlelheim said, mask subconcious fears under a guise of comic figures. Ghosts and spooks would be hard to depict in a more literal staging. We laugh, but take the point. There's even a group of trolls! Herheim's wry sense of humour is deliciously wicked.
These images also bring together several periods of German culture. Herheim's costumes suggest the Early Romantic period, when German intellectuals like the Brothers Grimm, Brentano and von Arnim and Gottfried Herder were rediscovering premodern tradition. Without the Romantics, we might not have the modern world with its interest in the darker side of life, and in creative freedom. Nor would we have Richard Wagner. He knew very well what he was doing when he chose Sachs for his subject, since Sachs lived robustly in the Reformation, another important flowering period of German culture and identity. At Glyndebourne in 2011, David McVicar's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (review here) was set in the period of Wagner's youth but to little effect. It romanticized without connecting to the savage spirit of the Romantiker.There's a huge difference.
Herheim's staging is much more literate, and intelligently thought through. The Romantiker fascination with Nature was often seen through the prism of the drawing room, so Herheim's indoor setting is wittily ironic.Things seen through the imagination are often hyper real. When David sings of "der rote, blau' und grüne Ton" we see wild flowers held aloft. The final scene on the banks of the Pegnitz isn't shown literally. But there's a train! This isn't director whimsy. Without railways, industrialization and the rise of the middle class, modern Europe wouldn't have developed. Trains represent change, just as aristocratic Walther represents change when he joins the good folk of Nuremberg.
The townsfolk are draped in flowers: if these were real their scent would fill the hall. The women wear white aprons, so dazzlingly bright they light the stage. Herheim's having a merry little dig at the idea that costumes "make" an opera. Although there's a lot of detail to reward repeated viewings, the visuals aren't there for their own sake but to intensify the fundemental drama in the music. The critical moments, like the quintet and the Prize Song are shown with simple clarity. Those who hate modern productions on principle often claim that directors should "respect the work". But that argument can be turned completely on its head. A really good opera is strong enough to withstand multiple interpretations, and perceptive interpretations like Herheim's show us how much there is yet to discover. "Verachtet mir die Meister nicht, und ehrt mir ihre Kunst!".
Michael Volle's Hans Sachs is excellent. It helps that he looks like the historic Sachs, and that he himself grew up in the Lutheran tradition. Volle gives the character grit and gravity, mixed with a genuinely warm humanity. Volle's diction highlights the couplets and phrasings so typical of German tradition. When he sings "ehrt eure deutschen Meister! Dann bannt ihr gute Geister" he infuses the words with positive feelings, banishing memories of wartime Bayreuth.
Markus Werba's Sixtus Beckmesser quivered with nervous energy. He sings with more colour and charm than we'd expect from Beckmesser, but that enhances his portrayal. Beckmesser's weak rather than evil. He wouldn't be a Meistersinger in the first place if he was incomptent. He just doesn't get it, that true art comes from being original. Werba makes the part sympathetic. This Beckmesser is deluded rather than a troll. Peter Sonn's David is delivered with strength and conviction. This David is no ingénu, and justifies his master's faith in him. Herheim's blocking of ensemble also shows how the apprentices connect to David.
Rather less rewarding were Roberto Saccà's Walther and Anna Gabler's Eva. Saccà's voice finally did him justice in the Prize Song but it was a little late. As for the orchestra ? What was Daniele Gatti doing? The pace kept slackening. Sachs is a cobbler, not a carpenter. Wooden playing like this just doesn't work. When Herheim's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg transfers to the Met, with a different cast and conductor, it should be a success.
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
In the early 90's Decca did a series of recordings of Entartete Musik, music suppressed by the Nazi regime. It was an act of great commercial foresight because at the time much of this music wasn't known outside specialist circles. The Decca series, created by Dr Albrecht Dümling, was truly visionary, extremely well curated, and the performances often so good they remain classics even now the genre is pretty much mainstream. This series is the benchmark by which all else is measured. Probably there won't be another series of this breadth and quality.
