Briefly Noted: Luisi's Nielsen Cycle

C. Nielsen, Symphonies 1/3, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, F. Luisi (released on December 9, 2022) DG 00028948634781 | 1h13 Symph. 4/5

Fabio Luisi was appointed principal conductor of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra in 2017, and his contract in Copenhagen has been extended through at least 2026. The Italian conductor's first recording project with the ensemble, the principal orchestra sponsored by DR (the Danish Broadcasting Corporation), is a complete cycle of the six symphonies of Carl Nielsen. Ionarts has been delighted to take account of the music of Denmark's pre-eminent composer, including the string quartets, piano music, chamber music and even opera. In live performance one is most likely to encounter his symphonies, especially the Fourth ("The Inextinguishable"), last heard from the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic in 2013 and the NSO in 2020, and the Fifth, heard from the NSO in 2011. Others, like the Second, are more rare.

Not surprisingly, the first installment of this cycle combined Nielsen's Fourth and Fifth Symphonies, released this past October. The dividing line between Nielsen's first three symphonies and his last three is World War I, with the first three symphonies composed roughly between 1890 and 1911, and the Fourth begun in 1914. While hardly juvenilia, the First Symphony was premiered around Nielsen's 30th birthday. It is already representative in some ways of his mature style, ending in a different key than it opens, a device eventually known as "progressive tonality."

With obvious influence from earlier symphonic composers, however, it is also rather conventional by Nielsen's standards: in four traditional movements with fairly standard orchestration. He completed it while working as a violinist in the Royal Chapel Orchestra (now styled the Royal Danish Orchestra), which premiered the First Symphony, with the composer playing in the second violin section. Luisi's interpretation of the First is more expansive than Neeme Järvi's version with the Gothenberg Symphony Orchestra (Deutsche Grammophon), closer in pacing to Blomstedt's recording with the San Francisco Symphony (Decca) -- interpretations likely shaped by Blomstedt's tenure as the first to be named the Danish NSO's principal conductor, from 1967 to 1977 -- and Michael Schønwandt's classic cycle with the Danish NSO (Dacapo, re-released by Naxos). Even more luxuriant in the middle movements, Luisi's tempo choices bring out the best of the ensemble's woodwind and string sound. A brass player in his youth, among other instruments, Nielsen knew how to marshal a brass-fueled crescendo, and the Danish NSO responds to Luisi's sculpting with sensitivity.

Every symphonic composer after Beethoven had a different reaction to the incorporation of singers in their symphonies. Nielsen wrote parts for voices only in his Third Symphony, a brief section of the second movement for baritone and soprano soloists, although without any words and therefore more like instruments. (In fact, in the score, Nielsen specifies that these parts may instead be performed by a fourth clarinet and fourth trombone.) The orchestration is augmented from the First, with three of each woodwind type, including doubling players on English horn and contrabassoon, plus a part for tuba. The "expansive" first movement, whose tempo marking gives the symphony its moniker, sounds like it easily could have been studied by John Williams, who has always imitated the best. As with the First, Luisi opts for more space in the tempo choices, especially in the serene slow movement, with fine vocal contributions from Palle Knudsen and Fatma Said, parts intertwined over a long pedal note with touches of Wagner and Strauss.

This cycle is just one of several to appear in recent years, with Nielsen's star on the rise: Paavo Järvi with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony (RCA), Ole Schmidt and the London Symphony Orchestra (Alto), Colin Davis also with the LSO (LSO Live), and Osmo Vänskä with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (BIS), among others. Perhaps the main competition could have been the cycle begun by Thomas Dausgaard with the Seattle Symphony, likely left incomplete following the Danish conductor's abrupt resignation from that orchestra early this year, before the Fifth or Sixth Symphony was released. Perhaps their new music director will complete the cycle, but no appointment has been announced yet. Luisi has the benefit of recording the symphonies with the orchestra that was the first ever to record a Nielsen symphony and has a long history with his music. The entire cycle will reportedly be released as a box set during the Carl Nielsen Festival this coming spring.

