Tristan und Isolde by Mariusz Treliński

Mariusz Treliński was movie-star good looking when I met him in the Kennedy Center foyer ahead of his first U.S. appearance in 2001. The acclaimed Polish film director had attracted the attention of then-Washington Opera director Placido Domingo with his innovative production of Puccini's Madama Butterfly in Poland and Domingo invited him to stage it in the U.S. That event changed Treliński's life forever. Since then he has directed operas in several major U.S. cities, and many others in various countries. His operatic journey has culminated with the production of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde for the opening of the Metropolitan Opera's new season.

Treliński's Butterfly was the first truly exciting opera production I had seen in Washington and, I thought, one with uniquely central European uncluttered esthetic. Although it is my least favorite opera, that one production of it remains memorable thanks to Treliński's genius.

In our interview that October of 2001, he told me (surprise, surprise) that the role of the opera director today is to make an old art form attractive to contemporary audiences, while retaining the original spirit of the work. He achieved that by making simple effects highly symbolic. Instead of recreating the early 20th century Nagasaki, he used lights to create images of shimmering water, boats silhouetted against the setting sun, the flow of Butterfly's blood. There were very few props. The stage was almost always bare, but never less than striking.

In a hitherto uncustomary prologue to the opening scene, three Polish mimes tiptoed over the dark and silent stage making grand theatrical movements at a slow pace as if performing some macabre dance. One of them slashed the air with a long knife. It was clear from their ominous expressions there will be no happy ending to the story.

The mimes reappeared throughout the opera in different roles - as servants, thieves, ghosts or spirits depicting Butterfly's moods - their movements and expressions reminiscent of the traditional Japanese kabuki theater. Similarly, Goro moved around the stage in bows and squats like an oversized sneaky cat with gestures and facial expressions that conveyed his shrewd and manipulative character better than words.

In the last highly symbolic scene the sky turned bright orange-red due to the eclipse of the sun. For Butterfly, the sun was gone with Pinkerton, said Treliński. "Butterfly sacrificed everything for the man she loved because she saw him as God. And that was her sin," he said. "Her excessive love for a man violated the first of the Ten Commandments."

The success of that production was such that Treliński got invited to return to Washington with his next creative endeavor, Andrea Chenier - also a very symbolic rendition, but in my view less focused and less memorable than his Butterfly. From the first act showing the nobility wrapped up in their cocoons (which I liked), the scene changed to something like an American country fair (which I didn't like), and the rest I forgot.

Treliński reappeared in the U.S. a few years later with productions of La Bohème and Don Giovanni that were not well received, and then I heard nothing of him, until he reappeared in New York in last season's spell-binding Met productions of Iolanta and Bluebird's Castle. The double bill performance made it crystal clear that during a decade and a half since his Butterfly in Washington, the Polish director had moved on. In his hands and Anna Netrebko's interpretation, the usually kitschy and pathetic princess Iolanta became a passionate young girl striving for independence and awareness. But it was in Bluebird's Castle, that Trelinski and his designer Boris Kudlička really outdid themselves. The double bill production was described as film noir, and seeing it in a movie theater as I did, was probably more impressive than seeing the live performance on account of the copious use of cinematic effects. Treliński believes that fairy tales always contain deeper levels and he is a master of unveiling them. He said he wanted the fairy-tale women to become real - the characters we can identify with. Both pieces were spectacularly successful, although for me Bluebird remains especially unique and unforgettable. It created a sense for the audience of being in a nightmare together with the performers. 

No wonder the Met snatched the talented Pole again for this season and this time with an offer he could not refuse. What can be more flattering for an opera director than an  invitation to present his vision of Tristan und Isolde and in no less than one of the world's top opera houses.

