Conductor, James Conlon; Director, Kasper Holten; Stage design, Costume design – Steffen Aarfing; Light design, Jesper Kongshaug. Cast – Heinrich, Ryan Speedo Green; Lohengrin, David Butt Philip; Elsa, Jennifer Davis; Telramund, Jordan Shanahan; Ortrud, Yulia Matochkina; Herald, Dean Murphy
After a morning at the Anglican Church in Berlin, where the familiarity of the liturgy was complemented by that of the seasonal request for more bottles for the Christmas tombola, I had lunch and then walked to the Opera House. This production is apparently some 11 years old, so a stable offer of the house, and the cast promised good things, I thought.
As it happened, 11 years meant ‘gone astray and people doing their own thing’. I mused to myself on the way back to my hotel why in so many ways the ROHCG David Alden production I saw last year was just such a better production. Part of the answer was that there was – 11 years on anyway – no driving concept in the Holten production such as there was with the Alden production (about the perils of saviour leadership). Partly also the sets didn’t really have any integral relationship with what was going on on stage (though they certainly didn’t impede the action). Again the action was a bit static and stylised (as I suppose is bound to be the case if you’re in a revival of an 11 year old production) – such a difference to the razor sharp attentiveness everyone had for everyone else’s doings on stage the previous evening. I was thinking during one of the intervals that I could conceive of a production where Lohengrin is a thoroughly fraudulent huckster, who dreams up the Grail story to make himself important and then is thoroughly found-out by Telramund and Ortrud. There were glimpses of ideas coming out at points – Lohengrin’s having to wear a pair of wings and then occasionally take them off may in fact play to the huckster idea (he does look a bit of a plonker in those wings); some clenched fist salutes from the good soldiers of Brabant may have something to do with the leadership idea but that’s never really taken any further. The production starts impressively – a landscape of dead bodies from a war, with a shooting star on the backdrop behind and relatives turning over the corpses searching for loved ones, with a shriek of recognition from a woman at the climax of the Prelude to Act 1 – but nothing follows on from this……….The end is (deliberately or just carelessly) ambiguous – Geoffrey could be appearing as a baby, as per stage directions, or could be a dead baby or something else. It was impossible to see which.
The stage is open and boxed round the edges for all three acts. Lit thin columns and a walkway are inserted for Act 2 for Telramund and Ortrud to lurk behind and for Elsa to walk on; there’s a curtain that’s drawn down towards the start of the processional scene at the end of Act 2 in the middle of the stage, and which also helps to close off the full stage during the intimate scene between Lohengrin and Elsa in Act 3. There is an Ypres WWI-stark blown-up trees backdrop for the last scene of Act 3, and, as you can see from the photo below, an impressive view of a Cathedral on a backdrop for the last 5 minutes of the Act 2 procession. There’s an impressive amount of lighting, smoke and things moving up and down at the back of the stage when Lohengrin first appears, but what could have been an interesting line for the production to take – how the divine breaks into modern life – was simply ticked off as a nice effect and otherwise ignored, though the projected swan comes back quite effectively at the end. Costumes are indeterminate – the chorus looks a mix of medieval, Napoleonic and 20th century, while the main cast is on the whole medieval.
Things aren’t helped by the detailed (or lack of it) personen-regie. King Henry just has to stand around looking regal, so he was OK, and the Herald likewise. The only person clearly acting in a dynamic way was Telramund, who captured the stage whenever he was around, but he didn’t really have anyone who responded meaningfully to his presence. Sad to say, Lohengrin was really pretty much of a lump, in terms of acting – he stood around trying to look solemn but seemingly asleep until it was his turn to sing, and occasionally just looking embarrassed at having those wings on him. Elsa does a lot with her voice but not much with her body and Ortrud resorts to semaphore too often.
Musically things were much better. James Conlon is a name I used to see a lot of in the UK but latterly he’s not done much there. Now in his mid 70’s, he conducted the orchestra very well and got a tight, bright performance from them – not much lingering on some of the gorgeous bits (after the Ortrud/Elsa scene in Act 2 for instance), but very exciting (with lots of offstage trumpets and drive at the beginning of Act 3 scene 2) at the points you need excitement. The augmented chorus sounded magnificent, and always more together under Conlon than they had been the previous evening. Ryan Speedo Green was excellent as the King, with a strong firm bass. Jordan Shanahan (who was Kilingsor in this year’s Bayreuth Festival) was, as I say, the star of the evening with a clear, well-projected voice with excellent diction. Yulia Matochinka was I suppose a standard Ortrud – rather in your face, noisy, not exactly subtle, and with a tendency to have a wide vibrato – who was good enough. I don’t think much of Jennifer Davies’ physical acting but she did an awful lot of effective acting in her singing, and seemed to get subtler and more nuanced as the evening went on. I was impressed. I’d like to cheer on David Butt Philip as one of our own but something seemed wrong about this performance. Partly, as said already, he just looked so uncomfortable on stage, but also his voice (and here I have to apologise for my lack of technical knowledge) is a rather dark, baritonal sort of tenor, and too much of his singing sounded a bit strained – you never felt at ease listening to it, and occasionally he struggled with one or two high notes. He certainly has the power and heft for the role, but his voice doesn’t convey easeful authority. It may be that this is (for a singer I have a lot of respect for) not a role he should carry on singing.
It should be said that some past reviews of this production in previous manifestations have said that, from their perspective, Lohengrin IS a huckster, and draws out prompt cards at the beginning to determine which story he should tell a gullible populace. They also say that in the production Elsa is seem to be in fact guilty of her brother’s death and brings in his corpse, All I can say is that none of this was evident to me………….
So, musically, enough to enjoy, but not a great evening………
John's musical journey 