Authentic Die Fledermaus

Orlofsky and Adele

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Johann Strauss's Die Fledermaus comes from the Wiener Staatsoper and streams on OperaVision. Catch it while you can.

Conductor Franz Welser-Möst
Director Otto Schenk

Gabriel von Eisenstein Kurt Streit
Rosalinde Michaela Kaune
Frank Alfred Šramek
Prinz Orlofsky Zoryana
Kushpler Alfred Rainer Trost
Dr. Falke Markus Eiche
Dr. Blind Peter Simonischek
Adele Daniela Fally

This is as authentic a production of this the most famous of German operettas that you are likely to see, both theatrically and musically.   This is the most I have liked Franz Welser-Möst.  Of course, the orchestra he is conducting could play this in their sleep, but nevertheless it was stylistically quite wonderful.

The cast were all unfamiliar to me but were filled with joy and great comic intensity.  Who wouldn't want to go to a party where everyone was having this much fun.  Es lebe Champaigne der Erste.  We get all the old jokes.  The Viennese understand this better than anyone else.

Die Fledermaus from Dresden

Franz Welser-Möst (conductor) –

Jonas Kaufmann (Eisenstein),
Elisabeth Kulman (Prince Orlofsky),
Andreas Schager (Alfred)
Rachel Willis-Sørensen (Rosalinde)
Nicola Hillebrand (Adele)
and the Staatskapelle Dresden


I'd guess we did about 40 performances of Johann Strauss II's Die Fledermaus, so I pretty much know the whole thing by heart auf Deutsch.  No need for subtitles.  It's not really my Fledermaus in English.  So Jonas Kaufmann's first Eisenstein is a present to me via medici.tv.

An early favorite is the ensemble where they pretend to be sad and completely fail.  "Oh yeh, oh yeh."  This Orlofsky is something else.  She/he doesn't take no for an answer.  (If they cast a man as Orlofsky, I leave.)  The substitute Adele is excellent.

I was underwhelmed by the Rosalinde until she started into the Csárdás which was just right.  The soloists get champagne but the chorus doesn't.  We would never have stood for that.  It's also nice to hear such excellent German diction.  I miss Germany.

Jonas is fine as Eisenstein who is actually a high baritone, but the music for him isn't the focus of attention.  It's mainly an acting role, which we know he is also quite good at.

Thank you all for a happy new years eve performance.  Alles gute.

Fidelio from Salzburg

Franz Welser-Möst musical direction
Claus Guth stage director

Jonas Kaufmann (Florestan)
Adrianne Pieczonka (Leonore)
Sebastian Holecek (Don Fernando)
Tomasz Konieczny (Don Pizarro)
Hans-Peter König (Rocco)
Olga Bezsmertna (Marzelline)
Norbert Ernst (Jaquino)

I watched the live stream of Fidelio from the Salzburg Festival today.  Perhaps it's best to talk about the music first.   Jonas Kaufmann as Florestan and Adrianne Pieczonka as Leonore were great, perfectly cast in their roles.  Hans-Peter König was familiar for his Hunding in the Met Ring, and Tomasz Konieczny was previously seen as Jack Rance in Girl of the Golden West.  I liked this cast very much.  This was probably the most beautiful canon quartet I have heard.

Leonore #3 overture was played between the two scenes of the second act.  It was probably necessary to accommodate the set change.  The orchestra received the biggest applause of the performance here.  This is the most I have liked Franz Welser-Möst.

The production.  All the spoken dialog was left out.  Where the dialog would have gone were extended periods of strange sounds:  wind, people breathing, the heart monitor going to the death sound, etc.  This had the effect of making the whole thing much more serious.  I didn't mind this.  I missed "Ich habe Mut und Kraft."  But that's about it.  But if you truly love Fidelio, you don't want it changed.

There were two acting only characters:  Paul Lorenger (Shadow Pizarro) and Nadia Kichler (Fantôme de Léonore).  The Fantôme de Léonore seemed to be one of those people who mime the dialog for the deaf.  I don't know enough sign language to tell if this is true.  Perhaps that's where the dialog went.

Florestan seems to have been driven mad by his imprisonment.  Loud noises and Leonore frighten him.  He collapses at the end.  Perhaps he has died.  He needs to be taken somewhere quiet to help recover from his PTSD.  In the picture above Leonore thinks perhaps he needs a drink. 

