Aviation and operatic history take flight together once again in an unfussy and beautifully cast revival of Barry Conyngham's Fly from Melbourne Lyric Opera

Two flights of stairs below ground level at central Melbourne’s fourtyfivedownstairs, an Australian opera took to the stage for the first time since it premiered 35 years to the day. Composer Barry Conyngham’s Fly, about Australian aviation pioneer Lawrence Hargrave, was commissioned by Victorian State Opera for Melbourne’s newly built State Theatre which opened in 1984. Since then, the state opera company has been drastically reshaped and pared down considerably. To some extent, Conyngham’s Fly has too, but nothing feels lost in small local enterprise Melbourne Lyric Opera's unfussy and sensitively lit staging that retains the work’s musical integrity and is beautifully cast with a strong vocal outfit. Sadly, it appears Fly won’t be recorded for the nation to listen to on ABC Classic FM and that’s the disappointment.

Sam Roberts-Smith as Lawrence Hargrave

For those who handled the Australian $20 banknote between 1966 and 1994, the white-bearded Hargrave, surrounded by some of his gliders, was a familiar sight. A NSW coastal road that begins near Stanwell Park, where Hargrave flew his varied apparatus, is named after him, as is a Qantas A380. Fame, however, was the last thing he sought. And make no mention of patents because Hargrave wouldn’t have a bar of them, much to his wife’s annoyance. We learn this through Murray Copland’s direct and informative libretto in which Hargrave’s story is told in just 4 episodes. Its 80-minute duration, however, feels generously ripe and, in combination with Conyngham’s delightfully and deeply evocative music, Hargrave’s intelligence, mild eccentricity and humility radiate through.

Based around his home with his wife and three children, far more is explored than merely biographical storytelling. The two-act work moves from 1904, soon after the first successful manned flight, to a scene on New Guinea’s Fly River in 1876 when Hargrave was an engineer on Italian Luigi D’Albertis’ expedition and finally at his home in Woollhara in 1915 where news of the death of his only son Geoffrey at Gallipoli is received. It’s an achingly emotional conclusion for a man who demands his son’s name never be mentioned in his presence - tellingly, Geoffrey is a figure mentioned and never given form - and who recognises the race against death to share the fruit of his perennially inventive mind. Just as he believes Geoffrey died doing his duty, we presume Hargrave will too, doing his.

Shakira Dugan as Meg and Caroline Vercoe as Mrs Hargrave

In Lara Kerestes’ keenly perceptive direction, a sense of both drama and immediacy is created that glides along effortlessly and variably, from the hypnotic reading of Hargrave’s notes to candlelight by his wife and daughters Olive and Meg around ripples of music to the altercation between Hargrave and his wife over his disinterest in patenting his designs and the poignantly played out arrival of the priest who bares bad news. Around a simple design concept by Zunica that draws inspiration from Hargraves’ strung lightweight devices, the cast work wonderfully with her.

As Hargrave, Sam Roberts-Smith is in view most of the time, even when not singing, and when he finally comes forth from having been working at the rear, his baritone launches with well-oiled smoothness firing resonance and power to revel in. Further, in an Aussie accent that marks place like no other, Roberts-Smith’s interplay with his characters deftly shows Hargrave’s behavioural changes in the relationships around him, making engaging three-dimensionality of the man known to be called the mad kite flyer.

Sam Roberts-Smith as Hargrave and Cameron Silby as young Hargrave

Often seen frowning as his wife Margret, treasure-rich mezzo-soprano Caroline Vercoe gives a compelling performance that exposes the heart of her character with an aching sense of melancholy, usually singing at her husband rather than to him in her frustration. Shakira Dugan is the most effective in being understood, her lighter mezzo-soprano delivering pristine diction with vocal elegance and flexibility as the matter-of-fact, slightly sarcastic Meg. Lisette Bolton soars with dreamy delight with her pure and bright soprano that perfectly suits the wide-eyed and cheerful Olive. In the central scene on New Guinea’s Fly River that plays out a tad too long, a fine muscular tenor accompanies Cameron Silby’s earnest young Hargrove and warm baritone Cameron Taylor drips with mistrust as a sinisterly Luigi D’Albertis.

