Maricarmen

(Waltraud Meier)

Em 1996, no Met, depois de atingida a glória, Waltraud Meier arrisca novos terrenos… e dá-se mal, muito mal. A sua Carmen foi absolutamente aniquilada pela crítica – sobretudo -, que a descreveu como uma fria germânica, almejando a graça latina.

Meier sofreu muitíssimo como o duro revés. Mas, como diria o outro, são “ossos do ofício”.

Doravante, regressou ao Met, apenas, no seu elemento natural, ossia Wagner.

Pessoalmente, considero Meier uma extraordinária intérprete, com uma veia dramática memorável. Embora a voz brilhe, a consagração só se dá quando representa. E como brilha a sua Kundry – a melhor da sua geração -, Isolda, Fricka, Venus, and so on…

Aos 55 anos, Meier regressa ao Met, desta feita para interpretar Marie, a protagonista feminina de Wozzeck (Berg).

O excelente artigo do The New York Times disseca a relação conturbada de Meier com o Met, quase sugerindo o que me parece óbvio: la vendetta! Depois do logro de Carmen, a Marie de Meier soa a um ajuste de contas com o público e crítica Metropolitanos. Oxalá!

É que – caro e fiel leitor -, ao seu jeito, Marie é também uma Carmen, ambas criaturas claramente afins com as vicissitudes da histeria…

«Ms. Meier is back at the Met now for a four-performance run as Marie in Alban Berg’s Expressionist masterpiece “Wozzeck,” which opens on Wednesday evening. At 55, she has short, dark hair, fashionably mussed; strong features; and a speaking voice with singing cadences. As usual when you meet a great diva, it was somehow disappointing to find her a mere ordinary, attractive woman. But answering a question, she glanced upward, and her profile, catching the light, both softened and strengthened. She was suddenly epic, mythological, like Isolde, the role for which she is perhaps best known.

At one point the idea of Ms. Meier singing Isolde, a dramatic soprano part, would have been a joke. She began her career in 1976, at 20, as a pure mezzo-soprano in the theaters of her hometown, Würzburg, and of Mannheim. There she sang the standard lyrical mezzo parts — Mozart’s Cherubino and Dorabella, Offenbach’s Nicklausse — and began taking on the heavier roles that would bring her fame: Verdi’s Azucena, Wagner’s Erda, Waltraute and Fricka.

Her first international appearance was in Buenos Aires in 1980, as Fricka in “Das Rheingold.” She made her debut at Bayreuth in 1983 as Kundry in Wagner’s “Parsifal,” her first time working with Mr. Levine. He became her Met champion, bringing her to the company in 1987 as Fricka in the premiere of the Otto Schenk production of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle. By the time she returned in the early 1990s, she had begun taking on traditional soprano roles like Isolde and Leonore in “Fidelio.” She had acclaimed runs at the Met as Kundry in 1992 and Santuzza in Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana” in 1993. She sang Sieglinde in the first act of “Die Walküre” with Mr. Domingo on the opening night of the 1993-94 season, and was a frequent soloist in concerts with Mr. Levine and the Met Orchestra.

(...)

Yet if Ms. Meier was never really able to expand her Met repertory, to become one of the company’s anchors, in her core roles she could captivate even there. When she returned for three performances of “Parsifal” in 2006, Mr. Holland wrote in The Times that “her audience went crazy for her.” Two years ago, while she was in New York to sing Sieglinde in the final performances of the Schenk “Ring” production, she even achieved a degree of redemption at the gala celebrating the Met’s 125th anniversary, singing the final scene from “Carmen.”

At a recent “Wozzeck” rehearsal, deep within the Met, Ms. Meier hung on the neck of Stuart Skelton, playing the Drum Major, as they danced slowly and sensuously downstage, moaning, “Immerzu, immerzu” (“Keep going, keep going”) in a soft rasp. Laughing and swooning in a tight black top and white peasant skirt, she looked over at Alan Held playing Wozzeck, her jealous common-law husband, with a complex mixture of disgust and regret and love. It suddenly became clear that when you play Marie at 55, and you’re Waltraud Meier, the character simply isn’t the innocent she is sometimes perceived to be. Marie has seen it all. She is what Carmen would have been had she survived “Carmen,” and now set on yet another course toward catastrophe.

