Alemania
Higher Powers
Jesse Simon
The mythological and the domestic are the
two central threads that run through Strauss’ operas, and if Die Frau ohne
Schatten falls unquestionably into the former category, both its spirit and
human worlds are rendered familiar by a desire for domestic stability shared by
the four protagonists. For the new production at Dresden’s Semperoper, director
David Bösch managed to concoct a staging in which elements of the magical and
mundane were held in near-perfect balance, letting neither its fantastic
elements nor its human quarrels seem intrusive or implausible; when combined
with a first-rate cast and the transcendent refinement of Christian
Thielemann’s musical direction, the production offered a fittingly grand
tribute to Strauss and von Hofmannsthal’s greatest achievement.
The story of Die Frau is set within
a densely symbolic world of von Hofmannsthal’s imagining – it has few obvious
connections with the mainstream of Classical or Norse mythologies – and
perhaps for this reason there has been a tendency within the past decade to
treat it not as a simple fairy tale, but to respond to its narrative challenges
with conceptual readings of commensurate density. While this approach has
resulted in some memorable versions, the central (and admirable) ambition
of Mr Bösch’s staging seems to have been to tell a potentially complex story as
clearly and straightforwardly as possible. Straightforward, however, need not
mean conservative, and the success of Mr Bösch’s vision is that he was able to
convey the essence of the story while avoiding the path of traditionalism.
Mr Bösch has developed a signature style
that draws heavily on an imagined post-war, working-class suburbia, albeit one
that is never so rigorously realistic as to exclude moments of fanciful beauty.
That world was nowhere to be found in the opening scenes of the first act,
which unfolded in a monochromatic dream world made of diaphanous sheets. The
human world, to which the action shifts mid-way through the act, was in its own
way just as unreal – a grimy concrete space, lit by fluorescent tubes and
furnished with vats of ominously gaseous chemicals, in which the Dyer and his
wife practiced their trade – but the ugly armchair, the wood-panelled
television set and the temperamental washing machine anchored it just enough in
Mr Bösch’s suburban reality to offer maximum contrast with the billowy
placelessness of the spirit world while giving the scenes that unfolded there a
familiar domesticity.
Indeed it was the stylised squalor of the
human world that brought out Mr Bösch’s most inspired direction. The long
confrontation between Barak and his wife at the centre of the first act was
close to perfect, a beautifully modulated quarrel of conflicting desires in
which neither party came across as unreasonable or unsympathetic: Barak’s
legendary good nature was balanced by a distinct lumpen streak while the
Färberin’s harsh tongue and hard exterior seemed born of genuine
disappointment. The scene was an extraordinary achievement: completely
unforced, but equally free of wasted movement, dramaturgical laziness or
condescension. Admittedly not all of the scenes were equally rooted in
naturalism, but even the opera’s intrusions of the supernatural showcased Mr
Bösch’s ability to integrate moments of convincing spectacle without disrupting
the narrative flow: the explosion of pink and descent of twirling dresses
during the Färberin’s first act visit from the Empress and the Nurse were a
delight, the appearances of the falcon were well-handled, and the unreal events
of the third act maintained a consistent logic.
Of course the staging was not infallible.
The spirit-world scenes, despite their visual grace, never achieved the same
levels of dramatic concentration as those in Barak’s house, and throughout the
evening there was far too much reliance on video projections. The video imagery
– some based in silent-film expressionism, some obviously beholden to the most
modern digital trickery – was both brilliantly executed and extremely clever in
its thematic relationship to the story, but it also felt unnecessary in the
face of such a well-assembled staging; in the latter scenes of the second act
it was so prevalent as to be distracting, while in crucial moments of the third
act, especially the reunion of the Kaiser and Kaiserin, it came across as a
lack of inspiration. Such minor points, however, could not detract from the
staging’s overwhelming strengths.
Even if the staging had been less
compelling, the evening would still have been memorable for its performances.
