Have some catching up to do.

Writing in-flight on my return from ZRH. 5h40m to arrival.

I think I left off Saturday night after the Adriana Lecouvreur matinée in Salzburg. After being steeped in Wagner for three days, Cilea seemed like a bunch of Italians stomping around and yelling at each other. The melodies seemed so obvious. It was singspielish. Aria, récit, aria, duet, blah. Funnily, when our heroine dies in Act IV, the poisoned violets (generally viewed as one of opera’s more ridiculous plot elements) seemed normal. If I were to do this kind of trip again, I think I would end with Wagner in order to let the feelings linger a bit more. For cripes’ sake, I’m listening to Parsifal on my headphones now.

After returning to the hostel and properly freshening up, I went to the nearby Die Weisse, a Biergarten.

Had some spinach dumplings, salad, and a couple dunkelweiss and a jubilator. Then decided to check out the local hosteler scene, been a while since I socialized. Had a good chat with the bartender and a young German fellow who is interning in Salzburg marketing their soccer team(s). The barback offered some ideas for touring the local mountains. For lack of better thought I figured I’d go to Großglockner Hochalpenstraße, a 10k m+ road I did in 2010. But that would have been 3h in and 3h out, a big push to see one thing. I was mostly avoiding this , preferring to draw up my routes organically. So I was grateful for his advice. When I returned he was outside smoking, I showed him my GPS tracks, and he said “you went everywhere I said!” Yes, well, I must be a good listener.

Ride an hour, cappuccino. Ride an hour, lunch, ride an hour, ice cream. A good way to live. Every turn a picture postcard and all the bikes came out to play on a sunny Sunday. Dual-sport “adventure” bikes in spades, as well as light sport tourers, a good rep of Harleys (who can get in a proper lean, I’ll have you know), bigger tourers, some Brits and minimalists… I can’t think of anything I didn’t see. Roads too twisty to give the wave except in the rare straightways.

Picked a route that took me down into valleys as well as had two proper mountain ascents (and descents!) at Obertauern and Königssomething, will have to check my tracks. Loved the R Nine T in the Twisties, not that I’m dropping a knee or anything, but very responsive all-round. Not that the suspension (non-settable WTF?!) is anything to write home about. It’s also super fun to have sport tires for the first time in a long while.

8 hours in the Alps, freshened up for Medée by Cherubini at the Salzburger Festspiele. The first of this trip’s eight operas that I had not previously seen. It’s a bit of a rarity, but it’s the standard Medea story, picking up at Jason’s marriage to Dirce. Gotta settle down, get rid of the foreign woman, keep those kids tho, and think about the family dynasty. Medea get’s a day’s reprieve and kills Dirce and then her and Jason’s children as revenge. Deus ex machina not included.

New production by Simon Stone. This would have played very well at the Met, and I’m still not sure if that’s a sideways insult or not. Two concepts at play here. One: Contemporary setting. Very theatrically designed sets: like, every naturalistic detail, bordered (no, crossed) into the busy. But so! fun! to look at! Every scene is on wagons that fit beautifully into the proscenium, mostly along the bottom half but also the top. Has a diorama effect which parcels out the action (and plays well with distance) and creates very intimate (1/6 set) or very open (1/2 or even full set). But the action is also framed inside a silent film narrative. The overture opens with a screen that takes up the whole stage: B&W, handheld montage-like narrative of our Jason getting caught with Dirce when Medea comes home (one of the kids forgot his violin for the school recital.) The film works well, (it uses the actual singers), but between scenes it drags a bit – Medea’s pleading phone calls start to feel a bit like we’re watching La Voix Humaine by Poulenc, and at a certain point it stops adding anything. Kind of a miss there.