It is in that context that Ms. Meier’s run in “Wozzeck” finds its meaning, both for the Met audience and for her, its undercurrent of poignancy and triumph. This is her moment finally to convince us, even to seduce us. “

‘Wozzeck’ asks for focusing very strictly,” Ms. Meier said. “ ‘Wozzeck’ is not a piece where you open up.”

That is not a formula for being a popular favorite, at least not here. She will never be one of the company’s stars; this will not have been the place that made or nourished her or stretched her considerable abilities. But 15 years later Ms. Meier has finally made a kind of peace with New York.

“Now when I come back to the Met,” she said, “I think I do what I can do. If they like it, I’m happy. If not, I don’t doubt myself. Because I know what is important: the acting, the real truth, the authenticity. I succeed if there is a performance where I really felt something true and I dug into it, not just making the beautiful sound but expressing something.”

When she returns next season, it will be characteristically in Wagner, in a relatively minor role as Waltraute in “Götterdämmerung,” which by then she will have been singing, on and off, for 34 years. In a few seasons she will reunite with her favorite director, Patrice Chéreau, as Klytemnestra in a new Met production of Strauss’s “Elektra.”»

LA Lulu!

(Petibon e Holland, em Lulu, no Liceu de Barcelona)

Depois do triunfo de Genève e Salzburgo, Petibon apresenta, no Liceu, a sua leitura (soberba) da anti-heroína, Lulu. Confirmam-se, à terceira, as expectativas: Patricia Petibon é a Lulu assoluta da actualidade.

«Enorme Patricia Petibon. Su debut en el Liceo se saldó con un rotundo éxito, todo lo rotundo que permite la Lulú de Berg, ópera a cuyo final se llega por extenuación de artistas y de público. Hubo las habituales deserciones en los entreactos, pero los que resistieron ovacionaron a la soprano hasta donde les alcanzaron las fuerzas. Se lo merecía. Su Lulú es cautivadora, dúctil, arriesgada, vibrante, sensual y cerebral a la vez, en lo escénico y lo vocal. Tras haber incorporado el personaje este mismo año en Ginebra y en Salzburgo y retomarlo ahora en Barcelona, Petibon dice que necesita volver con urgencia a las heroínas barrocas y mozartianas. Se comprende: Lulú a la fuerza te vacía. Ella misma es un agujero negro en el que convergen los peores instintos de una sociedad corrupta, materialista, moralmente inane, que Frank Wedekind retrató sin piedad en El espíritu de la tierra (1895) y La caja de Pandora (1904) y que Berg concentró en su poderosa ópera. El vértigo que produce esta femme fatale viene de su absoluto nihilismo, de la naturalidad con la que seduce al hijo en el sofá en que ha matado al padre (su marido) o de la asepsia con la que describe la homosexualidad de la condesa de Geschwitz, enamorada de ella ("No eres un ser humano como los demás. No hay suficiente materia para hacer de ti un hombre y tienes demasiado cerebro para ser mujer", le dice). Dar esa frialdad cortante, ese vacío, a través del canto, la manifestación más cálida del alma, requiere un esfuerzo interpretativo en el que Petibon estuvo inconmensurable. Se comprende que necesite reposo.

El éxito fue compartido con el director Michael Boder, quien sacó de la orquesta de la que es titular, hasta donde pudo, una lectura clara, transparente, equilibrada. La dureza del lenguaje serialista se ve en esta obra compensada por el uso de números cerrados -canción, lied, himno, coral-, de aliento melódico por más que atonal, que Boder tradujo con fuerza comunicativa. El resto del reparto estuvo a notable altura. Tal vez a Ashley Holland (Doctor Schön / Jack el Destripador) le faltara dar más de gramaje a su papel y Paul Grove (Alwa) superara forzando los temibles escollos de la parte, pero a cambio, Franz Grundheber (Schigolch), Julia Juon (Geschwitz), Andreas Hörl (domador / atleta) y demás bestiario estuvieron bien.