I think this production suggests that Fidelio might be successfully presented as a more serious opera, but I reject absolutely that it should have an unhappy ending.  "Die Liebe wird's erreichen. [Love will make it happen.]"  This is what it's about.
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Der Rosenkavalier

Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier usually looks like this:

This is the time of Mozart who as a child played for the Empress Maria Theresa.  Or perhaps we should say it used to look like this.

Now in the Strauss year this year in Malmö, Sweden, it looks like this:

With vivid colors that suggest but do not evoke a period. Nothing really looks like this. 

At Glyndebourne it looks like this:

Instead of Faninal's home we are at his factory, it seems.

And finally at Salzburg we have this:

The Girl of the Golden West 👍🏻

Franz Welser-Möst | Conductor
Marco Arturo Marelli | Direction and lighting
Marco Arturo Marelli | Sets
Dagmar Niefind | Costumes

Nina Stemme | Minnie
Tomasz Konieczny | Sheriff Jack Rance
Jonas Kaufmann | Dick Johnson (Ramerrez)
Norbert Ernst | Nick
Paolo Rumetz | Ashby
Boaz Daniel | Sonora

For Puccini La Fanciulla del West was his best opera. For me it has a special place because it was one of the works that we presented in Ulm while I was there. It was in German, sort of the Winnetou of opera. And yes, I have read the Winnetou books, Germany's answer to Zane Grey.

It is perhaps the most American of operas. Here I am in Sacramento watching a film from the Wiener Staatsoper, writing about a man who claims to be from Sacramento, a man who inherited a band of robbers when his father died. They are in the mountains above Placerville.  I will not tell the surprise ending.  Watch it for yourself.  I'll just say that from an American perspective it isn't as shocking as it is to Europeans.

How could you not love them? Nina Stemme's Minnie is a girl to love, a wild and passionate one who rolls around on the floor in the grip of first love. She and Jonas Kaufmann sing the shit out of it. It rises with them. Nothing is held back. If the singers can sing this big, the opera soars with them. I think it requires just this kind of no holds barred, wildly passionate singing and acting to make its effect.

The set looks more like Edmonton oil fields than it does like the California gold rush. Perhaps the Polka is a truck that stays parked outside the refinery to provide lunch and dinner for the laborers, guys that don't come from Edmonton.

Minnie tries to look like a laborer, too. She reads to them every day out of the Bible. They are now in the Psalms. She explains what hyssop is, which means she knows what hyssop is. She is a good girl who rejects their advances and has never danced with any of them. In return they all love her and bring her gifts.

I love the way she summons him.  "I want a man I can love like that," she sings, and there he is.

Dick enters and asks for whiskey with water. This is to make him look like a softy. She immediately remembers him because he said she had the face of an angel. For him she dances and brings home cigars to give him. For him she brings out her Sunday best dress, shoes and gloves.

He doesn't tell her about the other woman. What man tells a woman that he is seeing someone else? She is very naive with him. Perhaps he really likes her.  She tells him that she keeps the miners' gold in the saloon--he doesn't seem to coax it out of her--but he has already tried to find where it is hidden. She invites him to her cabin. All he's done is ask her if she lives in the Polka, and she has told him she lives in a cabin in the mountains. In this production she lives in a mobile home. Minnie may never have danced, but she knows how to cheat at cards.

Eventually Ramirez tells her everything, and she throws him out. He doesn't steal her gold. I think the intention of the opera is to show that this is true love, not just on Minnie's side but Ramirez's too. It is clear from the start that he might steal her heart or her money but would never cause harm to Minnie.  When she is guarding the gold in Act I, she looks him straight in the face and says that he can steal the gold, but he will have to do it over her dead body.  Perhaps she knows.  After all, he's only been a thief for six months. Perhaps their first meeting was before this. I refuse to think he's a cad like Pinkerton. In Butterfly Cio Cio San sings all the big emotions. In Fanciulla both must sing the big emotions, and in this production they did.  I have never loved it so much as here.

Dear Puccini, I think I too will love it best.

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Cleveland

It is funny to read the news from Cleveland in the New Yorker. Someone has been panning Franz Welser-Möst--the conductor of the Cleveland Symphony and musical director of the Zurich Opera--in the Cleveland newspaper and has been fired for same. I don't think I've seen Welser-Möst conduct in Zurich. However, I did pan him by implication in my review of Arabella on DVD where he was the conductor.

I said:

"Renée is divine as Arabella, but the musical preparation of the rest of the cast is disappointing. No one but Renée comes close to getting it. It's basically two operas--when Renée is singing and when she isn't. Someone seems to have created the impression that singing Strauss is nothing more than pronouncing the words and hitting the correct notes. It is so far from the correct style for Strauss it's embarrassing."

