Die Feen
Châtelet, Paris
Ernest Bloch’s Macbeth
Bloomsbury Theatre
Wagner wrote his first opera Die Feen (The Fairies) when he was 19 and 20. It was never staged or performed at all in his lifetime, and first performed in Munich in 1888, Richard Strauss having conducted the rehearsals. It was a big success, but has only been revived rarely, and the production which I saw at the Châtelet in Paris last week, of which there are five performances, was the first I have seen. It was rapturously received, and rightly so. Wagner thought little of it, gave the score to Ludwig II for Christmas in 1865 — the only score of it then in existence — and Cosima records the composer’s deprecatory remarks about it in her diary. Psychobiographers like to conjecture that Wagner’s down on the work was the result of complications within the family, though Die Feen, unlike previous abandoned operas of his, and also unlike any of its successors, is a kind of paean to marriage, not an institution that on the whole Wagner put a high value on.
Wagner wrote the libretto himself, as he was always to do, but adapted it, and in most respects closely, from Gozzi’s La donna serpente. Its main plot concerns the marriage of an immortal fairy, Ada, to a mortal king, Arindal, who first sees her as a doe when he is hunting. They marry on condition that he doesn’t ask of her provenance for eight years — of course he does, dreadful trials are endured, Ada nearly turns to stone for a century, but thanks to the power of his lyre Arindal wins her back and he too becomes immortal. There are several surrounding sub-plots, one of them providing comic relief, or trying to. Yet despite a certain amount of clutter, the plot acquires and maintains momentum, in largest part thanks to the vigour of Wagner’s musical idiom, with plenty of that swagger that is to be found in the early canonical operas, and some music of exquisite Weberian-cum-Mendelssohnian delicacy. It is composed on a large scale, and the performance lasted four hours with two 20-minutes intervals, but until the last act, where there is some let’s-get-it-all-sorted-out music, and Arindal’s ‘redemptive’ lyre-playing wasn’t really in the Orpheus league, it convinced and engaged.
Marc Minkowski was excessively leisurely in Act I, but warmed up noticeably thereafter, and the singing was of a high standard. The cast, though, was non-German except for the Ada of Christiane Libor, and the standard of diction was appalling. Without the surtitles I’d have been lost for long stretches. The part of Lora, Ada’s sister, was nonetheless so beautifully sung by Lina Tetruashvili, that we shall certainly be hearing more of her, and with any luck be able to understand what she is singing. Sensibly, the production of Emilio Sagi was straightforward and action-clarifying, though why the leading men should have been wearing off-the-shoulder dresses eluded me. Sets and costumes were colourful, quite simple, and there was far less camping around than I feared. What emerged throughout was how superior Die Feen is to many operas with which we are regularly persecuted. It deserves a minor but regular place in the repertoire, and would be an effective counterweight to the endless contemporaneous Italian drivel which emerges in concert performances and expensively packaged CDs.
This week’s other opera is also a composer’s earliest effort in the genre, and an impressive debut: Ernest Bloch’s Macbeth, which the Swiss composer originally set in French translation but after his move to the United States translated, as closely as he could, into Shakespeare’s original. I saw a fine production of it seven years ago in Vienna, and was bewildered then, as I am now, as to why we hear this piece so rarely.
If I hadn’t seen it before, the University College Opera production would have left me less puzzled. As usual with the annual performances of obscure pieces, one is grateful for the enterprise but wishes it could be carried through with a more consistent level of professionalism. Of course it is professionals who head for the mainstream, and so one almost always encounters the obscure with less than the forces it needs, except for a few specialist festivals.
In this case, the Macbeths were professional singers, George von Bergen as Macbeth, Katherine Rohrer as Lady Macbeth, and they were both admirable, alike in acting and singing. Ryland Davies put in a ‘special appearance’ as Duncan, but alas that was embarrassing. The standard of the rest of the cast varied between the acceptable and the unendurable, with some performers semi-shouting while others muttered. Sets were effective, pacing was good. But the orchestra had some quite dismal players, especially among the brass. One has to ask whether, at this level, it is worth carrying these ambitious projects through. And I write as someone who has a long list of operas that I would love to see staged but very much doubt whether I shall ever get the chance to.
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