First act: Dirce prepares to wed Jason: bridal salon, bridesmaids fitting, fussing, twirling, racking dresses – it’s great. Medea here is sent into exile (modern day Turkey, ‘natch) and pleas to Jason from a ratty internet cafe, replete with phone booth and teenage gamers. Wedding eve: Dirce in her and Jason’s new modern Euro apartment, kids eat spaghetti, domestic life. Super modern, great. Scrim reveals the upper stage: international arrivals, Medea’s back asking Creon for asylum. Gets livecast as a news item into the Dirce/Jason living room TV at the bottom – so they can act/sing/respond to each other across sets. Boom. Medea gets her day’s reprieve to see the kids and process it all, shows at the wedding venue, chokes out a waitress and takes her uniform, walks in and stabs Dirce, and flees with the kids. Final scene: gas station, sedan pulled to the pump. Stage otherwise bare. Everything that was boxed in and parceled out is over now: this is Medea’s great reckoning. Aria; Jason shows up, she splashes gas everywhere, gets into the backseat with the kids, lighter in hand. Reasonably awesome stage effects as the car ignites, chorus, curtain.

Elena Sitkhina was a beast of a Medea. Jason was way out of his range, off voice, very poor showing. Kowalijow as Creon, fine. Cherubini – eh, I don’t think he’s got a ton to offer. Everything seemed very arpeggiated. (There’s a passage that sounds for all the world like proto-Philip Glass.) I don’t think his arias hang super well within the drama. Maybe I’ll rethink this on a relisten.

Is the production a success? 18th century and older works usually benefit from over or under production. Look at all the spare baroque stuff that’s being done now – I can look at a color-transition scrim and someone in a bonkers pile of organza sing an aria da capo any day of the week. These productions give the work room to breathe: we can rest in the contemplative midst of the aria, a pause in time. Overproduction can work, too: fill in all the workaday details so we are steeped in the time and place (esp if re-set in time.) But the latter approach can be so distracting – I really don’t need to see Medea’s kids have their third pillow fight in as many acts (they aren’t even singing roles!) and without a cinematic way to take focus off of them (the way a camera could) there is little to keep my eye from darting to these sideshows.

Penne arrabiata at a tucked-away restaurant by the University Square down from the Festspielhaus. Had the lovely realization that I haven’t eaten a proper meal indoors in 9 days. Everywhere a café or bistro with outdoor seating, usually covered, and an empty restaurant inside. Also lots of outdoor high-tops which can be a nice reprieve from being in riding posture for too long.

This morning an early rise (4:45am) to return the bike to Zurich. About 400km in about 4 hours, made good time though most of my company was SLO/RO/PL truck drivers. Bus then train to the airport, quick shower in the lounge Have to be somewhat considerate of my seatmate. My boots reek and I haven’t taken them off all flight. I think when I get home I’ll have to put my jacket in a storage tote with baking soda and activated charcoal.

What worked:

Man, this whole itinerary just hung together perfectly. Never fewer than two nights in one place, days riding and nights at the opera. This wasn’t a trip for art museums or city walking, but I am so grateful for the time just idling over a coffee with a view to the Alps/countryside/Altstadt while strains of the last night’s (or upcoming) music filter thru my head.

Obviously the bike was a great sexy beast, and I won’t say my lower back hurts because then I’d sound old. Anyhoo, that much saddle time on any bike takes its toll. It hasn’t extinguished the desire for a large-bore Euro bike, tho.

Minimalist packing: tail bag and backpack really worked, and while no one wants to do laundry on vacation, I fit it in to my schedule and no complaints.

I did get some sideways looks at my motorcycle boots. (I am also especially self-conscious having recently learned that only Americans wear brown shoes with suits of any color.) But also at moto parking in Salzburg last night a late-50s guy in a tuxedo – or to the Germans, ein Smoking – straddled his Vespa, his wife in cocktail dress jumped on behind, saw me tucking my program under the pillion strap of the beemer and gave me a quick expression of camaraderie.

What didn’t:

Really disappointed I didn’t see the new Tannhauser, which is a big buzz. Gotta remember that the productions at Bayreuth I did see are new to me, and that’s enough. I’ve also never seen Tannhauser so it would be cool to say I’ve only seen it in Bayreuth, which would be such great fun to trot out when I want to feel particularly insufferable. I feel kinship with Wagner, the world’s greatest dilettante.

Couldn’t fit anything of Cecilia Bartolli from Salzburg into my sched. She doesn’t fly on airplanes or somesuch nonsense so there’s no opportunity to hear her in the States.