Franz Schreker's Die Gezeichneten was part of the series, conducted by Lothar Zagrosek and the Berlin Radio Symphony who were behind many of the recordings. Entartete Musik was cherished in East Germany, where there was a performance tradition. On one disc there's Matthias Goerne, barely out of his teens. Worthy as that recording is, it's outclassed by the performance in Salzburg in 2005, when Peter Ruzicka was director. So a visionary performance, unmissable for anyone, interested in the genre or not. This puts Die Gezeichneten firmly in the mainstram repertoire.
The Salzburg production is so good that topping it will be a challenge no one has yet dared attempt. It was conducted by Kent Nagano, and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (where many East Berliners went to). The cast is absolutely top notch : Anne Schwanewilms, Michael Volle, Wolfgang Schöne and Robert Brubaker in what must be the ultimate performance of his career. The director was Nikolaus Lehnhoff.
Lehnhoff's penchant for massive constructions works wonderfully to express the meaning of the opera. The stage at first looks like it's strewn with formidable boulders. Alviano Salvago has built Elysium, a secret world on a remote island off Genoa. These boulders are like the bastions of a frightening fortress, which is what Elysium really is, despite being dedicated to art, love and beauty. There are prisoners here, and unspeakable crimes which don't get revealed until the end. Salvago himself is a fortress. He's a hunchback, "the ugliest man in Genoa", crippled by self-loathing. He's built Elysium as an escape. It's so perfect that it makes everything beautiful. It's used by aristocrats for exquisite orgies, in which Salvago himself doesn't participate despite the magical aura which makes hideousness beautiful.
As the lovely Overture unfolds, Brubaker is carefully putting on elaborate makeup. He's dressed in a flimsy negligee. but his cropped hair and butch features make him look like a caricature drag queen. Immediately, the staging and acting conncet to the idea of psychic dissonance that is so much the soul of this opera. The boulders on stage are formed by a giant statue of a woman, but a statue collapsed and destroyed, only one arm, on hand still raised in a futile gesture to heaven. Most of the action in the opera unfolds on the statue's body, so watch carefully how the body becomes part of the action. Sometimes its rounded curves nurture, sometimes they allow a place to hide, but they remain opaque, inpenetrable, unlike the island's victims. The stage too extends to the walls around the auditorium, arches representing the many secret rooms in the grotto, yet also look sinister, like catacombs. The statue does not foretell the ending. It's clear in the music and text all along that Elysium is an unsustainable delusion in the first place, and Salvago is not deluded. This is important because there are moral and social values in this opera. Elysium is a prototype of an ideal society, corrupted by people who don't have ideals.
Salvago announces he's giving Elysium away to the City of Genoa. An altruistic act, perhaps, but Salvago knows that the girls used in the orgies were kidnapped from the town. Schreker's dwarf is an altogether more complex person than any of Zemlinsky's. Zemlinsky's dwarves fall in love with beauties, but accept their rejection on a relatively straightforward fairy tale level. Schreker's Salavgo (note the name) is so screwed up he doesn't dare look beyond himself and or even conceive of love. Fortress Elysium blocks out vulnerable feelings.
Schreker's drama is more than fairy tale in other ways. Listen to the way Anne Schwanewilms creates Carlotta Nardi, the wayward daughter of the Podestà (Wolfgang Schöne). She's a liberated woman, an artist who doesn't follow rules, the personification of Der ferne Klang, the elusive melody in physical form. She paints souls. Listen to that wonderful passage where she sings about her dream. She sees a "small wretched wanderer" walk into the sunlight, and a miracle happens - he grows larger and larger. "So male ich eure Gestalt, Signor Alviano". Watch Brubaker's face twitch. This is truly masterful acting. He's pouring out a flood of dammed up emotions, too powerful for Salvago to contain. Then she says, she still needs to see "trunkene Auge, darin all die Schoenheit sich gespeigelt".
This line is critical. Can Salvago give her the "drunken eye" that mirrors beauty ? Brubaker pulls his butch black overcoat on again, hiding his soft pink negligee, and for a moment stands alone on the harsh boulders. The scene ends with poignant strings, the film projecting the statue's blind stone eyes.
