Isolde’s Liebestod…just without Isolde.

Understanding (or trying to) orchestras who don’t use singers for Wagner’s Opera



This evening as I drove back into the city from dinner with friends about an hour away, I heard something extraordinary. It was the Liebestod, and I’d never heard an orchestra play it so well before. James Levine led the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in a concert version.

I was very upset however that they did they didn’t have a singer at all. I hate this practice, and so I had to take the place of some dramatic soprano. I must say I do as well as many of the so called Wagnerians currently working. It seemed odd to me that they made this choice, to leave out a soprano.

For all the mud I sling – as I just did – about the current dramatic bunch, I really do believe there are some incredible voices which are suited to the challenges of this work. Christine Brewer, Debroah Voigt, Nina Stemme just to name a few of the wonderful voices…and this was James Levine after all. Waltrud Meier is doing it in Milan this very week. The excuse that there are “simply no voices around for it” is just stupid.

Is it possible that some of these people who go to the symphony are not willing to pay to hear a singer like they would a violinist or pianist? I don’t think so: a few years ago when Debroah Voigt and Ben Heppner came to sing a concert version of Tristan in Cincinnati the place was packed…all four thousand seats (yes our opera house is bigger than Chicago’s) sold out. Jeanine Jansen – the world class violinist – played the Tchaikovsky Concerto the same year, and only about three thousand showed up.

My own home town orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra plays very wonderfully…but they rarely have great singer come during the normal season. Matthias Gorne appeared a few years ago, and they play an annual festival of nothing but operatic and choral music, but as a general rule Cincinnati’s Orchestra – like any other medium sized city – gives us very few concerts with the great singers.

Where are they then? Well, looking at the schedules of any of the fine singers I have mentioned, you will find them performing often in Europe or New York, but they rarely come outside of Manhattan to share their voices with the world. It’s a shame that I have to go so far to see a great singer.

If opera is to survive as an art form, the great singers have to end the monopoly that the Metropolitan, La Scala, Covent Garden, and Staatsoper have established (splitting the rest of their time between Chicago, San Francisco and such places). They have to make sure that people know that Liebestod with an Isolde is better than without.

It bothers me however, that that singers often show up in Cincinnati (because the reputation of our kindly nature, and enthusiasm) to try a role out a new roll, or espically after some sort of trauma. That same Voigt/Heppner Concert was her first outing after the surgery and it was his first appearance after a crisis of vocal health. We loved them! We were honored to have them and the city was proud that they had been a part of our illustrious musical history …it is after all as fine as that of New York, but just not as hot right now.

Birgit Nilsson, Placido Domingo, Leonie Rysanek, Jussi Bjorling, James Levine, Martina Arroyo, Leontyne Price…even Richard Strauss have all been at Cincinnati multiple times and even have been regulars (okay not Strauss, he just came twice). It’s a shame that today we have to work so hard (and pay so much) to have this sort of talent come, unless they want us to stoke their ego after they get their nodules removed.

Someone once said, “there is nothing better than great Shakespeare, and nothing worse than bad either.” The same is true of Wagner, and until the singers decide they are going to do it in places like Cincinnati more often, it just will be done with an orchestra. James Levine has no excuse to have done this without Isolde…but unfortunately most conductors do.

IN REVIEW: Chicago Lyric Opera - Die Frau ohne Schatten

Die Frau ohne Schatten
Richard Strauss



CAST:
Empress: Deborah Voigt
Dyer's Wife: Christine Brewer
Emperor: Robert Dean Smith
Barak: Franz Hawlata
Nurse: Jill Grove (illness: Sub unknown good singer)
Spirit Messenger: Quinn Kelsey
Voice of the Falcon: Stacey Tappan
Hunchbacked Brother: John Easterlin
One-Eyed Brother: Daniel Sutin
One-Armed Brother: Andrew Funk
PRODUCTION TEAM:
Conductor: Sir Andrew Davis
Director: Paul Curran
Designer: Kevin Knight
Lighting Designer: David Jacques
Chorus Master: Donald Nally
Ballet Mistress: August Tye

