Few cities in the world can boast of such a sustained and glorious relationship with opera as Munich. Here they have been made known, for example, from
Mozart's
Idomeneo
to
Jörg Widmann's
Babylon
, from
Hans Pfitzner's
Palestrina
to
Richard Strauss's
Capriccio
,
from Paul Hindemith's
Harmony of the World
to
Aribert Reimann's
Lear
,
from Walter's
Birds
Braunfels to
Hans Werner Henze's
Venus and Adonis
, not to mention his unrivaled curriculum of Wagnerian premieres:
Tristan and Isolde
,
The Master Singers of Nuremberg
,
The Gold of the Rhine
,
The Valkyrie
.
The opera is not here an addition, but a conquest of the city, which continues to shine proud, day after day, in its National Theater on Max-Joseph-Platz. Musical directors in the Bavarian capital have been none other than Hans von Bülow, Hermann Levi, Richard Strauss, Bruno Walter, Hans Knappertsbusch, Clemens Krauss, Georg Solti, Joseph Keilberth, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Zubin Mehta and Kirill Petrenko, who has just ceded the witness to Vladimir Jurowski. And Munich was also for years the main center of operations for Carlos Kleiber, the greatest and most elusive of modern conductors.
Some of these musicians were also mayors in their day, that is, responsible for the artistic direction of the opera house, as did Knappertsbusch or Sawallisch, who was succeeded in 1993 by the British Peter Jonas, responsible for a radical modernization and transformation of the repertoire of the current Bavarian State Opera (the old Wagner or Strauss Court Opera) during the 13 years he was in office, the same ones that have practically passed its last occupant, the Austrian Nikolaus Bachler, worthy continuator of his legacy. The due tribute to Jonas is still pending, who died last year in full generalized confinement, who has had to be postponed a couple of times due to the health crisis,Bachler's farewell was seen on Friday with a sort of operatic gala that has nothing to do with the bland and predictable clumsiness that long sequences of arias performed by big names tend to become.
Nikolaus Bachler, shadow architect of the concert 'The Turning Point' Wilfried Hösl
From the outset, although the
playwright
did not say anything about it, the concert took its title,
Der wendende Punkt (The turning point),
from a verse from the
Sonnets to Orpheus
by Rilke, which would then in turn be the focus of Bachler's own few spoken interventions from the stage. Specifically, the quote came from the twelfth sonnet of the second part: “He wants transformation. Oh, be enthusiastic about the flame, / inside there is something that escapes you, that shows transformations, / that spirit that projects, that has the mastery of the terrestrial, / nothing loves so much in the curve of the figure as the point of inflection " (in the classic translation of Eustaquio Barjau). This already had very little to do with the finery to use, where subtleties are conspicuous by their absence and command the whims of the divos, but Bachler went even further,giving room to several of the operas that have seen new productions in recent years under his auspices and articulating a slight but very intelligent dramaturgy (videos of the theater's guts included) so that the set was not a frayed, tedious and confusing tapestry, but that had illation, interest, agility and internal logic.
His proposal had the complicity of an extraordinary group of singers and directors, all linked to a greater or lesser extent with the theater. There was no doubt about those who led the orchestra: Kent Nagano was Bachler's predecessor in the brief interregnum that separated his quartermaster from Jonas's and was its first musical director; Ivor Bolton has built, from the stylistic conscience, the enviable baroque and classical baggage that has been accumulating during the last three decades; Asher Fisch, who directed the unforgettable
Capriccio
of the Royal Theater in Madrid, it is the perfect wild card, capable of shining in any repertoire, that any theater wants for itself;
and Kirill Petrenko, as has been said, has been the musical director for much of Bachler's tenure, raising even more, if possible, the quality of an orchestra that, together with the Vienna Philharmonic, is at the top of the world. world ranking of the formations linked to an opera theater.
The height of luxury has been to have briefly, and only as a pianist, the Greek conductor Constantinos Carydis, who has been conducting
Idomeneo
magnificently
this summer in Munich.
