Der fliegende Holländer. A. Kampe, M. Fujimura, E. Nikitin, S. Skorokhodov, F.-J. Selig, D. Portillo; Metropolitan Opera; V. Gergiev, cond., F. Girard, dir. Performance (premiere) of March 2, 2020.

Despite the Covid-19 crisis, which caused the cancellation of the last two months of the Met’s 2019-2020 season, the company did manage to pull off three of eight scheduled performances of its latest new production. Der fliegende Holländer, the composer’s first mature work, has not had a fresh look at the Met since August Everding’s spectral industrial-age production appeared in 1989. That effort aged poorly over its three decades. In a barometer of decline, the snow storm that blasted through its finale withered over successive revivals from the original blinding blizzard to the light flurry we saw at its last outing in 2017. Strong casts, however, generally made it worthwhile. [The new production streamed on July 5, following WSNY’s June 29 and July 1 Seminar/Webinar, which included an interview with two cast members: Daland (Franz-Josef Selig) and the Steersman (David Portillo).]

Director François Girard made a (bloody) splash with a Parsifal that opened to general approval here in 2013. I never saw much in it. The Act II bloodbath looked gimmicky, and the rest said little of interest about the work. Girard’s Dutchman, his second Met production, did not fare much better. The overture is one of Wagner’s most evocative and can stand well on its own as a kind of short dramatic tone poem. Here it was cluttered with a showy and inconsequential lightshow projecting shapes that come to resemble a ship breaking up in the waves. As Mariusz Trelinski did with his own misstep in the prelude of Tristan und Isolde in his new production of that opera in 2016, the busy nautical projections were a pointless distraction. Girard made his worse by adding a superfluous dancer whose weird undulations were bereft of any connection to the unfolding plot that follows. John Macfarlane’s uninspired sets were bland and basic. The cursed Dutchman does not even get a ship and is left to wander around awkwardly on foot. Daland’s ship, which has some visual merits, is heaved on and off stage as necessary, but its presence merely announces the other ship’s absence.

The spinning chorus that gives rise to Senta’s ballad, the opera’s focal point, heaves on vertically suspended ropes that recall an adolescent’s gym class. This could have poked fun at Senta’s raging passions, but the effect did not seem intended to be humorous. Her portrait of the Dutchman appears only as a huge eye that looked like it was repurposed from a failed Ring Cycle. There was no hint of legend, mystery, or attraction – just an empty gesture toward obsession that made one think of later Wagnerian characters and wonder what they were doing here. Dutchman’s finale has been tricky for the last generation or two of directors. The music movingly proclaims the doomed couple’s redemption through love, but our alienated creative caste is too uncomfortable with both of those concepts to give them any credence. Girard has the traumatized townspeople look out over a crimson sunset in a moment that screams, “So what?”

This new production was intended to mark the magnificent Welsh bass-baritone Sir Bryn Terfel’s return to the Met after an eight-year absence. A broken ankle, however, removed him from all stage performance even before Covid-19 shut down the performing arts worldwide. He was capably replaced by the Russian baritone Evgeny Nikitin, whom I first encountered in the role under conductor Valery Gergiev’s baton at St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater some twenty years ago. Nikitin gave alluringly brasher performances in those days, when he was still under thirty. Later, in 2012, he suffered a career setback with Dutchman when he was summarily fired from a new Bayreuth Festival production after an old video surfaced of him sporting what looked like a swastika tattoo. Being “cancelled” avant la lettre may have tempered his engagement with Wagner, but his solid baritone, which has given the Met memorable Klingsors, Kurwenals, and Gunthers, has not really grown into the part. The lower range, which conveys the grave depths of the doomed mariner’s devilish predicament, proved elusive.

Soprano Anja Kampe, shown above*, made a big, bright, and long overdue house debut as Senta. Having mastered heavier Wagner parts elsewhere – her Berlin Isolde last year was enthralling – she brought a powerful effort that in many ways saved this drab production. Like Nikitin, she sounded tired by the end of the evening, but Met audiences should look forward to hearing more from her. Nikitin’s countryman Sergei Skorokhodov proved an ardent Erik, delivering a manlier effort than we usually see in this cloying tenor part. And mezzo Mihoko Fujimura, a Wagnerian stalwart who has enjoyed a long and well-deserved European career, made a fine Met debut as Senta’s watchful governess Mary.

Gergiev was back on the Met podium after an absence of five years. Rumors have long swirled that the Met orchestra chafes under his reportedly authoritarian manner, and he has appeared regularly enough at Carnegie Hall to suggest that he has not just been too busy or too disenchanted with DeBlasio’s New York to have stayed away from the Met. He ran a tight performance, with a finely balanced touch that lingered over the sensitive moments while delivering a tenacious drive in the stormier scenes.

* Photo: Senta (Anja Kampe) surrounded by the spinning chorus. Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera.

Paul du Quenoy
Paul du Quenoy is a private investor. He holds a PhD in History from Georgetown University.
© Wagner Notes, July 2020, a publication of the Wagner Society of New York. All rights reserved.

