Last night was the premiere performance of the Salzburg production of Der Idiot, based on the book by Dostoevsky, composed by Mieczysław Weinberg. The Vienna Philharmonic was conducted by Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla and the regie was by Krzysztof Warlikowski. It was sung in Russian with German and English sur-titles. The performance was in the Felsenreitschule which seats just under 1500. The stage backs directly up on to the rock face of the Mönchsberg and apart from lighting, there is no overhead machinery so the director can't do nifty things like lower a four-door sedan over the stage or drop a baby grand piano. The stage is very wide, but not very deep and there is a large room that can be moved and positioned according to need. I saw Richard Strauss' Elektra here three years ago. To give you an idea of the space, here is a video I shot as the audience was coming in:
As you can see, it is more horizontal than most opera houses. I have to say that I did not enjoy this evening--so much so that I left at intermission. This really has nothing to do with the competence of the performance which was excellent. It did have something to do with the fact that sometimes I find it difficult to sit in a small space for a long period of time. I was at a symphony concert once, sitting in the front row of the balcony, and I noticed someone fifteen or twenty seats away, obviously fidgeting. It was the assistant conductor, whom I knew personally. At intermission we chatted and agreed that we were both terrible audience members, finding it difficult to sit passively for long periods of time. I'm ok for a couple of hours, usually, hopefully with an intermission, but more than that I find challenging. I was ok with Don Giovanni the other night because the production was so fascinating. But last night was a real challenge because my legs were sore from several days of a lot of walking and, this is the more important part, I really didn't like the opera.
There were early signs: I tried to read the novel beforehand, but just couldn't get into it despite having read Crime and Punishment recently and a book on Mikhail Bakhtin that talked a lot about Dostoevsky. But I just could not get into this piece and as it went on and on and on and on (the first half, up to the intermission, was two hours) I began to long to be liberated! After a while I began to really dislike the music.
So that's as much review as there will be. Salzburg is a wonderful music festival, but obviously every concert is not going to appeal to every listener.
This morning is a Mozart matinée in the Mozarteum Grosser Saal which I expect will be very enjoyable.
Quite frankly I much prefer Iggy Pop's The Idiot to the Weinberg opera. I am surprised you didn't read any reviews as it has been performed a couple of times in the last decade or so. Even Prokofiev couldn't do much with long Russian novels (eg War and Peace).
ReplyDeleteNope, I don't read a lot of reviews.
ReplyDeleteI can understand in general but there was a review from a few years ago on Bachtrack of another performance, since you were going to hear it, that wasn't too different than your post reading between the lines. There isn't any complete performance on youtube that I found but there are some 7 minute excerpts posted if people want to get a taste of what the opera is like.
ReplyDeleteI think people who are not opera mavens need to be careful with 20th C operas not by Puccini or Richard Strauss. Unlike 19th C opera where you at least get a warm soak in tonal harmony even with lesser operas or Baroque opera which is very consistent in style, 20th/21st C opera (1924 -2024) can deliver just about anything to the unwary.
I rather like to hear my 20th century operas without any confusing harbingers. For example, three years ago I attended a performance of Luigi Nono's Intolleranza 1960 and probably would have had a different experience if I had read some reviews before. With 20th century music one is sometimes disappointed--or often disappointed--but sometimes you have a really extraordinary experience. Best not to prejudge it.
ReplyDeleteMost people are not like you and one or two disastrous experiences are likely to kill interest.
ReplyDeleteTrue enough! And that's why they are all at those very predictable Taylor Swift concerts. Classical music in general and contemporary music in particular is where the more adventurous listeners go. When I was at McGill I attended a lot of new music concerts and my basic attitude was that if I went to a program of five pieces and one of them was good, that was a fair enough exchange. Sometimes that one piece was remarkable enough that it would stick in your memory for decades. This can also be true of recordings as well.
ReplyDeleteWith opera, of course, you pretty much have to go to the live performance. So my scorecard for this Festival is pretty good: one extraordinary opera experience (Don Giovanni) and one unpleasant opera experience.
This is an opera that I've been wanting to hear for a while, and if I'd been going to Salzburg I'd definitely have tried to get a ticket. I haven't been that impressed by Weinberg's music for voice, though his chamber music has come to mean a great deal to me over the last ten years or so.
ReplyDeleteFor what it's worth, Norman Lebrecht says the opera was well received! (https://slippedisc.com/2024/08/idiot-is-salzburgs-biggest-hit/)
The conductor seems to think highly of Weinberg:
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/ztdQnwyxtVA?si=DS3ZiQGPJh48f5bT
Yes, perhaps it was well-received. As I said, I left at intermission because I found it unbearable. I'm going to do another side by side comparison of music by Shostakovich and Weinberg.
ReplyDeleteYes, based on the interview, one gets the impression that this was a personal project of Mirga.