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.
