Deutsche Oper 100th Anniversary Gala: a recap

And only a week and a half late. Sorry about that, but things have been incredibly hectic over here, and then for some reason I lost all blogging motivation I'd had, and that was that. But here is my recap, for what it is worth.

Guys, German audiences can be mean. The poor woman who hosted the evening, Tita von Hardenberg, kept getting heckled like you wouldn't believe. Don't come between the Berlin audience and their opera, baby, was the message. I thought she handled herself very well, considering the shouting that started whenever she came onstage to interview one of the conductors (Donald Runnicles, Alberto Zedda and Jesus Lopez Cobos) or the management of the opera. Several of the managers were loudly booed, though I'm not sure which ones, as everyone was talking too fast and in German. There was a nice video trailer about the history of the opera house itself: long story short, the perfectly lovely building got bombed out during the war, and instead of restoring it, they had to raze it to the ground and build a perfectly ugly modern monstrosity in its place. The highlight was Christa Ludwig saying something snarky about the "rocket man" sculpture they have out front (again, my German wasn't up to catching exactly what she said, but I get that it wasn't flattering). The audience whooped and laughed and applauded her for it. That was fun.

But the music is what we all care about, and so here is what I wrote down in my journal the night of the performance. It's going to be piecemeal, but it's better than nothing:

The Gala itself was great, although they were losing Florestan's left and right: first Jonas Kaufmann withdrew, and then his sub got sick, and then the sub's sub got sick, and so it was announced right before intermission that the part of Florestan would be sung by a man named MacAllister. There was general disbelief in the audience, as you can imagine. I will say that he did a fine job with the role, despite having had only a few hours' notice.

Heidi Melton (who was the mastermind behind my being able to attend, for which I am forever grateful) opened the concert with Wagner's "Dich, teure Halle". She was fabulous. For some reason, I'd expected the aria to be solemn, considering the character of Elisabeth, but it was loud and jaunty and gorgeous, and definitely going on my iPod. Melton wore a fabulous, sparkly blue dress, brand new that day: the airline had lost her luggage and her gala gowns, and so emergency shopping was done. You can read all about it on her Twitter page.

We were subjected treated to a world premier of an overture by Hans Werner Henze, who died just this week, thus making me feel a little bad that I thought his Ouverture zu einem Theater was a cacophonous mess. It was just, well, extremely modern, and I'm not quite there yet in my musical tastes. It was quickly followed by Rossini's Semiramide overture, which was a nice palate cleanser.

Afterwards, Vittorio "There's Not A Tenor in the World Who Can Compete With Me" Grigolo came on to sing and (Heaven help us all) act out Romeo's aria Ah! leve-toi, soleil! from Gouno's Romeo and Juliet. Yay. He has a good voice, I'll give him that, but the arrogance involved was (and is) extremely off-putting. And he kept coming back onstage to bow, which was a trifle obnoxious, as we were keen on getting on with the program.

Lastly, we were treated to the Falstaff finale, Tutto nel mondo e burda, which was funny and fun and loud and jolly. And then there was intermission. Thirty minutes worth of music took over an hour to hear, because each and every single piece was preceded and followed by interviews and film clips. It was an extremely disgruntled audience that hit the wine buffet, let me tell you.

Intermission, in which several women told me they liked my dress, everyone got a little hammered, and the German glitterati swept around sparkling like teen vampires at high noon. Seriously, I'm sure there were millionaires and actors and artists and assorted German celebrities there, and believe me when I tell you that I didn't recognize a single one of them. This is one of the advantages of not watching TV.

After the intermission, we all came back for a mercifully uninterrupted Act 2 of Fidelio. It should surprise no one that I am extremely picky about my Fidelios, to the point of being a bore. The fact that we were on our fourth Florestan of the night worried me. I needn't have worried, for our Leonore was Anja Kampe, and she was phenomenal. She carried the whole evening. She made me cry. Her Lenore was scared, but overjoyed to find her Florestan, and hardly ever stopped smiling. She was the only one of the singers to speak, and used the (now rare) line where she tells Florestan to have faith right before Pizarro attacks. Hers is the best Leonore I've ever seen, and I've seen every performance of Fidelio released on DVD and YouTube. Oh, she was a freaking rockstar!

Rocco was sung by Matti Salminen, who I'm given to understand is a baritone of some renown (don't laugh at me if he's extremely famous; I've only just begun to discover Wagnerian baritones) and Bastiaan Everink's Don Pizarro was virile, elegant, and scary as hell. Everink was a young guy, too; I'd have really loved to see him opposite Kaufmann, to see what it would be like to have two relatively young men at each other's throats. Alas, it was not to be.

Fernando, Jacquino and Marzelline were sung by Markus Bruek, Burkhard Ulrich and Martina Welschenbach respectively, and they were all very good. The finale was a miracle of sound and light and beauty, but frankly, if it isn't, something's wrong. The thing that I learned about Fidelio that night was the way that Leonore and Marzelline's vocal lines sort of play off each other in the finale, melding into a gorgeous whole. Again, don't laugh: there's only so much that you can get from a digital recording. Seeing Fidelio live was a real experience for me, because it taught me so much about the music that I couldn't get from a recording. It was stunning, beautiful, fabulous-and now I'm done unloading superlatives and will only say that it went by too fast and I wanted them to do it again when they were finished.

After the gala was a big reception, where they effectively killed the mood brought on by Beethoven by having a rock band perform in the lobby. It was a good band, really, but I was on a Fidelio high, so after wandering around for a bit and eating some of the Deutsche Oper-shaped cake (pictured above), I collected my coat and flats* from the coat check and left. I had wanted to thank Heidi Melton in person for the ticket, and fall at Anja Kampe's feet in general adoring veneration, but neither of them appeared. Unfortunately, I dropped and broke my camera, so the one photo above is the only one I have. Le sigh.

All in all, it was a great night and I'm glad I went.

*I made an elderly lady in the subway laugh by changing out of my heels into my ballet flats: I can't walk well in heels in general, and there was no way I was riding home in them if I didn't have to.