Bayreuth - III - Tannhäuser (as fotos)

(Sebastian Baumgarten)

Eis algumas das fotografia do Tannhäuser de Baumgarten, este Verão apresentado em Bayreuth.

Bayreuth - II - Tannhäuser

Absolutamente pervertido, o Tannhäuser de Sebastian Baumgarten foi apupado do princípio ao fim! Segundo consta, a liberdade da encenação confundiu-se com uma obra grotesca, nos antípodas da concepção de Wagner.

Perversão metafórica em Bayreuth, evidentemente, mas não só... Para detalhes mais sórdidos, sugiro uma leitura atenta da critica de Mark Ronan, como segue.

«What a reception! The production team were booed to the rafters with not a single handclap, and Venus was so roundly booed she didn’t return for her second curtain call. Such a relief to cheer the chorus, along with Michael Nagy’s beautifully sung Wolfram and Günter Groissböck’s powerful voice and presence as Hermann the Landgraf.

Bayreuth is celebrating its 100th festival, delighting management if not its audience by opening with another extraordinary production, this one by 42-year-old Sebastian Baumgarten. His concept — and directors’ concepts are of the essence here — is that Tannhäuser is a huge experiment, reflecting a notion that the hero experiments with excess and its subsequent rejection.

An audience on stage observes everything, and apparently Baumgarten wanted to run the opera without intervals. When the caterers objected, he settled for the stage audience staying put while the real audience left and the experiment continued.

The Venusberg is a cage with ape-men and animals, including three giant tadpoles — could these represent the three Graces who intervene to halt the ever more frantic proceedings? When it descends below stage, we see three huge chemical processing plants in red, green and blue. Bold colours and big designs by Joep van Lieshout, but one is soon lost in the details.

The Act 1 shepherd in yellow trousers and white shirt is drunk, reappearing in a similar state at the Act 2 song contest, where scantily dressed girls in knickers and stockings, with holsters on their belts, occasionally enjoy caresses with one another, and the pregnant Venus comes to watch proceedings.

From high gantries Tannhäuser douses the other singers with water before embracing Venus, and the lovely Elisabeth slashes her wrists. Then in Act 3 Wolfram accompanies Elisabeth to the huge BIOGAS cylinder and locks her in.

“Kinder schaff’ Neues” (Children do something new) said Wagner, but did he really mean them to alter his dramas in this way? Elisabeth represents a pure type of love, and Wolfram adores her, yet he apparently murders her and sings his evening star song to the pregnant Venus, whose baby is passed round among the female chorus at the end.

Words and music remain Wagner’s, and conductor Thomas Hengelbrock gave us thrilling crescendos in the prelude to Act 3. Production concepts notwithstanding, Lars Cleveman in his many costumes sang strongly as Tannhäuser, and Camilla Nylund made an attractive Elisabeth, with Michael Nagy and Günther Groissböck as Wolfram and the Landgraf giving the performance real vocal heft.»

Bayreuth - I

À semelhança dos demais festivais líricos – quiçá por força da crise – os ecos de Bayreuth escasseiam!

Contudo, a abc faz uma síntese do desastroso Tannhäeuser (nova produção), cuja encenação bordeja o lixo. Já no tocante a Lohengrin, outro galo canta, apesar da rataria…

«Wagner fans take note: if you like your opera pure, two productions at this year's Bayreuth festival are not for you.

But come, if you have a love of the experimental. While Tannhaeuser fails in attempts to move from the traditional to the trendy, Lohengrin makes that leap of faith. And both productions reflect directing and staging audacity, even if only Lohengrin succeeds in being both bold and believable.

Tannhaeuser is the bigger buzz this year — less because it's a new production, more because of its audacious directing and stage effects that relegate the opera to a supporting role.

Already torn between the quest for carnal pleasure and platonic love that will prove his undoing, the bard Tannhaeuser must deal this year with the additional challenge of his backdrop, compliments of director Sebastian Baumgarten and stage designer Joep van Lieshout.

Instead of the serene pasture or noble hall, the production seen Monday plays out on a factory floor of tanks and connecting pipes depicting a closed cycle of sustenance at its most banal; food, alcohol — and the excrement produced which then is used to fuel the system.

