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Richard Wagner: Lohengrin, Savonlinna Opera Festival, 3 July 2024. Photo: Jussi Silvennoinen. |
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Richard Wagner: Lohengrin, Savonlinna Opera Festival, 3 July 2024. Sinéad Campbell Wallace, Karita Mattila, Timo Riihonen, Lucio Gallo & Choir. Photo: Jussi Silvennoinen. |
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Olavinlinna, 2 October 2023. Photo: Savonlinna Opera Festival. |
THE OPERA
Lohengrin : Romantische Oper in drei Aufzügen
DE 1850 [Weimar, Thüringen, Königreich Preussen]. Musik und Libretto: Richard Wagner. Durchkomponiert. Originalsprache: Deutsch. Literarische Vorlage: Wolfram von Eschenbach: Parzival (1200-1210). Uraufführung: 28 August 1850 - Grossherzogliches Hoftheater - in Weimar - unter der Leitung von Franz Liszt.
Figuren: Heinrich der Vogler, deutscher König - Lohengrin - Elsa von Brabant - Friedrich von Telramund, brabantischer Graf - Ortrud, seine Gemäldin - Der Heerrufer des Königs - Vier brabantische Edle - Vier Edelknaben - Vier Kammerfrauen - Sächsische und thüringische Grafen und Edle, brabantische Grafen und Edle, Edelfrauen, Edelknaben, Mannen, Frauen, Knechte.
Die Handlung spielt in Antwerpen in der 1. Hälfte des 10. Jahrhunderts
SAVONLINNA OPERA FESTIVAL TEAM
Conductor / Stephan Zilias
Director / Roman Hovenbitzer
Set designer / Hermann Feuchter
Costume designer / Hank Irwin Kittel
Lighting designer / Wolfgang Göbbel
Video designer / Andreas J. Etter
Choreographer / Janne Geest
Chorus master / Jan Schweiger
Savonlinna Opera Festival Choir
Savonlinna Opera Festival Orchestra
Language / German
Surtitles / Finnish and English
Duration : approx. 4 hrs 30 min, 2 intervals
CAST
TUOMAS KATAJALA / LOHENGRIN
KARITA MATTILA / ORTRUD
SINÉAD CAMPBELL WALLACE / ELSA
LUCIO GALLO / FRIEDRICH VON TELRAMUND
TIMO RIIHONEN / HEINRICH DER VOGLER
KRISTIAN LINDROOS / THE KING’S HERALD
PERFORMANCES AT OLAVINLINNA CASTLE
Olavinkatu 27 ; 57130 Savonlinna ; Finland
Capacity: 2.264 seats
5.7.2024 - 9.7.2024 - 12.7.2024 - 15.7.2024 - 18.7.2024
Visited on Friday, 5 July 2024
Savonlinna Opera Festival introduction: " Finally – here is Karita Mattila’s debut at the Savonlinna Opera Festival. She is a cunning sorceress and deep-voiced plotter in Wagner’s opulent Lohengrin. And what a Finnish celebration the evening will be, with Tuomas Katajala, the most internationally successful Finnish tenor of today, singing the title role. "
‘ Only one Finnish star can fill Olavinlinna alone. ’
Helsingin Sanomat about Karita Mattila’s concert, 15 July 2012
" Wagner’s mythical work of art is a fairy tale about the relationship between utopia and reality. ‘It is a child’s dream of an intact, reconciled world. The world has dreamed of this hundreds of times and keeps dreaming of it again and again. The work is about this human longing – and the painful realization that it can never come true’, says director Roman Hovenbitzer. "
" Right from the intense prelude, Lohengrin grips the listener. There’s a rumble of thunder in the castle walls. The music is highly charged, even hypnotic. With Wagner, time loses its meaning. When the secrets are revealed and the performance ends, you walk out of Olavinlinna into the summer night and ask yourself what really happened. "
‘ There is an empire on the verge of collapse, a people waiting for its saviour, and Lohengrin, the saviour. There is love, loyalty and Wagner’s medieval world of myths. ’ – Director Roman Hovenbitzer
AA: The setting, Olavinlinna castle, provides a magnificent context. The building was launched around 1475 by the Kalmar Union (1397-1523), in what proved to be the last stage of this union of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, with Copenhagen as its de facto capital. The monarch then was the Danish King Christian I, followed by his son Hans. The construction was launched by Erik Axelsson Tott, the regent of Sweden.
The Kalmar Union had been established as a counterforce to the Hanseatic League, but by now new powers were gaining prominence. Lithuania had grown into the greatest state of Europe. Ivan III, Grand Prince of Moscow, pushed Lithuania back from the East. The Byzantine Empire (330-1453) ended in the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire. Ivan III wed Sophia Palaiologina, niece of the last Byzantine emperor. Moscow finally liberated itself from the Mongol / Turkish rule of the Golden Horde (1242-1502). It also annexed the mighty Novgorod Republic (1136-1478).
