Salzburg Festival, 2018
Mariss Jansons, Hans Neuenfels, Brandon Jovanovich, Vladislav Sulimsky, Igor Golovatenko, Evgenia Muraveva, Oksana Volkova, Hanna Schwarz, Alexander Kravets, Stanislav Trofimov, Gleb Peryazev, Pavel Petrov, Margarita Nekrasova, Oleg Zalytskiy, Vasilisa Berzhanskaya, Yulia Suleimanova, Imola Kacso, Márton Gláser, Juan Aguila Cuevas
Medici.tv - 16 August 2018
No matter how familiar you might be with an opera, there is always the potential for a new production to bring something new out of it. Mariss Jansons exploring the richness Tchaikovsky is always a great experience, finding a human warmth in it where other conductors find Russian coldness and stiff formality. Both aspects are actually present in The Queen of Spades and Jansons controls and paces wonderfully to bring that out here in Salzburg, as he has done elsewhere.
A good director can also find something new and surprising to explore in the work of a great composer, and while he can be controversial and somewhat 'out there' at times, the very least you can say about Hans Neuenfels is that he has a unique vision that will be quite unlike any other interpretation of the work. Expectations and conventions must be put aside as you never know what will come next, and it can be very revealing to see a familiar work afresh, as it were, see it from a different perspective. If a work is rich enough, it is capable of endlessly revealing new truths and interpretations.
Even a work that is ostensibly a ghost story? Yes, certainly. Stefan Herheim most recently and convincingly demonstrated how much of Tchaikovsky (it's a lot!) is in The Queen of Spades at the Dutch National Opera (soon to be transferring to the Royal Opera House), again with Mariss Jansons conducting there. Hans Neuenfels not unexpectedly has an entirely different outlook on the opera for the 2018 Salzburg production, but surprisingly, while abstraction holds out over naturalism in the set designs, he sticks fairly closely to the stage directions, finding other ways to delve deeply into the subject and themes of the work.
And to some extent that is determined by the variety of tones, by the hot and cold nature of the work itself that Jansons brings out here, from the heat of passion to the chilling cold-bloodedness of murder and ghostly revenge. As with his Lohengrin for Bayreuth, those divisions are expressed visually in a black-and-white manner, and the chorus also have an important role to play in highlighting those extremes between the darkness of inner torment and the longing for the light of purity and innocence.
That's brought out right upfront in the opening scene of The Queen of Spades, where the children's chorus are subjected to almost militaristic control. It's always been a strange way to open and it doesn't seem to have much direct relevance to anything else that develops in the opera unless you contrast it with other parallel and equivalent scenes. For Hans Neuenfels, that's a matter of setting things in black or white, so the children are all dressed in white, while Liza, Pauline and her 'Circle of Friends', in the following scene quite literally form a circle, dressed in black like some kind of secret society. Pauline's song of life's morning looking towards the grave certainly takes on a different complexion here.
Quite what this contrast is precisely trying to say is hard to pin down and it seems a little reductive - as it often did in his Bayreuth Lohengrin - to mark divisions this way, but it is effective and makes an impression that forces you to reconsider how you look at the opera. What it does clearly mark out however is the contrast between how Hermann (in red) and the Countess dress colourfully in contrast to everyone else. The key to this can perhaps be found in the nurses with the children and with Liza's governess's words to her and her friends, that you must follow the "rules of society", know what is "proper and right" and "observe the conventions". Hermann and the Countess lie outside those strict black and white principles.
The structure of the work and its music also throws up such contrasts, from singing about happy days and enjoyment of life to being besieged by sudden storms, and that is the kind of emotional turmoil that Liza (who wears both black and white) seems to be most susceptible to. Hermann is just another blazing, burning ember on the fire of the confusion, uncertainty and naivety that lies with her, attractive and exciting in how he acts and behaves in a way that lies totally outside those normal rules of acceptable social behaviour.
If Neuenfels breaks the work down into such abstract terms while still holding to the familiar dramatic line, it's supported well by Jansons' elegant and passionate response to the music, alive to the precision of detail within it. The human element is brought out much more effectively by the characterisation and performances of a cast that boasts two exceptional leads in Brandon Jovanovich and Evgenia Muraveva as Hermann and Liza. I've become too used to Misha Didyk monopolising the role recently, but Jovanovich brings a much more lyrical and sympathetic interpretation to the madness of Hermann. Muraveva brings out Liza's innocence likewise in a sympathetic manner and sings marvellously, her Act III aria on the bridge absolutely heart-breaking.
With secondary roles all well cast and sung and a strong chorus that expresses all the variety of colour in the work with its little Pastorale and other diversions, this is an outstanding production at Salzburg that dispenses with operatic mannerisms, touches on its deeper themes and makes the ghost story at the centre of the work feel real and truly tragic.
Links: Salzburg Festspiele