The ethereal threads, intoxicating translucency and uplift of tension in Conyngham’s music are brought to highly satisfying heights in artistic director and conductor Pat Miller’s resolute and tactful approach. Electronic keyboard players Louis Nicoll and James Dekleva add particularly fine atmospheric colour, as does Kim Tan on flute, alto flute and piccolo amongst the Lyric Ensemble of nine. Barry Conyngham was there to take a bow as well. Let’s hope he has the opportunity to do so again in the not too distant future.


Fly
Melbourne Lyric Opera
fourtyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne
Until 1st September 2019


Production Photos: Lachlan Woods

Touching and disturbing, Breaking the Waves as opera is brought to the stage in a beautifully resolved production at San Francisco's West Edge Opera

Starting with a compelling and thought-provoking story, telling it with clarity and enacting it with dramatic sincerity can only be achieved through seamless collaboration. That’s exactly how composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek’s Breaking the Waves comes across in West Edge Opera’s disturbing and touching production. Further, success in the theatre often owes as much to long list of carefully resolved and well-aligned factors as it does to an ineffable and immeasurable quality that both resonates and challenges after. Breaking the Waves does that too.

Sara LeMesh as Bess McNeill

Based on Danish director Lars Von Trier’s 1996 film and premiered at Opera Philadelphia in 2016, Breaking the Waves relates a foreboding story that feels both incredulous and real as it explores psychological uniqueness and collective thought. In fact, it does so much more than that as it spins a tornado of themes that won’t fail to bring challenging discussion.

The protagonist of the story is Bess McNeill, a young woman traumatised by the death of her brother years earlier but who has found love and sexual awakening when she meets and marries a North Sea oil rig worker, Jan Nyman. Bess is also inextricably joined to her austere and conservative Calvinist community in a remote coastal Scottish town. When Jan is paralysed in an industrial accident, Bess blames herself. Then, on Jan’s request but initially resistant, she agrees to have sex with other men so that the experience can be related back to him in order for their love to have ongoing sexual meaning.

It sounds perverse and, on the surface, there’s a smear of male chauvinism and sado-masochist psychology at play but their deep mutual love glows beautifully in Mazzoli’s richly faceted music and Vavrek’s vividly painted libretto. Vavrek also cleverly builds a tight narrative that is especially effective, as is Mazzoli’s superb use of chorus, in how Bess’ communion with God channels her religiously tuned psychological state, believing that every time she gives herself to other men she is giving herself to Jan and, in doing so, will help cure him. When Bess is later ostracised by her community and then beaten in a brutal episode that causes her death, Jan is cured in a miraculous ending (Wagner’s Tannhäuser came to mind) in which Bess becomes both victim and saint-like.

Sara LeMesh as Bess and Robert Wesley Mason as Jan

Sexual freedom and expression, euthanasia, suicide, bodily rights, religious indoctrination, self-sacrifice, discrimination and empowerment raise their heads, highlighting how we judge what we see as an outsider, our failings to understand the reasoning behind another’s actions and the bigger picture that influences our ideas. It’s a remarkably portrayed conglomeration of issues to stew over as part of a production perceptively directed by West Edge Opera General Director Mark Streshinsky and performed by a well-cast outfit.

As Bess, Sara LeMesh gives it her all in a role that demands extensive stage time, convincing physical application and vocal dexterity. The results LeMesh achieves are beyond measure as she takes Bess emotionally close to her audience with her cowering juvenile behaviour, her seeming delusional state, affections for Jan and her leggy prostituting poses, baring everything from vulnerability to strength with absolute conviction of heart and mind. With LeMesh comes a strikingly expressive soprano of feathery beauty and penetrating effect that matches her character convincingly.

Lovingness oozes and tested emotions are firmly rendered in Robert Wesley Mason’s handsomely rugged Jan as life turns upside down, his warm, muscular and resonant baritone a perfect casing and compliment for LeMesh’s Bess. Sumptuous mezzo-soprano Kindra Scharich sings a devilishly good Dodo McNeill, Bess’ loyal and loving sister-in-law and robust tenor Alex Boyer impresses in balancing authority and compassion as Dr Richardson as does soprano Kristin Clayton as Bess’ uncompromising mother and Brandon Bell as Jan’s friend and co-worker Terry. Timings slipped here and there in an otherwise beautifully atmospheric chorus of ten males.

