Silvesterkonzert Dresden Das Land des Lächelns Thielemann

Live from the Semperoper, Dresden, this year's Silvesterkonzert : Franz Lehar, extracts from Das Land des Lächelns with Christian Thielemann conducting the Staatskapelle Dresden and soloists Pavol Breslik, Jane Archibald, Erin Morley and Sebastien Kohlhepp.  Core Austro-German repertoire, or rather operetta, good natured and stylish.  Just right for New Year's Eve ! Just because it's party time that doesn't mean dropping standards to fit the fashionable market. Lehar's Das Land des Lächelns (Land of Smiles) is closely associated with Richard Tauber, so it's a star vehicle for a good tenor. In Pavol Bresik we have a singer who not only sing but can create Prince Sou-chong as a believable and human personality.

This makes a difference because the libretto is painfully dated : a part created to showcase white people in yellowface, as if real Asians were no more than caricature.  That genre was normal in the early part of the twentieth century, when imperialism and white supriority went unquestioned.  Implicit in the genre is the idea that races cannot mix, and that exotic aliens, despite their erotic frisson, are dangerous to "normal" people. That is just not acceptable today. Fortunately there's enough in the  operetta that it doesn't have to rely on kitsch stereotype. Bresik's Prince Sou-chong is an ordinary, decent man from a culture which Lisa and her friends don't have a clue about. In "Bei einem Tee à deux", we glimpse for a moment how two people can communicate. He knows more about tea than she ever will, so the balance isn't all in her favour.  Bresik is genuinely sexy : he doesn't need a bucketload of makeup in order to pretend to be what he is not. He comes over as a hunk most people would fancy.  He really does command the stage. That "Dein ist mein ganzes Herz" is more than a Big Tenor Moment. Breslik makes it feel real. In the finale, when the song is repeated, he sings with sincere feeling. Despite the smiles Das Land des Lächelns is human tragedy behind a mask of insouciant good cheer. Smiling through tears, like so much of this genre. Anyone can feel that way, whatever their origins or background. 

Jane Archibald was a good Lisa, beautifully crested, and Erin Morley, (costumed like fake Japanese !) a sympathetic innocent.  Secretly, she loves Graf Gustav von Pottenstein (Sebastien Kohlhepp) but that love is doomed. Thielemann gets lively, animated playing from the Staatskapelle Dresden, bringing out the "orientalism" in the orchestration.  The "Chinesischer Hochzeitszug" is a bit of a gallop, but  then it should be. Lisa's rushing into something she doesn't understand, and Lehar is writing facsimile of music he doesn't understand, either.  But's its fun anyway. When you're sad, don't mope, but get on with things as if everything will turn out right.

Strange Strauss Salomé, Bayerisches Staatsoper

A strange Strauss Salomé from the Bayerisches Staatsoper.  Salomé is a strange opera, whose meaning is elusive and defies easy answers. Strange isn't wrong per se. Sometimes strangeness yields great insight even if it might take a degree of insight to grasp in the first place.  In this case,  strangeness seems to have been done for its own sake, without much thought behind it.  For one thing, this Salomé started not with Strauss but with Mahler. A veiled man appears, apparently singing a song from Kindertotenlieder, though the tessitura is so high it's close to falsetto.  Is Pavol Breslik (Narraboth) singing or mouthing the song of an offstage singer ?  Perhaps Krzysztof Warlikowski wants to make connections between parents and children in the songs, generation conflict in Salomé and the offstage voice of Jochanaan, the idea doesn't fit, or go very far, and isn't developed in the rest of the staging. 

In the palace, the courtiers lounge about like zombies, their body language stylized. They smoke and grasp tiny vials, whose purpose will be revealed later.  Some sort of erotic connection between Hérodias (Michaela Schuster) and the Page (Rachael Wilson), which makes you wonder about the dynamic between mother and daughter, but distracts from the obvious kinkiness of Herodes' (Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke) feelings from Salomé. (Marlis Petersen). This is a dysfunctional family, in dysfunctional times,  but caricature isn't the way to go.  Jochanaan (Wolfgang Koch) crawls out from the floorboards  A truly Wagnerian apparition. "Heisst ihn herkommen, auf dass er die Stimme Dessen höre, der in den Wüsten und in den Häusern der Könige gekündet hat" delivered with baleful portent. The horns that introduce this passage and the timpani with which it ends are there for a purpose. Perhaps that's why Warlikowski emphasises Salomé's sadistic streak.  She's rewarded for her cruelty by Johannan's curse but the masochistic bitch (not the singer) likes it.  Is he making connections between Wagner, Strauss, and Hitler?  Such connections may or may not be valid but here there's so much going on that they can't be developed beyond superficial shock level. Strauss's opera is much more nuanced, more sympathetic to female sexuality and suffering,  and doesn't lose sight of the fact that Salomé, like Elektra, might not be what she becomes had she not been abused herself.

The banquet in the palace is staged, the guests lined up one side of a long table, an obvious parody of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper, though the connections are dubious. Sure, Christ and his apostles were Jewish, but what does that imply ?  Does a smell of anti-semitism cling to this staging  where cynicism overides humanity ?  Herodes  justhappened to be Jewish : Strauss's opera is about people, not Judaism itself. The introduction to the first dance was gorgeously played- exotic, seductive, elusive.  The dance itself rather more predictable - Salomé in white lace embracing a dancer in a skeleton suit.  As if to distract attention further, a multi coloured backdrop  dominates the scene, with pseudo-medieval figures like lion and unicorn, which might please audiences who want colourful decor at all costs, but isn't really relevant. Any "beauty" in this scene is delusion. When the head of Jochannan is delivered to Salomé, in a box, Petersen alternates sensuality with sharp, brittle flutterings.  Now, for the trick ending. the final scene takes place in another busy, crowded backdrop. Jochannan's back, fullyl restored, having a cigarette with the crowd. Nabbaroth's back, too, holding a gun. Later he hands out treats, like at a party.  What is in those little vials ? Cyanide ? Strange I can cope with, but this confounds me.  Warlikowski generally is a good director but this time he seems to want to channel Barrie Kosky.  Not a good thing ! Wonderful playing though, conducted by Kirill Petrenko, who is, I think, better at opera than in orchestral work. 

Brain-free Smetana Die Verkaufte Braut - Bayerische Staatsoper

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