HGO Lohengrin - a vague, intellectualizing experiment - Summers debut conducting Wagner

Patrick Summers, in conducting his first Wagner opera anywhere in the world had sufficient craft to get through Lohengrin without it collapsing at any point, such as happened under Christoph Eschenbach for Lohengrin here in 1992. At the same time, that this is Houston and Houston Grand Opera, is that for all this alone, we owe some great debt of gratitude that we can only achieve Wagner this well under our music director here for already ten years. In fifty-four year history of HGO, this is their only second Lohengrin therein.

We have in this a Lohengrin and Elsa near top echelon in the international circuit for singing these parts, yet it sounded as though the world sure must suffer from a real dearth as to casting Wagner anymore. I can though think of several names with which perhaps with which we could do better than the two people we enlisted for this, but it may be difficult to book them here.

Houston Grand Opera has borrowed a production from Geneva by Daniel Slater, who has some experience at both second-tier British houses and Glyndebourne in mostly comic opera. Regardless, he could have given us a better Elisir d’amore, for likely it being less pretentious in addition to not glibly unaware of the score or of the music as the Arden production of that last week. Lohengrin here looked inoffensively generic, other than incidentally archetypal of anonymous modern totalitarian state, with armbands on some of Lohengrin’s coterie, followers to perhaps indicate outsider status of sorts.

Mystifying most of all was the Lohengrin - other than his having emerged from shadowy silhouette with his successor at stage rear during the prelude. Instead the whole evening of there being some form of mystical ‘other,’ he appeared most of the way through this as just some ordinary guy one might meet, let's say, in downtown Leipzig. There was some kind of swan insignia to apparently follow him around, as became evident during ceremonies closing Act Two. Other than that, it was hard to tell it was Lohengrin.

The sets were an overall drab brown and grey and for Elsa’s entrance in Act 2 through a wall up close to front of the stage, with several panel frames through which heads could stick out, butt-ugly. For the scene that preceded all this, there was little purpose for the wall other than against which could ping the voices of Ortrud and Telramund. Lighting, except for some incidental glaring effects, was good. Friedrich’s seemingly murderous subduing of a refugee - one out of group huddled about - and dragging his corpse across front of stage, to Elsa’s music closing her scene with Ortrud, looked merely awkward.

The stage two-thirds through Act Two then opened out for a great hall, with desks for office files to stage left, lit by conches, and two floors of library shelves at rear, from which emerged a small group of maidens in flamingo pink, to herald Elsa’s bridal train. They then distributed flowers amongst gathered crowd - small wreath of which to indicate villainy Ortrud then trampled under foot. Light then on purpose, became unremittingly harsh for opening of large door for bridal procession to pass through it. The famous bridal chorus was sung with chorus standing lined up in rows at stage front, with rectangular box glaringly lit right behind.- new light caramel colored boudoir (Bold and the Beautiful or Lohengrin?) for bridal pair. Elsa toward end of this scene pulled back the sheets – with things getting somewhat past hope of anything happening - as hope offered momentarily of things getting going pretty quick. It almost gave too underlined a new meaning to ‘anonymous sex.’

For downright silly, nothing could quite top the outcome of the death of Telramund, who with large gash in his side perhaps as mortally wounded precursor to Amfortas. There he was bleeding to death on the bed, staining badly bridal sheets for unconsummated newlyweds. The opening out of the rear of the stage for final entrance of Gottfried was nice, but the presentation to this short fair-haired brown-shirt youth of a gigantic sword verged on insipid. Apart from that, Slater settled for much simple blocking of his forces, Ortrud appearing to be some kind of apparatchik secretary, lurking about through most of Act One. If Slater was going to be revisionist, it would seem he might have come up with something interesting for March of the Vassals, as opposed to for moment it is over a brief show of army slowly parading back and forth.

