Reino Unido

Ready to win a singing competition?

Enrique Sacau
viernes, 10 de febrero de 2012
London, domingo, 1 de enero de 2012. The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg. Graham Vick, director. Elaine Kidd, revival director. Richard Hudson, designs. Wolfgang Gobbel, original lighting design. Ron Howell, movement. Simon O’Neill (Walther von Stolzing), Emma Bell (Eva), Heather Shipp (Magdalene), Toby Spence (David), John Tomlinson (Veit Pogner), Peter Coleman-Wright (Sixtus Beckmesser), Wolfgang Koch (Hans Sachs), Colin Judson (Kunz Vogelgesang), Nicholas Folwell (Konrad Nachtigall), Donald Maxwell (Fritz Hothner), Jihoon Kim (Hermann Ortel), Martyn Hill (Balthazar Zorn), Pablo Bemsch (Augustin Moser), Jeremy White (Hans Foltz), Richard Wiegold (Hans Schwarz), Robert Lloyd (Nightwatchman). Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Renato Balsadonna, chorus director. Antonio Pappano, conductor
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In his article for the Royal Opera brochure on Meistersinger, Christopher Wintle tries to shed light upon the generic credentials of Richard Wagner’s longest opera. Is it a romantic piece, whatever that may mean, or indeed a comedy? In his conclusion, Wintle proposes an impossibly long description of it (Grosse romantische Komödie im vorgerücken Alter) that rather kills the fun of it all. I believe Professor Wintle, a respected academic, has fallen into the modernist trap of looking at the author’s comments on the piece as well as the score manuscripts without considering its performance history. This would have revealed a much more fascinating picture in which different schools of staging, singing and conducting opera argue and mingle. The performance tradition of Meistersinger opens up windows of interpretation that make this opera still relevant to modern audiences. Indeed, an intelligent director working with a similarly astute conductor can turn a performance of Meistersinger into a surprise – the audience attends this opera, unlike most other titles of the repertoire, wondering what’s going to happen. Are they going to tell me how racist and nationalistic Wagner was? Are they going to present me with light comic stuff? Something in between?

Not having a chip on their shoulders about the holocaust, anti-semitism and having hailed racist Wagner as a national icon, British directors have been very good at focusing on the comic aspects of the opera. Well, British directors tend to look at the comic side of things, anyway, but in this case the contrast with their gloomy, apologetic German colleagues cannot be more striking. In 2010 Richard Jones presented his Cardiff Meistersinger as a comedy with a political twist: at the end, when most directors blush at the shameless nationalistic tirade, Jones made a very strong case for the exaltation of German art and artists. The members of the choir, one by one, held up pictures of the great and the good of German art and literary history – a most moving moment.

In his 1993 production for the Royal Opera, now revived, Graham Vick goes for the comic as well but with no obvious political references. He manages humour admirably – and perhaps the stupid and distracting codpieces worn by most male characters should be understood as comic – but glosses over the politics of the opera by not making any statement at the end. The nationalistic rant, therefore, feels just like the cheering of a football team or any other contemporary manifestation of collective patriotism. No chip on the shoulder here, nor any vindication of the German masters. There is a desire to recreate the costumes of the time, as well as to present the period-clad actors against an timeless and colourful background. It was a shame that the curtain was down during the awakening of Sachs in Act 3, but this is a question of taste – the reviewer can’t expect directors to put on the show he has in his mind. This Meistersinger not only works well, but it is still good enough for it to carry the show and make it enjoyable even when the musical rendition is below the usual standard, as was the case here.

© 2012 by ArenaPAL/Clive Barda

Call it a hangover show - it was after all the 1st of January - or a case of simple bad luck, but no singer was at their best and nor was conductor Antonio Pappano. The fact that the tenor singing the role of David almost merits the highest praise says it all. Indeed, Toby Spence sounded better than ever (even though he cracked two notes in act 1), more robust and mature, yet he didn’t fail to convey the adolescent languor of the apprentice. Emma Bell wasn’t a memorable Eva, although little criticism can be waged at her. John Tomlinson has gone from being a “mature singer” whose “experience” can make up for obvious “signs of decline” (I imagine myself writing something like this four years ago) to needing retirement – his voice is simply no longer good enough for Veit Pogner. He sounded strained and tired.

The most important characters are Beckmesser, Sachs and Walther. Whilst the first one was sung authoritatively by an inspired Peter Coleman-Wright and the second, in the voice of Wolfgang Koch, sounded great in Acts 1 and 2, but showed obvious signs of exhaustion in Act 3, the third was poorly served by Simon O’Neill. At the beginning of the show we were warned that O’Neill was ill and on antibiotics. As Zubin Metha once said, not only the singers who cancel performances make audiences suffer; also those who don’t cancel do! This was unfortunately the case with O’Neill, whose Act 3 was so bad that I feared that he might walk out and need to be replaced before the end of the opera. His timbre was lacklustre, the bottom notes inaudible and the top impossibly strained and often flat. That he should have been impersonating a character that impresses all with his singing rendered it impossible to believe. I can’t but wish him a speedy recovery – he didn’t do himself, nor the audience, a favour by singing the performance I attended.

One of the best things about the Royal Opera audience is that they go to the theatre to enjoy. This sounds obvious and many might think that it applies to all audiences, but that’s not the case. How many times has one heard in Vienna, Milan or Barcelona opera-goers laugh with obvious schadenfreude at the prospect of a bad performance? I have been Mundoclasico’s correspondent at the Royal Opera since 2000 and have not heard this kind of comment once. These people, if a bit stingy with their ovations, mean well and hope that the performance will be unforgettable – they never boo anyone and show their appreciation to their favourite artists with longer-than-usual (yet not very long) applause. This preamble is pertinent to explain the explosion of cheers heard when Pappano arrived in the pit. Most in the audience had read the news the day before that Covent Garden’s artistic director is to be knighted and will be, from the next Queen’s birthday onward, Sir Antonio. This piece of news was celebrated by an audience who adores him (not only as a conductor, but also as a media figure who appears increasingly on the BBC taking part in all sorts of documentaries about opera) and was mentioned by the lady who announced O’Neill’s indisposition. “After the news about the tenor who’s singing today the role of the knight, I leave you with our very own knight who will conduct this performance”. It was moving, really, to see a whole theatre recognise excellence with such selfless generosity.

Pappano is indeed an excellent opera conductor: he cares for the singers, conducts passionately, pays attention to detail and almost always manages to tell a story from the pit. Within his repertoire, of course, we all have our preferred bits: his Shostakovich, Britten and Puccini are second to none; I’m less keen on his Verdi, Rossini and Mozart. And his Wagner is definitely solid. Yet, this performance wasn’t his best. There was nothing wrong with it: he was brilliant at times, played well with the colours of the orchestra, gave us decibels when they were needed, but there was a certain lack of flexibility (as though he were trying to stay clear of the over-indulgent style of a Thielemann) and many moments in which not much seemed to happen.

Most of the merit of the obvious enjoyment of the audience, and of your correspondent, must be Graham Vick’s, then, whose Meistersinger still has long life expectancy.

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