Salvago's mirror image twin is Graf Vitelozzo Tamare, given a tour de force performance by Michael Volle, another high point in his career he deserves to be very proud of. Tamare is handsome, tall, virile. What body language! Yet listen to the music behind his description of Elysium, and its "Ein künstliche Grotto auf jenem Eiland", the Eiland soaring, swelling lyrically. So it makes sense that Tamare, Alpha male that he is, unlke the other men, the one who discovers love. "There are men who see only the light, and darkness "ist ihrem Fremd". Since he's set eyes on the Carlotta with her mysterious, challenging smile, no longer can he be careless and uncaring, no longer can he be the prankster hero he used to be. Think Tristan. Pity Volle isn't a tenor. Listen to the way Schreker builds echoes of horn calls into the music, as if he did hear the parallels. But it's distinctively Schreker's voice, "Ferne Musik und leise Gesänge" further invoked in the orchestral interlude that follows, where Lehnhoff has Schwanewilms start to seduce Brubaker.
Both Schwanewilms and Brubaker are encased in transparent black chiffon on naked flesh. When Schwanewilms talks off Brubaker's hard, heavy boots it's erotic and yet extremely tender. Watch Brubaker's expressions carefully as he doesn't have much to sing but his reactions are extremely important - thank goodness for close-ups in film! Yet seduction is just a simile for deeper intimacy. Carlotta sings of going out on s a sunny day, feeling sad without knowing why. Salvago realises someone has at last broken down his emotional walls. But that means he has to learn to give tenderness in return, for she, too is "ein gar gebrechliches Spielzug" She pulls off his pink dress, exposing him, but that's it.
The most striking scenes in this production occurs as the interlude is played. Suddenly the auditorium is bathed in blue light, a reference to the light that makes the Grotto magic. The arches around the stage light up, and figures appear, in black capes. These reference the men of Genoa in their black, beetle-like attire and also longer dramatic traditions. Carlotta's sensitivity is up against something too hard and too ingrained in society for her and Salvago to stand up to. Figures like vultures encroach on the stage as the Duke, representing power, persuades Carlotta that Salvago isn't the man for her. Eventually, it's Tamare she succumbs to, not unwillingly.
These groups of elegant but sinister figures, sexually ambiguous, with masks and feathered headresses, are Lehnhoff trademarks, but here wonderfully evoke things that can't rationally be expressed - mystery, evil, death, power, perhap ? They prepare us for the terrible trial scene when Duke Adorno and the Council of Eight denounce Salvago, blaming him for kidnapping and corrupting the girls of Genoa. It's a horrifying moment. Salvago squirms, helpless. The aristocrats who used Elysium are rounding on him for trying to end it. He must take the blame so they won't. And he is to blame, even though he never laid a finger on anyone. His crime was trying to upset the natural order of things where beauty is beauty and ugliness ugliness. Salvago's attempts to end the orgies on the island by giving it to the city are cruelly punished. Perhaps real ugliness is so powerful that dreams like Elysium can't possibly work and Salvagos are destined to fail. And the rescued girls themselves blame him, for it was in his Elysium they were corrupted.
Then in the final interlude, the ground itself opens up, as Elysium is destroyed, revealing lots of children, half naked, some dead, their haunted eyes captured more accusingly on film than you'd ever see in the opera house. It's horrible. In a corner, Carlotta and Tamare lie together as if dead. Then Volle sings. Even if he's killed, it won't change the fact he's had the most blissful moment of his life. "Die Schönheit sei Beute das Starken". In their final confrontation, Tamare tells Salvago in no uncertain terms why he's failed. "Du sahst nur das Dunkle, die Scahtten, Gefahr und Sünde". What's worse, "ein freudlos Leben, ein langsam Seichen, oder ein Tod in Rausch und Verklärung rauscher in brünstg’r Unarmung ein selig Sterben!". A death in rapture and transfiguration? Carlotta found the ecstasy, the "drunken eyes" she dreamed of so she died happy. Definitely, Tristan und Isolde, with a dash of Tannhauser.