It's enough to drive a person to drink — and extras dressed as factory workers do, occasionally tapping the big red alcohol tank. Some of them earn their keep in the performance seen Monday as members of the choir.

The others just clutter an already messy stage.

In a further challenge to the audience, the love nest where Tannhaeuser trysts with Venus between excursions to the "other woman" — the virginal Elisabeth — is bedlam in a cage that occasionally rises from the factory floor.

Tannhaeuser and Venus rub shoulders with mating ape-like creatures, and giant tadpoles spawned in their cesspool slither and wiggle across the stage. The point seems clear — yuck!

But at the end, Venus bears Tannhaeuser's child, muddying Wagner's original message that virtue triumphs over vice.

All in all, "too much, too much!" — Tannhaeuser's words reflecting his disgust at this orgiastic lifestyle also apply to the oversize liberties taken by Baumgarten and van Lieshout that scuttle this production.

But not all that is modern is maudlin this year at Bayreuth.

Lohengrin, another Wagnerian tale of medieval tragic love, gets yanked into the 21st century by director Hans Neuenfels and stage designer Reinhard von der Thannen — and is more interesting for it.

Instead of knights in armor, man-size rats with glowing red eyes populate the stage, an experimental laboratory where minders in scrubs and face masks prod and push characters on and off stage.

Irritating at first, the conceit works by meshing with Wagner's opera instead of conflicting with it. The rodents are a rat-eat-rat horde — like the medieval men at arms in the original version whose loyalties shift with every development.

And instead of muddying the plot, like Baumgarten, Neuenfels advances it. Over the more than three-hour staging, the rats slowly turn into humans, transformed perhaps by the aura of Lohengrin, the knight blessed by god, who defeats evil, but is ultimately defeated by the inconstancy of Elsa, his beloved.

A visual and intellectual pleasure — accompanied Tuesday by singing that ranged from sub-par to superb.

Astrid Weber, a last-minute stand in for Annette Dasch, failed to convince as Elsa, Lohengrin's paramour. While powerful, her voice had no center and lacked in range, forcing Weber to glide into the top notes. Her vibrato was irritating and her enunciation fuzzy.

Klaus Florian Vogt was in brilliant contrast as Lohengrin, effortless in delivery and diction, his voice so fluid and natural that it almost seemed untrained — no overreaching, no straining.

Petra Lang as Ortrud was another highlight, using her powerful mezzo and considerable dramatic skills to convincingly portray Elsa's evil counterpart, whose scheming ways lead to Elsa's doom. Also good: Georg Zeppenfeld as King Heinrich; Tomas Tomasson as Telramund and Samuel Youn as the Herald.

Conductor Andris Nelsons and choir leader Eberhard Friedrich provided powerful orchestral and choral backing to the soloists, masterfully balancing Wagner's imperatives of musical totality.

For Tannhaeuser, best were Camilia Nylund, a vocally and visually striking Elisabeth and Guenther Groissboeck as her father, Hermann, whose demeanor and supple bass were ideal for the gravitas called for in this role.

Michael Nagy was convincing as Wolfram von Eschenbach, as were Lothar Odinius as Walther von der Vogelweide and Thomas Jesatko as Biterolf. Lars Cleveman as Tannhaeuser shone dramatically but occasionally struggled to make himself heard.

For the most part seamlessly blending or carrying the voices as called for by the score, the orchestra, under Thomas Hengelbrock, sometimes lagged in tempo, unnecessarily slowing the pace of already languid musical sequences.

But even the generally satisfying musical renderings cannot redeem the visual transgressions of this Tannhaeuser.

The opera was booed at its first Paris performance, prompting composer Charles Gounod to proclaim: "God grant me a failure like that!"

He did not see this year's production.»

Bayreuth IV - (ainda o) Lohengrin (de Neuenfels)

(Lohengrin, Bayreuth, 2010. Kaufmann, em primeiro plano - foto de cima - e demais elenco)

Nestas coisas de criticar encenações, todos ganhamos com o olhar ponderado, distante, sensível e avesso a preconceitos (e sobrancerias) dos americanos. Esta notável leitura da nova produção de Lohengrin de Bayreuth, cuja polémica mise-en-scène de Neuenfelts tem gerado tanto mal-estar, coloca a coisa no seu lugar: há incongruências múltiplas no trabalho do encenador, a par de uma indiscutível riqueza simbólica.

