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The Times, December 11 2012 |
Neil Fisher |
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Wagner: Lohengrin, Teatro alla Scala, 7. Dezember 2012 |
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Lohengrin at La Scala, Milan
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Did Wagner topple the latest Italian government? Mario Monti, Italy’s Prime
Minister, was there for the opening night of the La Scala season but his
next announcement was that he intended to resign, after the news that Silvio
Berlusconi’s party had withdrawn support.
Berlo might not have
wielded the knife during the performance (he prefers the football to a night
at La Scala), but for all the glitz this gala did touch a political nerve.
Next year is the bicentenary of both Wagner and Verdi; choosing to perform
Wagner’s Lohengrin at the most important night in the Italian operatic
calendar looked to some like unacceptable cultural weakness.
But La
Scala’s general director, Stéphane Lissner, is French; its leading
conductor, Daniel Barenboim, an Israeli who specialises in German music.
Fold in Jonas Kaufmann and Anja Harteros, a German tenor and soprano both
favoured by Mediterranean good looks, and La Scala had made a compelling
argument.
Harteros, alas, succumbed to flu; so did her cover, giving
the house 24 hours to find a replacement. In the end the rather over-parted
Annette Dasch did a creditable job as Elsa in a gloomy new staging by Claus
Guth. In a spooky Victorian courtyard evoked by Christian Schmidt’s spare
and not very singer-friendly designs, Guth has the story unfold alongside a
befuddling array of psychological allusions and strange flashbacks.
Many of these concern the death by drowning of Elsa’s brother Gottfried, and
when Kaufmann’s terrified Lohengrin appears (no swan, only a handful of
feathers), writhing and twitching neurotically, the strong implication is
that he is just a projection of Elsa’s sisterly guilt. That’s one idea. So
is the odd relationship Elsa seems to have with her female nemesis, Ortrud
(sung with demonic vehemence by Evelyn Herlitzius), one based on sadistic
childhood lessons at a piano that never leaves the stage. But by the opera’s
denouement both internal logic and external drama have seeped away.
A shame, because Kaufmann’s commanding portrayal of the title role —
which effortlessly spans the sweetly lyrical and commandingly heroic — is
superb and Barenboim’s conducting, though dramatically
over-generalised, produces spine- tinglingly gorgeous playing from the La
Scala orchestra, who purr through the overture like a dream. There’s
powerful support, too, from René Pape’s King Henry and Zeljko Lucic’s
imposing Herald. Opening the season next December will be Verdi’s La
traviata. As you were.
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