A Lotta Night music

After Bremen, Sam went to Cologne to see their controversial new production of

WAGNER: TRISTAN UND ISOLDE
Cologne Opera
3 MAY 2009

The once mighty Cologne Opera has been having a tough time of late. This season the company has met with much printed and public disapprobation. In the latest scandal, the premiere of a new Samson et Dalilah, set for 2 May, had to be postponed a week. The originally announced Dalilah quit, after finding the production -- reportedly redolent with violence and rape -- too distressing. Her replacement dropped out at the last minute, citing illness.

On the following afternoon, I arrived from Bremen, just in time to witness the specter of another roundly heckled new production on the boards of the opera house. Few, it seems, liked David Pountney's setting of Tristan und Isolde when it was unveiled back in March. Even fewer liked the principals. Not much could be done about the production, but several cast changes were effected, and the show has been going on with hastily engaged replacements. The performance I was now witnessing sort of amounted to a somewhat newer new production of Tristan.

Since I was not present at the premiere, comparisons are not just odious but impossible. Pountney certainly has his detractors, but I certainly have been subjected to productions of Tristan that struck me as far worse. The only substantive objection I have to Pountney's staging is its visual disconnect between the middle and outer acts. Designer Robert Israel sets the first act with a grey ship on a grey Irish Sea. The last act is set in a similarly grey-hued cemetery. The second act, however, looks like an outsize fun house you might find in the toy section of a department store-- bright colored slabs of geometric constructs, strewn about a slowly revolving turntable.

None of this bothered me in the slightest, because nearly everything else about this performance was so surprising, so bodacious!
Swiss soprano Marion Ammann was a last-minute replacement, but she looked, moved and above all sounded as though she had been the chosen Isolde all along. But be warned -- especially those awaiting the Second Coming of St. Birgit: Ammann is different and quite possibly a throwback to an earlier epoch. How such a solid but beautiful sound can emanate from such a slender, willowy torso is truly a wonder. And, ah, the sweet sorrow that informs her glance as her tall, tortured Isolde remembers how she became powerless to prevent herself from dropping the sword, as she tried to kill Tristan: simply haunting. Those who recently heard Irene Theorin at the Met might summon comparisons, but Ammann is warmer, more vulnerable: Germaine Lubin resurrected.

Ammann also had the good fortune of playing off American Robert Gambill, another replacement whose grandly nuanced Tristan sounded and acted as though weeks of rehearsal had come to satisfying fruition. Gambill is a Tamino-turned-Tristan, who I first heard as Siegmund about eight years ago. He looks like a leading man and moves graciously. His voice has heft and stamina, but it tends to recede as it ascends beyond F, which puts a clamp on the tone, where it ought to open out. Nonetheless, Gambill shows signs of neither wear nor tear, as he finds himself in what appears to be a golden period of his career.

Some years ago, when Soviet mezzo-soprano Elena Obratztova took the Free World by storm, I wondered (perversely) how she would sound as Brangäne. Now I know. But putting it this way does disservice to both Obratztova and a diminutive, Lolita-looking singer named Elena Zhidkova. How often can you describe a singer portraying Brangäne as "hair-raising?" As big-voiced as Amman and Gambill are, Zhidkova's is by far bigger and ballsier than you're likely ever to get without invoking Sigrid Onegin. And like Onegin, she is also capable of mystical subtlety, as evidenced in her exchanges with Ammann. So mind your backs ladies, and I mean YOU -- Olga, Ewa, Larissa, Magdalena et cie: this one's for real and her handlers are comin' straight atcha!

Thomas J. Meyer was a virile sounding Kurwenal, Gerardo Graciacano a malicious Melot and Alfred Reiter an unusually introspective King Marke.

The performance was ultimately made cohesive by the direction of Markus Stenz, the Cologne Opera's music chief, who induced the kind of orchestral tension that I have come to expect mostly from much older Wagner conductors. He shows the kind of innate understanding of this work, at which recordings under great conductors hint, but never teach. Too bad, he chose to perform it with standard cuts -- no Tag und Nacht, etc.

