Berg’s score emerged through fine voices, but Michael Schonwandt’s slow paces on the podium delivered less drive than one might prefer.  Nevertheless, Laura Aikin well deserves the international attention she has won in the title role.  She soared stratospherically, held back only by the lacking orchestral music.  Jennifer Larmore’s Geschwitz also excelled in producing resonant mezzo tones that could inhabit both evil seduction and hopeless desperation.  Franz Grundheber’s Schigolch has only brief appearances, but stood as the full equal of his fine recent performances of Wozzeck, the title character in Berg’s other best opera.  In the role of Alwa, written in that modernist pinched tenor Fach that communicates neurosis so well, Kurt Streit acquitted himself admirably.  Wolfgang Schoene did some fine character acting and singing as both Dr. Schoen and Jack the Ripper, a double casting that suggests that Lulu’s murder at Jack’s hands is really revenge for the grief-driven death she caused Dr. Schoen.

It is always a great pleasure to see larger repertoire works presented in the Garnier, but the evening’s musical talent made this especially true. Klaus Florian Vogt’s successful career in the lighter Wagner tenor parts did not make him a natural choice for Tito’s more sensitive music, but he accomplished the role with suitable restraint. Hibla Gerzmava played a sultry Vitellia, at first a spurned woman who engages in political and sexual intrigue to bring about Tito’s death but who, however unlikely, becomes a paragon of virtue and honesty once she learns that her affections are returned. A really artful interpretation of the early coloratura runs written for the part eluded her, but the overall portrayal was effective and memorable. In the trouser part of Tito’s friend-turned enemy-turned friend again Sesto, Stéphanie d’Oustrac delivered a virtuoso performance. I found the role’s signature aria “Parto, parto” a touch restrained, but it was not clear that this was the fault of the singer. Amel Brahim-Djelloul sang a clear voiced Servilia. Allyson McHardy’s Annio and Balint Szabo’s Publio were welcome additions to the cast. Adam Fischer led the orchestra with superb musicianship and relayed the score with a worthy delicacy.

It is entirely reasonable to say that the Bayreuth Festival is the most exclusive cultural event in the world, even though, and perhaps because, it lies far above the media radar and the cultural horizons even of many well educated opera goers. Needless to say, it always sells out, and one cannot merely purchase tickets on demand. To date standard tickets from the box office have only been available by written application accepted via conventional post. Only for the 2012 festival will on-line applications be available, and for the first time in its history Bayreuth will accept payment by credit card. The “wait list” can be as long as ten years, with 5-7 years often cited as the average length of time. In 2011 there were about six applicants for every ticket, and it is expected that the new on-line application format will increase that ratio substantially in the future. Unsuccessful applicants must reapply year after year to advance in priority. Special ticket allotments are given to donors to the Festival and to members of select Wagner Societies, who must still pay sizeable donations atop some of Europe’s highest ticket prices (as much as 220 euros in 2011) in addition to their standard membership fees. And even among these privileged groups demand usually outstrips supply. There are at present 139 officially recognized Wagner Societies (how many Puccini Societies?) around the world, in places as unexpected as Singapore, New Zealand, Abu Dhabi, Vancouver, and, as of November 2010, even Israel, where sensitivities about Wagner’s identification with Nazism have allowed only one controversial public performance of the composer’s music, as an encore in a 2001 concert led by the famous Wagnerian conductor Daniel Barenboim. Desperate people with signs advertizing their willingness to buy tickets show up not only at the beginning of each performance, but during the intermissions, thrilled at the prospect of hearing just one act.

