Die Entführung at the Film Lounge

Tonight I had the great pleasure of watching a live satellite broadcast of Mozart’s Entführung at the Astor Film Lounge on Ku’Damm.

This place is amazing! It was the first time I’d ever watched opera at the movies. But if opera on film means spending time in a place this schwank, I hope it’s not the last time!

I highly, highly recommend this place. It’s covered in velvet. They serve gourmet food to your seat. They seem to emphasize opera and theatre, but you can also see a number of current first-run type things. Artsy things, odd things. Posters for Avatar, Alice in Wonderland caught my eye as I left.

Seriously. What? What is this place? And do I have to leave?

I have to say that whoever does the programming for these broadcasts has great taste. Tonight featured a fantastic cast in a production at the Liceu in Barcelona; every single performer was just excellent (Diana Damrau was Konstanze, Franz-Josef Selig was Osmin, Olga Peretyatko was Blonde, Christoph Strehl was Belmonte, Norbert Ernst was Pedrillo and Christoph Quest was Selim). Really truly excellent. Great singing, magnificent acting, and the orchestra was amazing.

Stand outs for me were Martern aller Arten and Selig any time he was on stage, but the whole cast was strong. I thought the casting was exactly right… but I did wish I could teleport to the Liceu theatre once or twice to hear the actual weight and balance of voices as opposed to the mic’d & broadcast version.

As you can see from the below photo (all photos are shamelessly taken from the Astor site), we had it pretty rough. Really a lot of suffering; not only do you sit on these incredible reclining leather chairs with footstools, but you have to endure a welcome drink and personal wait service.

Next month we’ll see La Traviata from La Scala with Gheorghiu, and then in June, Pique Dame.

They’re going to have to drag me out of there afterwards; I’m not leaving.

Leise, leise

The snow continues, unabated. It’s great, actually, because it’s covered up all the dirty snow and looks nice and pretty all over again.

But it’s no weather for tromping around outside, particularly since I have auditions in a few days (and everyone I know is SICK). So I’m doing my best to stay inside and warm. One must do one’s utmost to outsmart those pesky little germs. There are a lot of sopranos out there!

Speaking of which, I’ve been surfing a bit as I hide from the cold, and I’ve been listening in particular to a few renditions of Leise, Leise, which is one of Agathe’s arias from Der Freischütz by Weber. It’s an aria that covers a lot of ground: it’s long, it’s challenging, and it packs a lot of text and range of emotion. Especially interesting are some of the older recordings, which pay particular attention to text and a lilting legato.

Here’s Welsh soprano Margaret Price in 1973, with a few Freischütz-esque visual references for your viewing pleasure:

She sang a lot of Mozart and was quite well known for it, and Verdi as well. She also recorded Isolde with Kleiber, though she never sang the role on stage. I think she has a gorgeous voice, and she’s just so patient with the music, letting it open up where it wants to– but always so elegantly! I definitely have a voice crush on Margaret Price.

Like I said, Leise, leise is a long aria, so I might have lost a few of you already. But for those lucky few of you who decided to stick around, here’s an Agathe that really grabs your gut and makes you pray right along with her, even if you’re not a big fan of God: Leontyne Price. Her voice just soars, and, wow, is it stunning. This was recorded in 1968:

Her voice just makes me swoon, and I have shed many, many tears of joy just at hearing her sound.

And here’s Bulgarian soprano Ljuba Welitsch (1913-1996). Elegant and deliberate, but fiery. I’m not sure when this was recorded:

She was apparently quite a character herself. Apparently, in a performance as Tosca at the Met, she kept kicking her Scarpia, Lawrence Tibbett, long after he was already supposed to be dead. But really kicking him. Hard. And probably with pointy shoes.

They weren’t very close, those two.

Finally, one of the most famous Agathes of all time, Elisabeth Grümmer (1911 – 1986). Such pathos! She sang at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin for many years, and really sang all over the world. This recoding was made in 1955:

What’s interesting is how very different each of these voices are, even though these ladies shared a great deal of repertoire; most of them sang several important roles from Mozart, Strauss, Verdi, and Puccini. Yet they are each such masters. Isn’t it incredible?

Der Freischütz

Today I’m studying a little Freischütz.

It’s an opera written by Carl Maria von Weber, original Emo, ca. 1786-1826. Here he is, the sassy minx:

It’s considered a very important Romantic German opera, precursor to or at least a strong influence on Richard Wagner’s work. It weaves in a lot of old German folk songs and is set in old German hunting/woodsman society.

A “Freischütz” is kind of a marksman, and the opera is about a guy, Max, who is taking part in a shooting competition. Oh look, here it is now:

It’s a quite dark opera, really, for all the (ample) melodrama in the text. And the music is just breathtaking.

Ok so here’s the plot:

Max gets talked into using magical no-fail bullets by the Prince’s assistant Ranger, Kaspar (who in fact has a pact with the demon Samiel), so that Max will win the shooting contest and beat annoying peasant Kilian, thereby re/gaining his honour as a hunter and earning the right to marry his lady love Agathe (that’s me). Agathe spends most of her time worrying, visiting Hermits and interpreting bad omens while her perky cousin Ännchen sings a couple chirpy songs about nails, skinny boys, and her cousin who thought her dog was a ghost. Meanwhile, Kaspar builds himself a creepy stone circle for his devil-worshiping magic bullet-casting session and waits for Max to arrive, but Max is busy exchanging guilt trips and hallucinating with Agathe and Ännchen, who is either there to protect Agathe’s honour or else seriously can’t take a hint. Max eventually leaves for the Wolf’s Den to make his devil bullets, while Agathe cries into her wedding dress as usual and turns into a dove which then gets shot by Max. But don’t worry, it’s ok, because actually being engaged prevents you from being killed by magic bullets, so Agathe wakes up and sings about being alive, Kaspar dies instead and the Hermit arranges for a one-year engagement between Max and Agathe, the end.

Phew.

The first thing I like to do when I study a new role is highlight all my part. Why? Because I’m a dork like that. People make fun of me, I don’t care. I can see my part in the dark and you can’t haHA.

I can tell from this page that I first looked at this aria when I was first thinking of switching from mezzo to soprano, and long before my German was any good, because I had to remind myself that “ihn” (“him”) refers to Max (“Max!!!!!!”) , and I was totally obsessed with every single vowel and consonant and how to sing them (a) in German and (b) as a soprano.

There’s a heck of a lot of text in Der Freischütz, in a somewhat old style German, which can make for challenging and/or amusing translating sometimes. A sampling:

AGATHA: I love you, after all, so deeply. Should you not be lucky tomorrow, you would be from me, I from you torn…
MAX: Because of that I must be off again.
AGATHE: What’s pulling you?
MAX: I’ve been lucky a second time.
AGATHE: Again?
MAX: Yes anyway. A 16-pointer! It must be brought in, or else the farmers will steal it.
AGATHE: And where does it lie?
MAX: Quite far… by the Wolf’s Den!!!
AGATHE: Where?? What??? How appalling!! There in the den of terrors!!

But, as any singers out there reading this know, the silliness fades as you start to understand what the characters are all about, through the specific language choices of the librettist (in this case, Friedrich Kind) and how it all fits into the music, etc. You have to take these characters seriously if you hope to communicate anything other than your own sense of cynicism.

I’ll leave you with a little clip from the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus’s 2009 production of der Freischütz, directed by Robert Wilson and with costumes by Viktor & Rolf. It is *not* a traditional Freischütz. But it’s pretty memorable just the same.

And if the costumes caught your eye, here’s a clip all about the design and production of the costumes (in German).