DVD Review: Stefan Herheim's Eugene Onegin 2012 De Nederlandse Opera

Opus Arte

Tatyana: Krassimira Stoyanova
Onegin: Bo Skovhus
Lensky Andrej Dunaev
Olga: Elena Maximova
Madame Larina: Olga Savova
Filipyevna: Nina Romanova
Prince Gremin: Mikhail Petrenko

Director: Stefan Herheim
Set designer: Philipp Furhofer

Conductor: Mariss Jansons
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
De Nederlandse Opera


This is not an Onegin for those that haven't seen the piece before - it's not impenetrably complex, but a very good knowledge of the "standard" narrative would help hugely in unravelling the games being played here with plot and memory. It opens on a brilliant coup de theatre - a "split screen" introducing the the dual worlds that are being depicted in this production - the Russian oligarchy of today, and a sentimentalised kitsch vision of peasant Russia. It's not totally clear why Tatyana remembers her youth as occurring so long before it actually did though; perhaps Herheim is suggesting that Russians sentimentalise their own history and youths? Olga is a vision of naive peasantry, youth and happiness - a reminder to Tatyana of what she has left behind as we see Tatyana amongst her high society guests. Olga's aria becomes accusatory, or at least some sort of expression in Tatyana's guilt.

The letter scene is presented as the fulfilment of Tatyana's wish (Onegin is present, at least in her mind), and simultaneously, Onegin writing his letter with the same message to her as he does later in Act III in the conventional narrative. (Though of course we don't normally get to see it on stage, reference is made to his letter in the final scene, and Onegin gets the same letter writing music when he realises he's in love with Tatyana). We already know this second letter writing event happens, so I'm not sure how much of an insight this is beyond the initial surprise of the new staging. For newcomers it'll be totally baffling and inexplicable. It's tempting to have Tatyana address the actual Onegin onstage because the letter is doing this, but for me, the sense of the unknown is what makes this scene so moving and tense - we know she is fantasising - do we need to see the fulfilment of this fantasy onstage? Still, it's much more subtly and discreetly handled than the comparable version in Kasper Holten's dramatically null ROH staging, the first of many parallels between the two productions (not all of which I've mentioned here). I also didn't quite get what was added  in the following scene by having Onegin address his rejection to a double of Tatyana- yes we get to see the older Tatyana reliving the scene, but by this stage the theme is so clear, that it's weird to just get the same thing again, especially when the double Tatyana (a dancer) is so bad at acting.

Herheim sees the whole piece as being about the loss of ideals - most obviously Tatyana and Lensky's loss of the ideal of innocent romantic love - and mirrors this in the staging with the loss of the big ideals that Russia has suffered during the 20th century. At the end of the Larina ballroom scene Lensky seems to embrace Tatyana's little red book - replacing his naive poetic Romanticism with Communism, and he goes on to direct some troops to exact his revenge on the crowd. But soon the star of Communism is seen in flames and then smashed on the floor during the duel - the communist ideal being replaced with Onegin's playboy Capitalism and the rich Russian oligarchs of his world. It's interesting that Herheim makes these parallels, but what is it actually adding dramatically here? Again after the initial surprise has faded and we've worked out Herheim's code, I can't help feeling that this is a little jejune. Perhaps I'm missing a subtlety.

The Larina ballroom scene is somewhat clumsily staged and the revolving room feels artificial almost the whole time. Maybe it was different in the theatre but the feeling of larger and smaller spaces that the set design is meant to enable doesn't really come across - the pure aesthetics of the "stage picture" are probably the weakest aspect in almost all of Herheim's productions. In the intro to Act III we get a view of 20th century Russian cliches as seen by western Europe (which gets a round of applause from the audience!). Gremin reappears at the end of the final duet (again just as in Holten's production) as does the rest of high society at Gremin's instigation, who witness Onegin's failure, shame and impotence.