Kristin Clayton as Mrs Mc Neill, Sara LeMesh as Bess and
Robert Wesley Mason as Jan

Evan and Mark Streshinsky’s simple design incorporating a scrim-sheathed gabled building and strutted timber tower allows the action to be centred upon and move with fluidity from space to space. Christine Crook’s costumes adequately define the 1970s-set period and Pamila Gray’s lighting supports the dramatic mood appropriately.

Acoustic integrity, however, is undermined by The Bridge Yard’s metal cladding. At this penultimate performance, Music Director Jonathan Khuner elicited lovely tonal and textural form from the 22-strong musicians but there were times when intensity failed to lift according to drama, particularly as Bess and Jan bed for making love and when Bess says good-bye as Jan leaves for the oil rig. Mazzoli’s music is characterful and evocative, like a living organism that breathes and expires in all kinds of exciting ways. The night would have benefited even more if that musical organism had unleashed the gutsiness of the soul within.


Breaking The Waves
West Edge Opera
The Bridge Yard, Oakland CA
Until 18th August 2019



Production Photos: Cory Weaver

In an outstanding team sporting spirit and excellence, Jonas Kaufmann soars in the title role of Opera Australia's Andrea Chénier in Melbourne

When was the last time you saw someone holding a sign outside a venue in the hope of securing a ticket to see opera in Melbourne? It’s so rare but that’s exactly what you saw outside Hamer Hall on Tuesday evening. And it certainly wouldn’t have been because they were desperate to see Umberto Giordano’s late 19th century tragic opera, Andrea Chénier, a work often criticised for its thin plot. Indeed, it has its holes but they were more than filled by the splendid musicality on show.

Ludovic Tézier, Pinchas Steinberg, Eva-Maria Westbroek
 and Jonas Kaufmann

The drawcard for Opera Australia’s sold-out concert performance of this French Revolution set story, of course, was internationally acclaimed opera star Jonas Kaufmann, handsome German tenor in the title role and the face of the opera’s advertising. Kaufmann didn’t disappoint either. Layer upon layer of magnificently coloured and carved vocals rang out from this gifted artist who deserves the glowing superlatives showered upon him, his Chénier replete with great dramatic and impassioned force and beguiling all the way to the devastating finale. Fortunately, alongside Kaufmann was an outstanding team sporting spirit and excellence.

For those familiar with Dutch soprano Eva Marie Westbroek, her appearance alone would have been worth the ticket - her lush tone, expressive depth and character engagement superbly depicting a curious yet vulnerable Maddalena de Coigny. Both Kaufmann and Westbroek are no strangers to the roles, having shared the stage together in David McVicar’s production for Covent Garden. Their chemistry had spark. And then there was the huge pleasure to hear Frenchman Ludovic Tézier bursting forth with remarkably aligned text-to-voice interpretations with lashings of grand, smouldering baritone strength in the role of Carlo Gérard.

The three international imports formed the centrepiece of librettist Luigi Illica’s doomed love triangle loosely based on actual events - Chénier, a poet eventually sent to the guillotine for condemning the post-revolutionary government, Maddalena, a young women of the aristocracy who falls in love with Chénier and raises her hand to join him in death, and Gérard, a servant with romantic thoughts for Maddelena, in the employment of Contessa di Coigny, who turns to revolutionary politician.

Pinchas Steinberg, and Jonas Kaufmann 

First to impress, Tézier immediately established Gérard’s position in Act 1 as rankled servant denouncing the class system with thrusting conviction and simmering emotion in “Compiacente a' colloqui del cicisbeo . . . Son sessant'anni”. Every time Tézier stepped out, his singing was robust, fiercely intense and exhilarating to the ear, especially so in Act 3’s monumental aria, “Nemico della Patria” in which Gérard has a change of heart after intending to indict Chénier.

Westbroek was next, imbuing Maddelena’s light-hearted opening aria about the bothersome task women face in dressing up with creamy tones and delightful poise. Then on, Westbroek steered Maddelena through a trajectory that brought out the emotional furnace within, showcasing her vocal dexterity with utter ease and wrapping Act 3’s “La mamma morta” in an achingly glorious shroud of loss and hope as she sings to Gérard.

