Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, December 2011

This was Antonio Pappano’s first Meistersinger for the Royal Opera, and from the start of the overture to the final chords of Act III, more than five hours later, his peerless conducting drove Wagner’s comedy forward with huge effect. The chorus too was excellent, from the first four-part harmony in the church to their final embrace of Sachs and Walther on the meadows by the river Pegnitz.

Wolfgang Koch as Sachs, Emma Bell as Eva, Simon O'Neill as Walther, all images Clive Barda

Among the principal singers, some could hardly have been better. John Tomlinson was the best Pogner I ever remember seeing. This man, who is happy to give up his daughter as bride to the winner of a song contest, can sometimes appear a bit pompous, but Tomlinson’s delivery of Pogner’s Act I monologue was hugely powerful. This is where he extols the art-loving German burgher, frequently misrepresented abroad as caring for nought but money. It’s a key moment and so often comes over too weakly. Tomlinson’s characterisation of the role was so strong that the revival director even had him pushing Sachs around towards the end of Act III, urging him to embrace Eva and Walther. Add to that the excellent portrayal of Kothner, the head of the guild, by the ever reliable Donald Maxwell, and you only wish everyone on stage fitted their roles this well.

Toby Spence as David with the apprentices

Some did, and Toby Spence was an enormously likeable David, whose Act I explanation to Walther of what makes a mastersinger, along with the extraordinary list of tones he delivers, was riveting. Here is surely a future Walther. His fiancée Magdalena was very well portrayed by Heather Shipp, who seems to make a speciality of these awkward supporting roles, and Eva was well sung by Emma Bell, who showed angst and joy in equal measure. Her adored Walther, with whom she is willing to elope and defy her beloved father, was Simon O’Neill, whose voice I found too heldentenorish for the role, though he certainly delivered Walther’s various songs with great power. I only wish the costume department could have provided him with a better white outfit for Act III — cloaked for his delivery of the prize song it was better, but those shoulder wings … I know it’s Christmas, but this is not pantomime. Beckmesser’s black costume was much better, and his role was finely sung by Peter Coleman-Wright, though several comic moments were noticeable by their absence, perhaps due to a lack of stage direction. However the fight scene after he has attempted to serenade Eva at her window is cleverly staged, as is the appearance of the Nightwatchman, strongly sung by Robert Lloyd.

Emma Bell as Eva with John Tomlinson as her father Pogner

And then there is the main character, Hans Sachs, sung by Wolfgang Koch, who has performed the same role in Frankfurt (2006) and Vienna (2008). In Act I he came over less strongly than either Pogner or Kothner, and I found the Flieder monologue of Act II disappointing. Of course it’s a huge role and he must reserve himself for Act III, where his response to the crowd in the final scene and his final speech, Verachtet mir die Meister nicht (Don’t despise the masters) to Walther and the assembled company, came over well. But earlier in Act III, the Wahn monologue in the first scene and the later response to Walther’s question on what makes the difference between a beautiful song and a master song, were delivered in a matter-of-fact way as if they were academic lectures. With the Wahn monologue I felt I was listening to a defence of the Euro by a male version of Angela Merkel. Koch has a lovely tone to his voice, but I missed the repressed emotion of these important soliloquys, and the unrestrained emotion when he threw a chair across the room, just before Eva sings O Sachs! Mein Freund! was by contrast quite over top, though that would be due to revival director Elaine Kidd.

This production by Graham Vick is immensely colourful and I loved the lighting design by Wolfgang Göbbel. The blue light shining on the front curtain for the prelude to Act III, the light coming into Sachs’s study through the windows, casting shadows as people moved in front of them — it was all very carefully thought out. With a raked stage in Act III the view from the Amphitheatre was as if one were looking down on the proceedings, which was good, but I would have preferred some images of the river and meadow, rather than plain sides and a wooden floor.

But this was a musical triumph brought to fruition by Pappano, the orchestra, the chorus, and some superb singing.