La única, mínima, contestación para la puesta en escena. Los siete cuadros constituyen un gran fresco urbano-circense, en el estilo de la Nueva Objetividad de Otto Dix y George Grosz, por el que entran y salen novias de blanco, prostitutas de colores, proxenetas marcando paquete, burgueses ociosos, cabezudos, gorilas, payasos, militares e incluso Papá Noel. Operación estilística en el espíritu de la obra que da por resultado escenas de gran plasticidad. Pero el problema viene del exceso, por querer decir demasiadas cosas. ¿Hace falta rotularle al espectador tantas frases? Es como si esta producción no se fiase de su capacidad de comprensión, con el añadido de frenéticos movimientos de decorados que ya están en la música y acaban por distraerte de ella. Lulú pertenece a la categoría del mito y como tal reclama un mayor libertad para que cada cual lo llene con sus propios fantasmas.»

E pensar que começou - pateticamente - como soubrette...

A maturidade pô-la nos eixos! Ainda nos vai dar grandes surpresas!!!

Salzburgo II - Lulu & Petibon

(Patricia Petibon, em Lulu, Salzburgo 2010)

Vera Nemirova, em Salzburgo, propõe uma Lulu (Berg) mais crua do que é hábito (?!). Contudo, a sua encenação parece conter tiradas muito originais e inventivas.

Pela parte que me toca, confesso que o maior interesse desta nova produção radica na prestação de Petibon, que ocupa o lugar de Schäfer como protagonista desta ópera.

Desde a estreia de Patrícia Petibon no papel titular – em Genéve, na temporada passada (aqui e aqui) – que se percebeu tratar-se d’A LULU DA DÉCADA!

Veremos. Por ora, o momento é de festa!

«SALZBURG, Austria — From the first minutes of the Salzburg Festival’s new production of Berg’s “Lulu,” which opened here on Sunday night at the Felsenreitschule, it was clear that musical matters were in very capable hands. The German conductor Marc Albrecht drew a consistently plush, urgent and taut performance from the Vienna Philharmonic.

In the prologue, as the baritone Thomas Johannes Mayer snarled and bellowed the words of the Animal Tamer, inviting the audience to witness a menagerie in which the principal attraction was the snake representing “woman’s original form and nature,” the orchestra reveled in Berg’s insinuating music for the bleakly comic scene: all abrupt phrases, jagged lines and bursts of astringent chords.

But Berg’s 12-tone score is also rich with wistful allusions to late-Romantic lyricism. Under Mr. Albrecht, the chief conductor-designate of both the Netherlands Opera and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, the Vienna musicians played Berg’s score as if it were a natural extension of Wagner, late Brahms and early Strauss — a completely valid approach. The warmth and body of the Vienna Philharmonic’s strings proved ideal for Berg’s unfinished final work (played here in the now standard three-act version, with the final act orchestrated by the composer Friedrich Cerha).

Still, the talk of any new production at the Salzburg Festival inevitably focuses on the staging. Well before opening night, predictions circulated in the opera world and on opera chat lines that this “Lulu,” by the Bulgarian director Vera Nemirova, was going to be another Eurotrash outrage.

Yet Ms. Nemirova’s daring and engrossing production earned her, and the production team, a sustained ovation. She has clearly worked closely with the German artist Daniel Richter, who designed the sets and painted some stunning flats. In Act I the backdrop is a huge blowup of a surreal portrait of the voluptuous Lulu, dressed only in underclothes and wearing incongruous angel wings, that the Painter is working on as the lights go up. And in Act II, when a cholera epidemic has broken out, the backdrop is a panorama of sickly, ghostly faces in garish reds and yellows that change color with the stage lighting.

That Ms. Nemirova is more than a purveyor of directorial high concept comes through in the minutely detailed characterizations she draws from her cast. The French soprano Patricia Petibon is a blithely amoral Lulu. When we meet her, she is married to Dr. Goll, a browbeaten professor of medicine.

As Lulu, she sometimes sang with a hard-edged sound and wavering high notes. Yet those qualities fit the character of this cagey seductress, who gets ahead by using the only power she has: her allure over men. Slender and sensual, she was riveting in every scene. And she nailed the skittish passagework of this high-lying role while summoning earthy rawness when Lulu was up against it and had to take charge, however ruthlessly.

The Painter was the tenor Pavol Breslik, and it was fascinating to see this character, usually an oily opportunist, presented as a handsome, cocky young artist. And as Dr. Schön, the editor of a newspaper, a controlling man who has supported, groomed and demanded sexual favors of Lulu for years, the baritone Michael Volle towered over Ms. Petibon and sang the role with menacing power.