Portraying Chénier with an oft introspective demeanour, Kaufmann began with a seductive lyrical smoothness  followed by surging muscularity in Chénier’s notable Act 1 aria that criticises the aristocracy and authority, “Un dì all’azzurro spazio”. In Act 3’s “Sì fui soldato”, in which Chénier stands before the court, Kaufmann daringly took it all to a cliff edge in a stellar highlight as Chénier accepts death but asks that his honour be kept. Throughout, Kaufmann’s impeccable phrasing, register shifts, expansion of sound from pianissimo to forte and nuanced details added immensely to his performance. With Westbroek in duet, the pair strode a brilliant path as they declared their love in Act 2’s “Ora Soave” and the sheer energy and magnitude of their final declaration of “Viva la morte insiem!” (Long live death together!) brought the evening to a stunning conclusion.

There is no mistaking that the background of their characters’ story is painted with the turmoil of revolution in Giordano’s richly orchestrated music. The passions and volatility within it were demonstrated in compelling style by conductor Pinchas Steinberg who was both considered and earnest in his attention to the singers. Out of the pit and on the stage, the Opera Australia Orchestra looked a marvellous sight, playing with diligence and expertise a score that resonated with vibrancy and acoustic clarity.

From the solid ranks of regular Opera Australia artists, smaller roles were catered for handsomely. Dominica Matthews’ elegant mezzo-soprano and snobbish Contessa di Coigny, Luke Gabbedy’s authoritative baritone and soldierly Mathieu, Sian Sharp’s radiant mezzo-soprano and loyalty as Maddelena’s maid Bersi and Anna Dowsley’s heartbroken but patriotic old Madelon were particularly strong while Benjamin Rasheed’s spying The Incredible could have mustered greater sinisterly breadth. From the side galleries, the Opera Australia Chorus sang with gorgeously calibrated unity in an evening that goes down as the year’s operatic climax in the city.

I hope the outside sign-bearing individuals got a ticket. More so, with the 2020 season announcement fast approaching, I hope Opera Australia can march on forward with this kind of offering again.


Andrea Chénier in Concert
Opera Australia
Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne
13th August 2019

Production Photos: Keith Saunders (taken at the Sydney Opera House)

Barrie Kosky's daring Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at Bayreuth Festival is controversial yet poignant, with the music having the final say: Limelight Review

https://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/reviews/die-meistersinger-von-nurnberg-bayreuth-festival/

Published online at Limelight 31st July 2019


In Richard Wagner’s glorious celebration of being German in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Jewishness gets a beating and, in Barrie Kosky’s daring and inescapably controversial production at the Bayreuth Festival, Wagner is put on trial. It’s a juxtaposition and interpretation that zooms in on Wagner’s ideology on love, art and politics – which his work so completely embodied – to such an extent it makes Kosky’s 21st-century perspective not simply instructive, but shockingly poignant.

Kosky, who is Australian and of Jewish ancestry, never ignores the work’s mid-16th century setting of a song competition in which the prize is the hand in marriage to the young woman Eva, arranged by her father Veit Pogner. Kosky brings it to colourful and bucolic life in the hundreds of characters costumed in stunning Renaissance dress by Klaus Bruns. But he tells another story through Rebecca Ringst’s intelligently conceived set designs, beginning with the warm, wooden salon in Wagner’s Bayreuth oasis, Wahnfried. Then, there is Wagner on stage as the protagonist of the story, cobbler and mastersinger Hans Sachs. We also see Cosima Wagner as Eva and Franz Liszt (Cosima’s father) as Eva’s father Veit Pogner. More Wagner lookalikes appear. The young knight Walther, who is in love with Eva and she with him, is a younger Wagner.

Wagner-Sachs is the centre of prankish attention, both entertaining and annoying, in a room squeezed with the characters of a play-within-a-play, including the comic mastersingers who enter from under the piano lid. It’s when the Jewish conductor Hermann Levi enters – the man who conducted the premiere of Parsifal and was accused of having an affair with Cosima –that Wagner-Sachs’ tune changes. As he sets about humiliating him, you’re in no doubt this is the town clerk Beckmesser, the story’s derided character who can’t sing and has no hope in hell of snagging the beautiful Eva.

Kosky even seems to allow Act I’s comedy to wear thin in order to highlight a reason for the composer to eventually stand trial for his anti-Semitism. When Wahnfried is rolled rearward at the end of Act I, a large hall is revealed, a military officer stands guard and Wagner is alone. Act II unfolds around the piled up furnishings of Wagner’s salon and comes to a head -– quite literally an enormous inflated head of an evil-faced hooked-nose Jew with curls and skullcap ballooning on stage at the close of Act II. Beckmesser is beaten under a portrait of Wagner amongst the chaos that bursts forth in a horribly confronting act of discrimination.

