MIRACLES OF LOVE/DEATH

 

Ausrine Stundyte and Daniel Brenna in Erich Korngold's Das Wunder der Heliane
(Photo by Stephanie Berger)

It seems to be a miracle when an opera lays dormant for nearly a century and finally makes it to the stage. For such miracles we count on Maestro Leon Botstein who has made it his mission to bring works out of the dark and into the light for his summer adventure Bard Summerscape. We make it our business to make the lengthy bus trip up to Annandale-on-the-Hudson at least once each year. Sometimes we are thrilled; sometimes we are not.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold was a child prodigy in his native Germany and achieved success as a teenager. Die tote Stadt is oft performed and remains famous for two arias--"Marietta's Lied" and "Pierrots Tanzlied". His Das Wunder der Heliane premiered in 1927 and met with critical disdain although several members of the opera community heaped high praise on the work.

Due to Nazi suppression, the work fell into obscurity until recently and last night was its American premiere which we did not want to miss. The work is famous primarily for the aria "Ich ging zu ihm" which one can hear on YouTube sung by Renée Fleming and by Lotte Lehmann. Take your pick. Listen to both.

The story is a strange one with the libretto written by Hans Müller-Einigen. A totalitarian ruler is bitter over his unconsummated marriage with Heliane. He is  also disturbed by a messianic stranger who has brought joy to the repressed populace. He wants the stranger dead.

Heliane goes to comfort him on his last night on earth and becomes captivated by him. She grants him the favors he requests--to show her hair, her bare feet, and her body. She refuses him lovemaking.

The ruler is infuriated and wants them both dead. There is a trial in which Heliane can prove her chastity by raising the stranger from death. She does but there is a lot of stabbing and shifting responses by the populace. It was difficult to determine what exactly happened at the end but perhaps the couple found love on another plane.

The music has been described as lush and romantic; we found it muscular and dissonant. There is no denying that the music is "interesting" and Maestro Botstein succeeded in bringing out the details of the colorful orchestration. We heard lots of Straussian influence. There were pockets of lyricism which we did enjoy, especially when the harp added its voice. Perhaps it takes several hearings of the score to get "friendly" with this type of music. It is not instantly relatable.

In the titular role, soprano Ausrine Stundyte looked as fine as she sounded and was as convincingly innocent as one could hope for. As The Ruler, bass-baritone Alfred Walker gave his customarily fine performance, singing with rich resonant tone and creating a brutal tyrant.  Heldentenor Daniel Brenna pushed his voice in the upper register and failed to create a compelling figure onstage, i.e. someone who could beguile a populace. As in Siegfried, the role would seem to beg for a sweet-voice lyric tenor who could never be heard over the densely textured orchestration!  A real Catch-22.

We have always liked mezzo-soprano Jennifer Feinstein who created a very nasty and vengeful Messenger.  Tenor David Cangelosi was excellent as The Blind Judge who turns out to be Heliane's father. Bass-baritone Nicholas Brownlee made a fine impression as The Porter.

The other judges at the trial, rather peculiarly costumed, comprised Nathan Berg, Scott Conner, Michael J. Hawk, Derek Taylor, Kevin Thompson, and Richard Troxell.

Stage Director Christian Räth had his work cut out for him, making sense of this odd story. Esther Bialas, whose costume design we so admired in the Mostly Mozart Magic Flute, dressed the judges in strange red garments with large ruffs around their necks. Heliane looked as innocent as she was meant to look; The Ruler looked as totalitarian as he was meant to look; The Stranger needed something more ethereal or spiritual. Functionaries resembled futuristic airline stewardesses.

Sets were all grey and totalitarian looking with movable towers backed by staircases. Thomas C. Hase's lighting was effective with menacing shadows cast on the rear wall. Under James Bagwell's direction, the chorus sounded fine with beautiful solos from Aine Hakamatsuka and Caroline Miller as Celestial Voices.

Catherine Galasso's choreography was also on the odd side. A "ballet" of the functionaries was just plain ugly with awkward lifts. But Act III opened with a graceful dance for a clutch of women dressed like Heliane who imitated her movements or manipulated her body. We haven't a clue what this was meant to represent but at least it was graceful.

We took a look online at a production from Berlin which was done in contemporary street clothes, making this production look much better.

If 20th c. opera is your thing, there will be four additional performances.

