Copenhagen's "Ring": Why "Eurotrash" Isn't the Whole Story
Or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Regietheater Bomb. I sympathize with people who spend hundreds of bucks on tickets and end up with a two-headed Wotan, an Alberich who’s a gaudy pimp or Supreme Court Justice Fricka. But consider this: you can stage these things in your mind, and I don’t just mean closing your eyes in the theater.
Or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Regietheater Bomb.
I’m always up for a Ring with Viking suits, if there are any left today. It works fine – better than fine – because it’s wholly consonant with the original choreographic and semantic nature of the cycle.
I sympathize with people who spend hundreds of bucks on tickets to a live performance and end up with a two-headed Wotan, an Alberich who’s a gaudy pimp or Supreme Court Justice Fricka. But consider this: you can stage these things in your mind, and I don’t just mean closing your eyes in the theater. We have the Ring as a permanent endowment. The theater of imagination in recordings or at the piano (if anyone still plays) can provide the traditional underpinnings that establish the work’s bona fides. At this point, I even see something sentimental and nostalgic in Viking helmets, but I don’t see anything regressive about desiring such a representation. The specific locus of the cycle in Northern European mythology has a deep importance for the work. Let that be said and never gainsaid. To rebut this is to rebut the place of art in history.
I once had a professor who taught Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, who wholly disputed the primacy of the relation between Arthurian legends and Tennyson’s contemporary world. Understanding that work as even primarily metaphorical does not allow us to disregard the garb the work wears. Such is the case with Wagner’s Ring. I surely don’t recommend reading the Icelandic saga Edda, or the risible Nibelungenlied with its Amazonian Krimhild (Brünnhilde) winning feats of strength. I don’t recommend that everyong go out and buy Wolfram von Eschenbach’s wierdly erotic medievalisms.
With apologies to Tolkien fans, that stuff is boring. Viking suits can become boring, too.
That’s why I love (or at least cheerfully tolerate) Eurotrash. My “personal Wagner” is impregnable, like some Pentecostalist’s “personal savior.”
Which brings us to the Copenhagen Ring, the so-called Feminist Ring production by Kasper Bech Holten. (Read about the production at the Royal Danish Theater’s website.)
Firstly, it’s a good sign that the Michael Schønwandt, conducting the Royal Danish Orchestra, is a musician of obvious discernment who cares about subtlety, nuance and real musical value. Schønwandt, known to me through an excellent set of DVDs of the Nielsen symphonies, has proven himself again with a thoughtful, vibrant, fresh and surely learned approach to these well-known if enormously complex scores. He doesn’t try to prove himself through irreverence, or chamber music textures, or grotesque exaggeration, or strangely self-identifying tempo extravagances. His magic fire music glitters and glows. Hagen’s watch glowers. The forest murmurs place you under a tree in your favorite park.
The smokin’ good Brünnhilde, (Iréne Theorin) was a new discovery to me. (Apparently she’s owned the Wagner soprano roles in Copenhagen for years, and her Bayreuth debut as Isolde opposite Robert Dean Smith’s Tristan took place this past summer.) Theorin’s Brünnhilde is not some cruel heridan when a Valkyrie. Neither is she some majestic sage-woman as a mortal; she’s simply a woman, sometimes angry, sometimes affectionate (in ways both sweet and profound), but always human and vital.
More importantly for collectors, Theorin handles Brünnhilde’s taxing role not just with aplomb but with an almost casual technical ease, allowing the listener to focus on what her character is and not whether she can handle this or that technical stretch. An exceptional artist, indeed. I don’t bandy these words lightly. For, although, Wagnerian tenors are as rare as cheap tickets to Bayreuth, good Brünnhildes are still a find. By the way, I wouldn’t normally comment on such a topic, but I will do so now to avoid confusion. In recent photos, such as some of the ones on the Copenhagen site, Theorin is thin. In this Ring DVD (from 2006) she is heavy. She’s lost considerably weight in the past couple of years.
The Rheingold Wotan (Johann Reuter) was appropriately cruel, with the facile callousness of youthful power. It’s amusing that Scene 4 devolved into a weird and grotesque simile of the Hostel movie franchise. (Chaining Alberich in a white subway-tiled room next to a tray or surgical instruments was not a good sign.) I like horror movies, I must admit, and although I’m staring at my toes, nervously shuffling my feet, I like Hostel. It pushes the envelope as horror movies have done since Jason and Freddie shredded their first teenagers. Does this belong in Wagner? Just read the libretto, you!