Há muito que Bayreuth se tornou num espaço de ousadia – por vezes decrépita. Recordar-se-á o leitor, ainda, do Parsifal de Herheim???

Quem procura consensos e encenações comme il faut, pode bem lambuzar-se com as poeirentas propostas de Zeffirelli!

Não sendo eu um fã de Mortier – tido com o derradeiro vanguardista -, partilho da ousadia que introduziu em Salzburgo. Agora é a vez de Bayreuth… pós W. Wagner!

«BAYREUTH, Germany — It has become practically a part of the tradition at the Bayreuth Festival for the director of an avant-garde Wagner production to be vociferously booed on opening night. So it was on July 25, when the festival opened with the new Hans Neuenfels production of “Lohengrin,” which I saw here on Tuesday, the second performance.

If regie-opera (productions driven by a director with an imposing agenda) has a ringleader, it is probably Mr. Neuenfels, especially notorious for a 2001 “Fledermaus” at the Salzburg Festival that turned this frothy, waltzing comedy into a festering exposé of kinky sex and proto-Nazism.

What is mostly inciting the ire over Mr. Neuenfels’s “Lohengrin,” with sets and costumes by Reinhard von der Thannen, is his depiction of the nobles and commoners of 10th-century Brabant as rats in a sterile modern-day laboratory. Only the main characters — the Christian knight Lohengrin, the fair lady Elsa, King Henry the Fowler of Germany, the conniving Count Friedrich von Telramund and his wife, Ortrud, who practices the occult — are presented as fully human and, consequently, superior.

The concept is laden with symbolism, and Mr. Neuenfels’s presence as a director-commentator pervaded every scene. Yet provocative and insightful ideas fire this intriguing staging. And, as always at Bayreuth, the production values are so high that every set, costume and prop looked great.

What mattered most, of course, was the overall, and exceptionally strong, musical performance. In his debut role at Bayreuth, the German tenor Jonas Kaufmann was a magnificent Lohengrin. He looked the part of an earnest, pensive and dazzling young knight, come to defend Elsa against falsehoods and marry her. The fast-rising 31-year-old Latvian conductor Andris Nelsons, the music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in England, also making his Bayreuth debut, drew a glowing, supple and richly detailed performance from the festival orchestra. During the prelude to Act I, the penetrating warmth of the soft strings in this acoustically miraculous house, designed by Wagner, was spellbinding.

In an interview for the program book Mr. Neuenfels says that Wagner’s music “thinks, and thinks grandly,” that this is music of “concepts.” The question is whether the music should be allowed to convey its concepts free of a director’s explicit ideological imagery.

During the prelude the house lights went up to reveal a white-walled room with metallic gates to the sides and a rear wall with eerie portals poking through. Mr. Kaufmann’s Lohengrin, his back to the audience, looking Christlike with his arms spread, put his shoulders to the task and slowly pushed the back wall into the rear of the stage: an effective and richly metaphorical touch.

But in the first scene, when King Henry, recruiting troops to fight the Hungarians in the east, calls an assembly of noblemen and the people of Brabant, the chorus appears dressed in gray, loose-fitting rat costumes, complete with long tails, floppy feet and see-through head masks, red eyes aglow.

We get it. The commoners and even the nobles are trapped in a society in which they have circumscribed roles to play and are used by the powerful. But could the same not be said of, say, Telramund, who is manipulated by his consort, Ortrud, or even, in a way, King Henry?

Elsa relates a dream she has had in which God sends a white knight to defend her. When that savior, Lohengrin, appears to rescue her from charges that she has murdered her noble brother, and a trial commences, the choristers remove their rat frocks for the duration of the scene. Men and women alike wear rich yellow suits and matching hats. So there are times when they are allowed to transcend their rat roles? I was not sure, though the choristers certainly looked wondrous in their striking yellow garments.

Still, fine music making drove this rich evening of Wagner. Mr. Kaufmann earned many fans at the Metropolitan Opera this spring with a one-two punch triumph: singing Cavaradossi in the new production of “Tosca” and Don José in the new production of “Carmen.” On Tuesday in Bayreuth he did not sound in his very best voice. Some pianissimo phrases were breathy, and he lacked a little of his trademark burnished power. Overall, though, he sang splendidly, with soaring phrases and earthy vocal colorings. His singing is an ideal balance of keen intelligence and vocal charisma.