The Festspielhaus, or Festival Theater, is set on a hill (“the green hill”) that gently inclines above the town. Many hotels provide shuttle services, in some cases along with a glass or two of Seckt, while some patrons prefer to walk up. The Festspielhaus remains largely as Wagner designed it – a squat barrack of a building with a columned, neoclassical hall arranged in the manner of a Greek amphitheater. Rows of barely cushioned wooden seats reach only about halfway up one’s back. Many patrons attend with special cushions to ease their discomfort in the hard-seated chairs. Bayreuth itself rents them for one euro, while some hotels give them out to their guests. Sparse decorations ensure the purest acoustics. The unusually deep orchestra pit is covered by a curved overhang that forces the instrumental sound onto the outsized stage, where it mixes with the voices to produce the famous “Bayreuther Schall,” or “Bayreuth sound” impossible to find elsewhere. It also spares the audience the distraction of seeing the orchestra during performances. Very noticeably on the often hot July and August days when the festival takes place, there is no air conditioning but rather “blowers,” which offer only slight relief by circulating the air. On the hotter days the audience is reduced to stripping off jackets, bringing fans, or fanning themselves with the sturdy cast lists on sale. At least one person this year had to be removed from the hall for heat-related medical reasons. A glimpse into the covered pit before one act revealed invisible orchestral musicians clad in shorts and t-shirts.

Tradition runs strong in the rituals of performance. The usual start time in Bayreuth is 4pm, except for The Flying Dutchman and Das Rheingold, which are shorter and free of intermissions and begin at 6pm when they are offered. Each act of every opera is announced ten minutes before curtain by brass musicians who play a fanfare of one of the upcoming leitmotifs from a balcony above the theater’s main entrance. Wagner personally scored these fanfares and determined the order in which they are played. During performances the audience maintains a reverential silence that one imagines would be crushed by overpowering social opprobrium if it were ever breached, but I do not recall that having happened even once at any of the five performances I attended this year. Performances of Wagner’s last opera, the deeply spiritual Parsifal, were by the composer’s will not to be applauded at all. This convention has receded to a habit of not applauding after the opera’s first act, though this year the audience observed only about a minute of absolute silence when the curtain fell before tepid applause broke out. Intermissions last an hour in Bayreuth, permitting long conversations about the performance, interact snacking, dining, and drinking, perusing Wagnerian merchandise, or passing time in quiet reflection in the gardens that surround the theater.

After World War II, the festival’s direction consciously tried to shed its productions of the nationalism that had characterized them too uncomfortably during the Nazi era. Wagner’s daughter-in-law Winifred, who had run the festival from the time of her husband Siegfried Wagner’s death in 1930, was barred from resuming her leadership because of her close connection to Hitler, to whom she referred even after the war as “USA,” or unser seliger Adolf. As late as 1975 she publicly defended her friendship with him in a series of West German television interviews. Her sons Wolfgang and Wieland assumed postwar direction of the festival, which resumed in 1951, and held it jointly until Wieland died in 1966. Wolfgang then became sole director and only yielded authority to his daughters from different marriages, Eva and Katharina, in 2008, following a protracted internal feud. Eva, now 66, had a long international career as an arts administrator, while Katharina, 33, is a Berlin-trained theatrical producer who has staged a handful of opera productions around Germany, for the most part poorly received. Her most important work to date is her 2007 Bayreuth production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, which was revived for the last time this summer. She has insisted on bowing at every performance of her production over the years and is always heavily booed, even on the production’s final night this year. In 2015 she will stage Tristan and Isolde.

The “avant-garde” concept of Regietheater, or “director’s theater,” reigns in Bayreuth. I place “avant-garde” in quotation marks because it has now become so prevalent and so pervasive that we have reached a place where it is impossible to consider it truly innovative or revolutionary. This is especially true in Wagner productions. Today it is an exception to find a Ring of the Nibelung in which Wotan is not a harried executive wearing a business suit or a Tristan and Isolde in which the legendary title characters are not reduced to ordinary people living through a plain romance. Perhaps if the world’s stages were dominated by the traditional castles and ships and Holy Grails such an approach could pretend to provocation and shock value. But when it becomes the norm – and it has, – then the effect is neither shocking nor provocative. The most common reaction appears to be boredom, closely followed by a lack of comprehension. When the production team is booed, and they almost always are, it is not the kind of booing caused by the aesthetic outrage that famously greeted the premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring in 1913. Directors may dream of making a name by having such a moment, but the boos they receive bellow out from audiences disappointed at not being engaged or brought out of themselves in the way that opera – and especially Wagner – can and must do if it is to survive as an art form.