Photo: Ken Howard for the MetropolitanOpera

This time around the reviews were not unanimously complimentary. Some critics thought the modern warship setting and various video projections were unnecessary and distracting. One reviewer particularly hated references to Tristan's early loss of parents. None of this bothered me. I found Trelinski's contemporary setting as acceptable as any, and in an opera without too much action, an occasional appearance of Tristan's father's ghost, or some image from his childhood did not take away anything from the beauty of the music or from the central theme. The military costumes were not a novelty either. In fact, I was surprised to find this production of Wagner's work a lot less revolutionary than expected from such an innovator as Trelinski.

Still, his interpretation did reveal at least one new layer of Tristan for me. While for years I watched the opera as a great love story, this Saturday at a movie theater I saw it for the first time as an opera about death. Partly, it must have been due to the dark setting which highlighted all the talk about hating daylight and embracing night, and seeking relief in the blackness of the netherworld. But I am sure the shift in my perception was a great deal due to the protagonists who in this performance were anything but lovers. I have never been Nina Stemme's fan and no amount of imagination or goodwill on my part could turn Stuart Skelton into Tristan. To make matters worse, there was zero chemistry between the two. The only interpreters worth sitting through four hours of this opera were Ekaterina Gubanova, a convincing and lovable Brangäne - the best I've ever seen - and René Pape as dignified King Marke. Gubanova also never looked better. Neil Cooper's Melot was noteworthy, although less so.

Tristan und Isolde may be about death, but it is still primarily about star-crossed lovers - definitely not about their companions and relatives, and so despite Trelinski's effort and overall decent singing, this production fell flat.

First Day: Die Walküre

Wagner stipulated that his tetralogy is to be performed in three days and one preliminary evening. In this scheme of things, the first of the four operas, Das Rheingold, is a prologue. I don't quite get the logic of it, but nevertheless, this somehow puts Die Walküre in the first place. Indeed, it is the most popular and best known of the four Ring operas. Perhaps that's why it opened with more fanfare (literally) on Monday than the "prologue" two days ago.

Ring's "First Day" opens with fanfare on Alpenhorns

After seeing Christine Goerke in Florencia an el Amazonas a few years ago, I said she was my new favorite soprano. So when it was announced that she would replace the indisposed Catherine Foster as Brünhilde at least for the evening, I was curious but admittedly a little suspicious, despite her reputation as a Wagnerian. Florencia is one thing and Brünhilde quite another, and my taste rarely conforms with reviewers' opinions.

Well, Goerke dispelled any doubt I might have had when she hurtled onto the stage, seemingly from a riding session, for a meeting with her father. She was in excellent voice, sang effortlessly throughout, and her presence was electrifying after a somewhat disappointing Siegmund/Sieglinde duo (Christopher Ventris and Meagan Miller). It is a pity that Goerke's expressive voice was drowned by the orchestra in some of the most sensitive moments of her encounter with Siegmund.

Another star of the evening for me was Alan Held as Wotan. From a ruthless god in Das Rheingold he transitioned into a father torn between love and duty. His torment after killing out-of-wedlock son Siegmund is so genuine that I felt a lump swelling in my throat and I am far from sentimental. He was equally poignant in his farewell to Brünhilde. When I first saw Held's Wotan, he turned from the charming young seducer of Das Rheingold into a more mature man/god of Die Walküre and finally into an old tramp in Siegfried. This time around he displayed a more profound understanding of Wotan's character and his dilemmas. 

As heralded in Das Rheingold, Francesca Zambello's "American Ring" has undergone a lot of refinement since I last saw it. The popular ride of the Valkyres, with warrior women parachuting onto the stage, was spectacular and a clear favorite with the audience. I liked the way the uniformed women lined up before Wotan as if he were their military commander, not father. Real German shepherds were running across the stage to sniff out the runaway twins. And Wotan lit real fire around his disobedient daughter. That last scene was not only spectacular but a little frightening too.

