ROH Lulu (new production) - as devoid of shape, essence, form

George Perle has written very well that debate over whether we should do the Friedrich Cerha completion of Lulu or stick with the two act version with Variations and Adagio tagged on at the end could still be alive and well. There was some agreement with the Alban Berg Stiftung that at least loosely sought out some guarantee that if the Cerha completion was to be played, that the two act version still get performed as often. At least the conjecture has been with Helene Berg and most prestigious of Berg’s composer colleagues, each of whom turned down writing the completion of Berg’s sketches, that there was intended some reworking by Alban Berg especially of what he had of a third act already - but also even of some material from Acts One and Two.

From my own observations, as an aside, that might especially have meant for several passages from Act Two. Franz Welser-Most and more authoritatively Ingo Metzmacher in Hamburg have each opted lately for doing Lulu much as it was before 1979 – year of Paris world premiere of the new three-act version (F. Cerha) conducted by Boulez.

Antonio Pappano, at the Royal Opera, negatively made the case, in doing the three-act Lulu, for doing it in two acts instead. The pains and thoroughness with which Alban Berg took in writing Lulu were at best vaguely audible in his interpretation - especially so during the first two acts. Andrew Davis, from Chicago, at least was clear with this music and showed experience with it, if not drawing out much of its impetus, conceptual or otherwise, or making much of any case for either its dramatic or musical formal elements. For a good ways, it was intermittent from Pappano that we even got this much. The staging, by Christof Loy, exaggeratedly abstract, may have been a further liability.

The title role was handed to still somewhat of a relative unknown – Agneta Eichenholz. Here was certainly, a good stretch of the way through, a fairly brave attempt at it, but it was difficult to hear how things have developed for her in this part much beyond that. In a studied posture, her interpretation of Lulu was quite cool, glib, and passive throughout.

Eichenholz has a good lyrical voice, certainly with some soundness to it, to even attempt Lulu as well as she did. However, when the music turns up the heat for what is required here, Eichenholz’s solutions could only be described as curious. There was not so much a tubular means of achieving the high-flying acuti in this part - for lack of better wording best to be described as pressurized. The straight tone on notes above the staff including a D she quite securely landed on C-sharp, could not only be strident at times, but piercing. Some warmth got through, especially together with Alwa on stage, but frustratingly so little invested in scenes together with Schigolch, some of the opera's truly most intimate. Schigolch understands Lulu in numerous ways more than do the other characters in this..

Once the voice was warmed up, for the second half of the opera, from a good “O freiheit” to the end, Eichenholz provided more consistent results. She did reveal too how to pack a punch or two for several incisive lines in the part. A low point from her was the scene with Dr. Schon to close Act One. Lyrical voices that take on Lulu tend to trace lightly over the music, but with clear emphasis on the words, and also certainly enough tone to at least affect well sustaining the line. Eichenholz, to save voice perhaps, instead opted to chirp her way through this scene, remaining part of (Schoen) sonata passage, for Schoen and her. It was hardly identifiable at this point what was going on, other than there perhaps being a nervous Pomeranian nipping at the heels of Dr. Schoen. Such notion has come up as simile before; Eichenholz made it here full metaphor. insistence to Dr Schoen for calling off marrying his fiancé came across as what could have been instead her reading simple instructions by rote over nearby telephone. She rushed Pappano through opening stanzas or lines of ‘Das Lied der Lulu’ in Act Two, before finally opening out freely therein to reveal what aspects of her vocal art might indeed be worthy for Bergb’s Lulu. She, however, especially for its three act version, is not ready yet for this.

Michael Volle (Dr Schoen) was the most effective of principals in this cast. I am surprised that, as good a voice as he has, that he takes on this part still relatively early on during his career. He cuts as menacing a Dr Scheon as possible in numerous ways, without ever having to resort to barking Schoen’s lines.. The manic, obsessive energy of this man came through in spades, and without a moment where anything felt exaggerated this way or had to be. As Jack the Ripper, he adopted a warmer sound, demeanor very convincingly. Regardless how in other ways the outcome might seem already for Lulu, it was more obvious than just his being replica of Schon how magnetic his appeal was.

One had to wonder too during especially his second of two scenes alone with Lulu in Act One, how Volle could communicate effectively up against, what turned out to be so meager for resistance expected from Lulu. Synopsis wise, he was more likely having instead to resist her demands that in more ways than one appeared to be so miniscule in terms of being compelling - nothing hard to resist in the least.

Jennifer Larmore played a sensitive, dignified, cool, collected Geschwitz at about every step of the way through her part. Her voice, at times, betrayed some strain under pressure, but Larmore kept it quite understated the deep affection - not to mention on what grounds Geschwitz feels for Lulu. Willi Hartmann played lyrically the naïve, quite on purpose affected, and then tortured Painter well, without ever overstating the case. He caught as well the earthiness of the Negro (who slays Alwa during the final scene) very well.

