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[01] Bregenz—Festival with a Theme!
DEATH SCANS THE DANCE PATTERNS--A huge skeleton broods over the lake-stage set for Verdi's A Masked Ball in Bregenz. Photo: Bregenz Festival 1999.
[02] Unmasking Verdi's A Masked Ball
[03] Second World Premiere of Martinu's Greek Passion
[04] The New Festival Youth Fringe
[05] Preview of the Bregenz Millenium Summer
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For our archive of Glenn Loney's previous 1999 columns, click here.
Bregenz Festival on the Bodensee:
Every summer, Austria's innovative Bregenz Festival, on the southern shore of Lake Constance—or the Bodensee—is keyed to an important social theme.
THE SKELETON OF AN IMMENSE STAGE-SET--Open-air stage under construction for the Bregenz Festival's summer show, Verdi's A Masked Ball. Photo: Bregenz Festival 1999. This might seem an odd priority when spectacular productions of Porgy and Bess or Flying Dutchman on the great lake-stage are regularly sold out. Do they also need a philosophical overview?
But the Bregenz Festival Director, Dr. Alfred Wopmann, believes that audiences who come to Bregenz for its outstanding stagings of opera and drama are increasingly interested in the ideas and themes behind great works of Music Theatre.
This is especially true at a time when traditional social, political, and economic patterns in Europe are changing. And at a time when rapidly increasing dependence on computer technology and the Internet is changing the way business is done, even the way people communicate and socialize.
But, despite the computer revolution, there are still hundreds of thousands, even millions who will not profit from—or even understand—these changes. What does the future hold for them? Can the performing arts speak to them about the future?
And there are also pockets of ethnic savagery in Europe which defy rational solutions. As technology moves rapidly forward, humanity seems to be sliding swiftly backward.
The relatively new European Community inhabits a house whose back-porch is on fire. Some Western Europeans still aren't aware of this danger. Others believe bombing will put out the fires.
Dr. Wopmann's programming this past summer offered no solutions, but it certainly did encourage audiences to think about aspects of these problems as they were manifested in productions, workshops, and lectures.
It was a coup not only to give Bohuslav Martinu's 1957 Greek Passion its world premiere in its original English-language version, but also because of its immediate relevance to the plight of Kosovar refugees.
At the festival opening ceremonies, the Bosnian author David Karahasan spoke powerfully about the theatre's potential in addressing man's inhumanity to man. He didn't use that clichéd phrase, not only because it's so sadly worn, but also because it is too generic, too general, to deal with human savagery and sufferings of victims.
Evil and cruelty have human faces, as do the tortured, maimed, and murdered. To regard Serbs as murderers and Kosovars as victims is too simple a formulation. The theatre, Karahasan suggested, can strip away the generic masks which disguise the individuals behind them.
Killers can hide behind masks of patriotism or nationalism. But their savageries are finally the acts of individuals who should be held responsible for what they do to other individuals.
Verdi's A Masked Ball is not about genocide, but it does reveal a powerful king—virtually unmasking him—out of control and unresponsive to his social and moral obligations as a gentleman and as a ruler. Audiences get to see the human face behind the Mask of King.
An Anne Frank monodrama provided another dimension to this compelling festival theme, so sensitively explored by David Karahasan.
Dr. Thomas Klestil, Austria's President, examined another but less life-threatening aspect of social generics. In which the faces and voices of individuals are also in danger of being lost: the Trivialization and Banalization of Culture.
He noted the widespread infection of the "Pop-Virus" in Europe and the growth of a new "Fun Society." His remarks deplored this trend toward being only entertained and amused, rather than being encouraged to think about what culture has to offer.
Dr. Klestil cited a "Fun Park" outside Paris which has twice as many visitors per year as the Louvre. Austria's President refrained from giving this park its real name, "masking" its face as a Fun Park. But it's clear he meant EuroDisney.
What is at stake is a widespread loss of interest in experiencing and appreciating the Authentic. In favor of the Fake. Instead of the overpowering majesty of Austria's Alps or the green mystery of its forests, people seem to prefer man-made Eco-Environments.
President Klestil has cause to worry about the future of culture in Austria. He noted that the "World's Largest Castle"—constructed of styrofoam and plaster—is now a reality in the land of Mozart, Strauss, Schnitzler, and Freud. Apparently, even Austrians would rather pay good money to visit a fake castle in a land with scores of very real and often famous castles.
