patrikpen: Innovative Dramaturgy in Music and Vision 6 agosto

Innovative Dramaturgy

GIUSEPPE PENNISI visits the
annual Munich Opera Festival

Munich is almost one hour's drive from Erl in Tyrol, and many Munich residents have a week-end and vacation home in the nearby Austrian Bavarian Alps. However, the Munich Annual Opera Festival is quite different from the Tyrol Festival I visited recently [read Passion and Religion, 28 July 2012]. The latter is a low cost four week event with minimal stage setting and many young voices -- quite a few of them are not yet famous but several will become stars of the operatic scene. The annual Munich Opera Festival is a clear expression of Germany's most productive and highest Land. The Bayerische Staatsoper is one of the wealthiest theaters in the world because high government subsidies (the Bavarian governments have constantly given high priority to music) are matched by generous contributions from sponsors. Also, ticket prices are quite high but there is a good policy to provide special arrangements for students and low income categories. With these resources, the Bayerische Staatsoper can afford the best director, the best conductors, and the best singers.

Munich's National Theatre. Photo © Wilfried Hösl. Click on the image for higher resolution

The Staatsoper includes three different theatres. The National Theater is a huge (2,100 seat) nineteenth century theatre with rows of boxes and various tiers; it was there that Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger, Das Rheingold and Die Walküre were premiered, and there that Richard Strauss insisted that in October 1942, Capriccio should have its opening night, even though bombing had hit the facility. The Cuvilliés Theater is a highly decorated 400 seat baroque court theatre within the Residence Palace of the Ruler (who became King after the Napoleonic Wars); there Mozart's Idomeneo had its premiere. The 1,900 seat Prinzregent Theater is a 1900 clone of the Wagner hall in Bayreuth (but the seats are more comfortable and the auditorium is within an Art Nouveau building and garden); it was meant to have Wagner's operas performed in Munich just as Wagner wanted. The Bavarians are proud of their three opera houses, always full to capacity in a city of 1.3 million residents and an urban area of some 2 million people. There is a real genuine passion; one can see many youngsters in theaters where men wear dinner jackets and ladies long dresses.

Munich's Prince Regent Theatre. Photo © Wilfried Hösl. Click on the image for higher resolution

The July Festival (five weeks) is not a venue for experiments (as other Festivals are) but a special month when the Bayerische Staatsoper re-proposes the productions considered the best by the audience and the reviewers -- ie something similar to the White Night Festival in St Petersburg. Normally, its final staging is a special Die Meistersinger. This year, exceptionally, the last opera shown in the Festival was Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier in the famous Otto Schenk production and with an all star cast. The hottest items were two full Ring cycles under Kent Nagano's baton. To follow one, booking had to be done at least six months beforehand, and a full week in Munich was required. During 23-25 July 2012, my wife and I were able to sample all the three theaters with Jacques Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann at the National Theater, a chamber music concert at the Cuvilliés Theater and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Mitritade, rè di Ponto at the Prinzregent Theater. In this review, I focus on the two operas and make only a reference to the chamber music concert.

A general comment: Les Contes d'Hoffmann is a coproduction with English National Opera (ENO), where it was staged in Spring 2012 with a different cast; Mitridate, rè di Ponto is rarely performed because Mozart (then fourteen) composed a very long three act opera seria on a rather incredible libretto and with a long series of arias and only a duet (at the end of the second act), yet in the last two years the opera has been a major success and in its audience there is a host of young people.

In Les Contes d'Hoffmann, the protagonist (a poet and a would-be womanizer, but with very little luck) tells his life and unlucky love stories to a group of drinking buddies while awaiting his latest would-be conquest, an opera singer, Stella, who, meantime, is performing in Mozart's Don Giovanni. The stories he tells are more bitter than sweet; in each act, he courts unsuccessfully a different woman. When the performance is over and Stella arrives, the poor fellow is totally drunk. Of course, she goes to dinner (and what not) with some other chap.

Not long ago [Engrossing and Moving, 28 May 2012], I expressed criticism of Richard Jones' production of Britten's Peter Grimes at La Scala. I give him full marks for this Les Contes d'Hoffmann. Jones shuns librettist Jules Barbier's literal stage directions and locates the piece within an interior world. The opera's three tall tales are played out in variants of Hoffmann's own study, re-imagined each time to suggest his creative mind at work within its own environment. Up until the opera's close (when Stella, his true love, finds him sprawled under his desk in a stupor) nothing we see is real -- not even the swarm of students who crawl out of the woodwork during the Prologue, nor indeed the evil Lindorf, here a figure conjured by the Muse herself as a somewhat neutered emblem of darkness.

