Upiór w operze

Helmut Stürmer died last October, less than two months after the premiere of Pompeo Magno at Bayreuth Baroque. He designed the sets for Cavalli’s opera and, two years before that, to Handel’s Flavio – two productions, directed by Max Emanuel Cenčić, which are among the most wonderful theatrical experiences of my life. Stürmer was born in Timișoara, the former capital of the multiethnic Banat region, a city called, not without reason, a “little Vienna”. He was a descendant of the Danube Swabians, brought to the region during the reign of the Habsburgs. When he decided to emigrate to West Germany, he was not yet forty and the Ceaușescu regime was at its peak. Critics would later write that his set designs were seductive and sensual, referring, without nostalgia, to an order that was no longer there. According to the Romanian-born French theatre scholar Georges Banu, he was the most important collaborator of the Romanian visionary Silviu Purcărete, with whom he worked on over thirty productions, including operatic ones. Their legendary Faust, after Goethe, in which Stürmer was responsible not only for the sets, but also for the lighting, was performed over three hundred times all over the world.

That is why I wondered for months how Cenčić would be able to stage Handel’s Flavio, for I suspect that Stürmer managed to prepare only an outline of a vision of his next project for Bayreuth Baroque. In the end it was completed by Corina Gramosteanu, author of the costume designs for the above-mentioned two productions at the Margravial Opera House. The end result is a staging that is visually more understated, uses elements of Stürmer’s previous designs, but above all is surprisingly dark. The reason may be not just the director’s quite intriguing concept (of which more later), but simply grief over the death of the great set designer, whose imagination and sense of theatre undoubtedly contributed to the extraordinary success of the young festival.

Floridante was premiered in 1721, at a time when Handel began to seriously worry about competition from Bononcini, who captivated the King’s Theatre regulars with the simplicity of his memorable tunes, enchanting melodiousness of phrasing and transparency of texture. Handel decided to pander to the public’s taste and write an opera that would be as popular as the works of his rival. The success was tremendous: in its first season Floridate was performed twenty-two times and there were several revivals in the composer’s lifetime. However, it was later forgotten and failed to arouse much interest among contemporary performers, complaining about its dramaturgical weakness, absurdity of the libretto as well as lack of psychological depth in the characters.

Floridante. Sonja Runje (Elmira), Max Emanuel Cenčić (Floridante, Eva Zalenga (Rossane), and Bruno de Sá (Timante). Photo: Clemens Manser

Yet this did not stop musicologists from trying to decipher the opera’s political allusions. Some saw Oronte, a character blinded by greed, as a reference to John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough and Bononcini’s patron, while others formulated the rather far-fetched theory that Oronte the usurper represented the “foreign” King George of the House of Hanover; however, they were unable to explain why Handel would have endorsed a lampoon directed at his compatriot and undoubted benefactor. Let me add my two cents’ worth from a Central European perspective and cautiously suggest that the composer and his librettist, Paolo Antonio Rolli, were seeking to “depoliticise” the original work – that is, Francesco Silvani’s libretto – and set it in a safer context in order to avoid any potential trouble. The original piece, entitled La costanza in trionfo, was used in a 1696 Venetian opera by Marc’Antonio Ziani, in which the Persian king Oronte is called Gustavo and is a Norwegian “tyrant”, Floridante is called Sveno and is a Sarmatian prince, while his prisoner Lotario – Timante in Rolli’s version – is a mysterious French aristocrat. What if Silvani was making loose references to the events of the Swedish Deluge from a few decades earlier, with the “tyrant” being modelled on Charles X Gustav, who came to power in a kingdom that had acquired vast Norwegian territories following the Treaty of Brömsebro? If so, then the Sarmatian prince may have been one of the Polish magnates who at the beginning of the Swedish invasion naively sided with the King of Sweden and only later came to their senses, and Lotario – one of the French diplomats who helped bring about the Peace of Oliwa ending the long Polish-Swedish conflict. The problem is that Charles Gustav came from the same line of the House of Wittelsbach that brought George I to the British throne… In such a case shifting the action to ancient Persia would have been a sensible move, especially as the first wave of the popularity of One Thousand and One Nights was sweeping across the British Isles at the time.

We can come up with countless hypotheses and each would contain some gaps, which is why Cenčić decided to leave politics aside and take the sociological-moral approach, presenting Floridate as a story of a conflict between a sense of duty towards norms imposed by society and the right to choose one’s own path to happiness. Instead of looking for psychological depth in the three main male characters, he focused instead on the female protagonists of the opera: Rossane, Oronte’s daughter, in despair over the annulment of her betrothal to Timante, the defeated Prince of Tyre, and, above all, on her alleged sister Elmira, waiting for her promised marriage to General Floridante, who is returning from the victorious conquests with the Persian king’s army. The dashed matrimonial hopes of Rossane, who fails to recognise Timante in the captive named Gilcone, presented to her by the general, pale in comparison with the true tragedy of Elmira – first separated from Floridante, who falls out of favour with the king, then made to realise by Oronte that she is not his real daughter, finally terrorised by her stepfather, who intends to marry her.