Krassimira Stoyanova, in her role début, gives a radiant account of Tatyana, with committed acting that serves the staging very well. She has a little trouble convincing physically as the young Tatyana, but this production plays so much with time frames that this isn't a huge obstacle. She has a rich chest register, warm middle and lovely top, and sings with expressive nuance and technical expertise. It's a very beautiful timbre and sounds great up close on the mics, but the top is very covered which certainly doesn't sound as good in the theatre and was one of my main reservations about her in live performance earlier this year that I saw in the Holten ROH production. Still, a remarkable debut.

Bo Skovhus is a classic barihunk; possibly only Hvorostovsky is better looking of the major international baritones. He often moves awkwardly on stage, hunched and stumbling, which works reasonably well in this production with its characterisation of Onegin as constantly being on the back foot. Vocally he is entirely adequate, but he is not a first choice with all the excellent Onegins currently performing. Skovhus has a passing resemblance to Herheim himself looks wise, but weirdly so does tenor Andrej Dunaev, to an even greater degree. Again he's more than acceptable in the role, but the timbre is not the most beautiful and one might wish for a little more nuance from a character who is meant to be a poet. The rest of the cast are all more than acceptable.

Mariss Jansons gives a slightly weird account of the score, extremely lush and beautifully played by the Concertgebouw Orchestra, but somehow too polished and smooth to sound truly Russian. Where's the raw Slavic soul? A nebulous and intangible criticism perhaps and few will complain when the playing is of such high quality.

The first ten minutes of this production had me thinking that this might be one of the best DVDs on the market, but overall, though very enjoyable, I'm not sure that the interventions add enough to our understanding of the piece for this to escape being an egoistic project - too often I felt this was merely "Herheim's Onegin". That is the production made me think of Herheim rather than the opera, and for me for Regie theatre to be successful, it has to reveal the piece to us anew and bring us closer to the work and its meaning, rather than being a canvas on which the director is allowed to exercise his fantasy, however well intentioned. There's a creeping way in which this is every bit as camp and "fabulous" as any Franco Zeffirelli extravaganza. Others will disagree, and your mileage may vary; it's certainly worth a watch.

Capriccio in Concert, take II

21/07/13

This was the second and final performance of this duet of concert Capriccios at the ROH. To read a fuller review of the first night, click here.

Renée Fleming gave a more controlled performance this second night, with far less scooping, and there were no moments of dodgy sound production (there were a couple of small cracks on the first night). It was overall a slightly smaller scale performance, but in the final scene she was even more captivating than on the first night, getting rid of quite a lot of the forced theatrics, presenting it this time as a single dramatic and emotional arc, pain and beauty merging with obvious personal significance. Great to witness.

Gerhaher ironed out the little problems with text and lack of familiarity that he had had on the first night, again delivering a superb performance. His Olivier is moody, and even angry at times, and I have to say that this interpretation is one followed by directors quite a lot, with Flamand being the easy going, more romantic suitor. So many productions of Capriccio seem to have the Countess slightly (or more than slightly) favouring Flamand, and there is endless discussion in articles about the opera about whether that gorgeous final scene contains clues as to Strauss' preference (e.g. the banality of the final words compared to the sublimity of the music). The articles miss the point of the ambiguous ending I think, and directors who fail to make Olivier as attractive as Flamand as a character weaken the ending. The message of the piece is for me somewhat distorted if one is clearly more appealing to Madeleine than the other.

Unfortunately Andrew Staples was sounding a little hoarse on the second night, though he still sang well despite this. Peter Rose didn't seem to tire at all as La Roche, giving an even more impressive account of his monologue than the previous evening, and Bo Skovhus too seemed musically more in his stride as the Count. Everyone else sang well. The orchestra were a little more on top of the score this evening, but some of the magical sparkle of the first night was missing. Still, had I not heard Davis with the ROH Orchestra on the first night, I would have been very pleased with this performance.

I mentioned a significant cut in my first night review, but were there other small cuts? I don't remember hearing mention of who gets to be the tenor in the piece (though La Roche still gets his line about being the basso buffo), but I'm always reticent to say for sure on these things, because I may just have missed it because my attention was on the orchestra or something.