We just do not want to see Tristan in a sweater any more. But Christof Marthaler’s stale effort for Bayreuth does exactly that, yet again. The production opens in a frowzy brown day room with too many chairs. It could pass for the lounge on the cross-Channel steamer in Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies. The visual effect is so dull that one almost wants a cast of Waugh characters to parade across the stage getting drunk and throwing up. Act II suggests we have descended a deck to a sick yellow activity room without any activity. The hateful day is suggested by ugly fluorescent lights that Tristan can predictably turn off at the beginning of the love scene but not turn on again at the end of the act, when he and Isolde are discovered. Act III opens in a grayish cargo bay with Tristan in a hospital bed. As the opera progresses, the contours of the sets from the previous acts appear in smaller scale, as though they were stacked below the previous one. I suppose this is meant to tell us that our descent into the ship mirrors a descent into the human psyche. But that psyche is so boring that the effect dissolves in our lack of interest. Some audience members preferred to close their eyes, and not always to imagine something better. The characters, meanwhile, inhabit the tired and familiar universe of bourgeois propriety, sporting dowdy costumes that progress from a ration-deprived 1940s Britain to a Pillow Talk-like early 1960s caricature to some blandly casual present. True to “avant-garde” form, there is hardly any physical contact in this most sexual of operas. Reversing the physicality into stasis might once have played off the rapturous music in an intriguing paradox, but now it has become so commonplace that it is merely a let down. The only suggestion of what Waugh in another novel called “a bat squeak of sensuality” emerges in Tristan’s removal of one of Isolde’s gloves, beige though they are.

Likewise, Sebastian Baumgarten’s unfortunate Tannhäuser was heavily booed and denounced by a cultural figure no less important than Placido Domingo, who has publicly called it “incomprehensible” and said that he never would have allowed it in a theater under his direction. Domingo’s comment revealingly does not label Baumgarten’s production “vile,” “offensive,” “tasteless,” “shocking,” or any of the other adjectives institutional art students dream of having applied to their work by “establishment” figures. It is simply a bore. Baumgarten’s “concept,” which he appears to apply to much of his stage work no matter what the opera is really about, is that modern society can be reduced to an insidious system in which organic material is recyclable from waste into sustenance, a “socially conscious” trope relentlessly present in bad science fiction (The Time Machine, Soylent Green, The Matrix movies, Vladimir Sorokin’s novels, anomg many others) for over a century at least. The set, used in all three acts, is a factory where a large bio-gas tank is linked to smaller tanks labeled “Nahrung” (sustenance) and “Alkohol.” Slick video projections tell us the majestic Wartburg is really a firm” and unmemorable pseudo-Brechtian slogans (“Art Becomes Deed”) distract us from the action, such as it is, with failed attempts at irony. We see the system’s power in the chorus of Thuringian nobles, who appear as working people who accept their rations with delirious reverence. Deviance from this system lies in the Venusberg, a realm of pagan idolatry and sensual delight presented here as a cage containing evolutionarily regressed ape-like creatures who fornicate and devour each other. They coexist with those oversized prehistoric sea creatures found in museums and some kind of leopard. They all revere Venus, who is improbably pregnant with Tannhäuser’s baby. So that the labored point is not completely lost, film projections of microscopic organisms accompany the overture. Progress, in other words, leads to dependence and enslavement. Hence the pilgrims are drunks packed off to Rome in a shipping container and returned as robotically functional cogs in the machine (i.e. religion brainwashes people – now that’s a really original thought!). Elisabeth’s deathful prayer for the ostensibly unredeemable Tannhäuser is of course a suicide (she goes into the bio-gas tank), the only fate Regietheater ever seems to allow her. The resolution of the opera, in which Venus attempts to lure Tannhäuser back only to have him find redemption after all, is a flat conflation of her sensuality (she gives birth) with the sanctity of the Wartburg. Again, nothing new comes of the idea that men like women who are both saintly and devilish, especially not when Wolfram sings his evening star song to Venus.