As Wotan in DieWalküre and Der Wanderer in Siegfried, the American bass-baritone James Johnson was often very moving, and always commanding. This, itself, is not unusual (there are many moving Wotans) but it seemed to stand out in the context of this cruel Ring. When he was onstage, the production never lost me.
Fasolt. Here he have the greatest Fasolt in DVD history. A man (giant) so consumed by the fires of love and jealousy and possessiveness and sentimentality. A crude, cruel man who doesn’t understand his own impulses of tenderness and violence, erotic malaise and grotesque pseudo masculinity. And ultimately, he generates genuine pathos. This was the greatest portrayal of Fasolt that I’ve ever heard; and, in fact, Stephan Milling has reinvented Fasolt as a major figure to be reckoned with for all future Rings. This revelatory performance sets the standard; incredibly moving and equally disturbing, Rheingold profoundly benefits from this unprecedented incursion of human pathos. Bravo!
This is billed as the Feminist Ring, for reasons that weren’t always obvious to me as I watched. I was full of questions: What kind of division (or possibly politics) separates a feminist Ring from another kind of Ring? How can one gender score at the expense of the other? Well, of course it cannot. Wagner knew this and it is impossible to disentangle the author’s gender bias from his work. It’s all fruitless surmise. But Brünnhilde with apologies to Siegmund, is the single positive figure in the Ring. And wanting justice isn’t the same as claiming unwarranted privilege.
As a partial answer, this Ring is depicted as a flashback from Brünnhilde’s point of view. Kasper Bech Holten (blog) believes that each of us “writes” a personal mythology, and it’s Brünnhilde’s personal mythology that he dramatizes in this Ring. Her mythology centers on freeing herself from what Bech (in the liner notes) describes as an Electra complex via her break from Wotan.
In this sense, the Copenhagen Ring is a tremendous success. The greatest and most human operas, by which I mean The Marriage of Figaro, Fidelio, and Die Walkure, abandon utterly the traditional male hegemony implicit in Teutonic culture, although all these works are, in fact, Teutonic. Wagner’s awareness of the plight of women and his gentleness in expressing essentially feminine problems extant in his society is an under-studied topic.
This Ring doesn’t pursue these issues in particularly coherent ways. On the contrary, it is full of knee-jerk, hysterical political talking points that sometimes detract from the potential of a feminist Ring. But it’s a step, if not in the right direction, or even one endorsed by Wagner, that points to an underrated part of what the Wagnerian ethos is. I’m fully aware that there are so-called scholarly works that attempt to portray Wagner as a feminine figure. But the reality in most Ring productions is that Siegfried and Wotan dominate except for the immolation. This flawed, peculiar, and often immature production takes a firm step in a promising direction.
Are Viking suits better than feminist deconstruction and the grisliness of Hostel? Of course. But I can always reconstruct the literal Ring in my mind as I listen to innumerable recordings or probe my past fixations. This Ring, often silly and rarely profound, offers the potential of newly exeriencing not just a well-worn favorite but probably the essential work of my musical life. And for that, I say “Bravo!”
The Copenhagen Ring: The Complete DVD Set starring Stig Andersen, Irenie Theorin, Gitta-Maria Sjoberg, Johan Reuter, Stephen Milling
Update
on 2013-06-19 20:19 by John Gibbons
Originally posted Mar 24, 2009. Reposted for the Ring Cycle class.
Met “Tosca” Booed: Luc Bondy vs. Franco Zeffirelli
“He’s not second rate. He’s third rate.”
– Franco Zeffirelli in anticipation of Luc Bondy’s new Tosca at the Met.“I’m a third-rate director, and he is a second assistant of Visconti.”
– Luc Bondy, on Franco Zeffirelli, following the opening night boos of his Tosca.
The New York Times summarizes a defense of the production by the Met’s Peter Gelb and Bondy’s spirited comeback to Zeffirelli.
