Time for the second in this opera season's occasional mash-up diaries between SNLC and the Metropolitan Opera's HD moviecasts series originally begun by DK'er Demi Moaned. Thus, today's installment has as its standard opener:
Anyone see the Met HD-cast of Tannhäuser today?
If you didn't see this HD-cast today, that's quite understandable, since today is Halloween after all, so those with kids to take care of, for costumes or parties, or those planning parties in general (not necessarily with families or kids) have other priorities today. Plus, this HD-cast would have taken about 5 hours out of your day, not including transportation time to get to the movie house. (This is a Wagner opera, after all.)
However, if you did go, you would have been well-rewarded with a generally strong performance of a "traditional" production at the Met, nicely led by the company's long-standing music director, James Levine. Yet this last sentence embeds two general long-running concerns about the status and future of the Met. More (sort of) below the flip….
First, though, as is standard with 3CM's practice in this mash-up series, he starts with linky goodness to the Met's synopsis of Tannhäuser, so you can get up to speed on the plot. Since this production is a revival of the 1977 (yes, it's that old) Otto Schenk staging, there's just one review, from the NYT and Anthony Tommasini here. In AT's review, he uses the phrase "scrupulously traditional", and that is readily evident in the costumes and Act II set, where the wardrobes have that general medieval look that you'll recognize from portrait paintings of the Middle Ages, and the hall of Count Hermann of Thuringia has the overall look of a medieval castle court. In one of the intermission features, hostess Susan Graham talked with a member of the wardrobe department, where it transpired that some of the costumes are actually from the original 1977 production, while others are of more varying vintage, to accommodate different singers with different physiques from the original singers.
Here, it's quite appropriate to have a "traditional" production look to Tannhäuser, because its story isn't one where updating the surface setting would make much sense, precisely because of that medieval era-subtext. There is a considerable "moldy fig" segment of the Metropolitan Opera audience that likes its literalist, "traditional" productions in the manner of Franco Zeffirelli and, indeed, Otto Schenk, such as the latter's old production of Wagner's Ring cycle from the 1980s that was retired a few years back to make room for the now-notorious Robert LePage Ring with the 16-ton stage set known as "The Machine". But because Tannhäuser hasn't been staged all that often at the Met (apparently, the most recent series of performances of this staging was back in 2004), there wasn't much call for a new production, when this old one was on hand. Actually, it served just fine here, so that all parties, traditionalist and otherwise, should have been well satisfied.
In fact, the medieval-era subtext got reinforcement during the second intermission from a somewhat unlikely source, namely the new principal harp of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Emmanuel Ceysson. He (yes, a male harpist here, granted that most harpists in orchestras are female) had the job of being the instrumental voice of the dueling ballad singers in Act II, where Count Hermann (German bass-baritone Günther Groissböck) challenged his court's ballad singers to expostulate on the true nature of love. In other words, while the singers with stage harps mimed (with varying degrees of meh-ness) strumming their instruments, Ceysson provided the actual sound, and did so quite splendidly. In his intermission banter with hostess Susan Graham, Ceysson mentioned the term "amour courtois", in terms of contrasting the straight-ahead courtiers like Wolfram (Swedish baritone Peter Mattei, the rival for the hand of the female love interest, Elisabeth, the Dutch soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek) with Tannhäuser (South African tenor Johan Botha), who had previously spent quite a while in the grotto of the Venusberg, in the company of the goddess of love herself, Venus (American mezzo-soprano Michelle de Young). Basically, the thematic contrast of the opera is between that idealized, yet also de-sexualized idea of courtly love (Wolfram), vs. the more carnal side of love (Tannhäuser).
BTW, for those up on nomenclature of female human anatomy, as well as German, the term Venusberg literally translates as "Venus Mountain". It doesn't take too much morphing to get you to various names/nicknames for a certain part of the female anatomy. Hence Tommasini's mildly snarky comment on the opera's opening scene and what goes on there:
"The ballet sequence in the opening scene at the Venusberg remains pretty silly, with amorous nymphs and satyrs leaping about in lacy dresses and loincloths. This Venus hosts only tasteful orgies."
Of course, from the POV of a terminally single guy who's not getting any….Plus, there's also the historical irony that even though Wagner structures the plot nominally to end on the side of honorable, courtly love, he himself had his share of the ladies in real life, including stealing away the wife of another man. Also, in some meta-fairness, if all one did 24/7 were orgies all the time, and nothing else, that might get a bit wearying. (It might beat its polar opposite, self's situation, though.)
Overall, the cast did quite well, with Peter Mattei perhaps the standout among the leads as Wolfram, where he manages to make this straight-ahead good guy very compelling and not just a boring, monotonous pillar of virtue. Groissböck carries considerable dignity and authority as Count Hermann. I didn't get any sense of the problems that Tommasini heard with Westbroek as Elisabeth, and thought that E-MW did a really good job. Wagner seems to suit her quite well (perhaps more so than her Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana at the end of last season's HD-series, although she did OK then). Her polar opposite in terms of story character, De Young as the goddess of love, also did a fine job.
This leaves Botha in the title role, who actually proved to be the weakest link among the leads, though not necessarily vocally. Tommasini captured the key weakness as follows:
"This valuable artist is a reminder that singing comes first in opera. Mr. Botha has an awkwardly hefty physique and is no actor."
