Weber's Euryanthe

 

Conductor- Constantin Trinks
Director- Christof Loy

Euryanthe- Jacquelyn Wagner, soprano
Count Adolar, her betrothed- Norman Reinhardt, tenor
Eglantine- Theresa Kronthaler, soprano
Count Lysiart- Andrew Foster-Williams, baritone
King Louis VI- Stefan Cerny, bass

Weber's Euryanthe, 1823, comes to me from Operavision. The performance is Theater an der Wien, Vienna, in 2018.  It's unusual for an early German language opera because there is no spoken dialog.  We seem to be getting orchestral recitative.

Women's costumes are from the 1950s.  We are in a large room with windows on the left and a door at the back, containing only a small hospital bed and a grand piano.Throughout the opera a super plays the queen.

Adolar loves Euryanthe and praises her purity.  Lysiart says purity is not to be found among women.  They argue and make a bet.  The King must hold the proofs of the bet.  They all just look like business men in dark suits.

A blond woman enters and sings about her Adolar.  She must be Euryanthe.  And the dark haired woman must be Eglantine.  Euryanthe has rescued Egalantine, but despite this she still tries to ruin Euryanthe's life by betraying her.  Because she too loves Adolar.  The music is very serene.  If you didn't know what was going on, would you guess it was this?  Egalantine has a nice rage aria to liven things up.  

At the beginning of Act II we have an extended male nude scene with Lysiart.  The lighting and camera angles are carefully managed to blunt the effect of this.  Why do it if you can't see it?  This is an opera about violent jealousy.  The two villians, Eglantine and Lysiart sing an extended duet where they swear revenge on Euryanthe.  At the end of Act II Eglantine is seen banging away theatrically on the piano.  I don't really hear a piano.  They blame Euryanthe for revealing a secret she has sworn to keep, and she runs out.  Even Adolar rejects her.  The secret is personal, so I don't see what the fuss is about.  Adolar's sister Emma has killed herself and her ghost still roams.  She needs the tears of an innocent to put her soul to rest.

Act III same room, no furniture.  They're supposed to be outdoors and attacked by a giant serpent.  Instead we're still in the same white room.  There are no hit tunes in this opera, but there is a very nice hunting chorus with horns.  This is Weber, after all.

The scene changes, and the hospital bed is back.  This production explains nothing.  Eglantine is marrying Lysiart, who appears to love her.  They sing about roses, but the flowers appear to be lilies.  Eglantine is killed, and Euryanthe marries Adolar.  Emma goes to her rest.

The women have all the fun in this opera.  The villain is a woman.  Small people with evil passions, but good wins in the end.

Cosi from Salzburg

Joana Mallwitz: Conductor
Christof Loy: Director

Elsa Dreisig: Fiordiligi, soprano
Marianne Crebassa: Dorabella, mezzo
Andrè Schuen: Guglielmo, bass
Bogdan Volkov: Ferrando, tenor
Lea Desandre: Despina, soprano
Johannes Martin Kränzle: Don Alfonso, bass 

This year isn't just the Beethoven year, it is also 100 years of the Salzburg Festival.  They were determined not to just skip the whole thing like almost all the other festivals, so they reduced it as far as possible.  There are quite a few concerts but only two operas, down from 10.  We are concerning ourselves with Mozart's Cosi fan tutte.

This is a regie production which provides virtually no context.  We are in white rooms with no furniture.  The clothing is the usual modern black outfits, except for the guys.  They start out in the usual black suits, but when it's time for them show up in disguises, they are in the above outfits.  If you have no idea what goes on in this opera, you still won't.  They are supposed to be in disguise, but they would know who they are.  Obviously.  Despina's first act aria is cut.  In fact the whole performance is at least a half hour shorter than usual.  I notice that Dorabella has a tattoo on her ankle.  So these are modern children.  

In their funny outfits after the poison gag the guys woo the same girls they did at the beginning.  This is not how it's supposed to work.  They switch back and forth.  Hmmm.  These guys are not in disguise.  They are just messing with them.  The girls get pissed and the boys split.
This production seems to have its own plot.  The guys are back in their dark suits way before they usually are.  I don't think I like any of these people.

But the music is gorgeous.  The soprano ornaments her arias.  Have I ever heard this kind of ornamentation in Mozart before?  I don't think so.  The tenor is also lovely.

No one is fooled at any point.  They end up in the beginning arrangement, but it could have gone either way.  I still want a trick ending.

I Capuleti e i Montecchi from Zurich

 The Companion, Giulietta, Romeo

Fabio Luisi Conductor
Christof Loy Staging

Joyce DiDonato Romeo
Olga Kulchynska Giulietta
Benjamin Bernheim Tebaldo
Roberto Lorenzi Lorenzo
Alexei Botnarciuc Capellio
Gieorgij Puchalski The companion

Everyone is streaming these days.  Today was Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi from the Zurich opera in 2015.  Joyce performed this role in 2012 in San Francisco, but it is rather astounding how much more intense she is here.  There's something about watching opera two feet from your eyes that makes it seem more personal, more real.  Her Romeo here is intensely emotional, far more than the other characters on the stage.