I think it’s fair to disclose that we here at the palatial world headquarters of Holde Kunst are basically in favor of Regietheater (aka Eurotrash, aka Director’s theater) because it’s better than being afraid to try new things for fear of upsetting the old guard. On the other hand, we find ourselves dismayed at the majority of particular examples of Regietheater that we’ve encountered. I probably missed some nuances in Diane Paulus’s Don Giovanni at Chicago Opera Theater because I kept getting distracted by the “exclusive night club’s” recognizable KLIPPAN sofas from IKEA. I’ve seen the Nurse in Romeo et Juliette sung, apparently, by Mary Todd Lincoln. And I can’t tell you how alarmed I was when I first saw this picture from the current Bayreuth production of Parsifal – and how (relatively) relieved I was to find that this hospital ward wasn’t actually the church of the grail and the guy in fishnet stockings was at least Klingsor and not Amfortas or Gurenamnz.
In this case, Bondy’s vision is replacing a beloved, traditional production by Franco Zeffirelli, who took an opportunity to pre-emptively trash the production:.
“I have not seen yet any Puccini operas successfully adapted to this idiotic new way to approach his music,” he said. “You have to follow Puccini’s precise instructions.” Bringing interpretations to the staging of “Tosca” is especially tricky given that it is set in highly identifiable places in Rome, where any tourist can go. (Franco Zeffirelli, on Luc Bondy’s production of Tosca)
This wasn’t exactly sporting of “F-Zeff,” but his thesis matches one that John has advanced in this pages: Puccini’s original settings are too much fun to sacrifice on the altar of Regietheater. That’s why Puccini seems rarely subjected to directorial intrusion, and perhaps why messing with Tosca at the expense of the Zeffirelli production seems a particular affront to some members of the audience. Add the fact that this opening was the season’s Gala (with an audience self-selected for perhaps a greater conservative tendency) and we have ourselves a big, fat “Boooooo…”
So what’s so bad about the new Tosca? You can see for yourself at your local theater on October 10. Here’s what I’ve heard:
- Tosca stabs Scarpia in a more sensitive anatomical area than is customary.
- Instead of laying out Scarpia’s body respectfully with candles and and a cross, she fans herself on the sofa.
- Prostitutes are seen earlier in the action — on said sofa as well as crawling around on all fours.
- Cavaradossi paints a topless Mary Magdalene, which Tosca slashes with a knife.
- Scarpia writhes against a similarly nonvirginal statue of the Virgin Mary.
- Tosca’s suicidal leap is depicted by a body double hanging from a string as the curtain falls.
Here is a non-snarky negative review from NJ.com.
Opera Chic offers a contrarian view, declaring that “Only in New York City would an essentially conventional, prudent opera director such as Luc Bondy be considered some sort of insane, incendiary bomb-thrower…” – part of a detailed treatment of the production covering several blog posts.
But the prize goes to this Edith Wharton take on Monday night’s opening. It’s a spot-on rewrite of the opening scene in The Age of Innocence…
Today’s post is by Bonnie Gibbons.
Live in HD Series 2009-10 Schedule
- Tosca by Giacomo Puccini — October 10, 2009
- Aida by Giuseppe Verdi — October 24, 2009
- Turandot by Giacomo Puccini — November 7, 2009
- Les Contes d’Hoffmann by Jacques Offenbach — December 19, 2009
- Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss — January 9, 2010
- Carmen by Georges Bizet — January 16, 2010
- Simon Boccanegra by Giuseppe Verdi — February 6, 2010
- Hamlet by Ambroise Thomas — March 27, 2010
- Armida by Gioachino Rossini — May 1, 2010
I'll Offer Him a Setting He Can't Refuse: Puccini and Regietheatre
Paris. Rome. Nagasaki. The Gold Rush. Florence. Legendary China. How many directors want to relocate Michele’s barge from the Seine to, let’s say, the Ohio River? Who wants to forego the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, in favor of, oh, any other bridge. Who wants to replace the Emperor Altoum’s stairway to heaven with, let’s say, the head of the table in a corporate boardroom?
Nobody, that’s who.
Puccini is relatively immune to the phenomenon of Regietheatre because his scene settings are irresistable. Roman dawns, Seine twilights, and miner’s cabins in the mountains (complete with sterotypical indians) are good enough for anybody, it appears. Yes, there are occasional exceptions, such as Vienna’s recent Turandot. But even Jonathan Miller, in his admirable 1991 Faniciulla, retains the gold rush setting.
What does this say about Puccini? Does it mean he doesn’t have “universal scope”? Does it mean that he “doesn’t transcend his time”? Or is it simply that he was possessed of uncommon theatrical shrewdness?
