Hauptbuhne Opernhaus, Zurich. Parquet Left (Seat 10-11, CHF 75).
Story. See
previous post.
Lorenzo Viotti – conductor. Werther – Piotr Beczala, Charlotte – Anaik
Morel, Sophie – Melissa Petit, Albert – Andrei Bondarenko, Le Baili – Cheyne
Davidson, Schmidt – Martin Zysset, Johann – Yuriy Tsiple, Brahlmann – Stanislav
Vorobyov, Kathchen – Soyoung Lee.
Other artists: Children’s Chorus of Opera Zurich.
Program for Werther.
This was the second of our five operas. It appears both the Zurich and the Vienna
State Opera companies designated some of the performances for the season as “discount
events.” When I first looked into this
opera (around January) I couldn’t get the link for tickets to respond. Around April 10 that link worked, and seats
that cost over CHF 200 for other performances cost only CHF 75 for this
one. Our seats in Row 10 in the
Orchestra section felt even more “intimate” than last night’s performance.
Again, the singers put in excellent performances. I saw Beczala only one time as Rodolfo in
Luisa Miller, earlier this season, and was very impressed with his
singing. In the smaller auditorium he sounded
even better. All other singers were new
to me, and they again did very well. As
Charlotte, Morel conveyed how she was torn between duty and love in a
sympathetic manner. Petit as Sophie was innocent,
not aware of the issues that were consuming the other characters. There were about six children in the Bailiff’s
family, and they nailed the songs they sang at the beginning of the opera. Albert, Charlotte fiancé and later husband,
was portrayed well by Bondarenko. All the other voices came through clearly, in
no small part due to the volume of the auditorium, no doubt. I can understand why some singers prefer these
smaller European opera houses: they can get through to the audience much easier. That the smaller halls are easier on the
voices is supported by the shorter intermissions (they lasted about 25 minutes
today and last night.)
We saw this opera at the Met with Jonas Kaufman as
Werther and Sophie Koch as Charlotte. From
what I remember of the opera, the emotion built up slowly and didn’t become
frantic until the last act. Here things
for Werther unraveled very quickly as soon as he found out Charlotte was
engaged. As a result, the emotional levels
were very high for most of the opera, which, in my opinion, was difficult to
sustain. It was indeed to Beczala’s
credit that he delivered a moving performance of “Pourquoi me reveiller” with
an admirable dynamic range.
If I had a low opinion of the set for last night’s opera,
tonight’s simply left me scratching my head.
For all the sets and scenes the same basic layout of a room was
used. All the sides, the roof, and the
floor were built from ash-like (faux?) wood.
Different doors open and close as the room was repurposed for different
acts. There were several instances where
extras were left frozen (i.e., not moving) while the singer(s) carried on. There was a scene where several old-looking
people (as far as I could tell, they were old) were put on stage, and one old couple
was in the background during the death scene.
I have no idea why it was necessary to use these actors, perhaps to describe
the love between Charlotte and Werther would last a long time? That death did not diminish that love? No matter what reason I could give, it didn’t
work. One child was in a wheelchair.
I just read through my writeup of the Met Werther, which
we saw in 2014. I was quite critical of
that performance, but pointed out how I liked the cleverly designed sets, and
that Kaufman and Koch were good. I didn’t
have to read the review to remember I didn’t like the death scene, probably
muttering to myself “please die already” as the duet dragged on. Today’s Werther found enough energy to stand
up to do the singing, which made the scene actually quite bearable, and
enjoyable to the extent death scenes can be enjoyed. For the background (seen through the open
windows and doors) stars and the earth were projected as background, again
puzzling.
Even without the better death scene, I would have rated
tonight’s performance better than the Met one. The passage of time probably eroded some of
the negativity I associated with the Met performance.
Oh, and there was this clock on the wall. It would speed up a few hours to denote evening
progressing into night, and the clock case served as the gun storage
cabinet. Not as puzzling as the clock
last night, but still somewhat so. It
just occurred to me: the Swiss are known for their timepieces, so they don’t
need much reason to put in a time piece of some kind.
Curtain Call. This room is the set for all the acts. Notice the old couple (3rd and 4th from left). The young conductor is flanked by Morel and Bezcala.
After the curtain call, some person came on stage and said a lot of things in German, the gist of which was both the conductor Viotti and the tenor Beczala won recent awards in London as "artists of the year." Viotti looked very young (born in 1990) and this was his debut series at the Zurich opera house. And it appears Beczala built his reputation at the Zurich Opera.
It was around 5 pm when we got out of the Opera
House. The Yangs and we went and had a
quick dinner at Nordsee in the main train station.
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