Ryan McKinny (Herald) and Gunter Groissbock (King Heinrich) vocally started off the evening well, but McKinny, when push would come to shove, would stray quite a ways off pitch. The best vocal performance of the evening was the HGO debut of Groissbock, who sang with secure line, good legato, and firmly resonant voice, and brought measure of all-purpose dignity to his part, except while crudely rushed through invocations for Elsa’s knight to appear. The dignity here was all-purpose, since on the surface of things the King seemed to be one of the good guys, but at the end of the day here, toward benevolent or malevolent purposes, it was hard to say.

Richard Paul Fink repeated his (by now well known) Telramund from under Eschenbach seventeen years ago here. At that time, as heard over the air, the voice was one he was trying to push into being something larger than it actually could ever be, as encouraged no doubt by Eschenbach. This time around, his experience as Alberich at a number of major houses, and experience overall factored in, fortunately at the end of the evening to more advantage than not. The voice tends now to hollow out considerably at midrange however, and with the heavy miking and wall right behind him for opening scene of Act Two, it was hard to deduce how much volume was really his he could produce. The intrusion of now a Bayreuth bark, during which the voice can emerge more spoken than sung, thus often vague in intonation, still cut through a bit here, yet for finale to Act Two he achieved practically firm legato and rhythmically secure line to rival Groissbock.

Christine Goerke sang Ortrud with somewhat firm grasp of line, but at times extremely vague in pitch, with chin somewhat down, grabbing at notes alternatively from above and below, and cutting what amounted vocally most of all as little more than a generically menacing figure on stage. She was exposed more than was Fink by the removal of the wall, to show fatigue from the slightly extended stretch Wagnerputs Ortrud through for opening scenes of the act. A somewhat hard, vaguely quacky sound then emerged, but then for her brief moment of monologue up until two minutes before end of evening, Goerke changed placement effectively to lyric dramatic soprano from mezzo and finally really incisively got whatever the point might be across. Eschenbach, after rehearsal skirmish with his Ortrud (Dunja Vejzovic), did his level best to drown his Ortrud out for this same passage.

Simon O’Neill, by so frequently sounding strained in both dramatic profile and vocal character, thus did not abet matters in any attempt to identify what became basically as unidentifiable to us as to any Elsa. The voice is a pleasant lyric, as evident by being able to start some phrases with a decent mezza voce. However, it gets squeezed very quickly when pushed into singing what might carry any dramatic potential. Without choral forces being light and gratuitous miking, it is hard to tell how much better than not he would have fared. This was a Lohengrin that frequently sounded, came across anti-heroic.

One reads of Adrianne Pieczonka being the toast of Vienna, Salzburg, Bayreuth, but after hearing her Elsa, I must ask as I have in the past why. The instrument, especially if unencumbered by any real vocal challenge is lovely, as is her stage appearance, apart from being cool and glib at times, but pitch can be uneven, negotiation of the break is just noticeably unstable, and legato all patchwork. Whatever sense of wonder “Einsam in truben Tagen” and “Euch luften” (the latter cruelly undercut by bad staging) should have was lost. Apart from considering that the Bridal Chamber scene went well for her, there is hardly any accounting for a certain laziness that takes over of arbitrarily taking breaths every three or four notes that so arbitrarily break up legato (as in brief duet with Ortrud) Elsa this way becomes little more than a wallflower, a cipher. This was though a fine piece of work compared to literally the painful screaming Tina Kiberg gave us last time during the bridal chamber scene (paired with then fine lyric Wagner tenor in ascendancy as such - Goesta Winbergh)

Patrick Summers, though efficiently being able to get through Lohengrin without any embarrassing episodes, such as happened here before with previous total novice at it, gave at best approximate understanding of what Wagner and his Lohengrin are about. Thanks to slightly rushed tempos, making little of relationships between different passages in this score and of transitions between them, this performance of Lohengrin hung fire all too often. There were those places, especially in finding diaphanous sonorities for lyrical pages, and in firm enough grasp of rhythms in almost equally sporadic passages elsewhere that gave tentative hope of something emerging of halfway the real thing in terms of a Wagner podium here. What did not help however were several things – the frequently to almost constantly randy, out of tune brass playing, as crudely encouraged more by Summers from how things started once halfway into Act Two and beyond. The thin string tone and chamber sized choral forces, when especially working at pianissimo sounded more appropriate for Finzi or Brahms chamber choral music than for Wagner. With what forces were there and as miked, choral preparation by Richard Bado was convincingly very fine.