Production Photos from the Zurich Opera's Wozzeck with Christian Gerhaher

Spoiled by a masterful, cinematic production by Andreas Kriegenburg for the Munich State Opera, I was trying not to expect all that much – and certainly not something to supplant my experiences with Kriegenburg’s Wozzeck. And yet, the deceivingly simple production of the director (and Intendant of the Zurich Opera) Andreas Homoki did just that. Anchored by the set and costumes of Michael Levine (with further costume-help from Meta Bronski), it looked at first like a simple frame – yellow paint on black wood; the setup for a grim and grimy Punch & Judy show. As more and more frames opened behind the first one, revealing up to six layers, it became clear that it was a little cleverer than that, and wickedly effective to boot...

Full review on Forbes.com. Click on excerpted images below to find a higher resolution version of the full picture.

All images courtesy Zurich Opera, © Monika Rittershaus

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Mahler Festival Leipzig: Luisi - Concertgebouw - Das Lied von der Erde

While the New York Times is busy pitching Fabio Luisi as James Levine’s successor at the MET (it’s almost too obvious now, I wouldn’t be half surprised if the appointment ended up being someone else), Luisi was in Leizpig adding Mahler with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra to his conducting-credentials. Incidentally that put him in direct Mahler-competition with his two former orchestras, the MDR SO and the Dresden Staatskapelle.[1]

Purely on a technical level, it wasn’t too much of a contest; neither Dresden’s performance nor that of the MDR were so watertight that the RCO couldn’t have collectively sleepwalked to a better result. (They didn’t sleepwalk, but a few players might have preferred a leisurely breakfast over playing Das Lied von der Erde the Gewandhaus at 11AM.)

G.Mahler, Das Lied von der Erde, B.Haitink / Baker, King / RCO Philips/Decca G.Mahler, Totenfeier & Symphony No.2, R.Chailly / RCO Decca

But performance is more than getting all the notes and entries right… and in that regard Luisi, his Dutch orchestra, and the soloists left something to be desired. It started very promisingly with Mahler’s stand-alone symphonic movement “Totenfeier”, which Mahler would, with very few changes, turn into the first movement of the Second Symphony. The movement has special relevance for a Mahler Festival in Leipzig because it was, along with the First Symphony, composed while Mahler was second Kapellmeister in Leipzig (under Arthur Nikisch). Luisi combined deliberate touches, careful calibration, nuanced dynamics, and broadly sweeping gestures into a very pleasing whole – and the homogenous, mellow woodwind section had particular opportunity to distinguish itself. Perhaps it was to the advantage of that movement that it stood alone, rather than at the beginning of the long journey of the whole symphony. (Much like a single act from an opera in concert can sound very different than the same act as part of the whole.) Only the last few bars ended on a whimper, with matinee-timidity from the brass and strings.


Unfortunately that was pretty much the end of the glory. Das Lied von der Erde with Anna Larsson and Robert Dean Smith didn’t live up to the promise from before the intermission. This was largely due to Luisi allowing the orchestra to completely drown out the singers at every occasion he got. To his very considerable credit, Dean Smith did not let this tempt him to push his unspectacular but very fine voice—clear and unmannered—through the orchestra. It would only have sounded crude and he wouldn’t have had a chance, anyway. To the extent one heard him sing, there wasn’t much by way of inflection or text-coloring, but diction and pronunciation were exceptional.
Interestingly enough that same did not apply to Mme. Larsson, a model of stylish restraint and taste in her sleek black dress, as tall as Luisi with rostrum. Her voice is, in the low registers, deliciously haunting as ever… but hard—impossible, actually—to understand throughout the other registers, with a strange hollow quality to boot, as if you get the surrounding of a beautiful voice, a halo… but never quite the center. Luisi didn’t seem to care or mind about the voices and was busily engaged in an admittedly very lively accompaniment that completely dominated the affair. Eventually the liveliness faded, too, the energy level became inconsistent and in Der Abschied only musical moments remained, but no arch that carried one through to the end. Larsson’s “Ewig… Ewig!” was lovingly muted but one could only make out “Eeeehhhhh…-something”. I’m willing to assign blame to the hour of the day; AM-Mahler is probably just not a good idea.

