Opera in Concert Versions

Text: Ivana Rajič, 04.09.2023
 

The opera genre first saw the light of day over 400 years ago, and it has remained popular ever since: wild animals are tamed, the gods’ hearts are melted, victories in love are sung of – and the audience is amused and entertained. Opera is the art form that unites the greatest number of artistic disciplines: singing, acting and poetry, instrumental music, stage sets and painting, make-up, costumes and choreography – all of which have been combined as equal partners since Richard Wagner’s »Gesamtkunstwerk«.

Since Wagner invented the concept of the »Gesamtkunstwerk« – the term translates as »total work of art« or »all-embracing art form« –, the eternal question of whether the music or the plot is more important in an opera is a thing of the past. Yet a concert performance in Rome, i.e. a purely musical rendering of Wagner’s own, epoch-making cycle »The Ring of the Nibelung«, in 1968 triggered an »incredible demand and excited interest in the ›Ring‹« that the German conductor Wolfgang Sawallisch had rarely experienced: »People were buying piano scores and librettos. They sat on the stairs leading to the auditorium or even stood at the back of the studio for the entire duration of the ›Ring‹. Wagner’s ›Ring‹ was the talk of the town.

Concert versions of opera have been a fixed part of the Elbphilharmonie programme from the outset. And in the 2023/24 season as well, the public can look forward to several operas presented with great musical intensity.

In this way, something that is really just a half-portion – hardly any opera has been composed solely for the concert hall, except for the isolated phenomenon of Berlioz’s »La Damnation de Faust« - has the chance to become a whole after all. The focus is entirely on the music, which is sung and played in evening dress. As Sir Simon Rattle puts it: »It’s simply exciting when you look at the musicians«. He adds that in Wagner’s case the orchestra communicates »everything that the singers leave unsaid«.

But in the 20th century, concert versions of operas began to look increasingly musty alongside lavish film productions and stylish pop concerts. In the meantime, though, this model has been the subject of quite a few experiments, with »semi-concert« formats being tried out and the boundaries between established types of performance becoming blurred in the process.

In the Elbphilharmonie and the Laeiszhalle, the whole range of formats is presented in the 2023/24 season with ten productions that move opera from the orchestra pit on to the concert platform: from musical performances including Georges Bizet’s »Carmen« and Béla Bartók’s »Duke Bluebeard’s Castle« through a concert with Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s »Die Soldaten«, produced by Calixto Bieito, to semi-staged performances of Claude Debussy’s »Pelléas et Mélisande« and Jacques Offenbach’s »Orpheus in the Underworld«.

The programme also features opera rarities that many opera houses tend to give a wide berth. Works like Henry Purcell’s »Dido and Aeneas«, Giuseppe Verdi’s »I Lombardi alla prima crociata« or Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s »Médée« are rarely performed, either »because they are hard to produce, or because the music is great, but the libretto is on the weak side,« Christoph Lieben-Seutter explains.

To stop such works sinking completely into oblivion, it’s a good idea to at least present the music in the concert hall. The Elbphilharmonie’s General & Artistic Director sees concert versions »as an absolutely equivalent opportunity to enjoy operas«, focusing one’s attention entirely on the music.

But sometimes the fault lay with the opera houses themselves that were unable to realise a performance as the composer intended, with the requisite interaction between chorus, orchestra, soloists and the stage. »It’s nothing short of a disaster,« complained composer and opera director Gustav Mahler, »that the greatest composers have had to wrote for these wretched theatres where any kind of perfection is ruled out per se. Mahler was driven to despair by technical shortcomings, screaming singers, unsatisfactory scenery and orchestras that were too loud – by the trivial day-to-day practice in theatres that didn’t live up to his high musical standards.

Another opera composer who wished he could break free from the limitations of the theatres was Richard Wagner: »How I dread the costume and make-up sections!« he admitted bitterly to his second wife Cosima. He found himself unpleasantly reminded of the »revolting artists’ parties« with their fancy dress when he was confronted with a contemporary production: »And after I have created the invisible orchestra, I want to invent the invisible theatre as well!«

In this case, the audience would paint the scenery for the story in its own imagination. But before it can do that, it needs to have understood the plot. Even as a die-hard opera goer, it’s easy to lose track of the ramifications of the Atreus dynasty, be it in »Elektra«, »Cassandra« or »Iphigenia« – or indeed the microcosm of relationships in the Almaviva household (»The Marriage of Figaro«).

But does that mean that opera needs the big stage and sets that draw the audience into the story? Does it need producers who make an unfamiliar world, often centuries old, plausible in the here and now? As Lieben-Seutter says: »There are some super productions, but there are also a lot of things that can go wrong in an opera house.«

In Dmitri Tcherniakov’s production of Francis Poulenc’s »Dialogues des Carmélites« for example, the story was set in a wooden house that couldn’t be seen clearly from the dress circle and upper circle. Or there was Vasily Barkhatov’s production of Verdi’s complex opera »Simon Boccanegra«, about which the Berliner Zeitung wrote: »Now even harder to understand«. It goes without saying that there are also stunning examples of the opposite, productions that supply a remarkable overall musical and scenic experience. Nearly 700,000 people worldwide turned Barrie Kosky’s reading of Mozart’s »Magic Flute« into an immense success and a true export hit.

Leaving the risk factor of the production to one side, is musical quality alone a guarantee for an acclaimed opera performance? We certainly need to bear in mind that the public’s expectations of a concert’s visual expressiveness have altered. Back in 1966, composer Dieter Schnebel commented: »I always have to smile in chamber concerts at the way some musicians slouch on to the stage.« In his eyes, everything »that happens on a stage« has a »theatrical character«, making the music itself »visible«. Nowadays, every musician and every group, whether small or big, with an international or a local reputation, pays attention to the lighting and decor, to their outfits and of course the way they move on the concert platform.

So high-ranking conductors, singers and orchestral musicians with a strong stage presence are indispensable for a concert performance of an opera. Ditto a dramaturgy that plays with perspective and includes the whole ensemble. In this way, the big emotions of opera turn the world into a stage spectacle even in a concert version.