Christian Gerhaher sings 'Possente spirto' by Monteverdi under the direction of Ivor Bolton.Wilfried Hösl
What we could call conceptual dramaturgy led to the opening of the concert with the Prelude to
The Gold of the Rhine
: the beginning of the world, the beginning of everything. The eve of
The Ring of the Nibelung
was released in Munich on September 22, 1869 and the new production of Andreas Kriegenburg's tetralogy has been one of the theater's great bets in the last decade. Could there be a different beginning to this? Then infrequent operas followed:
Poulenc's
Dialogues of Carmelites
,
Strauss's
The Silent Woman
,
Monteverdi's
L'Orfeo
or
Dvořák's
Rusalka
, which shared the first part with more common titles, such as
Le nozze di Figaro
, Suor Angelica
or
Andrea Chénier.
There was also room for a
Lied
(
Mozart's
Abendempfindung
) and a string quartet (the end of the slow movement of Beethoven's Op. 132, which invited us to think of the opera house as a convalescent who is beginning to recover from a long and serious disease that has kept him prostrate and silent), played by four instrumentalists of the orchestra locked in three cages hanging overhead.
They all sang well or extremely well: following the same order above, Anne Schwanewilms, Georg Zeppenfeld, Christian Gerhaher, Diana Damrau, Anne Sofie von Otter, Pavol Breslik, Günther Groissböck, Ermonela Jaho and Jonas Kaufmann (Anna Netrebko was unable to travel to Munich due to current restrictions, but few must have
missed
his “
Vissi d'arte
”). There is nothing. But, beyond the interpretation, the interest was in the internal connections between the arias and in the way of presenting them on stage. Sir Morosus, the protagonist of
The Silent Woman
, hates music and makes it clear in his third act monologue: “How beautiful music really is! But how beautiful it is when it has stopped ringing! ”. And Georg Zeppenfeld ended up lying on the floor, ready to sleep, exclaiming "Just silence!" and he folded his jacket to use as a pillow. Right afterwards, instead, Christian Gerhaher used all Orpheus' resources as a musician and singer to convince Charon to help him cross the Styx. Two nuns expressed very different sentiments at both ends of this part, as did the prince and Vodník in
Rusalka's
two arias.
, sung the best by Pavol Breslik and Günther Groissböck in front of a white dress partially submerged in water in a transparent container as a symbol of the aquatic nymph.
Some singers came out characterized, others dressed in a formal or informal way, sometimes they remained on stage to listen to their companions (Diana Damrau during
Anne Sofie von Otter's intimate
Lied
, in the very final stretch of her career, but unforgettable Oktavian in this theater under the direction of Carlos Kleiber) or they sang on the proscenium so that, after them, the stage was retouched before tackling the next piece, without downtime.
Marlis Petersen during the final scene of 'Salome' Wilfried Hösl
The beginning of the second part ended up redeeming us from the pretentious
Don Giovanni
that had just premiered in Salzburg, as Alex Esposito and Ivor Bolton returned to the aria in the Leporello catalog its original verve and humor on a video in which the Italian baritone characterized himself same as several of those feminine conquests of his master. Elīna Garanča, in front of a crucifix of light, exhibited might in “
O mon Fernand!
”, By
La favorite,
one of its great specialties: it is difficult to imagine it better sung. The inevitable Wagnerian quota, unavoidable in Munich, had four exceptional protagonists: Anja Kampe (Sieglinde), Simon Keenlyside (Wolfram, who replaced the farewell to Wotan that the sick Bryn Terfel should have sung), Nina Stemme (Isolde) and Wolfgang Koch (Sachs); another hard-to-beat quartet. And between the monologue of the illusion or the madness of the third act of
The singing teachers
and the final scene of
Salome
There was one of the genres of the afternoon: hidden in the cobbler's wagon (taken from the David Bösch production) was hidden Marlis Petersen, who left to become Salome at the same time as Wolfgang Koch (the Jokanaan of the Munich production , who has been able to see each other again this summer) placed the prophet's head in his hands.