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. S. Jakubiak, O. von der Damerau; D. Kirch, A Clayton, W. Koch, M. Gantner, C. Fischesser; K. Petrenko, Bavarian State Opera; D. Bösch, Dir.; P. Bannwart, Sets; M. Nielsen, Costumes; F. Herold, Video; M. Bauer, Lighting.  Performance of July 27, 2019.

Sachs (Wolfgang Koch) and David (Allan Clayton) in Sachs' workshop.  Photo: Wilfred Hösl

As usual, Meistersinger closed out the annual Munich Opera Festival, a month-long celebration at what many feel is the finest opera house in the world today. That reputation is certainly built on world-class casting, a vast and rangey repertory, and dramatically thought-provoking and powerful productions, but mostly it is built on unstinting musical excellence. And credit for that must go to Kirill Petrenko, who is about to finish his tenure as the company’s General Music Director as he begins his leadership of the Berlin Philharmonic, the most prestigious conducting job in classical music. The Bavarian State Opera’s (and opera in general’s) loss is Berlin’s (and symphonic music’s) gain. Petrenko’s conducting of Meistersinger, and of an Otello we saw the previous week, affirmed my sense that he is the single greatest conductor I’ve seen in 35 years of regular opera and concert-going, with the possible exception of Carlos Kleiber. Watching him, and watching the orchestra, and watching the communication happening between him and the orchestra, is a joyous phenomenon.

The overture was surprisingly fleet. Surely, I thought, the players will never be able to maintain clear articulation at this pace, and the fugue section will become messy.  I was wrong: I’ve rarely heard such precision and such vertical clarity. And – better yet – the unfolding of each new section of the prelude felt exciting, as if the orchestra couldn’t wait to share each new treasurable moment, and yet there was no sense of rushing, nothing peremptory. The rest of the opera flowed with the same kind of passion, with constant attention to little details of instrumentation and, at the same time, a delirious surrender to the big moments of emotional overflow. I’ve never heard the haunting sonorities of Sachs’s “Melancholy” motif, which opens the third act prelude and ends so many of the big, joyous moments in that final act, played with such a sense of mystery and profound, ambiguous sadness, as if each new statement dug deeper into the protagonist’s soul. Petrenko conveyed these complex sentiments and yet also conveyed the sheer, radiant beauty of the score, clearly shared by the musicians who positively beamed from the pit.

Director David Bösch took a grim approach. He had directed a terrific Verkaufte Braut which we saw earlier in the week, set in a rustic, modern agricultural commune (complete with live, scene-stealing pig). His Meistersinger was similarly updated to a working-class present. The overall pictorial approach was dark and gritty; contemporary Nuremberg was portrayed – accurately – as a town balancing kitschy tourism with industrial work.  Sachs’s workshop was a run-down trailer, parked in a graffiti-filled section of the town. The fight at the end of the second act was (as in many modern productions) bloody and brutal. The competition in the final scene was a televised Eurovision Song Contest, complete with big-screen projections and calls for audience applause. A particularly humorous extension of this conceit was the Entrance of the Masters before the contest began. Each was accompanied by a dramatic 5-second video vignette showcasing the particular Master in a dramatic revolving pose, straight out of a WWE arena match. Beckmesser wore an embarrassing silver glam costume, desperately attempting to look cool and young. His utter failure drove him to despair and, in the final moments, to bring a gun on stage which he turned on himself as the curtain fell.

This final depiction of suicide was just one of several dark, ugly moments. I did not care for many of the choices Bösch made, although there was certainly an integrity to his approach. There were some concepts that did pay off, including the delightful portrayal of Walter as a jeans-and-leather-jacket-wearing, guitar-carrying rebel, a perfect contemporary expression of the character.  And ultimately, the dramatic elements were somewhat irrelevant in that the conducting and playing were so thrilling that all else seemed to fall aside.

Five days before the performance, we received an email from the Bavarian State Opera stating that Jonas Kaufmann would be sick for our performance on the 27th as well as the subsequent performance on the 31st. One could suggest that Kaufmann has an uncanny ability to foretell the state of his voice and his health days in advance, but the more convincing, and sad, conclusion is that he has abandoned a sense of professionalism and now sings by whim and not by obligation. His replacement, Daniel Kirch, a Stuttgart-based tenor, acted decently, but the voice is strained and lacks the requisite glamour for the role. Wolfgang Koch was a sturdy but not particularly revelatory Sachs. Christof Fischesser was a solid Pogner. Martin Gantner fulfilled the production’s complex vision of Beckmesser with skill and excellent vocalism (he is one of the few who can belt the high note at the end of the Act III workshop scene with Sachs). David was the excellent tenor Allan Clayton. Sara Jakubiak had the vocal amplitude and proper intensity for a convincing Eva. Okka von der Damerau was a gusty Magdalene.

Erick Neher
Erick Neher, a Society member and contributing editor for The Hudson Review, is a writer on classical music, opera, theater, and film. By day, he is the Vice President of Marketing for Hearst Magazine Media.
© Wagner Notes, November 2019, a publication of the Wagner Society of New York. All rights reserved.

