Class 3: Playing Toy Theaters

A. Orfeo ed Euridice

1. Title Slide 1 (Elysian Fields)

Continuing our quest for glimpses, at least, of “authentic” production style, we look today at two films of operas performed in genuine baroque theaters: Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice at Cesky Krumlov in the Czech Republic, and Mozart’s The Magic Flute at Drottningholm near Stockholm, Sweden. But before showing each one, I need to say a little about the operas themselves.

Orfeo ed Euridice, which premiered in Vienna in 1762, was the first salvo in the campaign by Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–87) to reform opera. He and his librettist Ranieri de Calzabigi aimed at reducing the action to its simplest elements: very few characters, no showy arias, no subplots, compressed in time, and the chorus and dancers integrated into the action rather than treated as divertissements. So his Orfeo opens with Eurydice already dead—halfway through Act II in the Monteverdi. In its original form, it is a very short opera: three acts, but a playing time of under 75 minutes. Gluck’s de-emphasis of arias also made this an unusually continuous opera. Everything is accompanied by the orchestra; there are no dry recitatives, and the musical numbers take highly flexible forms to suit the situation.

2. Gluck’s Orfeo and its interpreters

Because Orfeo was so popular, it went through many revisions, the history of which has put its imprint on performances even today. Especially in the matter of what kind of singer should take the title role: 1762 The original Orfeo in Vienna is an alto castrato, Gaetano Guadagni. 1774 Gluck, now living in Paris, makes an extensive revision, to a translation of the original text, with extra ballets, choruses, and ensembles for the soloists (thus making it a much more conventional opera). As the French tended not to use castrati, the role of Orphée is rewritten for a haut-contre or high tenor, in this case Joseph Legros. 1859 As the pitch of French tuning has been rising over the past 80 years, the tenor version has become impractical. The composer Hector Berlioz therefore makes a version a female singer in male clothing, originally the great contralto Pauline Viardot. This version holds the stage for more than a century. 1970s The increased availability of countertenors makes it possible for the role to be taken once more by a man, and most of the leading countertenors have sought to perform it.

I have put together a short video showing these various alternatives (though of course omitting the castrato). The music is Orfeo’s famous lament “Che faro senz’Euridice?” where the opening tune comes back three times. We will hear it in full later; here now are those three verses divided between a countertenor (Philippe Jaroussky), a tenor (Juan Diego Flórez), and a mezzo (Sharon Carty):

— 1 —

3. Gluck: Orfeo ed Euridice, lament sung by three voice types 4. Settings of the Cesky Krumlov film

All these, as it happens, are modern-dress productions, although not updated in the sense of putting the action into a recognizable modern environment. For Ondrej Havelka, the director of our movie however, the setting is very much a period one, on the stage of the baroque theater at Cesky Krumlov, suggesting how the opera might have been performed in Gluck’s time. A word of warning, however. The use of a period theater, period costumes, and lots of candles does not automatically make the production “authentic.” We know little about the acting styles, and the camera angles and lighting of a film obviously belong to a different era.

Gluck’s opera calls for five different settings: the scene of Orfeo’s mourning, Hades, the Elysian Fields, the return from the underworld, and the closing chorus. Havelka places only three of these on the main stage; for the underworld settings, he uses the stairs and basement of the theater, a fly gallery, and what looks like an undecorated rehearsal room. He also has the concept of placing Orfeo in the action but not of it: his is the least period costume; he is isolated from time to time in a very un-period spotlight of his own; and at the end, he walks away altogether. As we shall see.

B. Orfeo at Cesky Krumlov

5. Bejun Mehta in the opening credits

I am going to give you half a dozen quick snippets of the first two acts of the opera, followed by the last quarter-hour uninterrupted. That way, I hope to show each of the settings, sample the different musical moods, and give you the gist of the story. Havelka’s film opens in silence, with the singer Bejun Mehta in his dressing-room. Note that he is still more or less in modern dress. The orchestra sounds offstage, and he puts on the rest of his costume, preparing—it seems reluctantly—to go onstage for the first scene of mourning, in which he can barely articulate Euridice’s name.

6. Gluck: Orfeo ed Euridice, end of overture and opening scene 7. — still of the above

What do you think of Havelka’s use of the baroque theater and décor? For me, it gets us immediately into a world where we don’t look for realism, and where the pacing and expectations are quite different from our own. It becomes clear later that its artifice also plays into Havelka’s concept of the Orpheus singer being drawn into the repeated execution of a rite whose real-life equivalent does not necessarily have a theatrically happy ending. That sigh at the end of the overture was very telling.

