Salzburg Festival / Reviews

Aus der Geburtsstadt des Gaudimax Mozart ist von einer wahren Flut der Heiterkeit zu berichten. Als erste Quelle dafür ist Cecilia Bartoli auszumachen. Die Heiterkeit der Vokalvirtuosin erinnert bekanntlich an ein munteres Bächlein, das blubbert, gluckst und sprudelt. Der zweite Zufluss: Rolando Villazón. Die Heiterkeit des Mexikaners ist druckvoller, kommt einer Fontäne, einem Hochstrahlbrunnen, einem Wasserwerfer gleich: umwerfend lustig! Wenn nun die quirlige Intendantin der Salzburger Pfingstfestspiele den quietschfidelen Intendanten der Salzburger Mozartwoche einlädt, an der Salzach eine der populärsten komischen Opern der Musikgeschichte zu inszenieren, dann muss das doch ein ziemlicher Kracher werden.

The singers maintain a sense of structure in their wildly veering vocal lines and intense onstage action. Angela Denoke’s Montezuma has a dramatic, direct soprano that communicates her character and emotions expressively. Opposite her stands Bo Skovhus as Cortez, who adds the challenge of surrealistic physical spasms to the already-considerable challenge of his vocal part. He approaches it with frankness that matches Denoke’s, singing solidly and straightforwardly. Both voices carry through the large space while maintaining a natural, spoken quality. Montezuma is supported beautifully by a rich-voiced contralto (Marie-Ange Todorovitch) and a bell-toned, inhumanly high soprano (Susanna Andersson), who sometimes sing from the pit and sometimes climb onto the stage to commiserate with her and do shots together. The two “speakers” (Stephan Rehm and Peter Pruchniewitz), who support Cortez, also manage their tricky rhythms and guttural grunts with accuracy and feeling. Rihm’s music and Konwitschny’s vision have combined to create something extraordinary that is simultaneously abstract and concrete, challenging and accessible, surprising and familiar, modern and ancient, exciting and bewildering. If this is a possible future of opera, it’s one worth pursuing.

West Side Story, an unconventional choice for a festival that focuses on classical music and opera, but a great success, which has also been planned for a run of long sold out performances at the Summer Festival. Bartoli is Maria, in a role which has been tailored to fit her by stage director Philip Wm. McKinley. She is already on stage before the music begins, in a prologue that the director has created in order to show what Maria is doing twenty years after Tony’s death - she’s still working in the tailor shop, and when the working day is finished sets out to walk home in the neighborhood in which two decades before she found and lost the love of her life. In the street, she thinks and remembers. And there starts the music, with Bartoli on stage for the whole of the performance, among the memories of her youth. She is doubled by another, younger Maria, Michelle Veintimilla, who takes part in the action and the dialogue but does not sing - all the singing belongs to the older Maria’s memories, and is accordingly performed by Bartoli. This looks a little awkward during the duets, but in general it works and is compelling. Bartoli’s operatic voice is somewhat too heavy for musicals, and the vibrato may at moments sound inappropriate, but she sings with delicacy and tenderness, and the applause that met her rendition of Somewhere was fully deserved. As Tony, tenor Norman Reinhardt sounded more at ease with the lighter singing style and showcased his excellent vocal skills in the aria Maria. All other singers had a background in musicals and were great performers, especially Karen Olivo, ideally cast as Anita.

Not for one moment does the opera tire or bore the audience thanks to the dancers’ choreographies and video art projection onto the screen that render the idea of a magical world. However, it was the quality of the singers and orchestra that ensured the success of the performance. First of all, Cecilia Bartoli, in the title roles, gave an intense unforgettable interpretation, her Alcina was touching, needy, her fear of getting old and losing her power and charm was delivered with the hues of her voice as well as the acting. Philippe Jaroussky was a credible undecisive Ruggiero from the beginning when he was under the spell to the end when he finally finds the courage to break the spell. Sandrine Piau was an amazing Morgana, her coloratura was pure and her acting was very apt to the comic role of this character, Kristina Hammarström gave us a really great interpretation of Bradamante in her resolution to free Ruggiero. The rest of the cast was equally fine, including the young Sheen Park of the Vienna Boys Choir in the difficult role of Oberto. The conductor Gianluca Capuano and the orchestra Les Musiciens du Prince-Monaco are specialist of the baroque repertoire and performed the difficult score with minute attention to details. The show was an amazing experience throughout and, except for a few members of the audience who were clearly nostalgic for old baroque productions, it was greatly appreciated.

In Salzburg, the actor Jens Harzer proves to be the ideal cast for the torn, nervous, exalted title character who struggles for spiritual redemption and at the same time cannot accept it. The fact that the texts of the other characters are largely abbreviated or that Harzer adopts them in a dialogue with himself does not necessarily make the story arc easier to understand. Under the comparatively good financial festival conditions, Gardiner could have had more courage here to really complete the work by involving additional actors. In the end, the English conductor is primarily concerned with the music, whose inherent theatrical power he makes audible from the perspective of historically informed performance practice. The fact that the strings of the Camerata Salzburg play almost continuously without vibrato on both evenings ensures a fine-nerved, yet energetically charged sound. Gardiner brought the Monteverdi Choir, which he founded, with him, after which, fortunately, entire ensembles from Great Britain are now allowed to re-enter.The - consistently outstanding - soloists emerge from the Monteverdi Choir instead of joining them from outside. This corresponds to the spirit of the choir culture of the 19th century, in which the citizen rediscovered himself as a singing collective. In his choir cantata "The First Walpurgis Night", Felix Mendelssohn describes how the last remaining pagans in the time of Charlemagne outwitted the Christians in order to be able to celebrate the old, now forbidden Germanic gods. The fact that Christianity appears here as a religion of oppression is what makes the piquancy of the text - also by Goethe -: the heathen disguise themselves as witches and devils in order to frighten the superstitious Christians, which could also be easily implemented in a scenic way. Gardiner puts a lot of effort into creating an exciting arc that definitely stimulates the theatrical imagination. In the dry pointed forte he whips up the sounds with which the Monteverdi Choir and the Camerata Salzburg kindle a true witches' Sabbath. With their relational combination of rare works, both evenings fulfill the claim that the festival should have: a place of the special, to become impossible in the average concert business.