Lohengrin, Bayreuth Festival, July 2012

This intriguing production by Hans Neuenfels, now in its third year, concentrates on the people rather than the distant historical setting in which Wagner sets his opera. The stage action starts already during the overture with Lohengrin in an antiseptically white room trying to get out, which he eventually achieves by simply walking backwards through the door. Like the Flying Dutchman, Lohengrin desires a redeeming human love, but being forced to reveal his true origins in Act III he must return from whence he came.

King and subjects, all images Bayreuther Festspiele/ Enrico Nawrath

Yet he is on a mission to the land of Brabant, and finds it in uproar. The king is weak, unable to walk a straight line without wobbling, and the people are rats — shy creatures unable to do much when faced with forces beyond their control. Ortrud and Telramund’s scheming to capture the crown is displayed in video imagery of rats, and after Lohengrin defeats Telramund, the dialogue between the schemers at the beginning of Act II is set in the context of an overturned coach signifying their crash, with rats coming out of nowhere to take whatever wealth they still possess.

Elsa wounded by the accusations

Elsa, victim of her own naivety, has become reliant on semi-divine intervention to exculpate her for the disappearance of her brother. She is blind to Ortrud’s clever sorcery, unaware that its diabolical power caused her brother to vanish. But Elsa’s great fault is to question her redeemer rather than her accuser, and when she finally compels him to reveal his origins, the lighting for In fernem Land was superb. Lohengrin was warmly lit in centre stage, while Elsa stood front stage-left in a very cold light. After this distressing scene heralding the end of their love, the boat that comes for Lohengrin carries an egg containing an embryo who stands and severs his own umbilical cord. Elsa’s brother has returned and a new era dawns, but Elsa is beyond help.

Ortrud and Elsa

Such are the essentials of this production, and Annette Dasch sang Elsa beautifully, her first entrance showing huge purity of tone, pitch, and presence. Both she and Lohengrin were the same singers as last year, and Klaus Florian Vogt gave an outstanding performance as the title character. Like Elsa he started with great vocal purity and lack of assertiveness, yet quickly took a bolder attitude when addressing the king. This year Wilhelm Schwinghammer sang the king, portraying him as a very weak character, and Samuel Youn made a very fine Herald, just like last year. Thomas J. Mayer and Susan Maclean as Telramund and Ortrud were very strong, both in characterisation and vocal power, but the main plaudits must go to Dasch and Vogt, who were cheered to the rafters, with particularly insistent stamping and cheering for Vogt.

Elsa and Lohengrin

Conducting by Andris Nelsons was super — the overture was terrific and the Act II dialogue between Elsa and Ortrud reached sublime musical heights. There was huge audience appreciation for everyone, except a smattering of boos for the director — but they do like to boo at Bayreuth. This is a clever production, very well revived, and the dramaturge, Henry Arnold has a particularly good essay in the programme, discussing Wagner’s intentions.

For an alternative perspective on this production, see my review from last year.

Performances continue until August 25 — for details click here.

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.

Wagner at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, a retrospective, February 2010

Five Wagner operas in six days — Lohengrin, Rienzi, Der fliegende Holländer, Tannhäuser, and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg — was quite a marathon, but well worth it, particularly for three of the productions. Lohengrin and Meistersinger, both under the direction of Götz Friedrich were excellent, and Philipp Stölzl’s Rienzi gave us an intriguing representation of Hitler and the Nazis — very appropriate when one recalls that Hitler loved the opera and possessed the original score, which presumably went up in flames in the bunker when he died. Interestingly enough, Wagner had already disassociated himself from this early opera well before he died, which was before Hitler was born. Of the other two operas, the production of Tannhäuser by Kirsten Harms was effective in the first two acts, but disappointing in the third, while the one-act Holländer was given an absurd production by Tatjana Gürbaca. Opera houses that put on such nonsense shoot themselves in the foot, as word gets around and many seats remain unsold.

Some of the singing was outstanding. Anyone who did not attend Tannhäuser missed a superb performance by Stephen Gould, who seems perfectly suited to this role. In November 2011 he will sing it at the Wiener Staatsoper, where he will also perform Siegfried in the last two Ring operas. Mentioning singers who fill a role to perfection, I thought Torsten Kerl performed very well, and was convincingly narcissistic, as the title character in Rienzi. And a similar wonderful pairing between singer and role was Klaus Florian Vogt as Walther in Meistersinger. It’s one of his main parts, along with Lohengrin, and I would rather have seen him in that opera than Ben Heppner, whose power seems to have weakened in recent years, though he retains his lyricism. As it was I thought the best performers in Lohengrin were Waltraud Meier and Eike Wilm Schulte, who were wonderfully mendacious as Ortrud and Telramund. King Henry the Fowler was also very strongly sung by Markus Brück, who gave us a superb Beckmesser in Meistersinger, young, smug and appallingly lacking in self-esteem — it was a wonderful act. Holländer is hardly worth mentioning since the singers cannot do their best in such an absurd production, but I found the strongest member of the cast to be Hans-Peter König singing Daland, as he did a year ago at the Royal Opera.

