“Honor your German masters…”

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Act III, scene v.

It’s quite late but I’ll dash out a bit about Wednesday.

Left a drizzly Munich in hopes of a quick lunch in Nürnberg (Nuremberg) before finishing the ride up to Bayreuth. It was good fun to have seen a Roman wall yesterday before Agrippina, so why not try for the home of Meistersinger shoemaker hero Hans Sachs and the site of the action of the opera? Alas, lunch became coffee on Hans Sachs Platz – not enough time for a meal. In a hilariously ironic stroke of fate, the Hans Sachs statue was surrounded by construction and adjacent to a porta-potty. In what I saw of tonight’s performance, it’s brilliant juxtaposition.

So… Bayreuther Festspiele. What do I say? It’s an eight-year waiting list. You show your passport to the ushers to verify your ticket (if you try to resell your ticket, you are banned for life.) People go absolutely over-the-top attending here. 50% + black tie.

The balcony in the above photo is where a brass fanfare calls attendees to enter the venue before each performance. I’ll try to get a video tomorrow.

The venue: no aisles, no sideways seating, Wagner curtain, no surtitles, what are often described as punitive seats:

Anyway, the performance. It’s the Barrie Kosky from a couple of years ago. It’s probably quite brilliant – I do need to mull a bit. In extra-brief: boy (Walter) meets girl (Eva) and in order to win her, needs to win a singing competition judged by an ossified, rule-choked group of bourgeoisie hobbyists: Die Meistersinger (the master singers). Rival nitpicker Beckmesser, magnanimous advocate cobbler Hans Sachs. Boy innovates but wins the hearts of the judges. Everything works out in the end, by which I mean a choral ode to the vital purity of German art. This work is problematic to say the least – and has been employed in very unsavory political ends.

Vocals near flawless. Michael Volle who just finished Wotan at the Met’s Ring, inhabited Sachs so well. I’m an easy win for Groissböck (Pogner), Eva a bit strained, and Klaus Florian Voigt the earnest Teutonic lover we all don’t really want to need, but we get anyway.

Kosky’s production starts it in Wagner’s salon, and seamlessly transforms into the 16th century. Wagner excitedly tries on a new pair of shoes, fusses over scores w Liszt, little Wagners come climbing out of the piano. Cute stuff. Cosima becomes Eva, Liszt becomes Pogner (Eva’s father), (Jewish) conductor Hermann Levi becomes Beckmesser – eep! Wagner is portrayed by different characters at different stages, but often Sachs.

Act I ends with the salon walls withdrawing to reveal… 1945, Nuremberg Palace of Justice. It’s the war crimes trials. Blackout, curtain. Go check out the bratwurst tent, folks.

Acts II and III use largely the same set: all our 16th century friends are stalking around the courtroom. Hans Sachs’ paternal levelheadedness gives way, has a street (courtroom) brawl with Beckmesser, a full-on mindless riot erupts and Beckmesser is donned with a giant papier-mâché mask of a Nazi propaganda-styled Jewish villain. Oof. A hot-air-balloon sized head inflates next to him for the nightwatchman’s call that closes the act.

I won’t belabor the directing points, Act III ends with Sachs/Wagner conducting his orchestra and chorus (i.e., the stage choristers are dressed as instrumentalists and concert singers).

So, these figures continue through time, through W’s mind and the use of ideas, reprehensible and otherwise, his own and others’. Framing it within the Nuremberg trials at least tries to confront the past – certainly better than the Met’s (typical) fairytale Otto Schenk production where we all enjoy a good comedy and then just shift uncomfortably in our cushy seats at Act III.v.

Lots to mull on this one; I’m grateful.

Yesterday’s post ended Sunday afternoon while I waited for the clouds to clear over Bregenz and Rigoletto to start. This did not happen. I killed a few beers under the tent while the intercom occasionally announced delay information in German, then everyone talked over the English.

My friend emailed me to meet him inside the entrance- the performance was being cancelled, save for premium ticket holders who would have a concert performance inside the festspielhaus. I was not such – but he whisked me to the manager’s box where I saw the performance, done heartily and with great appreciation from the waterlogged audience.

Afterwards we went to the employees’ canteen and knocked back a few vending machine beers with Monterone and Borsa and talked shop and new operas and all sorts of good banter about the art. It was a unique experience for which I am grateful.

Sunday I departed for Munich the scenic way. Picking a route through the Alpine foothills, enjoying near-flawless roads with delicious sweeps and vistas, with a break in Garmisch-Partenkirchen before turning north. Thus starts Autobahn 95, part of the speed-restriction-free road network. It was… an excellent opportunity to really let the R NineT show me what it’s got. This bike is capable of anything I could ask of it. There is a line of thought among riders that the motorcycle is a perfect machine and only the rider provides improper inputs. I believe this assessment is correct. On a naked, unfaired bike, I felt like a lump of poor input. I dropped at an easy pull-off and tried to shake off my headache. I cinched down the straps on my tailbag, tightened up my backpack, zipped the vents in my jacket and shut those in my helmet. Re-oriented thus, once more into the breach.