But this is Schreker. Tamare recounts a tale about killing a funfair fiddler with his own violin. Carlotta awakes from her swoon and screams at Salvago in revulsion . "Gebt mir Wasser" she cries, "Nein, gebt mir Wein!" Salvago crumples into a ball as the music explodes into conflagration.
Often the more you love something, the harder it is to write about it, because it's sort of disappointing to dash off something superficial. Maybe one day I'll finally get around to setting out the critique of Eisler's Hollywood Liederbuch I've been making notes on for years. But with a new production of Tristan und Isolde coming up at the Royal Opera House it's a good time to be thinking about the ideas in Die Gezeichneten. Get the DVD, because this production was fantastically expensive to mount and was designed for the specifics of the Felsenreitschule and could never be quite the same again. PLEASE see my other posts on Franz Schreker, use the search button or labels on right.
The new Lulu at the Royal Opera House brought to mind the film Der blaue Engel, the film which created a huge sensation when it was released in 1930. Watching the film again, it's remarkable how much Alban Berg took from it, and what Christof Loy has taken from it in turn. Josef von Sternberg made the movie in 1930, based on the novel by Heinrich Mann Professor Unrat, written in 1905, which references the Lulu plays of Frank Wedekind, "Spring Awakening" (Erdgeist) in 1895 and Pandora's Box, 1904. G W Pabst's film of Pandora's Box came out in 1929. Embedded into this film is the song Ännchen von Tharau now a much loved Lieder, whose melody goes round and round. The original poem was written in the early 1600's about a real young woman, Anna Neander. It was revised by Gottfried Herder in 1778, and set to music in 1830.
So, rings within rings of influences, each creation a work of art in its own right, Loy being the latest to illuminate the tradition. Berg and the artists of his era didn't believe there was only one way to tell a story.
The Blue Angel starts in a quiet German town : silence operates throughout the movie like an inaudible soundtrack, every bit as important as the "real" music and speech. Long sequences where nothing much happens, nothing is said – bingo! Berg's Lulu, where the action operates on different planes. Berg's long interludes are like musical curtains drawn "across the stage" which aren't simply there to change scenes.
A town clock tings the hours, and a series of carved wooden statues move round its face. Where was this filmed? Probably destroyed now in the blitz - it's a beautiful piece of medieval German art. Look for the saint holding a miniature of a cathedral – a two second image that speaks volumes. The clockwork imagery is also so apt for Berg, whose themes rotate and reappear in relentless symmetry.
The Blue Angel is a seedy nightclub – look at the flat chested frumpy showgirls! Professor Rath's schoolboys (who look like they're 30) sneak off, enamoured of Lola Lola (not Lulu Lulu). So he confronts her and is himself drawn in. He marries her but ends up a sorry clown, amusing the crowds by crowing like a cock. When the show returns to his hometown, the humiliation is too much. He can't go on stage, and cracks up. Later he sneaks back to the schoolhouse and dies on his old desk. It's unbearably tragic, love and "civilization" destroyed.
Watch the minor parts, too like the theatre owner/magician, the strong man, the schoolboys, even the "nice wife". And the last scene, when Professor "UNrat " as his boys called him, creeps back to the schoolroom. Moonlight from the window throws a savage spotlight on his last struggle in the darkness. Loy's last scenes ? The idea is so powerful. Indeed, only now I figure what Loy's doing when he gets Lulu to "make her mark" on Dr Schön by smearing greasepaint on his face. That's what she wore when she was forced to dance while he and his fiancee sat in the audience. Professor Rath breaks down on stage in costume and greasepaint, when he sees how his present distorts his past.
Lola Lola isn't Lulu but they're closely related. Heinrich Mann called her Rosa, and in Berg's opera she has many names. Lola references Lola Montez, the siren who entranced King Ludwig of Bavaria and caused his downfall.
Listen to Marlene Dietrich sing Lola's song "Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß, auf Liebe eingestellt. Denn das ist meine Welt, und sonst gar nichts. Das ist, was soll ich machen, mein Natur. Ich halt kann lieben nur, und sonnst gar nichts" (From head to toe, I'm love personified, it's my world, so there. It's how I was made, my nature, I can't do otherwise". The song is famous in English as "Falling in love again" which isn't quite the same. So we've come all the way from an incident in 1617 which inspired the first poem, all the way to the ROH in 2009.