Capriccio at the Royal Opera House with Renée Fleming

19/07/13

What a gift. I was beginning to wonder whether Strauss' final and most perfect opera Capriccio simply was too rarely put on and too demanding in live performance for it to be likely that I'd ever see a really good one, but this was great. I was astonished to discover that the ROH has staged the opera fully only once - that was in 1991 with Kiri Te Kanawa. (In 1953 the Bavarian state opera came with a visiting production). This evening was a "concert performance" but it verged heavily towards "semi-staged" - Fleming and Skovhus, both of whom have done the opera many times, sang without music, and there was plenty of moving around and interaction from everyone. In fact it was an object lesson in how little has to happen for an opera to feel like it is being dramatically (rather than just musically) realised. It's probably my favourite opera so it's hard to be objective about how effective the set up was, but its cherished status for me means that it's also easy to be critical and I must say I was riveted and entertained throughout, which is more than I can say for some productions I've seen of the piece. How revealing to have Strauss' music for stage and scenery, with much of the action in the minds eye. Strauss gives us it all in his wondrous score which (as with all his operas) is so rich and detailed that it actually can become a challenge to stage.

The ROH used their "Royal Festival Hall" concert shell, with the orchestra on stage, the singers in front, and conductor Andrew Davis amongst the singers, a considerable distance from the orchestral musicians (many of whom weren't facing him as a result.) The concert shell does wonders for the ROH acoustic, at least for the front stalls where the sound can be poorly balanced and muffled. The ROH orchestra with Davis made for an interesting comparison with the Wiener Staatsoper orchestra (ostensibly the Vienna Philharmonic) and Christoph Eschenbach who I saw doing the piece last month (also with Fleming - see my review here). Individually, the playing of the ROH orchestra was sometimes questionable - the opening string sextet had some ropey moments (the offstage sextet sounded magnificent though!) and the gorgeous horn solo that introduces the famous final scene was hesitant and contained at least one crack - but overall this was by far the more convincing performance. The orchestral sonorities were more beautifully and warmly achieved, the underlying flow and momentum that links the fragmentary orchestral writing more convincing here, and the chiaroscuro contrasts of texture were more ably handled by Davis and his orchestra. Davis has a superb measure of the score, and conducts it with obvious love and affection - there were things in the orchestration that I'd never noticed before, and the vocal octets were more brilliantly performed than I have ever heard them before. The pacing always felt right and throughout the words were fully understandable from all - all in all then a superb ensemble achievement, niggles aside.

Renée Fleming did some wonderful things as the Countess Madeleine, proving she still has the goods when it counts. In Vienna last month she sang much better than she did here however - the line was firmer and purer, the text not so exaggerated. It is a common criticism of Fleming that she overinflects the text, and uses expressive portamentos to excess. As a Fleming fan (to put it mildly), these things have never bothered me in the past because the legato is so utterly flawless and in such perfect equipoise with the diction, the basic sound extremely firm and well supported, the phrasing pliant and sensitive, and the text so beautifully coloured by the voice. It's a voice I know supremely well, and here, I sadly felt that she was overcompensating for a slight loss of control that must be disconcerting for her - the scoops were often very extreme, even becoming yelps at times, especially in the more conversational moments where the line is harder to maintain, and sometimes the word stresses became so emphatic that the line was distorted. But then she'd whip out the trademark legato for one of the extended arioso moments and we'd hear the Fleming that we know and love from her recordings. In the final scene, she came on "dressed for dinner" in her Vivienne Westwood sequinned gown, now with a massive gold and silver overcoat, and we got her best singing of the evening - the huge dramatic outpourings which follow the recapitulated sonnet soared with powerful abandon, and the floating pianissimos of her final few phrases were magically dispatched. Fleming can be a very moving actress, but left to her own devices without a director her acting here felt unfocussed and even hammy - lots of pouting, posing questioningly with the sonnet, arm shaking, and the like. Again, she was at her most moving when she opted to do less, simply letting the music flow through her and naturally illuminate her expressions.