No kidding. Among opera nerds, there's a phrase, "park and bark", whose meaning you can easily guess even if you don't know opera. Botha did a lot of parking and barking, so even if he barked well, the parking element does indeed weigh down the drama. You could argue that De Young didn't move about all that much more, but even in a role where she pretty much urges Tannhäuser to come hither, she was notably more mobile than Botha. Tommasini then goes on to excuse Botha:
"It didn't matter."
Actually, in the new age of HD-casts, for good or ill, it does matter more now. As an example from another opera, it comes off as dramatically less convincing if the starving artist romantic lead in
La bohème is a big guy who looks well-fed.
In addition, Botha had a bit of a deer-in-the-headlights look when doing his intermission chit-chat with Graham, while De Young was a lot more at ease (the two appeared together for their joint interview with Graham). Mattei sounded a bit stiff with his English in his chat segment, but at least on stage, he is an infinitely more natural stage animal compared to Botha. Interestingly, in Act II, Botha seemed to get more lively when he started to sing about the joys of carnal love in reply to Wolfram and the other court singers, but even then, his dramatic gestures seemed limited to widening eyes at the thought of love and lust in the grotto. Westbroek, being Dutch, of course had no problems at all with her English communication, even if Graham's repeated question to several singers about differences between their parts here and other Wagner got a bit old, and wasn't that interesting a question anyway. The Met does need to work on better questions to give their hosts, even if they are trying to keep it pretty softball overall.
Before I forgot, I do need to mention the orchestra, which sounded on top form today, which shouldn't be a surprise, with the big boss on the podium. In fact, quite a bit of the HD-camera work today, especially in the overture and the Act III prelude, showcased musicians in the orchestra, particularly solo wind and French horn parts. One wonders if maybe this was a quiet gesture on the part of the HD-cast producers in support of the musicians, who made notable concessions in the recent and very contentious labor negotiations between the music unions and the Met management, led by general director Peter Gelb. It was as if to remind everyone, if subliminally, that as much as opera-goers like star singers, none of it works without a world-class orchestra to support them.
Levine has been at the musical helm for over 4 decades at the Met, albeit with breaks for major health concerns in the past few years, which now have forced him to rely on a wheelchair to get around, and from which he now conducts seated, perched on what is now referred to as the "Maestro Lift". In fact, in some stage right/house left shots facing the podium, you can see the words "Maestro Lift" on the podium stand. But these very health issues raise the concern of what's next for the Met, in terms of musical leadership. Tommasini raises the point at the end of his review:
"The encouraging news was Mr. Levine's strong work. The looming question, though, is whether it's enough for the Met's music director to lead just seven performances of a Wagner opera during the first months of the season, while passing on a new staging of Lulu planned in large part just for him."
Levine is 72, after all, and while conductors are notoriously long-lived creatures, the company does have to think about who could potentially take over as the Met's music director when the inevitable day of Levine's depature arrives. Even if Levine were in tip-top shape, fully mobile, and not having to use a wheelchair, looking ahead is still a necessity. That none of those 3 conditions applies here, even if he seems in good spirits, makes that worry all the more pressing.
Tommasini's mention of Lulu refers to the Alban Berg opera of that title, which is the next scheduled HD-cast on November 21. Levine had originally been scheduled to conduct both Tannhäuser and Lulu this season, as he's led both operas in the past at the Met and, no doubt, very much wanted to lead both. However, this seems to be a case of the spirit being willing, but the flesh being not quite strong enough for him to handle both. So he had to dump one of them from his itinerary. Lulu already carries baggage of being a 12-tone scary-sounding "modern opera", so Levine pulling out of this production can't but hurt the box office prospects. The substitute conductor for the first part of the run is Lothar Koenigs, a German conductor who is currently music director of Welsh National Opera, whom I've never seen live, but about whom I've generally heard very good things.
This is where, for once, I turn into a direct shill for the Met HD-casts and ask anyone reading this the following. If you care at all about art that isn't lowest common denominator dreck, please mark your calendars for Saturday, November 21, 2015, to see this production at your local cinema which hosts the HD-casts, even if you would be a total newbie to opera. This is probably going to be the single most cutting-edge Met HD-cast production this season, and for that reason, it will probably tank at the movie theaters in terms of box office. I think that most of you here can spare $22 for this one occasion (or $18 for the encore about 11 days later). Trying to see a popular warhorse doesn't really open minds and ears. It's the difficult works that show how open-minded and open-eared people are.
To close on a rather lighter note, getting back to the orchestra, one other thing I noticed was the preponderance of Asian players in the violin sections, particularly Asian female players. As it turns out, in the role of the Young Shepherd in the latter part of Act I, the young Chinese singer Ying Fang took the role (in what's referred to as a "pants" role, i.e. a male part sung by a female singer). In the background forestry scenery of Act I, some of the painted trees reminded me of Asian trees, almost like bamboo in their long thinness, in scroll paintings. Not sure if Otto Schenk had that in mind, but kind of interesting to note now, 38 years after his production debuted at the Met. (I also need to mention briefly the chorus, which did very well, pretty much as usual. Also, even for a story set in medieval-era Germany, you saw Af-Am and Asian faces in the chorus, i.e. a color-blind casting situation.)
With that, you can either:
1. Talk about the opera and the HD-cast today, or
2. Observe the standard SNLC protocol.
Or you can do both, since we're semi open-minded here ;) .