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS (November 30, 2007) – Upon my arrival in the Civic Theater I was disappointed. The man who soled my ticket seemed unwilling to help me. I got the feeling it was because I was a young black man in jeans, however I am not sure. I asked him several times where the best place to sit acoustically was. He continued to ask how much I was willing to spend…and didn’t seem to notice that money wasn’t a particular concern. I have seats in the third row, orchestra….that was too close, this man was an idiot, and must never have gone to the opera. More likely he thought that I had never been. This house was off to a bad start.

When I finally took my seat (far away and much more expensive than the Metropolitan) a man stepped out from behind the curtain. He announced that Jill Grove was ill and would replaced by another mezzo, whose name I didn’t know. The girl was alright, though she wasn’t the Strauss mezzo Goddess that Grove is, and she sang the roll of the Nurse well enough. Franz Hawlata, the baritone who performed Barak was also ill, and the gentleman asked the audience’s indulgence.

This work has a reputation as being one of the most difficult to stage pieces in operatic history. Complete with spiritual forces, Gods, and multiple dimensional realms setting this opera in a relevant way is a challenge. Robert Dean Smith was a wonderful Emperor, with sufficient vocal power to compete the roll well and I liked someone other than the women for once.

From the moment the empress appeared onstage director Paul Curran failed to establish the Freudian motives of the characters. Deborah Voigt’s playful and somewhat childish Empress sounded wonderful, a perfect roll for the diva vocally. She was a little too childish for my taste, and I didn’t find her alluring enough. After a night in bed with the empower she didn’t seem like she had just woken up from….a romp.

The Dyer’s Wife seemed less complex and sophisticated than Hofmannsthal intended. Like the Empress, she didn’t seem in touch with the sexual love the woman needed…so central to the character.

The set worked well, and the company employed a clever use of ballet to explain the visions many of the characters have. Occasionally there was too much going on in the sparse setting…crazy men hanging from cables, it was all very Cirque du Soleil and I am not a fan. When the emperor flew in on a plastic horse, following the Falcon (great young singer) who flew in a cube surrounded by florescent tube lighting people laughed…so did I. It was very Studio 54, in an opera that other than that was fairly pretty. The laughing continued as the Emperor tried to climb back onto the stallion and it shook and leaned from side to side.

Robert Dean Smith kept it together through all of these challenges…and seemed to care very much about the Empress. The Barak of Franz Hawlata was also very wonderful and his love for his wife was understood…though his desire for her only in a sexual and unemotional way wasn’t clear. Director Paul Curran’s biggest mistake was making the men so complete that women seemed like bitches: He didn’t understand Strauss’ stories, where the only important characters are women which are either power-hungry and needing to be put back in place, or needing the love they deserve from their husbands.

Christine Brewer’s voice was stunning. At times I wondered if the Dyer’s Wife and the Empress should have been switched? I guess not, but it could have been interesting. Brewer and Voigt were very naturally the highlights of the evening, Robert Dean Smith’s Emperor was very impressive as well. Other notable were that of baritone Franz Hawlata, I would love to have heard him in better health and the Falcon Stacey Tappan sounded wonderful in the high flying passages.

Sir Andrew Davis led the orchestra. They, per their usual, sounded very bright…annoyingly bright even. The strings tripped over each other in some of the more challenging passages. Growing up with the Cincinnati Symphony (who play in residence) at the Cincinnati Opera’s Summer Festival I have grown to expect a world class orchestra in the pit when I hear opera. Metropolitan is a part of this tradition (fellow Cincinnatian James Levin leading them) and I am always satisfied. Chicago’s orchestra was in that opera class, and didn’t hold up to a quality symphony or philharmonic.

Chicago’s Frau was a vehicle for some wonderful singing, but fell sort of my expectations for the piece.