Christian Gerhaher was an almost perfect Olivier - I simply cannot think of a currently active singer who could be more ideal for this role. His precision and extraordinary way with the text is totally fitting for the character, but the beautifully balanced timbre and wonderful legato mean that Strauss' music is also fully served. It's a much bigger voice than I remember hearing when he did Wolfram in Tannhauser here back in 2010. Bizarrely and almost amusingly he totally muddled up the words for the sonnet when he was addressing Fleming in plain speech, but even before he went wrong, I thought his delivery of this spoken text wasn't quite heartfelt enough - the only weak part of an otherwise superb vocal assumption of the role. His head was mostly quite buried in the score, so I wonder if this was his first performance of the part?

Andrew Staples, standing in for an indisposed Joseph Kaiser, made an excellent Flamand. His pointing of the text was not quite as nuanced or touching as Gerhaher's but his vocal contribution never felt out of place next to his stellar colleagues, and his beautiful scene in praise of Madeleine was sung with Mozartian clarity and refinement but with Straussian surge when the music asked for it. The timbre is not the most distinctive, or at least not yet, but it is nevertheless very pleasing. A very fine showing for a very fine young singer. Peter Rose was an equally excellent La Roche. It's not the biggest or juiciest bass voice, but his German is excellent, he "gets" the role fully, is funny without buffoonery, and his legato is very good. He seemed to tire a bit towards the end of his climactic speech, but this was another very pleasing performance.

Christine Rice was in such beautiful voice in her recent Minotaur appearances that I was quite sad about her having to cancel these performances of Clairon due to a quite serious illness. I hope she gets better very soon. Her replacement Tanja Ariane Baumgartner made more of this role musically than one might have expected in what is traditionally seen as an actress's role (Strauss makes sure she could never musically upstage his heroine, just as he had with Zdenka/Arabella a decade before). She has a dark coloured mezzo voice that contrasted very nicely with Fleming's silvery soprano, and meant they were never "in competition" as sometimes can seem the case. Bo Skovhus sounded better here than he had in Vienna, less gruff and with a fuller tone, and though arguably the role doesn't require, or even shouldn't be cast with a beautiful voice, the voice is sounding quite hardened and monochrome at this stage, and Skovhus was never the most finessed singer. That said, this wasn't a bad performance, certainly not a disservice to the role. Barry Banks and Mary Plazas made a good pair of Italian singers, Banks being particularly impressive. The female singer is almost always cast with a very light voice, as here, and I never quite know why, because the first entry sits very low for a long time, and the coloratura requirements are hardly demanding.

There's a small but painful cut which the ROH, Vienna and the Met all practise, coming just before the Count suggests his brilliant solution to the other characters' quandary as to what subject to make into an opera. It always jars, because the Counts suggestion simply comes out of the air, and not from the discussion, and so seems out of character for such a professed opera sceptic. Am I the only one that misses this part? Probably.

All in all, a very satisfying evening and a wonderful close to the ROH season. I will (obviously) be at the next performance as well, so will report back on that if I have more to say.

Capriccio at Wiener Staatsoper with Renée Fleming

20/06/13
Vienna State Opera

[NOTE: if you're looking for the 2013 ROH Capriccio with Fleming, look here.]

Strauss' final opera Capriccio, the piece for which my blog is named, almost means too much for me to give an overview of why I value it so highly. The temptation would be to list every detail, every felicity, so when I have more time I will write up my thoughts into a coherent structure - since there are a couple of ROH performances coming up, that will provide a good deadline. For the time being, suffice it to say that this piece represents an exquisite final flowering of Strauss' operatic career, an unexpected return to the brilliance of the Salome - Elektra - Rosenkavalier - Ariadne period after approximately two decades of relative mediocrity (the best bits of Arabella and Daphne being the principle highlights that soar beyond the meticulous humdrum of most of his work from the 1920s and 30s). It ushers Strauss' late harvest of works of which the Four Last Songs are the most famous and celebrated and is every bit as recherché and exquisitely crafted as the songs.