Adrianne Pieczonka reflects on time in the final monologue of the first act of 'The Knight of the Rose' Wilfried Hösl
Jonas Kaufmann returned to sing an aria by Paul from
Die tote Stadt
de Korngold, one of the great successes of the theater in recent years, and the operatic section closed with the monologue on the time of the marshal from the first act of
The Knight of the rose
, in which Adrianne Pieczonka replaced the announced Anja Harteros and ended up sadly supported by the great clock of Barrie Kosky's production released this year (although without sitting on its pendulum, as Marlis Petersen did in an image impossible to forget ). Nikolaus Bachler then recited, linking with the beginning, the thirteenth
Sonnet to Orpheus
, which Rilke himself considered as “the one that is closest to me and, ultimately, is the one that has the most value”: “Get ahead of any farewell, as if you had left it / behind it, like the winter that is leaving. / Well, under the winters there is one so infinitely winter / that, if you pass it, your heart will resist ”. And then the other local idol, Christian Gerhaher, returned, accompanied by his faithful Gerold Huber, and sang
Abschied (Farewell)
,
Franz Schubert's
Lied
that they themselves performed more than a year ago in the concerts that, Monday after Monday, offered by the
streaming
theater
free to keep the hope and flame of your activity alight.
It was Bachler's goodbye, Petrenko's imminent and, hopefully, the end of the theater's most difficult stage, closed and at half throttle for the last year and a half (and still limited to fifty percent of its capacity).
How can you not remember your text by Johann Mayrhofer?
“You advance through mountains, you arrive at many green places;
I have to go back completely alone;
Goodbye!
This is how it should be.
Parting, separating from the one you love, ah, how it afflicts the spirit!
Lakes like mirrors, forests and meadows: everything disappears;
the echo of your voices I hear fade.
Goodbye!
How sad it sounds, ah, how it saddens the heart!
To leave, to separate from the one you love ”.
Final family photo of all concert participants Wilfried Hösl
No one sings this
Lied
like Gerhaher, capable of expressing the pain of parting with maximum restraint and emotion. In any typical operatic gala, these three minutes would have been the perfect anticlimax, a renunciation of the apotheosis, the long-suffering toast of
La traviata
, with such a roster of backstage singers and a marvelous orchestra in the pit. Here they were just the opposite: the dream ending, the perfect finishing touch. All the participants came out to say hello and the public, knowing that there would be no tips, because they were not possible in an intelligent and non-pachanguera conception of what an operatic gala should be, demanded their departure once more, and another, and another. Only then could they give thanks for the gift of more than three hours that they had just received. Nina Stemme brought the prodigy's stunner, Nikolaus Bachler, to the stage, applauded by the audience, singers, orchestra and conductors in unison. But his triumph went beyond the personal: it was the victory of the institution, of opera as a genre, of the city as its proud, invincible and inexhaustible showcase.
Curiously, this
Turning Point
had much more interest and substance than
Wagner's
new production of
Tristan and Isolde
, which this summer has caused massive pilgrimages to Munich to hear the first incarnation of the leading roles by Jonas Kaufmann and Anja Harteros, at the same time that it supposed the final dismissal of Kirill Petrenko and Nikolaus Bachler as musical and artistic directors, respectively, of the Bavarian State Opera. Last Saturday, in what was his last performance this year, there were still dozens of people at the entrance of the National Theater looking for a ticket.
Nobody is perfect and, despite the continued fiascos in numerous theaters in Europe, Nikolaus Bachler had entrusted the new production of the work that forever changed the history of opera (if not music) to Krzysztof Warlikowski, a director overrated to the unspeakable and who, surprisingly, despite some specific finding (
Strauss's
Shadowless Woman
, here in Munich) continues to enjoy credit among the main managers of the great European theaters. At the premiere he was mercilessly booed by an audience that knows something about Richard Wagner and who is very proud that
Tristan und Isolde
It was premiered here in 1865. As is usual in his productions, the Polish director plays the distraction: since he has nothing to say, and it is enough to listen to him to verify it, he takes refuge in the introduction of abstruse elements to leave the viewer unprepared with the sensation that it is he who really understands the opera on duty.
