Wagner's Valhalla

[Wendell_E]

Photos from the new Lohengrin at Bayreuth, via Intermezzo.  Perhaps not for the rodent-averse. 

Yeah, I'm listening to the prima (may Wagner forgive me for the Italian term) on the Internet.  Fortnately, it sounds a lot better than it looks.

[jlaurson]

Yeah, I'm listening to the prima (may Wagner forgive me for the Italian term) on the Internet.  Fortnately, it sounds a lot better than it looks.

The rats are pretty cute, actually...  a good friend's sitting trough it, right now --- but I can't take Neuenfels. Not because of the rats, but because of the primitive underlying assumptions / ideologies.
The same, pseudo-progressive BS, decade after decade. His Medea in Corintho in Munich was the worst thing I ever had to endure, production wise.

Here, FYI, an interview with Neuenfels about this Lohengrin that I translated for the Society of Friends of Bayreuth. Written/conducted by the brilliant J. Koenigsdorf.

Addictive Truths
An encounter with director Hans Neuenfels


Half an hour into the interview, Hans Neuenfels can't take it anymore. A short, discretely disdainful look to the smoke detectors that keep tabs on air purity in the foyer of the Bavarian State Opera is followed by the brief flicker of his lighter and relief is at hand. He takes a drag from the cigarette that had lain before him all along, atop the pack with the ungainly warning label "Smoking Kills". His doctor told him not to smoke, just as he warned him off white wine. Because of the gout. Doctors, pshaw! If they had been consistent, they'd have forbidden him to direct, because theater is the real drug for this 68 year old. That's what he has been doing for about forty years now, one production after another. And of course opera is the strongest drug of them all. Often he's only got a quick breather for packing his bags before shuttling off from a premiere to the next round of rehearsals. This time he's off to Bayreuth as soon as the curtain falls on the premiere on Monday here in Munich. And if he finds a break, after all, Hans Neuenfels still devotes them to the stage business. Either by writing articles and essays – a surrogate drug – or by racking his brain over Verdi, Mozart, and Wagner. Such is the life of a theater addict. Compared to that, nicotine and alcohol are rather benign little helpers to make the madhouse 'Theater' appear a little more relaxed. All to foster the necessary optimism that the countless problems and altercations that pop up in every production will, somehow, work themselves out.

And of course it's an opera's fault this time, too, when Neuenfels has to ignore his doctors' advice. Specifcially, it is "Medea in Corinto" by Johann Simon Mayr, the teacher of Donizetti, with which Neuenfels makes his rather late debut at the Staatsoper. In a way, it's a 'postcoital' cigarette, because with the dress rehearsal over now, the real labor is all done with. But certainly the impending Bayreuth "Lohengrin" needs a bit of nicotine. In that week before the rehearsals begin, a production is in the most maddening phase.  Costumes and stage are all set, but will the conception – two years' worth of labor for Neuenfels and his team – work out on stage of the Festspielhaus? Will Neuenfels succeed in convincing choir, soloists, and conductor to not just carry out given instructions but champion the concept? And will the public accept the visual world he has concocted, chock full of metaphors? Will they be willingly to take the plunge with him?

It ain't certain. And not just because the international audience of the festival has a rather broader spectrum of expectations than hardened, veteran German audiences. Even the latter have already gotten plenty upset and excited about Neuenfels in the last decades. Probably no other living director has endured so many outbursts of indignation and thunderous salvos of boos as he has. Ever since his 1974 debut in Nürnberg with Verdi's "Il Trovatore" he's been labeled an ostentatious revolutionary and the bugbear of subscription audiences. That reputation as a brash Achtundsechziger, an antiauthoritarian political hippie, has stuck; he is considered as someone who simply throws convention out the window, along with all those lovely lavish costumes and pulpwood castles. He had tanks roll on stage when Verdi talks of war in "La Forza del Destino". He's put the choruses into animal costumes, and in his Berlin "Trovatore", Jesus gets back down from the cross in the finale of the second act, because only a miracle can help Leonora out of distress. But none of that was ever about provocation per se, he says. True provocation would have to be gratuitous. But since he is inexorably compelled by the work at hand to present the pictures and scenes he shows, his productions couldn't possibly be about provocation.

"After a certain point I, the director, become the prisoner of my own production and can't but continue further down the initially chosen path", he explains. "The quality of a production, after all, lies in it taking a development of its own, virtually dictating the solutions for the stage. Once the work 'bites', once you have it on a hook, then you can add things at will. But from then on it's really more the art of cooking than the art of directing."

Hans Neuenfels  calls that situation his 'creative dilemma' and he has once again fallen into it: That gravitational pull exerted by all great works, once you feel like you've gotten a glimpse of their core truths and those truths further dictate you where to go with the work.