Cenčić has rightly found similar dilemmas in the world of legal and social constraints of Jane Austen’s novels. However, while the decision to move the action – following the example of librettists of the past – to a different period seems entirely justified, the director’s suggestion in the programme notes that Elmira’s misfortunes can be compared to the fate of Anastasia Robinson, the first performer of the role, who entered into a socially unacceptable marriage with Charles Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough, seems to be a superfluous alibi. The couple lived separately; Mordaunt acknowledged his wife shortly before his death; for more than a decade everybody had been convinced that Robinson was his mistress and this gave rise to numerous scandals as well as accusations of hypocrisy levelled at the singer, when she rejected inappropriate advances of the castrato Senesino, who sang the role of Floridante at the premiere.

Floridante. Sonja Runje and Gerrit Illenberger (Oronte). Photo: Clemens Manser

Let me repeat once again: we should not take the creative team’s explanations too much to heart, but judge their efforts from the perspective of our knowledge and sensibility. I will ignore the critical comments of some members of the audience who did not sense the atmosphere of Austen’s favourite books in Cenčić’s staging. They did not sense it, for the director drew primarily on the novel Mansfield Park, too hermetic for modern readers and, consequently, the most difficult in the English writer’s entire oeuvre. Hence the dark mood of the director’s story, set in  Stürmer’s monumental sets, expressively lit by Christoph Pöschko and brilliantly evoking the atmosphere of a wealthy landowner’s residence; hence the allusions to the psychopathic personality of a tyrant, emphasised by Domenica Regkou’s performance in the silent role of Oronte’s mistreated wife; hence the puzzling reactions of Rossane and Elmira, just as indifferent to their mother’s death as Sir Bertram’s daughters were when they heard of their father’s move to Antigua in Mansfield Park. There is no shortage of comic elements in the production – including the frail Timante’s struggles with an enormous umbrella held above the eponymous hero’s head, as well as the pantomime interludes featuring actors, which are characteristic of Cenčić’s style and serve to complement the narrative. This time, however, they were overshadowed by scenes straight out of a thriller: Oronte’s rape of Elmira, the violence against Floridante, and the regicide – which does not appear in the libretto – carried out to the rhythm of clubs furiously struck on the stage floor.

Despite the seemingly radical departures from the text of the opera, the staging is surprisingly coherent and there is no dissonance between what can be seen and the words uttered by the singers. This may be the greatest achievement of the director, who has managed to remove from Floridate the stigma of being a dramaturgically weak work with a plot convoluted to the point of absurdity. The work’s dramaturgy lies primarily in the music, which was expertly highlighted by Markellos Chrysiccos conducting the whole from the harpsichord. It was probably a good decision to choose the Wrocław Baroque Orchestra as this year’s festival resident ensemble: Floridante, a work that has been overlooked for years, calls for precisely such an ensemble – one that is flexible and responsive to the cues of a conductor with whom it does not work on a daily basis. Rediscovery of forgotten works is better served by rhythmic precision, conscious phrasing and lively pulse rather than by a desire to stamp an ensemble’s uniqueness on a performance. I am delighted that Violetta Szopa-Tomczyk, a pupil of Martyna Pastuszka, was at the first violin desk. She is a concertmistress in the truest sense of the word, combining virtuosity and a keen sense of style with an ability to inspire the rest of the musicians. Special praise should also go to the superbly prepared twelve-strong festival chorus.

Christophe Dumaux. Photo: Clemens Manser

Among the soloists I was struck by two carefully selected pairs of protagonists – Eva Zalenga and Bruno de Sá in the soprano roles of Rossane and Timante, as well as the contralto Sonja Runje and the countertenor Max Cenčić in the “more weighty” roles of Elmira and Floridante. All four gave exemplary performances, to say the least, although in Act I Zalenga’s voice sounded a bit too much soubrette-like; Runje, with her sensual, melancholic alto, was more consistent, but here and there she lacked volume and, consequently, expressive power (which, fortunately, did not apply to the extraordinary, superbly interpreted arioso “Notte cara” with its sudden change of mood in the accompagnato). Cenčić did not come into his own vocally until towards the end of Act I (in the exquisite duet with Elmira “Ah, mia cara”), but throughout the performance he consistently built up the character of an indomitable, dignified lover, right up to the harrowing prison scene in Act III. The brightest star in the cast was, however, Bruno de Sá, whose beautiful, technically phenomenal soprano voice has developed over recent seasons into a voice that finally gives us an idea of what soprano castratos might have sounded like on stage. I was less impressed by the other soloists: the decent but not particularly expressive Gerrit Illenberger as Oronte, a role that is a bit too low for him, and Yannis François, whose voice is quite nice but definitely too feeble for the high bass role of the satrap Coralbo.

