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CARNEGIE HALL | Mahler’s Symphony #6

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

gm-dolomiten
[Sextner Dolomiten in Südtirol, where Mahler completed his Sixth Symphony]

Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 8 PM
STAATSKAPELLE BERLIN, cond. Pierre Boulez

MAHLER | Symphony No. 6, ‘Tragic’

Of the four concerts in this series I have attended, last night’s account of the Sixth has emerged as the most impressive. A world plunged deep and deeper unto itself, this is a difficult symphony to get right. Nature’s traces of bells and birds are here more distant than ever; culture’s phantasmagorias of marches and waltzes waft through only to become abstraction. It is a work that gazes through to the abyss and is eventually flung headlong into it. It knows better than to believe in redemption, yet must still seek out means of survival, forms of farewell.

Under the direction of Boulez, the Staatskapelle Berlin met the thrusting rhythmic demands of the opening movement with force and precision, delineating its martial theme as a logic refusing to be discarded or derailed. Despite the lyrical surge of the ascending ‘Alma theme’ in the strings, despite its compelling resurgences, despite this or that pizzicato-and-winds interlude, despite even moments when the theme itself almost melts into formlessness, the orchestra emphatically ensured that the heaviness always beat back into life unabated—with a life of its own and back to battering into the life of the hero. A last attempt at the ‘Alma theme’ shattered into calamity and, chillingly, was absorbed by it.

In the Scherzo following, rhythms that first seem to reassert those of the prior movement soon slide away from each other, each disbanded set struggling to find its own development, sometimes degenerating thereby. For Adorno, this movement conveyed ‘the hell of absolute space.’ Such hell was finely articulated: Boulez secured a remarkable translucency throughout that allowed layers to persist in a kind of palimpsest, precarious yet trembling onward. When the movement came to a close, the orchestra receded deftly to a faded tone, evoking the last fallings away of surface appeasements.

The symphony itself cannot fall away, however, without nestling in one last lasting pang of beauty, a kind of extended Orphean gaze. The Andante, into which floats many a wistful interval or melisma from Mahler’s earlier work, was given as pellucid an account as one could hope for. One realized here that Boulez executes Mahler’s disintegrations with exceptional fineness; one hears each grain and shred of the elemental debris (in the bleaker world of this symphony, alas, no longer stardust).

The Staatskapelle’s violin sections have not especially impressed in the performances so far, but in the opening octave motif of the Finale they at last attained a lovely, almost courageous sheen—one that would last the motif’s recurrences as well as the growing turmoil. Spare yet potent in its gestures, sprawling in length, this was the longest single movement Mahler ever wrote. Fanfare may strut through and more expansive vistas sweep in, but the essential terror of ‘absolute space’ remains. Sheer duration is the music’s (is life’s) only means of defiance throughout, but we are forced to realize that duration does not save. The hammer blows devastate from a realm of regulation wholly beyond our reach. This Finale gained much from Boulez’s distilled, almost cautious handling, while eliciting playing from the orchestra that was more densely symphonic than in their previous showings.

Boulez’s 1994 recording of this work with the Vienna Philharmonic clocks in at just under 81 minutes; last night it lasted about 84 minutes (including the extended pause, for late seating, after the first movement). Much of this significant extra time seemed to have been invested into the Finale. Call it not a notable discrepancy for the famously self-consistent Boulez, then, and rather a conscious rethinking with tremendous payoff—for audience and orchestra alike.

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CARNEGIE HALL | Mahler’s Rückert Lieder & Symphony #5

Monday, May 11, 2009

gm-pierpont
[the Scherzo from Mahler’s 5th in ms at the Morgan Library]

Sunday, May 10, 2009 at 2 PM
STAATSKAPELLE BERLIN, cond. Daniel Barenboim
Thomas Quasthoff, Bass-Baritone

MAHLER | Rückert Lieder & Symphony No. 5

Daniel Barenboim resumed the podium this afternoon for an indefatigable account of Mahler’s Fifth, following Pierre Boulez’s three-night vigil through the Second, Third, and Fourth symphonies (just reviewed in the NYT). Opening with the five 1901-1902 Rückert Lieder, the program also brought back Thomas Quasthoff, whose delicate phrasings were again affecting, if in an abated capacity compared to his Kindertotenlieder Wednesday night.

