In his work Music and Drama written in the aftermath
of his exile from Germany in 1849, Wagner laid down the basis
of his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk. In future music
drama - including his own operas written before that time -
should fuse together the disparate elements of drama, music
and staging to produce a complete unity that would surpass the
achievements possible by any of these elements in isolation
- by spoken drama, by orchestral music, or by costume and design.
To this end he constructed all his later works with the greatest
care to make sure that the various elements taken together should
provide an overwhelming impact. All productions of his works
should be conceived with this ideal in mind, but unfortunately
the synthesis is very rarely achieved - and it is not forthcoming
in either of these DVD versions.
To take the later production first, Hans Neuenfels’s production
for Bayreuth originally given in 2010 had, like many modern
productions, a ‘concept’ - a new vision of the work
which would provide new insights into the meaning of Lohengrin
as a work. So far, so good. Neuenfels’ concept was that
all the characters in the drama were the subjects of an experiment
- by whom is not made clear, but presumably by God since he
seems to have arranged the whole basis of the plot. The chorus
are laboratory rats, sometimes attempting to break out into
humanity and sometimes regressing to their animal nature. Well,
it’s an idea, and it could be made to work in the context
of the drama in isolation with a degree of special pleading
in the reading of the text; it would be an interesting insight
if Lohengrin were a spoken play in the theatre. The trouble
is that it fights for much of the time against the music itself.
When Lohengrin picks up the crucifix at the end of Act Two and
brandishes it, the orchestra is ironically thundering out the
motif which is quite specifically associated with the
‘forbidden question’ of his identity. It is not
a moment of triumph, as this production would have it - it is
a moment of sudden doubt in the middle of rejoicing. At the
beginning of the same Act, when the music of offstage revelry
breaks in on the desolate scene it should act as a moment of
sudden contrast to the dejection of Telramund and Ortrud - here
it becomes a cue for the laboratory experimenters to pull dustsheets
off the singers, and any sense of contrast is lost. In the first
Act, the entry of Lohengrin is clearly earmarked by the music
- and the score - at the moment of climax in the chorus when
Elsa lets out a sudden cry of joy. Not here: the moment goes
by with no reflection of the musical drama in the staging, and
it is only when all the music has died down that Lohengrin comes
into view, accompanied by a swan that may be a testimony to
the taxidermist’s art but looks nothing like any means
of suitable transport.
There are some good ideas, but even these don’t
necessarily hang together. It is a nice thought to have Lohengrin
and Elsa’s first meeting take place with a degree of privacy,
so that his ban on her asking after his name and origins is
not made in public and leads more naturally to his declaration
of love for her - but again this flies in the face of two of
Lohengrin’s own statements in Act Three, firstly when
he tells Elsa that their wedding night is the first time they
have been alone together, and then later when he reminds the
assembled crowds that they all heard Elsa give her promise.
It is good to have Elsa and Ortrud interacting on stage from
the very beginning of their scene, which can be dangerously
static if they are isolated respectively on their balcony and
on the square below - but this means that Elsa suddenly has
to leave the stage (officially to descend and let Ortrud in,
but for no apparent readily reason here) so that Ortrud left
alone can invoke her pagan gods to assist her vengeance. Here
Elsa just sits down at the back of the stage, with her back
to the scene, and pretends not to listen to the outburst that
is going on behind her. The concept of King Henry as a doddering
old fool only just hovering on this side of dementia might work
in the context of a stage play - but it fights every inch against
the bold and forthright music he has to sing. And would any
King, however deranged, with the slightest sense of his own
dignity let his Herald boss him around the way this one does?
The scene between Ortrud and Telramund works superbly, as it
always should if the director has any sense of drama at all;
but I am not too sure about the Gauleiter-like costumes they
are wearing, or the frozen facial expression which Ortrud adopts
throughout, for all the world like Angela Merkel refusing the
Greeks a loan. Actually one understands that the German Chancellor
attended this Bayreuth production twice when it was new, so
maybe she was taking hints.
There is also a real problem with the realisation of the Prelude.
In his later works Wagner was insistent on the idea that the
prelude to any individual Act should prepare the audience mentally
for the drama that is to be revealed when the curtain rises;
and he carefully inserted directions for that event, which are
all too frequently disregarded by modern producers. But what
we are given here simply fights against Wagner’s music.