Bruno de Sá, Wrocław Baroque Orchestra and Pedro Beriso. Photo: Clemens Manser

I decided to complement another opera premiere at Bayreuth Baroque with three vocal recitals, but not everything went according to plan. I missed the performance by the countertenor Maximiliano Danta, winner of the 2024 Cesti Competition, due to disruption on the German rail network. Christophe Dumaux’s recital, featuring Les Accents, left me with mixed feelings – the evening, devoted to musical images of nature in Handel’s music, was dominated by the French ensemble led by the phenomenal violinist Thibault Noally. Seven years ago Dumaux left me speechless at the Göttingen Festival. This time he seemed to be weary of his own legend: as if he were deliberately giving the instrumentalists centre stage, singing from a distance, with a nasal tone, his voice stripped of its former energy and brilliance. Two days later Julia Lezhneva cancelled her entire arie di baule tour, including her performance at the Margravial Opera House. She was replaced at the last moment by Bruno de Sá with his own set of the “suitcase arias” from operas by Handel, Hasse and Pergolesi, interspersed with instrumental music, including pieces by Telemann and Pisendel – at a concert hastily titled “Delirio d’amore” and preceded by just two rehearsals with the Wrocław Baroque Orchestra conducted by the harpsichordist Pedro Beriso. This time it was these artists who left me speechless: because of their spontaneous joy of playing and singing, their mutual support – essential in such situations – their lightness of touch and energy that made it possible to overlook a few inevitable slip-ups.

I left Bayreuth feeling fulfilled and confident in the festival’s future. At the same time I felt some regret that, following Helmut Stürmer’s death, everything here unfolded – to loosely refer to the words of Georges Banu – between the miracle of revelation and the mourning of loss. It will be interesting to see what will emerge from this next season.

Translated by: Anna Kijak

That the organisers had considerably scaled back, due to budget cuts, the programme of the 150th anniversary season of the Bayreuther Festspiele was something we learned over six months before the start of the previous festival. The initial plans were indeed bold: the Green Hill was to have seen the presentation of the entire Bayreuther Kanon, the last ten of Wagner’s thirteen operas as well as – much to purists’ outrage – Rienzi, an opera rejected by the composer himself. In the scaled-down version the choice was obvious: Der Ring des Nibelungen and Parsifal, representing the “canon proper”, that is the only works staged at the Festspielhaus during the composer’s lifetime. The programme was complemented by performances of Der fliegende Holländer in Tcherniakov’s 2021 staging as well as a new production of Rienzi directed by the Hungarian duo Alexandra Szemerédy and Magdolna Parditka – preceded by an announcement that it would be a one-off event and that the work would not return to the stage of the Wagnerian temple. Bayreuth decided not to revive its two latest productions, Thorleifur Örn Arnarsson’s 2024 Tristan und Isolde and last year’s quite sucessful Die Meistersinger directed by Matthias Davids.

I decided to forgo the new Ring, mainly on account of its cast (Christian Thielemann took the baffling decision to entrust all the most important tenor roles – Loge, Siegmund and Siegfried in the last two parts – to one singer, Klaus Florian Vogt, so beloved by the German audiences). As I co-presented the Polish radio broadcasts of the Ring I saw that my decision had been right, although the controversy was aroused primarily by the “staging”, generated by artificial intelligence. Judging by the reactions of the critics and the more seasoned among the music lovers, the prompts had not been quite spot-on. I limited myself to Rienzi, still a rarity on the world’s stages, presented in Bayreuth in a new reconstruction commissioned especially for this year’s performance; and to Parsifal, in Jay Scheib’s staging, presented for the fourth and last time.

The recurring allegations that the Festival is unable to face up to its own inglorious past seem unfounded. That it is zealously facing up to it is something I witnessed on numerous occasions. Sometimes this turns into overzealousness and raises the question of whether the organisers – perhaps unwittingly – might be trying to combat one form of propaganda with another. Bayreuth has long abandoned the abstract approaches of Wieland Wagner and his epigones, approaches that leave plenty of room for interpretation. Like elsewhere in the world, the dominant productions at the Festspielhaus are those that are full of references to the current conflicts, threats and social ills, are increasingly politicised and increasingly reluctant to enter into a creative dialogue with the composer’s oeuvre, which is, after all, just as politicised and engaged. A similar approach was taken by the authors of the stage concept of Rienzi, who have transformed Wagner’s grand tragic opera into a story of the rise and fall of a power-hungry populist – possibly in a reference to the current political situation in Hungary, although more striking allusions are those to Donald Trump’s second campaign (it is hard to resist the ambiguity of the name Capitol, which most people today associate mainly with the seat of the United States Senate and the place where American presidents are sworn in).