The conductor has to take a significant amount of blame for this.

Arabella

Arabella soprano Renee Fleming
Zdenka, her sister soprano Julia Kleiter 


Mandryka, a Croatian landowner baritone Morten Frank Larsen

After hearing Renée Fleming sing the ending to Capriccio, I thought it might be time to listen to my DVD of Arabella from the Zürich Opera. I don't have a lot of Arabellas to draw on for comparison.

The plot is a little thin. A young woman first coming of age during that fabulous German excuse for endless parties--Fasching--must commit tonight to someone she will marry in order to save her family from financial ruin. She will do her duty but still longs for the man of her dreams who will sweep her off her feet. He shows up, they get together, etc.

There is a somewhat amusing subplot. The mezzo in drag is actually in drag in the story. This has to be some kind of opera joke put in to confuse regular opera goers. She is in love with her friend Matteo who loves her sister Arabella. The subplot has a happy ending, too.

The production is a typical Zurich minimalist design. Simple modern clothing with not much in the way of set. I would think the locals would be tiring of this style by now.

Renée is divine as Arabella, but the musical preparation of the rest of the cast is disappointing. No one but Renée comes close to getting it. It's basically two operas--when Renée is singing and when she isn't. Someone seems to have created the impression that singing Strauss is nothing more than pronouncing the words and hitting the correct notes. It is so far from the correct style for Strauss it's embarrassing. They do excellent Handel in Zurich and a pretty nice Carmen, but this misses.

Morten Frank Larsen as the man of her dreams just made me wish for Jonas Kaufmann. He looked beautiful but sounded wooden and unpleasant. They should have done better by Renée.

Strauss is all in the phrasing. All. No phrasing, no music.
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Carmen

This production of Carmen at the Zurich Opera asks the question "What if Carmen were Joan Crawford? What if she slunk about the stage with her giant shoulders and her ankle strap high heels like a lioness in heat? Would we love her?" The answer is a resounding yes! I believed in Vesselina Kasarova`s Carmen as I have never before. This is one tough bitch. She dies slowly with a surprised but resigned look on her face. There is no regret. Don Jose regrets everything.

Jonas Kaufmann was lovely, sang and acted beautifully. His were the loudest cheers. But without Carmen it is nothing. Their portrayals created the perfect balance of weakness and strength.

In this picture she has just thrown down the enchanted flower.

The stage is a bare circle with very few props or features--minimalism--except in each scene something is placed over the prompter`s hole in the floor. In the first act it is a sleeping dog that at one point wags its tail. A lot of energy went into planning this joke. In the third scene Carmen herself brings out the large rock and places it over the hole. It is difficult to imagine what a huge percent of the staging this represents.

They were filming for television.

Conductor: Franz Welser-Möst
Director:  Matthias Hartmann

Carmen:  Vesselina Kasarova
Micaela:  Isabel Rey
Don Jose:  Jonas Kaufmann
Escamillo:  Michele Pertusi
Le Remendado:  Javier Camarena

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Zurich Der Rosenkavalier

I am comforting myself with this DVD of Der Rosenkavalier from the Zurich Opera.

The second act is completely incongruous. We are expected to believe that Herr von Faninal is so completely middle class that he entertains the Count Rofrano and the Baron Ochs in his kitchen. No one is that middle class. And von Faninal uses the kitchen appliances? How are we possibly to believe this? Octavian stabs the Baron with a kitchen knife.

At the inn in the third act Octavian and the Baron sway back and forth in time to the waltz music. This Rosenkavalier is a fairy tale of no particular time and place.

The best bit in this whole production comes when the plot is unraveling and Sophie sees the relationship between Octavian and the Marschallin, she unselfconsciously walks over and puts her hand on the Baron's shoulder.

I have long suspected that I needed to see Vesselina Kasarova as Octavian. I could not have been more right. It is her masterpiece. She dominates the action as no one I have seen before. And I've seen a few of these.

Each actor is bringing us new insights. The unusual production makes this possible. Rosenkavalier is almost always choreographed with extreme precision according to ancient tradition, but not here. Without violating the meaning of the piece, each scene is not what we are used to. For instance, I have never seen it begin with the Marschallin and Octavian already out of bed.

Our Marschallin is not so brave. In moments of crisis she faints. Nina Stemme is not the best singing Marschallin I've seen, but she is the most tragic and emotional. She does not quite believe how well she has predicted this day. Today or tomorrow or the next day.... In the action she actively blesses the union of Octavian and Sophie, something I have never seen before.