This is an economic as well as a cultural issue. When Austria lost its Empire at the close of World War I, it was at least permitted by the Allies to retain and cherish its culture.
That was repeated after its disastrous involvement in the Second World War. Austria's multi-faceted Culture remains its major tourist attraction.
When the American director, Tom O'Horgan, was invited to stage Berlioz's The Trojans at the Vienna State Opera, he quipped: "The State Opera and torturing white horses is Austria's Space Program!"
Predictably, some former Yugoslavs now living in Austria were infuriated by Karahasan's thoughtful speech. And some younger observers took exception to President Klestil's "old-fashioned" ideas about art and culture.
Denunciation, followed by spirited discussion, is a sure-fire formula for a lively exchange of ideas—or at least opinions.
It's interesting to note that the Munich Festival and other major European Festivals are now also keying summer programming to themes similar to those introduced at Bregenz.
How many North American summer theatre and music festivals are theme-oriented? How many open with major declarations of the importance of Art and Humanity in Society? By the Nation's President, no less?
Perhaps it's those centuries of civilization which Europeans have and which we lack? Or their misgivings about having a good time at an opera or a play without pondering its deeper philosophical implications?
Verdi's Masked Ball as a Dance of Death
Looming high over Bregenz's Lake Constance embankment is a giant skeleton. His empty eye-sockets are gazing fixedly at the patterns of a dance, painted on the pages of a huge book. One half the book is an immense stage. The other half is its backdrop.This grisly figure is the signature-image of the unusual staging of Verdi's A Masked Ball, mounted by the British direction and design team of Richard Jones and Anthony McDonald.
Because Bregenz lake-stage opera and musical productions run for two summers, their sets are constructed so they can withstand the bitter winters on the Bodensee, at the foot of the Vorarlberg Alps. That means it's going to be Halloween all year for locals and morning commuters to German Lindau, just across the Austrian border.
They'll have to get used to seeing the skeleton a lot. Fortunately, the outdoor operas have put Bregenz on Europe's cultural map and proved a tourist gold-mine as well, so this skull and these bones may be seen as necessary horrors.
But then there's that towering guillotine rising out of the water as well. Not a cheery sight every day of the week. In performance, it rises suddenly out of the lake, pivoting from an underwater horizontal position to the vertical.
It continues to drip water as the unfortunate heroine, Amelia, comes at midnight to pluck a magical herb to stave off the love of King Gustav III Adolf of Sweden. It then sinks back underwater.
Amelia is the wife of the king's best friend, Count Ankarström, who will later assassinate him out of jealousy. Fortunately for Amelia, the guillotine blade is fixed and is not going to end her singing career.
The directorial duo of Jones and McDonald are famously unwilling to discuss the inspirations for their directorial or design decisions. They insist that they want to leave audiences—and critics—free to interpret what they see on stage in their own various ways.
Obviously, constantly stimulating each other's imaginations, they have their own ideas about the initial meaning of scenic-environments, set-props, and costumes. But they are delighted when viewers discover for themselves meanings and associations they hadn't even considered.
Richard Jones says he has a lot of sympathy for Verdi's King Gustav, a man who lives entirely in the moment and is therefore unafraid of death. But he expects that others will identify more with Ankarström or Amelia.
"Our job is to present all aspects as clearly as possible," he notes. That means there is no one point of view or interpretation that spectators are supposed to "get."
King Gustav was called "The Theatre King." He wrote plays and opera-librettos for the Drottningholm Theatre, built for his mother, Queen Luisa Ulrika, sister of Frederick the Great. He appeared on his various court stages, even requiring servants to watch performances.
But this infuriated some influential Swedes, who believed he was neglecting affairs of state. They enlisted Ankarström in their plots, and the Count killed the king at a masked ball in the Stockholm Opera House.
Verdi improved on history by making jealousy over an unconsummated love-affair the motive for the murder. Originally, he had to move the action to Boston, for killing kings on stage at that time in Italy might have given some spectators dangerous ideas.
BIG HEADS AND FALSE FACES--Swedish courtiers at the fatal Stockholm Masked Ball, where King Gustav III Adolf is assassinated. Photo: Bregenz Festival 1999. Both Jones and McDonald are fascinated with the dance—which the king also loved. So one of the visual motifs is a dance-pattern painted on the great open pages of the book-stage. In Gustav's time, new dances from Paris or London were sent all over Europe in this printed form.