The New Year’s Day performance of this opera will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 from 14:45, and performances at the Royal Opera House continue until January 8 — for details click here.

Bayreuth Festival Retrospective, 2011

This year the Bayreuth Festival produced five different operas, opening with a new production of Tannhäuser, followed by four revivals: Meistersinger, Lohengrin, Parsifal, and Tristan, in that order.  I went to the first four, which included Katarina Wagner’s grotesque Meistersinger for which spare tickets were selling at half price, and no wonder. With a weak Walther this year it was even worse than I remembered. Tristan I avoided after the dull production and low quality performance of two years ago, so my sequence ended with Parsifal, which was stunning.

More on that later, but on opening night the Tannhäuser production team was roundly booed. Sebastian Baumgarten portrayed the opera as one vast recycling experiment, yet just behind me in the centre box sat Angela Merkel and Jean-Claude Trichet, who represent the main people in control of another huge experiment, namely the Euro. I wonder if they saw the irony. In the Euro experiment, Greece is in the Venusberg, and Elisabeth represents the Euro, but rather than seek redemption in Rome, the Greek government must journey to Berlin and Brussels. In Tannhäuser we know the result. He does not gain absolution for his sins of excess, but there is divine intervention. In the real experiment, Greece has now started its journey, but regardless of what the Euro gods eventually decide, the omnipotent power on high is the bond market. That’s worth remembering because although the higher power absolves Tannhäuser at the end of the opera, there’s a final denouement: both he and Elisabeth die.

What a pity the director of Tannhäuser made no use of this ominous comparison, so that left just two good productions, Lohengrin and Parsifal. In Hans Neuenfels’ Lohengrin production I liked the rats and video projections, which gave a novel insight into a Wagner opera I care for less than others, but the real punch was from Parsifal. Like many people I’m sceptical of unusual productions, but Norwegian director Stefan Herheim’s bold conception was remarkable. It gave an overview of German history from before the First World War until after the Second. The wound from the Treaty of Versailles, the sorcery that Nazism did to a weakened nation, the huge loss of prestige, and finally the cure from paralysis with the death of the old Germany in the person of Titurel. It was an experience not to be missed.

Fortunately Parsifal will reappear next year — see it if you can. It will be shown in the company of Tristan, Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, and a new production of Fliegende Holländer. As for the Ring, a new production will appear in 2013, the bicentenary of Wagner’s birth.

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.

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Glyndebourne, May 2011

This new production of Meistersinger by David McVicar elicited thunderous applause at the end. And what an end it was, with Hans Sachs’s monologue being given its full force in a way I’ve not seen before.

Finley as Sachs in the final scene of Act III, all photos by Alastair Muir

When Walther refuses the award of Mastership from Pogner, Gerald Finley as Sachs draws him aside to stage right, and his first few lines, Verachtet mir die Meister nicht …, begging Walther not to spurn the Masters, are sung privately to him while the others talk in confusion among themselves. As Sachs moves forward with his great monologue, explaining how the Masters have nurtured true art through difficult times in the past, he moves to stage left and grasps Beckmesser by the arm. This is a nice touch because the poor old town clerk, pompous ass though he is, has made such a frightful mess of things and was moved to shed a tear as Walther sang his prize song. Then as Sachs continues to develop his great monologue he rushes round the stage urgently addressing everyone. His Hab’ Acht!, when he warns of German Art falling under false rule, is a wonderful moment. There is nothing sententious here, nothing to be taken amiss, just an appeal not to be led astray by false and foreign ideas, and it resonated with me as a striking comment against that awful 12-year rule known as the Third Reich. The chorus comes in with enormous force, Eva places the wreath on Sachs’s head, and he pitches it up to the revellers at the top of the bandstand. The curtain stayed up, the audience roared their approval, and the performers and production team on stage received a hugely vocal standing ovation.

