Der Freischütz

Conductor: Antonello Manacorda 
Production: Dmitri Tcherniakov 

 

Ottokar, Prince: Boris Prýgl (baritone)
Kuno, forrester: Bálint Szabó (bass)
Agathe, Kuno's daughter: Golda Schultz (soprano)
Ännchen: Anna Prohaska  (soprano)
Kaspar / Samiel: Kyle Ketelsen (bass)
Max: Pavel Černoch (tenor)
Ein Eremit: Tareq Nazmi (bass)
Kilian: Milan Siljanov  (baritone)

 

Der Freischütz, 1821, by Carl Maria von Weber streamed from the Bayerische Staatsoper.  It's a Singspiel, which means there is spoken dialog just as in Fidelio.  I remember it was covered in school as an historically significant event, though performances are rare.  Once long ago I was in Vienna when it was playing, and I thought not to miss it.  It is my only previous experience of this opera.

You can tell from the picture that it's regie.  These are business men in an office tower.  In the front is a man in a blue suit with brown shoes.  He has not been properly raised.  Blue suits go with black shoes.  I am not buying Freischütz in an office.  Waiters come in wearing pandemic masks.  The contest isn't about marksmanship, it's about being willing to shoot someone.  So the cops don't show up if you shoot someone through the window of an office building?  I'm not buying it.

I love the music in this opera.  I suppose it's the most like Beethoven.  The arias are nice.  Ok.  Alles gute.  So no one is really shooting anyone.  The waiters tell us that it's all fake.  The scenes end entirely without applause.

Max is told he must go to the Wolf's Glen, but in this single set production it looks just like the other scenes.  Max must shoot his fiance.  The music leads us to a happy ending, but then there is a twist.  I won't give it away.  The music is pretty good.  This is the same director that put Les Troyens in a mental hospital.  If you've never seen the opera, this will give you a rough idea.  It streams for 30 days.

Les Troyens from the Paris Opera

I am viewing a film of Berlioz' Les Troyens from the Paris opera.

Conductor:  Philippe Jordan
Production: Dmitri Tcherniakov

The Trojans at Troy

Aeneas: Brandon Jovanovich
Cassandra: Stéphanie d'Oustrac
Coroebus, Cassandra's fiance: Stéphane Degout, bass

Something like a movie marquee announces in French and English that the Greeks have abandoned their positions around Troy, and the war is over.  The streets fill with celebrators.  This is a regie production of Berlioz' Les Troyens from the Paris opera.  The characters are introduced with text at the top of the screen.  Priam looks a lot like Generalissimo Franco.  The billboard clarifies the action as perhaps never before.

I found Act I very coherent.  We don't see a horse, but the death of Laocoon is vividly described.  Cassandra warns and laments, but no one listens.

Where Act II should begin, we see soldiers with automatic rifles enter and shake hands with Aeneas.  Hmm.  So are we to believe he is a traitor?  His wife is dead and sends him a note explaining she is ashamed by his betrayal.  This is unclear.  Perhaps I have completely misunderstood.  His own people still seem to honor him.

Priam and his wife are shown dead.  Stéphanie d'Oustrac is wonderfully intense.  The men all head off and leave the women to die or be taken into slavery.  They choose death, and Cassandra goes up in flames.  I seem to remember a play by Euripides called The Trojan Women which describes a somewhat different fate for them.

This part of the opera is well presented.

The Trojans at Carthage

Dido: Ekaterina Semenchuk
Aeneas: Brandon Jovanovich
Anna: Aude Extremo
Narbal: Christian Van Horn

A title announces that we are in a Psychological Center for Victims of the War.  The set looks a bit like a hotel lobby.  This is my third insane asylum opera after Carmen (also Tcherniakov) and Oberon.  This part of the staging has nothing to do with either Berlioz's opera or the staging of the first half.  Yes, people in war are often in need of psychiatric care, but the opera is about the triumph of Rome, not mental illness.  Perhaps it is better to just listen.  The audio is gorgeous.  This staging is definitely boo worthy.

I may never have realized before what a great opera for chorus this is.  Dido enters and the chorus holds up a homemade sign saying "Tu es notre Reine." [You are our queen.]  Aeneas's son holds up his cell phone to show pictures of Troy to Dido.  Ach!  One is interested in the translation because nothing in the visuals is giving you a clue.  I missed before that these people of Carthage are from the eastern Mediterranean, just like the Trojans.  That explains a lot.

A black guy comes in and Aeneas tries to beat him up.  Weird.  The essential feature of an insane asylum is the keepers who now enter in red vests and lead everyone out.  It is hard to imagine any other tenor besides Jovanovich playing this scene.  I'm determined to watch it to the end, but it gets goofier and goofier.