Violins sounded thin, precariously out of tune to open the Prelude to Act One, a bit ragged at opening of the Third Act Prelude - strings overall a bit skittish during March of the Vassals under blaring brass (though better that than the invasion of locusts that it sounded like invaded the still relatively new Wortham Center for this seventeen years ago). Double basses as led by Dennis Whitaker were firmer than one could ever hope for the past thirty years to draw out of the Houston Symphony. The Symphony played Lohengrin in 1992; this year was the HGO Orchestra’s debut at playing it. Trumpets, led by Jim Vassallo, were frequently out of tune and the principal clarinet made next to nothing out of the melancholic closing reminiscence of the opening of the Bridal Chamber Scene. Music for offstage winds and brass right after the start of Act Two - diegetic music for festivities in progress off-stage- got played very loud, it seemed, coming from the orchestra pit.

Frequent rushing through numerous passages also became annoying. The herald’s antiphonal trumpets were underlined for a more pedantic start to this scene than usual; all the rest of the scene then got merely rushed through, making the choruses, miked, sound like cross between Slavic and Savoyard. The overtly de-Teutonicized feeling, for whatever interests to which Summers might feel beholden to whle conducting Wagner, not to leave things a little more identifiable as Wagner, was clearly insipid – almost as though second-rate Weber, or at times, Dvorak. Could have Ortrud been our premature encounter with the Foreign Princess from Rusalka? There was little (more than approximately utilitarian) feeling here for idiom or sentiment at hand. It was not that tempos were often so fast, as the music that they serve came across - through so many dotted rhythm passages for example in Act One - as rhythmically flaccid. Sag in the line for the Act 1 Prelude and choral passages welcoming first appearance of swan knight - without swan – indicated much the same.

Arms frequently held high in the air fed unwelcome notion that Summers presumed having achieved something more aloft than he actually had - with quasi-academic half pseudo-intellectualizing of his own in play here. He certainly has people both in offices downtown and elsewhere here to reassure him. As for competence at conducting this type of repertoire, such may come with time, emerge eventually. Any real internally driving passion for conducting this music though is still unclear, very unclear. Choral forces being slim, the rushing through good portions of this, and secondarily, the herding of audience through first intermission all resembled what might pass for a half successful Indiana University Lohengrin. This made - streets noisy outside the Wortham right afterwards - for a tedious, nondescript, mostly unenviable way to spend a crisp autumn Friday evening in Houston.

HGO 2009-2010: Dull opener - Donizetti., but Hawks and Sparrows or Elixir of Love, ... or new more ratings suitable I racconti di Canterbury?

This could easily have been predicted to be best opener to an HGO season in three years, with the HGO debut of Ekaterina Siurina, the return of Alessandro Corbelli, a conductor known for long experience in bel canto and the casting of what press has reported is a promising tenor for the same repertoire. Hugh Canning’s convincingly positive review of this production by Annabel Arden two years ago described it as a naturally acted, realistic, modern day Pagliaaci type Elisir d’amore. Arden’s Gianni Schicchi, which I just saw for the first time yesterday on dvd, also stars Corbelli.

Ekaterina Siurina, in her HGO debut as Adina and first major character active on stage, though looking dull wearing beige dockers, immediately gave the lie t that this production was just as described. Her teasing of Nemorino had the saucy wit one expects from a good Adina, and also betrayed a girlish compassion for her weaker-minded peasant friend. Her confused reaction to Nemorino’s flighty changes of mood was palpable. Adina’s compassion eventually came to the fore, leading all to the expected very happy ending. Her ease in coloratura, secure intonation and evenness across a reasonably wide range Adina covers were all exemplary. Her command of line and of breath control during long aria toward end of Act Two was equally fine, but I found therein just slight shortcoming of not filling out the line as completely as she could have. Given the flat-line accompanying from the pit, it may have been more than we could expect from her.