Not talking to anyone much esp at Bayreuth. There weren’t a ton of singlets and my German still sucks. I think I could re-do this trip in 5 years and that would give me enough time to finally get down to the Goethe Institute and get some actual German in my head.

I brought some Thomas Mann short stories and only read one. I had better luck with the Wagner commentaries, surprisingly.

I never take enough pictures.

What’s changed:

I feel like I hit a lot more construction traffic than in 2010.

Rest stops are dirtier, coffee is worse.

Hostelers spend a lot of time on electronics.

Gas still frightfully expensive.

What hasn’t:

Driver ability still excellent. I’ll do my mileage tally later but I saw zero collisions or fender-benders. Never noticed a distracted driver weaving or not keeping pace with traffic.

Motorcycles still kings of the road. Everyone gives way to pass (passing on the left is not a hostile move in EU), park (er, almost) anywhere, toll reduction (only one tunnel toll cash pay – the rest done by weekly/monthly/annual sticker – just buy it at a gas station or service shop and you’re good to go. Not every country does this but AT and CH do.

Things I haven’t figured out yet:

Why, when I would order milchkaffee or kaffe crème in vending machines and get coffee with room for milk but usually no other milk to be found?

Whether Parsifal’s Kundry is immortal or living multiple lives?

Why I have to pay €2 for a one-sheet cast list at the opera?

How some of the tallest nations in the world build theaters that have my knees feeling pressed? Salzburg especially, with straight seatbacks like some kind of Lutheran masochist fantasy.

If I eat my salad before my entrée, am I being judged?

Up to Obertauern.

“I am the humble servant of the Creative Spirit.”

Adriana Lecouvreur, Act I scene iii

One last look at the Bayreuther Festspielhaus without crowds or security this morning.

And then off thisaway:

Kept losing time all morning. Nothing in particular, just dragging. Knew I would get to the Salzburg Festspielhaus quite late. Definitely no time to check in to hostel and shower (sorry, reihenfreund). No biggie, just dumped my motorcycle in bicycle parking outside the venue, dashed upstairs and changed into dry clothes, and dumped my bag at the garderobe (whyyyyyy does NYC always charge for this, buried in the basement and seldom used, so that every tier looks like a hobo camp of puffer jackets and messenger bags?!). One minute to spare.

Ah, Francesco Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur: opera’s most tragic 4-act cat-fight. Performed in concert. Lead Anna Netrebko. Her “I was just holding them for a friend” lover Maurizio sung by AN’s actual husband Yusuf Eyvazov. Anita Rashvelishveli as the jealous princess (big rep from the former USSR today.) The audience was amped for fireworks and they got ’em.

Came out to a cluster of Polizei encircling my bike who I just knew weren’t merely trying to guess its horsepower (110). So I got a little souvenir:

I was sufficiently contrite that they didn’t make a big fuss, not that there is ever any arguing, their main concern was security, they made a little joke that it doesn’t compare with the costs of a NYC ticket, and I was on my way.

I have my first free evening in a while. Going to see what kind of trouble I can get into at the Biergarten.

“Uncover the Grail!”

– Parsifal, passim

Rest stop coffee break between Bayreuth and Nuremberg. Salzburg-bound but pressed for time as I have a matinée of Adriana Lecouvreur there.

Mostly pics from Friday:

Parsifal was a big think. It’s a “panreligous” or “suprareligious” production which is challenging in a work that is so (seemingly) rooted in Christianity. I think this is the first time I “got” Kundry, though. Met a nice French tax lawyer sitting next to me.

Gotta hit the road.

Beware! Night soon gives way to day.

Brangäne, Tristan und Isolde, II ii

Took a stroll in Bayreuth’s old city in search of coffee and an amenable place to read. Came across this jolly little sidecar rig:

And passed the Steingräber Piano factory who supplied both Ferenc Liszt as well as the Bayreuther Festspiele, and cast the bell that I will hear rung in Parsifal tomorrow.

And found my (not very good) coffee at a shop on the market square.

The gentle reader may note an ashtray on nigh every table I have photographed. I am not chain-smoking my way across the Holy Roman Empire, I assure you. But it’s ubiquitous outdoors, I’m not keen to stage photos, and there you have it.