Rienzi. Gabriela Scherer (Irene), Jennifer Holloway (Adriano) and Andreas Schager in the title role. Photo: Enrico Nawrath

It was mentioned before the premiere, of course, that Rienzi was a historical figure. His real name was Nicola di Lorenzo Gabrini, but he went down in history as Cola di Rienzo. In May 1347 he became the leader of a successful revolt against the rule of Roman patricians. He was a man of the people, a self-made man in the best sense of the word, a highly educated and very influential individual who dreamt of restoring Rome to its former glory from Republican era and of making it the capital of the united cities of the Italian Peninsula. During his less than a year in power he carried out a number of groundbreaking administrative, financial and judicial reforms – until representatives of the deposed Orsini and Colonna families laid siege to the city and decided to force it to surrender by starving it. It was then that the people turned away from their benefactor. Hated and excommunicated by the pope, Rienzo hid in a monastery for a few years. He thought that fortune had smiled upon him again, when yet another Avignon pope, seeking to return to the See of Peter, lifted the excommunication from the ill-fated tribune so that he could use him in the fight against the patricians. However, Rienzo failed to regain the trust of his old followers. He died during bloody riots and his rotting, desecrated body was put on public display in a church.

Cola di Rienzo was not a man without flaws, yet historians see him today primarily as a hero and pioneer of the idea of a united Italy. Wagner wrote the Rienzi libretto on the basis of Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novel written in 1835 as a warning to the British liberals of the day that they should not impose freedom on a thoughtless mob incapable of appreciating it. It was in a similar spirit that Wagner instructed Josef Tichatschek, the first performer of the title role: he argued that Rienzi had been called to enlighten the depraved people and raise them out of their fall.

Obviously, Hitler, who saw Rienzi for the first time in 1905, may have seen the eponymous tribune as a role model, but to say that “it all began from that” and that Rienzi was the favourite opera of the future leader of the Third Reich is a serious exaggeration. First of all, the anecdote of the “revelation” experienced by Hitler thanks to Rienzi is known solely from the memoirs of his friend August Kubizek, not a very reliable source to say the least. Secondly, at least half of the works of the Bayreuth master are in the running for the title of the Führer’s favourite opera; they include the far more ideologically suspect Lohengrin and quite apolitical Tristan. That is why presenting Rienzi in this light in the anniversary season – even if Winifred did give Hitler the manuscript of the score, subsequently lost in unexplained circumstances – is a remedy worse than the disease and, in addition, instead of shedding light on the complex context of the work, it obfuscates it even further.

If only the audience had a chance to judge the directors’ efforts. Yet the printed programme does not feature a libretto synopsis; surtitles are traditionally not displayed at the Festspielhaus; and the words uttered on the stage are sometimes incomprehensible even to native German speakers (the programme is accompanied by a separate booklet with the German libretto, but it is impossible to follow it during the performance). As a result, most spectators could not make head or tails of things, watching a staging that was at time very attractive visually but most of the time had nothing in common with the work.

Rienzi. Photo: Enrico Nawrath

The geometric set design, in a wide variety of shades of grey, sparingly punctuated by red and dazzling white, quite effectively captures the contrast between the cramped, uniform nature of private space and the openness of public space. “The people” huddle in identical cubbyholes, watch the same news programmes on television and stare at the screens of identical messaging apps. Colour and light appear only on the municipal agora, on the red-carpeted stairs, in the spectacular live projections, sometimes multiplied and reflected as if in a kaleidoscope (video by Leonard Koch, lighting by Berndt Gallasch). Yet we do not learn why the people followed Rienzi and then abandoned him. Already during the overture we see a gravely ill child, to whom Irene and Rienzi, preoccupied with each other, devote too little attention and, as a result, do not notice the child’s death. An allusion to an incestuous relationship between the two characters or an introduction of a character not present in the libretto, Rienzi’s brother, who, in fact, was an adult and died at the hands of the patricians? There is no sexual assault on Irene, only an unlawful use of her image on social media. The pantomime in Act II – instead of serving as a symbolic comparison of Orsini’s assault on Irene with the story of the rape of Lucretia, as the composer intended – turns into an amusing interlude with the Festspielhaus at the centre, featuring characters from several legendary staging of Wagner’s operas jostling for space on stage at the same time, while audience members alternately queue for the toilets or for a pretzel stall in the intervals. Admittedly, it was very amusing and brought a clear sense of relief to many, because they were able to understand what was going on at least for a moment. The action then continues independently of the libretto: in Act V, even before the final climax, Rienzi receives a fatal blow from his own sister. Nevertheless, he valiantly sings his part until the end in a set eerily bringing to mind the backstage of the theatre on the Green Hill.