Siurina’s Gilda at the Met in 2006, conducted by Frierdirch Halder (Gruberova’s husband) provided high expectations – many still met. This marked a very significant HGO debut. One had to regret how so much from Siurina got shortchanged.

John Osborn joined her in what ultimately turned out - replacing Eric Cutler two weeks back - to be a lesser HGO debut, though still with merit. He has a good youthful appearance and sound for Nemorino, and though acting the part a bit stiffly, still well brought out the naivete but only partly the simplicity of the peasant. Though matters improved as the afternoon wore on, the way he approached singing his opening aria proved a liability. Osborn will bear down when in the passaggio (break); when doing so, his vowels, at least in Italian go left and right, up and down, vice versa from where they should remain. It all resembles hunt in the dark for on which vowel good placement may occur - while forcing his instrument, also tastelessly up to long held unwritten high D at one point he came close to losing - one or two other high notes the same way.

Pitch occasionally suffered too. While singing duets with Siurina and Corbelli especially, though, he lightened both his sound and phrasing matching well with his partners on stage to optimum effect. There then is available for him more a mezza voce approach to the break – toward making his acuti more mellifluous especially on repertoire in which he specializes. These two duets early on perhaps belied more than anywhere else that staging of this Elisir might continue unaffected, responsibly so for a good while. Until several technical issues get resolved, Osborn is best advised to steer clear of parts requiring much ring, spinto, as for instance Arturo Talbot and Arnold (William Tell).

Liam Bonner, former HGO studio artist, well known here for doing supporting baritone roles, looked dapper in military uniform as Belcore. He sang with alternatively good diction and tone, and bluster. What might have been the allure about Belcore to Adina in the first place wound up seemed a mystery. Belcore hardly winds up winning the girl anyway. Catherine Martin sang much of Gianetta under pitch.


That leaves mostly Alessandro Corbelli. Though sounding slightly thin at the edges by now, he revealed again his mastery at parlando, spinning out Donizetti’s lines with fine if this time inhibited swagger. There was of course more than hint of his plentifully clear mastery of text, nuance thereof, but the good news ends just about there.

I have yet to run across a staging conceit more asinine than addition of a mime part (Dulcamara’s assistant), as acted by former U of Houston theater major Adam Von Wagoner. If one came downtown expecting Corbelli’s command of the stage, one seldom got it. He stiffly, only halfway engagingly moved across it - as to anything that might wittily enhance his portrayal of the quack in a real way. It became perplexing as to how so much could be lost; now it remains that Dale Travis, a regular here, will have made at least as strong an impression as Dulcamara as Corbelli just has here. A Dulcamara as dour, poker-faced, merely fuddy-duddy as Corbeli proved this time just will not do - on the street, could not hope to make ends meet.

Corbelli has proven many times before the very gifted basso buffo he is, how then he could believe being in on a good thing to combine efforts with Annabel Arden, who produced this, should confound us all. Should he ever want ample comparison we have read of him with Baccaloni, Corena, Capecchi, Dara, to persist at all, it is time, even since Gianni Schicchi, he abandon ship. Unfortunately he has not done so yet.

What denatured things so, that most conspicuously affected was the lone Italian member of the cast? One must blame a combination of two factors, all enhanced by drab set design good to suit Hawks and Sparrows (1966 Pasolini flick). Elisir is now indeed a work one can no longer consider entirely fail-proof, oddly enough. Most obvious was the stage direction of Annabel Arden, as for Glyndebourne. Members of the chorus entered before the orchestral intro was over, to affect a performance beginning so spontaneously as such, but with tree-hedgers coming on stage immediately assuming a freeze on stage, until the brief prelude was over. Siurina’s smile was certainly could have won everyone over, but her removal of top to reveal tank top underneath was simply crude, even more so than her filling a large pail full of water to help herself to a foot bath.