Against this new formidable power of Ivan III the Kalmar Union fortified itself by strengthening the Castle of Vyborg (est. 1293) and building Olavinlinna.
Visiting Savonlinna Opera Festival today we cannot help meditating the power of history and the history of power. The troubles of history and the history of troubles. "The past is never dead. It's not even past" (William Faulkner: Requiem for a Nun).
Richard Wagner's Lohengrin is set in a precise moment of history 500 years before Olavinlinna, but it is not a historical play. It is a dream play, a fairy-tale and a mythological quest inspired by Arthurian legends. The formidable walls of the real castle provide a rock solid sounding board to the ethereal fabula.
As a music lover I am an amateur and armchair listener who hardly ever ventures to a live event. Knowing Lohengrin as a radio listener only I am moved and stunned by the subtle power and refined perfection of detail in a first class live performance. Live music is a superior physical experience, shared by a spellbound audience in a castle with a capacity of over 2000.
I realize that Richard Wagner started to discuss "unendliche Melodie" ("endless melody") only ten years after the premiere of Lohengrin and that this work is the last which he called an opera, meaning that it still obeys the conventions of arias and choruses. Yet already here I am most moved by the unity of the suspense that begins with the Vorspiel and holds until the tragic finale.
Later Wagner works have been compared with the stream of consciousness and inner monologue, but already here it is the most compelling feature. "The poet's greatness is mostly to be measured by what he leaves unsaid, letting us breathe in silence to ourselves the thing unspeakable; the musician it is who brings this untold mystery to clarion tongue, and the impeccable form of his sounding silence is endless melody" (Wagner 1860).
The cast of characters are like sleepwalkers in a shared dream, which we are invited to join. The most striking feature of the music is its gentleness and tenderness. It is an experience of serenity, nobility and a presence of the sacred. The Arthurian element (Lohengrin, Graal) belongs to Christianity, but there is also a presence of the ancient Teutonic gods of Wotan and Freya invoked by the witch Ortrud, Lohengrin's formidable adversary.
The most famous feature of Wagner's music is das Leitmotiv, although Wagner was not the inventor of the method nor did he use the word himself. He only spoke of motifs (Motive), but did not accept the standard discourse about his work. Wagner's emphasis was always on organic unity and the integration of elements, including motifs.
I stumbled upon a beautiful online lesson by Professor Laurence Dreyfus (Faculty of Music, University of Oxford, 7 Nov 2019) in a "
Lohengrin TimeMachine app". He discovers 14 motifs in Lohengrin and selects one of them for close study,
das Frageverbot ("don't ask"), which appears 18 times in the opera. Dreyfus really opens Wagner's way of composition in a fascinating way.
After the Olavinlinna performance I have been listening to the opera on cd, and for the first time registered something that aficionados must have always recognized: the affinity of the
Frageverbot motif with the "Flight of the Swans Theme" (the key theme first introduced in Act I:9: Finale andante and Act I:10: Scène moderato) in Tchaikovsky's
Swan Lake (comp. 1875, perf. 1877). A profound and meaningful homage by the Russian master to the creator of the Swan Knight.
The prohibition to ask the question is at the core. Elsa is the suspect of the murder of her brother, but comes a knight in shining armour drawn by a swan to save her. He also proposes to her, with one condition:
Nie sollst du mich befragen,
noch Wissens Sorge tragen,
woher ich kam der Fahrt,
noch wie mein Nam' und Art!
(Never shall you ask me / nor trouble yourself to know / whence I came / my name nor my kind!)
The most famous passage of the opera is the Brautlied / Bridal Chorus in the first scene of act three ("Treulich geführt" / "Here comes the bride"), probably the most popular and joyous of all Wagner melodies. Again, I am impressed by the sober and gentle interpretation. Less is more. The restraint and the solemnity make it feel special.
But: in the context of the opera it is a tragic song, because Elsa breaks her vow never to ask the question. The mysterious stranger is compelled to reveal that he is Lohengrin, the son of Parsifal the Grail King, a guardian of divine power, which he loses if he reveals who he is.
Lohengrin gets ready to go and leaves his horn, sword and ring for Elsa's brother. The swan sinks, and Lohengrin lifts Gottfried from the water. Gottfried will be the new ruler of Brabant, Lohengrin vanishes in his boat now drawn by a dove. Ortrud collapses. Elsa embraces Gottfried and sinks lifeless to the ground.
For the first time in my life I see Karita Mattila in a live performance. It is also her first visit to the Savonlinna Opera Festival. I am a long term Karita Mattila admirer. The title of her biography is characteristically Korkealta ja kovaa ([High and Loud], 2019). Her star quality is ideal for the biggest arenas, and only they are big enough for her. As a radio listener I have never felt that I have really known her.
Now I do. All singers are great, but I focus on Karita Mattila because this performance revealed a new aspect that I did not know before. She is the villain and the monster, and she commands the stage effortlessly with her mere presence. It is an understated performance with psychological nuance. There is bitterness, and a barely hidden sense of condescension and superiority. And a pathos of evil. The monster is finally a victim of herself.