This was a frustrating show because it was almost so good in every way. First, let's consider the design. From the photos above you'd be forgiven for thinking that this was one of the most visually alluring productions you're ever likely to see, and it certainly has its moments. Visually this show is best when the lighting is very focussed on the singers bringing them into heightened, luminous focus (as in the photos above, and a few others here), and I love the idea of a Capriccio in slightly surreal, glimmering half lights, as its so different from what I hold in my minds eye when I listen to the work. However this only happens occasionally, and all too often the singers and set are covered in a haze of blues, lilacs, oranges, yellows and pinks, and there are just too many colours and textures for the aesthetic to properly congeal, let alone be stylish. The last scene for instance, contrary to the neon beauty of the photo above, has much of its stark luminescence vitiated by very diffuse gels on the lights that nullify the intense colour, and do no favours to the set. We'll see how it looks on camera* as shows can look very different on the little/big screen to how they look in the theatre.

this sort of thing is closer to the production's norm.

these three as well. Lots of lovely things individually,
but a mishmash overall, and often not well lit.

Second, the direction. The main set components of Marco Arturo Marelli's production (he designed, directed and lit it) are a series of large triangular columns that each have three different faces representing three different levels of reality in the show. The visual effect is sometimes similar to Herbert Wernicke's Der Rosenkavalier. The stage opens on 1940's attired Flamand and Olivier (composer and poet) at their respective writing desks either side of the stage behind a gauze which blends smoothly from a chaos of notes to a chaos of words. Throughout the show this layer occasionally pops up but is not much developed. The principle action appears in a very stylised late 18th century setting and is presumably the opera that these two artists are constructing. But by teasing apart these layers that are implicit in the piece without providing obvious insights that this rending apart has opened us up to, it spoils something of this work's enigmatic unity, that special smiling glow and wistful humour that informs every bar of the score and text. Capriccio exists as a conversation piece on the nature of opera, a charming "period" romance set in an aristocratic salon, and simultaneously serves as its own explanation and deconstruction. The characters are both metaphors for the debate being enacted, archtypes, and detailed, living, believable people, whose complex desires and relationships drive the plot. It's all so artfully and effortlessly achieved that no further clarification is required: the piece itself is literally and metaphorically its own best explanation and it does it with a simple smiling elegance that it would be virtually impossible to improve upon. Marco Arturo Marelli writes with obvious love and understanding in his programme note, but he hasn't been brave enough with his vision.

This revival was very obviously very under-rehearsed. Although many of the singers from the début 2008 cast remain, they can't be expected to remember every detail in an opera as conversationally fleet footed and detailed as this without extensively re-engaging with the text, motivations and actions of the characters in this production again. It wasn't entirely clear from the booklet whether Marelli was back for this revival, but either way verbal queues were constantly missed and actions were often vague and indecisive. When Madeleine says "Fasst mich nicht an!", Olivier hadn't yet touched her, but then he awkwardly remembered he should have, and quickly grabbed her and then immediately lets go. Madeleine is meant to demonstrate the Rameau excerpt at the keyboard, but Fleming didn't get there in time, and just joined in with the offstage harpsichord way after the music has started. These are small things, but over an evening amount to a larger feeling of malaise that the singers are merely "walking through" the parts - often it seems unclear what characters actually mean by their words because their actions are ambiguous and approximate. The wonderful scenes where Olivier and Flamand declare their love were not convincing for this reason, and references to offstage action were also strangely glossed over or ignored in the acting. It's really not all bad though, characters do what they're meant to, it's not static, and there are nice touches also - the house lights going up a little when the characters all start talking about how strange opera is, adressing the audience all the while, and Olivier's cry of "Gondola, gondola!" when discussing Italian singing in the first scene, is picked up on later when the Italian Singers' duet is presented with them being carried about in gondolas. Olivier and Flamand, two sides of the same coin, wear mirror image costumes.