I readily believe him that he specifically wanted "Lohengrin" for his Bayreuth debut – for the reason alone that the idea of utopia – dashed hopes – are at the core of his life's work. Not particularly surprisingly that it is Heinrich von Kleist who is his favorite among the classics; this failure of a man, his earthly existence 'beyond help', and someone who consequently clung even more tightly to his ideals. After all, what would Neuenfels' ceaseless scrutinizing be good for, if not for the hope that somewhere there must be a truth to which one can hold on.

"I believe in values like love, tenderness, friendship. That's how I see life. And I believe that it is worth it to invoke these truths over and over and that it's worth fighting for these ideals." Maybe his theater addiction also stems from the fact that these truths usually make only fleeting appearances on stage and pass quickly as a nicotine buzz.

"Lohengrin" is only Neuenfels' third Wagner production after his Stuttgart "Meistersinger" in 1994 and a "Tannhäuser" in Essen, two years ago. His longing for the south, especially Verdi, has long kept him from Wagner. As did his unease with these 'august Germans', that touch of the disreputable that still sticks to these works – at least and especially as far as Germans of his generation are concerned. And of course Lohengrin won't be the knight in shining armor with Neuenfels; that radiant hero that not just Elsa but perhaps also the audience expects. "For me, Lohengrin's mission is the last attempt to save the world. And the tragedy of the work lies in the mission turning out to be bigger than the hero; just like in the Heinrich von Kleist play "The Prince of Homburg". Nowadays we tend to making people bigger than the thing itself, just like with Superman, who in a way doesn't even seem to care who or what he saves. In that sense, Lohengrin is really more of an anti-hero. In the end he is doubly disappointed because both, his love and his mission, have failed. I like that figure, because he's distinctly human to me, but even he hasn't got a shot against the powers of reality."

Hans Neuenfels is still an idealist, even after 36 years in the opera business. And though his brash animal metaphors can be misleading at first appearance, he is miles away from the ostentatiously ironic, happy-go-lucky opera productions... just as he doesn't subscribe to the breathlessly up-to-date productions that reduce the greater meaning of an opera to a boardroom or a military camp. Without fairy tale-like dimensions, he insists, Wagner's Musiktheater is deprived of an important dimension. And his understanding of fidelity to the work's intent means he tries to get as close as possible to the grandeur of Wagner's blueprint. That, he says, is the main duty of a production: to probe the musical concept and its radical original aspirations anew every time.

"And if it be considered conservative to believe in the ability of theater to communicate these ideals, then I suppose I am in fact a conservative" he concedes. And looks very much like he needs another cigarette just about now.

[DarkAngel]

 

Bargain alert..........
This 1963 Meistersinger with Hotter/Keilberth partnership has been reissued in a bargain box for $15 at Amazon USA, very pricey on used market

[DarkAngel]

Also puchased these two Knappertsbusch sets, the 1956 Ring is only $39 new at Amazon USA.........
Any comments on these?

[jlaurson]

Also puchased these two Knappertsbusch sets, the 1956 Ring is only $39 new at Amazon USA.........
Any comments on these?

the Kna' Meistersinger has always been a great bargain... and it's a very good recording.

The '56 Kna' Ring is solid... the Philips/Decca Kna' Parsifal legendary. Great stuff.

[Solitary Wanderer]

Big Wagner fan here.

I also discovered him when I was a teenager.

I'm travelling to Wellington in September to hear the NZSO perfrom a concert of Wagner Overtures/Preludes. We're literally planning a holiday around a Wagner concert 

Three years on and I've outdone myself 

Attended Die Walkure in San Francisco this year which was one of the best musical/threatrical performances I've experienced.

So much so that I've booked for the complete Ring Cycle in SF next year 

[zamyrabyrd]

Has anyone seen the film of Lohengrin, 2006, Baden-Baden? I just viewed it and decided that Klaus Florian Vogt is my prince!! His unflappable, unblinking total control in the etherial Wagnerian tessitura is quite astounding.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcSq3R6PzOg

I have a little problem with seeing this opera in modern dress, though. Lohengrin himself seated at a grand piano kind of strains credibility.

One can just imagine what it was like back in 1850 when Franz Liszt first conducted the opera.

ZB

[jlaurson]

Has anyone seen the film of Lohengrin, 2006, Baden-Baden?

http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2007/03/klaus-florian-vogts-splendor-lohengrin.html

[Scarpia]

I was just thinking, in a perfect world, Angelina Jolie would have Waltraud Meier's voice and could sing Venus in Tannhauser.  The Sharon Stone Kundry would also be essential.  Now who to sing Salome, but that's another thread...

[Sergeant Rock]

Now who to sing Salome, but that's another thread...

You need a girl in early adolescence, Jewish, and cute enough to tempt Herod. How about Natalie Portman, circa Beautiful Girls, with Birgit Nilsson's voice? 