Elitism and the Marketplace in Opera
One of the ironies implicit in the Mac Donald essay, discussed in this forum yesterday, is that traditional and respectful performances of the standard repertory may soon be presented by, and enjoyed by, a sort of elite; an elite distinguished by sane cultural values as opposed to a common denominator of hubristic trash which will come to “abduct” operatic culture. Well, this is unlikely, except just possibly in Germany, but it could happen, I guess. It seems like it is happening, actually, by some barometers.
Mac Donald doesn’t address the underlying cause of why opera administrators, and in some cases the public as well, are duped by the excesses of Eurotrash. I can suggest at least one reason; the narrowing of the repertory. I know “opera lovers” who only like a half dozen or so operas, and aren’t even interested in anything else. And in America, you could probably retain most of your audience with Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Die Zauberfloete, Rigoletto, La Traviata, La Boheme, Salome, and an occasional Ring cycle. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating. But the situation with the repertory is unhealthy, and it may be that in order to attract new audiences mangers feel like Eurotrash is a “Hail Mary” option. And this despite booming ticket sales, because ticket sales are necessary, but not enough.
This is why elites are important. Elites, or even pejoratively, snobs, perform a useful function. Whether they are sincere or not, they provide a kind of bulwark against unrestrained lowest common-denominatorship. Consider talk radio or network TV to get an idea of what lowest common denominatorship can come to mean. It’s unfortunate to have the Lyric Opera put on Pirates of Penzance, charming as it is, as they did a few years ago, because lesser houses can handle this! ( I think that there were significant budgetary issues here, which of course one needs to take into account).
I understand that what I am about to say may appear arrogant and insufferably elitist, which it is not my intention, and in my considered judgement the idea I’m espousing will create a better operatic climate:
Opera is special, and needs to be handled specially, because of its intrinsic cultural worth, and because of its dauntingly high price tag, which means that you simply can’t charge enough for tickets to sustain it by traditional marketplace mechanisms. Like most marketplaces in the entertainment sphere, an operatic marketplace will eventually create a lowest common denominator, a custodial culture rather than a creative one, when left without special handling by cultural and funding institutions.
Opera houses, when desiring to put on new works, will choose anodyne pap which 10,000 people don’t mind hearing, and won’t withdraw their subscriptions because of, rather then some challenging work which a tiny minority really loves, but some irate customers might write letters to the editor about. This is to some extent true of productions, as well, which is why I worry about the Eurotrash lunatics. They may spoil it for truly gifted directors, like Robert Carsen, for instance. A case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, or even the tub itself.
Works like Moses und Aron, for instance, need to be put on occasionally (not as often as Carmen, O.K.!) even if there isn’t a big public for them, in Chicago or New York, at least, if not in Des Moines or Detroit. Why? Why provide a product without a big enough market? Because opera is special, and the work is great, and needs to be kept alive. Why is it great? Because elite professors write books about it? Well, la-di-dah! …yes, partly because recognized experts value it. Products in science and industry, intended to improve our lives, are supported all the time by various underwriters, products of which the public is unaware, but need. Maybe we need some culture, as well. I guess I am an elitist, because I don’t think of opera as entertainment, but as something much more, which deserves promotion as well as protection from the ravages of an undiluted marketplace model.
In America, the word elite, when applied to a snooty opera lover, is a dirty word. But I’d like to point out that we Americans worship elites all the time; athletes (who at least exist in a meritocracy), the super-rich who are notorious for being super-inane, amateur TV singers who couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, etc., etc. These elites get many advantages, and media saturation almost forces us to participate, at least passively, in their elevation. Popular culture is all too pervasive, and authentic culture has to keep apologizing for itself. Recently, in the Chicago Tribune, the, I think, head of National Endowment for the Arts, a poet, lamented precisely this. That the average American can’t name living poets, conductors, scientists, etc. constitutes a cultural crisis was the point she made, and a good one it is.
Regietheatre: It's a Fad
I recently recommended the Heather Mac Donald article, “The Abduction of Opera” which appeared in City Journal. I continue to recommend this unusually astute evaluation of some of the directorial excesses afflicting the operatic world today, but would like to comment more specifically, and include a few reservations.