Some say that Glyndebourne is too small a venue for Meistersinger, and it’s only their second Wagner production, but it was terrific. The designs by Vicki Mortimer are simply wonderful. I loved Sachs’s study in the first part of Act III with the wonderful summer morning light entering through the window. Paule Constable’s lighting is superbly calm, but also thrillingly dramatic as that warning shaft of light emerges in Act II at the moment Walther and Eva are about to elope in the darkness.

Beckmesser and Sachs in Act II

This is just before Beckmesser arrives to serenade Eva, and here and in the other two acts, Johannes Martin Kränzle was perfect in both voice and dramatic interpretation. He took full advantage of David McVicar’s clever production ideas. When he creeps into Sachs’s study in Act III the music allows time for plenty of side play and it was very funny: his tumbling over the bench, the paper sticking on his hand, and then his shoe, the boxes falling out of the shelves. It was all done with perfect comic timing.

Kränzle and Finley as Beckmessser and Sachs were the stars of this performance, and Finley opened out Sachs’s role in interesting ways. In the Flieder monologue of Act II, as he thinks of the Masters’ rejection of Walther’s Act I performance, he exhibits huge frustration. And in the Wahn monologue of Act III he shows enormous anguish, even kicking a chair over at the beginning, but calming down as he sings of his beloved Nuremberg and the customs and contentment in deed and work. Then after he expostulates about the events of the previous night, the London Philharmonic under the brilliant direction of Vladimir Jurowski, rises beautifully to the challenge of Sachs’s Der Flieder war’s: Johannisnacht! (It was the Elder-tree: Midsummer’s Eve!) Nun aber kam Johannistag! (But now there comes Midsummer’s Day!). These great monologues by Sachs are almost always stirringly sung, but Finley brought them out with huge emotion. A great performance.

Pogner enters with Eva in the final scene

His interaction with the other cast members was excellent, and the quintet in Act III was beautifully sung with Marco Jentzsch, Anna Gabler, Michaela Selinger, and Topi Lehtipuu in the roles of Walther, Eva, Magdalena and David. Alastair Miles was excellent as Eva’s father Pogner, and Marco Jentzsch was a strongly voiced Walther with a heroic tone. Anna Gabler also sang strongly as Eva, but perhaps a bit too forcefully for my taste. When Eva goes to see Sachs early in Act III, I’m used to her being very anxious, but here she seemed ill-tempered, so that rather than seeing her as a glorious future wife for Walther, I wondered if he knew what he was letting himself in for. Also in Act II when she hits Sachs she appeared more as a leading lady for Richard Strauss rather than Wagner. Her young nurse Magdalena often comes over as the more forceful and difficult of the two, but here it was the reverse, and Michaela Selinger’s well-sung Magdelena seemed perfectly charming. While on the topic of performance, Mats Almgren sang beautifully as the Night Watchman.

The jugglers in Act III

Among many lovely points about this production, I rather liked Augustin Moser, one of the mastersingers, bringing his small daughter into Act I where she sits on his lap until Frau Moser retrieves her. This was a nice touch, but I was not so wild about the fight at the end of that act. There were more women in nightshirts than men, and the choreography for the rent-a-mob fight crew was just too much. This is supposed to be an impromptu row caused by all the noise, and it should look like it. By contrast, the choreography for the dance in the final scene of Act III was very good: the girls from Fürth swishing their skirts, slapping their thighs and dancing in circular formation in the bandstand, with the boys joining in on the outside. I loved the jugglers, particularly those on stilts — they were brilliant. And the way Pogner brought Eva in on his arm reminded me briefly of the recent Royal Wedding. Then immediately Sachs came on the chorus made a glorious sound, and Finley’s Euch macht ihr’s leicht, mir macht ihr’s schwer . . . (For you it’s easy, but you make it hard for me . . .) was riveting. This was Finley’s first Hans Sachs, and as he matures into the role it will only get better.

My view of the stage from the upper circle was perfect, and if you can get ticket returns anywhere in the theatre, go for it at any price. Performances continue until June 26 — for more details click here.

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, 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.