Opera
Memory lane
Rodney Milnes
Munich Festival
The last time 1 attended the Munich Opera Festival some quarter of a cen- tury ago there were twelve marks to the Pound; now there are four, which really says it all. Then one lived rather well, walloping back the white wine and lunching at Dallmayr; now it is beer, sausages and furtive sums on the backs of envelopes to see if the travellers cheques are going to last. Such are the disadvantages of no longer being Top Nation. Then the ravages of war were still tragically evident; now one is dazzled by the tidiness, the efficiency and the sheer wealth. You need dark glasses to look in the shop windows.
The much lauded public transport system is as impressive as its reputation, though the City fathers might perhaps run courses for tourists on how to use it. A week had gone by before I realised I was not feeding enough strips into those merrily pinging slots. Munich is hot in July, very hot, and the breezes of the Starnbergersee beckon, not to mention the great baroque churches dotted around it. Then one clattered back to the lake after the opera on the ancient 11.25 from the Hauptbahnhof; now one Whizzes silently on the S6 from Marienplatz (no smoking, though, addicts be warned).
Starnberg, in the Fifties a dozy little town, all oom-pah bands and Lederhosen, is now the Southend of Munich, with day- trippers, discos and drunks. The memorial cross and chapel where poor King Ludwig II drowned himself, once encountered by chance in the course of a quiet lakeside stroll, now has its postcard stand and atten- dant collection of amazing Ludwig-kitsch. The woods around are full of notices warn- ing of rabid wildlife. One watches nervously for swivel-eyed voles foaming at the mouth and waiting to savage one's ankles. Such are the advantages of living on an island.
And there is the new opera house. The old Hofoper, a Piranesi ruin in the Fifties, has been lovingly restored, every early-19th- century neo-classical gold acanthus leaf relentlessly gleaming. The auditorium is sadly over-lit. It is a fine and practical building, though (the refreshment arrange- ments are superb), and will look much bet- ter in another quarter of a century, just as the restored Cuvillies Theatre, which glit- tered similarly in the Fifties, now has dust in the folds of the extravagant carving and looks like a real theatre again.
What happens in theatres has not chan- ged much: Strauss, Wagner, Mozart, and then more Strauss. The Munich Festival differs from Bayreuth or Salzburg in that it is not a one-off affair. The best of the cur- rent repertory and one new production are
churned out one after the other in what must be three hair-raising weeks for the stage staff. Since money is no object, pro- ductions are spectacular, with modern stage machinery much in evidence. There were some technical mishaps and really rather awful stagings (a perfectly beastly Meister- singer and a lazy Frau ohne Schatten among them) that would have made me quite cross had I been paying L60-odd for my seat.
The main attraction, though, remains the orchestral playing. Then it was under Knappertsbusch, Kempe and BOhm; now Wolfgang Sawallisch is in charge, and the reason that this outstanding musician is lit- tle known outside Germany is that he is conducting in Munich practically every night. I suppose that is what musical direc tors are for. He and his band certainly pro- duce a highly distinctive sound: smooth- textured, finely balanced, with round brass and silky woodwind floating on top of con- tained and precise string tone. There is little of the crunchy attack of, say, the Covent Garden orchestra under Davis. It is in Strauss that Sawallisch's approach pays the most handsome dividends: you can really hear what is going on in the scores and the complete lack of bombast might even con- vert the most tasteful of Straussophobes. I have never heard Frau ohne Schatten or Aegyptische Helena so beautifully or so carefully played.
Some might find Sawallisch's Mozart and Wagner too uninvolved, too careful. Meistersinger, despite memorable singing from Lucia Popp and Rene Kollo, remain- ed well beneath boiling point for the first two acts and built up steam only in the third, and this was obviously what Sawallisch wanted. Die ZauberflOte, too, had none of the musical enjoyment that a Pritchard or a Haitink might have brought to it: it was cool, correct and impeccable — and impeccably sung, with Helen Donath and Peter Schreier as Pamina and Tamino, Kurt Moll as Sarastro, and Wolfgang Brendel as a highly musical Papageno. These comparative disappointments, or rather surprises, in no way diminished my respect for Sawallisch as a musician. He prudently side-stepped Joseph's Legende, the least defensible of Strauss's scores (though I secretly love it) given in a bizarre version by John Neumeier, perhaps the most unmusical choreographer working anywhere today and popular only in Ger- many. He unwisely departed from Harry Kessler's detailed scenario and concentrated instead on Joseph's relationship with the Angel. Potiphar's Wife (Judith Jamison, magnificent) had little to do other than gaze in growing amazement at these two pranc- ing round her drawing-room in their jock- straps. I survived the evening by wondering what Strauss would have made of it all, and indeed how Frau Pauline coped when Kessler, Diaghilev and Nijinsky came to call at Garmisch to discuss the project.
This year's new production was Moses und Aron, indifferently staged by Jean- Pierre Ponnelle and Giancarlo Del Monaco but quite beautifully played under Gerd Albrecht and graced by a powerful Moses in Wolfgang Reichmann, an actor from the Zurich Schauspielhaus. The oldest produc- tion was Ponnelle's La clemenza di Tito (1971), in which. Julia Varady was an out- standing Vitellia. Helga Dernesch (Nurse) easily dominated Frau ohne Schatten. Gwyneth Jones was in excellent voice in Helena, and Joachim Herz's production was both the best of the Festival and the best work of his I have seen. Yet, despite many impressive individual contributions, didn't see anything in the way of a complete opera performance to touch the current Glyndebourne Don Giovanni, of which more anon.
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