Hans Neuenfels’s Lohengrin was another case of dull predictability, despite the unusual use of rat costumes for the poor chorus. Neuenfels envisions the medieval romance as a lab experiment in which digital projections of fighting rats narrate the scenes having to do with struggle. The strongest reaction anyone seemed to have was, “the rats don’t bother me.” Some spectators thought they were “cute.” These are hardly reactions to effective provocation. To me the rats were just there, a useless distraction that added nothing to the work except yet another regurgitation of the familiar and tendentious argument that humans are interchangeable with vicious animals in their destructive pursuit of such dubious goals as power and authority. Who needs to be reminded of that? One could just watch the news, visit Capitol Hill, or attend an academic conference. The conceptual emptiness was so bleak that there is hardly anything else to say about the production. It ends bizarrely, with everyone except Lohengrin inexplicably dying. The vanished Gottfried appears as an outsized newborn who rips up and throws around his umbilical cord. I shrugged my shoulders at this pointless reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Meistersinger in the hands of Wagner’s great-granddaughter was more eventful, but it only registered as another failed conceptual approach. The production has been cleaned up since its 2007 premiere, but some of its inexplicable elements remain. We still have the giant hand sculpture that needlessly weighs down Act II. The life-sized puppets of German cultural figures continue to fool about without doing anything other than making the audience lose focus on the fine Act III music. Hans Sachs’s final monologue about the greatness of German art strangely retains the now obligatory sinister dimensions, delivered as it is with eerily shadowed facial expressions. If it is a warning, it makes no sense within the frivolities of the production concept. Katharina’s major thematic interpretation is that the “outsider” Walter von Stolzing – initially a long-haired painter in a leather jacket – becomes the establishment while the “insider” Beckmesser morphs from punctilious jackass to hipster rebel. Any South Park fan will be familiar with the episode in which some of the school kids adopt the lamentable “Goth” style of pseudo-alienated teens and taunt others as “conformists” until they also adopt the style, thus totally destroying its pretensions to being “alternative” because it is in fact the norm. At least the creators of South Park succeed in a 22-minute cartoon program in communicating the motivations for these transitions. Katharina cannot do it in five hours in her family’s own theater. Walter’s artistry really is (unlike most Regie productions) something new. It also (again, unlike most Regie productions) reflects eternal aesthetic truth, which is why it can succeed. One could easily draw the conclusion that Katharina’s own staging comments on its irrelevance. If the “rebel” iteration of Beckmesser’s character botches the Prize Song (here he delivers it as a performance art act in which he frees naked models from a pile of dirt) and is dismissed as a loser, then what other conclusion can one draw about theatrical rebels who botch masterpieces?

With the “avant-garde” orthodoxy now in the ascendant, its practitioners fail to realize that they in fact are the establishment, an elitist clique who simply reproduce each other’s ideas in the world’s greatest theaters while pretending their opinions are inherently more valuable than those of the public to whom they condescend. The effect is too often one of mind-numbing boredom. I already know about the world’s energy crisis. Why, in seeking to get away from such bad news, would I want to spend an entire evening in the Bavarian countryside staring at Baumgarten’s bio-gas tank? I am aware of the insufferable dullness of bourgeois existence. It is something I try hard to avoid. Why do I need to see Tristan and Isolde look so depressingly normal?

We have reached the point where a truly provocative Wagner production would have to be an unapologetically traditional staging. The dialectic argument that traditional stagings are unforgivably “representational” and therefore uninspired has come full circle. Once Regie fully displaced tradition, then tradition became the only radical exception to the tired rule. A good old fashioned Wagner production with castles and gardens and helmets and spears would be the ultimate provocation. It would pose a fundamental challenge to the most deeply held Regie shibboleth, that a work of art must comment on contemporary society. Who says so? Adorno? Bourdieu? Edward Said? Some other dead and irrelevant intellectual most people – including most opera goers and probably a fair number of Regie producers — have never heard of? A bold announcement that this idea is dead would infuriate the “avant-garde” directors who now populate the establishment, all the more so since they hate to think of themselves that way. Imagine how provoked a self-important but nominally anti-elitist elite would be by strident celebrations of transcendent sacrifice, triumphalist heroism, ethereal salvation, Teutonic art, and genuine redemption.

