Los Angeles Times - 25.08.2019

F4 SUNDAY, AUGUST 25, 2019 LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR

OPERA

gone nor forgotten: “Lohengrin”
has just been released on video and
“Idomeneo” was filmed, and per-
haps if we pester Sony enough, it
will be out soon. Some things can’t
wait.
Invited to give the keynote ad-
dress of this year’s Salzburg Festi-
val, the 99th, Sellars called on chil-
dren to talk to their parents and on
parents to listen to their children.
“Our generation,” he concluded,
“has been the generation of empire
builders and consumers. It is time
to welcome the generation of crea-
tors, activists, repairers, restorers
and healers.”
“Idomeneo” is the only Mozart
opera Sellars has restaged. His
original production at Glynde-
bourne, in England, 16 years ago,
was topical. He controversially al-
luded to the Iraq war. This time,
with the invaluable help of conduc-
tor Teodor Currentzis, who ignites
every single gesture in Mozart’s
score with a kind of life force, Sell-
ars takes a more expansive and
deeper, namely oceanic, approach.
Idomeneo keeps from drowning
in a terrible storm at sea only by
agreeing to sacrifice to the god
Neptune the first person he meets
on shore. That person turns out to
be his son, Idamante. To punish
Idomeneo for his inevitable at-
tempts to evade the bargain, Nep-
tune sends a sea monster to devas-
tate the population of Crete.
In “Idomeneo,” Mozart lets us
listen to the ocean, and for Sellars,
this becomes a warning that our
oceans are again angry. Climate
change has altered their form, and
plastics have toxified their sub-
stance. This production is in the
Felsenreitschule, a former riding
stable turned into a theater shaped
like a Greek amphitheater and
equipped with vibrant acoustics.
The set by George Tsypin is an
ever-present collection of plastic
globules of various sizes and
shapes, the biggest ones becoming
the man-eating monster.
Opera in the 18th century re-
quired a love interest. Ilia, a Trojan
princess given an effervescent
beauty by soprano Ying Fang, falls
in love with her captor, Idamante,
the vibrant mezzo-soprano Paula
Murrihy. He, though, is betrothed
to the emotionally damaged Greek
princess Elettra, sung by a grip-
pingly dramatic Nicole Chevalier.
Sellars asks all for never-ending
self-examination. No one knows
how or where to show love. All care
for the other but are paralyzed by
their own suffering, and none more
than Russell Thomas’ haunted
Idomeneo. In the synopsis of the
plot that Sellars wrote for the pro-
gram book, he refers to the Four
Noble Truths of Buddhism. Suffer-
ing is life, but all of it must be tran-
scended.
Neptune allows Idomeneo to
cede the throne to Idamante and
Ilia. In typical productions, a re-

jected Elettra goes off raving mad

and kills herself. Here she remains

sadly in Idomeneo’s affection if not

loved. Nonetheless, abandoned,

her body is consumed and torn

apart by the toxicity of the ocean in

an aria of such power nothing

really can follow it.

So Mozart ends “Idomeneo”

not with a celebratory chorus (and

Currentzis’ Perm Opera chorus is a

major attraction) but with speech-

lessness, and a seemingly anti-cli-

mactic courtly ballet. Sellars ends

his production with dances by the

Samoan-born Lemi Ponifasio.

Elettra’s lifeless body remains on-

stage danced around in fast foot-

stomping steps by Arikitau Tan-

tau, a native dancer from the Pa-

cific island of Kiribati that is being

inundated by rising sea levels.

The Freiburg Baroque Orches-

tra, which plays with most musi-

cians standing throughout the

three-hour opera, made even these

slight dances sound momentous.

At the end, a Hawaiian dancer in

ceremonial dress, Brittne Ma-

healani Fuimaono, tenderly lifts

Elettra as though raising the dead

with heartbreaking yet hope-giv-

ing grace.

In Wagner’s home

Bayreuth is a very different fes-

tival than Salzburg. Wagner built

this theater for his operas, and only

his operas are performed every

summer, attended with a ritual re-

ligiosity by devotees who plan their

pilgrimage years in advance.

Dress is still mainly formal, even

in hot weather. Mystification is the

business of the Festspielhaus. The

orchestra and conductor work in a

hidden pit. The acoustics are all-

encompassing. There are no sur-

titles, and the program book for-

goes plot synopses. You come

knowing well Wagnerian scripture.

Your free will belongs to the cult.

But Wagner also meant for the-

ater to involve all the arts, and for

many years this has also been a

home for experimental, even radi-

cal and irreverent productions.

The traditional audience boos the

director but comes anyway for the

music.

While it would be difficult to

think of two more different com-

posers than the playful, heavenly,

democratic Mozart and the im-

periously self-consumed Wagner,

there are similarities in their op-

eras. Both composers have a

strong sense the environment, the

necessity for love and an under-

standing of the frailty of mortals

(and, in Wagner’s case, gods).

The “Lohengrin” production

caused a certain amount of bewil-

derment last year. But as the

founder of the L.A. opera company

the Industry, Sharon — like Sell-

ars, the recipient of a MacArthur

“genius” grant — has shown him-

self to be a true Wagnerian en-

tranced by the concept of opera as

a confluence of all the arts op-

erating on a grand scale.

