Meistersinger, Bayreuth Festival, July 2011

Tickets for Bayreuth are hard to come by, so you know something’s wrong when people are disposing of Meistersinger at half price outside the theatre.

Walther centre, Sachs left, Beckmesser right, all photos Bayreuther Festspiele/ Enrico Nawrath

It’s the production that’s the problem, but even if one likes the idea of Walther being a graffiti artist who exhibits a portfolio of bad Picasso-like paintings to the Masters in Act I and acts like a yobbo, there was still a problem with his singing, and with Sebastian Weigle’s conducting.

The overture was sluggishly played; it lacked spring and coherence, and the prelude to Act III was a bit ragged, lacking the powerful depth it should convey. Only the prelude to Act II gave any sense of what this music can really sound like, but on balance it was a lifeless rendering of Wagner’s wonderful score.

Walther and David in Act I

The singing and performances varied in standard. Georg Zeppenfeld was a superb Pogner, dignified, sympathetic and powerfully voiced. Adrian Eröd sang strongly as Beckmesser, though the production is against him by not allowing him to make an inadvertent fool of himself with the mistaken words of his attempted prize song. On the contrary, he dresses like a goofball in Act III — quite differently from his strait-laced appearance in Acts I and II — and looks terribly pleased with his silly piece of performance art, digging out a naked man from under a pile of sand. Norbert Ernst also sang very strongly as David, but Burkhard Fritz was a disappointing Walther, giving a sad rendering of the prize song and ending with the wrong pitch for Paradies. He also seemed unable to portray the outlandish creativity that Katharina Wagner’s production seems to be laying on this role, and merely degenerated into uncouth boorishness. As Eva and Magdalena, I felt Michaela Kaune and Carola Guber did not rise above the production in their vocal work, though I saw Ms. Kaune in the same role at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, in a Götz Friedrich production, and she came over far better. Fortunately James Rutherford as Hans Sachs helped hold things together, aided by the fact that his representation in this production is relatively standard. After a comparatively quiet start he really came into his own in Act III, singing a fine Wahn monologue and giving a strong performance at the end, even if the lighting, featuring only him and Beckmesser, made him look like a giant sepulchral figure.

Walther and Eva in Act II

When Walther stalked off the stage after winning the prize, Eva followed and we saw neither of them again, so Sachs is left to address the first part of his final monologue Verachtet mir die Meister nicht (Don’t condemn the masters to me) to no one at all. Mind you, in this production Walther doesn’t want to listen to anything, and early in Act III when Walther asks Sachs the difference between a beautiful song and a master song, he takes no notice of the wonderful reply Mein Freund, in holder Jugendzeit . . . (My friend in the sweet time of youth . . .).

Act III

Then in the following scene where Beckmesser finds Walther’s wooing song, transcribed by Sachs, and accuses Sachs of trying to woo Eva, he asks Ist das Eure Hand? (Is that your hand?), to which Sachs replies yes. Yet in this production Sachs writes nothing, and what Beckmesser has picked up is a tatty piece of toy stage scenery, sloppily painted by Walther. So it wasn’t Sachs’s hand at all — he’s lying, but what’s the point?

If you try to do clever things like replacing the composition of songs and poetry with performance art, then you’re liable to run into difficulties like this, and Katharina Wagner’s production is rife with them. I saw it two years ago with the same singers for David, Beckmesser, Eva and Magdalena, so I thought I’d close my eyes, but on finding the conducting inadequate I opened them and tried to concentrate on the staging. Next year Meistersinger is not on the programme, and one hopes that when it reappears there will be a new production. I can understand doing strange things with other Wagner operas, and the extraordinary production of Parsifal was intriguing — I want to see it again — but Meistersinger does not lend itself to new concepts in the same way, and it’s time to drop the effort. With a better production the singers and the conductor will surely give stronger performances.

Lohengrin, Bayreuth Festival, July 2011

The people of Brabant as rats, Elsa in white, wounded with arrows in her back, and Lohengrin during the overture trying to get through white double doors. In 2010 this was the new production that opened the festival — it apparently got a mixed reception, but seeing it for the first time this year I liked it! And so presumably did Angela Merkel who returned as a private citizen to see it again, sitting in the first few rows rather than the main box at the back.

The Wedding, all photos Bayreuther Festspiele/Enrico Nawrath

The video projections of rats fighting and metaphorically trying to take over the kingdom were clever, and I loved the opening of Act II with a dead horse and overturned carriage. Telramund and Ortud were evidently trying to abscond with boxes of gold bars that the rats quickly made off with. They have failed in their attempt to take over the kingdom, and the wrecked carriage is representative of their wrecked plans.

