Stylishly Irrelevant
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Strauss' Arabella
Florentine Klepper | Christian Thielemann
When the Berliner Philharmoniker announced its decision to abandon the Salzburg Easter Festival after more than four decades, the shock-waves could be felt across the Continent. But in a compensating surprise move, executive director Peter Alward wasted no time in netting Christian Thielemann and the Dresdener Staatskapelle to fill the brief.
Just two years down the track, the Staatskapelle’s rich, traditional sound and Thielemann’s reputation for conservatism give every appearance of being a good match for the Salzburg Easter Festival’s well-heeled audience. Last year’s Parsifal production made up in musical richness for what it lacked in dramatic plausibility, but left the field wide open for a better opera staging in 2014.
Whatever else it might be, Arabella is certainly not that.
Richard Strauss’ final opera with librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, written for the Staatskapelle and first performed in Dresden, is arguably in need of renewal. Von Hoffmannsthal died before he could re-work his patchy libretto with the composer, and even Strauss compared it negatively to his other operas. The plot, of a nobleman fallen on hard times auctioning off his headstrong daughter to the highest bidder, is a hard one to sell today’s public.
Salzburg does not even try. Alone by casting Renée Fleming and Thomas Hampson as the work’s passionate young lovers, the Festival has opted for crowd-pleasing names rather than artistic truth. Young director Florentine Klepper never had a chance; even if her concept had been revolutionary, which it was not, she could not have wooed these veterans away from their standard rituals and towards something new or fresh.
Kleppner and her team move the action forward from 1860 to 1910, with a chandelier and the elegant rooms of fin-de-siècle art nouveau. If there was a point to this temporal shift, it was not evident. Nor does a break in the back wall of Martina Segna’s sets in the middle of the second act for a touch of surreal elevator symbolism in any way relieve the general tedium.
The point ought to be Thielemann’s lush sound, his lavish precision, the burnished warmth of the Staatskapelle under his high romantic direction. But even this goes awry. The Festspielhaus is too big for the piece, and Thielemann, perhaps in a bid to fill it with sound, thrashes the orchestra well beyond the point of refinement. Many entries are rough, and the singers often struggle to be heard.
To struggle would be beneath Fleming’s dignity, so she remains stylishly inaudible for much of the evening, and of course incomprehensible throughout - diction is not her strong point. This is her signature role, and her focus is on Arabella’s self-reflection and capacity for nuance. Along the way she loses vitality and charisma, beautifying herself into blandness. Hampson, never an ideal Mandryka, sounds depressingly past his prime, husbanding his failing resources with a calculated poise quite at odds with his character’s rustic boldness.
Hanna-Elisabeth Müller as Arabella’s reluctantly cross-dressing sister Zdenka brings much-needed freshness to the evening, with singing that is clear, lyrical and courageous; she is well-matched by Daniel Behle’s Matteo, an equally bold account of a dangerous role. Their recklessness pays off in spades. If only the rest of the Festival could follow their lead.
Just a few weeks after Easter, Peter Alward announced his intention not to continue in his Salzburg job after 2015. That hardly constitutes a vote of confidence for Thielemann and his Dresden regime.
photo | ©Forster