When we first see the soprano Annette Dasch as Elsa, she is in a shining white coat pierced with arrows representing the false accusations that have been shot at her. Lohengrin plucks away the arrows. But Ms. Dasch conveyed Elsa’s wounded dignity so naturally that she did not need this lamely obvious metaphor. She was a touching Elsa who sang with warmth and pliant phrasing, but for a few strained high notes during some of the impassioned outbursts.

The soprano Evelyn Herlitzius brought hard-edged, sometimes wobbly vocal intensity to her vehement portrayal of Ortrud. The role need not be sung with such continuous ferocity. Still, Ms. Herlitzius was a maniacal force as Ortrud, and her top notes shook the house. The veteran Wagnerian baritone Hans-Joachim Ketelsen was a grave and fitful Telramund. The bass Georg Zeppenfeld as King Henry and the bass-baritone Samuel Youn as the Herald were excellent.

By Act III Mr. Neuenfels had worn down my resistance. As the citizens of Brabant sang the famous wedding march to Elsa and Lohengrin, the impressive Bayreuth choristers looked adorable lined up as rows of white rats, black rats and little pink kiddie rats, waving to the newlyweds, fidgety with excitement. Strange, I know. But oddly moving.

The production team did not take bows for this performance. The ovation for the cast, chorus and conductor went on for 20 minutes. This is the first Bayreuth festival presented under the new team of co-directors, Eva Wagner-Pasquier and Katharina Wagner, who are half-sisters and Richard Wagner’s great-granddaughters. Their father, Wolfgang Wagner, died at 90 this March after running the festival for more than 40 years. The new directors have announced their intention to make the festival less elitist and more approachable. It looks as if regie-opera, for better or worse, will continue to define productions here.»

Bayreuth III - Lohengrin & Tricas

(A. Dasch, como Elsa, em Lohengrin, Salzburgo 2010)

«Lab rats, a dead horse and bridesmaids with long, pert rodent tails and hybrid dahlias on their heads hardly feature in the original of Wagner's Lohengrin. Nor does a fat, cloned baby which crawls out of its placenta and severs its own umbilical cord, tossing it to the people of Brabant like a string of raw Bavarian sausages: a doubtful new era begins.

Hans Neuenfels's alarming but laser-etched new production opened the 99th Bayreuth festival last Sunday amid mayoral pomp, red-carpet splendour and a roar of boos when the director, making his Bayreuth debut at the age of 69, took his bow. Wagner was a revolutionary, unlike his often unimaginative fans.

This was the start of the festival's own uncertain new era, the first without the composer's grandson, Wolfgang Wagner, who died in March having run the festival for more than half a century. Now his daughters, half-sisters Eva (65) and Katharina (32), are at the helm: anything could happen. By the end of the opening weekend, shy Eva had committed herself to hospital for observation, suffering from stress. Perhaps it was the only place to shun the public glare. Who can blame her?

The story of the medieval knight who won't reveal his name becomes, in Neuenfels's hands, a high-voltage examination of the morality of truth. What is it and what right have we to know it? The citizens of Brabant are part of a clinical experiment gone wrong. Identikit rats wearing numbers scurry in and out of cages and tomography chambers, part-human, part-rat pack – "Ratten-Slapstick" as one German newspaper labelled it, responding with a mix of approval and despair.

Reinhard von der Thannen's designs look crisp and spectacular. Rich with visual reference, from Petipa's Swan Lake and spooky Max Ernst to Saatchi-favoured contemporaries such as Katharina Fritsch (the rats) and Maurizio Cattalan (the horse), this is highly political theatre. It makes a brilliant contrast with the opulently imaginative Parsifal which was new here in 2008 and is also being staged this year. Many of these subtleties may have been lost on the glitzy first-night crowd, who sniffed and hooted in irritation as yet another pink rattus scampered on in its rubber flipper feet.

Neuenfels is best known for an Aida starring roast chickens, and an Idomeneo initially banned for inciting Muslim hatred with its depiction of Mohammed, saved only by the sensible intervention of Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was also in this audience, clapping hard, with her shy scientist husband, fondly known as the Phantom of the Opera since it is one of the few places he voluntarily shows up.