Because the reckless king refuses to listen to advice or warnings about his conduct or personal safety—given in almost every scene by all those close to him—the production becomes a virtual Dance of Death, or Totentanz.
This is not only strongly underscored by the huge skeleton and the dance-patterns, but also by the haunting scene with Ulrika, the fortune-teller.
Two things are standard in every Bregenz lake-stage production: fireworks and a ship or boat arriving on the water which separates the audience from the stage. It's not always easy to integrate these crowd-pleasers into a serious opera plot.
The fireworks accent the festivities of the ball. But the boat in Jones and McDonald's production is something else again. Jones staged Titanic on Broadway, so he knows about doomed ships.
From the stage-right side of the great open book comes an immense black coffin, floating on the water. When it reaches front and center, it opens and there is Ulrika, making prophecies to various members of the Court. Including Amelia and the king.
This unusual ship—with no visible captain—is constructed to hold up to forty people, but high water and choppy waves make it an uneasy ride for chorus-members. You could get seasick just looking at it.
When the team first saw the lake-stage, as Jones recalls, they realized that the performers would look like Lilliputians in Gulliver's Travels. That meant that small gestures or movements would visually be lost. But the solution was not just to make everything larger.
Instead, they sought striking images which would convey something of the psychological forces at work in the libretto and score. The skeleton is one of these, as is the book whose pages are headed with the king's name and dates.
Another is an immense silver crown, with six points, which rises out of the book-floor at upstage right. When it is sunk in the stage, it seems only a ring on the surface. Rising hydraulically and made of polished chrome steel, it suggests not only the power of kingship but also the inaccessibility of the king behind its protecting walls. Confronted by scores of petitioners, the king can cross over its margins and descend by means of a portable staircase.
Rather than set the opera in its historical time, the late 18th century, Jones and McDonald have—primarily through costuming—transported it to the early 20th century. This time-frame is also emphasized when Amelia is driven home from her midnight herb-gathering in an elegant electrified Bugatti, which rises from beneath the book-floor upstage left.
The stage-floor can hold up to 130 performers in a group, but more if they are scattered out. Sections of its pages downstage serve as steps, and its top and bottom binding margins are also playable.
A "book-flap" rises from the downstage pages, so Ankarström can confront his—as he wrongly believes—adulterous wife at home. They have the longest table, not only in Sweden, but probably in the world. It rises along the entire front of the stage. It is in fact 32.50 meters wide!
The only other item of decor at the Ankarströms is an elliptical frame on the wall containing a crowned king's head—which could have been borrowed directly from a Max Beckmann painting. It also indicates the depth of the Count's admiration of and friendship with the king—who betrays his trust.
At the premiere, Stephen O'Mara was a virile King Gustav, strong, willful, and unpredictable. He embodied the role both physically and vocally. Elizabeth Whitehouse was an affecting Amelia, torn between duty and love.
Pavlo Hunka was an interesting Ankarström, his voice and body-language both revealing the changes in his feelings as he begins to suspect the King of an intrigue with his wife.
As the prophetess—or fortune-teller—Elisabetta Fiorillo held her floating followers and her auditorium audience spellbound. Especially when raucous waves made the giant coffin surge and pitch about. Interesting that this seeress has the same first name—Ulrika—as King Gustav's mother.
The most frenetic performance was provided by Elena de la Merced as Gustav's adoring page, Oscar. The costume and manner made this lively factotum look rather like Oscar Wilde Jr.
As in previous lakeside opera and musical productions, major roles are double and triple-cast. It's unthinkable to sing Gustav or Amelia night after night indoors. But it's also difficult to perform even several times a week on such a vast stage, given the unpredictable weather and the real need to keep the action surging over the entire stage.
This presents a special problem in A Masked Ball because most of the scenes are fairly intimate. They do not lend themselves to spectacular full-stage treatment. Yet that is exactly what the directorial team had to devise for Bregenz.
Philippe Giraudeau's choreography was a major factor in making this immense stage-space not seem a liability. And Wolfgang Göbbel's ingenious and surprisingly subtle changes of lighting were also very effective in focusing audience-attention.
Marcello Viotti was a forceful conductor, keeping the action—without intermissions—moving along despite varied complicated stage-maneuvers. But he was also fortunate to have the excellent Vienna Symphony as his unseen orchestra.
