Geoffroy Schied
In right now’s world, Lohengrin is a tough opera to supply, particularly in Munich, the place the opera is presently a part of the Munich Opera Competition and the place the manufacturing of the 1860s solid a spell on King Ludwig II, who immortalized his obsession in buildings that at the moment are the staple of a kitschy Bavarian vacationer trade. Neuschwanstein, Linderhof and many others. are constructed across the thought of swans, knights, and magical rescues.
Fashionable audiences can’t – shouldn’t – need that sort of stuff, so productions lately tended to satirize, or mock, the opera. Richard Jones in 2009 placed on a Munich manufacturing that had a real-looking swan (useless), and a central metaphor working by way of: Lohengrin and Elsa had been constructing a home, and a pair of actually nice singers, Jonas Kaufmann and Anja Harteros, had been decreased to transferring constructing blocks round. The nice music critic Joachim Kaiser appropriately described it as Schwachsinn, baloney, or as we’d now say, bullshit.
The brand new Munich model, which premiered in 2022 however has been successfully and sensitively developed, takes a way more considerate — and a extra radical — strategy. The piece isn’t a blue-silvery evocation of the otherworldly, a metaphysical confrontation of purity (Elsa), transformative religion (Lohengrin), and the relics of a sophisticated pre-Christian cult (Ortrud). As a substitute, it’s introduced as an outline of contemporary politics, particularly populism, with Lohengrin as a charismatic chief, invented by manipulators or influencers to take care of a double drawback: main the individuals right into a warfare they don’t find out about or care about in opposition to a barbarous jap risk — these are Hungarians within the Wagner textual content; appropriately the director, Kornél Mundruczó, is an actual Hungarian — in addition to fixing Friedrich von Telramund’s authorized problem in opposition to Elsa.
Everybody, together with Elsa, is thus purported to belief a determine who emerges out of nowhere: he has apparently been on stage on a regular basis, hidden within the massive refrain, as a substitute of breaking onto the scene as Lohengrin did within the 1999 Munich manufacturing by Götz Friedrich, which had the shock impact of Lohengrin bursting by way of a standard painted nineteenth-century model backdrop. Mundruczó’s manufacturing neatly captures the decision for blind belief and obedience, the way in which that Elsa worries from the start about that decision, and the way Ortrud provides Elsa wise psychological recommendation that she could be higher off not committing to a determine about whom she is aware of nothing. Right here, as in Wagner’s unique textual content Lohengrin is acclaimed the Führer of Brabant reasonably than the Schützer (protector), the phrase utilized in Bayreuth and elsewhere in an tried sanitization of the libretto.
That is, briefly, a manufacturing about populism, violence, and, in the long run, apocalypse. The huge refrain, onstage virtually on a regular basis, alternately picks up flowers to hail the hero, little (or not so little) pellets to stone outsiders who’ve violated the social compact, and little pink flags to wave in approval of political gestures. As it is a coproduction of the Bavarian opera with Shanghai, the observer is sure to surprise how these flags are seen there.
The loss of life of Telramund, by stoning after he emerges as a witness to Elsa’s persistent questioning in Act III, is exceptionally bloody, with a gaping pink wound on his brow. After which a bigger model of the stones seems, suspended over the stage and slowly descending as Lohengrin calls on the swan. It’s a asteroid, on its approach to kill everybody, apart from Elsa, who appears to stroll onboard the asteroid, and her younger brother Gottfried who has been introduced again to rule a Brabant that has no stay inhabitants.
Geoffroy Schied
On this bleak, brutal, and conflictual world, the 2 central characters are Lohengrin and the pagan princess Ortrud, and they’re each sung with utter conviction and brilliance, by Piotr Beczała and Anja Kampe. Beczała is changing Klaus Florian Vogt, who took the half on the premiere in 2022, and whose softly elegant and otherworldly tenor is far more acceptable for a classically metaphysical rendition of the piece.
Beczała has sheer vocal brilliance, making the case for a charismatic chief who expresses drive fantastically with overwhelming energy. And Kampe is a splendidly expressive actress too, stalking across the stage and at occasions following Elsa as if she is reenacting Donald Trump’s weird strikes in his tv debate of 2016 in opposition to Hilary Clinton, when he aggressively moved behind his rival with the identical intimidating smile that Kampe bears.
By comparability, Rachel Willis-Sørensen as Elsa von Brabant has a more durable job, since she is successfully decreased to a minor character who can’t deal with the psychology of a politically damaged world. She seems first wearing drab saggy black garments, whereas the remainder of the solid, together with the King, Telramund, and Ortrud are in some number of mild gray or beige train clothes. (They give the impression of being as if they’ve been in a cult-like meditation session, after which within the second Act they seem in plastic raincoats, maybe referencing the massive quantities of rain skilled in Munich this summer season.) Willis-Sørensen sings each fantastically and powerfully, however she appears to be like consistently like an alien presence within the brainwashed setting.
Geoffroy Schied
It’s hanging when, in the beginning of the third Act, she tries to flee, however all of the doorways are barred, after which, within the bridal chamber, when she and Lohengrin are surrounded by the massive refrain. (Some members of the viewers tittered on the phrases of Lohengrin, “Wir sind allein, zum ersten Mal allein.”) Telramund, portrayed with a delicate ingredient of demented hysteria by Wolfgang Koch, is only a cipher. King Heinrich, sung by René Pape, who performed the function within the days of the Götz Friedrich manufacturing, sounds drained and worn; he was outsung by Kostas Smoriginas as the military herald. That’s all fairly acceptable as a result of on this interpretation of Lohengrin as populist, the king is simply one other enabler.
The fantastically taking part in Bayerisches Staatorchester, with the 4 trumpets sounding out from an higher proscenium lodge, are reliably directed by Sebastian Weigle, who according to the overall course of the piece, emphasizes energy and even brutality over otherworldly transcendence. In any case, you possibly can’t be too transcendent if you happen to’re going to be eradicated by the apocalypse within the type of an asteroid.