Sarge

[Brahmsian]

You need a girl in early adolescence, Jewish, and cute enough to tempt Herod. How about Natalie Portman, circa Beautiful Girls, with Birgit Nilsson's voice? 

Sarge

Sarge, we have a winner.  Check the Salome thread! 

[DavidRoss]

You need a girl in early adolescence, Jewish, and cute enough to tempt Herod. How about Natalie Portman, circa Beautiful Girls, with Birgit Nilsson's voice? 

Too young and not up to the temptress role.

[jlaurson]

Too young and not up to the temptress role.

curmudgeon. i'll see you resist that before i believe it.

[DavidRoss]

curmudgeon. i'll see you resist that before i believe it.

Come on--she was 14, built like a boy, and with a voice like Birgit Nilsson would have wilted an iron bar.

Someone like Estella Warren would be far more believable (and hard to resist!) as a young temptress:

[knight66]

On another thread we had discussion around the virtues of the singer Gertrude Grob-Prandl. It was a name and voice that was new to me. Having been pointed to some tracks on Youtube, I really needed to get hold of some of her discs.

As well as a mixed recital, I bought a full live Tristan from Vienna in 1956. The excerpt on Youtube promised much.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDrIe2Xpqwk

So far I have managed two acts. I am not sure if I will bother with act three.

There are two flies in the ointment, one is the Tristan, the other is Cluytens. This is a speed merchant's interpretation. Very little by way of lingering and in comparison to say Furtwangler's transfixing way with the end of Act 1 or Kleiber's narcotic act 2, it is pedestrian. The sheer speed can emulate energy and this works well in the excerpt I have linked.

There you get the sound picture, a bit boxy, the orchestra sounds uningratiating. But overall Act 1 is fairly successful and the remarkable gifts of Grob-Prandl are well displayed. The Tristan is Rudolf Lustig. Initially I thought he was going to be an asset, healthy voice, a bit loud, but fairly satisfactory in Act 1.

Act 2 is rushed, so there is no sense of 'night', but the real problems here are that the singers are simply not given time to get round the phrasing, which becomes approximate and unfocused. Add to this exceptionally insensitive hollering by Tristan and there is not much there to attract one. It is cut, which is a distinct plus here.

I can't think that Act 3 will be other than a trial with this tenor and with the conductor seemingly intent on getting to the pub before it closes. No doubt I will get to hear it, but no time soon. I have never rated Cluytens very highly and this confirmed me in my opinion that having his enjoyable EMI Faust will probably 'do' me.

However, frankly, the entire Walhall issue is worth the budget price for the soprano singing in Act 1, it it a warm clarion voice, she does phrase well and does not utilise her astonishing volume to the detriment of the music. Unlike the tenor, she does sing to the marks and she provides a memorable and exciting experience.

Mike

[AndyD.]

I mentioned to Mike in PMs that, there are so many great first Acts of Tristan und Isolde (perhaps enough to start a whole 'nother thread). It's almost like that first act seems to inspire performers the most. Maybe because it's so hyperbolic, so typically Wagnerian. I don't know.

I do know that a Tristan und Isolde with a flubbed 2nd act is usually fatally flawed. Granted, the 2nd and 3rd acts are easily the hardest to perform, particularly the 3rd for the tenor and the second overall.

Still, being the Wagnerophile, I'll still step all over people to listen to the 1st act of this performance !!!

[kishnevi]

Listening now to the Zagrosek/Naxos Walkure.  Only real flaw is the Brunnhilde (Renate Behle) who gets screechy a little too often, especially in the final scene (similar flaw in the Brunnhilde of the Halle Gotterdammerung, also a live recording). There is stage noise, but no audience noise except applause at the end of the acts. 

Meanwhile, I noticed this is set to be released October 19

[Coopmv]

I mentioned to Mike in PMs that, there are so many great first Acts of Tristan und Isolde (perhaps enough to start a whole 'nother thread). It's almost like that first act seems to inspire performers the most. Maybe because it's so hyperbolic, so typically Wagnerian. I don't know.

I do know that a Tristan und Isolde with a flubbed 2nd act is usually fatally flawed. Granted, the 2nd and 3rd acts are easily the hardest to perform, particularly the 3rd for the tenor and the second overall.

Still, being the Wagnerophile, I'll still step all over people to listen to the 1st act of this performance !!!

I have an excellent recording here, though in the politically incorrect format which I rarely play ...

[kishnevi]

I have an excellent recording here, though in the politically incorrect format which I rarely play ...

Politically incorrect how?  I have the cheapie Brilliant issue.

[Coopmv]

Politically incorrect how?  I have the cheapie Brilliant issue.

You can almost count on one hand the number of forum members who listen to LP on a regular basis ...