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.

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.

Oberon

Conductor:  Ivor Bolton
Production:   Nikolaus Habjan

Oberon.........................Julian Prégardien
Rezia.............................Annette Dasch
Hüon von Bordeau........Brenden Gunnell
Titania (Puck)................Alyona Abramowa
Fatime, Rezia's servant...Rachael Wilson
Scherasmin, Hüon's squire..Johannes Kammler

Oberon, or The Elf King's Oath (1826) by Carl Maria von Weber is originally in English with spoken dialog. Characters appear from A Midsummer Night's Dream.  Today it live streamed from the Bayerische Staatsoper where it presents in German with English subtitles.

The original dialog is rewritten to suit the regietheater production.  We saw this rewriting of the dialog recently in the Carmen from Aix-en-Provence, and it is strangely curious that it appears to be for the same reason--to make the opera about psychiatry. 

I'm getting the impression a lot of people are angry about psychiatrists.  They pick two seemingly random people from the audience and conduct experiments on them to see if they will experience passionate, long-lasting love.  As things go along we pick up on the idea that this is personal between the head psychiatrists and that one or both of them are betting on no. Here no papers are signed and the fantasy is assisted with drugs and electric treatments.

The producer Nikolaus Habjan is a puppeteer.  His puppets are larger than ventriloquist dummies but are handled similarly except the ventriloquist tries to be invisible.  I've seen this sort of thing before but I don't think in an opera.  The characters that exist entirely in the fantasy of Oberon assisting an imagined mortal in finding his love and recovering his good name.  The real people are the two men from the audience and Rezia.  We aren't sure if Fatime is real or imaginary.  The psychiatrists and lab technicians are all real, of course.  I don't know if it's necessary to explain this any further.  The action results from sick cruelties inflicted on the test subjects. 

Weber was a great composer, but this opera is supposed to have killed him.  It was a pleasure to hear this music, though technical difficulties interfered with some of the arias.  The greatest aria from this opera is "Ozean du Ungeheuer."  If you've never heard it, here is a sample.



Our soprano Annette Dasch was excellent, and at least one audience member shouted bis at the end of the aria.  We also liked the tenor Brenden Gunnell.

The drama comes out on the side of love.

Der Freischütz

For my retirement I was given a $100 gift certificate at Borders. A drop in the bucket, but a welcome one.

I have purchased a DVD of Der Freischütz by Carl Maria von Weber from the Zurich Opera. I have only seen this opera once before, in the 1970’s at the Wienerstaatsoper. The two productions could not be more different.

In Vienna the orchestra pit was overflowing with extra horns who made a fine blast of sound. The sets were in a romanticized naturalistic style. This Zurich production with Nickolas Harnoncourt shows a bare stage and black costumes, and in the pit are only four natural horns, which produce a relatively delicate sound. These are the same natural horns that blooped their way through Giulio Cesare, and now they are blooping their way through Freischütz. Pardon me if I don't acquire a taste for this.

Freischütz is still in the Singspiel tradition with spoken dialog. The opera has a Faust plot. Max is a candidate for the post of forester, but doubts his ability to win the shooting contest and the hand of his beloved Agathe on his own, and sells his soul to the devil in exchange for bullets that never miss.

It is one of the underperformed gems of opera with great arias and an exciting plot. They seem to be working very hard here to make it boring. I suppose this approach is cheaper, but it’s not much fun.

Every now and then people lie down on the floor for no reason, usually in groups, all pointing in the same direction. Does it beat boredom to have something to puzzle over?

The plot of Freischütz is difficult to make clear, especially the ending. We're dealing with bullets which cannot be seen. Max aims at the white dove and hits Agathe who seems to fall dead. When she does not die, it is never clear exactly why. It is also not clear why Kaspar dies instead. It is an unsatisfying deus ex machina.

Everything from Zurich seems to include the Hungarian bass László Polgár, a tall man with a somber expression and a beautifully lyrical bass voice. He's quite gloomily attractive. His name does not appear on the notes anywhere, but I remember him from other opera dvds from Zurich, most notably as Leporello in Don Giovanni. Matti Salminen as Kaspar is wonderful, the scariest man on the opera stage.
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