Mahler Festival Leipzig: Salonen - Dresden - Third Symphony
Mahler Festival Leipzig: Märkl - MDR SO - Tenth Symphony
Mahler Festival Leipzig: Nezét-Séguin - BRSO - Seventh Symphony
Mahler Festival Leipzig: Gergiev - LSO - First Symphony
Mahler Festival Leipzig: Gilbert - NYPhil - Fifth Symphony
Mahler Festival Leipzig: Zinman - Tonhalle Zurich - Sixth Symphony
Mahler Festival Leipzig: Harding - Mahler Chamber Orchestra - Fourth Symphony

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[1] Luisi resigned from that orchestra in a (perfectly justified) huff and puff when the new management bungled big time and didn’t even deign to inform him that his slated successor, Christian Thielemann, would conduct his, Luisi’s orchestra in a New Years TV Gala performance in 2010.

Vienna Weekend

Renaissance man--Homo Universalis, if you wish--Tzimon Barto, a soon-to-be-regular in Washington, performed with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra at the Musikverein last weekend in a program that coupled the 20^th century Nordics Einojuhani Rautavaara and Sibelius with Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No.1. The VSO’s music director Fabio Luisi had to replace Mikko Franck who bailed out on scheduling issues, and impressively did so without changing the program despite not having conducted either the Sibelius (Symphony No.5), or the Rautavaara (“Apotheosis”, the re-worked finale of his Sixth Symphony) before.

J.Sibelius, Symphony No.5 (two versions), O.Vänskä / Lahti SO BIS

Tchaikovsky is among those composes whose beauty can easily be taken for granted… a failing I am not immune to. I was moved by the nuanced and very flexible opening of Barto’s, intelligently moving between brawn and lurid tenderness where many another interpreter merely thrashes the hell out of the instrument, to ever less effect the louder they play. As familiarity set in, I was only occasionally jolted out of the Tchaikovsky-routine: for worse when the clanky upper register of the instrument called strident attention to itself; for better when the second movement’s duos between first the cello and piano then the oboe and piano were played with gallantly-fresh accentuation. I found myself rather less in the position to extract anything particular special from the finale, but judging from the excited hollers and “Bravos” from the otherwise reserved Musikverein audience, it must have been a greater success of communicating a particular vision than I picked up on. (A few naifs in the audience had even dare applauded after the first movement... followed, without fail, by the haughty hissers. It's good to know that modern audiences know better how to reverently treat a Tchaikovsky concerto than, say, Tchaikovsky himself.) As it turned out, that particular warm reception would be a blessing because it elicited an encore from Barto, who played Schumann’s Mignon. Playing with the softest of touches—which, despite superficial suggestions that it might be otherwise, suits this musician best—he forced the ears to focus, forced a natural hushed silence onto the audience, and delivered something unreservedly magnificent. Radically daring pianissimo is where, for all his ability to destroy any instrument of choice, Barto’s true strength lies.

For Finn Mikko Franck, already a veteran conductor at the tender age of thirty-something, programming Sibelius and Rautavaara made eminent sense—he is on record, after all, claiming Rautavaara “the best composer. Period.” It has been over ten years since I read that statement of his (I remember him conducting a Shostakovich Seventh Symphony with the Munich Philharmonic, then barely into his twenties), and perhaps it was a comment borne out of youthful enthusiasm, meant to make a statement more than anything else. But the statement certain had had its effect on me. Never having even heard of Rautavaara before that, I have keenly followed the composer’s output since—which thanks to the many excellent recordings on the Ondine label is easy. “Best composer, ever” might be pushing it, but certainly one of the most interesting and enjoyable composers of our time. For Luisi—who is more of a stranger to these musical ideas of north—to leave the program intact was laudable and daring. Laudable to bring composers unknown or neglected in continental Europe to an audience not likely to get much exposure to this music; daring because it meant entering a different language.

The ruminatingly-gorgeous sounds of Rautavaara’s “Apotheosis” were bleeding through the doors of Musikverein as I made my belated way back to the seats for Sibelius. The beginning of this gorgeous work—probably the second-most accessible of Sibelius’ Symphonies after the terrific, relatively conventional Second—was precise and unafraid of jarring sounds. The separation of instrumental groups—as if put together from extensive Stimmproben and then skillfully re-arranged into proper common order—sounded like an interpretive choice for a while. Then the confusion set in. Not unlike Bruckner I’ve heard in Italy, this sounded like the perfectly proper recitation of a poem in a language the speaker doesn’t actually understand. All the letters and words are there and in the right order, but the sense is lost somewhere between them. It’s not entirely surprising that Sibelius still baffles many continental listeners when faced with performances itself so thoroughly baffling. Consequently the applause was gentle and confused, leaving open the question whether the case of Sibelius had been served or not, that Friday night.