In contrast to the common tragic theme in Kindertotenlieder, the wayfarer persona persisting through Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, and the shared chinoiserie source-material of Das Lied von der Erde, any principle of unity among the Rückert Lieder is less obvious or organic; they comprise rather a sort of medley, diverse in moods and meanings. A self-possessed humility and taciturn ardor are revealed through the lingering lines of “Liebst du um Schönheit,” for instance, whereas the brisk “Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder” cajoles in a spirited, almost impish manner. And while the hymn-like resolution of “Um Mitternacht” feels confirmed by the score, however hard-won, the final tranquility of “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” may still suggest resigned receding more than beatific transcendence, the protagonist having found no real refuge either from or in his Weltschmerz. If one feels compelled now to sketch some such contours of difference, it is because Mr. Quasthoff’s restrained handling of these Lieder did not do enough to. Due to occasional pitch pressures met in the upper range, moreover, and given what seemed to be general constraints on upper volume, the songs rarely came alive. What did become still clearer today is Quasthoff’s admirable sensitivity to minute gradations of quiet. This gift is not without its perils: in the final moments of “Um Mitternacht”—timpani and brass joining sung declaration of faith in chorale-like apotheosis—it became uncertain whether human voice could here survive, much less be buoyed by, the rising architecture of concomitant sound. But it was precisely this gift, too, that lent affecting subtlety to the stillnesses and subdual of the final song, “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,” aided by the excruciating attentiveness of the orchestra. Barenboim and the Staatskapelle are to be commended for taking noticeable care in supporting and tracing Quasthoff’s phrasings overall—a few discrepancies of timing notwithstanding—and they achieved particularly beautiful results during the attenuated, gleaming passages concluding “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen.”

The reception of Barenboim’s opening effort this cycle, Mahler’s First on Wednesday, ranged largely from scolding to skeptical (at least among those who’ve written about it). But what was sacrificed in scrupulousness that evening, in my opinion, was more than made up for in vigor and exhilaration. Today’s account of the Fifth certainly came off more cleanly, and at its best moments acquired inexorable propulsion. At times, though, the orchestra would have benefited from a clearer unifying directive. In both Mahler appearances thus far, Barenboim has demonstrated that he has definite ideas about beginnings: almost each movement under his leadership begins with a sense of concentration and with promise. He has also proven much energized when carrying momentum toward an ending, and this infuses additional energy into the orchestra. Many a middle stretch of this Fifth, however, seemed left to the musicians themselves, with Barenboim throwing himself into what was transpiring rather than administering the events or even much influencing them. The default license thereby granted to the players, or the implicit faith placed in them, by turns benefited the music and cost it. During the Trauermarsch and Scherzo sections, for instance, the strings sometimes seemed hastened and the woodwinds pressed by the broad gestures issued from the podium, whereas the orchestra’s collective efforts in the Rondo-Finale came together in glorious summation—in no small part due to today’s dependable brass showing. The crucial, consistent highlight of the concert was the meticulous Adagietto, at moderate tempo and unsentimental, yet shimmering in self-evident beauty.

Midway now through a demanding cycle, and so understandably, the spectre of fatigue began to haunt this performance, even as the struggle against it was steadfastly heroic and always sufficed. (Pauses between movements this time were less interpretive effects than necessary, visible breaks for breath-taking and brow-wiping.) This week the musicians will have two nights off from performing, though not likely from rehearsing. One is heartened by their fortitude, and hopes for a renewal also of focus.

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Mahler Intermission

Saturday, May 9, 2009

A compelling essay in the May issue of Opera News by the Washington Post‘s Philip Kennicott persuasively addresses the vexing question of Mahler’s vital yet fraught relationship to opera:

[…] Opera-lovers tend to think of song and symphony as the rudiments of opera, as if opera were the natural apotheosis of two lesser forms. But the nineteenth century proved otherwise. Mastering both song and symphony seems almost to have been a hindrance to mastering opera, if one considers the careers of Schubert, Schumann and Brahms. Perhaps it is more remarkable that Mahler managed to elaborate song into symphonic structures than that he never wrote an opera.