Act III opens in the Nuremberg courtroom where the trials of those involved with the Third Reich famously took place. It was clear from the start that the dashing and instinctively creative Walther was going to win Eva but he could only do so with Hans Sachs’ help. In Act III, with the younger and older Wagner together – Walther getting an interactive lesson in mastersinging from Hans Sachs -– it’s as if the values and foundations of German artistic pride are being thrashed out. And later, when the various guilds enter the Nuremberg courtroom overflowing with townsfolk in a magnificently directed scene, that Germanness comes to an immense celebration before Beckmesser is laughed at and dragged off as Walther and Eva are blissfully united.

In this, his third consecutive appearance as Hans Sachs since the production premiered in 2017, German baritone Michael Volle more than demonstrated how well equipped he is to handle the mountainous demands of the role. Eccentric and moody, Volle’s Sachs imparts much about Wagner, he never fails to look the part and the eloquence, heft and flexibility of his instrument enlivens the text without any loss of stamina through to the end of almost four and a half hours of music drama.

Also reprising his role as Walther, German Klaus Florian Vogt’s exuberance, youthful sunny tenor and agility on stage perfectly suits the young Wagner. Vogt’s performance didn’t go without issue as the top of the voice showed strain by the third act, most likely due to having sung the title role of Lohengrin the night before. Pearlescent soprano Camilla Nylund is a graceful presence as Eva, convincing in the love she has for Walther and the respectable tenderness she bears the older Sachs. The trusty, old-oak bass of Günther Groissböck resonates large as a sympathetic Veit Pogner. Rich and creamy mezzo-soprano Wiebke Lehmkuhl impresses with strong musical sensibility as Eva’s maid Magdalene, as does warm tenor Daniel Behle’s genial David. Most moving of all is characterful German baritone Johannes Martin Kränzle’s buffoon-like Beckmesser in once again withstanding the ridicule served on him to the extent that tears were shed for the injustice he receives.

The huge chorus of townsfolk do remarkable work with the action and comic gesturing that make up their parts. Vocally, they combine in beguiling precision to produce the finest pianissimos and majestic fortes with a range that utterly radiates. And leading the musical behemoth, conductor Philippe Jordan is back again with a persuasive account that shows obvious support for the singers and untiring awareness of carrying dramatic momentum.

Judge him as you like, but when the concluding splendiferous hymn to German art rings out, the courtroom has emptied, the walls have lifted and Sachs, as Wagner, begins to conduct an incoming raked stand of musicians and choristers, it’s a poignant and powerful moment that gives his music the firm and final say.


Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Bayreuth Festival
Until 27th August 2019


Production Photos: Enrico Nawrath

A wild, confronting and bittersweet Tannhäuser at Bayreuth Festival: Limelight Review

https://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/reviews/tannhauser-bayreuth-festival/

Published online at Limelight, 31st July 2019


Between Wartburg Castle’s bastion of civilisation and the decadence that reigns in Venusberg, Wagner’s original 13th-century setting for Tannhäuser gets oodles of modern mileage in Bayreuth’s new 2019 production. In his house debut, director Tobias Kratzer brings inventive contemporary relevance to the work, rather eschewing the medieval moral rigidity – as well as any overt reference to the theme of redemption – and lays bare a bleak romantic thriller of fatal attraction. The problem is, it doesn’t consistently work with Wagner’s libretto. On the other hand, with no surtitles to draw attention to inconsistencies, Kratzer at the very least takes you on a wild, confronting and bittersweet ride in three acts you won’t easily forget.

Here, Venusberg is not a place but is simply the anarchic lifestyle Venus and some colourful misfits set upon. During the long, vividly sculptured overture, Kratzer draws his audience into something of a B-grade movie on the big screen. The minx-like Venus at the wheel of her quirky old van, a vivacious black drag queen, a dwarf and Tannhäuser, as a clown, are driving through the German countryside, a law unto themselves and thinking nothing of diddling Burger King out of a free meal and siphoning off petrol before Venus, in a panic, mows down a policeman. With just enough sanity to feel remorse, it’s Tannhäuser’s exit out of lawlessness. Any sense that this is about the nature of love is challenging to find, but in relation to the work’s interest in artistic freedom, Kratzer makes in-roads.