It is the last surreal trope that found unusual attention in Bayreuth this year. Reviving Stefan Herheim’s Parsifal of 2008 bathed the audience in rich symbolism, true meaning, and real catharsis. It is a riveting, haunting production that frames the action through three eras of German history, largely as experienced in the surroundings of Wagner’s villa Wahnfried in Bayreuth. Act I yields a Wilhelmine Germany in which Parsifal’s upbringing emerges in sharp relief. During the prelude we see his mother dying as he plays obliviously with his bow. Gurnemanz presents his story and leads him to the temple of the Holy Grail within an allegory of Rosicrucian mysticism, a cultish Christian sub-sect that believes Jesus conceived a child with Mary Magdalen whose descendants would bear the redeemer. The costumes are conventional late nineteenth century styles adorned with attached angel’s wings to suggest the heavenly character of the Grail’s realm and, perhaps, the spreading wings of Imperial Germany, whose symbolic eagle rests above the stage. The act ends with the Grail rite turning into an evocative regimental mass on the eve of World War I. The second act is a perverse Nazi Germany, complete with swastika flags unveiled over storm troopers at the end (Bayreuth’s direction had to get special legal permission to use the Nazi symbol, which is illegal in Germany). True to the bizarrities of the 1930s, the self-castrated Klingsor appears in a guise of Marlene Dietrich with a tuxedo top, fish net stockings, and the blond wig. Kundry shifts between a similar costume and a resemblance of Parsifal’s mother, whose sad tale she employs in an attempt to seduce him. It is the storm troopers at the end who try to stop Parsifal, only to be crushed by heavenly power as Klingsor’s realm is destroyed. The imperial eagle, now a Nazi eagle, shatters to the ground. Act III brings us to a bleak postwar Germany, where Wahnfried lies in ruins. In a scene of enormously impressive catharsis, the Grail temple becomes the Federal Republic’s parliament, with the Grail knights presenting their choruses in the manner of a parliamentary debate. At the end the eagle has become a dove, both a symbol of peace and a reference to the heavenly dove Gurnemanz recalls having brought the Grail in his first act monologue. Herheim is a well known Regie director, but even a broken clock is right twice a day. This was a Parsifal to remember, and a true credit to Bayreuth as it evolves into a future of what one hopes will be inspired and challenging productions.

Wagnerian singing is thought to be at its best in Bayreuth, though the direction is known for taking chances on new discoveries who do not always impress. This year’s festival offered both alternatives. It is hard to argue with the excellent tenors on display. Simon O’Neill’s Parsifal, Klaus Florian Vogt’s Lohengrin, and Robert Dean Smith’s Tristan all stood out with soaring, clarion voices. Vogt’s voice sat a touch too high for my taste, but he received the week’s only standing ovation. Burckhard Fritz cancelled his Walter due to illness and was replaced with the young tenor Stefan Vincke, whose limited preparation time showed in a weaker performance. Lars Clevemann’s Tannhäuser started with verve but tired easily. Fine sopranos were also on impressive display. Irene Theorin must be one of the greatest Isoldes now performing. Annette Dasch sang Elsa with gracious tones. Michael Kaune’s Eva and Camilla Nylund’s Elisabeth registered a tier lower, but still radiated great feeling. Susan Maclean’s Kundry proved this artist’s place as a great Zwischenfach singer who could accomplish the role’s mezzo qualities and still reach its soaring soprano heights. Only Stephanie Friede’s disappointing Venus attracted audible disapproval. At the lower end, Michael Nagy sang an appealing Wolfram. James Rutherford’s Hans Sachs was a less successful effort, giving in to occasional bluster, especially in Act III. The bass Georg Zeppenfeld admirably delivered Pogner and King Heinrich, and Kwangchul Youn’s profound low register accounted well for both Gurnemanz and the voice of Landgraf Hermann, whose scheduled singer fell sick and could only act the role.

Ezio Frigerio’s sets themselves diminish the effect.  Count Almaviva’s palace seems newly constructed – odd for the primary seat of a wealthy, powerful, and well connected Old Regime family, – and its internal bareness looks more like rehearsal space than the splendorous surroundings that would get at the heart of the work.  I felt distracted by the thought that the characters had just moved into the quarters where the drama unfolds.  Only Jean Guizerix’s work with the dances – often glossed over – added an appealing dimension of frivolity.