The audience, some of whom had loudly booed the experimental new Ring, this time had no complaints, not even about the musical aspect of the production. I, on the other hand, became increasingly convinced that Rienzi indeed should not be staged at Bayreuth: regardless of whether we regard it as a masterful mix of Italian heroic opera and the French grand opéra or ridicule it like Ernest Newman, who called it “an attack of musical measles”, it requires a completely different setting and a diametrically different approach on the part of the conductor in charge of the whole thing. First of all, it does not sound right with an orchestra hidden in a deep, partly covered pit: under such circumstances what is lost is not only the monumental nature of the composition, but above all its dense, multi-layered texture as well as distinctive colouring, which Wagner regarded as an essential element of the dramaturgy of Rienzi. Yet Nathalie Stutzmann conducted the opera as if she wanted at all cost to avoid any accusation of showmanship: conservatively, carefully, focusing on honing the various episodes at the expense of narrative coherence. In addition, it would have been advisable to select for such an arduous and, apparently, one-off project singers specialising in a similar repertoire, even if their names meant little to the Bayreuther Festspiele regulars.

However, as a decision was taken to entrust the title role to a tenor associated with the local company, we should be happy that the choice fell on Andreas Schager, who has never been a particularly subtle singer, but does have the necessary stamina for the role and quite decent technique as well. Unfortunately, his handsome voice is already showing signs of fatigue, resulting in too much vibrato, intonation mistakes and lack of ease at the top. Nevertheless, he managed to create a striking character and had a few magnificent moments, even in the not entirely successful aria “Allmächt’ger Vater, blick herab!” (moved to the beginning of Act IV in the Bayreuth version), in which he effortlessly sang the famous gruppetti, which for some unfathomable reasons are beyond the reach of most Wagnerian tenors today. Jennifer Holloway did a fine job as Adriano, although she, too, succumbed to the temptation of pushing her beautiful soprano. On the other hand, I was disappointed by Gabriela Scherer – her Irene was completely bland, sung in a voice that was dull, somewhat breathy, getting weaker and increasingly monotonous with each act. Among the supporting characters Vitalij Kowaljow gave the best performance as Raimondo, outshining both Andreas Bauer Kanabas (Colonna) and Michael Nagy (Orsini). Surprisingly fine performances in the cameo roles came from Matthias Stier as Baroncelli, Joachim Goltz as Cecca del Vecchio and the ever-reliable Victoria Randem as the Messenger of Peace.

Parsifal. Miina-Liisa Värelä (Kundry), Andreas Schager (Parsifal) and Georg Zeppenfeld (Gurnemanz). Photo: Enrico Nawrath

This Rienzi will not go down in the history of either opera or attempts to make audiences aware of the complex evolution of Wagner’s worldview and compositional technique. It will remain one of the many stagings conceived as a tool to describe the current social and political situation, stagings detached from both the work itself and the broader context in which it was written. Another production that will not go down in history is Jay Scheib’s Parsifal, staged against the backdrop of climate crisis and the unrest caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This repulsive dystopia, completely reversing the meaning of Wagner’s message in the finale, will be remembered above all because of a gadget available to just a fraction of the audience – the famous augmented reality glasses, which, according to their users, proved even less attractive than the production itself. Sheib’s concept has already been described by many before me; let me just note that the Knights of the Grail have all the hallmarks of a fanatical sect and Parsifal destroys both Klingsor’s garden and the very cup used during the Last Supper. Apart from Act II – resembling an LSD-fuelled psychedelic orgy – the production team bathes the stage in the colours of disease, decay and poisoned earth. Blood flows not only from Amfortas’ wound: Titurel literally bathes in it, while the Flowermaidens suck it out from the bodies of the fallen. There are also allusions to the “blood minerals” extracted in conflict zones – including the Grail itself, which in Scheib’s vision takes the form of a crystal resembling cobalt spinel, one of the rarest precious stones in the world, owing its extraordinary colour to the ions of an element essential to all batteries powering modern electronic devices. These include laptops and smartphones, which were certainly indispensable to the “eco-friendly” Bayreuth staging.

However, it would be hard to formulate any complaints about the cast of this Parsifal, which also applies to Schager, who in the relatively short and rewarding title role seemed to be resting after the recent labours of Rienzi. Miina-Liisa Värelä, who made her Bayreuth debut last year as Ortrud in Lohengrin, proved to be an excellent Kundry. She has all the makings of a true Falcon, a powerful, dark dramatic soprano, with the only element still missing being greater ease at the top. All the roles written for low male voices found worthy performers, which is especially true of Amfortas in a deeply moving portrayal by Michael Volle; in vocal terms, an equally fine performance came from Georg Zeppenfeld as Gurnemanz, with convincing interpretations also coming from Vitalij Kowaljow (Titurel) and Jordan Shanahan (Klingsor). Worthy of note is also the exceptionally apt choice of singers cast in the minor roles. Contrary to popular belief, these are not Wagnerian bit parts, but roles demanding exceptional skills and often a unique type of voice (this applies, for example, to the excellent Victoria Randem as one of the Flowermaidens). I should add, not merely for the sake of formality, that the Polish mezzo-soprano Natalia Skrycka, in addition to appearing in three parts of the Ring under Thielemann (this year, as well as Wellgunde, she also took on the role of Rossweisse in Die Walküre), also sang the Second Squire and the third of the Flowermaidens in Parsifal – and she still has an exceptionally busy season ahead of her at the Berlin Staatsoper, where already in early October she will sing Marcellina in The Marriage of Figaro conducted by Marc Minkowski.