Klaus Florian Vogt played a light voiced Alwa - as thus a good match to Eichenholz in the title role. Passage where Alwa reflects backstage on what it might be like to write an opera on story at hand near end of Act One went well, apart from clunky introduction to it by Pappano (regardless that it is the very start of Wozzeck one hears), as did some of the Rondo portion of Rondo-Hymn, split between both scenes of Act Two. He lapsed though into insipidly crooning “Ich liebe dich” through a high G at the end of his first full liaison with Lulu, but then however was hardly able to sustain anything at all over heavier orchestration by Berg at the end of Act Two for the Hymn portion of this passage

Peter Rose, as Animal Trainer, in selling story to follow, communicated proper authoritative sonority, necessary gusto and good lightness with the text simultaneously. He tended however, as the Athlete, to excessively ham up his lines – vulgar character that the Athlete is – and also clip notation and rhythms. Early in Act Two, he and Larmore seemed to reverse direction of Berg’s tempo markings from poco ritardando to accelerando, to clip what is written - in misguided interest of making it more incisive.

Apart from Volle and Hartmann, the most successful casting here was of Royal Opera veterans Philip Langridge (Prince/Manservant/Marquis) and Gywnne Howell (Schigolch). Lnagridge managed, in fine voice, to find the sinister charm of the Prince toward end of Act One, the begrudging fear and servility of the Manservant in Act Two and the wheedling nature of the Marquis during Act Three to very near perfection. Howell, while playing up a little much the comedic or accessible features of Schigolch, made something very human and involving of the character, with at his age, fine sonority, beautiful diction and reading of Schigolch’s lines. He made it a little further hard to understand why either the staging, Eichenholz or both did not allow much of any more than effective one-way communication with the Lulu on stage. At any rate, it is with perfect reason that Royal Opera keeps such veterans as Langridge and Howell around, for what they represent for the company. Experience does matter in this business.

Before things cohered very well for the final scene, Antonio Pappano gave us little reason why him instead of someone else to conduct this music. The BBC emcee reassured us at the end that in terms of clarity, Pappano’s approach to this music was effective. Texturally alone, things were unclear for near half the time. Except for some uncertain entrances, Pappano accommodated his singers well, including his excessively choppy conducting of Alwa’s hymn at the end of Act Two and making ‘chamber music’ out of at least one of the two big Lulu/Schoen scenes in Act One. Temperature was so low as if to resemble tuning into the noonday soaps instead, albeit with odd soundtrack for such.

The classical structures Berg superimposes on his dramatic layout or canvas were most of the time insufficiently clearly audible most of the way through such central passages - for much of the motivic/set row fiber out of which such is built. Rhythms for passage such as the exchange between Schon and the Painter, where Schon confronts the young man about Lulu’s past, sounded disorganized as to any sense of pulsation - even toward direction things should be headed. Cumulative impact of such a passage was greatly diminished. For rushing things too much, Pappano made almost a complete shambles out of lighter scene for Athlete, Schoolboy, and Schigolch early on in Act Two.

The pistol shot aimed at Schon came out ten minutes later at a rate one better associates with Minnie in Fanciulla del West than how quickly Lulu can pump the metal into Schon - as underpinned by clipped, smeared sixteenths from the ROH violin section. Subtleties in tempo directions were altogether ignored in this passage and two other places in this scene alone. The stillness at marking of ‘Grave’, right after Dr Schon has died, the pause or space needed for this moment, got sloughed off – with flaccid handling of slow stretto octaves right before. It became clear that Pappano, perhaps attempting to posture at being objective or clinically so, does not get it as of yet, when it comes to any of this music.

Pappano likely may have received good coaching for this - from Dohnanyi perhaps. He just has not taken time to thoroughly think this music through for himself – other than to achieve some diaphanous effects in context of music that then hardly ever appeared to go in any specific direction at all. Pappano tended from early on to gild, dovetail its lines. Within such an approach, his failure especially at first to shape the Schon theme in the big sonata passages of Act One meaningfully at all was bewildering.

To Pappano’s credit, at least the ragtime, English waltz, offstage band music during Act One, Scene 3, clearly sounded acoustically as though it was played offstage as marked. At least, to this pair of broadcast ears it did – and as though patrons at both Convent Garden and at Lyric heard things the same way I did, at least I imagine.