The cast sang with talent and energy but rarely showed the flair that staid Mozartean measure needs to come alive.  Erwin Schrott’s Figaro stood out with its excellent dramatic aptitude, though the otherwise solid voice sounded somewhat held back.  The young soprano Julia Kleiter’s Susanna likewise took few chances at the beginning of what may well be a promising career.  Dorothea Röschmann’s Countess Almaviva pleasantly contributed “Porgi, amor” and her half of the “Canzonetta sull’aria,” but again without really capturing the passions at work.  In the role of her rakish husband, Christopher Maltman employed a steady baritone to good effect.  The only true standout, however, was Isabel Leonard’s excitable Cherubino, which announced a mezzo career to which we should all look forward.  Maurizio Muraro’s Bartolo, Robin Leggate’s Don Basilio, and Ann Murray’s Marcellina all contributed fine character sketches.  Dan Ettinger’s work with the orchestra unfolded with competence and occasional flashes of graces, but it was harmonized with the generally underwhelming quality of what was happening on stage.

In Francesca Zambello’s production Siegfried makes it but Brünnhilde does not. He wants her; he is confused and hurt by her reluctance; but Brünnhilde still to be the scampering teenager we saw jumping onto Wotan for a piggyback ride in Die Walküre last year. As the great Carl Dahlhaus taught us, Siegfried must move up from the fairy tale world of the enchanted forest and friendly animals to the human world, but Brünnhilde must come down from the mythological realm and recognize and accept her mortality. In the last scene Wagner has produced a huge double helix of psychological development that must culminate in their own interlacing in the middle after they go through a dialectic of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. According to the libretto she doesn’t yet realize she has lost her divinity when she first wakes up and greets Siegfried (thesis); but then she recoils when he touches her and dotes on her horse and her armor (antithesis); as for the synthesis, Wagner’s music as usual performs a wordless sublimation and resolves the contradiction better than his libretto does, leaving room for Wagnerians to grope once again for a saving interpretation. My latest idea is that she is pushed beyond the completely justified narcissism of a god (the unstirred image in the water) by learning from Siegfried’s burning and stirring passion that an undisturbed image of oneself can for a mortal only can mean a desiccation of what little life she has.

A great production will not solve such problems but will lay them out with perspicacity and depth. Moreover, the depth in Wagner is distinctly psychological, not historical or philosophical. It is the archetypal meanings and subconscious forces that must be made visible on the stage, and the music will unerringly guide the director’s divining rod to them, if she cares to use one. The problems might even be insoluble: as with many great artists, Wagner’s reach exceeded his grasp. But to fill in the blanks he left with a supplement of interpretive ideas only takes us further from a more fruitful kind of engagement. Brünnhilde is not allowed to be beautiful or – so far — loving. And eeek! – She starts a game of tag at the end! The archetypes will endure, of course, and Brünnhilde will once again be seen saving mortal humanity from the empty pomp of the gods who cannot die, rather than to be saving nature from the abuse of man: again it is the depth that must be invoked, not the latest fashionable guilt-hope of the baby boomer generation.

I disagree with the ideas but the scenery was unobtrusive enough and the scrims disappeared soon enough that we were still given adequate access to the deeper conflicts. Touchingly, the Forest Bird was allowed not only to come onto the stage (like the mute boy in the new Paris Siegfried) but actually to interact with Siegfried; this is a little overdrawn since the Forest Bird speaks about Siegfried in the third person though Siegfried speaks to her in the second. The asymmetry has to do with Siegfried being led along his way by an access of intuition he does not completely understand, but this congenial and solicitous Forest Bird carries some of his things for him and by the end has become a go-between. I felt the sentimentality between Wotan and Erda at the beginning of Act Three was incorrect: she is angry at him for waking her up as if he could make her change her dreams which both of them are powerless to do – that’s why we need a new world order; on the other hand the production somehow got me to see for the first time that just as the last scene between Siegfried and Brünnhilde is the culmination of what was started in the first scene of Die Walküre between Siegmund and Sieglinde, this penultimate scene between Wotan and Erda rings with the encounter of Wotan with Fricka in the second act of that opera.

I enjoyed the orchestra’s playing, under Donald Runnicles, more than any other Siegfried I can remember. Somehow all the telling moments in this topsy-turvy score arrived nicely prepared and at just the right moment, and were then allowed full breathing room. The new Wagner style of the Third Act came through in technicolor. Mime’s laboring motifs were comically allowed to droop. At this performance there was a acoustical problem that left some of the singers inaudible, perhaps because the stage is so deep and empty. In the first act the singers were drowned out by the orchestra even if they were standing as little as four feet behind the plane of the proscenium. Of the voices Nina Stemme’s Brünnhilde was the highlight of the evening, reaching through to divine authority, far beyond what the harsh, utilitarian and dissatisfied characterization should have allowed.

