Parsifal in Bayreuth. Sad, though, that the ideas needed to bring this dystopic world of the future closer to us never materialized, as too the additions and modifications to Wagner’s intentions only drove us away.
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La Vestale. De jonge Italiaanse dirigent Giuseppe Mentuccia, protégé van Daniel Barenboim, pakte de gecompliceerde partituur met een zeldzaam élan aan, waar de orkestklank totaal in dienst stond van de zangers. Lyriek en dramatische kracht waren zijn wapens en hij boekte een grote triomf zonder maar een moment de spanning te laten verslappen.
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Les Contes d’Hoffmann. Les Contes d’Hoffmann is a formidable opera to stage. Few works move so abruptly between exuberant comedy, fantastical deception and harrowing tragedy. Its unusual history adds another complication: Offenbach died before completing it, leaving every production to decide what musical shape the opera should take. We were therefore particularly curious about St. Gallen’s use of the edition prepared by Michael Kaye and Jean-Christophe Keck. Which arias would be included, which were omitted, and in what order would the acts appear?
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Regietheater. Intellectual terror through compelling prescription. The dictatorship of the director has turned the opera world into an ideological and aesthetic battlefield, in which the score and the creator’s original intent have been systematically sacrificed on the altar of the director’s narcissism for decades. What began in 1951 as an almost clinical aesthetic intervention by Wieland Wagner -who sought to “purify” the Bayreuth Festival with his minimalist and stripped-down productions and free it from its burdened traditions-degenerated in the 1970s into a destructive artistic totalitarianism: the unadulterated and radical Regietheater.
Read More →Regietheater. Intellectuele terreur op dwingend recept. De regiedictatuur heeft van de operawereld een ideologisch en esthetisch slagveld gemaakt, waarin de partituur en de oorspronkelijke intentie van de schepper al decennialang stelselmatig worden geofferd op het altaar van het regisseursnarcisme. Wat in 1951 begon als een bijna klinische esthetische ingreep door Wieland Wagner -die de Festspiele in Bayreuth met zijn minimalistische en kaalgeslagen ensceneringen trachtte te “zuiveren” en te verlossen van de beladen tradities- ontaardde in de jaren 70 in een destructief artistiek totalitarisme: het onversneden en radicale Regietheater.
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Iconoclasm in Opera. The public is losing access to its own cultural and musical roots because the institutions tasked with protecting and nurturing those roots have opted for a permanent, subsidized iconoclasm. It is an insidious, institutional form of cultural cleansing.
Read More →Beeldenstorm in de opera. Daarnaast getuigen beide fenomenen van een mateloze, stuitende arrogantie en agressie ten opzichte van het verleden. De beeldenstormers meenden dat zij, na eeuwen van vermeend dwalen, de enige ware interpretatie van de werkelijkheid in pacht hadden. De tradities van generaties kunstenaars, denkers en ambachtslieden werden in een oogwenk als waardeloos of schadelijk gecategoriseerd. Deze chronologische arrogantie viert ook in de hedendaagse operapraktijk hoogtij. Binnen de theatrale avant-garde heerst het hardnekkige, dictatoriale dogma dat een klassiek stuk pas \’relevant\’ (ook wel: ‘urgent’ of \’desoriënterend\’ kan zijn wanneer het door de mangel van de modernisering en deconstructie is gehaald.
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Die Zauberflöte. The Magic Flute often plays a special role in educational contexts. The disappointment is correspondingly greater when a stage performance has little to do with what one has come to understand in the work musically, dramatically and poetically. For us, the earlier Zurich Magic Flute productions by Martin Kušej and Tatjana Gürbaca belonged to that type of Regietheater which obscures a work rather than clarifying it. All the greater, then, was our pleasure that Zurich Opera, with Daniele Finzi Pasca’s new production, chose a wholly different course. For us, this new Magic Flute was an unqualified success – musically and scenically, imaginative and coherent, and remarkable for its sense of overall unity.
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Macbeth. For me, this resulted in a sense of overload, a distraction from what really matters – from what is actually ‘unfolding’ and, above all, being sung. To give a small example: why were those men in thongs there to introduce the musically so crucial aria from *La Sonnambula*? The dance episodes struck me as long, almost self-contained interludes. What I was seeing prevented me from truly hearing what Verdi had intended to convey in his significant orchestral passages.
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The Flying Dutchman in Bayreuth. There is no one about, but soon a mother with her young boy will arrive, then a man, then villagers bringing folding IKEA chairs and tables on and off stage. The mother, as we will soon understand, is a street prostitute, kissing a client passionately precisely as the theme of Senta’s love-redemption sounds, only soon to be rejected not only by men, but also by the villagers. Shattered, she hangs herself, dangling from a window just above where her son is sitting. During the entire Overture, villagers come in and out, as if in an Alain Resnais film. The boy’s ‘Traumatic Memory Imprinting’ catches the facial features of someone we will meet later on in the opera: a then-young Daland, the merchant, and Senta’s soon-to-be father. The mother? No worries. Tcherniakov has turned Senta’s governess, Mary, into his wife.