When conservative Wagner-lovers boo, the floor reverberates, especially in the glorious acoustic of the composer's Festspielhaus, the all-wood, purpose-built theatre which opened in 1876 for the performance of his "music of the future", and his alone, and has maintained that tradition ever since. The cheers and foot stamps, almost as inevitable as the boos, were saved for the singers, led by the charismatic star tenor and local Munich boy Jonas Kaufmann, and his ardent Elsa, the Berlin-born soprano Annette Dasch, leading a mostly impressive cast.

The young Latvian, Andris Nelsons, turning heads in the UK as music director of the Birmingham's CBSO, made a persuasive conducting debut, drawing shimmering orchestral playing, expertly co-ordinating stage and pit and observing broad but never dragging tempi. If his cheers were not as loud as deserved, it was as if the first-night audience, preoccupied with saving their breath for anti-production clamour and diva-whoops, had scarcely realised how much this slight, boyish figure had achieved. Subsequent performances, minus the claque and the celebrities, will surely be more responsive.

This season, though mostly planned by Wolfgang and including a vigorously spruced-up return for playwright Tankred Dorst's Ring cycle, is being referred to as a "relaunch", the first since 1951 when he and his gifted brother Wieland attempted to reinvent the festival and rid it, not wholly successfully, of its recent Nazi associations. The hope is that with Eva – an experienced casting director who has worked in the world's great opera houses, notably the New York Met – vocal standards will improve and star names, alienated by the arcane, to say the least, methods of the Wolfgang years, will return. To have the dark-toned Kaufmann, who first sang the role of Lohengrin last summer in Richard Jones's equally controversial bricklayer production in Munich, and the lyrical, graceful Dasch is a coup by any operatic standard. The Ring, too, has a fresh cast, including Canadian Lance Ryan as Siegfried.

Bayreuth has always been a magnet of international high society. Kaiser Wilhelm, Nietzsche, Tchaikovsky and the king of Brazil were among the first august visitors in 1876, when the festival began amid threats of bankruptcy. The Nazi years are all too well chronicled. Now, still, the elite of German society turn out for the gala opening, with the townsfolk of Bayreuth jostling to ogle them as the VIP cavalcade winds its way up the Green Hill, crowned with a meticulous civic flower bed in front of the famous theatre shrine itself.

Last Sunday, under the blazing afternoon sun, politicians and celebrities arrived, perma-tanned, with big hairdos and dressed to the nines in formal evening wear which had as much gleam, infrastructure and upholstery as the big, black limos they travelled in. The year's sartorial tip? The man's bow-tie must match his wife's dress. If you want to see a dirndl worn without irony, come to Bayreuth.

"It's no different from when Hitler came," observed a politically conscientious young German, somewhat harshly but with reason. Bayreuthers love the glamour, and if you lived in this humdrum conurbation (with a population of 73,000, about the same size as Brentwood), you would too. Last week the chief action apart from the festival was the recobbling of the main street. Drab shops struggle to survive. Even Sex-Exclusive had slashed its wares to half price.

"It's the Queen!" shouted one onlooker, when a Rolls-Royce broke the pattern of Volkswagens and BMWs. "No it's not. But there's Gloria!" Who is Gloria? I asked my neighbour, as we stood wedged between beefy rubber-neckers up for the day from Nuremberg. "Gloria? She's just Gloria! Prinzessin TNT". Gloria von Thurn und Taxis was a 1980s socialite punk icon, now a Catholic convert and intimate of the Pope, and, evidently, a keen Wagnerian.

If Bayreuth itself has the feel of a place of pilgrimage, that is what Wagner intended. His wife Cosima, as Oliver Hilmes's new biography reminds us, wrote down her husband's words as gospel. The audience perforce are the congregation, whether they like it or not, and mostly, having struggled for years to code-break the box-office enigma (408,000 requests this year for 54,000 available tickets), they do.

Why? The fabled amphitheatre-inspired opera house in which the large orchestra, distributed on four descending tiers beneath the stage with low brass and timpani, heroically and no doubt claustrophobically, at the bottom, remains the best acoustic in the world. The key point is that you can hear the singers with, and not drowned out by, the grand panoply of orchestral sound which Wagner's scoring demands. Even the "Ride of the Valkyries", usually so bombastic, takes on a different quality, ethereal and airborne.