Freude am fahren, to shamelessly adopt BMW’s current marketing tagline. With a good tuck, heel behind the frame, helmet pressed low towards the handlebars and knees parturiently grabbing the tank, I was off like a shot. That is to say, with full throttle in sixth gear, this bike makes pavement vanish beneath it. Sadly a few stretches were (exceptionally well-marked for) undergoing construction, so it was never a long-lived shot. But a delightful taste of this machine’s capabilities nonetheless. Approaching 200 km/h nothing in the bike suggests headshake or instability, nor a need to pin the throttle. Götter in Himmel, it has so much to give.

For the nervous nellies who may be reading, I will say that such endeavors are only possible on roads that are not only perfectly maintained and cleaned, with competent drivers, sensible laws, and proper traffic flow. This is not recklessness, it is risk assessment.

Modest hotel in Munich behind the Maximilianeum.

Evening La Fanciulla del West at Bayerische Staatsoper.

Minnie is the much-fawned-over (but never kissed) proprietesss of a casino-saloon in gold rush California. Highwayman in town, Wells Fargo on the hunt, a once-glimpsed Dick Johnson shows, turns out he’s the highwayman and Minnie takes a stand for new love and new life. New Production here. Minnie – Anje Kampe (new to me)- nails the vulnerability and inner steel of her character, Jovanovich (whom I’d seen as Prince in Rusalka and in Lady Macbeth of Mtskenk) got every sincere and sleazy and opportunistic atom out of his role. One does not usually weep during the first scene of an opera, but Norman Garrett as Jim Larkens, singing of his homesickness, brought me to tears. I checked my log while writing and see he was the excellent Crown at Glimmerglass’s Porgy and Bess two years ago. Go figure. The man’s got it.Don’t have too much to say about the innocuous production. Modern-timeless, spare enough, but it let the viewer latch on to the few trappings of personal life the characters are afforded: Minnie’s tidy cabin, Johnson’s beaten saddlebags, Sid’s scarlet-letter-ace. Choral director visible from backstage entrances. Truly intimate conducting and beautiful, languid phrasing from (not that) James Gaffigan.

Slept in a bit on Monday but recovered the day with a jaunt to Regensburg, home of the Thurm und Taxis family (German royalty in name if not right) who were in residence at the time of my visit. Nevertheless got a solid tour of baroque opulence.

Quick peek at the Roman wall – I think one of the only surviving wall forts north of the Alps, good old Marcus Aurelius. Oh, and an Italian ice in front of the cathedral. Heidelbeeren und Melone. So good.

Shot back to Munich for Agrippina. This was of especial interest because it’s a new production by Barrie Kosky and the Met is doing a new one by Sir David McVicar this spring. Two Agrippinæ to compare, how lucky I be. Played at the Prinzregentheatr, around the corner from my lodgings, about Alice Tully Hall sized for my home readers. As is usual for Euro theaters, there are no aisles, so everyone is quite close and one has an enhanced sense of communality and intimacy. Purchased a 2€ program (also normal here) which was stolen at intermission. Pre-ordered wine and snack in the garden which cost less than one plastic cup of grape dregs at the Met.

But. The opera:Munich nailed it again. This is the perfect production and, for probably all purposes, the perfect cast. Agrippina moves her retinue and family like chess pieces to get her son Nero on her husband Claudius’ throne. It all works out in the end but we never feel happy. This production gets it. Aluminum mobile frame set piece with absolutely nothing else – we can see the cinderblock walls and lighting rigging. This box, I’ll call it the power structure, actually moves with meaning: when we plot, it’s closed up. When we’re in public, it opens. Periodless costumes that were actually thought-through. Agrippina moves from black gown to power caftan-and-turban, to Hillary Clinton Certified Pantsuit®. Poppaea’s dresses are what would be scenery in a more (gah) traditional production: because she’s about as effective as a garden or pile of taffeta. Bang-o. Claudius first shows up in slavic loungewear, velour zip-up that marks him as the idiotic, tasteless rich. Zing. Nero is a brooding punk-misfit, but of the Hot Topic not 1978 CBGBs variety. Tribal laurel tattoo on his bald head, slinking and weaseling his way around the stage, even if he was my least favorite voice, he owned the role. Iestyn Davies gave his finest performance Ive yet heard of him- an earnest and technically superior Otone. The whole ensemble winds up in Act II trouncing the innocent Ottone and end in a tableau that looked like the smug, witless Bluths from Arrested Development. Act III in Poppaea’s rooms is a perfect study of physical comedy. But when Händel has Claudius pit everything right in the end, the natural trumpet fanfare seems hollow, and Agrippina stands alone. She won, but what? Without the disneyfied frippery of a trad production, we see these idle rulers as empty suits, in a world of their own making.

This dispatch from my hotel bar, ironically named Thurm und Taxis. Tomorrow to Bayreuth but I have to figure a way to Nuremberg if time allows.