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Financial Times, December 10, 2012 |
Shirley Apthorp |
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Wagner: Lohengrin, Teatro alla Scala, 7. Dezember 2012 |
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Lohengrin, La Scala, Milan
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No other opera event in the world can possibly generate the public
excitement of La Scala’s annual season-opener. It is not only the feast day
of Milan’s patron saint and the social event of the year on the Italian
calendar, it is also an act of participatory public theatre. Protesters,
police, onlookers, press, politicians, celebrities, bankers and socialites
all passionately play their appointed parts. What happens at La Scala on
December 7 is both game and fight, a projection screen for the state of the
nation.
With ticket prices up to €2,400, the event boasts a plush
exclusivity that is almost as far removed from the everyday world of
opera-going as a trip into space. There are officials with plumed helmets,
there are jostling crowds of screaming camera crews, and the glossy
programme books are so hefty that they could be used as murder weapons.
It is hard to imagine how an evening of opera – even one of Wagnerian
length – could be worth the price of a second-hand car. But in any case,
there is a reasonable expectation that whatever is offered will be more or
less as good as it gets.
Last Friday at La Scala, it really was.
Controversies over the choice of repertoire were well founded – this is the
third Wagnerian season-opener in six years at La Scala, which has everything
to do with Daniel Barenboim’s ability to call the shots, as well with the
imperatives of international co-productions. But the Scala audience can be
forgiving, especially for a Lohengrin of this calibre. Intendant Stéphane
Lissner’s appointment of Claus Guth and his team reads like a summation of
all he has done in the past seven years to win over the Milanese audience
for opera stagings that are complex, profound, and well-made – a very far
cry from the stand-and-deliver style of the Muti era.
What
makes a world-class cast for Lohengrin today? Jonas Kaufmann in the title
role seems a no-brainer – not even those who quibble over the lieder-singer
ease with which he navigates the role’s manifold difficulties could have
failed to be entranced by the ethereal beauty of his upper register, the
seductive warmth of his chest voice, his magnetic charisma and musical
acumen. René Pape as Heinrich is authoritative yet ambivalent;
Evelyn Herlitzius makes an intense, damaged, vulnerable Ortrud, Tómas
Tómasson delivers a Telramund of arresting sensitivity, more wounded pride
than evil rage. But the undoubted star of the evening was Annette Dasch,
leaping in at slightly less than 24 hours’ notice for the ailing Anja
Harteros.
Guth’s production is a bleak, meticulous examination of
Bismarck-era militarism and its emotional consequences. Elsa and Gottfried
are children of a system so ruthlessly strict that both retreat into an
inner world of fantasy, dissociation and hysteria. This is a society where
madness is regarded with dawning scientific curiosity but treated with
barbarity, and Christian Schmidt’s set is a masterpiece of Gothic
associations, from the mad-house to the false promise of freedom on a
reed-fringed shore.
Dasch’s performance in this context is a
breathtaking feat of improvisation, guts and professionalism; she moves as
though the production had been conceived around her, and sings with unerring
accuracy and unfettered fervour.
Lohengrin is Barenboim’s party
piece, from the ethereal delicacy of the overture to the marshal thunder of
Heinrich’s army, and the Scala orchestra plays for him as if it were born to
it. If it has to be Barenboim, it may as well be Wagner.
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