When the festival ends, silence falls in Bayreuth for another year. Will this illustrious highpoint in the musical calendar – always run by the Wagner family, and still the most talked about event of its kind in the world – survive? Outsiders are ready to give it another five years or so, presuming that the relationship between the sisters, depicted as one of open war, will come to grief. "Eva wants a quiet life and Katharina wants Rolex watches and jet setting," says one well-informed outsider, writing off the partnership.

Why did they always fight, asked a German journalist at the press conference, where the emphasis was almost wholly on the off- rather than onstage drama. "How could we fight? We never saw each other until now," Katharina answered. "It's all going well, we are working together," replied Eva. The room rippled with scepticism.

Yet it is more complicated than it appears. The sisters really were kept apart until very recently and hardly know each other. Eva was close to her father until he married his young secretary, Gudrun Mack, who soon gave birth to Katharina. That's the short version. Eva, in painful circumstances, was cast out. She has compared her paternal rejection to that of Brünnhilde, Wotan's beloved daughter in the Ring.

If the wayward novice Katharina can learn wisdom from Eva, the festival is potentially secured for another half century. It could have been otherwise. Gudrun, who died suddenly in 2007, was expected to take over. She held the reins, and was not always popular. Responding to a caller who wanted to speak to her elderly husband she is said to have replied: "I am my husband."

Diplomacy, unity and openness, never part of the Wagner family style, are now vital. Details will be announced shortly of a high-profile new Ring cycle in 2013, conducted by Kirill Petrenko, to mark the composers bicentenary year. And though the festival has no intention of breaking the Wagner exclusivity, the tightly sealed bell-jar atmosphere of old is slowly disappearing.

Thanks chiefly to the efforts of Katharina, Bayreuth has entered the online age with a live webstream transmission of Die Walküre on 21 August, available on demand for a fortnight after (see siemens.com/festivalnight) and, for the third year running, a big-screen relay of the same performance, giving access to tens of thousands of people. With Christian Thielemann conducting with almighty force and Johan Botha and Edith Haller in superb voice as Siegmund and Sieglinde, this is one to see.

In addition, there is a Wagner für Kinder scheme, in which one opera – this year Tannhäuser – is given a shortened makeover for children. The 2,000 seats sold out online in January within 30 minutes of going on sale, and after some 200,000 hits. Dedicated parents will already have read the cartoon "Green Hill Toons" versions of the operas as bedtime stories, no doubt. I saw a few crumpled faces at the door, as small figures barely out of toddlerhood had to abandon half-licked ice lollies and submit themselves to their first Wagner. But there were no tears.

A full orchestra and professional singers sang bleeding chunks, which is the way most people start on Wagner, with skateboards, silly monsters and a pillow fight added for good measure. At the end, these small folk stamped and cheered with authentic bravura, led on by a few Teutonically enthusiastic mums and dads. Catch them young. Train them early. Rats notwithstanding, Wagner is the biggest Pied Piper of them all.»

Bayreuth II - O Lohengrin de Neuenfels

A nova produção de Lohengrin, de Neuenfels, parece conter inúmeros pontos de interesse, a começar pela simbologia rica e expressiva:

«À force de voir en Hans Neuenfels l'enfant terrible de la scène allemande depuis plus de trente ans, on a fini par ne voir en lui qu'un dynamiteur de pièces qui choque le bourgeois par ses provocations gratuites. C'est oublier qu'il est un très grand homme de théâtre, qu'il ne fait rien sans raison. Dimanche, lorsqu'il est venu saluer, seul, à la fin de la première de Lohengrin qui marquait ses débuts tardifs à Bayreuth, deux camps se sont nettement opposés:ceux qui, ayant l'impression qu'on avait mis des moustaches à la Joconde, ont hué violemment le metteur en scène, et ceux qui, ayant reconnu la force et (mais oui!) l'étonnante cohérence de cette production, ont crié «Hourra !».