Malin Hartelius is perfect for Sophie, serious and only a little bit arrogant. When she finally marries, it will be as a grown woman with her eyes open.

How can I possibly describe the Ochs of Alfred Muff? If he were not precisely this big a pig, we would surely love him. Life moves only forward. Sophie knows that she may have made a mistake. (There is no way I could possibly have gotten to Cleveland.) She pulls herself together for the happy ending, and briefly we hear the theme for "when was I ever this happy" from the presentation scene. When she sings "It's a dream, can't be real," we somehow know that she is right.

The magic flows together at the end, as indeed it must for a truly successful Rosenkavalier. When it comes time to wail, they do. If you can bear the unusual bits, it is a truly beautiful Rosenkavalier.
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Fierrabras

The Zurich Opera, my home away from home, has produced a genuine curiosity: Franz Schubert's Fierrabras. The tiny folder that comes with the DVD tells why we have never heard it, or indeed unless you are memorizing lists of things for your doctoral orals, heard of it. The Viennese company that commissioned the work changed management just before it was to be produced, and the new managers dropped it. It had its first Viennese performance in 1988.

We seem to have wandered into a staging rehearsal where Schubert himself is the director. All are costumed in clothing from Schubert's era, and Schubert, who occasionally speaks, moves them around the stage. I imagine the Schubert character is a Regie insertion into the fairy tale plot, that his lines are borrowed from the other characters. He hands out lines and scores to the characters who appear to read from this copy.

There is a cute bit of business at the end where Schubert is handing out scores to the characters and Jonas Kaufmann who plays Fierrabras follows him around the stage insisting on his score. He is quite irate. He opens the skimpy book he is finally handed, sees that there are only a couple of pages for him, that he doesn't even get the girl, and he stalks off in a huff. Schubert shrugs.

Jonas is relatively cheerful about the insignificant nature of his music. Indeed only the two women, Juliane Banse as Emma and Twyla Robinson as Florinda, seem to have anything like an aria. László Polgár as Charlemagne has a fairly significant part. He has grown a beard which improves his looks.

Most of the music is ensembles, and all has a lovely stately quality. The two love affairs end as they should. Would you want to buy this? Only for the historical curiosity aspect of the thing. Compare with Fidelio.

Fidelio....................Fierrabras
1814..........................1823
spoken dialog..............spoken dialog
melodrama..................melodrama
fabulous arias.............ariettas at best and none to write home about
great plot.................plot too complicated
great part for Jonas.......lousy part for Jonas, though he looked cute
great soprano role.........two halfway decent soprano roles
off stage trumpets.........off stage trumpets
great music................good but rather bland music
lots of arias.............endless tedious ensembles
happy ending..............happy ending

The absence of significant arias is key. It never rises above nice. All of my advice to opera composers would seem to apply to Schubert as well.
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Clemenza di Tito

This DVD of Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito from the Zurich Opera has a number of unusual features.

The secco recitatives are known not to have been composed by Mozart, so they have tossed them. We are left with a work of no particular genre--a serious opera with spoken dialog, even rather severely truncated spoken Italian dialog, instead of the intended opera seria. As even the most superficial student of opera knows, Italian is never spoken from the opera stage. "Piu tardi" I think Violetta says after she reads the letter. That's it. No one in the cast sounds convincing speaking Italian.

When we get to have singing, it is rather good. There is a gorgeous duet between Malin Hartelius as Servilia and Liliana Nikiteanu as Annio.

The production is twentieth century Italian fascism with Tito, sung by Jonas Kaufmann (you knew there was a reason I bought this) as Mussolini. Vitelia and Servilia dress formally in evening wear. The male characters wear either fascist uniforms or suits, usually double-breasted. Liliana wears a cute double-breasted pin stripe. The chorus are attired in street wear, the women in short dresses and hats, the men in suits and fedoras. The evocation of the era by the costumer, Isabella Bywater, is astounding.

I bought this for Kaufmann, and he does not disappoint. The ensemble players of the Zurich Opera are very fine. The audience preferred Vesselina Kasarova as Sesto, but I was disappointed with her "Parto parto." She has pockets of intensity in her voice which she does not try to even out. She is particularly manly.

Vitelia, sung by Eva Mei, and Sesto are treacherous, but Tito eventually lets everyone off, an act that seems particularly foolish. It is difficult to know what to make of the juxtaposition of the generous and forgiving Tito with Mussolini. Perhaps we are just to feel the militarism of dictatorship rather than the specifics of World War II. Or are they trying to tell us something?
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