In Act IV the patients are in a circle, and enact a story.  They hold up signs to indicate where they are and what is going on.  The title of the story is "La Chasse Royale."  Perhaps you will recall that Dido and Aeneas go out into the country on a hunt.  "The forest" is next.  The audience for these signs appears to be Dido alone.  We have nymphs and naiads and satyrs.  When the sign says "The marriage of Dido" [you're not required to trust my translations], Aeneas is handed a bow and arrow which he waves around.  He shoots Dido's companion and Dido faints.  The arrow is theater, and the companion is fine.  We were wondering why they would give a mental patient a weapon.

Dido goes back to her room, and a ping pong table appears.  Two keepers in red vests then proceed to play ping pong and sing about triumphing over the Africans. These are Dido's advisers?  Oy.  They plot the marriage of Dido to Aeneas.  There has been nothing that even remotely resembles ballet.

This director seems to be under the impression that psychiatric treatment consists of arranging fantasy scenarios for the patients.  Problems arise because the patients react as though they were real.  This doesn't correspond to any therapeutic method I have heard of.  In a nuthouse apparently anything can happen.

When everyone else has left the stage, Dido and Aeneas sing a very gorgeous version of "Nuit d'ivresse," one of the most beautiful duets in all of opera.  The ending is kind of cool.

Carmen from Aix-en-Provence

Carmen, José, Micaëla

👍🏻
Conductor:  Pablo Heras-Casado
Production:  Dmitri Tcherniakov

Stéphanie d'Oustrac (Carmen)
Michael Fabiano (Don José)
Elsa Dreisig (Micaëla)
Michael Todd Simpson (Escamillo, toreador)
Gabrielle Philiponet (Frasquita)
Virginie Verrez (Mercédès)

Over undisclosed pathways I found my way to Bizet's Carmen from Aix-en-Provence.  I will try to explain it, but it may take a while.  My source shows only French subtitles.  Above is the end tableau.  Carmen was originally an opera comique with spoken French dialogue, and this is what we have here.  This allows our producers to change the dialogue to whatever pleases them, including adding characters not in the original libretto.  Last summer our Carmen included Lillas Pastia, the owner of Carmen's nighttime hangout, in a speaking role.

We appear to be in the lobby of a business in a room filled with large brown leather chairs.  An official appears periodically throughout the performance who does not sing and seems to be the head therapist in a radical experimental therapy group.  At first Fabiano (in a light blue suit and sun glasses) and Dreisig (in a pink coat) are an engaged couple who are here to seek help before marrying.  Legal disclaimers are signed.  Watch, wallet and phone are given to staff.  Fabiano puts on a name tag "José" and Dreisig leaves.  Clearly this is what I would call a concept staging.  I thought it worked.  If the characters are modern people, then it is easier to understand what is going on emotionally.

This is closer to the basis for Carmen than the stagings usually are.  Carmen needs a policeman to assist with certain aspects of her smuggling operation, and Don José is chosen.  So it's all a con.  Our staging is more theater than con, but the effect on José is similar.

Men enter bearing name tags that say "Soldat" and sit in the brown chairs.  The lady in the pink coat returns but everyone ignores her.  The soldiers first sing in their normal voices and then later they open their mouths and children's voices come out.  Hmmm.  They hold up smiley faces and José laughs.

Then suddenly the men bring out wine and girls enter smoking cigarettes.  Everyone drinks.  The atmosphere is very casual and relaxed, and I enjoyed this.

The entrance of Carmen is something to experience.  She bursts on the scene wearing pants and warning everyone not to fall in love with her.  She flirts with everyone but gives the flower to Don José.  I loved her madly and understood why José would fall for her.  She looks and sounds gorgeous and sings with great intensity and joy.  After choosing him, she leaves.

The woman with the pink coat returns, calls herself fiance, and puts on her "Micaëla" name tag.  This is the duet where she brings a kiss from mama.  Carmen returns and there is an extended scene where José tries to tie her up with his necktie.  The Seguidilla is sung from a chair.  The lights come back up, everyone leaves except José, and we have the end of Act I.

In Act II the plot thickens.  We are attempting to understand what about all this is its therapeutic purpose.  Projection?  Perhaps girlfriend is dissatisfied with his level of passion.

The girls with Carmen return.  The toreador comes out smoking a cigar and sings his big aria.  Carmen really likes him and goes off with him.  The men point guns at José long enough to upset him, and then smiley faces come out the barrels, making him laugh.

Carmen returns with castanets, argues with José and tells him to go back to his barracks.  Escamillo is her real interest while José is only pretend.  He responds by singing The Flower Song.  Beautifully.  This staging emphasizes the importance of Don José.  Michael Fabiano basically carries the opera.  Carmen responds by praising only liberty.  They fight and everyone else on the stage applauds.  For them this indicates success.  Shall we continue or not?  End of Act II.