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Poulenc’s Trois Movements is a gay and frolicking little nonet for winds, strings, and a horn, rather typical of Poulenc’s engaging chamber music and it opened a matinee at the Vienna Konzerthaus I attended. Admittedly, I wasn’t there for the nine members of the Vienna Chamber Orchestra to perform Poulenc, and had I been, I might have been more disappointed with the ‘it’s-too-early-in-the-morning-to-be-doing-this’ performance than I was. I was there to hear the young cellist Julian Steckel, the freshly crowned winner of the ARD Competition. To say I was underwhelmed with the whole cellist’s side of this year’s ARD Competition—including Steckel, even as I, too, thought him primus inter pares—would be putting it kindly. All the more reason then to hear him in his natural environment: under non-competition conditions in a concert hall; a ‘real’ performance, conducted by his teacher and (former) colleague Heinrich Schiff.

Saint-Saëns & Dvořák, Cello Concertos, du Pré / Barenboim, Celibidache / Philadelphia, Swedish RSO Teldec

My impression of his being awarded the ARD prize was that he received it based on what the jury knew he has been and would be capable of, rather than what they heard from him during those weeks. That might not be my idea of how to dole out prizes at competitions, but it serves well enough to pique my intrigue, of wanting to hear that potential materialize; perhaps in this performance on a grisly-gray, misty Sunday morning in Vienna, with the ear-pleasing Saint-Saëns Concerto No.1 in a-minor. And voila: the bold opening was right on, Steckel’s sound easily filing the Konzerthaus’ smaller, charming Mozart Hall. Technically unimpeachable, interpretively polite, and enhanced by an obvious sensitivity to what he was playing, this was a different league from the competition performances—supported by the sincerely engaged orchestra under an engagedly baton-waving Schiff, who looks ever more like a rotund, friendly bear on his quest for another pot of honey-mead.

Ionarts at Large: Fabio Luisi in Mahler & Beethoven

Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony and Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto are separated by less time than separates us from the premiere of the Mahler Symphony (in it’s final form) in Berlin. A fact that has been true for 15 years. (Quiz: If the Beethoven concerto was premiered in 1800, when was Mahler’s work premiered?) And yet Mahler still seems so much more current, (sometimes even modern) than Beethoven – while Beethoven’s C-major piano concerto op.15 is instead graced with timelessness. You would think classical music – as everything else in life – to have changed more in the last hundred years than in any hundred years before that. Did it– but it ceased to be relevant at some point? Perhaps questions for a long night with Mahler and Single Malt.

Mahler, Sy.2, MDRSO / Luisi Mahler, Sy.6, MDRSO / Luisi Mahler, Das Lied von der Erde et al., MDRSo / Luisi Robert & Clara Schumann, Piano Concertos, Hohenrieder / New Philharmonic Westphalia / Wildner

Both composers – though not the libation – were present in the second week of April when Winderstein Concerts presented Fabio Luisi’s at the Munich Philharmonic Hall with his orchestra, the Staatskapelle Dresden. The Mahler performed there will soon join the many recent issues of Mahler symphonies (on DVD, presumably, as it was filmed), but whether that performance had what it takes to merit preservation for future generations could be doubted. While the Dresden orchestra is one of the handful of best orchestras in Germany, and while it knows its Mahler (reiterated by recently issued Giuseppe Sinopoli recordings from their vault on the Profil label), and while its string section never offers anything less than impressive ensemble work, and while Luisi seemed utterly engaged in every aspect of this performance, the result was distinctively lackluster.

The brass section had inexplicable lapses in the “Titan’s” finale (when they had been so impressive, still, in the first movement), the Frère Jacques round in the third movement (played by the entire double bass section – though sometimes taken solo) was of unfortunate accuracy and refinement, without any sense of terror, warped frenzy, or being slightly off kilter. The Hungaro/Jewish dance elements, rendered with delicate refinement, made me wish the Saxon State Orchestra Dresden might play a little less perfectly. The utmost gentility of the morning dew, though, was superbly crafted.