Parsifal. Miina-Liisa Värelä and Georg Zeppenfeld. Photo: Enrico Nawrath

On the other hand, I was not too impressed by the interpretation of Pablo Heras-Casado, who was in charge of musical direction. He is yet another conductor who cannot see the wood for the trees, endlessly polishing individual elements of Wagner’s masterpiece (with some phenomenal results, as the festival orchestra was in excellent form this year), yet fails to bring them together into a cohesive musical and dramatic whole, to sustain the narrative pulse, to draw the listener completely into this mystery. That is why I have decided to end my review with the collective hero of both performances – the Festival Choir, under the guidance, since after the end of the 2024 season, of Thomas Eitler-de Lint, who has worked true wonders with it. Four years ago he prepared the Leipzig Opera choral ensemble for the WAGNER 22 festival, which encompassed the composer’s all stage works. Eitler-de Lint put the knowledge he had accumulated over the years to good use in Bayreuth, inspiring the choir members, who – after years in a crisis – are finally singing with excellent projection and total commitment; at times one could get the impression that they were more aware of what they were doing than the conductors of in this year’s productions.

And there is hope in these choir singers, for I have a feeling that an era is coming to an end in Bayreuth: a time of breaking away from the sinister legacy of the Bayreuther Kreis, often at the expense of Wagner’s musical legacy. May these be the voices of messengers of peace and reconciliation.

Translated by: Anna Kijak

The motto of this year’s Innsbrucker Festwochen der Alten Musik is “Was feiern wir?” – and not without reason, as there is something to celebrate and someone to honour in 2026. The festival is celebrating fifty years of uninterrupted existence: it took place even during the pandemic, which prevented the organisation of Festival Oude Muziek in Utrecht, Avignon Festival and Bayreuther Festspiele, among others. Soon, it will be able to celebrate even more jubilees – of the Ambraser Schlosskonzerte, which were launched in 1963 and continue to take place during the Festwochen; of the Early Music Summer Academy, inaugurated in 1972, the predecessor of several educational projects run today; and of the Cesti-Wettbewerb, which has been accompanying the festival for sixteen years. This year Eva-Maria Sens and Ottavio Dantone managed to invite two previous artistic directors, René Jacobs and Alessandro De Marchi, to take part in the festival. In addition, they paid tribute to Alan Curtis, who initiated the tradition of staging forgotten Baroque operas in Innsbruck. Although the tenth anniversary of the death of the American harpsichordist, musicologist and conductor came during the previous Festwochen, this year’s commemoration may have been even more fitting given the staging of Cesti’s legendary opera Il pomo d’oro: after all, it was Curtis who presented two other reconstructed works of this extraordinary composer, the melodrama Il Tito and the dramma musicale La Semirami.

This is why I decided to include in my operatic visit to Innsbruck the “Tribute to Alan” event at the Spanish Hall of the Ambras Castle. It featured the mezzo-soprano Anna Bonitatibus as well as ten Accademia Bizantina musicians led from the harpsichord by Dantone. Bonitatibus was one of Curtis’ favourite singers. He heard her for the first time in 2001, at the Handel Festival in Halle, where she was portraying Irene in a Tamerlano production conducted by Trevor Pinnock. He immediately started working with her and that collaboration soon turned into close friendship. Bonitatibus mentioned “Carissimo Alan” among the people who had the biggest impact on her career. She worked with him until his death and their collaboration included an unfinished project of recording all of Handel’s operas. It was largely thanks to Curtis that she became involved with the Innsbrucker Festwochen, where she continues to conduct masterclasses and serves on the jury of the Cesti Competition.

The artists constructed their programme in such a way as to capture the listeners’ attention and, at the same time, pay tribute to Curtis in pieces marked by an emotional intensity and unbridled energy similar to that he himself brought to his own ventures. The concert at Schloss Ambras was thus brief but delicious. Bonitatibus’ voice may no longer be as fresh as it used to be, yet it still delights with its warm tone, characteristic rapid vibrato and complete control over phrasing, thanks to which her interpretations have gained even more intensity and expressiveness (especially in her phenomenal performance of Ulysses’ aria “No, quella beltà non amo” from Handel’s Deidamia and Anastasio’s endearingly lyrical “Sento in seno” from Vivaldi’s Il Giustino). The evening, which also featured two concerti grossi by Handel and Geminiani respectively (a standout performance among the instrumentalists came from Alessandro Tampieri, a violinist who combines incredible technical discipline with lightness and freedom of improvisation), was by no means a “musical monument” in honour of the great artist: rather, it brought to mind a well worked-through period of mourning for a departed friend, when one can finally allow oneself to return to joyful memories.