Hans Neuenfels installe son Lohengrin dans un bloc blanc aseptisé (formidable décor de Reinhard von der Thannen). Les soldats brabançons? Des rats noirs géants. Leurs femmes? Des souris blanches. Sans aucun réalisme:stylisés comme des êtres hybrides, plus tout à fait animaux, pas encore humains. Toute l'intrigue est vue comme une expérience faite sur des créatures de laboratoires:Wagner n'est-il pas, après Shakespeare, celui qui a le mieux disséqué les comportements des hommes, presque en clinicien? La lumière (fabuleux éclairages de Franck Evin) est d'une clarté fulgurante, au point que, au deuxième acte, on voit même le chef d'orchestre, en reflet dans une paroi de verre:c'est la première fois sans doute dans l'histoire du Festival de Bayreuth, dont la fosse couverte cache les musiciens.

On rit souvent, désamorçage salutaire d'une tension palpable. Car Neuenfels ne ridiculise pas les personnages, il prend au sérieux le cercle vicieux dans lequel ils se débattent. Et pour quelques clins d'œil un peu potaches, combien d'images fortes comme Lohengrin brandissant la croix à la fin du deuxième acte, ou seul sur le plateau dépouillé, surmonté d'un point d'interrogation, à la fin du troisième. Tout est signifiant:les gestes, les couleurs (belle symphonie de noir et de blanc), et l'on s'éloigne finalement très peu de la lettre de l'intrigue. Même le cygne est là, et bien là, décliné sous des formes innombrables, jusqu'à cette troublante image finale d'un œuf donnant naissance à un fœtus humain coupant son cordon, sans que l'on puisse dire avec certitude qu'il annonce une fin heureuse à cet opéra si tragique.»

«Neuenfels es un hombre de teatro muy experimentado y cuenta con un equipo de primera línea del que son parte fundamental el escenógrafo y figurinista Reinhard von der Thannen y el dramaturgo Henry Arnold. Las imágenes plásticas con las que cuenta la ópera son muy impactantes y el sentido teatral, impecable. Vaya por delante este reconocimiento a la profesionalidad teatral. El primer paso de Neuenfels y los suyos consiste en transformar la leyenda en un cuento lleno de alegorías y salpicado con un sentido del humor muy incisivo. La evolución de la especie humana está presente en los juegos narrativos y así el coro puede ser, en momentos, de ratas, bien como una ironía burlona en el tratamiento de la boda, bien como un reflejo del miedo y la inseguridad al que responden muchos colectivos de nuestro tiempo. Nada en cualquier caso es gratuito. La componente analítica deriva en una terapia.

Las utopías se muestran irrealizables pero hay al menos un mensaje de esperanza en la ópera que el propio Wagner consideraba la más triste de las suyas. Es un montaje que desde su apariencia a veces kitsch invita a pensar sobre la condición humana y sus enigmas. No es un cuento de hadas, desde luego, pero sí es un cuento ideológico o, si se prefiere, filosófico. Muy alemán, con una componente fantástica muy original y con un casi inverosímil sentido del humor.»

E quanto a intérpretes, previsivelmente, o colossal Kaufmann levou a melhor, triunfando num papel que, doravante, É SEU! A seu lado, também o promissor jovem maestro Andris Nelsons suscitou aclamações.

«El triunfador de la noche fue el tenor Jonas Kaufmann. Su actuación fue de principio a fin soberbia, con un fraseo admirable y un fabuloso dominio de las medias voces. Extraordinario asimismo Georg Zeppenfeld como el Rey, correcta Annette Dasch como Elsa y un poco justa de expresión dramática Evelyn Herlitzius como Ortrud. Magnífico el trabajo al frente de la orquesta de Andris Nelson, un director que está lanzado. Las enseñanzas de Mariss Jansons y su trabajo al frente de la Ópera de Letonia y de la orquesta de Birmingham han dado sus frutos. Una vez más estuvo sensacional el Coro de Bayreuth preparado por Eberhard Friedrich. En expresión, en matices y en línea de canto.»

