|
|
|
|
Musical America, May 17, 2016 |
By ANDREW POWELL |
|
Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Bayerische Staatsoper, 16. Mai 2016 |
|
Mastersingers’ Depression
|
|
Beckmesser blew his brains out at the end of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
last night here in the Nationaltheater. That was after first aiming his gun
at the back of the head of Sachs — who was sitting moping because Stolzing
had ignored his Verachtet mir die Meister nicht, would not honor German art
or the masters who safeguard it, and simply walked out with Eva — and after
a graphically brutal beating by David and bat-wielding apprentices had left
him in a wheelchair, from which he had thankfully recovered, back onto his
feet, within the few hours separating Johannisnacht and Johannisfest.
Whether Beckmesser’s character is of the suicidal type is a fair, though
in context minor, question. Stage director David Bösch’s new production for
Bavarian State Opera offers an altogether transformed view of Wagner’s
erstwhile comedy, funded by the same hardworking Bavarian people who brought
you the first, when Hans von Bülow conducted on GMD Kirill Petrenko’s
podium. Swiss-trained Bösch explores the role art can play in society by
winding the clock in the opposite direction from the composer. Instead of
reaching back three centuries to show the art-guild tradition at its
liveliest, when Nuremberg prospered, he forwards us to a faceless town that
has seen better days, where the institution feted by Wagner is in yet more
jeopardy than when the score was written and where the masters in their
trades suffer the effects of debilitating, distant economic forces. Somewhat
outside these problems is the presumably flush Stolzing, but even he cannot
invigorate through his candidacy a guild whose masters find it easier to
delude themselves than honestly confront demise. Sachs’s Wahnmonolog fits
right in. Not much else does.
Inevitably the idea of collective
depression finds little use for such musical-dramatic particulars as the
scent of the Flieder and the shade of the Linde. Bösch has to invert droll
humor, in for instance the Nachtwächter’s round or Sachs’s gift to
Beckmesser, and he defies Wagner’s times-of-day and lighting directives.
Indeed clashes with the composer create an uneasy mix of narrative, pomp,
violence and slapstick (song-trial errors marked via shocks to the applicant
in an electric chair; a town-clerk serenade from atop a scissor-lift
constantly adjusted by Sachs). But the director’s visual-stylistic
trademarks are firmly in place, reminding us of his spacy or zoned-out
previous work for this company: L’elisir d’amore (2009), Mitridate, rè di
Ponto (2011) and, his touching flower-power effort, La favola d’Orfeo
(2014). Neatly arranged decay, locally lit props, dark limbo backgrounds, a
funky insouciance to the stage action: these are some.
The Bavarian
State Opera Chorus sang magnificently for this premiere, achieving levels of
expressive detail and shading it reserves for its obsessive GMD; Sören
Eckhoff did the coaching. Sara Jakubiak from Bay City, MI, made a welcome
debut as Eva, acting well and producing girlish tones in mostly clear
German. Benjamin Bruns coped sweetly with the boisterous lyric challenges of
David. Jonas Kaufmann added the quality of heroic delivery to the youthful
ardor and Lied skills evident in his Scottish Stolzing of long ago. Wolfgang
Koch — vocal opulence of Goerne, brains of Gerhaher — looked sloppy as Sachs
but conveyed enlightenment anyway. He projected his words impeccably and
never forced for volume. Markus Eiche’s musically ideal Beckmesser deserved
and received the loudest applause, and the baritone worked hard to make
sense of Bösch’s action. Christof Fischesser intoned nobly and securely
through Pogner’s wide range, while the Nachtwächter’s chant seemed all too
short as securely phrased by Tareq Nazmi. Petrenko drew playing of color and
sparkle from his Bavarian State Orchestra, favoring momentum (78’ 58’ 70’
42’) over reflection and pointing the rhythms with ceaseless energy and
emphasis, much to the opera’s advantage.
|
|
|
|
|
|