Failing to understand in his brand new
Tristan
What does that strange old man with long hair and walking stick that we see at the beginning and end of the opera paint on stage, why do the two main characters have, already while the prelude is playing, as many doubles looking like mannequins, or who are those seated children? at the table (again, mannequins or dolls, this time immobile) throughout Act 3 they seem to launch the message, reversing the tables, that he is the smart one and we are the fools.
Okka von der Damerau (Brangäne), Jonas Kaufmann (Tristan) and Wolfgang Koch (Kurwenal) in the first act of the opera.Wilfried Hösl
But his tricks are old and, to repeat them (his gruesome
Elektra
last year in Salzburg also used the dolls as almost ubiquitous extras), they are already very worn out.
Another that frequents a lot is that of the projection of videos that generate a parallel action, almost always absurd, when not openly contradictory with the essence of the work: impossible to forget and forgive the one of the interview with Lady Di in the
Alceste
of Gluck from the Royal Theater. The colorful and psychedelic images that we have to endure in one of the most extraordinary moments of the opera, after Tristan and Isolde have drunk the love filter in the first act, would be clumsy and laughable even at a hippie party in the sixties. And if Wagner saw his two great creations turned into rough repeat offenders, he would rightly think that Warlikowski had drunk the potion of stupidity. What in Wagner is ambiguity, areas of shadow, space for interpretation, fog, the Polish turns into fluorescent light (the one that illuminates Tristan's agony in the third act is terrifying), papier-mâché, bluff, deceit.
As is usual in his montages, in Warlikowski's proposal contradictions accumulate. In its unique scenography (designed by his faithful Małgorzata Szczęśniak, also responsible for some bland and shocking costumes), it is impossible to clarify whether we are in a public or private space; the constant presence of the young sailor with the blindfolds and the pretense of a mad king only manages to distract from the essential action and does not contribute absolutely anything; for Kurwenal to lie on the same couch where Isolde, a princess, just did, is a real nonsense; Nor does it make sense that Brangäne - now a nurse, now a waitress, changing her apron - punishes herself facing the wall while Tristan and Isolde drink the love potion that she has served them herself; It is inexplicable, during his long agony,Tristan's constant bustle of the table (surrounded by dolls, a distant imitation - it seems - of
Tadeusz Kantor's
Dead Class
) on the couch, alternating positions with his walking mannequin;
and the deaths of Kurwenal and Melot deserve a less grotesque rendering at the end of the third act.
However, this staging, clumsy and hollow as it is, is not as unnerving as that of the aforementioned
Elektra from
Salzburg.
Dolls, walking mannequins, Kurwenal (Wolfgang Koch) and Tristan (Jonas Kaufmann) in the third act of the opera.Wilfried Hösl
Anja Harteros and Jonas Kaufmann –the girl and the boy of their eyes for the faithful of this theater– concentrated, of course, all the glances. It escapes no one that neither of them has the ideal voice that one or the other role demands, those who have reached the edge of the bell that would mark the impossibility, physically and psychically, of undertaking them. Her voice lacks volume and drama; to him, heroism and forcefulness in the highs. But both are consummate artists, supplementing what physics denies them with a display of intelligence and their vast arsenal of technical resources. Harteros inevitably tends towards lyricism, which is the territory where she feels most comfortable, which is why she revealed her greatest shortcomings in the incarnation of the angry woman in the first act and did her best in the calmer sections of the second e,even, in its final transfiguration, which she turns into an intimate, serene piece drawn not in oil, but with pastel paintings. Kaufmann knows them all and, as he is not afraid of anything, he saves the current deficiencies and problems of his voice, which are not few, with his extraordinary musical intuition and, above all, his courage. With enormous astuteness he graduates his forces according to the demands of each moment and manages to arrive at the most demanding moments of the third act with enough reserves - the right ones - so that the credibility of his character is not affected or he weakens the exemplary Wagnerian dramaturgical construction. It is in the half voices where he shows his best stripes and where his phrasing flows with greater naturalness and conviction, just as it happened in his first and highly anticipated Otello at the Royal Opera House in London.which also gave rise to mixed feelings.