Closing scene from Die Walküre was encored in my kitchen 

Some of the things that bothered my the first time around were still there and now I know why. When Placido Domingo sang Siegmund in the earlier production, I remember thinking: well, hasn't he aged, look at how his shoulders are stooped! But when I saw the same hump on a much younger Christopher Ventris on Monday, I had a better view from a seat closer to the stage, and saw that the problem was in the coat, not Domingo's back. The coat has a pleat in the upper back that opens when the singer bends, making him look like a hunchback. Hasn't the designer noticed that with all the bending between Siegmund and Sieglinde?

A propos bending, I used to think that Anja Kampe (WNO's 2007 Sieglinde) was unable to assume more than two different postures on the stage: one with her arms wrapped around her waist, the other with her arms spread out; both while leaning heavily forward. I was therefore surprised to see her as a seductive and quite creative Tosca two years ago in Berlin. Miller's Sieglinde on Monday showed a wider range of motion and expression than Kampe's, but bending forward was her main shtick as well, suggesting it has more to do with die Regie than the interpreter.

New patrons probably won't notice any of this as they get carried away by the drama unfolding on the stage. Zambello's concept of Americanizing The Ring worked very well in Die Walküre as it did in Das Rheingold, and how could it not with our CEO's acting like gods, many of our young people serving in the military, numerous children being abandoned by parents and women still being punished for being assertive. The first scene of Act I could be taking place in the Appalachia, or in any remote, gun-toting community that abides by its own laws and honor code. The encounter between Wotan and Fricka could have been a scene from a convincing new version of Citizen Cane.

In answer to the traditionalists who reject Wotan in a three-piece suit, here's how Sir Denis Forman paraphrases Wotan in A Night at the Opera: "I won the world by making some pretty dodgy deals with certain doubtful operators" and "I can't attack Fafner because the deal I did with him specifically excludes aggression." Forman was born in 1917 and the book is from 1994. We are in 2016 if I am not mistaken.

Wagner's impact is powerful - I was only too aware of it when the smell from my kitchen  back home reminded me that I had forgotten to turn off the stove before leaving for the opera. During the five-hour absence, what was supposed to be a home made beef soup turned into a pile of charcoals at the bottom of the pot.  My apprehension about the stage fire was actually a premonition.

On Oedipus, Wagner and GSA

As Washington is getting ready for its first-ever full cycle of Wagner's Ring tetralogy, the British news media are aflush with a story of incestuous love between a mother and son, reunited after years of separation. The son who had been put up for adoption more than 30 years ago, found the mother during his search for biological parents and when he found her, the two fell madly in love. Now the couple is planning to get married and try for a child. They say their relationship is not incest, but a case of GSA, or "genetic sexual attraction."

I have noticed the story from London's Daily Mail on Facebook because of the avalanche of disgust, revulsion and disbelief it has unleashed in Croatia. The reaction must have been similar elsewhere. In the article, the British daily also includes an interview with an Australian father and daughter, both adults, who live as a couple and claim to be happy and enjoying great sex.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3529572/I-m-love-son-want-baby-Mother-falls-son-gave-adoption-32-years-ago.html 

Britain's Independent soon published more on the topic under the headline Gran and Grandson, Brother and Sister, Father and Daughter - the Weird World of Genetic Sexual Attraction.  The phenomenon reportedly afflicts especially family members who have long been separated.

Stories of incest under any name have always fascinated the world, in the way horror stories do.  The couples inspire hatred or pity, depending on whether they have entered the "sinful" liaison willingly or inadvertently.  Take for example Oedipus, the mythological king of Thebes from the ancient Greek drama that gave us the term Oedipus Complex. The tragic hero kills his father and marries his mother, but is as horrified as everyone else when he finds out what he has done. So he blinds himself and leaves Thebes for exile until he is somewhat rehabilitated in the second installment of the Sophocles's trilogy. But his burial place has to remain secret so as not to cause bad luck.