On the upside, the second movement had zest and vitality – at which the orchestra was clearly better than mystical evocation. In the finale they were, Chicagoean brass crudeness and wobbles aside, going at it again with verve. It was impossible not to hear the wind, but the felt impact they made was disproportionately small. Lagging, purposelessness slow parts, and some very unfortunate string sounds in ppp passages did not heighten the experience – whereas watching Luisi did. The cameras, which seemed to ignore him, should have focused on nothing else but the little conductor who, like Mahler might have himself, flung his arms about with passion, made little leaps… in short: was the embodiment of the music as aerobic exercise.

The Mahler performance was rapturously received all the same – but the actual excellence of this concert lied in the Beethoven concerto No.1 in C-major. Partly because it is such a great concerto: graceful like Mozart initially, but soon showing a little Beethovenian muscle – surely one of the (from a Western point of view) most civilized pieces of music composed. Refinement and beauty balanced with wit, sparkle, and thunder – and all in a very sympathetic performance by the Staatskapelle and Margarita Höhenrieder.

Her playing was no-nonsense, clear, and secure – which could most generously be described as in the vain of Wilhelm Backhausen (or less generously as one of thwarted passion). It suited the exquisite orchestral performance with the strings particularly energetic and gripping in that way that only live performances can convey – and then only the most precise, and cohesive ones. The third, bravura, cadenza of the Allegro con brio was delivered with fleet fingers by the former Leon Fleisher student from Munich, though disjointed on one, two occasions.

The calm, even languid second movement had similar virtues, capped by a wonderfully casual, flippant entry into the third movement where the full power of the reduced Staatskappellen-forces (11-11-8-6-5 plus trombone, horn, clarinet, bassoon, flute, oboe, and timpani) was unleashed.

Stubbornly prolonged applause forced an encore out of Mme. Höhenrieder, which was dedicated to and by Harald Genzmer who, aged 98, passed away in December of 2007. A short piece – also in C-major – of angular beauty and business – virtuosic sounding in a way one might expect from Frederic Rzewski.

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A Helen for all Ears, if not all Eyes: Die Ägyptische Helena at the MET

Prelude

In bringing the rarely performed Richard Strauss opera Die Ägyptische Helena (“The Egyptian Helen”—last at the MET in 1928) back to the stage, the Metropolitan Opera is doing opera lovers a great favor. The music of this opera is marvelous, as most of even neglected Strauss is, and the opera’s story/libretto, maligned for being silly, incoherent, and whatever other damning thing one can throw at it, might just be worth our time, too. Nine years ago, Bernhard Holland wrote in the New York Times that “Richard Strauss gave Die Ägyptische Helena so many reasons to fail that its best qualities are neutralized, held hostage by its worst instincts. … [T]here exists so much in the opera’s favor, yet so much that almost guarantees its doom.” That was by way of introducing concert performances of the American Symphony Orchestra under Leon Botstein with—then as now—Deborah Voigt as Helena at Avery Fisher Hall that were widely considered a success, in part because they were not staged.

From the same venue and team, but five years later, comes the finest available recording of the opera. (By my count there are five performances on record—in various editions—only the 1970 RCA live recording from Vienna with Josef Krips, Edita Gruberova, Jess Thomas, Gwyneth Jones, and Peter Schreier is a serious alternative; Dorati / Detroit with Jones and Hendricks on Decca is oop.) The rest of the cast featured on that Telarc live recording, if more or less anonymous in late 2002, has all made their name in opera, since. Celena Shafer surely impressed everyone who heard her in the Washington Concert Opera’s performance of Massenet’s Esclarmonde two years ago. Carl Tanner—he’s been Samson for the WNO—has established himself firmly on the world’s opera stages (no more truck-driving and head-hunting for him…), Eric Cutler has since issued his debut recital on EMI, Jill Grove is in very good company as an ARIA winner (including Ms. Shafer and Mr. Cutler).