«Plus jeune chef de l'histoire de Bayreuth, Andris Nelsons nous a, une fois de plus, estomaqué. À 31 ans, le chef letton réalise des prodiges de vigueur dramatique et de finesse poétique, faisant sonner les cordes de l'Orchestre du Festival avec une transparence rare. Une impressionnante présence physique et un incroyable sens des atmosphères font de lui une baguette hors norme. Hors norme aussi, Jonas Kaufmann et son Lohengrin d'anthologie:ténébreux et solitaire, il est d'une présence absolue. Les couleurs de cuivre patiné qu'emprunte son timbre voilé dans la demi-teinte sont magiques. À côté de cette lumière noire, les autres palissent quelque peu, notamment l'Elsa mièvre et trop légère d'Annette Dasch, à l'intonation paresseuse. Ortrud saisissante mais trop criarde d'Evelyn Herlitzius, Telramund râpeux de Hans Joachim Ketelsen. Le Chœur est tout simplement le plus beau du monde. Cela devient presque lassant de le répéter chaque année! Une première passionnante, en présence d'Angela Merkel, mélomane qui était fidèle à Bayreuth bien avant d'être chancelière, mais aussi de Roselyne Bachelot et Renaud Donnedieu de Vabre.»

Bayreuth I - As Manas Unidas...

Armado em visionário, neste mesmo espaço, amiúde, decretei que a união das manas Wagner estava condenada! A dita união, ensombrada pelo espírito da distorção, pessimismo e destruição de Der Ring, levou-me a vaticinar a tragédia... Pela boca morre o peixe...

So far, há que reconhecer a mestria da fusion:

«Las hermanastras -hijas del mismo padre y de diferentes madres- no se han conformado con este reto. Han planteado por primera vez una doble inauguración del festival a través de un proyecto para niños, en una sala de ensayos habilitada para la ocasión, con un Tannhäuser reducido a 70 minutos que hizo las delicias del público infantil que abarrotaba el recinto. Hasta 10 funciones están anunciadas hasta que tome el relevo en el mismo espacio un simposio internacional en colaboración con la Universidad Libre de Berlín que responde al enunciado ¿Cuándo vendrá el próximo cisne? Milagro entre estrategia y emergencia. Y además proyecciones al aire libre de algún título... En fin, Bayreuth ha cambiado de estilo.»

Duas novas produções, sendo uma delas une sorte de versão infantil?!

«Capítulo aparte merece la ópera para niños, una idea de Katharina Wagner puesta en marcha gracias a una adaptación de Alexander Busche. Obviamente se adaptan las situaciones escénicas a las inquietudes de los más jóvenes pero todo ello con un gran respeto a la música original. Aunque se invita a los asistentes a la participación en alguna escena, los niños no se desmelenan en ningún momento y siguen con un interés casi religioso su particular Tannhäuser, con Elisabeth en bicicleta y Venus de punki con sus arañas que meten miedo. La dirección musical es de Hartmut Keil al frente de una orquesta de Fráncfort, y la escénica de Reyna Bruns.

Entre unas y otras cosas Bayreuth ha dado este año un paso adelante de considerable importancia. Dos últimos detalles. Uno: asistió a Lohengrin Angela Merkel, que aplaudió de pie al final con la misma intensidad y cara de satisfacción que la que se mostró a medio mundo en Sudáfrica con motivo de la victoria futbolística de Alemania frente a Argentina. Dos: en el momento de mayor rechazo del público a Hans Neuenfels y su escenógrafo saltaron al escenario Katharina y Eva Wagner para solidarizarse con ellos en un abrazo. Con gestos de este calado esta pareja tiene cuerda para rato.»

Salzburgo? Bayreuth?!

Com ou sem perplexidade (mas, indubitavelmente, com toda a razão), a Teresa aponta a minha ausência de referências a Salzburgo'09. Isto, a propósito do Così de Guth.

(Claus Guth)

A verdade, caríssima, é que a imprensa especializada - vá lá saber-se por quê (crise, desinteresse?) - poucas ou nenhumas referências tem feito, tanto a Salzburgo, como a Bayreuth!

Com muita pena minha - diga-se -, posto que este ano não tive a felicidade de me deslocar a nenhuma das catedrais...

Não se pode ter tudo! Temos o São Carlos, com a sua excelsa direcção artística, pois então!

Há pessoas eternamente descontentes com o que têm...

Bayreuth do pos-guerra...

Bayreuth do pós-guerra...
Originally uploaded by ildissolutopunito.

Bilder zum Jubiläum 50 Jahre Neues Bayreuth

A proósito dos 50 anos do Festival de Bayreuth...
Fotos espantosas das míticas encenações de Wieland & Wolfgang WAGNER...
Wagner sempre actual !