Butterfly at Weiner Staatsoper

Made my maiden voyage to the Weiner Staatsoper last Wednesday, the same day of Johan Botha's untimely passing in Vienna. GM Dominique Meyer appeared in front of the curtain prior to the performance and spoke at length in German about Botha. I could only pick out so much, but he spent some time talking about Botha's extensive career at the Staatsoper, and so I gather from later reports, discussed the company's sadly unrealized plan to award Botha the prestigious Kammersanger title.

Though I have always appreciated Botha virtually, I only saw him live once, in his fine showing as Walther in last spring's Met Meistersingers. The voice was the real deal, and whatever his dramatic limitations we have lost one of the few folks on the planet that can overwhelm a house the size of the Met with Wagner's music as it should sound. It's a massive loss and one that will be felt acutely.

As for the show itself, my disappointment at missing Monday's Lohengrin with Klaus Florian Vogt was somewhat assuaged by the opportunity to finally get to see Kristine Opolais' Butterfly live. Her cool, smoky timbre isn't a typical sound for Butterfly but she employs it to unique affect, especially in the great statements of the second and third acts, though it doesn't quite have the beauty needed for a truly memorable first act. Unfortunately our seats in the Galerie (several rows back at the edge of the center section) were decidedly partial view and it was hard a bit hard to fully engage.

Piero Pretti's Pinkerton was a bit generic but valiantly sung, with a big true sound especially in a ringing climax for "Addio, fiorito asil." Mezzo Bongiwe Nakani, in an auspicious Staatsoper debut, turned in an attention grabbing Suzuki, with a rich, authoritative lower register. Among the gallery of dudes trying to solve Butterfly's problems, Boaz Daniel stood out with a pleasant, earnest Sharpless. 

The 1957(!) production by Josef Geilin was everything I could have asked for in a throwback Staatsoper experience. The head on pictures with Japanese painting inspired backgrounds are actually pretty attractive, but from the upper balcony (1957 designers did NOT give a shit about the cheap seats) the quaint set is delightfully reminiscent of one of those 1950s live TV movie musicals. For the second and third acts, the interior of Butterfly's little shack improbably opens up into a generous open plan ranch house, with a decor looks a little like the view inside the house you get on that Japanese cat care cell phone game. It's great.

DC's own Philipe Auguin, who will conduct Butterfly at WNO in the Spring, seemed to relish the glorious sound of the Staatsoper band, driving the volume to 11 as soon as the singers took a break and then quickly dialing things back down (for the most part, he was guilty of swamping the singers on a few occasions). If a bit less subtle than what I remember from his Butterfly outing here a few years back, the results were pretty exciting, especially an exuberant Act III in which Butterfly did its best impression of an exuberant passage from Die Frau Ohne Schatten, a reminder of how rich these scores can be in the right hands.

The NSO Season Ahead

Seven years is a curious amount of time in the life of a symphony orchestra: long enough to feel like the past is a distant memory, too short to comfortably assume the rose colored glasses that obscure recent misgivings. Perhaps that is why Christoph Eschenbach's final season with the NSO doesn't look like much of a victory lap, but rather a continuation of the NSO's last few years, characterized by a healthy smattering of interesting programs but few of the exciting investments we saw earlier in Eschenbach's tenure.

The "themes" for the season probably won't drive anyone into the concert hall: "Shakespeare" (a good year to use that one I suppose) and folklore (I mean, c'mon). At the least one would hope these themes were tied to an ambitious project or two, but mostly they seem to be justification for a lot of filler programming.

In the Shakespeare bucket, most of the material is new to me and may turn out to include some interesting curiosities (Smetana did something inspired by Richard III? There's a Korngold score for a Much Ado About Nothing film?) but none of it is likely to generate broader excitement. The folklore lineup provides a pretext for chestnuts from Rimsky-Korsakov and the like (though I will definitely be going to hear the suite from Cunning Little Vixen).

One of Music Director Designate Gianandrea Noseda's two appearances for the year (and definitely the choicer of the two) crops up under one of the Shakespeare headers: a complete reading of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet ballet. Noseda's lesser evening will find him proving he can hack it in Americana in the NSO's big Kennedy tribute evening, a program that will include John Williams' music from Lincoln and JFK, Copland's Lincoln Portrait, Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue, among other crowd-pleasers.

A more fruitful line of programming is the celebration of the 90th anniversary of beloved former maestro Mstislav Rostropovich's birth, offering a welcome emphasis on Russian works and a brief tour to Russia  featuring cellist Alisa Weilerstein. Highlights include Eschenbach conducting Shostakovich Symphonies 1 and 8 and the Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 1, and James Conlon leading Shostakovich Symphony 5 and Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 1 with Lise de la Salle.

Soloist wise, a number of big names from recent years return next season, most notably Joshua Bell, who will take up a residency in February, much of which will be devoted to new works or TBD crossover programs. Lang Lang (opening ball something something), Emanuel Ax (Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 1), Gidon Kremer (Weinberg Violin Concerto), and Hilary Hahn (Mendelssohn Violin Concerto), all turn up as well for a roster that is respectable, if not brimming with must-see soloist and repertoire combinations.

Missing from the line-up are any forays into concert presentations of dramatic works, often a highlight of the Eschenbach years, though there will be a few evenings requiring larger forces. These include Eschenbach's final NSO encounter with Mahler (Symphony No. 2), and the requisite Beethoven 9 torch song (featuring, FWIW, a strong cast including Joseph Kaiser and J'nai Brugger).

If one fact stands out about the season, it is the impressive line-up of new commissions, world premieres, and recent works new to the NSO. The Kennedy Center is paying a lot of lip service to new and/or American work as part of the JFK centennial year, and the NSO is doing its part with no less than 5 new commissions or co-commissions. This is a commendable thing, though whether it translates to enjoyable nights in the hall is yet to be seen. For instance, we're going to be getting a whole lot of composer-in-residence Mason Bates next year, which is good or bad news depending on how much you enjoy a techno bonus track on top of you regularly scheduled symphony.

Earlier this year, upon news of Noseda's appointment Ionarts' Jens Laurson offered some crucial thoughts on where the NSO goes from here:

The NSO cannot be fixed without its audience improving. Anyone familiar with the Washington classical music scene will have noticed a strange disparity between the uncurious, unenthusiastic, fair-weather crowd that goes to the Kennedy Center (the Washington National Opera crowd being the worst, but the NSO audience, which gives standing ovations only to reach for the car keys, not far behind)… and the world class chamber music audience, which is curious, excitable, stands in long lines to hear new acts or unknown music and which is discriminating and extremely knowledgeable. You find them in the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Freer Gallery’s concert stage, at the Phillips Collection, at the National Gallery of Arts, at various embassies and residencies. How can these latter music lovers be coaxed to take a stake in the NSO’s future and presence?

The chamber music scene Laurson describes builds on DC's considerable cultural advantages: 1) a smart, deep pocketed audience attracted by the government and its attendant industries; 2) foreign institutions providing support for and ready connections to international culture; 3) the prestige that ensures DC remains a destination for international artists; and 4) proximity to federal largesse.

While the NSO leverages #2, #3, and #4 pretty well, it has indeed failed to really capture the crucial loyalties of #1. For these audiences the NSO exudes a drab institutionalism, a good enough band for a good enough city, but not the kind of cultural asset which inspires a feeling of ownership. Changing this narrative will require taking some chances, thinking hard about what role the NSO wants to play in the cultural life of the city, and moving away from the bet-hedging of the current season.