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.

“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.