The Second World Premier of Greek Passion:
Stefanos Lazaridis and David Pountney
Provide Ingenious Scenic Solutions
For Bohuslav Martinu's Complex LibrettoOn the open stage of the Bregenz Festspielhaus, the audience is confronted with a series of suspended rectangular panels. With small squares to suggest windows, they are obviously house-facades. These fly slowly in groups to reveal an impressive raw wood construction of heavy squared vertical beams, supporting a series of ramps and stairs and eight squared platforms.
THE POWER AND THE GLORY--Great golden bells and censers suggest centuries of faith and the power of Greek Orthodoxy in the lives of simple villagers in Martinu's Greek Passion. Photo: Copyright © —Nikolaus Walter 1999. "The platforms represent the Stations of the Cross," says designer Stefanos Lazaridis. Actually, there are fourteen Stations in Catholic and Orthodox devotions, but eight proved just right for staging the almost cinematic scenes of Bohuslav Martinu's Greek Passion.
This July in Bregenz, Martinu's opera—composed for his own English libretto—finally had its world premiere, after more than 40 years of oblivion. It was originally created for the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, which rejected it "on artistic grounds."
Considering the religious controversy this Nikos Kazantzakis novel has aroused—especially when adapted for cinema—it might be surmised that directors at the Royal Opera feared just such outcries.
But no. Internal memos have made it clear that was not the problem at all. A very powerful conductor didn't like Martinu's score, which is certainly not conventional.
In despair, Martinu scattered pages of his manuscript among friends as souvenirs.
Fortunately, it has been possible to recover them and reconstitute the work. And, after its tremendous success in Bregenz, it will at last be seen in London at Covent Garden in December, joining the repertory of the newly reopened opera house. This is a co-production of Covent Garden and the Bregenz Festival, which produces a neglected or forgotten opera every summer on its indoor stage.
Director David Pountney and designer Stefanos Lazaridis have already made their mark on the Lake Constance stage with monumental productions of Nabucco, Flying Dutchman, and Fidelio.
Jules Dassin made a classic film of Kazantzakis' novel, so it's especially interesting to discover how Martinu developed the opera libretto in virtually filmic sequences, with an eclectic musical score which heightens the power of each scene rather like cinema background music. The score ranges from folkloric to atonal.
Pountney and Lazaridis' scenic solution keeps the drama in constant motion, with scenes acted on many levels and inclines, without breaks for scene-changes. With ramps rising to the proscenium portal, performers are deployed in cubic space, not just lined up on stage.
The novel, the film, and the opera all deal with the gradual transformation of simple Greek village folk—chosen to play the major roles in an Easter Passion Play—into the biblical characters. The shepherd Manolios becomes almost Christ-like, especially in his determination to aid a group of desperate wandering Greek villagers, whose homes have been burned down by Turks.
"This is very topical right now," says Lazaridis. "Just look at what has been happening in Kosovo." So he and the production team wanted to suggest the immediacy of the story, as well as its historic overtones.
To visualize the power and majesty of Greek Orthodoxy, even at the village level, Lazaridis has suspended above the high central platform six large brass bells and four massive and ornate incense vessels.
To show the poverty and misery of the outcast Greeks, the set revolves to reveal them on a desolate rocky mountainside, where they are burying the bones of their ancestors, brought with them from their destroyed village. Here, on the backside of the set, one of the vertical beams, with a cross-bar and ladder, suggests the Crucifixion of Christ.
Marie-Jean Lecca's costumes evoke a way of life that can still be seen in rural Greece. Pountney admits that Lazaridis' own experience, growing up in a Greek community, was a great help in getting things right. Such as the proud villager who wears his good shoes on laces around his neck to save their soles when he's not in church.
Davy Cunningham's subtle lighting emphasizes important moments even in this confined and complicated stage-space. This is very important, for the villagers or the refugees are always on the ramps, watching the action. If they were bathed in light as well, the audience's attention might be drawn away from major dramatic moments.
Because the Moscow Chamber Chorus must double as villagers and refugees, Lecca has deftly designed costumes which can quickly be shed to reveal their "other selves" underneath.
In the novel, the village Magdalene gives her valuable sheep to the refugees so they'll have milk for their babies. And the local drover has a donkey, which also is featured in the action. To avoid problems with live animals, Lazaridis has created two-dimensional wooden cut-outs which go very well with the exposed wood of the set and the general stylization.