Watch the WHOLE MOVIE HERE on free download. Sorry the clip is interspersed by ads but they are themselves vintage, quite a scream. "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should" for those who remember the 1950's ! You can also watch segment by segment AND watch full screen mode by clicking the cicrcular button. Subtitled in English.
Christof Loy's new production of Berg's Lulu at the Royal Opera House really does benefit from repeat viewings as there is so much to take in, it's not possible in one or even two sittings. Second time round, the cast is more confident and settled, so the singing and acting was much better all round.
This time, too, I was sitting nearer the front, to get close-up detail. In a production as spartan as this, Der Teufel is in the detail. There are long passages with no singing, but these are absolutely integral to the development of the music. Instead of distracting the audience with silly gimmicks, Loy puts the focus on the music as simply as possible. So Agneta Eichenholz's Lulu stands alone and vulnerable on an empty stage while the music surges round her. Even at a distance it's a telling moment. Close up, you can see her facial muscles twitch, her shoulders jerk with suppressed tension. This Lulu may look serene but Eichenholz expresses the hidden volcano within.
Eichenholz's Lulu isn't just a cipher or a creature of sensual instinct but a seriously fractured personality. The controlled, elegant exterior is a way of suppressing the chaos within, rather like Berg's almost OCD obsession with patterns and codes. So zips get pulled, shoes and dresses removed, silently showing how clothes are a kind of armour behind which we can hide. Even Peter Rose's portly tum is touching, vulnerable, "exposed".
Thus when, towards the end, Lulu is confronted by her portrait, she loses control and screams "Throw it out!". This scene is brilliant. The portrait isn't an object. What we see instead is a harsh spotlight projected onto Lulu. It pins her down so she can't escape its probing glare. So she cracks up. In many ways, this is her real death, what happens with Jack the Ripper is just the follow-on.
Throughout the opera, things are constantly being projected – other people's fantasies onto Lulu, the music onto the stage. So the idea of film is fundamental to the opera. Intermezzo's blog makes a good point – why so much fascination with the movies? In the case of Berg and his contemporaries, film was cutting-edge technology, a whole new art form with infinite possibilities, opening up new ways of extending opera and music. Nowadays we think of movies as mass entertainment, but German movies were serious art. Many of them are still classics today.
Watching Michael Volle this time evoked a younger version of Emil Jannings, the schoolmaster in Josef von Sternberg's Der Blaue Engel, who is destroyed by his love for the vaguely Lulu-like woman played by Marlene Dietrich. Berg of course knew The Blue Angel, it was a sensation, and he and his crowd appreciated film in a way we don't do today outside art-house cinema.
Close up works better too for Klaus Florian Vogt's Alwa. Because so much of this opera is shocking, Alwa's delicacy is often overwhelmed, yet he's in many ways the "conscience" of the piece. He's a composer who hears Lulu in music – one of Berg's more explicit autobiographical clues. When the Painter commits suicide because of Lulu's infidelity, the message cannot have been lost on Schoenberg. So Vogt's understated lyricism was prescient – subtle, almost dominated by the other characters, a counterpoint to the brutality in the major musical themes.
Berg's writing is almost mathematical in its precision – like a balance sheet where entries must match, credit and debit. Although he wasn't doing economic analysis in this opera, the idea of society kept in order by checks and balances does creep in. Life here is a sequence of cold calculating transactions. Lulu uses sex for power, Dr Schön's wealth buys Lulu status, there are so many references to money (and the explicit in-joke of Jungfrau shares). Since seeing this production, the Paris scene is bringing up lots of new ideas for me. It's almost pure Berg, the discords in the music are expressing the discordant situation. Where Cerha pops up, it's in the barrel organ music around Schilgoch in the London scene, a little too literal compared with the distortions Berg's written in before.
Like a good wine, Loy's production improves with age and will, I think, be one of the defining moments in the performance history of this opera. Next season he directs Tristan und Isolde. It will be worth investing in top price seats if it will be as subtle as this Lulu.