In Act III José is still on the stage while the music plays.  Then the lights come up and the psychiatrist comes out along with the others.  The decision has been made to continue.  Carmen, Frasquita and Mercédès play the card game.  The two girls discuss their fortunes, but Carmen draws the death card.  José stares at them.  We're trying to decide if the therapy has gone wrong.  He has clearly lost his sense of what is real and what is not.  Something resembling a staff orgy ensues.  This would be a hell of a job.  José watches from above.

José fights with Escamillo.  Micaëla returns.  This whole act is very chaotic.

In Act IV something odd happens.  José is still there looking on, but a new client has arrived.  The music of Act IV plays while the scene is staged to resemble Act I.  The new guy's name tag even says José.  Except all the fizz has gone out of Carmen.  Our José stabs Carmen multiple times, but this is all fake since the knives are not real.  The opera ends with the staff on stage getting out the wine, the new José receives flowers which ours never did.  Carmen isn't dead and tries to comfort our José along with the returned woman in the pink coat.  This is sort of a WTF ending.

We are certain of only a few things:  that we love Stéphanie d'Oustrac and think Michael Fabiano is absolutely fabulous, especially for being able to establish so many different moods. The music was not destroyed by this regie production.  I like trying to figure out what is going on, but the ending didn't clarify anything.  It seems the therapy has backfired.

Prince Igor

Conductor Gianandrea Noseda
Production Dmitri Tcherniakov

Host Eric Owens

Cast

Prince Igor:  Ildar Abdrazakov
Prince Galitsky (Igor's wife's brother):  Mikhail Petrenko
Vladimir Igorevich (Igor's son):  Sergey Semishkur
Skula (deserter):  Vladimir Ognovenko
Yeroshka (deserter):  Andrey Popov
Yaroslavna (Igor's wife):  Oksana Dyka
Polovtsian Maiden:  Kiri Deonarine
Konchakovna (Khan Konchak's daughter):  Anita Rachvelishvili
Ovlur (Christian Polovtsian):   Mikhail Vekua
Khan Konchak (Polovtsian general):   Štefan Kocán
Yaroslavna’s Nurse:  Barbara Dever

My list says that I have seen Alexander Borodin's Prince Igor at the San Francisco Opera in 1996.  I don't remember.  There has been a massive effort to improve the theatrical viability of this opera and to alter the score to include only music by Borodin. 

Traditionally the scenes are:

Prologue--Igor's army leaves for battle.
Act I scene 1--Prince Galitsky's drunken bash.
Act I scene 2--Yaroslavna's chamber, news that Igor is defeated, enemy is approaching.
Act II--Singing and dancing in Polovtsian camp.
Act III--Igor and Vladimir are to escape, but Vladimir stays for Konchakovna.
Act IV--Igor returns home and is celebrated.

I am looking at the program for this performance live from the Metropolitan Opera in HD and it seems to be incorrect.  I will attempt to explain what happens.  The Prologue is as before, but it is followed by the scene of singing and dancing in the Polovtsian camp.  This is the famous Polovtsian dances and takes place in a field of red poppies.  It is Igor's reality and fantasy mixed.  The enemy general and his daughter are introduced, and she falls in love with Vladimir.

Act II in this version includes scenes where women of the village come to Yaroslavna to complain that Galitsky has abducted a girl from the village.  Then there is a drunken bash with Galitsky where he plans to overthrow the rule of Yaroslavna.  Then there is a scene when the city council meets, declares that Igor has been captured, his army killed and the enemy is advancing.  Galitsky tries to overthrow Yaroslavna, but is killed.

Then there is a scene where Ovlur tries to persuade Igor and Vladimir to escape, but Vladimir stays for Konchakovna.  This is Act III above, but does not appear in the handout. In the end Igor returns to a ruined city and encourages rebuilding.

I felt that these changes were successful, that a level of theatricality had been achieved and that Igor became central.  The choral work in this opera is spectacular.  But in either arrangement bad guys always seem to have more charisma, and Prince Galitsky is wonderfully nasty.

The singing was particularly enjoyable.  I especially liked Oksana Dyka and Anita Rachvelishvili, next season's Carmen.  Her Carmen will be wild.

Dmitri Tcherniakov talks about his production and what it means.  He tells that Igor has had a transforming experience, that he immediately starts in to reconstruct his land, that he wishes to turn his attention to peaceful, constructive purposes, but when we see the dialog on the screen we know that this isn't what he is saying.  He wants to go back to fighting.  This is why the audience is confused.  I don't think this opera will make it into standard repertoire. 

P.S.  All my reviews are a work in progress.  After the Oscars I want to point out the original field of red poppies:  the Wizard of Oz.  Of course, these are California poppies.

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