Things mostly coasted along until Dulcamara’s entrance - completely undercut by androgynous monkey-shaped tattooed youth climbing electrical pole by ladder to short out the factory light used to illuminate most of the stage and provide excuse for spotlight. Such crudely applied cliché also got used in the Glyndebourne Schicchi (for trio of women putting ‘Donati’ to bed). For once that Dulcamara made it to the rapid parlando section of his big opening number, as though much ado about nothing. The very opening of the aria should at once feel grandiose, text and music make clear while here the whole cause became lost, fell flat. Nothing was clever enough here to be construed as deconstructionist. Instead, it was just simply crude, as was the damnable failure of this boy to sit still for any longer than twenty seconds for about all the rest of Act One.

Arden’s supposedly dark view of Schicchi is half-conceived to extent that all, including layered on stock humor also therein just falls flat. Arden has some craft for moving chorus members across the stage, even in dance step, but feels it pressing to put such a personal stamp on every turn of phrase or whatever at her disposal, that it then is all just hers and nothing else. It is all so busy that it does not show so much technique other than to look very stiff. Stamping about on stage, that Miss Siurina did once early in Act Two to underline fit of agitation, is so clichéd, it is already only too familiar to HGO audiences from other productions of comedy - no less irritating than before.

’Fascist blackshirt’ police restraining Nemorino looked so fey, it could have instead been Village People (every pun intended); one had to fear a little extra for the poor bloke. We can not be sure Adina’s ass remains virgin, with so much flailing about going on. Dulcamara’s boy(-toy) comes on in goose looking costume drag for what should have sufficed – bumping ass, but nudge, nudge, wink, wink, as though we might fail to get the joke already. You know how unfunny when someone makes a joke he has to explain it, but then come to think of it how unintentionally funny things become if the joke starts getting xplained several times. Other than clichéd – effusive embraces at the end– there was minimal evidence of more than generic investment in any love interest here.

Up until Dulcamara’s entrance, Edoardo Muller seemed to own the light touch, even hint of suavity we expect for accompanying Donizetti, but tas matters became more complex than the simple ideas, tunes to start Act One, a kind of wooden beating time took over. Osborn got left in quite a vacuum for ‘Adina, credimi,’ as did Ramon Vargas under a less experienced Summers nine years ago. There was both times little yielding from the podium for ample rubato, shading of the line, to give it true shape. It was, as though to find the true bel canto style or that of doing Donizetti, one must look to Glyndebourne, Little comes to mind more pandering than how Muller just about exactly held forth so.

Muller apparently could not either put in word to contradict any of the stage direction - constant noise and clutter distracting from the music, not helping characterize it. Not any of such could bring out the true comedy of the piece, even toward introducing any real frisson into the mix. The latter could happen as some real emphasis on a social theme of interest, but the touch for applying such was simply not there.

While Osborn adequately shaped ‘Una furtive lagirma’, Muller would only stop a moderate metronomic pace for the crests of the line – not to level of self-parody, but enough to leave Osborn once again in a vacuum, noting also sour intonation from obbligato bassoon and other winds. I have heard as much Donizettian with Danses suisses from Baiser du Fee conducted well as I did Sunday in detachment to pass for swagger during festivities that opened Act Two. Skill, conducting Donizetti, may be adequate, but sense of charm for conducting Elisir was not.

What makes the British beholden to praise such a pretentious Elsiir and the Schicchi gain confounds one. If there be any chance to rescue Glyndebourne tradition from impression of being somewhat fraudulent, this Elisir d’amore failed to provide any help. Neither did the Schicchi, in which British members of the cast, even including Felicity Palmer, who knows better, do some of the worst mugging and blithering in what can only pass as acting for second tier varsity opera studio. By comparison, the Met Schicchi (O’Brien) looks now very close to definitive, while certainly just competent,

Call it untoward bias on my part if you like; it probably will not matter who gets cast in something like this again, as to paraphrase James Camner here (concerning Met in HD Aida last Saturday). I am likely most happy to put this type of production, perhaps anything from Glyndebourne on DNR status for what to attend from now on. Such at least should happen for repertoire with halfway such openly warm character as this. So much character got denied here in as an obtrusive handling of Elisir as conceptually possible - with little to compensate in return.