Story

The Operas of Richard Strauss – and recommended recordings Guntram, op.25 (1894) Gala, 1985 BBC SO, John Pritchard, William Lewis, Henry Newman, Carole Farley et al. UK | DE | FR Feuersnot, op.50 (1901) Arts Music, 1985 Munich RSO, Heinz Fricke, Julia Varády, Bernd Weikl, Manfred Schenck et al. UK | DE | FR Salome, op.54 (1905) Deutsche Grammophon, 1990 Deutsche Oper Berlin, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Cheryl Studer, Bryn Terfel, Leonie Rysanek, Horst Hiestermann et al. UK | DE | FR Elektra, op.58 (1909) Decca, 1967 Wiener Philharmoniker, Georg Solti, Birgit Nilsson, Regina Resnik, Gerhard Stolze, Tom Krause et al. UK | DE | FR Der Rosenkavalier, op.59 (1911) EMI, 1956 Philharmonia Orchestra, Herbert von Karajan, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Christa Ludwig, Eberhard Wächter, Otto Edelmann, Ljuba Welitsch, Teresa Stich-Randall, Nicolai Gedda, Paul Kuen et al. UK | DE | FR Ariadne auf Naxos, op.60 (1912) Deutsche Grammophon, 2000 Staatskapelle Dresden, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Deborah Voigt, Ben Heppner, Klaus Florian Vogt, Anne Sofie von Otter, Natalie Dessay, et al. UK | DE | FR Die Frau ohne Schatten, op.65 (1919) EMI, 1987? Bavarian RSO, Wolfgang Sawallisch, René Kollo, Cheryl Studer, Hanna Schwarz et al. UK | DE | FR Intermezzo, op.72 (1924) cpo, 2011 Munich radio Orchestra, Ulf Schirmer, Simone Schneider, Markus Eiche, Brigitte Fassbaender et al. UK | DE | FR Die ägyptische Helena, op.75 (1928) Telarc, 2002 American SO, Leon Botstein, Deborah Voigt, Celena Shafer, Carl Tanner et al. UK | DE | FR Arabella, op.79 (1933) Decca, 1957 Wiener Philharmoniker, Georg Solti, Lisa Della Casa, Otto Edelmann, Ira Malaniuk, Hilde Gueden, George London et al. UK | DE | FR Die schweigsame Frau, op.80 (1935) Orfeo, 1971 Bavarian State Opera, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Reri Grist, Martha Mödl, Barry McDaniel, Kurt Böhme, Donald Grobe et al. UK | DE | FR Friedenstag, op.81 (1938) Deutsche Grammophon, 1985 Staatskapelle Dresden, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Albert Dohmen, Alfred Reiter, Deborah Voigt, Jochen Kupfer, Johan Botha et al. et al. UK | DE | FR Daphne, op.82 (1938) Deutsche Grammophon, 2005 West German RSO, Semyon Bychkov, Renée Fleming, Anna Larsson, Johan Botha, Michael Schade, Eike Wilm Schulte, Kwangchul Youn et al. UK | DE | FR Die Liebe der Danaë, op.83 (1940) Telarc, 2000 American SO, Leon Botstein, Lauren Flanigan, Peter Coleman-Wright, Hugh Smith et al. UK | DE | FR Capriccio, op.85 (1942) EMI, 1957 Philharmonia Orchestra , Wolfgang Sawallisch, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Nicolai Gedda, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Eberhard Wächter, Hans Hotter, Christa Ludwig, Anna Moffo et al. UK | DE | FR

But about that story: Poseidon’s mistress Aithra awaits her sea-ruling lover for dinner – in vain. (Poseidon is currently in Ethiopia.) Her omniscient clam (or mussel, although “mussel” and the German “Muschel” are not the same; the latter refers to the entire phylum of Mollusca, not just the class of Bivalvia) tells of a ship where a beautiful woman (the most beautiful woman, in fact) is about to be murdered by her jealous husband.

Aithra is appalled and prevents the murder by having the sea wreck the ship and the couple washed ashore. She receives Helen (just back from a ten-year stint with Paris in Troy) and her Spartan husband Menelas (just back from an equally long stint of destroying Troy and Paris) in her abode and sets about to fix that troubled marriage for Helen’s sake. The latter still loves Menelas, even if Aithra can’t understand what the woman finds in the aggressive boor.

