Jonas Kaufmann / Recensioni

The onward march of Korngold's opera Die tote Stadt back into the mainstream continues with its return to the Bavarian State Opera after more than 60 years. And you're unlikely to come across a better performance of the work that famously had a double premiere in both Hamburg and Cologne on the same night in 1920 and then first reached Munich two years later. The opera then suffered from both Nazi racial-cultural policies and anti-Romantic modernist prejudices. But the gap between the city's single postwar staging in the mid-50s and today's did, however, provide the first full studio recording, made in the 70s with Erich Leinsdorf and Munich's other great orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and which effectively launched the opera on to its current revivalist trajectory. Jonas Kaufmann (Paul) © Wilfried Hösl Jonas Kaufmann (Paul) © Wilfried Hösl Simon Stone's production was first seen in Basel in 2016, and makes a good fit for the BSO stage. His concept has the smack of genius about it in the ingenuity and perceptiveness with which he conveys a plot that is in effect two-thirds a dream. The 'dead city' of the title, Bruges, merely becomes metaphor as a place to leave in order to overcome bereavement. Ralph Myers' single set is a modular house, first seen from the street as Paul's housekeeper, Brigitta, encourages his friend Frank to peer through the windows at the shrine Paul has installed as a memorial to his late wife, Marie, who, we are later shown, died from cancer. Moving inside, and the modern apartment is set in every realistic detail, down to the food packets in the kitchen cupboards. As Paul's imagination takes hold, when the arrival of his wife's lookalike, the dancer Marietta, sets him off into a lengthy reverie, the house begins to disassemble. His own rooms, switched around in position, become the lodgings of Marietta's debauched theatrical troupe, and when the dream turns ghoulish, Stone is brilliant at encapsulating the stuff of nightmares. Paul bumps into his own doppelganger in the warren of lanes that his house has become, doors in his home open on to brick walls where rooms should be, and his whole family, including children, first seen like a poignant flashback to happier times of easy domesticity, multiply to become the procession that invades and entraps his consciousness. As reality returns, so too does Paul's home in its original state. Jonas Kaufmann (Paul) and Marlis Petersen (Marietta) © Wilfried Hösl Jonas Kaufmann (Paul) and Marlis Petersen (Marietta) © Wilfried Hösl In any production of Die tote Stadt worth its salt the dividing line between dream and reality, as Paul pursues Marietta as a perceived reincarnation of his wife, needs to be ambiguous, something that Stone's approach achieves unfailingly, teasing us with situations that begin plausibly but drift off into unexpected visions. His direction of the singers is no less accomplished, helped by the fact that the BSO cast employs some of the best singing actors in the business. Marlis Petersen (Marietta) and Andrzej Filonczyk (Frank/Fritz) © Wilfried Hösl Marlis Petersen (Marietta) and Andrzej Filonczyk (Frank/Fritz) © Wilfried Hösl The tenor role of Paul is one of the most punishing in the repertoire, particularly high-lying, often histrionic in its force and as demanding as Siegfried but squeezed into an opera half the length of Wagner's eponymous work. In Jonas Kaufmann it has met its match: his stamina never lets up, he throws his all into the character and rattles off reams of mellifluous tone without the crooning that can sometimes dog his singing. No less a contribution was made by Marlis Petersen. Her voice may be on a more refined scale, but my goodness she can launch herself into a role, channelling Salome and Lulu into the taunting, lascivious Marietta of Paul's imagination. Birgitta perhaps lies a little high for Jennifer Johnston, but her communicativeness and velvety tone were much in evidence; Andrzej Filonczyk's double act as Frank and Franz was neatly drawn, with a beguiling Pierrot's Lied at its heart: and Mirjam Mesak (Juliette), Corinna Scheurle (Lucienne), Manuel Günther (Gaston/Victorian) and Dean Power (Graf Albert) made up the rest of the dance troupe, singing and acting with panache. <i>Die tote Stadt</i> © Wilfried Hösl Die tote Stad To cap it all, the Bayerisches Staatsorchester's playing was incandescent. Kirill Petrenko, conducting his penultimate new production as the BSO's out-going general music director, was clearly loving every minute, coaxing sounds from Korngold's opulent, searing score that were both sumptuous and crystalline. True, his slow tempo for the return of “Glück, das mir verblieb” at the very end of the opera caught Kaufmann out briefly, but in general the pacing and the sheer generosity of the music-making were both impressive and emotionally satiating.

In the title role, Elena Maximova disappointed. She has the looks and moves for the part, power to burn and the right sort of dark colour in the voice. But a thick accent was allied to awful diction, with hardly a consonant intelligible all evening. I spent the evening struggling to work out the words from a combination of memory and back-translation of the surtitles, and that kills any possibility of being swept away by siren-like sexuality, which is required to make the whole opera plausible. Just like the singing, the orchestral performance was mixed. Bertrand de Billy kept things moving nicely and strings and woodwind gave good, precise performances: the prelude to Act III, when they’re playing on their own, was the orchestral highlight of the evening. But there were simply too many errors and hesitancies in brass and percussion: this is a score where anything less than immaculate timing of triangle or tambourine notes can throw the whole flow of the music. The result was an orchestral performance that was adequate without ever touching greatness. Zambello’s staging is appealing: her take on 19th century Seville is well lit and bustling, very much one’s ideal of a Hispanic city in the burning sun gathered from Zorro movies or elsewhere. But it gives a lot of rope on which a revival director can hang himself: there is a huge amount of movement on stage and it all needs to be executed crisply. Under the revival direction of Duncan Macfarland and choreography of Sirena Tocco, last night’s cast and chorus were good enough to execute it all correctly, but not good enough to give the sense of doing so with abandon. The defining example was extras abseiling down the walls, who landed with care rather than with a thump and a flourish; the exception was the Royal Opera Youth Company, with the children throwing themselves into the action with delightful abandon and brio. For anyone seeing Carmen for the first time, this production will have been a more than satisfactory evening. Old hands hoping to see something extra will find it in Hymel and Car, but not elsewhere.

Vratogna is in total command, vocally and dramatically, ever alert to the sinuous subtleties of Verdi’s most flexible score, dark and menacing, and ruthless in his racist determination to destroy his man. He knows instinctively that all devious schemers can present a plausible face to the world while sowing seeds of doubt in malleable minds. Vratogna took over the role just three weeks ago (just as he stepped in as Scarpia three years ago) and it was he, not Kaufmann, who drew and deserved the greatest ovation on opening night.That storm scene introduces another character to the piece in this new production: the set itself. Designer Boris Kudlička has built a clever, shape-shifting tunnel that fragments and slides, lit starkly by Bruno Poet to emphasise Otello’s descent into jealous madness, or bathed in soft, golden hues when hidden rooms and courtyards are revealed behind attractive Moorish tracery. The set both brilliantly frames and comments on the drama, and is suitably ambiguous for a production that consciously moves away from the realism of Moshinsky’s Renaissance world towards an expressionism that more closely reflects Verdi’s most daringly fluid score.The Italian soprano Maria Agresta makes an implacable Desdemona, devastated yet dignified in the face of Otello’s false accusations of adultery and singing with a tender yet creamy intensity, never more so than in Piangea cantando nell’erma landa and her heartfelt Ave Maria, moments before her demise. The Canadian tenor Frédéric Antoun is a lithely elegant Cassio, and among the smaller roles, Estonian mezzo Kai Rüütel as Emilia and Korean bass In Sung Sim really make their mark.