The Berlin Edition of the New York Feuilleton (fɶ'yə-tôɴ')

Originally Published at Operanews.com

Walter Braunfels (1882–1954), a German composer labeled "degenerate" by the Nazis, is receiving a belated rehabilitation at the hands of Deutsche Oper Berlin, which pulled out all the stops for the world stage premiere of the composer's 1942 opera Jeanne d'Arc — Szenen aus dem Leben der Heiligen Johanna (Joan of Arc — Scenes from the Life of St. Joan). There might be better news to report, however, had Deutsche Oper not decided to recruit one of the most controversial figures in opera today, Christoph Schlingensief, to stage this production (seen May 2).

Schlingensief gained the opera world's attention in 2004 with a staging of Parsifal at Bayreuth that included time-lapse footage of decomposing rabbits. Schlingensief's preparations for Johanna brought him to Nepal, where he took copious video of corpses being ceremoniously burned along the Ganges. That footage, projected across the entire stage for the better part of the evening, was but one element of a crude, chaotic and baffling production that made it exceedingly difficult to enjoy Braunfels's fascinating score.

Braunfels was a popular opera composer in 1920s Germany. After World War II, he enjoyed a successful career as an academic, but his predominantly tonal musical style was considered old-fashioned. Braunfels never again found success as a composer.

In the last fifteen years, there has been a slight renaissance of interest in Braunfels. Johanna, which Braunfels worked on from 1938 to 1942, was first heard in Stockholm in 2001, in a concert performance conducted by Manfred Honeck. Even without Schlingensief's overreaching production, this remains a fairly ambitious opera, with more than twenty singing roles and extensive choral writing. There was some unimpeachable singing to be heard at DOB, especially from Lenus Carlson as Trémouille and Paul McNamara as St. Michael. Daniel Kirsch was a sympathetic and slightly pathetic Dauphin, especially in his opening aria, an introspective number worthy of Verdi. Morten Frank Larsen was in fine form as well, as Gilles de Rais, Joan's staunchest supporter. As the Maid of Orleans herself, Mary Mills played her role to a fever pitch, with a raw, exposed sound that was always honest if not always accurate. She was brazen and fearless, even if her high notes were somewhat strident.

However, the fine voices were visually overwhelmed by the frequently rotating sets of hospital rooms and funeral pyres, onto which were projected multiple images of burning corpses. This production suffered from an acute case of ADD: nothing was allowed to stay still, not even for a moment. Cows, goats and sheep were paraded across the stage. A row of young boys was ritually circumcised, or possibly castrated. An epileptic, emaciated mime twitched across the stage, smearing himself with blood. A midget wearing a red raincoat (à la Nicholas Roeg's Don't Look Now) accompanied the English soldiers who apprehend Joan.

A tight, eight-scene structure makes Johanna feel at times like an oratorio — in particular, a Passion — with its frequent alternation between clearly demarcated arias, arioso-like outpouring and extensive choruses. Dramatically speaking, the scenes are disjointed and often take on the character of chamber operas strung together by virtue of musical cues and motifs. This is music that is deeply scarred and fragmented, even if it does aspire to Wagnerian totality. The score serves a graphically illustrative purpose to Braunfel's own libretto (based on the trial transcripts from 1431), which was hopelessly blurred by Schlingensief's mess of a production.

All in all, it is wildly diverse music that evokes many different epochs. One surely hears the influence of Wagner and Verdi, but Weill and Hindemith poke through as well. There are jazzy horns and jaunty clarinets. The trumpet call that awakens Joan to her mission brings to mind Ives's "Unanswered Question." Bach and Telemann also echo in the devout and liturgical phrases. In the more rapturous moments, one feels the sweep of Berlioz, and in the expansive orchestral interludes, one finds hints of Richard Strauss.

In the pit, Ulf Schirmer conducted with a great deal of muscle and zest. The chorus of the DOB and the Staats- und Domchor Berlin (a renowned boy's choir that dates from 1465) were well coordinated and effective, despite the strange configurations in which they were placed.

Originally published at Operanews.com



New productions of beloved operas often turn sour when overzealous directors step in with one too many ideas up their sleeves. So perhaps it was for the best that Andreas Homoki, the artistic director of the Komische Oper Berlin, opted for a basic and scaled-down stage concept for La Bohème that, in the best possible way, let the music speak for itself.