Background tells us that there are two R&J operas:  Gounod's and Bellini's.  Gounod's opera is French and derives from the Shakespeare play.  The Italian Bellini designs his play around Italian history.  I previously wrote:  "We studied the Guelphs and Ghibellines in my class in Florence. The Guelphs, represented here by Giuletta's family the Capuleti, support the Pope, and the Ghibellines, represented here by Romeo's faction the Montecchi, support the Holy Roman Empire. So you see it isn't just two families that don't like each other. It's a war that went on in Italy from 1140 to 1289."

Christof Loy has made of this history a minimalist regie production with the usual black suits for all the male characters.  The women all seem to wear white dresses which we confuse with wedding dresses.

There is one other regie feature--The companion.  He's an androgynous figure with long hair who dresses sometimes in a black suit and other times in a black dress.  He says nothing but seems to fill holes in the plot.  When Romeo pulls a gun and tries to get Tebaldo to shoot him, The companion disposes of the gun.  When Giulietta needs lifting, he is there to do the job.  [Why do directors assume that tenors can lift sopranos?]

You want this opera for the music.  It is glorious here, beautifully conducted and beautifully sung. 

I couldn't face Butterfly.

Korngold's Das Wunder der Heliane

Conductor: Marc Albrecht 
Stage director:  Christof Loy  

Heliane: Sara Jakubiak
The Ruler, her husband: Josef Wagner
The Stranger: Brian Jagde
The Messenger: Okka Von der Damerau
The Doorman: Derek Welton
The Blind Judge: Burkhard Ulrich
The Young Man: Gideon Poppe

From Deutsche Oper Berlin from 2018 on Medici.tv we have Korngold's Das Wunder der Heliane, 1927.  I am watching it because Lotte Lehmann said Heliane was her favorite role.  It is the outer extreme of post Romanticism.

In Act I there are three characters:  The Stranger, the Ruler and his wife Heliane.  She is the only one with an actual name.  The Ruler is pissed because his wife doesn't love him.  So he kills anyone who seems happy, including The Stranger who wanders into town and cheers people up.  While he is in jail awaiting his execution, Heliane comes in to comfort him.  She announces herself as the Queen.  This is one of the wildest scenes in opera.  At The Stranger's request she first takes down her hair, then takes off her shoes, and finally takes off everything else.  Is this part of comforting?  So did Lotte like the nudity?  Husband comes back and things go from bad to worse.  The music is very intense.

In Act II Heliane is tried for being unfaithful to her husband.  The blind Judge enters, and both The Ruler and Heliane call him Father.  He speaks to Heliane as though she were a child, so I presume that he is her father.  She testifies in a long amazing aria "Ich ging zu ihm."



The Stranger comes into the courtroom and asks to be left alone for a moment with Heliane.  The King and the Judge allow this.  Our Stranger is very persuasive and gets Heliane to kiss him "for the first and last time."  She does, and he stabs himself and dies.

The chorus enters complaining that The Stranger has been taken from them.  She tells her husband she is pure and he decides that if she is pure she will bring The Stranger back to life.  The act ends with her swearing that she will.

The ending in Act III is complex.  The Stranger rises from the dead, but this only enrages the King who stabs his wife.  You should know it has a happy ending.  What is one to make of such a thing?  They played it very low key, but the music is large and soaring.  I'm glad I took the time to see it.

Ariodante 👍🏻

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Conductor: Gianluca Capuano
Production: Christof Loy

Nathan Berg: King of Scotland (bass)
Kathryn Lewek: Ginevra, his daughter (soprano)
Cecilia Bartoli: Prince Ariodante, her betrothed (originally a castrato)
Rolando Villazón: Lurcanio, his brother (tenor)
Christophe Dumaux:  Duke Polinesso (contralto countertenor, originally a woman)
Sandrine Piau: Dalinda, Ginevra's attendant (soprano)
Kristofer Lundin:  Odoardo (tenor)

This is the Salzburg production of Handel's Ariodante, 2017, starring the one and only Cecilia Bartoli.  In Kathryn Lewek they have found an excellent soprano who is smaller than Cecilia to play her love.  Their voices are beautiful together.  The presence of many men in business suits makes it regie.  At the very beginning Cecilia speaks to us in Italian to explain her story.  The set is large and almost blank.

Cecilia's entrance is made in a full suit of armor.  One cannot stop staring at her.  In her first aria after the king has declared Ariodante to be his heir, she sings all that coloratura while getting increasingly drunk.  I didn't know this opera was a comedy.  Villazon prevents her from falling down.  On the eve of the wedding there is a party where people dance in period costumes, including Ariodante and Ginevra. The bits where Cecilia dances are relatively short but enjoyable.  So far so good. 

The plot is one of those she loves him, while he loves someone else, etc.  Polinesso is the villain.  He plots to steal Ginevra.  Dalinda loves Polinesso, and Lurcanio loves Dalinda.  Polinesso bribes Dalinda to disguise herself as Ginevra to fool Ariodante.  He succeeds with this ruse and drops one of Ginevra's dresses on the floor outside her room.  Ariodante sings "scherza infida" and puts the dress on.