Siegfried, the central hero in Wagner's Nibelung Ring, is the son of twins Siegmund and Sieglinde, who were separated as children and reunited after Sieglinde was already married to Hunding. Although the siblings' father, Valhalla's chief god Wotan, condones their sexual relationship because he expects them to beget a perfect hero needed to save the gods, he is forced to punish his out-of-wedlock children at the request of his legitimate wife Fricka. But Siegfried, the fruit of the incestuous union, himself falls in love and marries a long-lost aunt, Bruenhilde. Naturally, there is no happy end there either.

Wagner, The Valkyrie, Act I finale:  Twins Siegmund and Sieglinde fall in love - photo Cory Weaver for SFO

The Sophocles drama as well as Wagner's Ring are entrenched in their status as the world's immortal classics. They serve to remind that "unnatural" sexual relationships can only end in tragedy.

In real life, it is a little different. In ancient Egypt, it was not uncommon for brothers and sisters to marry if it was in their interest. Cleopatra was first married to one of her brothers before replacing him with Roman conqueror Julius Caesar in a union that gave her more power. Until quite recently, it was perfectly acceptable for cousins in some European countries to marry.  Even Queen Victoria was related to her beloved consort Albert.  

Sexual relationships and marriages between close relatives have been shunned mostly because of the possibility of inbreeding. One of my most beloved fictional characters, Ursula Iguarian from Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, feared one of her children would be born with a pig's tail because she was married to a cousin.

The stigma attached to sex between close relatives compels those involved to keep it tightly under wraps, giving the impression that it occurs very seldom and only among mentally disturbed people. If a couple is discovered, the older, and presumably more experienced participant is accused of abuse. The younger is advised to seek counseling in order to avoid lifelong psychological consequences.

But sexual relationships between family members are not as uncommon as we would like to believe, and are often consensual.  They are not always a result of lengthy separation either.  Many daughters fall in love with their fathers and want sex with them, at least for a while, and sons also fall in love with their mothers.  In most cases, the attraction is suppressed and eventually outgrown, but not always.  Louis Malle's movie Murmur of the Heart deals with a mother-son relationship, which culminates in an unplanned sex encounter.  The next morning the mother tells the son "I don't want you to be unhappy, or ashamed, or sorry. We'll remember it as a very beautiful and solemn moment that will never happen again..." The experience seems to have liberated the socially awkward boy and prepared him for a more conventional relationship. Though uncomfortable to watch, the movie showed normal people in somewhat extraordinary, but still realistic situations.

In the news media, however, such stories reek of sensationalism and are intended to shock, horrify, repulse and fascinate at the same time. They suggest aberration and depravity - something that does not happen to normal people. When it does, it has to remain a dirty little secret. One person recently revealed in a chat forum that she had been involved in a sexual relationship with her brother for several years before both of them grew out of it and married other people.

"I mostly feel guilty because people say I should," she wrote. "I thought it was pretty great at the time, but it's hard to talk about it without people smashing the stigma in your face. Overall, I don't think it's that big of a deal, really. It was great at the time, nowadays I don't think much about it."

So, if there is lifelong trauma from having consensual sex with a close family member, it seems to stem from the social condemnation rather than from the relationship itself.   

People tend to express disgust for behavior veering away from proscribed social norms, and they like to make it illegal and punishable.  Same-sex marriage was all but unthinkable until recently, and not so long ago, gay and lesbian sex was widely considered to be unnatural. Even heterosexual sex between unmarried couples is still punishable by death in many traditional societies.  In the United States and other western countries, there is a growing movement toward tolerance of diversity in the area of gender and relationships, but now that the same-sex marriage is widely accepted, there seems to be a search for new monsters in the closet.

Meanwhile, the tickets for Washington's first complete Ring cycle are all but sold out. When Wagner's masterpiece starts to weave its magic in the Kennedy Center Opera House, few patrons will stop to think whether Siegfried and Bruenhilde are committing incest or just suffering from GSA.