This is a new Karita Mattila. Even her voice has changed. The soprano is a mezzo-soprano for a change.
Lohengrin is a mystery play, but it is never confused or insecure. It is always compelling, often in a quietly self-assured manner. It is based on myths, but there is nothing decorative in Wagner's approach. Claude Lévi-Strauss admired Wagner's audacious way of grasping complex associations from various myths and his ability of conveying a profound and genuine emotional impact via them. Lévi-Strauss even called him the "father of the structural analysis of myth".
Otto Rank put Richard Wagner on the couch, paying attention to the hero's arrival on "the billows' azure mirror", the forbidden question and the white swan pulling a newcomer out of the water, and the even more devastating implications of the unknown identity and the anxiety with triangle situations.
Otto Rank's suggestions may seem preposterous, unless we pay attention to Wagner's recurrent obsessions both in his work and his life: Already in his first opera, Die Feen (comp. 1833, unproduced until prem. 1888) includes themes of the forbidden question, search for father, conflict between worldly and otherworldly love, compassion for an animal and a key musical motif expressing aspiration towards transcendence. Wagner never found certitude about the identity of his father. He hardly knew how to live except in a triangle situation, usually with a married woman. But this private trouble he sublimated into works of universal grandeur.
The Wagnerian swan image in Lohengrin and Parsifal stems from the Knights of the Holy Grail for whom the swan was a sacred creature. Universally swans are also a symbol of everlasting love. Universally and since ancient times birds in general are sexual symbols. But often birds also appear as images related to death: harbingers from beyond, images of souls flying to heaven. I also think about
The Swan of Tuonela by Sibelius based on Kalevala mythology but also "
Sparven om julmorgonen" ("Sparrow on Christmas Morning") written by Zachris Topelius in memory of his little son, in the superior Finnish translation "en mä ole, lapseni, lintu tästä maasta ; olen pieni veljesi, tulin taivahasta" ["My child, I am not a bird from this earth, I am your little brother coming from heaven"].
Because this is the first production of Lohengrin that I have seen I cannot compare it, except perhaps with Lohengrin scenes in Luchino Visconti's Ludwig. I was impressed with the musical achievement, the performances and the Olavinlinna Castle. I was puzzled by the production and costume design. They look impressive in photographs, but in the real experience I felt like following a children's room performance. I was asking: are we still too close to Hitler that we must deconstruct Wagner glory to the max? Are we living in an écolo period of opera design that the approach must be ars povera, recycling. (I don't mean that this is the third revival of this production in Savonlinna, seen before in 2011 and 2013). Video: whenever there is video in a stage performance or art exhibition I look the other way or close my eyes.
I guess that the director Roman Hovenbitzer does not believe in transcendence. The sacred dimension may not be mean much to him. From the first notes to the last, Wagner's opera is an exalted piece of spiritual poetry, but Hovenbitzer's stage interpretation remains in the world of prose. Entzauberung instead of Zauberfeuer.
But the musical performance is triumphant.
...
Wagner and the cinema? "The Wedding March" from Lohengrin has been one of the most popular themes in film music since the early days. For some reason I'm thinking about the double wedding of Dorothy and Lorelei in
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: "Remember, honey, on your wedding day, it's alright to say yes." Today the wedding ceremony might be between Dorothy and Lorelei.
Les Timidités de Rigadin (FR 1910) is an early comedy with Rigadin (Charles Prince) as Lohengrin, the knight in shining armour. Luchino Visconti's
Ludwig (IT/FR/DE 1973) is a key film about Wagner's faithful patron of arts, with a lavish scene about staging Lohengrin at Schloss Neuschwanstein. Lohengrin was for Ludwig a point of complete identification.
Not Wagnerian but Arthurian: two unique films untypical for them by Frenchmen: Lancelot du Lac by Robert Bresson and Perceval le Gallois by Éric Rohmer. Walt Disney's
The Sword in the Stone (1963) and Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975).
A book could be written on Wagner and the cinema, and probably has. Suffice it to mention the controversial side: "The Ride of the Valkyries" in
The Birth of a Nation and Apocalypse Now. Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg inevitably in Leni Riefenstahl's
Triumph des Willens (shot on location in Nuremberg). In
Brute Force, a prisoner is sadistically beaten to the accompaniment of the Tannhäuser overture of Richard Wagner.
À propos: Daniel Barenboim in dialogue with Edward Said on Wagner and Ideology: "
A lady who came to see me in Tel Aviv when the whole Wagner debate was taking place said, “How can you want to play that? I saw my family taken to the gas chambers to the sound of the Meistersinger overture. Why should I listen to that? ” (
Daniel Barenboim.com, 1998)
One film is genuinely Wagnerian.
Vertigo.
BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: MORE DATA FROM THE SAVONLINNA OPERA FESTIVAL WEBSITE: