DVD Review: Call in the Swiss Navy

Opernhaus Zürich presents Der Fliegende Holländer.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Heart of darkness: Bryn Terfel (center) is the Dutchman in Opernhaus Zürich's
Der Fliegende Holländer. Photo © 2013 Opernhaus Zürich/DG/UMG.

With the 1843 premiere of Der Fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman) Richard Wagner created the first of ten operas that constitute the canon of his work. He also created a serious problem for stage directors, as the romance between a ghostly ship's captain and an obsessive young woman ends with the latter hurling herself off a nearby cliff and the reunited couple "ascending to Heaven" as the opera's final bars crash home.

Brass Tacks: Basses

How low can they go? (The answer is, usually a low "D.")
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Matti Salminen as Hagen in Götterdämmerung at the Savonlinna Festival.
Photograph by Stefan Bremer © 2011 Savonlinna Festival.

This is the last section of Brass Tacks dealing with voice types. And I've saved my favorites for the very end.

Basses are the lowest of the six major voice types, and exclusively male. A great bass will be able to sing in his normal range and then move his tone production deep down into the chest (this is called the "break") to deliver room-shaking low notes. A full "black bass" must be able to bellow over the orchestra, in scenes like the Calling of the Gibichung Vassals from Act II of Götterdämmerung.

Most operas have parts for basses, who get to play devils, priests, and the most villainous of villains. The hardest roles in the bass repertory (mostly because they're very long) are the title role in Boris Godunov and the father-and-son villains Alberich and Hagen in Wagner's Ring Cycle.

There is some cross-over from the baritone range, particularly in bass-baritones, the voice type that is frequently a bass who can push up into the baritone range for certain passages. Examples of this include Wotan in Wagner's Ring although the part in Das Rheingold has been sung by a full baritone,and John Tomlinson, a full bass, sang all three Wotan roles at Bayreuth in the 1990s.

Let's start with a great example of bass singing: Martti Talvela as Osmin in Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail. This aria, "Ha! Wie Will Ich Triumphieren!" requires a low D.

Footage © 1978 Bayerische Staatsoper. 

And here's a rare duet for two basses as King Philip (Ferruccio Furlanetto) confronts the Grand Inquisitor (Matti Salminen) in Act IV of Don Carlo.

Footage © 1980 Salzburg Festival/Sony Classical.

"Migration" between bass voices is usually a one-way street--a Dr. Bartolo is highly unlikely to sing Hagen in Götterdämmerung although sometimes deep bass voices go "up" to sing comic villains.

The range for a bass voice is the C two octaves below middle C to the F above middle C (C to f'). A bass-baritone  The lowest note required for a bass is Osmin's low D2 in Die Entführung aus dem Serail.

Recordings Review: Jogging through Nuremberg

Marek Janowski's brisk new Meistersinger.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

It's a concert recording, so you'll just have to imagine Ye Olde Nuremberg.

This live recording of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg was made in Berlin at a June 3, 2011 concert performance by the talented, underrated Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra. Led by veteran Wagnerian Marek Janowski, it is the first of a 10-opera project to preserve new digital version of the composer's mature operas over two years.

DVD Review: Battle for the Radioactive Donut

Der Ring des Nibelungen from Valencia, with La Fura dels Baus.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Rhinegold appears in the form of a large baby in La Fura del Baus' staging of Wagner's Ring.
Photo © 2009 © Unitel Classics.

This 2009 Unitel release of the complete Ring, filmed in 2008 in Valencia, Spain under the baton of Zubin Mehta is a compelling, visually arresting, and best of all, well-sung version of Wagner's mythological cycle. It should appeal to Wagnerians who want to hear the next generation of singers, and those curious opera-lovers who want to see what a modern Ring looks like without stage machinery that goes "clunk."

DVD Review: Night Of the Comet

The post-apocalyptic Baden-Baden Parsifal.

by Paul Pelkonen

Gurnemanz (Matti Salminen) presides over the devastation in Act I of Parsifal.Image © 2006 OpusArte/Baden-Baden Festival

The composer Richard Wagner once said, "Children, go do something new!" This new 3-DVD set, which captures Nikolaus Lehnhoff's remarkable production of Parsifal, filmed here on a good night in Baden-Baden takes the composer at his word. Lehnhoff is not the first director to stage a post-apocalyptic version of the Grail legend, but this desolate production (also seen at Covent Garden and the San Francisco Opera) is chillingly effective.

DVD Review: Cuckoo Cocoon

The Zurich Zauberflöte moves the action to an asylum.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Birdman of Zurich: Ruben Drole as Papageno
Image © 2008 by Hans Jörg Michel/Opernhaus Zürich

From the Zürich Opernhaus and music director Nikolaus Harnoncourt comes this new DVD performance of Mozart's Zauberflöte. Mr. Harnoncourt is an acclaimed conductor who built his reputation on performances with period instruments, and unusual textual decisions. However, this performance is on modern instruments, crisply played and note-complete.

DVD Review: Songs From the Big Chair

Boris Godunov at the Liceu

In the capable hands of director Willy Decker and conductor Sebastian Weigle, this production of Boris Godunov (filmed at the Teatre de Liceu in Barcelona) , the Liceu Boris becomes more than a radical work that changed Russian opera forever. It becomes the first great political thriller of the stage.

Matti Salminen and Erik Halfvarson are both basses, and both known for their huge, round dark voices that have led them to build their careers around the role of the villain Hagen in Wagner's Götterdämmerung. Salminen takes the title role into his massive hands and delivers a thunderous performance, swinging between grim self-defeat and stark terror in the mad scenes. Halfvarson, as the monk, Pimen is the more emotionally stable of the two--his opening monologue is riveting. The two great basses finally confront each other in the Duma scene, now moved to the close of the opera.

This is Boris as Mussorgsky originally conceived it--seven tableaux clocking in at two and a half hours. In this production, there is no Polish act. Grigory's part is accordingly diminished. Princess Marina and the Jesuit, Rangoni are cut completely. Also cut out, the Kromy Forest scene--replaced here by the confrontation before St. Basil's. However, these cuts have their advantages. While Grigory (the appealing tenor Pär Lindskog) is reduced to a mere historical footbote against the grand drama of Boris, the shadowy schemes of Shuisky (the excellent Philip Langridge) now come to the fore.

Director Willy Decker has opted against the tradiitonal Russian look, choosing a quasi-fascist 20th century setting that opens with Boris in a well-cut business suit before he becomes tsar. The set consists of a wide open space dominated by an enormous, gilded wooden chair--which serves as scenery and blocking as well as the central image of the Russian throne. The seat is literally too big for any one man--perhaps that is the idea. The spare set gives the choristers plenty of space to move and act, allowing them to dominate this opera when the two great basses are not onstage.