ARTS
Weekend with Wagner
Michael Tanner goes to Berlin and hears one of the best Meistersingers ever Each of Berlin's three opera houses had a Wagner opera on over the Easter weekend, all produced by quite senior one- time enfants terribles of the DDR. It seemed a good opportunity to find out not only what they are doing now that, Kun- dera-like, they have lost a large part of their favoured subject matter, but also to see how the two rival conductors of the Deutsche Oper and the Staatsoper com- pare, even if in works as different as Die Meistersinger and Parsifal. Saturday evening was to be devoted to a heavily cut (thank God) production of Rienzi at the Komische Oper, but in the event the illness of one of the chief singers led to the performance being cancelled and replaced by Turandot. The Rienzi, we gath- ered, was a production that had been around for some time, and involved storm- troopers invading the auditorium, which sounds quite fun. The Turandot production was brand new, but you'd never have guessed it. The curtain rose on a black and white set, with a row of spotlights pointing at the audience and blinding us for a few minutes, before the intimidating point what point? — had been made and they were turned off. Otherwise it seemed to be a routine old-style DDR affair, relentlessly ugly, remaining mostly without colour, plenty of heavily armed thugs around, Turandot arriving in an elevator at one side of the stage. The chorus was excellent, as was the con- ducting. What made it imperative to leave in the interval was the gruesome vocal con- dition of the Calaf, a young tenor of a kind that only German-speaking countries pro- duce, thick of tone, straining for his high notes and not getting them, reminiscent of the great Max Lorenz in his later afflicted years. The idea of him singing 'Niemand schlafen!' was not to be borne. Still, the theatre itself has been so exquisitely restored that it is worth visiting just to see. The same can be said of the Staatsoper, a bit further along Unter den Linden. It is also very spacious, with lots of room and rooms to wander and take refreshments in during the Bayreuth-length intervals. Hav- ing heard Barenboim conduct a mediocre performance of Meistersinger at Bayreuth last year — admittedly the day after he had Conducted a stunning Tristan — I didn't have high expectations. Even if I had had, they would have been exceeded. This was one of the two or three best performances of the work, musically speaking, that I have ever heard, and Harry Kupfer's production was so unobtrusively right in virtually every last detail that the total effect was certainly more exhilarating than any other Meis- tersinger I have seen. I hope to go back to it
Mary Evans Picture Library
Richard Wagner again and again, because there are few things in life so completely fulfilling yet endlessly intriguing as this opera executed at this level.
Barenboim set things off at a spanking pace, but overall his was a leisurely, loving interpretation which savoured the incom- parable richness of the score. Which does not mean that it was mellow and left one feeling that really everyone is nice — on the contrary, both Barenboim and Kupfer were keen to bring out the anger, violence, bitterness and pain which is the true 'dark underside' of this piece.
I did try conscientiously, several times, to see Beckmesser as a Jew, or at least as hav- ing Jewish characteristics as Wagner con- ceived of them, the received view in the Anglo-American world at present; but it simply isn't an intelligible effort to make, I found, and if it were I can't see that it would contribute to any interesting com- plexity in the opera. Kupfer, by the way, explicitly disdains the view in the pro- gramme book. So the upsettingness of Meistersinger was firmly located in the mal- adjustment of people and their needs and desires to the world as they experience and explore it. That was given eloquent expres- sion by Falk Struckmann, one of Baren- boim's favourite artists, in his powerful account of the Wahn monologue; though it will be more powerful yet when he learns to vary the colours in his voice a little more. He is that wonderful phenomenon, an intelligent singer whose progress one eagerly looks forward to following, so that one can learn from him about the great roles he sings.
One of the most inspiriting features of this production was the youthfulness of the cast, and the fact that they were operating as a team. The veteran among them, oddly enough, was Francisco Araiza, who is no longer able to convey, either vocally — his top is drying out fast — or in appearance and movement, the irritable impetuosity of Walther, which leads Sachs, at least in Kupfer's view, to take a quite rough view of him, at the same time as he sees that the future lies with him — or does it? For most of the time this production is characteristic of Kupfer's work, as I know it, only in the intensity of attention paid to detail, and in the conviction with which opera singers are made to act, especially to touch one anoth- er often.
Hans Schavernoch's setting is sober, too: a large construction in the centre of the stage, with Darer paintings, Eve in par- adise at the top, as envisaged in the Prize Song, a spiral staircase of broad dimen- sions, plenty of nooks, and the capacities to be neon-lit and to rotate. For Act I it looks quite like a Nuremberg church, for Act II is more indeterminate, and with projected skyscrapers on both sides. Act III reverts to Act I for Sachs's workshop, to Act II for the festival meadow. The production of the entry of the guilds and the general merry- making is by far the most imaginative and brilliant I have ever seen, completely in keeping with the spirit of the words and music; altogether an almost shocking adherence to Wagner's instructions. Only in the closing moments of the whole enor- mous work does the mischievous Kupfer intrude. Sachs refuses the crown of laurels, sets it on the ground and pays homage to it, while the skies darken threateningly, and as the curtains swish to Beckmesser, ban- daged and infirm, stands briefly before them and glowers at the audience, very much as Alberich did at the end of the same team's Ring. Has holy German art, lauded by Sachs and then by everybody, had its day? Does the future lie, as it were, with the past — as any fine performance of Meistersinger must make one temporarily feel? The combination of that crafty part- ing shot, and of the sheer vehemence of Barenboim's conducting, but a vehemence which coheres with the other elements in the inexhaustible score, make it seem that this work is world-encompassing. I could go on dilating on its merits, its insights, its continuous level of inspiration, for a long time, and I am very aware that by being so brief I have done the rest of the cast an injustice.
Monday night brought Parsifal at the Deutsche Oper, the theatre itself like sit- ting in a multi-storey carpark after the pre- vious two. The production is by Gotz Friedrich, the conductor is Christian Thielemann, one of the youthful hopes of the German musical scene, a traditionalist and great admirer of Furtwangler and Knappertsbusch. The reception he got was genuinely mixed; and so were my feelings about his activities. Sensitive passages were followed by ones so loud and crass — for instance the Act III Transformation Music, the loudest sound I have ever heard in an opera house (not forgetting Die Soldaten) — that I despaired at such brutality. The overall effect was of mannered and some- times imitative interpretation.
The cast was strong, though Gosta Win- bergh matured in outward appearance more than in expression. Matti Salminen retains a beautiful voice, but chose to sing a gruff, unyielding Gurnemanz. Philippe Rouillon, whom I haven't encountered before, made an extremely convincing and moving Amfortas, and the same can be said for Violeta Urmana's Kundry, vastly improved since a year ago under Rattle. Friedrich's production took place within a huge bathroom, with huge vistas on to fur- ther bathrooms. In Act II galaxies provided the background, and Parsifal's making the sign of the cross precipitated a cosmic catastrophe, everything in sight exploding: surely an excessive reaction. This produc- tion didn't compare with his great one in Bayreuth, terminated at Levine's insis- tence. It was an evening of modified rap- tures; there were some, but in this work they should be uninterrupted, at least in the outer acts. At least Kundry died at the end, as she should, but as she expired women in dowdy suits entered and kneeled, an inscrutable and typically tire- some touch.
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