Anna Bonitatibus, Ottavio Dantone, and members of Accademia Bizantina. Photo: Amir Kaufmann

It is a pity that Curtis did not live to see the staging of Il pomo d’oro, rightly announced as the biggest event of this year’s Festwochen (also in the literal sense: according to accounts from the period, this monstrous festa teatrale lasted over ten hours). It was also announced – not quite so rightly – that it would be the first performance of the work since its premiere in 1668. The manuscript of Cesti’s five-act opera to Francesco Sbarra’s libretto has not survived in its entirety: Acts Three and Five disappeared from the score at some point. This was the form in which Il pomo d’oro was published in 1897 by Guido Adler, in the Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich series he edited. Interest in the work was revived in 1982, when the American musicologist Carl B. Schmidt found fragments of the lost acts (including nearly twenty arias) in the library of the House of Este in Modena. However, a year before that a group enthusiasts staged Il pomo d’oro as part of an initiative so peculiar that it is worth mentioning it at least. A so-called chamber version of the surviving three acts with the prologue was directed by the twenty-four-year-old Eberhardt Harnoncourt, son of Nikolaus, in collaboration with the instrument maker and gambist Walter Waidosch. The premiere, featuring fifty amateurs, was held in the small town of Aidenbach near Passau. Eight years later in Vienna a “complete” version – that is, with the fragments discovered in Modena – was presented in a concert performance on period instruments conducted by Gerhard Kramer, a judge by profession and, at heart, a passionate Baroque opera lover. The cast, on the other hand, was made up of professionals, headed by Kurt Equiluz as Paride. The work impressed Martin Haselböck, the founder of the Orchester Wiener Akademie, so much that he decided to stage it. He even managed to put together a creative team, but the project did not go ahead due to logistical reasons.

Interestingly, the Boosey & Hawkes catalogue features a critical edition of the score of Il pomo d’oro – including the Modena fragments and a reconstruction of the rest of the music on the basis of other works by Cesti – by Alan Curtis himself. However, the edition is not available and it is not known if and when it will be published at all. Even more interestingly, Dantone became aware of the gaps in the score already when planning the staging for the festival anniversary season – which he openly admitted in a conversation with Paolo Scarnecchia for the Total Baroque magazine. He, therefore, decided to take the bull by the horns and create his own reconstruction, complementing a new critical edition he had prepared together with Bernardo Ticci. A very good decision, for in this version we cannot hear any “tacking”, although it lasts “only” just under eight hours. Conclusion? Either the witnesses’ accounts are inaccurate or the reconstruction could be expanded to include fragments composed in the style of Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, who composed music to numerous ballet scenes.

But it is just not quite clear whether it would be worth it, because staging this monumental celebration in honour of the House of Habsburg – albeit one loosely drawing on the myth of the Judgement of Paris, the prime cause of the Trojan War – is just as complex today as it was in the seventeenth century. Pietro Antonio Cesti apparently composed Il pomo d’oro for the wedding of Emperor Leopold I and Margaret Theresa of Spain, planned for mid-1666 in Vienna. Yet, first, the wedding was delayed, as was later the construction of the huge Theater auf der Cortina, and then the young empress had to recover after the death of her firstborn son. In the end the premiere took place to mark her seventeenth birthday, on 12 and 14 July 1668 – it was divided into two parts owing to the size of the work. The staging featured over one thousand performers, not to mention horses, elephants and lions. The architect Lodovico Burnacini – who also designed the theatre – prepared no fewer than twenty-three sets for the performance. The show had just about everything: shipwrecks, Venus descending from the night sky in a ball of fire, burning ruins surrounded by the waters of the Styx and vanishing into the monstrous jaws of the monster of Hades. In other words, a veritable theatre of miracles, which apparently overshadowed even Paris’ Salle des Machines.

Il pomo d’oro. Alberto Allegrezza (Filaura), and dancers. Photo: Birgit Gufler

Fabio Ceresa, the director of the Innsbruck production, had much more modest resources at his disposal, but his theatrical imagination was just as rich and was, moreover, supported by his impressive knowledge of Baroque opera. First of all, he appreciated the surprisingly coherent narrative of Il pomo d’oro, which stemmed not only from the libretto, but, above all, from the musical structure of the work. As a result, he was able to create two clear main storylines, that is the ruthless rivalry of the Olympian gods and the romantic vicissitudes of the mortals unfolding in its shadow – combining the fairy-tale splendour of the former’s world with the conventional, stylised modernity of the latter’s (Giuseppe Palelli’s marvellous costumes and Nikolaus Webern’s sophisticated yet functional set design, precisely lit by George Tellos). He brilliantly highlighted two characters drawn from the comedy convention: the nurse Filaura, an en travesti role, and Momo, or Momus, the god of mockery, a former adviser to the inhabitants of Olympus, cast down to earth as punishment (in Cesti’s opera, Momo also serves as a commentator on the events, breaking down the symbolic barrier between the stage and the audience). Ceresa peppers some scenes – including the Prologue, featuring the allegories of the lands of the Holy Roman Empire, and the episode depicting the council at the residence of Eolo, the lord of the winds, at the beginning of Act III – with allusions to current political and social events, sometimes rather bluntly, yet never crossing the line of good taste.