The efforts to bring the story to life seem very successful to me.  Ginevra laments the loss of Ariodante, but when he returns, he's wearing his beard and the dress Polinesso gave him, and Ginevra freaks out.  Suddenly she's interested in all the other men around her.  Hmmm.  The aria by Ginevra that appears here is accompanied by a lot of physical violence which looks too real to me.

This entire opera is performed with great emotional intensity.  If you've followed the news about this, you know that Ariodante eventually turns into Cecilia Bartoli.  So then she's singing and smoking a cigar at the same time.  It doesn't look lit, but....  When I was married long ago, my husband smoked a pipe, and I swear he would blow smoke rings exactly like that.  I swear.  This indicates a level of expertise.

It has a peculiar but happy ending.  It is nice to see Rolando, and Kathryn Lewek was marvelous.  Hail La Bartoli.  I did kind of like the beard.

The production is about gender ambiguity.  At the beginning our hero doesn't seem very happy while at the end he/she is full of smiles.   For more pictures see here.

La Forza del Destino at ROH

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Conductor: Antonio Pappano
Original director: Christof Loy

Leonora: Anna Netrebko
Don Alvaro: Jonas Kaufmann
Don Carlo di Vargas: Ludovic Tézier
Padre Guardiano: Ferruccio Furlanetto
Fra Melitone: Alessandro Corbelli
Preziosilla: Veronica Simeoni
Marquis of Calatrava: Robert Lloyd
Curra: Roberta Alexander
Alcalde: Michael Mofidian

This production of La Forza del Destino from the Royal Opera in London emphasizes the already chaotic nature of this opera.  The plot is enhanced by staging the overture with scenes from the childhood of siblings Leonora and Don Carlo.  It is clear that Don Carlo hates his sister from long before her boyfriend shot their father.   A grown up Don Carlo is still playing with a red yo-yo from these scenes.  This is a visual clue so you will recognize Don Carlo as a grown up.

The opening scene of the shooting is by far the best staging I have seen of this difficult scene. Wonderful. You must believe that he intends no harm when he throws the gun to the floor. A further enhancement in the staging comes with projections of this death scene to show how it lives in Leonora's memory.

I love this chaotic opera, primarily for the music--it is some of the best Verdi--but would like very much to love it as theater as well.  It never quite works.  But here the opening is true to the plot and clearly outlined.  With our love of guns we still must ask ourselves, "What is he doing in her house with a gun in the first place?"

I'll admit I could do entirely without Preziosilla and her scenes.  Now that I realize "rataplan" came from Meyerbeer, I'm still not sure anything about the opera is improved by it.  Silliness in the deadly serious opera seems like nonsense.  It represents soldiers relaxing between killing people.  When Leonora sees her brother in this place, she knows she must go into hiding.

It's a terrible opera with glorious music and in this case spectacular singing.  Netrebko represents the
fear and horror that haunts Leonora with wonderful intensity.  Jonas is his usual spectacular self.  Tézier is a beautiful man who portrays Don Carlo's evil nature better than seems possible.  All this great music is wasted on useless vengeance.  I guess Rigoletto has a similar plot but hating your boss and hating your sister are rather different.  At least Rigoletto loves someone.

Le Nozze di Figaro from Munich

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Conductor: Constantinos Carydis
Production: Christof Loy

Il Conte di Almaviva: Christian Gerhaher
La Contessa di Almaviva: Federica Lombardi
Cherubino: Solenn' Lavanant-Linke
Figaro: Alex Esposito
Susanna: Olga Kulchynska
Bartolo: Paolo Bordogna
Marcellina: Anne Sofie von Otter
Basilio: Manuel Günther
Don Curzio: Dean Power
Antonio: Milan Siljanov
Barbarina: Anna El-Khashem

Haven't I seen this set before, or does every set look like a theater now?  Some costumes are modern, others are period.  Uniforms?  This is the live stream of Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro from the Bayerische Staatsoper.  I'm hearing a piano in the secco recitative, maybe a first for me.  Mozart played pianos, not harpsichords.

This is of course an opera about sexual harassment, in case you were imagining this was a new thing.  Perhaps that's why it is ever green in every generation.  The women get their revenge.  I wonder how many modern women think of that. 

The comedy is very much enhanced by the fairly brisk tempos.  Munich is one of the best opera companies in the world, and this is a very high quality performance.  This is a gorgeous "Dove sono" from our Contessa.  And our conductor is a winner of the Kleiber prize. Musically it is gorgeous.  How to conduct Strauss may be falling from memory, but Mozart was never better than today.  This is a lesson, especially the recitative.

The production is simple and does not interfere with the story.  Either the people shrink or the doors get bigger.  You decide.  I choose the people are shrinking.

One does not think to ask, also for the first time, why one is hearing Marcellina's aria.  Except one isn't.  This is a song interpolation of Mozart's "Abendempfindung.“  It fits beautifully and is for the biggest star of this cast, Anne Sofie von Otter.  This is lovely.

I cannot explain how much I love it.  Everyone should see this. The ending is cute.