Principals: S. Gould, L. Davidsen, E. Zhidkova, M. Eiche, S. Milling. Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, V. Gergiev and C. Thielemann (8/13) cond., T. Kratzer, director; R. Stellmaier, sets and costumes; M. Braun, video. Performances of July 28 and August 13, 2019.

A team of young creators headed by a director sporting a baseball cap; a black performer in drag; extensive use of video: the new production of Tannhäuser in Bayreuth this summer had enough advance buzz to generate pre-opening jitters for another regietheater production expected to provoke and shock the audience. Happily, the director Tobias Kratzer, a winner of the Faust Award for Excellence in German Theater for his brilliant Götterdämmerung in Karlsruhe, gives us a fresh and captivating take on the story of a singer who strays from society for sensual pleasure, only to be punished for his sin, then redeemed by the sacrifice of a woman. I was fortunate to attend two performances, on July 28 and August 13, the latter conducted by Christian Thielemann in place of Valery Gergiev. This afforded me an opportunity to savor the details of the production, which could become a classic.

The production team provides a helpful discussion of their concept in the written program. They view the opera Tannhäuser as a journey experienced by Wagner during his turbulent time in Dresden, of “disillusionment and expectations.” As the overture begins, the curtain opens to a full video screen with an arial view of the Wartburg Castle, which is the setting of Act II of the opera. A van travels through the forest; the scenery gradually changes to a contemporary urban setting. The van’s occupants are an eccentric mix: Tannhäuser in a clown outfit, Venus in glittering form-fitting pantsuit, a dwarf in the image of Oskar in Günter Grass’ The Tin Drum, and a drag queen named Le Gateau Chocolat. They steal gasoline and their Burger King dinner, using a fake credit card with Wagner’s 1849 invocation “Frei im Wollen, Frei im Thun, Frei im Geniessen” (free in willing, free in doing, free in enjoying).  Venus runs over a policeman, whereupon Tannhäuser comes to his senses and throws himself off the van, to awaken in the vicinity of the Bayreuth Festival House. The pilgrims, formally dressed, line up at the lamppost as they approach the “Mecca.”

Tannhäuser (Stephen Gould) and Venus (Elena Zhidkova) at Burger King. Photo: Enrico Nawrath.	Tannhäuser (Stephen Gould) and Elizabeth (Lisa Davidsen); Act iii. Photo: Enrico Nawrath.

Act II features the storming of the Bayreuth Festival House by Venus, Oskar, and Chocolat and their confrontation with the police.  The stage shows a “traditional” enactment in the interior of the Wartburg Castle, and a screen above depicts “the back story”: Elisabeth, Tannhäuser, and other performers getting ready for their entrance. Venus and her two companions, whose van crashed into the barrier of the Festival House at the end of Act I, gain access to the House from the balcony, and the disparate worlds of static opera and real life perfor­mance collide. Venus sneaks onto the stage disguised as one of the singers. The physical presence of Venus in Act II makes her a more interesting character, contrasting the two women who vie for Tannhäuser’s attention. Elena Zhidkova, who was a late replacement for Ekaterina Gubanova after the latter’s injury during the rehearsal period, was perfect for the physical demands of the role, moving with athletic energy and ease.

The invasion by the outsiders is brought under control as Katharina Wagner summons the police (shown on screen) and several police men and women storm onto the stage. Tannhäuser is arrested as he sings of “Rome.” Elisabeth, by no means a simple saintly figure, was shown earlier as a troubled wrist-cutter and almost steps out of her rarefied surroundings into the world of Tannhäuser at the end of Act II but returns to her society.

Act III takes place in a desolate area with the broken van and other metal scraps and the pilgrims as homeless vagrants. Elisabeth appears and shares a meal with Oskar.  She has sex with Wolfram, who disguises himself as Tannhäuser by donning the clown outfit, and then commits suicide by slitting her wrist. As Tannhäuser cradles her body, we see on the above screen the happy pair embarking on a road trip in the van, this time with Tannhäuser (and not Venus) in the driver’s seat. The last scene, with its swelling and dramatic music, ends as the pair rides off into the sunset, in Tannhäuser’s imagination. This was one of the most moving and hopeful endings of the opera I have experienced.

On August 13, with Thielemann at the helm, the orchestra was in top form. Stephen Gould showed again, with his stamina and powerful but nuanced singing, that he is the reigning Tannhäuser. The young Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen, hailed by many as the next great Wagnerian soprano, impressed with her huge and brilliant voice that became creamy in soft singing. Markus Eiche was a sympathetic and warm-voiced Wolfram. Stephen Milling headed a strong ensemble of singing knights.

The success of this production rests on the meticulous care taken to develop the four main characters in a modern interpretation. Unlike the Castorf Ring, it did not distract me from enjoying the music, because the director, who had a good understanding of the opera, giving precedence to the music. A delightful bonus of an outdoor performance by Tannhäuser’s companions during the first intermission attracted not only the festival-goers but also the local audience who were not attending the performance. A splendid integration of theater with real life.

Ako Imamura
Ako Imamura, a Society member, is a familiar face at international performances and a reviewer for "Bachtrack."
© Wagner Notes, September 2019, a publication of the Wagner Society of New York. All rights reserved.