Picture by Klara Beck
As a part of a season that features Otello, a touring manufacturing of Les Mamelles de Tirésias, Le Roi d’Ys, Le nozze di Figaro, Händel’s Trionfo del Tempo, Hänsel und Gretel, ballets, and a few musicals together with, for many who really feel as much as it, Gypsy with Natalie Dessay, the Opéra Nationwide du Rhin has simply ended the primary ever French run of Korngold’s fourth opera, Das Wunder der Heliane (1927). His third, Die tote Stadt, was first staged in France in the identical home, twenty-five years in the past. All of this testifies, I believe, to the creativeness proven of their programming by France’s regional opera homes. Die tote Stadt finally made it to Paris. Heliane, clearly, hasn’t managed that but.
When in Strasbourg, the Opéra Nationwide du Rhin, which additionally performs in Colmar, Mulhouse, and smaller cities within the area, occupies a good-looking neoclassical theatre with a grand, red-sandstone peristyle topped by six muses, inaugurated in 1821 and restored (after they’d bombarded it) by the Germans in 1888. Strasbourg is now lower than two hours from Paris by high-speed practice. Because of this, with matinee seats, you may comfortably go away Paris at 10 am, wolf a choucroute close to the cathedral, see the opera, and be house for a snack earlier than bedtime. Which, as a rarity like Heliane was to not be missed, is precisely what I did.
To save lots of those that don’t realize it from scouring the online, I’ll attempt to sum the story up briefly right here. It’s based mostly on a thriller play by the poet Hans Kaltneker, who died of tuberculosis at simply 24; however, this being Austria coming as much as 1920, “Heliane is about intercourse, and the way the sexual act is the holiest of holies when carried out between individuals in love.” (So writes Michael Haas, chief of Decca’s well-known “Entartete Musik” sequence, in a weblog article effectively price studying if you wish to know extra concerning the work.)
So, that plot, which (together with the convoluted textual content) remembers numerous highly-charged works from across the similar interval.
Heliane is in a loveless marriage to a tyrant. She falls for a mysterious, Christ-like stranger, on demise row for selling redemption by means of love. When information will get out, they’re placed on trial, however the stranger stabs himself to avoid wasting Heliane. In entrance of the townspeople, her husband decrees that to show she is harmless, she should restore the stranger to life. Refusing to blaspheme, she confesses her love however would slightly burn on the stake than undergo her husband. A refrain of angels strikes up because the stranger is resurrected. Heliane runs to his arms. The tyrant stabs her, however the lovers stay united in ecstasy. Finish.
That’s boiled down from three acts, however you get the thought. The music is, from bar one, immediately recognizable Korngold, crammed with echoes of Die tote Stadt and foretastes of what would turn into the Hollywood fashion and sound.
The Strasbourg manufacturing was initially toured by the Nederlandse Reisopera in 2023, and the Philharmonique makes use of the diminished rating, for 70 to 80 musicians, commissioned by the Dutch firm from Fergus McAlpine, with the blessing of Korngold’s property, to make their tour — and extra productions by homes unable to discipline an orchestra of over 100 — doable.
The casting was remarkably robust all spherical, beginning with six evenly-matched judges and, particularly, Der junge Mann. Though his second of fame is extra like fifteen seconds than Warhol’s fifteen minutes, Korngold couldn’t resist giving him a fearsome high notice to cope with. The tall and glowering younger Italian tenor Massimo Frigato, a member of the home’s Opéra Studio and Roderigo on this season’s Otello, nailed it. Bravo.
Paul McNamara is an ex-baritone from Eire, who realized he was a tenor whereas rehearsing Leporello. He has since sung quite a few hefty roles in Germany, and was Kazakhstan’s first ever Tristan. Each vocally and dramatically, he makes a convincingly adamant blind decide, based mostly on which I ought to think about he’s, or could be, a great Herod. Franco-Australian (through Yale and Oberlin) Damien Move has a nice, medium-weight baritone voice — although not all the time audible amongst Korngold’s paroxysms — and an enticing stage persona: being good appears to come back naturally.
The function of the messenger, Die Botin, is extra sporadic than intensive, however it’s vehement: she’s the native bad-girl and bitch and exhibits it. Estonian mezzo Kai Rüütel-Pajula, like McNamara new to me, was suitably fiery, her voice wealthy and colourful, her demeanor… effectively, bitchy. Josef Wagner I first noticed in Salome in Stockholm ten years in the past: “… a very thrilling Jochanaan, very practically stealing the present.” He has sung Der Herrscher earlier than, within the Berlin manufacturing starring Sara Jakubiak and Brian Jagde, out on DVD, the place you may decide for your self how good he’s.
Our Heliane, Franco-German Camille Schnoor, one other new identify to me, appears to be making a profession of singing kind of substantial roles in principally regional homes: Rosalinde in Lille, the International Princess in Marseille, Ciò-Ciò-San in Limoges, Rouen and Vichy, Ariadne in Limoges, and so forth; she is quickly to sing Micaela in Hong Kong and the Marschallin in Germany (so I learn; I’m not making it up). She has a full, pretty constant voice with a darkish, spherical, barely veiled timbre, and no important problem dealing with Korngold’s uncompromising, near-inhuman calls for. She has all Heliane’s notes, however is, understandably, at her restrict. Generally the hassle exhibits; once more, comprehensible, particularly as she throws herself bodily into the staging. There’s little left over, so to talk, for subtleties, for number of vocal shade, shading… Additionally, within the libretto’s extra garrulous moments (it has these), within the center vary her sustaining energy flags considerably. I admit I generally puzzled if, by singing Heliane, she wasn’t taking a giant threat for the longer term. However I point out all this solely to offer a full account, to not detract from her achievement in mastering the function. She was in fact loudly applauded.