Rolando Villazón in the title role of Offenbach's 'The Tales of Hoffmann' in Bavarian State Opera's production at the Munich Opera Festival. Photo © 2012 Wilfried Hösl. Click on the image for higher resolution

Jones and his designer, Giles Cadle, carry off this reinvention brilliantly, and with the storylines rendered intact there is little here to irritate even the most literally-minded of spectators. Only in the final yarn, where the Venetian courtesan Giulietta steals men's souls for her evil master, Dapertutto, does the interiorised setting fail somewhat to convince. In Jones' staging, Hoffmann is not the usual garrulous taproom raconteur, but a depressive alcoholic at an artistic standstill. Rolando Villazón plays the title role remarkably well. Villazón was also Hoffmann in London some time ago, not at ENO but at the Royal Opera House. He has the physique du role and the stamina to act and even dance while singing in decent, albeit not perfect, French. He had a short défaillance at the beginning of the third act (most probably he was quite tired) but recovered quite well in the duet with Giulietta (Anna Virovlansky). He received ovations at the end of the performance.

Rolando Villazón in the title role of Offenbach's 'The Tales of Hoffmann' with Brenda Rae as Olympia in Bavarian State Opera's production at the Munich Opera Festival. Photo © 2012 Wilfried Hösl. Click on the image for higher resolution

When, in October 2011, this production was unveiled, one of its features was that Diana Damrau sang all the three main soprano roles, even though each of them has a different slant. In July 2012, Ms Damrau was pregnant and had cancelled all her performances at the Munich festival. Thus, Olympia was the coloratura soprano Brenda Rae, Antonia the dramatic soprano Olga Mykytenko and, as mentioned, Giulietta was Anna Virovlansky. All performed at a very high level. Similarly, Kevin Conners and John Relyea fitted Hoffmann's contenders and rivals in the various episodes quite well.

Rolando Villazón in the title role of Offenbach's 'The Tales of Hoffmann' with Olga Mykytenko as Antonia in Bavarian State Opera's production at the Munich Opera Festival. Photo © 2012 Wilfried Hösl. Click on the image for higher resolution

More significantly, the conductor, Marc Piollet, avoided quickening the tempi, as often happens with Les Contes d'Hoffmann, with the unintended result of transforming a reflection on life into a farce.

Mitridate, rè di Ponto is seldom staged. It was commissioned by the Teatro Ducale in Milan (the predecessor of La Scala) when Mozart was fourteen. The libretto is for a rather standard opera seria in which a tripartite aria follows another tripartite aria; as said, there is only a duet. Furthermore, the adolescent Mozart was composing with very peculiar, and very difficult, singers. To make things worse (should there have been any need), the opening night, 26 December 1770, ballet music was added to give a total performance duration of nearly six hours. In Italy, I heard only a drastically cut concert version. For the celebration of Mozart's 250th birthday, two performances of an old Jean Pierre Ponnelle production were held in Vicenza's Teatro Olimpico.

Barry Banks in the title role of Mozart's 'Mitridate, rè di Ponto' in Bavarian State Opera's production at the Munich Opera Festival. Photo © 2012 Wilfried Hösl. Click on the image for higher resolution

I believe that musically, Mitridate, rè di Ponto deserves to be revalued. The overture is a three movement symphony in E major. Although only fourteen, Mozart took quite a few liberties with the opera seria: not all the arias are tripartite, Aspasia's second aria is a powerful lament in G minor, Sifare's second aria combines a short andante with a vehement allegro, and in the finale the soloists join in a small chorus.

Anja-Nina Bahrmann as Aspasia and Anna Bonitatibus as Sifare in Mozart's 'Mitridate, rè di Ponto' in Bavarian State Opera's production at the Munich Opera Festival. Please note that Sifare was sung by Tara Erraught on 25 July. Photo © 2012 Wilfried Hösl. Click on the image for higher resolution

The production combines an excellent international cast of singers -- Barry Banks, Anja-Nina Bahrmann, Tara Erraught, Lawrence Zazzo, Lisette Oropesa, Taylor Stayton and Eri Nakamura -- with really innovative dramaturgy.

Anna Bonitatibus as Sifare in Mozart's 'Mitridate, rè di Ponto' in Bavarian State Opera's production at the Munich Opera Festival. Please note that Sifare was sung by Tara Erraught on 25 July. Photo © 2012 Wilfried Hösl. Click on the image for higher resolution

David Bösch and Rainer Karlitschek (stage and drama directors), Patrick Bannwart (set designer) and Falko Herold (costumes) move to undefined present time and place the rather incredible libretto from an imaginary Black Sea kingdom at war with the Romans. In short, it becomes a black comedy family portrait. It is of course a multiple family where, until the happy ending, everyone wants to share a bed with everyone else. That adolescent Mozart was quite precocious. The conductor Mark Wigglesworth kept the whole thing together quite well.

Just a few words on the Cuvilliés Theater concert. A quartet from the Bayerische Staatsoper orchestra (flute, violin, viola and harp) took us from Max Reger's Serenade Op 77a to Camille Saint-Saëns' Fantasie Op 124 and Beethoven's extended Serenade Op 25 in a precious rococo setting.