Potions calm Menelas down—but he is haunted by visions of his less-than-ideally faithful wife (Menelas didn’t know Leonard Cohen, but he would have sympathetically hummed along to: “Everybody knows that you love me baby / Everybody knows that you really do / Everybody knows that you’ve been faithful / give or take a night or two * / Everybody knows you’ve been discreet / But there were so many people you just had to meet / Without your clothes / And everybody knows”) and promptly runs amok. Aithra’s fairies distract him and, confused, Menelas thinks he is killing Paris and Helen all over again as he stabs at the conjured spirits. (* Or 3652, as it were)

Now Aithra tells him that Helen was never actually in Troy—but that a spirit had been created in her image to protect the real Helen who was sound asleep all that time, safely tucked away in Egypt. (This is actually one of the variations of the myth, but with Hofmannsthal and Strauss it’s just that: a cockamamy scheme to help Menelas reconcile Helen’s true love for him with her alleged (actual, but now appearing never-to-have-happened) marital transgressions. (After Paris’ death she was handed from brother to brother… “A sister-in-law unlike any other” Menelas points out, with sarcastic disdain.)

That seems to be the solution at first, and Helen asks to be ferried (fairied, to be precise) away to a secluded place where she can sort things out with her hubby. Soon she realizes that Menelas’ forgetting the past (supported by more potions) does not actually help. Now the quarrels are just different—and the newly reunited couple finds itself in a union that is not really themselves. A foreign prince and his rash son (Altair and Da-ud) crash the party, create diversion, but don’t propel the drama. Helen decides that in order to save her real marriage she must risk having Menelas remember everything—and gives him a potion to that effect. With that act she also allows Menelas to come to the difficult terms of how his beautiful loving wife could be the same one that ran away with Paris, leaving him with their daughter behind and causing a long, bloody war. In overcoming this discrepancy, an actual reunion is possible and the opera ends on this hopeful, but unresolved, and hardly definitively happy, note—not unlike Così, Der Rosenkavalier, or Capriccio.

If this (and numerous fairies and acts of magic and some summoned sea-warriors of Poseidon) sounds ludicrously “out there”, it’s probably because the surface of the story can all too easily detract from its substance. At the heart of Die Ägyptische Helena is a (nearly) as domestic a story as in Intermezzo (another obscure opera of his—see table to the left) or, non-operatically, in the Sinfonia Domestica.

Meaning

It’s a beautiful and sensitive problem and predicament that Strauss and Hofmannsthal tackle: That of the difficulties of reconciling the seeming inconsistencies and contradictions of reality (in spouses or elsewhere); the reality of the people we interact with and the ideal we may hold of them. Often we simply deny this discrepancy; others react with violent outbursts to them. (A rather crass label for this conflict is the “Virgin Mary / Whore complex”.) Anyone who has ever been in a relationship will have done or thought something they know is better not shared with the respective partner. (“Your thighs are fat”, “That guy is really hot”, “I wish your mother finally died”, “No, actually the soup is execrable”, “You’re not the best I’ve had” etc.)

At the same time we run around denying our partners might think similar thoughts or do similar deeds. When we can’t brush that inconsistency under the carpet anymore, we might be in trouble, just like Menelas, who can’t deny that half the Trojan royal family had a go at Helen. (What kind of a role model would she be to our daughter, he thinks.) Understandably it takes him a while to integrate that person with the Helen he loves and knows and who loves him… and then accept her as that, in all her complexities.

Even if you don’t buy that the glaring discrepancy between the two acts of Strauss’ opera—the comedic, silly first act and the relatively serious drama of the second act—represent in form the very psychological discrepancies the characters have to overcome, the subject matter alone deserves more benevolent attention than the easy mockery that it usually meets. Sure, it’s easy to claim silliness starts with the first line, “Dinner is served” in the MET-titles (it’s actually “The meal is prepared” or “The feast awaits… night is falling”), but that is in any case no less meaningful a way to start an opera than using the lines: “Five… Ten… Twenty… Thirty… Thirty-six… Forty-three”—and amounts to little more than taking potshots at poor Helena. Most of the absurdity in it merely serves to illustrate this very human, very bourgeois and near-universal condition.