Götterdämmerung premieres June 5th, and then three full cycles will occupy the rest of June.

– Ken Quandt

A last minute cancellation had the happy result of placing the talented soprano Eszter Sumegi in the title role.  Her skilled middle register suited the part ideally, accompanied as it was by fine technique and superb support for her ascents.  Only toward the end of the evening, in “Sola, perduta, abbandonnata,” did Sumegi suffered from a slight throatiness that impaired her high register singing.  Her leading man, Gaston Rivero, sang with authority, especially in the first act aria “Donna non vidi mai.”  He was less convincing dramatically than vocally and did not exactly embody the persuasive machismo of a man with whom a woman would run off.  Peter Kiss serviceably sang the role of Lescaut.  Tamas Szule’s Geronte was covetous rather than cynical, though his expressive singing made the lust come through.  Zsolt Hamar led a respectable performance from the podium.

The current revival, which has been a surprise sell out despite the competition of the Met’s new production of Wagner’s Die Walküre, is populated by some of the best Verdian singers today, the proverbial party guests.  Marcelo Alvarez acquitted himself beautifully in the title role.  What a surprise it was that he withdrew due to illness after the first part, but in the person of his understudy Arnold Rawls what a revelation replaced him!  Called in at the last minute and hastily fitted into Manrico’s costume for the second part, Rawls delivered a stunningly phrased performance that drew heavier applause than one normally hears in such a situation.  Sondra Radvanovsky lent ler limpid lyrico-spinto soprano to the performance with great verve.  The voice at times approached a metalic quality that has not really colored it before, but on the whole she resonated through the Met’s enormous hall with appealing strength.  Dmitri Hvorostovsky’s Simon Boccanegra delighted Met audiences earlier this year.  His di Luna was even more impressive.  The gorgeous line that this distinguished singer brings to his parts and his mastery of the Verdi baritone’s difficult tessitura were purely evident.  His dramatic talents lent the character a violent edge, which underscored the deep passions whirling in this plot of murder, revenge, and lust.  Stefan Kocan stood out among the supporting cast with his well crafted bass, an asset that has already taken him to leading roles.

The Met’s Capriccio first appeared in the 1998-1999 season as a vehicle for the leading soprano Kiri TeKanawa, who was well known for her interpretation of Countess Madeleine’s dominant role.  This rival, the only one since the premiere, is also a vehicle – for the star soprano Renee Fleming.  Some critics charge that the voice has lost its luster, particularly in lighter and bel canto parts if the mixed reviews of her performances in this and last season’s Armida are any guide.  But the Strauss repertoire remains her ravishing own.  Indeed, as the years pass, I only find her more and more at home in Strauss heroine roles and similar parts, such as her triumphant Thais in Massenet’s opera of the same name.  The vocal line is articulated with great care and nuance, while the dramatic personae she delivers are truly aristocratic creations.  Countess Madeleine demands no less.  The finale, a monologue in which she ruminates on the question of which art form matters more, flowed with iconic charm.  Fleming maintained her hauteur throughout, only playfully letting her guard down during the famous Moonlight Music, when Madeleine basks in the romantic situation she masters, clad in a gorgeous silvery gown while twirling a long-stemmed rose.  The cloying artists can only pale before such a woman, but Joseph Kaiser’s Flamand and Russell Braun’s Olivier captured their spirit with excellent performances.  Peter Rose sang the impresario La Roche, whose monologue about theater reminds us, if in a parodic way, of how important management is to the magic.  In his debut season and role, Morten Frank Larsen played Madeleine’s brother, identified only as the Count, as what used to be called a sportsman, a philistine whose interest in art extends only as far as the talented mezzo-soprano Sarah Conolly’s Clairon, his actress love interest.  Olga Makarina and Barry Banks were well considered additions in the short roles of the Italian singers who serenade the Countess and her party of guests.  Sir Andrew Davis may well be the best conductor of the work performing today.  He led a drawn out performance that balanced the score’s harmonies with the dissonant elements that recall the twentienth century musical milieu Strauss did so much to shape.