Opera-lovers may not be comfortable with the inevitable conclusion to this query, that for Mahler, writing an opera would have been a step backward. Wagner elaborated musical works over vast arches of time through essentially dramatic means, textual and narrative. Mahler elaborated equally impressive fusions of word and music, but through essentially musical means. Listen to his greatest symphonies. A narrative arc, anything so mundane as a story, would diminish them. For Mahler’s voices to elaborate characters would be ridiculous, because they speak with a distilled power that can’t be limited by the usual parameters of the theater. The lack of a great opera from Mahler wasn’t a failure; it was a sign that he had transcended the form.

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CARNEGIE HALL | Mahler’s Symphony #2

Friday, May 8, 2009

gm-frankenthaler

Thursday, May 7, 2009 at 8 PM
STAATSKAPELLE BERLIN, cond. Pierre Boulez
Westminster Symphonic Choir, dir. Eberhard Friedrich
Soloists: Michelle DeYoung (mezzo-soprano), Dorothea Röschmann (soprano)

MAHLER | Symphony No. 2, ‘Resurrection’

For me, as for many Mahler devotees I’ve known or known of (and not only the fabled Gilbert Kaplan, for whom it was a veritable idée fixe), the Second Symphony [‘Resurrection’] was the most decisive portal into this composer’s oeuvre. During my high school years, after an English teacher lent me a recording of Abbado’s 1976 recording with the Chicago SO on Deutsche Grammophone—which I listened to probably some twenty times before buying my own copy—I went to the local library and checked out every recording of this work I could get my hands on (Bernstein, Solti, Haitink, Kaplan, Mehta, Maazel, et al., some of which were incredibly forgettable). Gradual listening to the other symphonies, then the Lieder—helped along the way by brief lurk-time on MAHLER-L and a Mahler seminar in college—sealed Mahler as the composer closest to my heart. My two go-to recordings of this symphony are now Klemperer’s with the Philharmonia on EMI and, after all these years, that old Abbado disc; occasionally, in less impatient moods, I turn to Rattle’s attentive 1986 rendition. (Many of these just mentioned are discussed in Tony Duggan’s fine omnibus review of Second Symphony recordings.) None of the others I’ve come across has really managed to bore itself into the soul. Soul-gripping and soul-assailing and soul-transporting—that is the power of this symphony when done right.

Puzzlingly, despairingly, last night’s Staatskapelle Berlin performance, led by Pierre Boulez, felt at times almost procedural, and although the orchestra and chorus lacked no power when it mattered, not until Urlicht and the final movement did the execution begin truly to rise to the score. The opening was, it must be said, extremely promising. I’ve always thought that the cellos in the opening section should have a shade of brutality, of raw and earthy rumble: it is something like the sound of existence’s grappling with earthliness, and this grappling requires a lot of textured traction. The Staatskapelle’s cellists were superb in digging into their strings here, and curiously this effect was even augmented by Boulez’s directions stipulating an unusual slowness, protracting the push and pull of strokes. As the movement went on, however, the sense of musical as well as emotional continuity became tenuous. What did those hearing (or truly listening to) this for the first time last night make, say, of some superficial abruptnesses in the music? Why a seeming biding of time one minute, and a minute later a clashing of cymbals startling everybody who’s nodded off? Mahler’s symphonies are never mere stories, but each amounts to far more than any Eliotian ‘heap of broken images.’ Each Mahlerian fragment bears within it the longing for wholeness, the wishful memory of wholeness; often longing is the story. At best, Mr. Boulez seemed interested in excavating the sonic textures of certain segments rather than in unfolding for us the whole. Indeed, in the second and third movements especially, perhaps wary of too-easy drama, he seemed to hold back a bit too much, resulting in an inscrutable plainness. One ached for a more vigilant treatment of the transitions—a more responsible communication, even, of the ebbs and flows, the whims and the throes, of feeling.

The Staatskapelle players sounded terrific overall, for their part, as did the Westminster Symphonic Choir (which sang this work with the NYPhil directed by Kaplan last December, and will appear again this cycle for Mahler’s Third and Eighth). Moments of vulnerability among the brass were more audible this time, unfortunately, and I found myself wishing—for this symphony at least—for a more glistening, gauzy sound from the violin section. Apart from the ever lovely cellos, the true star of the evening was the lush and capacious voice of Michelle DeYoung. (I saw her last as Venus in a wonderful Tannhäuser at the Met in December 2004, which also starred Deborah Voight, Thomas Hampson, and Peter Seiffert.) Pending her vibrato—which needs just a slight diminution for this music—I dare say she has the potential to become one of the great Mahlerian mezzos of our time.

Theodor Adorno was right to focus on Mahler’s ‘breakthroughs’—when the music exceeds itself, swells up from its own ground, toward new luminosities or into new tumult—a pattern of almost inexplicable mutation and transmutation that is truly at the heart of Mahler’s alchemy. The performance last night enabled the listener to imagine such magic, but not to experience it.

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CARNEGIE HALL | Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder & Symphony #1

Thursday, May 7, 2009

younger Gustav

Wednesday, May 6, 2009 at 8 PM
STAATSKAPELLE BERLIN, cond. Daniel Barenboim
Thomas Quasthoff, Bass-Baritone

MAHLER | Kindertotenlieder & Symphony No. 1

Last night began the Staatskapelle Berlin’s much-anticipated, ten-part Mahler symphonic and song cycle at Carnegie Hall. Three Maestros ‘B’ are here involved or invoked: conducted alternatingly by Boulez and Barenboim (the Staatskapelle’s General Music Director, and in 2000 honored as its ‘Conductor for Life’), these concerts coincide with a new all-Mahler boxed set from Bernstein, that greatest American champion of Mahler whom Carnegie Hall (and indeed all New York) celebrated last fall, on the 50th anniversary of his appointment to directorship of the NY Philharmonic. (A full Bernstein-Mahler set already exists on Deutsche Grammophon—as does, incidentally, a full NY Philharmonic Mahler set wholly sans Lenny—whereas the new issue comes from Sony Masterworks. One will need some thirty uninterrupted hours of listening time to work out comparisons, so that will be for a separate post. But for now let it be said that one feature of the new set is particularly welcome: the radio documentary ‘I Remember Mahler,’ produced by William Malloch in the 1960s, which had been available only and only in part on Mahler Plays Mahler. The addict craves more, however: say, Malloch’s eight-hour ‘Mahlerthon’ from 1975.)

Barenboim had the baton for this opening concert. The heartbreakingly sparse Kindertotenlieder of 1901-1904—its delicate life borne through the years by the likes of contralto Kathleen Ferrier, mezzos Janet Baker and Christa Ludwig, and baritones Fischer-Dieskau and Thomas Hampson—could scarcely have found a more tender custodian than Thomas Quasthoff. Amid the fragile, meandering harmonies of the first song, ‘Nun will die Sonn’ so hell aufgeh’n,’ he wove softly about the instrumental lines, with no presumption of greater prominence, and when the orchestration expanded—there’s nothing like Mahler’s use of harp and strings to delicately unfurl a world—his voice melted into the soundscape. It was in the second song, ‘Nun seh’ ich wohl, warum so dunkle Flammen,’ however, that Quasthoff’s voice blossomed, warm yet vulnerable, carrying us farther into the depths of sorrow. The next two songs proved slightly more challenging: the purity of Quasthoff’s voice hardened a bit amid the top notes, and between him and the orchestra there were moments of strained clamor, as if each vied to back off from vying. Still, with ‘In diesem Wetter, in diesem Braus,’ the songs came to an imperturbably luminous close. In this Rückert poem, a father repeats he would never have let his children out in such tempestuous weather, but is gradually forced to realize their demise. His resoluteness would be regret if only he could bring himself to face the actual rather than the ‘would have’—and thus amounts to denial. Quasthoff and Barenboim grasped this with rare exactitude: no mere declarative emoting, they evoked sorrow as trance, as necessary and even self-annihilating dream, during which the slow, pained movement toward truth can still take place only in the realm of grammar. Occasional imperfections aside, this performance feelingly captured the desolation and inconsolable melancholy of these Lieder. Bare of familiarly lyrical flourishes or default aggrandizing of the soloist, it ushered us with care into Mahler’s world—which, after all, is a world subtending the expressible, however exuberantly or eloquently expressed.

Quashoff’s rendition here was long-anticipated; two winters ago, his Carnegie Hall appearance for these Lieder with the Philadelphia Orchestra was cancelled due to illness. Ovations abound, the audience last night did not hold back its gratitude.