© meche kroop

MARTINU ON DREAMING

Sara Jakubiak, Maestro Leon Botstein, Aaron Blake, David Cangelosi, Alfred Walker, Kevin Burdette, Rebecca Jo Loeb, Philip Cokorinos, Tichina Vaughn, and Raehann Bryce-Davis

Diehard opera lovers, fans of the rare, and a sprinkling of Czech nationals gathered in force last night at Carnegie Hall for a concert production of Bohuslav Martinu's Julietta, a 1937 opera based on a French play Juliette, ou La clé des songes by Georges Neveux. There must have been something very appealing about the theme for the composer to get it translated into Czech by Alex Zucker.

We speculated about the historical forces extant in Europe at that time--the insecurity of living on the same continent as a megalomaniac madman (What's old is new again!) making a dream world more appealing than reality. We thought at length about the surreal aspects of the story which gave the composer free rein to utilize massive orchestral forces in strange and colorful ways, developing new and wonderful colors with surprising rhythmic twists. 

We loved these orchestral colors, the French Horn fanfares, the use of the English Horn and the Bass Clarinet. Liberal use was also made of an accordion and there were sounds we could not identify.

The odd story concerns a Parisian bookseller (performed by terrific tenor Aaron Blake) who revisits a small coastal town where three years earlier he had become enchanted by a woman singing a love song, heard through an open window. There are some pretty strange things going on in this town; the citizens have no memories and live in the present. The railway station disappears. Michel gets elected to high office because he has memories--of a rubber duckie from childhood. 

The chief of police (astutely enacted by David Cangelosi) later becomes a postman and denies his earlier occupation. Everything is off-kilter, the way it is in dreams. So, we realize that Michel is dreaming. But was his earlier visit also a dream? One can only speculate; but credence is lent this theory by our own experience of returning occasionally to a certain place in our dream life that doesn't really exist.

Dreams are utilized in the theater quite often.  Think of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Pedro Calderón de la Barca's La Vida es Sueño. Although Eastern religions claim that what we call reality is really maya or illusion. Nonetheless, we are Westerners and see things differently.

In this libretto, an innkeeper tells stories to an elderly couple, which makes them happy. Is that not true today when many rely on film and other media to make life more interesting?

Act I sets the stage for the action which follows; Act II is surely more compelling as Julietta appears and seems to know and remember Michel. The music given to Julietta, so beautifully sung by soprano Sara Jakubiak, is the most lyrical of the evening. After a romantic reunion there is a spat and the frustrated Michel fires his pistol at the fleeing Julietta. But no one else hears the shot and there is no body. Visiting her home yields no further information. The resident denies her existence. Does this absurdity not resemble dreams of anxiety and frustration you may have had?

Act III brings things together. Michel is in the Central Office of Dreams and there are episodes of humor--a bellhop who wants to dream about the Wild West, a convict who wants dreams of a huge cell, a beggar who wants a dream seaside holiday. At the end Michel refuses to leave and becomes one of the "people in grey", madmen all, deniers of reality. How suitable for Hitlerian Europe!

The singers did yeoman's work in learning this extremely difficult language and managed to capture the rhythmic thrust of the sound as matched to the music. The vocal lines were not at all melodic, as is common in opera of the mid 20th c. The lines were often parlando and there were some lines spoken in English. Although there were no titles, libretti were distributed with the programs and house lights were left on. Most members of the audience elected to read along with the performance.

Aside from the outstanding performances of Ms. Jakubiak, Mr. Blake, and Mr. Cangelosi, we particularly enjoyed mezzo-soprano Rebecca Jo Loeb whose versatility animated a number of roles; equivalent versatility can be claimed by bass Kevin Burdette and bass-baritone Philip Cokorinos. The resonant bass-baritone Alfred Walker also fulfilled a number of roles to perfection.

Two mezzo-sopranos added significantly to the performance--Tichina Vaughn and Raehann Bryce-Davis who each assumed a number of different roles. The Bard Festival Chorale, directed by James Bagwell made significant contributions as well.

But the main event was the orchestra which played magnificently under the baton of Leon Botstein, who loves discovering neglected works. Julietta has not been heard in the United States before. Martinu was a prolific composer who left Czechoslovakia in 1923 for France where his music certainly acquired a degree of Gallic influence. This work premiered in Prague in 1938 but was also translated into French. Shortly afterward Martinu came to the United States, bringing the score with him. Strange that it had to wait nearly 80 years to be brought to the stage of Carnegie Hall. Thank you Maestro Botstein!

(c) meche kroop