We skip ahead now to the baroque stage machinery in action, as Amore (Cupid) comes down on a rather creaky cloud. S/he gives Orpheus the usual instructions about not looking back at Euridice, then sings a rather chirpy aria which I will put on the website but not play here. Havelka plays Amore as a comic character throughout, which is well handled by the performer, Regula Mühlemann.

— 2 —

8. Gluck: Orfeo ed Euridice, arrival of Amore 9. — still of the above

Orpheus takes Cupid’s advice and descends into the underworld. I will play the interlude both to show the grim aspect of Gluck’s music and the way Havelka uses the cellars and backstage spaces in the theater. I shall then cut immediately to the scene where he pleads with the chorus of tormented souls, only to hear their repeated “No!”

10. Gluck: Orfeo ed Euridice, descent of Orpheus to Hades 11. Gluck: Orfeo ed Euridice, Act II, scene 1, “Deh, placatevi con me” 12. — still of the above

But eventually the spirits relent and allow Orpheus to ascend to the Elysian Fields, represented by a baroque garden, graceful couples dancing, and the singing of birds. This is one of the sections that Gluck expanded for Paris, with the famous “Dance of the Blessed Spirits” with its flute solo. We don’t get that here, but nonetheless the gently undulating texture of flute and strings under Orpheus’s solo “How pure the air!” is enchanting. I will skip the middle section of the scene and move to the end of it, where Eurydice appears in the person of Eva Liebau—once again using a simple baroque theater machine: a trap door. [I have never quite understood why Calzabigi and Gluck included the Elysian Fields scene. If Euridice is already in a kind of paradise, why should she want to return to earth? It certainly explains her wanting to go back when she thinks Orpheus doesn’t love her.]

13. Gluck: Orfeo ed Euridice, Act II, scene 2, “Che puro ciel!” 14. Gluck: Orfeo ed Euridice, Act II, scene 2, appearance of Euridice 15. — still of the above

Any questions or comments before we go on? I now want to play the last quarter-hour of the movie without a pause. It contains the following sections: • Euridice’s aria as she feels that Orpheus no longer loves her. It is a more conventional ABA shape, like a Handel da capo, although it feels entirely spontaneous in its passion. Note Havelka’s use of the backstage stairs and galleries, and his brilliant use of shadows in the middle section. • The recitative in which Orpheus agonizes and eventually turns to Euridice, who immediately dies. • The introduction to his famous aria, “Che farò senz’Euridice?” and the aria itself. I have already mentioned that it is structured around three occurrences of the basic tune, with a kind of recitative in between. But it is interesting that the tune itself, in a moderately fast tempo in C major, belies the popular wisdom that expressions of grief should be slow and in minor keys! • Another recitative in which he prepares to commit suicide, until stopped by Amore, who brings Euridice back to life again. • The conventional happy finale in which everybody joins in praise of Love.

The original finale contained also a number of dances, which are cut in this film. This dance sequence was expanded in 1774 to suit French taste, and Gluck also added a trio for the three characters. This sequence is also where Ondrej Havelka is most radical in pursuing his theme that Orpheus lives in a

— 3 — different world and on a different time-span than that of the theater his character temporarily inhabits. See what you think of his ending, and his treatment of Euridice.

16. Gluck: Orfeo ed Euridice, Act III, second half 17. Title slide 2 (Bejun Mehta looking back at the stage)

C. Bergman’s Magic Flute

18. Title slide 3 (girl in the audience)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91) wrote Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) in the last year of his life for a fellow Mason, Emanuel Schikaneder (1751–1812), who ran a small popular theater on the outskirts of Vienna. Schikaneder wrote the libretto and took the leading comic role of the bird-catcher Papageno himself. Although the opera is an elaborate fantasy involving a Prince and Princess, a dark Queen and the High Priest of Light, Papageno represents the ordinary guy, the direct link with the audience.

I was very struck when Ingmar Bergman’s film version of The Magic Flute came out in 1975, filmed as though performed at the Swedish court theater at Drottningholm, outside Stockholm. In fact, I now learn that the scenery at Drottningholm (some of which dates back to the original production of Mozart’s opera there) was considered too fragile to let a film crew roam around, so Bergman meticulously reproduced the scenery, the stage house, the stage machinery, and the surrounding spaces, and rebuilt them in his film studio. But I now ask myself why it was so important to him to film what is in effect a popular musical in an aristocratic theater?