The only thing that isn't wooden is the acting. When the tyrannical local priest begins to feel really threatened by the wrathful priest leading the refugees, he incites the Judas-player to kill Manolios-Christ.
As the unwelcome refugees dig up their bones and move on, rejected by their Christian brothers, the local worthies sit down to enjoy slices of an Easter lamb—an ancient symbol of Christ and His Mercy.
Ulf Schirmer conducted with close attention to the rapidly changing moods and the varied musical modes employed by Martinu to underscore the action.
Christopher Ventris was a really engaging and compelling Manolios, with Nina Stemme a wonderfully responsive Katerina, the young widowed Magdalene of the village. Egils Silins—already a Bregenz star as the Demon in Rubinstein's opera of the same name—portrayed the angry priest of the outcast villagers with peculiar power.
Also impressive were Esa Ruuttunen, Terry Jenkins, Robert Wörle, Anat Efraty, and Richard Angas as the Turkish Captain—who not only oversees life in the village but also serves as Martinu's commentator on the events in the opera.
This remarkable staging won't be seen again in Bregenz. But it will surely be a popular repertory offering in London. And well worth a trip to Covent Garden to see it.
In fact, now the English version has been produced, it is sure to be given a variety of imaginative stagings. [There is a later German version—long since premiered—which Martinu never lived to see in production.]
It is really a work of Music-Theatre, not a conventional opera with arias, duets, and choruses. Its powers in performance are those of a great modern classic drama, supported by music ranging from Greek folk-tunes, through jazz, to abstract and minimal music.
Initially, Martinu asked Kazantzakis if he could compose a score for Zorba the Greek, but the novelist convinced him that Greek Passion was more appropriate for the opera-stage. Considering what happened to Zorba on Broadway, he was so right!
Also a Bregenz Fringe Festival!
The outdoor and indoor opera-productions aren't the only shows in town in festival season. There are concerts by the Vienna Symphony and theatre presentations. Berlin's Deutsches Theater, a regular festival guest, imported its production of Dürrenmatt's The Visit of the Old Lady.Now, following the lead of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Bregenz for the first time offered its own youth-oriented "Fringe 99." This was programmed by Axel Renner and Bernd Kauffmann, a dynamic young duo on Dr. Wopmann's production staff.
The Edinburgh Fringe runs for three weeks and this summer boasted nearly 2,000 productions of one sort or another. Bregenz has begun more modestly, with only one weekend.
But what a weekend!
Among the shows on offer were two dramas—seen in a new light—by Georg Büchner. Theater Carrousel Berlin played his Woyzeck, while Junges Theater Leverkusen presented his comedy, Leonce und Lena.
This latter group also presented Faust? Walpurgis-Night as a Drug-Trip. On the occasion of Goethe's 250th birthday, Leverkusen showed it was not going to be upstaged by either Weimar or Salzburg with innovative riffs on the Faust Legend.
Mozart's Die Zauberflöte was presented in a venue Peter Brook would have loved: a local quarry. This was a production of the Young Chamber Opera of Cologne.
From another city on the lakeside came The Heart of a Boxer, produced by the Stadttheater Konstanz.
There were even theatre-workshops for interested young spectators. And a party for audiences, performers, and techies on board the MS Österreich on the choppy late night waters of Lake Constance.
This could grow into a new and important dimension of the Bregenz Festival, drawing new young audiences and exploring new ideas in culture and theatre communication.
Bregenz has a stunning new Kunsthaus, with cutting-edge shows, as well as some avant-garde art galleries, so there is potential for unusually stimulating developments on Austria's westernmost city.
Preview of Coming Attractions:
The lake-stage production of Verdi's Masked Ball will be back for the coming Millennium Summer. The "forgotten" opera selected for the indoor stage is to be Rimsky-Korsakov's The Golden Cockerel. In German, it's known as Der goldene Hahn.Martinu's Greek Passion was sung in English, but Bregenz has for some time now provided supertitles for English and German-speakers. The brochure notes of the projected Rimsky production: "In German and Russian Languages." It's not clear if that means sung Russian and German supertitles—or two sung versions.
David Pountney will return to stage Cockerel/Hahn, which will be conducted by Vladimir Fedoseyev, a master of the Russian opera repertory. [Loney]
Copyright © Glenn Loney 1999. No re-publication or broadcast use without proper credit of authorship. Suggested credit line: "Glenn Loney, New York Theatre Wire." Reproduction rights please contact: jslaff@nytheatre-wire.com.
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