All the characters were similarly fleshed out. Though the tenor Thomas Piffka has a big, robust voice, he was movingly befuddled as Alwa, Dr. Schön’s lost-soul son, hopelessly smitten with Lulu. The mezzo-soprano Tanja Ariane Baumgartner as the lesbian Countess Geschwitz, who adores Lulu, brought both pitiable longing and fragile dignity to her portrayal. And the bass-baritone Franz Grundheber as the old, shriveled Schigolch, who may be Lulu’s no-good father (or a former lover or an abusive stepfather; it is not clear), found endless ways to convey the character’s creepiness.

Ms. Nemirova’s staging was sometimes heavy-handed in its symbolism. Did we need to see seven agonized, blood-stained, shirtless men of various ages and body shapes crawling on the floor and clinging to Lulu to get that she is irresistibly sexual? On the other hand, the choreographed writhing was quite a sight.

For nearly the entire first scene of the final act, which takes place at a Paris soiree, Ms. Nemirova had the cast sing out in the auditorium, walking up and down the aisles with the house lights on. The singers, in over-the-top evening wear (thanks to Klaus Noack’s inventive costumes), passed out drinks and scattered gambling money (bills playfully marked 500 eros) to delighted audience members. The wily Marquis (the tenor Andreas Conrad) walked across the auditorium on a narrow wooden rail that divided two sections of seats.

This theatrical coup proved an effective setup for the harrowing final scene, in which Lulu, reduced to prostitution in London, is murdered by a pickup who turns out to be Jack the Ripper. I have never seen the climax staged with such matter-of-fact degradation.»

Lulu - Grand Théâtre de Genève, Fevereiro de 2010 II - Py & Patibon

(Patricia Petibon, como protagonista de Lulu, da ópera homónima de Berg, em Genéve)

Não cessam as aclamações da dupla de sonho, que revitaliza a Lulu de Genéve. Doravante, Lulu deverá escrever-se com duplo "P":

«Py est parti de Wedekind, auteur de la pièce, plus que de Berg, le compositeur : un auteur tout sauf réaliste, un précurseur de Brecht et du surréalisme. Le monde y est vu comme un cirque où les personnages sont des rôles plus que des individualités, une allégorie de l'inhumanité du monde moderne où le sexe et la mort ont remplacé le cœur et la raison. Cette descente aux enfers sacrificielle (quelle belle image finale de Lulu mourant debout les bras en croix !) se traduit par un spectacle saturé de couleurs expressionnistes, de mouvements de décors vertigineux, de costumes criards, dans un mouvement incessant qui est une fuite en avant. Oui, le plateau est surchargé jusqu'à la dispersion, oui la mise en scène est parfois illisible à force d'être explicite et l'attention a du mal à se fixer, mais quelle virtuosité, quel sens du spectacle au service d'une vision du monde ! On ­repensera aux imperfections du spec tacle, on n'oubliera pas sa puissance expressive.

La place manque pour détailler les prestations des chanteurs, remarquables dans l'ensemble (le Dr Schön de Pavlo Hunka, la Comtesse Geschwitz de Julia Juon), d'autant que l'on a envie de s'attarder sur celle de Patricia Petibon en Lulu. Débutant dans ce rôle si exigeant devant lequel Natalie Dessay a si constamment et si absurdement reculé, elle y est d'emblée inoubliable. Utilisant sa voix légère et souple comme un instrument de musique, sans la moindre stridence, elle mue comme un serpent pour entrer dans les peaux successives qu'Olivier Py fait revêtir à cette figure mythologique immémoriale : l'incarnation d'une vie, pour une artiste qui nous a si souvent agacé par ses minauderies. Admirable direction musicale de Marc Albrecht, transparente sans être radiographique, tendue sans être raide, et qui tire de l'Orchestre de la Suisse romande des couleurs à la fois crues et chaudes, entêtantes.»

Lulu - Grand Théâtre de Genève, Fevereiro de 2010

(Patricia Petibon, como Lulu, da ópera homónima - Alban Berg -, Grand Théâtre de Genève)

Lulu (Alban Berg), uma das mais ousadas peças líricas de inícios do século passado, em nova produção (Olivier Py), em Genéve, revela uma protagonista madura e teatralmente dotada.