If I’ve left American Heldentenor Ric Furman until final, it’s as a result of, to me, he was the best-cast of all because the enigmatic, starry-eyed stranger. His is an intriguing form of voice — does the time period jugendlicher lyrischer Heldentenor exist? — and he has a good-looking and, on this manufacturing, Christ-like presence on stage, by which I imply the blond, blue-eyed Jesus of the Kitsch Christian imagery of my (and lots of others’) childhood. Moderately like Camille Schnoor, after a Seattle Lohengrin (2014), he’s been singing huge roles, principally in Germany, lots of them Wagner’s, in reasonably-sized theaters, which is smart as his voice is, by Heldentenor requirements, clear and fairly mild. His singing was spot-on all afternoon, killer notes and all, with a brilliance that suited his visionary, considerably spaced-out character.
On this work, killer notes aren’t reserved for the soloists alone. The refrain did a miraculous job with Korngold’s thorny writing, a few of it — when the mob will get its dander up — curious certainly, and presumably onerous to maintain collectively. There was, nevertheless, no miracle within the pit. I used to be reminded of the times, earlier than the Bastille was constructed, when the Strauss of, say, Rosenkavalier was greater than the Paris Opera orchestra may make sense of. Conductor Robert Houssart was maybe too busy simply protecting all of the notes kind of in place to hitch them collectively in a steady sweep, as a part of an overarching imaginative and prescient. The diminished scoring makes the work accessible to regional homes, sure; however whereas stripping out lush, late-romantic padding, leaving us with a extra uncooked, expressionistic sound, it cruelly exposes their orchestras. In Strasbourg, just like the Paris Opera’s pre-Bastille Strauss (and generally its Janacek even now), the music remained disjointed, often even chaotic: the orchestral begin of the second and third acts had been examples of that. In Le Figaro, Christian Merlin, who’s had a complete sequence about orchestras on French radio, summed all of it up as “plus de rudesse que de sensualité” (extra tough than sensual).
Picture by Klara Beck
Jakob Peters-Messer’s staging is, as you may count on from one designed to tour, comparatively easy. There’s one, principally brightly-lit house. Its two partitions kind a nook in direction of the proper on the rear, below an undulating mirrored ceiling. Relying on the lighting, the house is white, gray, or that very pale inexperienced that Prada paints its outlets. Mirrored mild makes advanced, fascinating patterns on the partitions, and generally stills from the 1933 Czech movie Ecstasy, with Hedy Lamarr and Aribert Mog, are projected on them (a look at Wikipedia will clarify why).
The act-one jail is sparsely however chicly furnished with a Marcel Breuer divan and tables from across the time Korngold was composing Heliane. The stranger wears a type of “city adventurer” outfit (assume The Misplaced Ark) of white cargo pants, gray tee shirt, tan jeans-jacket and boots; Heliane unbuttons a slinky, champagne silk costume to point out him her breasts (within the story, she’s presupposed to be fairly bare). An angel — a dancer — in a gray hoodie already hovers (although not actually) round. She’s going to act as a type of refrain all through the opera.
The courtroom within the second act, with a easy white tribune and orange plastic chairs, is supposed to recall the trial of the Baader-Meinhof group, although in case you hadn’t learn that you simply in all probability wouldn’t know. The judges are cleverly wearing sharply-tailored black raincoats, with white ties, echoing with out really representing judges’ robes; the tyrant and the blind decide are in complete black. Die Botin is obtained up as an environment friendly and officious assistant. The gang that surges in slightly too visibly represents “all walks of life,” with individuals carrying or bearing the attributes of their life-style, class or calling, like saints in outdated work displaying the symbols of their martyrdom (e.g. Saint Agatha’s breasts on a tray), or with a citadel or cathedral of their outstretched palms. There was even the imam from the native mosque, a demonstrator holding a placard, and a bourgeoise with a Louis Vuitton bag.
Within the final act, the refrain/crowd, having modified their thoughts concerning the stranger, have modified their garments as effectively, now showing in Antifa-style black (or at any price as protestors of some type), solely their various costumes veer only a contact too near Vogue Week. (I remembered a pal describing the design of the Aeroflot workplace in London, all boxy black leather-based, as “employees’ realist stylish.”) They wheel in plastic bins, and throw in placards and papers — discarding their illusions, I believe; they use crowd-control limitations and wood pallets to construct a pyre, stoked by wands of fluorescent mild. As apotheosis approaches, numerous characters clearly strike mannerist poses from baroque spiritual portray.
After which comes the ultimate coup de théâtre. The angelic voices ring out, the stranger is resurrected and reunited with Heliane, and partitions and ceiling crack aside, giving solution to a cascade of dazzling slivers of mirror, a type of nice white solution to heaven. Solely it’s tackily blingy. Trumpery. Intentionally so, I think, heaven being however a corny chimera — all smoke and mirrors, because the saying certainly goes.