The Bayreuth assignment,

though, was complicated. Sharon

was invited only after the original

director had dropped out and the

painters Neo Rauch and Rosa Loy

had developed a concept for sets

and costumes. From all appear-

ances, Sharon took an already

complicated approach and added

his own philosophical context.

The production is not especially

easy to follow. Lohengrin is no long-

er the white knight of the Holy

Grail who rides in on a swan to save

Elsa, falsely accused of murdering

her younger brother and heir to the

throne of Brabant. Lohengrin is an

electrician come to electrify an

ahistorical, possibly post-apoca-

lyptic, community that has gone

dark. His sword is shaped like a

lightning bolt.

The deal is that Elsa is not sup-

posed to ask who he is and he’ll

marry her and be the people’s sav-

ior. She’s smitten but asks anyway,

and as punishment he leaves her

and Brabant. Not knowing her

place, Elsa has ruined everything

and now, seemingly like Elettra in

“Idomeneo,” has no reason to live.

But thanks to Wagner’s magical re-

alism, her younger brother reap-

pears. He’d been subjected to a

magic spell and, as in “Idomeneo,”

we’re left with the hopes of idealis-

tic young new leaders.

Who has the power?

Of course, Sharon and his de-

sign team are not buying this kind

of patriarchy. For them, Lohengrin

comes to Brabant to empower em-

pire builders and consumers. Elsa

and her brother, Gottfried, are the

generation of creators, activists,

repairers, restorers. The people of

Brabant are sturdy town folk,

stodgily dressed like something

out of a 16th century Flemish paint-

ing. The king sports a cut-out

beard. The men have the wings of

insects on their backs. The set

would work for a Frankenstein

movie, and Elsa’s hairdo looks like

it would be fetching for the mon-

ster’s bride. But the backdrops are

glorious paintings, subtly lighted.

Lohengrin arrives in his work

clothes to turn the power back on.

He clearly has visions of grandeur.

What Elsa needs, however, is not a

hero but an actual fixer.

Musically, Wagner already

makes sure that on their wedding

night everything that can go wrong

in bed does. In this production

there is what looks like a large elec-

tric phallus to which Lohengrin

ties up Elsa and then sits back and

watches impotently. Wouldn’t you

want to know who this weirdo is?

And more to point, shouldn’t we

all want to know where our electric-

ity comes from, and what our sup-

posed technological fixers who act

like heroes are up to?

Black and white sometimes re-

verse in Sharon’s world. Ortrud,

evil in the opera for putting doubt

about Lohengrin in Elsa’s mind, in

fact inspires her to take control of

the situation. Gottfried returns a

little grass-covered green man, and

he and Elsa are left, I’m guessing,

to restore the earth.

Unlike with Sellars’ wholly inte-

grated “Idomeneo” production,

though, Sharon was left with the

sum of disjoint parts, including an

ever-changing and not entirely

sympathetic-seeming cast. An-

nette Dash replaced Anna Netre-

bko in the last two performances

and never got a chance to work

with Sharon. Even so, she did an

admirable job Sunday of convinc-

ingly portraying a both strong and

feminine Elsa.

Tenor Piotr Beczala’s Lohen-

grin was strongly sung if lacking

nuance. Elena Pankratova domi-

nated excellently as an Ortrud

worth paying attention to, and

Tomasz Konieczny made her hus-

band, Friedrich, who loses a battle

to Lohengrin, an unusually effec-

tive tragic figure.

The real dominating presence,

however, was the figure you never

saw until the curtain call. Hidden

away in the pit, Bayreuth’s music

director, Christian Thielemann,

oozed out of the orchestra remark-

ably painterly detail in an almost

hallucinatory slow performance.

On its own, the orchestra in this

hall can become an aural drug. No

matter how much you might ques-

tion Wagner’s intentions dramati-

cally, his music, especially in the

hands of a master like Thielemann,

who is revered in Wagner circles,

the musical intent remains inviola-

ble. Here Lohengrin’s farewell was

of such breathtaking grandiosity

that it undercut what should have

been Elsa’s and Gottfried’s tri-

umph, as if to say the Greens

should not get too smug. Lohen-

grin might just be back someday to

turn the power back on, and this

will start all over again.

No matter. In the end, Sellars

and Sharon practice a new prog-

ressive approach to opera as an

agent for societal transformation

and environmental activism that

goes far beyond the usual directori-

al updating of opera beloved in Eu-

rope, too often for little more than

show-business pizazz. Can we go

so far as to call this a Los Angeles

school of opera? From this side of

the Atlantic, that’s where the big

ideas seem to be coming from.

“IDOMENEO,”as staged by Peter Sellars for the Salzburg Festival in Austria, is swept into an ocean that is roiled by climate change and made toxic with plastics.

Photographs by Ruth WalzSalzburg Festival

No operas like this in L.A.

[Opera, from F1]

SALZBURG’SElettra (Nicole Chevalier), left, Ilia (Ying Fang) and Idamante (Paula Murrihy).