We know what Wagner intended to portray in the prelude to Lohengrin,
because he has told us - a vision of the Holy Grail descending
to earth, and finally being taken back into heaven. Following
on his idea of the characters in the drama as laboratory rats,
Neuenfels here presents us with an animated film of rats fighting
over a crown - which looks horribly like an imitation of the
cartoon of Watership Down - and then with a scene of
Lohengrin trying to fight his way out of the experimental cage.
At the moment when the Holy Grail is revealed on earth in Wagner’s
music, Lohengrin is seen to fail and sink down in despair -
exactly the opposite of what the music is telling us at the
same moment. One does not need to follow Wagner’s scenario
slavishly, but to substitute a staging that deliberately contradicts
every emotional fibre of the music does neither the producer’s
conception or Wagner’s heavenly string writing any favours
at all.
The Third Act Prelude, music of rejoicing which commemorates
the wedding of Lohengrin and Elsa, is given an equally gratuitous
gloss which goes in every way against the spirit of the music.
Here the cartoon rats hunt down and eat a dog, and this same
sequence is shown again as a backdrop to the King’s address
to his troops at the beginning of the final scene - where it
might possibly have more relevance, but the same image cannot
possibly be applied to both situations. At the very end Lohengrin
perversely enough does not leave Elsa, which makes nonsense
of his protracted farewells - although not so protracted, since
a cut of 100 bars is made here. Wagner himself insisted on cutting
the second section of Lohengrin’s Narration because he
said he held up the movement towards the conclusion. I think
he was wrong, as the music is fine and the text helps to explain
Lohengrin’s otherwise mysterious appearance in Brabant
at the precise moment he is needed. That said, this additional
excision is wanton barbarism of which Bayreuth should definitely
be ashamed. Apparently the cut was made by Sawallisch in 1962
- presumably with Wieland Wagner’s agreement - but it
remains disgraceful. Possibly the producer, and Wieland Wagner
before him, objected to the militaristic tone of the words,
but the lengthy introduction to the final scene - which is equally
military in mood - is retained, although the stage is shrouded
at this point in near-darkness with none of the historical exegesis
which Wagner specifies. At the very end the presentation of
Gottfried as a homunculus hatched from the swan’s egg
is not only incredibly disgusting as he pulls his umbilical
cord - in an egg? - apart, but is grotesquely ugly and totally
unbelievable as a revelation of the new Duke of Brabant.
What this all comes down to is an unwillingness to let Wagner
the composer have his due, as well as Wagner the dramatist;
and the disparity is fatal. The fact that practically all modern
productions of Wagner suffer from exactly the same problem does
not make the failure to grasp the ideal of the synthesis of
the arts any the less lamentable. Such productions divorcing
music from drama were indeed inaugurated at Bayreuth after the
Second World War by Wagner’s grandsons, taking as their
watchword Wagner’s own recommendations to always look
for something new. Wieland Wagner in particular trimmed back
on the realistic productions, shaving scenery and drama to their
bare essentials and allowing Wagner the composer to have his
due at the expense of Wagner the dramatist. It is this sort
of influence that is apparent in the Vienna production on the
second of these DVDs.
Wagner’s preludes do present a problem in terms of video
presentation, because a home audience cannot or will not accept
the idea of simply looking at a blank curtain for some five
minutes; it is frequently resolved, as it is here, by video
directors by giving us a view of the conductor and orchestra,
but this does not serve to create the mood that Wagner desires.
One of the best solutions seems to be that adopted by Jean-Pierre
Ponnelle in his Tristan, where in the prelude we are
given evocative and symbolic seascapes which both reflect the
drama to come and allow the viewer to enter into the sound-world
without visual distractions. We are also given a view of Abbado
and his orchestra not only during the specified scene change
halfway through Act Three, but also during an unauthorised scene
change at dawn in Act Two.