Elsa, with Ortrud, Telramund and Lohengrin

As for Lohengrin himself, Wagner writes in his Mitteilung an meine Freunde (Communication to my friends) that the hero is looking for a woman who “ihn unbedingt liebe” (loves him unconditionally). He longs for the one person who can release him from his solitude, quench his yearning — for love, for being loved, for being understood through love (original German “ihn aus seiner Einsamkeit erlösen, seine Sehnsucht stillen konnte — nach Liebe, nach Geliebtsein, nach Verstandensein durch die Liebe“). He fails of course because Elsa cannot resist demanding the name he can’t reveal without returning immediately to the land of the Grail. When the swan comes back for him, it turns into Elsa’s lost younger brother whom Ortrud bewitched and accused her of murdering, and in this production the brother is an embryo held inside an egg-like container. He rises onto his legs, tears his umbilical cord, and stands there like some far eastern holy man. Lohengrin walked slowly to the front of the stage, the lights went out, and the applause erupted.

Elsa and Ortrud

Klaus Florian Vogt was an immensely strong and charismatic Lohengrin, assertive against others, yet showing quieter tender moments to the beautiful Elsa of Annette Dasch. Tómas Tómasson sang strongly as Telramund, and Petra Lang was a powerful presence as Ortrud, singing with huge force when the occasion demanded it. Samuel Youn was in good voice and whacky costume as the Herald, and Georg Zeppenfeld showed suitable weakness as King Henry, but sang with firmness, particularly in Act I when he refers to the sword giving a judgement between Trug und Wahreheit (fraud and truth).

The final tableau

Andris Nelsons conducted with energy and what seemed a faster than usual tempo, though I’ve no objection to that since I find this opera can tend to drag despite the beautiful music. In any event, Hans Neuenfels’ production, with costume and stage designs by Reinhard von der Thannen, gives a forward movement to developments and lightens things with a strong splash of colour. I loved the pink mice, and the hugely colourful lady rats at the wedding ceremony. As the mice came on, followed by the ladies I half expected the orchestra to burst into ballet music for Nutcracker or La fille mal gardée, to say nothing of the allusion to Swan Lake with Elsa and Ortrud in their feathered dresses of white and black.

In the end what stands out is: an intriguing production, fine performances from the whole cast, and that wonderful stage moment with the broken carriage and dead horse at the start of Act II. Super.

Tristan und Isolde, Glyndebourne, August 2009

This was Glyndebourne’s 2003 production by Nikolaus Lehnhoff, revived in 2007, 2008, and again this year under revival director Daniel Dooner. It works terrifically well, with a set by Roland Aeschlimann featuring a broken vortex of huge curved girders. While the vortex alters only slightly from act to act, the main variation comes from the wonderful lighting by Robin Carter. There was no comparison with the cold and incoherent production I saw in Bayreuth three weeks ago, and musically it was better too, with Glyndebourne’s music director Vladimir Jurowski conducting the London Philharmonic with restraint and sensitivity. Unlike Bayreuth, this Glyndebourne production gives a focus to the opera by having essentially the same set throughout, so things can gradually build in intensity until the Liebestod, after which the audience remained silent for a few moments while a square opening surrounding Isolde slowly closed itself off.

The singers all did a fine job, with Ian Storey standing in at the last minute for Torsten Kerl as Tristan. Anja Kampe, whom I saw in February giving a fine performance of Senta in the Royal Opera’s production of Holländer, sang Isolde, but I felt she didn’t quite rise above the orchestra at the end. Her companion Brangäne was sympathetically portrayed by Sarah Connelly, and Tristan’s companion Kurwenal was sung by Polish baritone Andrzej Dobber, who came over very strongly in the last Act. Melot was Trevor Scheunemann, and German bass Georg Zeppenfeld sang a powerful and nuanced King Mark. His understanding and forgiveness of Tristan in the last act was beautifully done, and Ian Storey responded well as Tristan. This was fine acting with both body and voice, and Zeppenfeld gave a fitting lead-in to the final love-death of Isolde.

Three down and one to go. In 2008 the Metropolitan Opera’s cinema screening was excellent, this year Bayreuth was a great disappointment, but now Glyndebourne has made up for it. Let’s hope the new Royal Opera production compares to the two good ones, not the bad one. Oddly enough all four directors are German: Daniel Dorn for the Met, Christof Marthaler for Bayreuth, Nikolaus Lehnhoff for Glyndebourne, and Christof Loy for the Royal Opera. I am full of anticipation, but not optimistic, since Loy’s last two operas for Covent Garden have been disappointing. He inserted a middle-aged lesbian composer into Ariadne auf Naxos, making a nonsense of the interaction with Zerbinetta, which is a focal point of the opera, and he turned Lulu into an incredibly cold affair with stationary singers who might as well have been giving a concert performance. Will Tristan also be cold, like Marthaler’s awful Bayreuth production? I shall report again after the first night on September 29^th.