My commentaries on some of the productions I’ve seen appear to concentrate on much milder fare than the productions perpetrated in Europe today. I haven’t been to the continent in over a year and have apparently missed all the fun. Things are exponentially ratcheting up, it seems, and the goofy irrelevancies I’ve blogged about appear to be giving way, at least in some quarters, to the truly offensive. Calixto Bieito, for instance, is singled out as a particularly egrigious offender in the Mac Donald article.
Among the best points Mac Donald makes involve at least two essential theses:
1. The style and rhetoric of the standard operatic repertory reflects its time without compromising this repertory’s potential timelessness, and the imposition of a so-called contemporary frame of reference creates an unintended, illegitimate, irrevelant, and solipsistic adolescent vandalism of some of the greatest works in Western culture.
2. (We can assume opera to be an extravagant medium) But it is also a subtle medium, deeply concerned with beauty; beauty in the standard, non-deconstructionist meaning of the word. The best line in Mac Donald’s article?
“Regietheatre directors undoubtedly think of themselves as sophisticated when they unmask courtly decorum as just a cover for fornication. The demystifiers’ awareness of desire is so crude that they cannot hear that the barely perceptible darkening of a voice or the constricted suffusion of breath into a note can be a thousand times more erotic than a frenzy of pelvic thrusting.”
That passage could only have been written by somebody who loves and understands opera.
I’m personally less interested in the angle of the article speculating on the Metropolitan Opera’s future direction. Time will tell. Now for my reservations:
Mac Donald comments:
“But while subsidies may be a necessary condition for Regietheater, they are not a sufficient one. European opera has been subsidized to varying degrees throughout its centuries-long history without generating the musical abuse that is now so common. And Regietheater productions are creeping into the U.S., where opera relies overwhelmingly on private support.” and a little later in the same paragraph, (concerning the departure of a Regie oriented manager) “…The Market provided the necessary corrective in San Francisco,…”
I am definitely not trying to promote my own political philosophies, and I respect those whose views are not consonant with mine, please understand that I am attempting to apply some logic here. Also, I am reading a “subtext” into Mac Donald’s article which I freely admit may be misplaced.
1. I believe subsidies, public or private, are an absolute good. Only people who don’t care about high culture want to submit opera to the unfettered selfishness and superficiality of the marketplace. And artists, including directors, need to have artistic freedom. Opera cannot pay for itself; it’s too expensive. It needs help. We all pay for a heck of a lot of things the government does that we don’t agree with. Hey taxpayer! Do I want to take your money and give it to the opera establishment? You bet I do. And I understand that you have the right to take my money and use it for something I don’t care about. That’s the way it goes, and anyone who thinks the government is going to retreat, in any event, from its bloated role in our lives is deceiving himself. So let’s do some good with the dough that we are gonna have to cough up anyway. What’s different about public arts funding, which will in even the best possible case be a pittance? Ultimately, the Libertarian ideal or the (unrestrained) free market model will reduce us all to a state of nature, each man for himself. Oops! I misspoke. Each corporation for itself. But, especially in America, corporations and foundations are essential arbiters of our cultural life. But I’m definitely not going against a somewhat constrained free market. We ought to have some nuance in our cultural politics. We need to be responsible public custodians, and promote an environment that creates the necessary preconditions for great things. And this means taking the bad with the good, up to a point. Only children expect things to be all one way, or all the other; Good versus evil, like Harry Potter and Voldemort.
I worry about the potential, in both Europe and America, for corporate and (mostly in Europe) governmental mandarins to exploit the situation created by these nauseating productions for purposes contrary to the long-term health of culture. A civilized society has a collective responsibility toward its culture, which is most obviously expressed financially. The production decisions should be in the hands of opera professionals, and if these professionals are inadequate, one wants them replaced, for sure, but in a manner consonant with the retention of professional and interpretive freedom. The audience suffers, the way it is, but things could get worse in a hurry if reactionaries and bottom-liners hold the reins. By the way, Germany continues to have the most vibrant operatic culture in the world. How many really new works do we have in America? I don’t believe Menotti, Heggie, Bolcom, or Tan Dun are really giving us, or have given us, something really new and substantial. Where is the American Lulu? And who is the Met really serving by giving us La Boheme every year, in attractive but conventional settings? The situation is more complex than can be solved by eliminating the badness of idiots like Bieito, that’s for sure.
2. Remember the Robert Mapplethorpe shenanigans? The politicians who despise and fear art and artists seized on a publicly funded exhibit they didn’t like, in order to attempt (with at least some success) to conjure up rage against culture in the artistically ignorant population (which means almost the entirety of the population). This is dangerous, and as bad as the productions Mac Donald refers to undoubtedly are, I’d rather have that shambles than the meddling of the moneybags. This is hard for an American to hear, perhaps, but underwriters (in some limited cases, especially including the arts) should not have carte blanche to dictate the contents of the art they fund. Art cannot work that way.
3. This stuff is a fad. It’ll reach its acme, and then recede.
By the way, I just remembered that I have read a book by Heather Mac Donald, called “The Burden of Bad Ideas”. Like her article, it’s excellent. That doesn’t mean I don’t harbor a few similar reservations, however!
Update on 2007-08-11 17:10 by Bonnie Gibbons
Related Posts:
What Would He Say Now?
In the preface to George Perle’s definitive study of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, Perle takes vitriolic aim at the French director Patrice Chereau’s inaugural production at the Paris Opera of the three act version of Berg’s magnum opus, Lulu. Perle is offended by Chereau’s disregard of, and subversion of, Berg’s text. He even enlists that hothead of all hotheads, Hector Berlioz, on his behalf, quoting a passage from Berlioz decrying directors who similarly abused Mozart and Weber. As always with Berlioz, his comments are highly entertaining and incredibly hyperbolic. Berlioz’s advice to his director nemesi? “Despair and Die!”
Like street drugs and cheap handguns, operatic directorial license is designed to be abused. From a director’s standpoint, if you do something reasonable, audiences and musicians will leave the opera house thinking about Mozart or Wagner. If you do something insane, audiences and musicians will leave the theatre thinking about you. It’s a no-brainer. But it doesn’t impair or kill the listener. It’s only a narcissistic exercise in inane infantilism. Epater le Bourgeoisie!
I have my doubts about the future of literalistic stagings, however. Viking helmets, cool as they undoubtedly are, improperly narrow the context of Wagner’s Ring, at least for the twenty-first century.
But utterly inadmissable is the scene in the Stuttgart Opera’s Siegfried, where instead of beating his famous Nibelungen tatoo with a hammer on an anvil, in a futile attempt at forging Nothung, Mime beats a potato peeler against the side of a bowl. I know what the director was thinking, I think…later in the act, Mime makes a potion to murder Siegfried, saying that since he failed as a smith, he may as well be a cook. The director anticipates this with his potato peeler. Well, it shouldn’t be anticipated, number one, because it makes a mockery of the plot and the structure of the act, and, number two, it is so inherently stupid that it draws attention to itself in a disruptive manner. Acceptable, however, is another director’s Tristan und Isolde, act three, where the dying Tristan nostalgically looks at viewfinder style snapshots of his childhood. Why is this admissable? It’s not in the score anymore than the stupid potato peeler. It’s admissable because it’s touching. And why is it touching? Because it’s wholly consonant with Tristan’s fatalistic psychology, it underlines Tristan’s morbidly self-referential character. I cannot explain, however, the idea behind Tristan carrying his own couch around in the same director’s act two.
Reviews of Katharina Wagner's "Meistersinger" at Bayreuth
Since John has brought up the latest directorial excesses from Bayreuth I thought I’d provide some links for those who want to read more. See John’s take on the situation, and his list of operas that shouldn’t be messed with. You will see that Die Meistersinger is certainly one of them.
Since John has brought up the latest directorial excesses from Bayreuth I thought I’d provide some links for those who want to read more. See John’s take on the situation, and his list of operas that shouldn’t be messed with.
Jeers, Cheers as Bayreuth `Meistersinger’ Mixes Hitler, Nudity
By Shirley Apthorp
July 26 (Bloomberg)
Hitler is briefly back in Bayreuth as Katharina’s confused staging reaches its apotheosis. Her Hans Sachs sets out as the bare-footed, chain-smoking rebel of the singers’ guild, yet he becomes increasingly conservative as the evening proceeds. He warms his hands on the flames as conductor and stage-director doubles are burned. By the end, in time for his speech on “holy German art,” he is Adolf himself, flanked by statues in the style of Nazi sculptor Arno Breker.