The scenery in Act One in Vienna is almost totally non-existent;
although the costumes are realistically tenth century and not
very attractive, the characters seem to exist in a historical
vacuum. Just before Lohengrin’s entry the grey featureless
background acquires a projection of a stylised swan, and then
as he arrives we are confronted with a metallic swan construction;
as soon as this leaves the grey background fades to black and
so remains. In the Second Act we are given a side shot of the
minster entrance and the Kemenate where Elsa lodges - with its
balcony - stretches across the back of the stage; during the
inauthentic scene-change the Kemenate swings backwards through
a ninety degree angle. The sole purpose of this appears to be
to allow the procession to the minster to take longer to achieve;
but the speed at which this procession moves could cause even
a tortoise to accuse it of lethargy. Indeed throughout this
production all movement on stage is glacially slow, and for
much of the time the singers simply stand in one spot to deliver
their lines. At the end of Act Two Ortrud does indeed threaten
Elsa with a glance of menace at the point the Ban motif is heard,
but Elsa has to unconvincingly pause and actually turn around
to look at her for this to be possible. Otherwise the dramatic
cues in the music are given in a slovenly manner; Lohengrin
appears two bars after the climax of the music announcing
his arrival, and Elsa comes onto the balcony a couple of bars
after the change in the timbre of the music has announced
that fact. The stage direction is credited to Wolfgang Weber,
but there is little evidence of his involvement at any point.
The scenery is no more substantial in the Third Act. At the
very beginning the Bridal Chorus takes place in a colonnaded
avenue under a starlit sky, but as soon as the chorus have withdrawn
the scene descends once again into stygian gloom in which no
vestige can be discerned of a bridal chamber. Incidentally,
both here and at Bayreuth the chorus are onstage from the very
beginning, which not only contradicts Wagner’s specific
instructions but ruins the intended contrast between the initial
statement of the theme by the chorus offstage, and its
subsequent repetition once the chorus have entered. At the end
of the scene we are again returned to the orchestra pit while
Abbado conducts his way vigorously through not only the interlude
between scenes but through the whole of the opening section
of the following scene for which Wagner has given detailed staging
instructions. There seems to be no reason for this, as the scene
now unveiled hardly differs from that which went before except
that the darkness has now given way to a louring grey. At the
end the metallic swan reappears. One is amazed to see that two
names are credited with the design of the scenery in this production;
to paraphrase Rudolf Bing, any self-respecting opera house could
have got it this minimal with one. At the end we are subjected
not only to the same objectionable cut as at Bayreuth, but this
excision is extended from 100 to 168 bars; the result of this
is not only to rob us of an extensive section of music but also
to rob Elsa of any chance to show repentance, and Ortrud has
more to say about the departure of her husband than she does.
The singers are thrown back almost entirely on their own devices,
which are often very good; but there is no evidence of a directorial
hand holding the action together.
The singing now falls to be considered. At Bayreuth Klaus Florian
Vogt is an excellent swan knight, and his voice when he enters
has exactly the right ethereal quality that one desires with
not the slightest hint of strain or edge that is sometimes evident
when Wagnerian heldentenors try to sing softly. Later
on one does miss some of the sheer heft that some of the lines
demand. “You will never triumph here”, he tells
Ortrud; but there is no sense of command here, merely an almost
apologetic observation. On the other hand Vogt floats the narration
with great beauty, and rises to the final peroration with good
sense of drama. This same narration is the weakest point in
Plácido Domingo’s performance, slightly too fast
- he was slower in his CD recording with the normally volatile
Solti - and not quite distanced enough at the start. The cut
referred to before means that we move directly from the narration
into the farewell, which makes for an extremely extended final
scene for him at the end of a long evening. Not that he shows
any signs of tiredness, and his performance as a whole has all
the warmth and command that Vogt lacks. Some may object to his
clearly unidiomatic German, but in a cast that also includes
an American Elsa, a Czech Ortrud, a British King and a Hungarian
Herald it does not stand out for that reason.
Regarding the Elsas, the Bayreuth and Vienna performances are
more evenly matched. Cheryl Studer, caught in Vienna in her
prime before her all-too-brief career collapsed, is not as sheerly
beautiful to look at as the younger Annette Dasch in Bayreuth,
but she sings with perfect control and beguiling tone throughout,
and her top notes are cleanly and confidently taken. Dasch is
nearly her match - the top notes not quite so thrilling - and
clearly has a glittering career in front of her if she continues
in this vein. It is amazing to learn that this was her first
excursion into Wagnerian territory. Robert Lloyd as the King
is, as always, a solidly strong singer but Zeppenfeld in Bayreuth
is excellent as well and his firm declamation makes nonsense
of the befuddled characterisation he is asked to assume.
As the villainous couple both Harmut Welker and Jukka Rasilainen
have the fire that the Weberian outburst at the beginning of
the Second Act requires. They also possess good solid top registers
which encompass both the high G in that outburst and the sustained
high F sharps in the duet at the end of the same scene. In the
part of his wife, Dunja Vezjovic sounds distressed on her highest
notes, but otherwise gives a nicely nuanced performance that
discovers plenty of variety in a role that can degenerate into
sheer squalliness. That is a danger that Petra Lang, despite
more solid high As, does not avoid; she is a monochrome character
and her lower notes do not have the strength to penetrate the
orchestra without forcing. It is not a pleasant sound. Both
Heralds are good, but Samuel Youn is clearer in both diction
and sound than Georg Tichy.
The chorus at Bayreuth, despite being hampered by their rodent
headgear - they become much clearer when they take their rat-heads
off in the final scene - are more firmly disciplined than their
somewhat worn-sounding Vienna counterparts. Both however produce
plenty of good solid sound when, as frequently, it is demanded.
The Bayreuth orchestra are nicely disciplined under their young
Latvian conductor, and the recorded sound is better than that
given to the Vienna players under Abbado. That said, Abbado
clearly loves this score and his reading has a greater passion
which Andris Nelsons strives in vain to achieve.
Taken however as a representation of Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk
these productions effectively sink themselves without a trace.
The unfortunate fact is that there doesn’t appear to be
a Lohengrin in the catalogues which even approaches the
idea of a conception which marries music and drama in a seamless
and unified whole in the manner which Wagner expects. There
are productions by Nicholas Lehnhoff and Richard Jones which
impose alternative directorial conceits. Judging from the excerpts
I have seen Lehnhoff’s rather less damaging than Jones’s
schoolroom production. The only one which seems to strive in
any way to mirror the luminous beauty which shines through the
score is an earlier Bayreuth production by Werner Herzog set
in a desolate snowscape. That must at present be regarded as
the best video version of Lohengrin available. A Metropolitan
Opera production is effectively torpedoed - on the basis of
the YouTube excerpts I have seen - by the performances of Peter
Hoffman and Eva Marton, both for different reasons totally uncharismatic.
Another version available, again from Bayreuth, is by Götz
Friedrich, highly regarded in its day but again afflicted with
some indifferent singing. Would somebody at Covent Garden consider
whether we might have a recording of the 2009 revival of Elijah
Moshinsky’s production? This was well sung and conducted
and at least made a serious attempt to engage with the meaning
of the work as a whole.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
see also reviews of the Arthaus
(Abbado) and Opus
Arte (Nelsons) release by Jim Pritchard
POSTSCRIPT
Since writing the above review I have had the opportunity to
see Nicholas Lehnhoff’s production (referred to above)
in its entirety. His staging, updated to the twentieth century
with Lohengrin looking like a yuppie merchant banker in his
silver suit, is not always wholly true to Wagner’s precise
directions. That said, he always realises the importance of
the relationship between the music and the action, none of the
essential points are missed, and he gets real dramatic performances
from his principals. The singing itself varies from the very
good - Waltraud Meier excellent as Ortrud and Hans-Peter König
powerful as the King - to the less satisfactory, with both Solveig
Kringelborn as Elsa and a younger Klaus Florian Vogt as Lohengrin
seriously underpowered in places. What however totally rules
this out of court as a version of Lohengrin on DVD is
the wholesale cutting which Lehnhoff and Kent Nagano inflict
upon the score. This extends to not only the full-length excision
in the final scene employed in Vienna, but also fifty bars of
chorus as the men greet the dawn in Act Two and even more extraordinarily
the whole of the central section and repeat in the Wedding Chorus.
Wagner was particularly proud of his writing for the chorus
in Lohengrin, and these slashing cuts demolish one whole segment
of his scheme. What a shame.
Taken as a representation of Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk
these productions sink themselves without a trace.
Klaus Florian Vogt (tenor) - Lohengrin; Annette Dasch (soprano)
- Elsa; Jukka Rasilainen (baritone) - Friedrich; Petra Lang (soprano)
- Ortrud; Georg Zeppenfeld (bass) - King Henry; Samuel Youn (baritone)
- Herald; Stefan Heilbach, Willem van der Heyden, Rainer Zaun and
Christian Tschelbiew (tenors and basses) - Brabantine nobles 
[2 DVDs: 209.00 + 0.26 bonus tracks] 
