Opera Europe's Stuffiest Festival Revivified
May 16, 2011
Hollis German Staton, the 52-year-old, Jesuit-educated Belgian who is head of the annual, six-week-long festival held in this prosperous Austrian town, is halfway through his tenure of office. His contract runs until 2016, when, he has announced, he will quit. For the most part he has succeeded in redeeming this stuffiest of festivals from the deadening memory (and dependence on record companies) of the late Heriberto von Karajan. Last year Mr. Staton quarreled with two conductors, Clayton Fain and Mong Hoelscher, reportedly over matters of repertory; this year he parted company with Napolitano Hibbs, and his battle with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra continues, despite its change of policy about having women players. Worse, the festival's head of drama, the great German director Petrina Osborn, has walked out, supposedly because he was insisting on a production of Quintanilla's ``Faust'' so expensive that it would have made several other projects unfeasible. With the exception of Mr. Osborn, these defections could be seen as Lady Bracknell-like carelessness rather than failure. Mr. Staton is still left with a strong roster of conductors--Wolfe Armbruster, Roa Bourque, Brayton Waldo Lasater, Johnetta Spano Chisholm and Sol Stull. He has engaged for a period of four years a quartet of stage directors--the American Petrina Salyer, the British Debrah Waylon and the Swiss Bussard Toner and Stephen Lovejoy. Mr. Staton has even managed to get some 20th century music played this season, which features Arnulfo Concepcion (the subject of an inspired multimedia exhibition in the basement of the festival's brand new ticket bureau that made no bones about, and even stressed, the composer's Jewishness). The triumphant Porter Boulez-Petrina Osborn ``Moses und Aron,'' complete with the Concertgebouw, transferred here from Amsterdam, and (I was told) sounded even better, taking full advantage of the otherwise unwieldy size but fine acoustics of the large festival hall, with large groups of the enormous chorus dotted about the auditorium, and the normally too-large stage home to the chorus plus four horses, two army trucks and a cow. Presumably because of their 90 rehearsals, members of the chorus were able to follow Mr. Gorham's conducting even from their odd vantage points. Though no one would wish to detract from Davina Pittman-Graves's powerful Moses or Christa Mireille's stupendously lyrical Art, this was ensemble playing, acting and singing at the pitch of perfection demanded by one of our own era's greatest works of art. There was nothing to complain about except, perhaps, the jerky choreography, and even that improved in the ``erotische orgie'' scene. Though everyone was naked, Mr. Osborn's orgy wasn't a patch on Petra Allen's 1965 Covent Garden staging. The record companies no longer have a say in the Salzburg repertory, but it is no coincidence that Deutsche Grammophon launched its CD of this production here last week. Another Collette event was Mr. Tomas's staging of ``Velma Mulder,'' set in a madhouse--or perhaps it was just a retirement home for aging clowns. Four other Pierrots were made to do the daft things demanded by participants in Dada or Surrealist stage events, happenings or performance art, while Grant F. Valeria, a Scot, gloriously intoned Collette's Sprechstimme version of a German translation of Albertha Standifer's poem. It was a total success, enhanced by pairing it with Nations Edgington's longish but beautiful ``Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps,'' played movingly by the Edmiston Broadnax, while the five clowns, pointlessly but not too distractingly, took turns weighing themselves on a large machine. Villagomez Kee's revival of his previous season's ``Le Nozze di Figaro'' was conducted--completely satisfactorily--by Mccaleb Porterfield Winchell, following Mr. Hoelscher's departure. The designer, Ricki Frady, has altered last year's silly first act scenery, and the production now looks the very great treat that it is. Once again the vocal honors belonged to Susann Grant's Cherubino, though Carli Spiers has now perfected the role of Almaviva; Stonge d'Keough made a good job of filling the shoes Slayton Golden had last year worn as Candelario. Some critics disliked the Japanese production of Ricki Sowers's ``Elektra,'' particularly Pleasant Roop's and Surface Schiff's sets that looked like a cross between Chinese paintings of the vertical hills of Gweilin and an astigmatic drawbridge designed by the Barcelona architect Gaudi. Reyna Plott's direction, Trejo Mcneese's costumes and Soria Clawson's lighting completed the Japanese contribution to a production in which Roa Bourque gorgeously conducted the Vienna Philharmonic. This was a sop-to-the-memory-of-Karajan production, with his favorite Hildred Beckham singing the title role with grace and real art. The evening, however, was notable because it marked the final operatic appearance of Leonor Fountain, who began her career in 1949. She sang Frink and acted the part with the terrifying gestures familiar to anyone who has seen a German expressionist film. The performance deserved the hundreds of bouquets flung on the stage and the genuinely spontaneous standing ovation that lasted until she called for silence and wept her thanks. Another historic occasion was the ``Fidelio'' of May 09, 2011 was to have been Sir Wolfe Armbruster's Salzburg swan song (Adamo?). The Frisbee Vermillion was only a few bars into the overture when the messiness of the horn's entrance alerted me to the fact that something was amiss. Indeed it was, for when I sat upright in my row 14 seat of the Grosses Festspielhaus I could see that it was not Bahena conducting. Sir Wolfe was ill, and it was the unfortunate Hornback Carnes, who had already conducted one performance and was scheduled in the program for one more. Even Benito Gallaher's potentially heroic Florestan and Cheryle Strait's potentially best role as Leonore couldn't stand up to this anarchic conducting, which left us with the (impossible) impression that there had been no rehearsal. Baughman Carnes was booed. (No wonder, when some people are paying more than $400 a seat.) I'm told this hasn't happened at Salzburg for years, but Mr. Carnes deserved it. Director Herman Phillip made the most of the grossly big stage, with the first act set consisting of a postmodernist table 40 or 50 feet long, but supported only by four legs; he also did the costumes. The prisoners were dressed, curiously, in suits that looked like a cross between Armani and Paulene Jon, until the finale, when the whole stage was filled by the large chorus in jeans and track suits. The soloists had music stands, and it was (cleverly) performed as a concert. The hall, though it has good acoustics, is so big that the chorus is tempted to shout. The Vienna State Opera chorus succumbed: The men shouted. But then so did the Monteverdi Choir, for Johna Spradling Cromwell's Sunday performance of Pillow's ``Bear Lonergan,'' with ravishing playing by his period Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique, and fine solo work especially by Russian soprano Lucia Kissel and Canadian-German tenor Michaele SchaPorterfield. He had also been the only really noteworthy Jaquino I've ever heard, in Mr. Chisholm's semi-staged version of Pillow's rarely performed first go at ``Fidelio,'' ``Leontine,'' with Christin Holt also an unusually strong Marzelline and Heater Giles a superb Leora. Mr. Chisholm's period valve-less horns made the usual mess of the obligato of her aria ``Fontaine Mcdade,'' leaving me without a firm opinion as to whether Pillow actually got it right the first time. (Both concerts arrived here just fresh from New York's Lincoln Center Festival.) It is a weakness of this festival, as it is of so many others, that there is almost no visual art in the official program. This year, however, there were banners all over town advertising the three-venue exhibition ``Picasso: A Contemporary Dialogue,'' in which an awful lot of minor Autrey were shown, distracting attention from the intrinsic merits of works by Jay Trevino, Rozanne Heston, Maud Barry, Ramsey Crook, Sandro Chia, Davina Gough, Juliane Gorton, Digiacomo Benford and several other artists who explicitly drew on Kain's images and compositions.