As far as the conducting went, Jacques Lacombe’s rendition of Holländer came over well, and since the production was so awful I kept my eyes closed and concentrated on the music. Sebastian Lang-Lessing did well with Rienzi in the cut-down version that was performed here, and I very much liked Michael Schønwandt’s conducting of Lohengrin. Ulf Schirmer did well with Tannhäuser, but although I found Donald Runnicles’ conducting of Meistersinger to be very sensitive to the singers, I wasn’t sure he had taken enough time to rehearse. Being later in Wagner’s oeuvre than the other operas during the week it is musically more sophisticated and I felt there was some raggedness in parts.

Altogether, however this was a great week of Wagner. I particularly loved the Götz Friedrich productions of Lohengrin and Meistersinger, and found Rienzi stunning after a rather dubious first half. Congratulations to the Deutsche Oper for putting it on in this new Philipp Stölzl production.

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Wagner Wochen, February 2010

Rossini’s comment that, “Wagner has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour” was spoken before Die Meistersinger was created, and this opera has, for me, not a dull moment — it’s one glorious thing after another. Of course a determined director can spoil it, as happened at Bayreuth this past summer in Katharina Wagner’s diabolical production, but here in Berlin the production by Götz Friedrich was a wonderful antidote. The church pews became visible during the overture, the houses of Sachs and Pogner were opposite one another, the Flieder bush was visible on stage in Act II, and Sachs breathed its scent during his Flieder monologue. All this is as it should be, and I loved the sets by Peter Sykora, who collaborated with Kirsten Dephoff on the nineteenth and twentieth century costume designs. The production had a sense of movement and spontaneity, and on the fields outside Nuremberg the opening events of the final scene were enlivened by acrobats, and a wonderful charade with the tailors, their goatskin, and men dressed in armour, showing how they protected the city from a long siege by pretending it still had frisky goats inside.

Within this delightful production we had Klaus Florian Vogt as a glorious Walther, with Michaela Kaune as a lovely Eva, both having sung these same roles in Bayreuth last July. Beckmesser was brilliantly performed by Markus Brück, clearly sung, amusingly pompous and clumsy, but never over the top. Kristinn Sigmundsson was a strong Pogner with fine stage presence, and Paul Kaufmann and Ulrike Helzel did well as David and as Eva’s confidante Magdalena. James Johnson sang a very sympathetic Hans Sachs, and though he was a little underpowered and lacking in stage presence, he interacted well with the other cast members. The chorus sang strongly, and the conducting by Donald Runnicles never flagged, never went over the top, and gave the singers plenty of space.

As I said, this was the perfect antidote to the nonsense from Bayreuth, and I’m delighted I came to Berlin to see it.

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Bayreuther Festspiele, July 2009

At the end of this opera, Hans Sachs sings a wonderful soliloquy on the importance of preserving German art against alien threats and invasions. How ironic then that this production is entirely alien to Wagner’s great opera, and only by keeping ones eyes closed and ignoring the indescribable nonsense on stage can one preserve the great art of Wagner’s music. Who could do such a thing to so wonderful an opera? And do it at Wagner’s own festival, in the opera house he founded? Surely the Wagner family, guardians of the great man’s legacy, would not allow one of his works to serve as a background on which a confused person can hang a lot of grossly impertinent and even grotesque staging. Who on earth was able to get away with this?

The answer is, I’m afraid, a member of the Wagner family, one who obviously lacks the self-discipline necessary for true creativity. This is someone whose narcissism seeks attention by shocking the audience, and by extension the world outside Bayreuth. But surely the administrators of the Festival will do away with such stuff? No chance, because the producer has put this on before, and has now become co-administrator. If anyone thought that might have tempered her wish to outrage the audience and shriek out her own inadequacy, they were mistaken, because this year’s production of Meistersinger was apparently even more ludicrous than last year’s.

It is useless to try listing the follies and contradictions that make this production so incoherent, and the only interest can be in the singers and conductor. It is clear that Bayreuth no longer attracts the calibre of singers it used to, so they were very lucky to have a superb Walther in the person of Klaus Florian Vogt, who sang like a god. Adrian Eröd was a very strong Beckmesser, as was Norbert Ernst as David, and Alan Titus a pleasingly solid Hans Sachs. Pogner was Artur Korn, with Michaela Kaune as his daughter Eva and Carola Guber as her nurse Magdalena, but they could not rise above the production. Conducting was by Sebastian Weigle, who did a good job with the invisible orchestra, but missed some highlights, though it is difficult to blame him when he has to watch the appalling nonsense on stage. At the end there was enthusiastic applause for some of the singers, particularly Klaus Florian Vogt, and hearty boos for the producer, Katharina Wagner.

This appalling nonsense was worse by far than yesterday’s dour production of Tristan, which is really saying something.