By ANDREW POWELL
Published: July 7, 2014
MUNICH — It was standing room only for Die Flut yesterday (July 6). Not only was Boris Blacher’s 1946 radio opera sold out, but the audience was expected to stand or stroll through it, as directed by Aernout Mik at a former riding hall here. Improbably part of Bavarian State Opera’s summer festival, the event introduced conductor Oksana Lyniv, the attractive new assistant to Kirill Petrenko.
Blacher might not normally draw a big crowd, but we live in visual times and “video-installation artist” Mik has a following. Hiring him must have seemed a safe bet: he could do whatever he wanted to enhance a work conceived for radio. Sadly he brought only distractions.
Visual cues abound in Die Flut, which reworks an 1885 nouvelle by Guy de Maupassant, L’épave (The Wreck), about an insurance appraiser who journeys from Paris to the endless sandbanks of the Île de Ré where a claimant’s boat has run aground an hour’s walk out from shore. The appraiser approaches the wreck:
Elle semblait sortir du sol et prenait, sur cette immense étendue plate et jaune, des proportions surprenantes. Je l’atteignis enfin, après une heure de marche. Elle gisait sur le flanc, crevée, brisée, montrant, comme les côtes d’une bête, ses os rompus, ses os de bois goudronné, percés de clous énormes. Le sable déjà l’avait envahie, entré par toutes les fentes, et il la tenait, la possédait, ne la lâcherait plus. Elle paraissait avoir pris racine en lui.
But Bay of Biscay tides, he has been warned, need rise only centimeters to cut him off. And sure enough he winds up surrounded by rising water and expecting to die as night descends — in the company of others, as it turns out, including an 18-year-old girl who is feeling cold.
Heinz von Cramer’s postwar German libretto for Blacher is the shrewdest of adaptations, retaining the salty scene and perilous sandbanks while exploring through modified roles some harsher effects of the sense of imminent death.
Cramer’s appraiser is a wealthy banker (Der alte Bankier, bass Miklós Sebestyén) who fatally tries offering cash to fellow tide victims (Der Fischer, baritone Tim Kuypers, and Der junge Mann, tenor Dean Power) if they would only swim ashore for help. His money, tellingly, proves irrelevant as the water rises, supreme as it recedes. And then there is the girl (Das Mädchen, soprano Iulia Maria Dan).
Mik missed it all. His contribution, trite mini-movies of rescues and rituals looping incessantly on screens over our heads, appeared canned, as if the director had merely used the occasion to showcase unrelated pre-existing work. He failed to set Maupassant’s remarkable scene or exploit its potential.
The action itself proved intense, though, partly because the four protagonists were confined to a platform, along with a commenting chorus and the instrumentalists (a dozen members each from the Bavarian State Opera Chorus and Bavarian State Orchestra). This shunted slowly from one end of the 80-yard hall to the other, and back, as the story unfolded, while two dozen mimes mingled with the fluid audience, gesturing in sync with each mini-movie.
Blacher’s mostly tonal 40-minute score for the singers, five wind instruments and string quintet (augmented to a septet yesterday) places passion in the voices but irony in the jaunty, blues-tinged, light-textured accompaniment. It is alas not especially original or memorable.
Lyniv secured eloquent, vivid performances. Dan, Power, Kuypers and Sebestyén projected desperation, resignation, envy, surprise or relief, as required. For reasons unclear, certain sections of the opera were played twice, to altered dramaturgy, stretching the runtime beyond an hour. A tape of the Prologue from the original 1946 broadcast lent authenticity.
Photo © Wilfried Hösl
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Thursday, December 11th, 2014By ANDREW POWELL
Published: December 11, 2014
MUNICH — Puccini lost even before the curtain went up Nov. 15 on Hans Neuenfels’ conceptual new staging of Manon Lescaut for Bavarian State Opera. Anna Netrebko, its titular star, abandoned the project in quiet disgust, understandably it turned out. Disaster did not follow, but the night and the subsequent run will long be remembered for what might have been, musically.
The company broke the sorry news Nov. 3 after securing a substitute in Kristine Opolais. It cited “unterschiedlichen Auffassungen,” divergent opinions, between star and director and lamely lamented the stresses of theater life. It had not, apparently, considered managing those stresses so that no cast change was needed. In any case, the neat explanation rang hollow: Netrebko has a history of flexibility with Regietheater. She had signed on with a régisseur known for strange concepts and was no doubt looking forward to the highly visible introduction to Germany of a successful new role.