At Beyreuth, ‘Die Meistersinger,’ unsettles a Wagner legacy
George Loomis
July 31 (International Herald Tribune)
Picking up on an idea advanced by scholars that the gibberish of Beckmesser’s contest song anticipates Dadaism and hence is actually forward-looking, she has him undergo an epiphany after the street riot. A strong minority of the populace applauds Beckmesser’s song, and he departs, disgusted, only when Sachs starts talking about German art.
Fascinating though the ideas of Wagner and her collaborator Robert Sollich may be, the result is more a critique of “Meistersinger” - and a negative one - than a production. Nor did she achieve the kind of absorbing interaction between characters typical of the best concept-oriented directors. Of the opera’s warmly expansive spirit there was little trace. You left thinking you hadn’t really seen the opera.
Tradition, revolution and reaction in Bayreuth
Marianne Zelger-Vogt
July 30 (sightandsound)
This article originally appeared in German.
Stolzing has become part of the mainstream, and is led around by an historically dressed opera singer. He receives a golden stag as a prize and poses, surrounded by the “leading team,” with the check of an imaginary sponsor bank. But between these two applause scenes there is also the appearance of Beckmesser: the turbulent happening of a reactionary who has discovered his creative potential in the fight scene and now outs himself as a performance artist.
Sachs resigns, Stolzing conforms, Beckmesser becomes an action artist giving a new twist to the art scene - a commentary on today’s opera in general and the Bayreuth Festival in particular? Perhaps. Yet it all remains too intellectual, on the one hand filled to overflowing with ideas and props, on the other hand a void - the entire history of the ideological reception of the “Mastersingers” as “Nazi opera” is blended out, for example, while Katharina Wagner remains focussed on the performance aesthetic.
Ms Wagner jeered as great-grandad’s opera flops at Bayreuth
Kate Connolly
July 27, 2007 (The Guardian)
It was the most eagerly anticipated event in this year’s German cultural calendar, set to make or break a young woman’s career.But following a cascade of boos and the comparison of her production of Die Meistersinger to a “top-heavy pizza with a thick topping on a thin base”, things were not looking too rosy yesterday for Katharina Wagner.
Her interpretation, which turned the original plot on its head - Richard Wagner danced in his underpants and topless dancers took to the stage - proved too much for the traditionalists, who made up the bulk of the audience, at the same time as irritating the iconoclasts.
This is Insane
According to the NY Times for Tuesday, July 31, Katharina Wagner’s new production of Die Meistersinger for the Bayreuth Festival featured topless dancers, complete male nudity, plastic phalluses, and “a bizzare auto da-fe” In the third act. My wife related to me a production (this one?) that had Hans Sachs made up as Hitler. One doesn’t have to have seen the particular production to comment. We’ve all seen eurotrash productions.
For years I’ve vacillated back and forth about the validity of such productions. I’ve been reluctant to condemn this sort of thing outright out of cowardice (just like many, many critics), a reluctance to appear to be a close-minded reactionary. But enough is enough. Opera (unless you specifically set out to make a film, such as H.J. Syberberg’s Parsifal) is not a director’s medium. There is a huge dissonance between 1860s music and 2007 post deconstructionist neurotic infantilism. You don’t have to bring the bearskins, metal brassieres and horned helmets back, but Hans Sachs needs to be a grounded, humane figure, Wotan better be missing an eye (this has deep plot relevance) and Sigmund better pull a weapon from the tree, even if it needs must be a submachine gun rather than a sword.
Some operas may potentially benefit from deconstructionst treatment, and some you should leave strictly alone. Here’s a partial list. Feel free to add to it.
Works that may potentially benefit from radical directors:
1. Die Zauberflote
2. Cosi fan Tutte
3. Tristan und Isolde
4. Parsifal
5. Lulu
6. Any of the Orfeo operas; any opera seria (this stuff is so dramatically inert that any dramatic reconsideration is an improvement)
Works to be left strictly alone:
1. La Traviata
2. Die Meistersinger
3. Tosca
4. Peter Grimes
5. Der Rosenkavalier
6-7 Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades
When in doubt, leave it alone. Mozart, Verdi and Wagner knew more than you do. And think long and hard about putting sex and violence in…We’ve had too much of that already. In “City Journal” Heather McDonald has an excellent article on the topic. I know nothing of Ms. McDonald, except that my wife finds her politics unsavory, but the article is indeed an excellent one.
Palate-Cleansing Meistersinger DVDs