Kirill Petrenko Takes Over Berlin Philharmonic

Last week the world's most renowned orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, announced that Russian conductor Kirill Petrenko would succeed Sir Simon Rattle as music director in August of 2018. The news did not take America by storm.  Few people ever even heard of him.  I have been confusing him with Vasily Petrenko.  So when I received an excited e-mail from a Russian friend who otherwise never e-mails, saying "Wow! This is quite incredible; after Furtwangler, Karajan, Abbado, and Rattle, now this orchestra will be led by a man of the Russian-Jewish (and Soviet) upbringing - a rare moment these days when one can be proud to be Russian,"  I had to Google Petrenko to establish which one he was talking about.

There is actually no reason why Kirill Petrenko should be little known in the United States. When he performed here with the Cleveland Orchestra in 2009 and with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2012, he received generally glowing reviews. He conducted Mussorgsky’s “Khovanschina” at the Metropolitan Opera in 2012 also with great acclaim.

According to Zachary Woolfe of the New York Times: "Perhaps the most impressive performance was Mr. Petrenko’s. The orchestra rose to powerful climaxes, but in quieter, conversational moments he held the sound carefully below the singers. His pacing was controlled but flexible, ebbing, flowing and inexorably building under Shaklovity’s dark monologue bemoaning the state of Russia."

Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, 2012

But Petrenko's performances in the U.S. have not been announced with great pomp as those of his compatriot Valery Gergiev, who enjoys a celebrity status here.  Petrenko seems to be far more appreciated in Europe where he is best known as an opera conductor.  In the past couple of years he has enjoyed success as the music director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich.  His take  on Wagner’s “Ring” at the Bayreuth Festival in 2013 also was admired.

Gergiev has conducted some of the best orchestras in the world and there is no doubt that if he wanted to leave Russia for a prestigious position anywhere in the world, he could, said Washington-based Russia analyst Peter Eltsov. "Yet Gergiev has lent his art and his name to raising the profile of his political patron, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, " Eltsov said in an article on Gergiev in The Atlantic magazine.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/07/russias-hero-of-labor-comes-to-washington/277735/

Petrenko on the other hand has remained silent regarding his stance on Putin’s policies. As far as I am concerned, he can stay that way. When I listen to music I don't want to have to worry whether the performer has been politically correct or not. Gergiev is one of my most favorite contemporary conductors and he became one before I knew anything about his political sympathies. I enjoyed every performance he conducted here in Washington and in terms of recordings, I think he energizes anything he conducts, regardless of how many flaws some critics find.  

I also consider Furtwangler's "Ring" the best on record and enjoy most of what Karajan conducted.  Both have been suspected or openly accused of Nazi sympathies.  Should I shun them?  Perhaps.  But some of my best friends also have what many would consider unacceptable political opinions.   I still love them just don't discuss politics with them.  I like to think that art, friendship and love are eternal and celestial. Politics is earthly and passing.

Still it will be easier to listen to Petrenko without having to worry about what he thinks of Putin.

He will be the first Russian-born conductor, as well as the first Jewish one, to take the job in the orchestra’s 133-year history.  It would appear that he beat German Christian Thielemann and Latvian Andris Nelsons, for the lofty position in Berlin.

“Words cannot express my feelings, everything from euphoria and great joy to awe and disbelief,” Petrenko said. “I am aware of the responsibility and high expectations, and I will do everything in my power to be a worthy conductor of this outstanding orchestra.”

"He has led the Berlin Philharmonic only three times before, choosing the eclectic repertoire including music by Bartok, Rachmaninov, Stravinsky and Scriabin. He can be expected to move the orchestra away from the Germanic masterpieces at the core of its repertoire," The New York Times said. I will be looking forward to following that development.

To clarify any confusion with Kirill's namesake: Vasily Petrenko is Chief Conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Music Director of the Oslo Philharmonic.

He has recently caused a hoopla by telling the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten that orchestras “react better” when the conductor is a man. “When women get a family, it becomes difficult to be as dedicated as the job demands,” he added, joining the army of politically incorrect artists.