Tannhäuser ends up not at Wartburg Castle but outside the Festspielhaus, praising God as the well-heeled and highly privileged pass by to engage with opera on the Green Hill. Wolfram von Eschenbach and the Landgrave’s hunting party are singers who become part of Act II in a staid period production of the actual opera, with Tannhäuser returning to his career, in the title role naturally, alongside Elisabeth. In black and white video footage, Venus and her accomplices are shown to be in pursuit. They break into the theatre, Venus restraining a chorus woman and ending up on the actual stage in a hoot of a scene as the Minnesingers begin the contest on the nature of love, and she bears witness to the actual love Tannhäuser and Elisabeth share. Surprises follow, with the police showing up and arresting Tannhäuser after he presumably takes the blame for the hit-and-run depicted in the overture.

Between a gutsy Venus and emotionally spent Elisabeth, Tannhäuser comes across as unlikeable and lost, moving from one world to the other somewhat freely but never finding solace in either. The strength that comes from Kratzer’s vision for Elisabeth is that she, an artist herself but hopelessly distraught over Tannhäuser’s second absence – not on a pilgrimage to Rome but doing time in prison it appears – opens herself to inclusiveness while waiting for his return in Act III’s roadside junkyard. It comes too late. In her abjection, her career is over, she has sex with Wolfram, he having to don the clown suit, and out of sight she takes her life. A revolve reveal a black drag queen on a billboard as both icon and luxury brand, Le Gateau Chocolat, representing the artist as commercial success. Oskar, the sailor-suited drumming dwarf has lost his spark, Venus continues on her merry way and, though it’s not clear if he dies or not, Tannhäuser feels deep remorse again.

The final act, despite having produced the most impressive singing in what was an overall thrillingly sung opening night, feels conceptually restless. But while the glove doesn’t always fit Wagner’s medieval tale, the production jigs along with uncanny appeal to his mid-19th century score. Kratzer’s creative team of Rainer Sellmaier (sets and costumes), Manuel Braun (video) and Reinhard Traub (lighting) all contribute greatly to its overall execution. In his Bayreuth debut, Valery Gergiev conducts with such verve that at multiple turns it was like hearing the score anew.

Continuing his long association with Bayreuth that started in 2004 in the very same role of Tannhäuser, American Stephen Gould’s experience and potent heldentenor was in full evidence here. The big, molten centre of his chest voice conveyed much of the character’s soul, and although some of the high head notes he hit in the first act were uneven, Gould’s performance in the final act, particularly his wrenching Roman Narrative, was outstanding.

In her Bayreuth debut, Norwegian dramatic soprano Lise Davidsen brought exceptional crystalline vocal strength and emotional translucency to Elisabeth. Mezzo-soprano Elena Zhidkova, stepping in for Ekaterina Gubanova who injured herself during rehearsal, earned thunderous applause for her uber-lithe and feisty Venus, the voice pliant and assured, her top notes clear and penetrating.

Markus Eiche is superbly cast as Wolfram von Eschenbach, bringing complexity to the mix and singing with a burnished baritone sound of radiance. Eiche’s Act III Song to the Evening Star was of particular poignancy, an aria that hints at Elisabeth’s impending death and which was sung with post-coital tenderness. Hefty Danish bass Stephen Milling balanced authority and compassion as Landgraf Hermann, while  German actor Manni Laudenbach as Oskar and Le Gateau Chocolat were rhythm and zest combined, indispensable to the production. The chorus too were convincing in acting and excellent in voice.

A final thought. In referencing a period-set Tannhäuser in his interpretation, Kratzer could also be alluding to the need for opera never to shy away from reinvention. That the Festspielhaus, dating back to 1876, has embraced change and is committed to presenting Wagner’s work in ever critical and creative ways is glowingly on show here. As part of this intrepid production, in a Festspielhaus first, Le Gateau Chocolat performed in the garden during the first interval alongside Manni Laudenbach’s Oskar beating his drum and Venus sorting her banners, bearing the words “Frei im Wollen, frei im Thun, frei im Geniessen” (Free in will, free in doing, free in enjoyment). You get the distinct feeling that Bayreuth not only takes its commitment seriously, it can do so with a good tongue-in-cheek look at itself.


Tannhäuser 
Bayreuth Festival
Until 25th August 2019


Production Photos: Enrico Nawrath