Before thinking the late Romantic era and jazz infusion of post-romanticism during Alban Berg’s own time in conducting his music, may I suggest that Pappano, plus anyone else doing this think instead of Mozart and his operas? It seems that big mistake here was in getting it wrong as to who should conduct the Korngold earlier in the season and then who should have conducted Lulu instead, even if it might have meant the two-act version (as it did in Hamburg) instead of the three-act one that got performed yet again. For alone how unprepared much of the first two acts of this sounded, this broadcast turned out to be the least persuasive of what I have yet come across in terms of doing Lulu in three acts.

LOC Brief Encounter with Alban Berg's Lulu

The title of a new opera starts things off in reviewing a now past season performance of one of the greatest classics of the twentieth century, and perhaps for good reason. For one, I only listened through Act 2 of the Saturday broadcast from Chicago Lyric. What was heard thus far did not do Alban Berg’s score adequate justice.

Using equally the Friedrich Cerha completion of Act 3 was a broadcast of Lulu from Lyric twenty years ago, starring Catherine Malfitano and Viktor Braun and conducted by Dennis Russell Davies. I was, going in, a bit apprehensive of what might lean toward being too dry or academic. If anything needed to help, it certainly was the frisson that producer Yuri Lyubimov somehow brought to the stage, even infusing such a line as ‘Der Teufel’ from a dying Dr Schon with acerbic wit. Somehow Rodney Milnes (in review I looked up last weekend) found the production altogether humorless, but I hardly at all believe him. Up next to what I heard Saturday, the Davies performances were positively orgiastic; this Lulu had its very deeply affecting moments too. Saturday, by way of contrast, there were numerous instances in which the singing actors pointlessly hammed up their lines or worked the hall. I do not surmise that this is what passes for humor to Rodney Milnes, as I usually very much respect his judgment.

In terms of pretty good knowledge of the score, Sir Andrew Davis is someone I certainly find efficient enough, for instance being able to hold things together and for having a pretty good superficial understanding of what essentially goes on musically here. Beyond that, still keeping in mind that the Lyric orchestra plays this music well, I heard little that made any difference. Gilding phrase endings of passages of musical romanticism in this and (in effect just partly to help singers sustain strenuous high notes) clipping other passages or note values for modernistic effect do not really cut it, as toward giving a unified feel to Lulu. Even in the context of smoothly enough handled transitions and what have you, it still is lacking.

The coloring, nuance Davis did provide, it is insufficient for sense of the overtones in the complex motivic and harmonic language of this music. It is most definitely in some of that most certainly lies the soul and even the spirituality of Alban Berg's music, and as revealing the character of Lulu herself. The internal engine for the frisson a good producer can add to theatrical proceedings is found in the substance of the music itself.

There is the dialectic in how the system by which Lulu was composed seriously undermined the system of overtones we have with diatonic or what we call tonal music. Berg further expanded upon things, the dialectic, by re-introducing diatonicism into the mix of composing in tone rows. If not a convincing and completely thought out romantic view of the work – or even a completely thoroughly worked out balance between all romantic and modernistic elements as one might get from Metzmacher – why not then a convincing modernistic take on it, such as we’ve heard already from Boulez and Davies? With Andrew Davis, there was instead little of any point of view conveyed here at all.

An assured smugness, self-satisfaction has taken over with Andrew Davis that Saturday one had to wait until 'O freiheit' in Act Two, Scene 2, for any sense of the heat being turned up to anywhere near the level at which some of this music is written. Here it merely seemed that Davis got carried along by Marlis Petersen, in one of her best moments in the broadcast. There is also so much need for contrast between sections in music so immersed in the classical tradition as Lulu is - with its beautifully crafted adaptation of sonata and rondo forms - for the chamber music sections, with its beautiful woodwind concertato writing. Fact remains too that some of the best comic relief scenes – mix of high and low comedy – in this opera occur with these passages. Clarity of much of Berg's writing was good, but the reason why any of it should be so clear, anymore than Previn's facilely crafted spinning and re-spinning over and over again of seventh and ninth chords in Brief Encounter here, hardly existed at all.

The buhnemusik sections (for jazz band) seemed to be coming, instead of from where the noise of audience applause from very back of stage for Act 1, Scene 3 (back-stage scene) is, to be coming from the orchestra pit. I decided then to investigate the Glyndebourne dvd, as also conducted by Andrew Davis. Graham Vick has set up a brick-wall cyclodrome, which in his conceptualization seems to be blocking off of any notion that anything should or might be such to ever happen behind it, except for a couple of apertures in it through which characters can enter and exit - so aurally the effect on the dvd was pretty much the same as heard from Lyric.. The production at Lyric was by Paul Curran, not Graham Vick, so what might have been the excuse here? Frankly, what may have been the excuse either time? This is by far cutting corners way too much on what the composer wrote. It is especially to be cutting corners if the special instrumentation for the jazz band is not fully included; the temptation to cut back thus is so much greater with this music played in the pit, including for those who will follow this example.