His natural understanding with Harteros (in recent years they have recreated numerous operatic couples) manages to disguise several of the shortcomings of Warlikowski's incongruous proposal. It is significant, however, that in the revival of Wagner's opera at the 2022 Festival, they will no longer be the ones who give life to Tristan and Isolde, but will be relieved by Nina Stemma and Stuart Skelton (the same ones who have Simon Stone's new production premiered in Aix-en-Provence this summer, which, crazy as it is, is infinitely more interesting and visually attractive than this goofy from Munich). Everything points, therefore, that what has been seen during this month of July, perhaps as a loan from Harteros and Kaufmann before the farewell of Nikolaus Bachler, has been the flower of a day.
Kurwenal is not the best role for Wolfgang Koch (much better as Sachs the day before), nor Mika Kares (the Commander of
Don Giovanni
of Salzburg) is not the noble and deeply pained King Marke that we imagine, and of which Franz-Josef Selig did give a perfect and moving account in Aix-en-Provence.
The Finnish bass hollows out too many notes and its long phrases are streaked with discontinuities.
Okka von der Damerau is a stiff, somewhat cold Brangäne who failed to elaborate and let her voice resonate a bit more in her wonderful warning calls in the second act, which was partially offset by her magnificent intervention in the third. , in which Warlikowski presents her as a plaintive outfit, black veil included.
In his two very brief speeches, Dean Power made an excellent impression as the pastor.
Isolde (Anja Harteros) before Tristan's digger (Jonas Kaufmann) while a video shows them lying on a hotel bed.Wilfried Hösl
The best that can be said about Kirill Petrenko's conducting is that it gives us a perfect scan of the score: you hear everything, perfectly crumbled and amalgamated, and there is not a single piece of the highly complex puzzle, constantly metamorphosing, that is out of place. . He marks with crystal clarity and the orchestra, which knows him so well after so many hours of living together, follows him with blind obedience. However, his proposal lacks meat, flexibility, abandon, spontaneity and even, in some moments, intensity, the virtues that characterize the conducting of the greatest living conductor of the Wagnerian score: Daniel Barenboim. After a model Prelude, in which he let the silences also speak eloquently, he directed a very contained and controlled first act, although he recovered his best essences in the final section.In the second he took off again in the most lyrical and backward moments of the love duo, while in the third he was very attentive to Kaufmann feeling comfortable in his inhuman
tour de force
, reweaving a perfect and delicate sound tapestry for the final transfiguration of Isolde. On Saturday they threw braves at him even before he marked the entry of the first measure, such is the enthusiasm and admiration that he has managed to arouse during his Munich years.
What perhaps was not expected is that, when it was his turn to receive the final applause, the orchestra and audience (waving their handkerchiefs aloud) would present him with
Muss i den
, a German folk song in Swabian dialect in which, before his traditional
Wanderjahr
, a man bids farewell to his beloved until he returns to marry her. Petrenko is going - he's been gone a long time, actually - to Berlin and it was the way to say goodbye not only to him, but also to Nikolaus Bachler, also focused during the song in his proscenium box. To chase away the final nostalgia, the orchestra attacked a pair of lively waltzes from
The Knight
of the Rose
spontaneously danced by some of the singers and ending two days of maximum intensity in Munich, in which it has been shown how far the communion of an audience with the opera house of their city can go;
and with his orchestra, with his singers, with his managers.
Concert and operatic performance were offered simultaneously live on giant screens at the neighboring Marstallplatz under the motto "Opera for all."
What in other places might sound like an imposture, a beautiful and salable slogan for the gallery, here in Munich, as almost three centuries of idyll between its opera house and the inhabitants of the city guarantee, it has all the signs of being a faithful description of reality.
Discover the best stories of the summer in
Magazine V.