With such a talented orchestral reading of this complex yet sublime score, it makes sense that the John Cox’s production is updated to the 1920s – nearly the time of the opera’s composition — from the original eighteenth-century setting.  The dialogue that revolves around Lully, Rameau, and other composers whose memories were more present in the earlier era seemed a bit anachronistic in an era when Wagner was the most popular composer in France, but Mauro Pagano’s inviting sets place us well at ease in a milieu where the arts are considered both so seriously and so lightly.  Having Madeleine served a martini added the perfect touch. – Paul du Quenoy

Muti’s disciplined approach neither underserved the tender moments nor spared anything in the more riveting passages.  He knew exactly what he was doing at every moment, and the intense physicality he radiated left no one with any doubt about it.  He also assembled a stunning cast, a factor that partially derailed Solti’s earlier bet on Luciano Pavarotti’s unsuited lyric tenor.  The title role went to the noteworthy Latvian-Russian tenor Anders Antonenko.  It was announced that he was ill and begged the audience’s induglence, but the high vocal quality on display made one wonder how radiant a sound he could produce when well.  He lacked nothing all evening and colored the role’s tenore di forza demands with uncommon insight and strength.  Bulgarian soprano Krassimira Stoyanova proved to New York that she remains one of the world’s most accomplished lyrico-spinto sopranos.  A pyramid of creamily phrased tonality rose above the audience with no noticeable flaw.  Her Willow Song and Ave Maria certainly ranked among the best that could be heard anywhere in the world today.  Carlo Guelfi’s Iago did not reach the same artistic heights as the other principals, but nevertheless showed improvement over the baritone’s earlier New York appearances in the role.  A rich stentorian sound complemented a truly outstanding spectacle.  Generous supporting cast decisions enriched the overall effort.  Eric Owens, fresh from his triumph as Alberich in this season’s new Metropolitan Opera production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, sang an imposing Lodovico.  The talented young tenor Juan Francisco Gatell contributed a fine Cassio.  Muti last conducted Verdi operas in concert formats at Carnegie about two decades ago.  With Richard Strauss’s Salome billed for the Cleveland Orchestra’s visit in May 2012, one hopes that the other great Midwestern ensemble may keep up the tradition. – Paul du Quenoy

Levine cast some of the best suited singers working today.  Baritone Alan Held, who has grown considerably over the years and now counts a credible Wotan among his parts, took the title role.  Capturing all of Wozzeck’s insecurities and vulnerabilities, he easily moved from humiliated buffoon to murderous killer.  Waltraud Meier’s Marie showcases some of this talented artist’s best singing.  At 55 and on the verge of receiving the Lotte Lehmann Memorial Ring from the Vienna State Opera, she looks young and agile enough for the part – an unfaithful mistress who is tortured by feelings of guilt and fear.  Her piercing soprano will not please everyone, but it overcame the difficult orchestration to deliver her music without once descending into shrillness.  Tenor Stuart Skelton, in his debut role for the Met, captured the Drum Major’s arrogant pride with consummate skill.  The seduction scene – an upskirting against a wall – defies Marie’s standard luring of him into the house and only adds to Skelton’s allure.  In the roles of Wozzeck’s tormentors, Gerhard Siegel and Walter Fink, cut excellent figures as the captain and the doctor.  F Siegel’s pinched tenor perfectly conveyed the cruel captain, a martinet who abuses Wozzeck while chiding him for his immoral life.  Fink’s baritone rolled out almost too beautifully to allow one to believe that he is a social oppressor great enough to pay the impoverished Wozzeck to take part in his medical experiments.

Mark Lamos’s stark, stylized production – based on walls placed askew – captures both the degenerated psychology that dominates the piece and the intimacy that we need to understand it well.  The stage direction by Gregory Keller spares nothing by way of cruelty.  Wozzeck’s humiliation is egregious yet captures our sympathy.  His murder of Marie is not a conventional operatic stabbing, but a full-on throat slashing.  The children’s mockery that ends the opera packs a full emotionally disturbing effect.  – Paul du Quenoy