Today was Katharina Wagner’s production of Tristan und Isolde. It was here I most felt the specialness of being in the House that Wagner Built©. Meistersinger is downright conventional. Parsifal is intellectual. But Tristan is a great, fated, erotic expression of longing that resolves only in death. What little action there is, is… superfluous, omitted, or, when sung about, only truly understood through the music. There is no other opera like it. Twice before have I heard the English horn curl up the motif of desire – at the Met, a house not-so-affectionately known as the Barn. (3,800 seats, the world’s largest house; to Bayreuth’s 1,925). The impression is of a virtuoso offering a solo to the audience.
Bayreuth was designed, with lowered and covered orchestra, to allow voice and music to mix, before going over the gulf of the double proscenium. The solo fills the room, no bouncing around boxes and overhangs (there are none), but expands like it’s … inevitable. More than once tonight I thought I heard the most gorgeous sounds ever produced by mankind. To conductor Thielemann, chapeau.

First intermission I walked the grounds a bit, and spent some time at the exhibit on anti-Semitism and Wagner, a forthright, brutal, and proper assessment of W, his family, and advocates.

There is a swift dismissal of the argument “Oh, Wagner was part of his times, no worse, it was really Winifred who was the Nazi, he was misappropriated…” The exhibit details not only W’s reprehensible writings, but also Cosima, Winifred, and Eva’s husband Houston Stewart Chamberlain (some of Hitler’s favorite reading), the not-even-thinly-veiled Jewish villains in the operas (Alberich, Beckmesser, Mime). A slew of other memorials describe the careers of Jewish singers and instrumentalists who were employed at Bayreuth, then sidelined, fired, sent to concentration camps, and murdered. It’s sobering, and I give credit to any cultural institution that can attempt such an self-assessment.

I’ll try to dash off a bit more about the performance tomorrow. For now: Stephen Gould, previously unknown to me, was a brilliant, ringing, measured-but-earnest Tristan. Petra Lang’s Isolde didn’t quite have the stamina to make it through, and I felt some pitch issues. Beautiful tone when she did tho. Greer Grimsley, Kurwenal, should be encouraged to find other employment. Not only does his name sound like a second-rate Dickens character, but he woofs and pushes his way through what little singing he has to do (hint: one dynamic and it ain’t ppp), and when he isn’t singing he throws himself about like an unruly toddler — saw it in Glimmerglass two years ago (a performance I will title “Sweeney Todd Goes on a ‘Roid Rage”) and he can’t give it up. He has no inner stillness (why should he, he has no talent to lean on) and thinks he should throw himself against the walls to show his “empathy” during T&I’s love duet.

Production was booed at curtain call. Probably because it committed some “sins” the Wagner nuts couldn’t handle, but I am not so doctrinaire. Love philtre applied to hands? I dig it. Melot stabs a bound and blindfolded Tristan, instead of in a fight? No matter. Isolde “dies” but is then carried off by Marke? Well, I have to ponder that one.

Oh, and the costumes were rubbish.

“[Shall I] breathe my life away in sweet scents?” – Liebestod, Act III, Tristan und Isolde

Midday dispatch from day two in Bayreuth.

Did laundry, probably the only place you can do this:

…and be seated next to someone reading the libretto of the same:

Errands at the local shopping center. Sad to see the tacky trend of bridge padlocks has infected this meaningless pedestrian pass over a canalway to the river Main:

I want more time at Wahnfried than time allows today, so I will go to the Altstadt and meander a bit, find a coffee, and enjoy my Ernest Newman commentary in preparation for Tristan und Isolde tonight. One gem, on the ruse that Tristan uses to disguise himself when receiving help from Isolde after killing her husband Morholt:

Knowing that, as the slayer of Morholt, he [Tristan] is taking his life on his hands, he tells Iseult that his name is Tantris. This was a touch that would delight the imagination of the Middle Ages, which always admired cunning in the outwitting of an enemy. To us, of course, it is charmingly naïve; it is very much as if a modern novelist were to ask us to believe that Mr. Winston Churchill managed to maintain himself for some weeks in the Cabinet councils of the Nazi party by calling himself Chinston Wurchill.

And on that delightful note, I’m off.