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Sophie doet een Esmah Lahlah’tje. Sophie de Lint vertrekt voorlopig niet van Amsterdam naar Salzburg. Hoewel er sterke geruchten waren en er intensief werd onderhandeld over een overstap, is de overstap definitief mislukt. Er circuleerden plannen om De Lint aan te stellen bij het prestigieuze festival in Oostenrijk vanaf het najaar van 2027. Hierdoor blijft Sophie de Lint gewoon verbonden aan De Nationale Opera in Amsterdam. Zoals Sophie de Lint vertrekt voorlopig niet van Amsterdam naar Salzburg. Zoals Esmah Lahlah na mislukte sollicitaties gewoon terug kon keren naar de Tweede Kamer en vervolgens naar de Gemeenteraad van Amsterdam.
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Saint François d’Assise. To all this, the stage director Romeo Castellucci has added two perhaps not totally necessary scenes to the First Act: the saint’s renunciation of worldly possessions, striping naked to demonstrate his choice of a new existence; his encounter with the terrifying Wolf of Gubbio, uniting him with Nature. We will also encounter a strutting peacock and, as a final touch after the death of Saint François, a small flock of wandering sheep.
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Corinnes column. Aangezien ik sinds alweer 3 jaar als customer service agent voor de truck afdeling van Mercedes Benz werk, heb ik besloten dat mijn comeback column voor Opera Gazet over Mercedes moet gaan. Maar niet het automerk maar de rol van Mercedes, een van de vriendinnen van Carmen in de gelijknamige opera van G. Bizet.
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Pagliacci bij DNO. De setting in deze regie is de kleedkamer van het operatheater. Kaptafeltjes en verlichte spiegels vullen de zwarte ruimte. In deze omgeving kunnen wij Lucia als kleedster wel plaatsen, het is echter lastig de ruimte te zien als Lucia’s huis, waar Santuzza op de drempel blijft dralen, omdat zij geweerd wordt vanwege haar zonde. We gaan dan nadenken, of zij wegens ontucht ontslagen is uit het operakoor. Nadenken over de bedoeling van een voorstelling is een veeg teken. Het is natuurlijk wel onrechtvaardig dat zij verbannen is terwijl Lola, het sletje van het koor, het letterlijk met iedereen doet, inclusief de koordirigent.
Opera vraagt echter om een driedimensionale klank, drama en ontknoping. De scenes op het voortoneel kennen weliswaar schitterende harmonieën (met name de scenes met koor), maar de monologen en dialogen doen verticaal aan, als een ladder waar men op- en afklimt.
Lucia di Lammermoor at the Berkshire Opera. About six years ago, I discovered the Berkshire Opera (just re-named the Berkshire Opera Festival), an innovative, clever, and thoroughly professional company that operates out of the restored 123-year-old Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The charming theater seats 680; there is no orchestra pit. The opera was Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, and the 30-or-so musicians were in an upper corner of the stage, barely visible, but audibly well-balanced with the singers. The production was updated to the 20th century with no outrages: Norina, by the time she had taken over Pasquale’s household, was dressed as a dominatrix – not all that far from the text.
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Kolja. De regie van Jeroen Lopes Cardozo was briljant, een inventieve en sfeervolle verbeelding van het verhaal. Absoluut een van de beste regies die wij de laatste veertig jaar In Nederland mochten aanschouwen. Oneindig veel kudos voor Jeroen Lopes Cardozo.
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“MARINA” (by Giordano) – ITS WORLD STAGE PREMIÈRE IN FOGGIA. The harmonic language of Marina in certain passages carries unmistakable traces of the late-Verdian chromatic idiom: the plangent inner-voice movement of the central duet, the dense harmonic fabric of the ensemble episodes, and an approach to orchestration -visible even in the piano reduction- in which solo instrumental colours are assigned an unusual prominence and purposefulness.
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Rienzi. An Epochal Life of Images. The Second Act followed immediately with no break, and the huge screen flew upwards to reveal the same slow-motion clapping citizens seated upon a white bleacher-like section; frankly not one of the most attractive scenic elements, as it also will be over-used until the end of the opera, where it is out of place. Its sole purpose was to house the vast chorus center-stage, neatly arranging them unobtrusively it must be said. As to the length of Act One and Act Two joined for a total of two hours, there is little else to do if the Ballet is to included which it was here. Originally, a wise move by Wagner, opposed as he would be in being forced to insert a ballet into the Third Act of his Tannhauser 16 years later in Paris, which he spitefully did, but at the beginning of the First Act, causing a riot out of which grew his hate for Meyerbeer and his gang. Yet, to paint History rightfully, we must recall that Meyerbeer also helped Wagner produce his operas in Dresden.
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Ileana Cotrubaș She believed that performers had the right, and sometimes the duty, to say no when the essence of a work was being violated. Her later book, Opernwahrheiten, provided a lasting expression of these convictions. It formed part of a broader argument for an opera theatre in which music, text, character and staging remained in dialogue with one another rather than being pitted in competition.
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Faust. Piotr Beczała sang the title role with audible caution following a recent cold. At times, his voice sounded slightly congested and less free than usual. In the more dramatic passages, it lacked some of its customary brilliance. All the more impressive, therefore, was his performance of \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\”Salut! demeures chaste et pure,\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\” characterized by refined phrasing, stylistic elegance, and admirable restraint.
Read More →Among the endless drivel of directors, a sublime exposition of what opera is really about.
Too critical for some…
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