Camilla Nylund started singing the role of the Kaiserin around eight years ago and
has since become one its most exciting modern interpreters. Two of her finest
scenes on this evening showcased both her mastery of emotional range and her
ability to move plausibly between extremes: the peaceful awakening of her first
appearance was transformed to sudden dread when confronted with the urgent
necessity of finding a shadow; and in the third act monologue she built from a
softly-phrased purity – almost a direct extension of the gentle solo-violin
passage that introduces the scene – to an existential crisis of monumental
proportions. Yet the secret strength of her performance was an ability to
remain in the background without losing her purchase on the thread of the
drama. If much of the first two acts shift their focus to the Färberin, Ms
Nylund’s brief monologue in the second and, especially, her rejection of the
nurse in the third act came as immediate reminders of the Kaiserin’s
centrality.
In Miina-Liisa Värelä the production had a
Färberin of equal distinction. Ms Värelä gave an excellent reading of the role
a year ago at a concert performance in Berlin, but on this evening her approach
was more nuanced and more persuasive. In the extraordinary first act scene with
Barak she had an almost conversational ease of delivery which gave her barbed
banter a caustic edge without tipping over into mean-spirited hectoring. Indeed
Ms Värelä was able to suggest that the Färberin’s increasingly haughty, increasingly
irrational behaviour came not from the temptations of the Nurse, but from her
frustrations with the uncommunicative, uncomprehending Barak; these
frustrations reached a magnificent peak in the final scene of the second act,
which was less a taunting farewell than a final frenzied attempt to make her
husband realise there was indeed something wrong with their relationship.
Evelyn Herlitzius is well-known for her
complete dedication to character, and her Nurse was unsurprisingly electrifying.
In her first three dialogues – with the messenger, the emperor and, finally,
the empress – she made no secret of her agenda, nor of her contempt for
humanity; but if she established the Nurse early as an unambiguously
antagonistic presence, she always stopped well short of exaggerated villainy.
Indeed, the confidence and subtle control she brought to each of her
appearances in the first two acts allowed the Nurse to emerge as the fulcrum on
which the fates of the four characters were balanced. Even in the third act,
there was more connivance than actual fear in her attempts to steer the
Kaiserin away from the threshold.
Eric Cutler had the right heroic tone for
the Kaiser, but there were moments in his phrasing that could sound
overmannered; if his crisp, highly-articulated syllables had a theatrical
quality that worked with the fantastic adventure described in the first act
monologue, the approach seemed oddly matched to the emotional volatility of his
second act scene. Oleksandr Pushniak, however, was an effortlessly natural
Barak: in the first act he was an ideal sparring partner for Ms Värelä,
balancing obvious frustrations with an unfeigned generosity of spirit; and the
slow-dawning confusion that overtakes the character during the course of the
second act was no less credibly rendered than the overwhelming remorse of the
third. The evening also benefitted from the presence of an unusually strong
spirit messenger and some excellent off-stage voices.
Christian Thielemann has few contemporary
equals when it comes to the operas of Strauss, and in recent years he has
emerged as one of Die Frau’s greatest twenty-first-century champions. In
addition to his insistence on performing the work without the cuts that marred
most post-war performances, his appreciation of the score’s profundities is
apparent in nearly every bar. While his tempi on this evening were never broad
to the point of slowing down the action, there was a sense of reverent wonder
in his patient approach to the score’s most sensuous passages. The brief
orchestral reconciliation of Barak and his wife in the first act was luminous,
and the bittersweet finale of that same act, with its offstage male chorus, was
taken at a hypnotic pace that captured the full grace of Barak’s domestic
pathos. Of course, Mr Thielemann had no trouble summoning stormy playing from
the orchestra – in the Erdenflug interlude or the Kaiserin’s turbulent third
act monologue – but it was the finale of the second act, where the cruelty
of the Färberin’s words and the threat of higher powers were undercut continually
by flashes of beauty, in which the range and depth of Mr Thielemann’s interpretive
insights were most apparent.
Since the 1950s, Die Frau has been
something of an ‘event’ opera, not perhaps as widely loved as Rosenkavalier
or Ariadne, but a work whose perceived inaccessibility is overcome easily
by the presence of great singers and a sympathetic conductor. But if
appreciation of the opera is enhanced by one’s willingness to immerse
themselves in von Hofmannsthal’s arcane mythology – or at least to suspend
their reservations – Mr Bösch’s staging made a solid argument that its
underlying story is no less universal than the emotional spectrum of Strauss’
score. And when a well-told staging is combined with appropriately grand
musical forces – as they were on this evening – there can be no doubt that
we are in the presence of a masterpiece.
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