Whoever played the English horn solo (no program credit) in the third act was marvelous.

The takeaway: Forget about the noise surrounding this production. This performance ranks among the all-time top five of the 40-odd Tristans I have attended thus far. The other four? Don't ask.

© Sam Shirakawa

Tristan Production Photo courtesy of Opera Cologne (© Klaus Lefebvre)

DIE WÄLKURE - Season Premiere

Sam Shirakawa, peripatetic Wagnerian that he is, was at the opening night of Die Walküre at the Met on Monday night. His squib:

Season Premiere 6 April 2009
Metropolitan Opera

The Muses were in attendance at the Met on Monday night. I never thought “riveting” would be an appropriate way to describe James Levine’s reading of any score, but absent a lapse here and there, his umpteenth traversal of Wagner’s [who else’s?] Die Walküre was indeed riveting. The pacing seemed livelier, the dynamic thrust more propulsive than ever before.

After a briefly tentative start, James Morris sang possibly his finest Wotan at the Met to date. Few veteran singers get to show what they have learned over the years, because their voices give out before they get the chance. Morris is one of the lucky ones. Drawing from a wealth of acquired and innate reserves, he rendered a deeply moving account of an embattled god, forced to sacrifice two of his most beloved children. On Monday, though, his soft and heartbreaking farewell to his love child was overshadowed by the orchestra. Too loud, Jimmy!

The much anticipated curiosity of the evening was the debut of Iréne Theorin, a hastily recruited Brünnhilde, replacing the indisposed Christine Brewer. The Swedish soprano has an ample voice that’s evenly distributed from top to bottom, and she showed no signs of strain in scooping up to those treacherous Bs and Cs in the valkyrie’s signature war cry. What her voice lacks at this point in her young career is a personality that is distinctive and lingers in the ear. Withal, Theorin proved herself an effective actress on her first showing, and she needed no extra makeup to highlight her estimable comeliness.

The same can hardly be said of Jan Botha’s appearance. The stage lights may have been kept on extra low wattage to mask his corpulence. Ah, but the rotund sound of his Siegmund! Think Jon Vickers meets Franz Völker: seductive, sweet and potent. Too bad Wagner kills the Wälsung off at the end of the second act.

Too bad, too, that the composer also kills off Hunding almost at the same moment. Especially when the role is so deftly portrayed by John Tomlinson -- another veteran Wagnerian, who’s made a well-deserved name for himself as Wotan and Sachs over the years. As an acquaintance sagaciously commented during the first intermission, Tomlinson purveys a depth of understanding about the role that makes Hunding far more complex than a brutish cuckold. And it’s not all about the singing, about which: no complaints. The way he listens to Siegmund’s tale of woe and becomes aware that he’s giving hospitality to his arch-enemy; the way he makes his long-suffering trophy wife stand up so that he can sit down.

And speaking of that long-suffering wife, Waltraud Meyer is back again as Sieglinde. I’ve always liked her, but I don’t care for mezzo-Sieglindes. I long for that slightly girlish inflection that real sopranos bring to the role. But Meyer was in full possession of her dark powers on Monday night, and satisfied customers gave her huge ovations.
Yvonne Naef is a cooly bitchy Fricka in her Virginia Woolf encounter with Morris. When she quits the stage with no loss of perspiration, you know it’s Game Over.

The eight Valkyrie Sisters -- all in great shape.

Monday’s cast is set to appear on the broadcast matinee. Theorin will also appear in Siegfried, which is fortunate. But not, apparently, in the broadcast of Götterdämmerung, which is unfortunate.

A sidebar to Monday night’s performance: It was marred by the cacophony of cellphones beeping and jangling throughout the performance. The hall frequently sounded like an intensive care unit. Isn’t it time for a full-page ad opposite the cast listing in the program, telling patrons to shut off? Or maybe the security personnel at the entrances should make it mandatory. Even better, why not create a firewall around the building to prevent incoming calls? If Wotan could do it for Brühnnhilde way back in those pre-digital days of yore, certainly the Met management can do it for its public now.

© Sam Shirakawa