Staging

If taken as the silly, hopelessly weird opera that it is generally thought of, a new production might well be tempted to go all-out absurd and completely ignore or obscure the central theme. David Fielding, who updated his 1997 staging from the Garsington Festival for the MET, does not fall victim to that temptation. His set is wild, abstract, and a good many of those things that have MET patrons cringe, but it never distracts, often adds subtly to the drama (while looking unsubtle on the outside—not unlike the opera itself). Acts I and II are visual inversions of each other—what is white in act I is black in act II, what was stage left in act one is now stage right. The sets are gorgeous, skewed and abstract contraptions of oversized doors and walls. A number of inspired touches makes this opera a visually most arresting feast for the eyes of those that don’t expect traditional settings. But why would anyone care about representational sets when the story of the opera has so little to do with the actual drama, anyway? The direction of the green fairy-chorus (a weird alienesque bunch of glittering things, somewhere between lions and Liszt-monkeys, in mint-mouthwash colored vinyl dresses) is delightful and surprisingly in line with the text. (When they can’t take the radiance of Helen’s beauty, why shouldn’t they take out their glacier-goggles?)

The Music

Helen might be Clytemnestra’s sister (both hatched from eggs after Zeus raped/seduced their mother with at least one of them having been in the form of a swan… the accounts vary on this)—but Strauss’ 1928 opera sounds much more like Salome than Elektra, shot through with the harmonic and orchestral language we might know from later works like Die Frau ohne Schatten (1919) and Arabella (1933). The music is gorgeous far beyond what one might expect for an opera of such ill repute (even if, admittedly, no one ever claimed that it was neglected because of the music). Hugo von Hofmannsthal, who wrote the libretto for Helene (as he did for Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne auf Naxos, Die Frau ohne Schatten, Arabella, and Die Liebe der Danaë) wanted Strauss to get away from Wagnerian “erotic screaming” (Frau ohne Schatten, anyone?), and while that goal was achieved, there are still a couple of orchestral moments in Helene that bring Die Walküre and Das Rheingold to mind. This is music to indulge in and it gives the two leading sopranos more wonderful opportunities to show off their ability (athletic and bel canto, alike), sensitivity, and vocal voluptuousness than other composers manage to offer in their entire œvre’s output.

The Singing

The Met cast offers several reasons to tune in on Saturday, but none greater than the spectacular Diana Damrau and Deborah Voigt. The latter sang more than admirably despite having been announced “ill” by Peter Gelb. A speckle on the very first note and slight metallic restriction that loosened as the opera went on were the only notable results of that illness in the first act. An odd, but isolated, metallic buzzing (like a blown tweeter) when she was at her most forceful in the “Zweite Brautnacht, Zaubernacht” opening of act II was the only other moment when her incapacitation called attention to itself. Her Helen was still a vocal feat and feast, and to hear her—hopefully—in full health on Saturday (1.30 PM) should prove even more rewarding. Sadly not visible on the radio, she now even believably looks the part of “most beautiful woman in the world”!

Her Helen was bettered only by Aithra with her more agile part—brought to life in every way by the German soprano Diana Damrau. With diction as perfect as her natural pronunciation, she also added a theatrical element to her use of language. An actor could not have treated language more appropriately than she. And while this might be a detail lost on all but those who follow the libretto by listening to it, her vocal contribution escaped no one in the house, which went (comparatively) wild at curtain call. Indeed, Ms. Damrau must have momentarily forgotten that she was not the top-billed singer and last to take a bow, because she started to order her colleagues together for the group-bow before realizing that Ms. Voigt and Torsten Kerl (Menelas) had yet to appear. A very cute (and on that night truly forgivable) faux pas.

Under Fielding’s direction, said Torsten Kerl came across like Alec Baldwin in one of his slightly absurd, over the top performances. He lacked the power to compete with the ladies, seemed at his limit throughout the first act (never strained but never easily cutting across the orchestra, either) – but came to life mid-second act. Jill Grove repeated her clam/mussel from the 2002 performance and recording with maturity and a deep, molluscan beauty. Wolfgang Brendel brought his veteran but unreliable baritone to the part of prince Altair and surprised with a big and round, largely wobble-free delivery that belied recent experiences I have had with him.

Altair’s son, Da-ud, was sung by Texan tenor Garrett Sorenson and it was never in question why he had previously been given seven other roles at the MET. He’ll get more, still, judging by what he made of this small part. The chorus was fine – but acted even better. Only the Met orchestra under Fabio Luisi (who so had magnificently conducted Simon Boccanegra) left something to be desired. Best when sweeping and impetuous, there were some problems in the delicate (and already oddly tuned) string passage accompanying Aithra’s “Ihr grünen Augen” and the ensemble seemed to drift apart a little in the first act.

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