Bluebeard's Castle and Erwartung

Concert Review: Doublebill: Bluebeard's Castle and Erwartung

September 27, 2019, Geffen Hall
NYPO - Jaap van Zweden - Nina Stemme - Katarina Karneus - Johannes Kranzle
Schoenberg - Bartok

My penchant for one-act (or just mercifully short) operas shows I am not the usual opera lover. For me, the music ought to tell the story better than the action, which is always way stylized and will never be as realistic as in films, though that doesn't keep a never ending army of directors to try their de-constructive ways.

Bartok's Buebeard's Castle is an absolute favorite and I own many important recordings, but I have never seen it on stage or even in an orchestral program (later this year, Rattle will also conduct one in Carnegie Hall). As for Schoenberg, although I like the even more hysterical Pierrot Lunaire even more, Erwartung appeals too. Although I went in doubting Jaap was the person to carry it out, I was both pleased and annoyed by the results, which has nothing much to do with the music - this was a staged concert, but director Bengt Gomer's effort was definitely pedestrian and distracting.

The protruding wedge of the stage was not big, and the singers had to maneuver carefully, lest they drop off the precipice (I hate that kind of constraints). Well, OK, space was at a premium. But that ghastly rectangular screen just read like a large iPad. It flickered and emitted patterns more appropriate for Close Encounter of the Third Kind, that we were supposed to decipher. The paleness and fluorescence supposedly is more suited to to Erwartung, which takes place under the moonlight. But, hey, moonlight and shadows, even when threatening, have beauty, whereas this doesn't. Katarina Karneus sang perhaps too well, and the orchestra was totally committed too. I actually missed a more manic perspective (more sense of struggle), more sprecht than sing, that I think would be more appropriate to the drama.

Even worse was the pretense of the autopsy/surgical table. Many "artists", past or present, seem to delight in taking a stab at doctors (Wozzeck, very much related to the works here, is an example), but the metaphor of the doctor as cold and ruthless is simply false and have been re-hashed just too many times to not make one yawn. In this case, it seriously erred by detracting us from the torment/plight of the woman. The music is about her mind, not about the dead body, but that was forgotten. Karneus had to hold and threw flowers, and crawl on the floor - for what?

Bluebeard was very well sung by Nina Stemme (who HK audience would be familiar with) and Johannes Kranzle. The NYPO played with feelings, though not much Hungarian flavor (one would not expect that of Jaap). The magnificence of Bartok's incredibly colorful score came shining forth nonetheless. What truly bothered me again was the staging. This is an opera with much blood on the walls, so to speak, so some red color was allowed, but the staging was completely static and failed miserably to reflect the kaleidoscopic world of the music. The conceit of staying in sepia, or diluted colors, just failed the music. But that was not the worse. The most upsetting thing for me was the demeaning of Bluebeard, who was directed to become a much smaller, pitiable and perversely comical character. Murder or not, Bluebeard was high up in society, and would not have behaved like that. A more grisly and lurid staging would have been much better. That the music rose above the direction was indeed a testament to Bartok's magnificent score.

Guess what? I actually think the screen and all that gratuitous staging represent the director and his cohort. Most unfortunate.

Two ushers were discussing the program. They detested it, while heaping praise on the earlier Psycho. Ah, the great Bernard Hermann's score.