Patricia Petibon iniciou a sua carreira lírica como soprano ligeiro, enveredando, doravante, por interpretações afectadas e de gosto duvidoso. Nos recitais, sobretudo, animou as suas incarnações, recorrendo a uma mímica patética, histriónica e infeliz.

Contudo, segundo reza esta notícia, Petibon alcançou a maturidade, notabilizando-se como – provavelmente -, a Lulu da sua geração. Sucederá, pois, a Schäffer, no trono...

Evidentemente, o mérito da sua personagem conta com o sábio dedo do magnífico Olivier Py, que tão brilhantemente recriou Tristan und Isolde, em Geneve, igualmente.

«Lulu est debout, dans la solitude, le sang coulant de sa gorge tranchée, sous son imperméable. Elle a rencontré sous le manteau du Père Noël, qui est vraiment une ordure, Jack l'Eventreur. Il vient de lui faire sa fête, ainsi qu'à la comtesse Geschwitz, cette "pauvre bête" amoureuse de Lulu. "Ces gens-là n'ont même pas de serviettes", grommelle-t-il en essuyant son couteau avant de s'en aller.

Alors Lulu apparaît face à celle qui l'aime et en meurt, et pour nous aussi, les bons larrons qui communions dans cette Passion-Epiphanie des bas-fonds. Elle est nue, les bras en croix, transfiguration christique sur fond de neige.

Dernière et sublime image de la Lulu d'Alban Berg (1881-1935), mise en scène par Olivier Py à l'Opéra de Genève, où le Français signe sa sixième production lyrique.

Une fin, et un apaisement, enfin, après le déchaînement de couleurs criardes, de scènes crues et d'objets violents, mort et sexe, sexe et mort, enseigne clignotant dans le manège sans cesse recommencé de la séduction mortifère de Lulu. Lulu est une femme-enfant, une femme fatale, une femme-monstre que le livret tiré des deux drames de Frank Wedekind (La Boîte de Pandore et L'Esprit de la terre) a cernée d'hommes à abattre.

Olivier Py a déjà travaillé avec la soprano Patricia Petibon (Lulu), qui était son Olympia dans Les Contes d'Hoffmann, d'Offenbach, montés, à Genève déjà, lors de la saison 2001-2002. Le metteur en scène sait le potentiel fou de la jeune artiste, qui a parfois péché par son ardente jeunesse - on se souvient de récitals avec moult poses et mimiques. Mais elle réalise ici une performance remarquable, de femme et de cantatrice. Au point que sa Lulu impose une perversité détachée et une libido prédatrice, comme à son corps défendant.

Scéniquement, le décor mobile de Pierre-André Weitz mime dans un mouvement inexorable, de jardin à cour, l'ascension de Lulu, puis repart en sens inverse au troisième acte, celui de la déchéance, jusqu'à disparaître. Les lumières sont primaires, les personnages ressemblent à ceux d'Otto Dix, dans leurs costumes flamboyants ou leurs peaux d'animaux, et évoquent le cirque des passions humaines.

Vocalement répartis en vingt-cinq rôles, les seize chanteurs sont remarquables, avec une mention pour le Dr Schön/Jack l'Eventreur de Pavlo Hunka, le peintre/le nègre de Bruce Rankin, l'Alwa de Gerhard Siegel, le Schigolch d'Hartmut Welker et le dompteur/l'athlète de Jonathan Veira.

Dans la fosse, l'Orchestre de la Suisse romande rutile sous la baguette experte du chef allemand Marc Albrecht, qui fait ici des débuts remarqués à l'Opéra de Genève, recueillant un succès mérité dans une Lulu donnée ici dans sa version achevée par Friedrich Cerha en 1979.

Un seul regret, la publicité polémique faite autour de cette Lulu d'Olivier Py, "déconseillée aux moins de 16 ans". En 2005, dans Tannhäuser, de Wagner, c'était le sexe en érection du hardeur HPG dans la "bacchanale au Venusberg". Cette fois, c'est la projection d'une vidéo porno (une sodomie savamment floutée) au moment où Lulu, ruinée, en est réduite à se prostituer. Record d'affluence, dit-on, dans la cité calviniste. Tant mieux pour Berg !»