Sure enough, a more accurate picture emerged within days, in Der Spiegel and from the horse’s mouth. While the Russian soprano remained atypically mute, Neuenfels, 73, echoed the conversation in rehearsals that caused the rift. Netrebko had conveyed views about the choice facing Abbé Prévost’s 1731 material girl — between a life of passion with penniless des Grieux and one of wealth with Geronte — that he, Neuenfels, found “lächerlich und degradierend,” laughable and degrading, to women. He had reasoned back: “Möglicherweise findet man es in Russland als Frau gar nicht schlimm, sich von einem alten, reichen Mann aushalten zu lassen,” or, Maybe in Russia it is not considered at all bad for a woman to let herself be kept by an old rich man — this, not incidentally, to an actress whose own family endured deprivation and hunger at the start of her career. Bottom line: your views are no good, and probably because you are Russian. Bravo, Herr Direktor!
The cast change would not have mattered so much had Netrebko not triumphed in February in her role debut as Puccini’s Manon, and before an Italian audience under Riccardo Muti’s strict tutelage. But she had. Tapes demonstrate she was red hot for this role this year, with clear Italian, a dramatic command of the evolving character gleaned from years as Massenet’s protagonist, and, especially, rich tones to wield in all sorts of expressive ways.
Opolais has sung here often since her radiant first appearance in 2010 in a lyrically conducted (Tomáš Hanus), perversely staged (Martin Kušej) Rusalka, not always equaling that achievement. She is an enchanting presence on stage, an excellent musician, a game and cooperative colleague. The voice never makes an ugly sound, but it wanes in volume as it descends (there is no “chest voice” of substance), and her Italian wants stronger consonant projection.
On opening night Opolais (pictured) teamed magnetically with her des Grieux, Jonas Kaufmann. Both gave their best in Act IV, she singing to the boards for heft in Sola, perduta, he sailing high as a generous embodiment of Gallic desperation. Throughout Act II, alas, the soprano’s relatively monochromatic voice and missing gravitas limited the music: a little morbidezza helps in the singing of In quelle trine morbide, and Tu, tu, amore! Tu? at the start of the duet requires intensity and volume. Markus Eiche, as the immoral Lescaut, sounded glorious but strove in vain for italianità. Ditto for Sören Eckhoff’s loosely regimented choristers. Vivid supporting contributions came from Okka von der Damerau, a vocally lush Musico; Dean Power, a spright Edmondo; and the veterans Ulrich Reß, cast inexplicably as a hypertrichotic Maestro di ballo (hand is pictured, lower left), and Roland Bracht, a credible and clear Geronte.
The Bavarian State Orchestra showed astonishing sensitivity to Puccini’s freshest score, finely tracing its melodic ideas, scampering through the momentary ironies, deftly tinting the myriad and occasionally peculiar textures. It was an evening of great acumen and discernment for the brass, notably the trombone group, where an oversized cimbasso provided discreet assistance. Everything came across new and instant as propelled by Alain Altinoglu, Munich’s first master Puccinian in many seasons.
Neuenfels’ staging, which returns next July and will be streamed, advances the action to “Irgendwann,” whenever. It is black, framed in white neon. Its black-clad protagonists emote under seldom-varied white light. Stripped of time and place, the French cautionary tale is spun with the aid of projected texts auf Deutsch, plugging holes the director perceives in the Italian libretto and injecting wisdom and whimsy, little of it profound or funny. Early example: “‘When a coach comes, the opera begins,’ said Giacomo Puccini.” Neuenfels uses the choristers — Act I’s students, Act II’s guests, the gawkers at Le Havre — to toy around more invasively, mockingly, endowing them with flame-red hair to ensure we watch.
The action is closely calibrated to shifts in the score, but the rootless and sterile settings, combined with Neuenfels’ propensity to play with paraphernalia and gags of his own invention, send the opera down a path that is at odds with the brutal application of law and the personal destruction driving the music. Result: a diminished dramma mitigated somewhat by a powerfully bare Act IV.
It is intriguing to contemplate how much of this production would still have worked had its director been fired last month after offending Netrebko. Chances are, all of it. One imagines a late but efficient Bavarian State Opera team scramble to prepare for opening night without Neuenfels, mounting Manon Lescaut with the planned and more gifted soprano. In business, it would have been that way, and one wonders why a public theater is any different. Instead the company’s management allowed hurtful on-the-job remarks to deprive Munich, and the world, of what would certainly have been a momentous series of performances. Prima il regista, poi la musica.
Photo © Wilfried Hösl
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Tags:Abbé Prévost, Alain Altinoglu, Bavarian State Opera, Bavarian State Orchestra, Bayerische Staatsoper, Bayerischer Staatsopernchor, Bayerisches Staatsorchester, Commentary, Dean Power, Der Spiegel, Giacomo Puccini, Hans Neuenfels, Kaufmann, Kristine Opolais, Manon Lescaut, Markus Eiche, München, Munich, Netrebko, Okka von der Damerau, Review, Roland Bracht, Ulrich Reß
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