Hopes were surely high after intermission, and the Staatskapelle’s rendition of the First Symphony brought hope closer to faith. The first movement began with a deliberateness that bordered on tenuous, but in the process let some details surface afresh for the ear, and then burst into fulgent fullness after the cymbals midway through. Thenceforth the experience seized us and would not let go, from the swooping, swooning dance of the second movement—Maestro Barenboim’s own arms scooping up swathes of air—through the hair-raising finale.

Particular stars that emerged for me last night were the cellos—which had seemed subdued until one realized that their amazingly sensitive volume control pretty much underwrote the success of the entire performance—and principal timpanist Torsten Schönfeld, whose beautifully fluid yet weighted movements were mesmerizing to watch. The woodwinds blessed us with color and audacity aplenty, though occasionally the clarinets risked too much brightness. (Jury’s out on the brass; how will they do tomorrow?) Interestingly, the ensemble seemed precisest when momentum was fiercest. Barenboim’s realization of the score was at once thoughtful and driven—sustaining a sense of contemplative reverie throughout even the most excitable stretches.

One could not help but marvel at the energy, empathy and collective devotion it took for these musicians to bring Mahler’s world to life for us—with all its detailed plenitude, its wistful play at languor, its embrace of everything that is life, however dejecting or calamitous.

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Metropolitan Opera in HD | Madame Butterfly

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

minghella butterfly

Madame Butterfly in HD [rebroadcast of the live March 7 Met performance]
March 17, 2009, Walter Reade Theatre at Lincoln Center
Metropolitan Opera
Conductor: Patrick Summers
Production: Anthony Minghella
Cast: Patricia Racette (Cio-Cio San), Marcello Giordani (Pinkerton), Maria Zifchak (Suzuki), Dwayne Croft (Sharpless)

The drama was taut, the gorgeousness detailed. The staging: imaginative, often exquisite, though always immodest enough for opera: bright scarlet blossom groves, glowing lanterns constellating unto galaxies aswirl, shimmering petals threaded onto filaments slowly descending like a seeping horizon, and of course measureless swathes of silk set unfurling. At times one almost feared it might verge on anime choreographed for wax-museum figures as directed by Zhang Yimou, but (Minghella’s English?) good taste reined things in.

Patricia Racette: powerhouse Puccinian—voice capacious, mellifluous throughout, the movement of her face and limbs in studious mimicry of girlishness. Nothing really could render her believable as an Asian child bride—the singing and emoting both were ripe too far beyond pubescence (and the ethnic makeover erred toward Morticia Addams, I thought)—but that’s the usual trouble so perhaps had to be forgiven. Marcello Giordani’s Pinkerton presented a solid amalgam of cad, brute, and dolt—nothing very complicated, though sung with soul. The whole supporting cast was surprisingly great, especially those in the roles of Suzuki, Sharpless, and Yamadori (played by an actual Asian singer—to odd yet doubly sympathetic effect somehow). Even Cio-Cio San’s mother, who barely gets any lines, lingers in this heartbreaking way on the hill upon leaving her just-married daughter—a supreme indication of the directorial care taken.

The silent puppet child, center and cipher of all this theatrical artifice, turned out to seem the most human and expressive of all—and even for this uncanny effect alone I’d recommend, and indeed repeat, the experience. Also for the thundering final act. Not one predisposed to Puccini, I left feeling dazzled and stricken. The performance will surely come out on DVD soon enough, so all is not lost to those who missed it this time.

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CARNEGIE HALL | Yes to Janáček

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Monday, March 9, 2009 at 8 PM
CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, dir. Pierre Boulez

Pre-concert talk by Ara Guzelimian, Provost & Dean, The Juilliard School.

JANÁČEK | Sinfonietta
SZYMANOWSKI | Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. 35. Soloist: Frank Peter Zimmermann
STRAVINSKY | Pulcinella (complete). Soloists: Roxana Constantinescu (mezzo-soprano), Nicholas Phan (tenor), Kyle Ketelsen (bass-baritone)

The Janáček work was surprisingly revelatory—a work, one feels, modeled on nothing but its own sense of wonder and exuberance—and a reminder of Boulez’s tremendous contribution to programming. The opening twelve-trumpet fanfare immediately engages, yet so many ideas spring up and develop—entailing some transportingly beautiful spots for strings—before it returns again to close the work. Once in a while one hears for the first time, in concert or on the radio, a work one knows must urgently join one’s own inner repertoire; this piece had that effect. Juilliard Dean Ara Guzelimian’s fluent pre-concert lecture nicely evoked the faintly magical role of Kamila Stösslová—the 25 year-old wife of a small-town antiques dealer, with whom Janáček fell in love at 63 and who became the wellspring of nearly all of his important (i.e., late) output.