Above all, however, he knows how to leave the modern audience speechless and full of childlike wonder – and this is a no mean feat in this era of ubiquitous projections and opera’s increasingly common forays into artificial intelligence and augmented reality. Ceresa resorts to tried and tested theatrical tricks, which we fall for like children, because we have long forgotten that it can be done that way. Who would have thought that a curtain with a simple image of a skyscraper suddenly pulled down from its batten would create such a poignant impression of a city falling into ruin? Who did not burst out laughing when Giunone showered Momo with a deluge of tacky gold tinsel? Who did not stare, mouth agape, at the black abyss of the stage, where the Milky Way, made up of light points on invisible poles, was dancing?

Mauro Borgione (Paride) and Federico D.E. Sacchi (Nettuno). Photo: Birgit Gufler

Dantone showed similar imagination, entrusting the over forty roles to twenty singers, sharing the stage with the NovoCanto vocal ensemble and two dance groups, Street Motion Studio and Compagna Fattoria Vittadini. The Innsbruck Il pomo d’oro cast would in any case be sufficient for at least three productions of works representing various types of Italian Baroque opera. Because that is precisely what this work is like, unique within Cesti’s oeuvre – contrary to appearances – making liberal use of all the styles and conventions of its day. There are surprisingly melodious recitatives, characteristic of the Venetian School; there are more or less elaborate arias, ariosos and laments; there are true arie di furore, ensembles of various kinds, group scenes composed in the traditional Roman style or with elements of the polychoral and concertante techniques. The mood changes constantly: pastoral fragments alternate with scenes straight from hell; passionate lovers’ duets are juxtaposed with comic episodes; outbursts of divine wrath are separated by a short distance from manifestations of triumph and glory.

The cast included artists with voices of various colours, very diverse temperaments and even more diverse stage experience. All did more than well, but I hope I will be forgiven for mentioning only those whose craftsmanship made the biggest impression on me. Let me start with the phenomenal Giunone of Sophie Rennert, a mezzo-soprano that attracted my attention a few years ago, but it is only now that I have heard her in a role seemingly tailor-made for her. She played with it in a manner bordering on nonchalance, displaying a whole range of demeanours and emotions – from the imperiousness of a goddess of the heavens to unholy fits of rage, worthy of Sophia Loren in Matrimonio all’italiana. I was captivated by two red-blooded, passionate altos – Margherita Maria Sala, especially in the role of Alceste, and the young Mathilde Ortscheidt, winner of the Cesti Competition three years ago, convincing in the role of the nymph Ennone abandoned by Paride. Both of Ennone’s partners came trumps: Mauro Borgione singing Paride, a role nominally written for a tenor, but, in fact, from the point of view of today’s Fach classification, just as indefinable as the roles of Orpheus and Ulysses from Monteverdi’s operas, requiring a flexible voice with a broad range and clearly baritonal colour; and Rémy Brès-Feuillet, who has a dark, velvety alto countertenor, perfect for the role of the melancholic shepherd Aurindo. However, in many scenes in which he appeared the show was stolen by the brilliant Alberto Allegrezza, a versatile singer actor in the bravura role of Filaura, Ennone’s nurse. Rocco Cavalluzzi increasingly won me over with each act, in the big role of Momo, written for a high bass; another excellent performance came from Federico D.E. Sacchi, just as experienced in this repertoire, in the bass roles of Nettuno and Cecrope. I should also mention fine performance of two young singers freshly discovered by Dantone: the tenor Žiga Čopi as Marte and the bass Balázs Bán as Bacco.

Despite the fact that Dantone had at his disposal a much smaller number of musicians than the Viennese orchestra in 1668 – which was made up of five ensembles playing, it would seem, every instrument used in opera at the time – he nevertheless managed to bring out everything that matters in this score. Also thanks to a large and very nimble continuo section, constantly engaging in a lively dialogue with the soloists and the chorus.

There is just one thing that keeps me awake at night: the finale, where, in the original version, Giove presents the golden apple to the young empress, while Fabio Ceresa chose to bestow the fruits of the Hesperides’ garden on all the performers – replacing the obsequious message of Il pomo d’oro with a contemporary allegory of the unity of the European Union. The golden-haired infanta from Velázquez’s Las Meninas gave birth to three more children, only one of whom reached adulthood, and had two miscarriages. She died at the age of twenty-one, during her seventh pregnancy. Perhaps it is better not to tempt fate?

Translated by: Anna Kijak