As I've said before, Renée Fleming is in my opinion the greatest soprano of the age, and when the prime was so effortlessly, ravishingly flawless, the autumn of the career comes all the more painfully. However, having seen her perform (a ridiculous) eight times last year, I can confidently say that this was by some distance the best I have seen her since I started blogging, a gratefully heard return to form. Although the timbre doesn't have the same glistening radiance that it used to, here the legato and exceptional support of the line recalled the glory days of "The Beautiful Voice", and in the all important final scene, the voice soared just as one might have hoped. Amazingly, from my seat Fleming's voice sounded larger than most of her colleagues (equalled only by Kurt Rydl), giving far more tone than I have heard her give for a long time. The textual acuity is remarkable as ever. Madeleine's tessitura sits higher than the Marschallin, but lower than Arabella, and may be her best role at this stage. Despite occasional lapses in specificity in her acting, she was the only singer to overall give a rounded and dynamic acting performance in her role perhaps because she has sung her role more often than her peers (?) but her elegance and humour and occasionally bratty playfulness all made for an engaging assumption of the part.

The rest of the cast were servicable, but noticeably not of world class standard, and for Capriccio to succeed it manifestly can not just be a star vehicle. Diction wise, I could only consistently understand Fleming, ironic since she is the only non native speaker apart from Skovhus, but it seems that the old singer's cliché that native speakers are usually more lazy with diction when singing in their own language is true. The role of Clairon is vocally a breeze for Angelika Kirchschlager but above all this is an actress's part and she made a curiously frumpy and charmless personality on stage. Part of it was her unflattering costuming, but she kept doing this thing where she'd reveal her trousered legs under her dress and it wasn't obvious whether this was meant to be a dramatic flourish or a sign of nervousness. This production makes her haughty and derisive, but there's got to be the inbuilt charisma to get away with the ill humour. Michael Schade and and Markus Eiche were vocally acceptable as Flamand and Olivier respectively, though were both a bit too much boyish swagger without offering the characters' sensitive vulnerability and charm. Bo Skovhus is hardly the most opulent voice, but was quite likeable as the playful count. Kurt Rydl's rather quizzical, sad La Roche laments the death of Bel Canto, sadly quite ironically here since the voice lacks anything resembling line these days, every phrase broken into individual words.

In the pit, Christoph Eschenbach astonishingly makes his Vienna State Opera début. It was not quite the perfect Capriccio I was expecting based on previous experiences of his conducting of the final scene, which must be ranked as the most gloriously beautiful and understanding of our time (thankfully enshrined on CD with the Vienna philharmonic on Fleming's Strauss Heroines disc.) The singers were never covered, and were followed and supported with great accuracy, and the orchestra was dazzlingly precise in its fragments of melody, but the sense of the longer line wasn't achieved until quite a while in. Since I was near the front, perhaps the sound wasn't ideal - I'd be fascinated to hear how it sounded higher up in the house where the sound it better. The final scene was as wonderful as ever though.


Overall I enjoyed this, and found it worthwhile despite its flaws.

*This production is being filmed for DVD (EDIT: though there were doubts about whether this was going to be released, it is, very soon!) which means, extraordinarily enough, that we will have three Fleming Capriccios on DVD. The Carsen 2004 production with Fleming in her peak voice is still the one to have as overall as it is the best directed, has the best supporting cast, and is the most visually beautiful. The Met DVD of the abominably drab Cox production which is the one wheeled out in most English speaking nations (in 20s/30s or "period" dress) finds Fleming at her most affected dramatically, a none too exciting cast, and of course the Met's horrible video direction (review here). The Marelli production is decent, but Oh how I wish we could have had the 2008 première when the cast were all newly rehearsed, and Fleming was in her prime. However, we can't have everything, and must be thankful that we are having it at all. Hopefully, over the next two evenings, the cast will hit their marks more often and they'll be able to patch together a convincing realisation of the staging. Also perhaps close-ups will help make the thing feel less "bitty". It will broadcast live on the internet on 27th June 2013.

Curtain calls:

this is the leg thing she kept doing

looked throughout like John Malkovitch in Dangerous Liaisons

The 1940's dress

Production photos (c) Wiener Staatsoper / Michael Pöhn