Marlis Petersen spoke very sympathetically of the character of Lulu at second intermission, right before I tuned out. She tended however to overplay Lulu as a malicious vamp in the early scenes of the opera. While being just a bit weak with low notes, her voice showed the flexibility to meet most of the demands of the music, but let it perhaps be churlish to say that notes above the staff tended to tighten much, and thus she became a little easily compromised by some of the most cruel demands the music makes on the upper part of the soprano range. Compromising her best efforts was the failure of any really truly complete support from the podium.

Wolfgang Schone made a good, conventional Dr Schon, that showed too some growth into the part since performing it at Glyndebourne fifteen years ago. Willliam Burden made a somewhat light-voiced but at the same time refulgent enough Alwa to be at least very close to fully credible in the part, instead of for instance being cast as the Painter (capably sung by Scott Ramsay). A chesty sounding Jill Grove somewhat underlined the butch aspect of Geschwitz a little much for my tastes, but otherwise served the part adequately well. Thomas Hammons, being light in voice for Schigolch, relied a little heavily on broad cliche to put across such a mysterious character as Schigolch, thus one got little or considerably less feel for what Schigolch is about certainly than one should. Some of that may have to be chalked up to failure on part of the dramaturgy behind the Paul Curran production - regardless the praise for it I have read.

Other reviews have remarked upon the clarity and ease with which Marlis Petersen sings the title role of Lulu. One however only has to remember just back as far as Christine Schafer to find a true ideal - and for who so effortlessly acts the part that she is practically indistinguishable from the character herself. Vick however does so little to work with the singer toward bringing out how she might be able to give a little of her own insight and as such not to quite interfere much at all with whatever Vick's lofty ideas or ideals might be, that is, if there exist any. Vick tends to work best with singers being on stage with just one other singer, but his putting Norman Bailey as Schigolch at one point in poistion of humping Lulu does absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing at all, but confuse whoever is watching as to what is going on. It is not even risible in any outré way; it is just boring - but we must see that it is his way instead of that of the top Lulu in the world (no pun intended) and one of the top Wotan's of the 1970's as Schigolch.

The necessity of having the Lulu from Glyndebourne is indeed the vocalism and complete artistry of Christne Schafer. Andrew Davis, here with a London Philharmonic that seldom ever goes the second mile in revealing the harmonic depths of Lulu, is less interpretative, affected, or obfuscating of musical form than how I found his work from Lyric. The inner rhythmic vitality of the music comes across on the dvd performance better as well. When one reaches 'O freiheit' towards the end of Act Two however, one still has to ask, 'is that all he or they can give?'

Graham Vick curiously also cheats us of feeling sympathy for other than Countess Geschwitz (sung eloquently by Kathryn Harries). The buildup of manic obsession in Dr Schon, that can get clichéd too much the other way, is such from Vick that Wolfgang Schone is mostly left to fend for himself toward finding it, and while a too little and especially too late, he does halfway through Act Two, Scene 1. Having David Kuebler, incisive as Alwa, play the artist son of Dr Schon a bit wild-eyed all the time, undercuts some how Alban Berg may have found some of his own persona in Alwa Schon.

What got undercut through most of this is the music of Alban Berg, so at once ornate and meditative on the psychology of what drives these characters (especially of about five of them).that both implicitly and openly admits to there being greater secrets to the characters we can only start getting to know. Anymore than that we must unearth ourselves. Such is the very beauty, even the aesthetic of Alban Berg's Lulu.

Whatever loss was encountered - there was much - it is good to remake the acquaintance of such a good friend as this score, that Saturday upon better unearthing its riches, is such that may not be able to stop paying back. However inadequate a performance, it is only so far that one can take away from such genius. Perhaps when we return - in attempting perhaps to rescue Mozart from the Glyndebourne tradition more than some have tried so far - to doing Mozart the justice his music deserves, we will eventually also in a more deep and satisfying way find Alban Berg. For all the ‘glutinous’ layering on of rallentandi at the ends of numbers in Nozze di Figaro, conducted by Andrew Davis, almost in simultaneous run with the Lulu of 21 years ago, Rodney Milnes found the Nozze to be in ‘sanctimonious Victorian’ mode so much of the way.

Could not have Lyric instead lured Markus Stenz, Jonathan Nott, Ingo Metzmacher, Kazushi Ono, Kent Nagano, Edo De Waart, Ilan Volkov, or even Dennis Russell Davies again to their podium for this? It has been mentioned that the score of Lulu, such as could be said of Mahler 6, is in effect a dirge, though inculcating such a variety of both instrumental and vocal forms. Whereas there may be much death over which to suffer loss, there should be some or at least a little more semblance of life to have made it noticeable or a little more so than was made evident Saturday.