Seeing it again, I come up with two answers. One is that the traditional tricks of the baroque stage—the transformation effects, the cutely unbelievable dragon—all those things that I meant by my title, “Playing Toy Theaters”—are perfect equivalents of Schikaneder’s popular stage, for which the piece was written. It is not merely a matter of suspending disbelief, but of joining gleefully into the make-believe. And second, that a special theater is a magic place for the audience also. Unlike the Cesky Krumlov film, Bergman emphasizes that the theater is a two-way interaction between stage and audience. By showing faces of all ages and racial types in the overture, he emphasizes the universal nature of Mozart’s deeper message. And by focusing on the reactions of one particular girl (popularly thought to be his daughter, but in fact an actor, Helene Friberg), he has all of us watching through the eyes of a child

19. Main characters in the opera

That’s just about it from me. I intend to show you a somewhat cut version of Act One, and will let Mozart, Schikaneder, and Bergman speak for themselves. [Act Two is a rather different matter, and Bergman no longer stays so close to the Drottningholm stage.] But here are the main characters. Tamino, the wandering prince. The Three Ladies who rescue him from a dragon. Their mistress, the Queen of Night, who tells him that her daughter Pamina has been abducted by the evil wizard Sarastro. And Sarastro, who turns out not to be evil at all. And of course the ordinary man Papageno, no braver than he should be, but good at heart.

— 4 —

20. Mozart: The Magic Flute, Act I opening 21. — still of the above (portrait)

You will notice, incidentally, that Bergman is still a film director. Although set on a real stage, he rarely shows us all of it. More often, the characters are shown in close-up, where they can appear over one another’s shoulders and disappear again. I will look at this again in the final class.

Anyway, Tamino looks at Pamina’s portrait in an aria I have not time to play, and falls in love. We will pick it up from there, though making a short cut in the Queen’s aria.

22. Mozart: The Magic Flute, Queen’s aria and quintet 23. — still of the above (Three Boys)

Bergman makes an alteration to the score here. In the original, the Three Ladies tell the men about the Three Boys who will escort them. Here, they appear in person and sing for themselves. I also want to point out the device of lifting up those little cards with the words on them at certain points. This is of course a joke derived from film subtitles. But it also points out something important about this opera: the way the action so often stops for the characters to deliver little take-home “morals” to the audience. There are more of these than Bergman actually marks, and they are characteristic of popular theater with universal appeal.

The scene now changes to Pamina, guarded by Monostatos, a lecherous Moor. Papageno arrives and helps her to escape. But I must skip to the little duet that they sing on the way out. It is one of the most beautiful love duets in all opera, but sung by two people who are not in love with one another, merely friends. It is a duet about the idea of love. Each of them is in love with someone they have not seen: Pamina with the Prince who is coming to rescue here, Papageno with his ideal Papagena, who he is sure must be out there somewhere—but where?

24. Mozart: The Magic Flute, Pamina/Papageno duet 25. — still of the above (Pamina and Papageno)

The Act I Finale begins with a section in which the Boys deliver Tamino to the forecourt of Sarastro’s temple. After stumbling about for a bit, he comes upon an old Scholar who tells him that Sarastro is in fact wise and good, and that the Queen has been telling him lies. Still confused when our excerpt resumes, he begins to play the Magic Flute, and finds that all the animals come out of the forest to hear him. Meanwhile, Papageno and Pamina fall straight into the clutches of Monstatos, but just as the Flute worked for Tamino, so do the Bells work for him.

26. Mozart: The Magic Flute, Act I finale, flute aria and scene of the bells 27. — still of the above (Sarastro)

I am going straight on to the end of the act, but just a word of explanation. Sarastro is heard approaching. Bergman switches to a rather different style here, although he keeps some popular theater devices, such as the lions pulling Sarastro’s chariot. But what is more important is the shift in seriousness. Realizing that she cannot run for ever, Pamina says that they must return to face Sarastro

— 5 — and tell him the truth; commentators often point to her declaration (“Die Wahrheit” in German) as the moment when the popular narrative indeed becomes a serious philosophical one. And indeed when we finally hear Sarastro, this is what we get. Too bad that his message—a woman needs a man to guide her—should be so darned misogynistic!

28. Mozart: The Magic Flute, Act I finale, Sarastro scene to the end 29. Title slide 4 (opening of Act II)

— 6 —