For my tastes the Szymanowski concerto suffers a bit from overlong lyricism—and its orchestration suggests more fantasia than concerto—but Zimmermann rendered the work with impressive precision, meeting its demand that the violinist stay strenuously in his instrument’s highest, most wracking range while producing notes of dreamlike delicacy.

A delight as always to hear Pulcinella again, especially so soon after seeing Douglas Dunn’s exhilarating, hilarious choreography.

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CARNEGIE HALL | Vienna Philharmonic

Saturday, February 28, 2009

Saturday, February 28, 2009 at 8 PM
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, cond. Zubin Mehta

Hugo Wolf | Italian Serenade
Joseph Marx | Lieder: “Hat Dich die Liebe berührt,” “Selige Nacht,” “Zigeuner,” “Barcarole.” Soloist: Angela Maria Blasi, Soprano.
Franz Schubert | Symphony No. 9, “Great”

Encores: Johann Strauss Jr. | “Tritsch-Tratsch” Polka, Op. 214 & “Unter Donner und Blitz,” Op. 324
Joseph Hellmesberger Jr. | “Leichtfüssig”
Eduard Strauss Sr. | “Bahn Frei!”

The Wiener Philharmoniker’s sound is still different from that of any orchestra I’ve heard live. Lucky the New Yorkers who can make the Vienna ensemble’s three-night appearance each year here an annual tradition of their own. The first half of this concert presented two works entirely new to me—Hugo Wolf’s lyrical, lovely Italian Serenade and a set of songs by Joseph Marx, both composers from the Age of Mahler—though selections, I suspect, chosen as a breather for the orchestra as they recovered from the Bruckner Ninth 24 hours ago and prepared for the Schubert Ninth to come after intermission. It was of course the mammoth, marathon Schubert symphony that provided the revelatory vehicle for this orchestra’s flawlessly rich sound. (One might characterize it as “robust creaminess,” but that’d risk evoking the curdled decadence or mere afterthought status of dessert.) It was one densely woven fabric of sound, with no relenting whatsoever in intensity and no bristling over of texture. In the moment, one felt as if this is what an orchestra should be, must be.

[Update: James Oestreich in the NYT reflects a few days later on the Vienna Philharmonic’s choices of encore during this series of Carnegie Hall concerts.]

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‘Damage’ (dir. Malle, 1992)

Thursday, December 18, 2008

damage

Like Last Tango in Paris and Unfaithful, Damage is a film that explores—with punishing severity—the nightmarish consequences of lustful abandon. The acting excels within the category of tense facial tableaux: Jeremy Irons as MP Stephen Fleming, at once wooden and craven, Juliette Binoche’s Anna Barton trancey and transfixing, her gaze by turns pleading and rejecting. But all this thespian potential is confined within what turns out to be a morality tale that lunges toward fatalism (and literally into fatality) just when it’d need to grapple with complexity. The hurt son backs up over the low railing of a high staircase and falls to his death. The father grows his hair long, retreats to some inconspicuous Italianate town, subsists on sparse slices of cheese, all the while living daily with a photograph of himself, son, and their joint ex-lover wallpapering his monastic room. We learn that Anna eventually returned to her adolescent love and bore a child with him. This, reflects Stephen, reveals her to have been the same as everyone else.

What a pedestrian insight—and one nearly irrelevant to this particular story. Anna’s initial refusal to be possessed—the only semi-rigorous premise of the film—has fizzled embarrassingly. Is real life, it turns out, the only place where the human animal can stray from monogamy and be allowed, justly or not, to survive, within society still, and without retracting and contracting into yet another dyad? Has the dyad come to represent the only alternative to alienation?

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Christmas at the Bayerische Staatsoper

Sunday, December 30, 2007

bayerischestaatsoper1207

December 25, 2007, Munich

Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz at the Nationaltheater: the perfect sweet-treat after the gorgings of Weihnachten. My first time back to this gorgeous opera house since a very white-box Dieter Dorn staging of Le Nozze di Figaro some eight years ago.

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