One key to this production's success was the exceptional singing from a young and energetic cast, who communicated the thrill and zeal of Puccini's bohemians in a way that the clunky German-language translation often fell short of conveying. Another factor was the intensely concentrated work by the orchestra, led by the company's music-director designate, American conductor Carl St. Clair.

The evening's Rodolphe was Timothy Richards, a Welsh tenor with a deep, soothing voice. His sustained notes were a bit whiny and the orchestra drowned him out early on. But during the breakup in Scene III, he sang in a weeping voice with warm, dark shadings. Only once or twice did his voice grow murky.

Alluring Swiss soprano Brigitte Geller made a spirited, vulnerable Mimi. She sang with exciting and exacting clarity, even if her delivery became a bit too staccato at times. Her high notes were wonderfully sustained with a pleasant trill. St. Clair often gave her slow tempos, which she followed with full, sentimental abandon. In the final scene, her voice grew fragile, but not at the expense of audibility. The other principal woman of the evening was the Bavarian soprano Christiane Karg, who sang Musette as a Madison Avenue tramp in a quick, snappy voice as dry and as bubbly as the champagne they served at Momus.

Mirko Janiska was a tempestuous and stubborn Marcel. He was most in control during the stunning Scene 2 duet with Rodolphe. (Marcel dealt Rodolphe a slap for refusing to care for the dying Mimi.) He sang the duet and the subsequent quartet with a powerful, deeply moving voice.

As the other bohemians, Renatus Mészár was a throaty, vibrato-heavy Colline clad in a flowing leather trench coat. Günter Papendell, a bouncy, persuasive baritone, made a flamboyant Schaunard.

The opera was performed without intermission. Homoki kept the curtain raised on a completely naked stage, which gave his staging the aspect of a bargain-basement production. The one fixed prop was a massive Christmas tree that the chorus elaborately assembled in the second scene and dismantled at the opera's conclusion. Homoki's most innovative suggestion came in the fourth scene. Rather than set it in the old apartment of the friends, the finale instead unfurled amid a lavish banquet for Rodolphe, now a famous author, who was seen signing copies of a book simply titled Mimi. In seemed a suitable companion piece to Peter Konwitschny's production of Don Giovanni, where the descent to hell was interpreted as a forced acceptance of bourgeois conformity. Less successful was the play-acting that the singers affected whenever they warmed-up for famous numbers, which may have been an attempt to inject some sarcasm into this irony-proof opera. The same goes for the baffling food-fight that directly preceded Mimi's death scene, which left Rodolphe wiping eggnog off his head with a tablecloth before rushing to the side of his dying beloved.

Originally Published at Operanews.com



On April 10, Berlin's two most distinguished conductors swapped orchestras for an evening to conduct works derived from Maurice Maeterlinck's symbolist play Pelléas et Mélisande. Daniel Barenboim, conductor of the Berlin Staatskapelle (the resident orchestra of the Staatsoper unter den Linden) led the Berliner Philharmoniker in a program that included Schoenberg's tone poem of Pelléas. At precisely the same hour, Simon Rattle, chief conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker, was making his Staatsoper debut conducting Debussy's more famous operatic setting.

To make matters more intriguing, the evening's Mélisande was the maestro's partner, Czech mezzo Magdalena Kožená. Kožená, who was visibly pregnant, appeared opposite American tenor William Burden. Both singers were extraordinary, together and apart: each brought simple yet enigmatic matter-of-factness to this impossible love story. Kožená sang in a remarkably textured voice, by turns rough and lulling. There was something urgent yet defeatist about her soft murmurings and fluent declamations. Burden's youthful-sounding performance was marked by agility and controlled lyricism. His gentle restraint was a worthy compliment to Kožena's overt, aching desire.

Hanno Müller-Brachmann was a simple yet powerful Golaud. His richly fluid baritone expressed tenderness, pathos and violence. The fierce bass Robert Lloyd was somewhere between menacing and sympathetic as King Arkel. His sinister Act IV confrontation with Mélisande brimmed with repressed sexuality. Yniold, the child who unwittingly exposes the lovers to Golaud, was honey-voiced Andreas Mörwald, soloist of the Tölz Boys Choir.

