Miecysłav Weinberg’s The Idiot, based on the Dostoevsky novel, was composed in 1986/7 but didn’t get a full premiere until 2013 in Mannheim. The neglect of Weinberg’s music in USSR/Russia is probably explained by him being a Polish Jew but why he’s so little known elsewhere is a bit of a mystery as The Idiot shows that The Passenger wasn’t a fluke. Anyway, The Idiot got a second outing at Salzburg in 2024 in a rather complex production by Krysztof Warlikowski.
I don’t think I’ve been as frustrated by a video recording of an opera since I watched the 2007 recording of Unsuk Chin’s Alice in Wonderland. This time the culprit is a recording of the 2024 production of Prokofiev’s The Gambler at the Salzburg Festival. It’s a Peter Sellars production set in the Felsenreitschule and it’s fascinating on many levels. The problem is that, as is wont, Sellars directs the video too and he seems to think people watch opera videos on their phones. There’s been a welcome trend since the advent of HD cameras to, generally, show as much of the stage action as possible and ration extreme close ups. Sellars takes the opposite approach and it drives me nuts. Not only do I feel that I’m missing a lot; especially in the cavernous Felsenreitschule, but I just don’t need to know how fast Asmik Gregorian is moving her tongue when she’s going for fast vibrato.
Mariane Clément’s production of Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann recorded at the 2024 Salzburg Festival is not the sort of production that one dismisses as pointless and/or ill conceived but it is complex and difficult to read; at least on first viewing. That said, being on video rather than live probably doesn’t help.
Martin Kušej’s production of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro at Salzburg in 2023 came 20 years after he had last directed a Mozart opera at Salzburg. My reviews (and follow up pieces) of his productions of Don Giovanni (2002, revived 2006) and La clemenza di Tito (2002) are probably two of the most commented on on this blog. So I’m interested to see where this goes.
Bohislav Martinů’s The Greek Passion is a 1961 opera based on the novel Christ Recrucified by Nicos Kazantzakis. The English language libretto is by the composer. It was staged in the Felsenreitschule in Salzburg in 2023 in a production directed y Simon Stone and recorded for video.
Opera is full of patriarchy. It’s a bit odd then that Leoš Janáček wrote two operas about dominating matriarchs and the consequences of their actions. The better known of the two is probably Jenůfa but the later Kát’a Kabanová deals with similar themes. Both are bleak and have watery endings.
It’s quite rare nowadays to stage all three Il Trittico operas in one evening and it will probably get rarer as financial pressures force shorter shows. Nonetheless it was done in Salzburg in 2022 in productions by Christof Loy. The USP was having Asmik Grigorian sing all three principal soprano roles so, not unreasonably, the usual order was switched up with Gianni Schicchi coming first and Suor Angelica closing things out. Unsurprisingly, and as intended, the evening increasingly became the Grigorian show as each opera succeeded the previous one.
Live from Salzburg is a new CD featuring music recorded live at Salzburg during the pandemic. The performers are Elīna Garanča, The Vienna Philharmonic and Christian Thielemann. There are two sets of songs; Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder (recorded in 2020) and Mahler’s Rückert Lieder (recorded in 2021). Both recordings were made during live performances in the Großesfestspielhaus.
I like Garanča a lot in this music. Sometimes I find her a bit “cold” but here there’s a really nice balance of emotion and clarity. Her articulation of the text is excellent and she sounds good throughout her range. The lower and middle ranges have a kind of burnished quality; not really dark but definitely not soprano like , while her upper register is controlled and smooth. The low end is perhaps best heard in Um Mitternacht where she shows real power and depth of emotion.
The disc release (Blu-ray and DVD) of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Jedermann is actually a 2 for 1. There’s a recording of a performance of the play from the 2020 Salzburg festival plus a 54 minute “docufiction” film about the history of the festival.
Christof Loy’s production of Handel’s Ariodante premiered at the Salzburg Whitsun Festival in 2017 and was reprised later in the year at the Haus für Mozart where it was filmed. It’s notable for marking Cecilia Bartoli’s first appearance in a breeches role. Loy uses this, and the gender ambiguity that abounds in the source material, in a most interesting way. He’s also very fluid about period; modern and 18th century costumes plus 15th century armour are mixed with gay abandon. Using very spare monochrome sets, often backed by 18th century style genre paintings, he creates a very open space within which the details of the production play out.
operaramblings 