The work was presented in Ruth Berghaus's 1991 production, an Expressionist rendering that seemed equal parts Dr. Caligari and Dr. Seuss. Berghaus, who died in 1996, was best-known for her interpretations of Brecht. Her vision for Pelléas was a stage concept as abstract yet strangely affecting as the Debussy score. It featured a rotating metallic set, a sleek cave-like structure with jarring confrontations of curves and angles. Aside from providing a suitable visual complement to the music, the metallic sets resonated the onstage voices beautifully. Even Yniold rang out with a fullness and immediacy generally achieved only on recordings.

Rattle guided his singers gently through the tangled Impressionistic forest of the score. He highlighted the bass lines in the horns and contrabasses during the frequent orchestral interludes and took every opportunity to let loose at full force with the strings. The music remained wonderfully subdued, but Rattle frequently made it pulsate with drama and urgency. With expert singing, arresting visuals and a truly moving orchestral contribution, this was a Pélleas that never leaned too far in the direction of either sentimentality or cold abstraction.

A. J. GOLDMANN

Originally Published on Operanews.com

 

Robert Dean Smith, who filled in for an ailing Ben Heppner in the Met's HD transmission of Tristan und Isolde on March 22, appeared at Berlin's Staatoper unter den Linden the following week in the German company's revival of Harry Kupfer's 1999 staging of Tannhäuser (seen March 30).

The American tenor was in fine voice, yet while his performance as Tannhäuser was pleasant enough, it was rarely overwhelming. He sang his entrance aria, "Dir töne Lob" in a gently lilting style: careful phrasing carried him through the evening. In his scenes with Venus, he chose not to adopt the usual devil-may-care attitude of arrogance and feistiness that most Tannhäusers sport, but his out-of-synch duet with the love goddess left much to be desired, as did his melodramatic acting, which greatly detracted from the dramatic impact of this production.

One thought at first that the heldentenor might be holding himself in reserve — Tannhäuser is a challenging assignment for any tenor — but when Smith failed to distinguish himself in the Act II singing contest, one was left with serious doubts. It seemed more than likely that Smith was simply exhausted. His exhaustion was nowhere more evident than alongside the domineering Christof Fischesser, the powerhouse bass who sang Hermann and commanded more attention than anyone else in the contest scene.

German baritone Roman Trekel gave a curiously understated performance as Wolfram, full of soft quivers and half-whispered words. He seemed to be "feeling" the music a little too much and drawing it out unnecessarily: for all its artful soulfulness, his performance seemed contrived.

Finnish soprano Camilla Nylund made a thrilling entrance as Elisabeth, with an accurate, energetic "Dich, teure Halle." She changed dramatically for her grief-filled Act III appearance, when she sang with controlled hysteria and darker, tremulous hues: she made her character's anguish totally convincing.

Michaela Schuster was a sultry, menacing Venus whose habit of launching her high notes with too much force worked against her seductive air, making her sound shrill. The Staatsoper's recent discovery, Anna Prohaska, was dazzling in her small role as the young pilgrim, singing in a remarkably even, boyish voice.

In Harry Kupfer's striking yet baffling production, the Venusberg looks like something out of Fellini Satyricon, with copious naked bodies posed statuesquely in a variety of lewd acts. The Act II singing contest was held in a recital hall with stadium seating for the spectators (one of the best-dressed choruses in recent memory). During Tannhäuser's ode on the profane love of the Venusberg, Smith climbed onto a grand piano that was rooted in the middle of the stage, and which he later used as a shelter from the crowd's wrath. The stage was curiously bare for Act III, save for a votive Madonna at which a scruffy band of pilgrims, suitcases in tow, stopped to sing their chorus.

In the pit, Philippe Jordan, the Staatsoper's principal guest conductor, was a sensitive guide during the lengthy overture, which he scaled down to chamber-like dimensions before letting loose with full force the massive crescendos and luxuriant, achingly-slow glissando horn passages, the expressive strings and strong, march-like percussion. Throughout the evening, alas, the orchestra was often not entirely together with the singers. The Act II finale was particularly badly coordinated.

A. J. GOLDMANN