SALZBURG — From operatic settings of Dostoyevsky to salon-style recitals, this year’s Salzburg Festival boasts an impressive range. A new staging of Mieczysław Weinberg’s The Idiot is generally considered the production hit of the summer. And Ambroise Thomas’ Hamlet was wisely presented in concert. Yet Salzburg should also be setting trends rather than picking up works that were recently presented in Vienna and Paris, respectively.
Weinberg, a contemporary and close friend of Shostakovich, has been reevaluated as a composer in his own right since his opera The Passenger was mounted at the Bregenz Festival in 2010. The Idiot, seen on Aug. 18, has now received only its third production, having first been heard at the Mannheim National Theater under Thomas Sanderling in 2014 and at the Theater an der Wien in 2023. The brooding score most of all serves to underscore and comment on the action, with colorful orchestration that includes moments of Shostakovich-like irony (the two composers enjoyed a relationship of mutual influence) but also spells of tonal lyricism.
As based on the eponymous Dostoyevsky novel, the plotline explores a tension between passion and bourgeois marriage values that ultimately ends in tragedy: Both the epileptic Prince Myshkin and Rogozhin, the son of a merchant, are smitten by the courtesan Nastasya. Their desire is only extinguished when Rogozhin kills her. The director Krzysztof Warlikowski, together with set and costume designer Malgorzata Szczesniak, tells the story in an aesthetic that is by turns contemporary and surreal. Nastasya first appears sitting in front of a video camera, a subtle reference to today’s webcam culture, and is doubled in live video. After the murder, Rogozhin and Myshkin lie on either side of her, consummating their affection in death (a celesta twinkles as the latter sings “I am cold”).
Myshkin’s martyr-like qualities are earlier on made clear when he lies half-naked beneath a giant image of Jesus Christ, a potentially controversial touch that ultimately drives home symbolism in the libretto (Rogozhin and Myshkin exchange crucifixes in the third act). The cast is strong throughout. Bogdan Volkov makes for a vulnerable, nearly angelic Myshkin with his clear, piercing tenor. Ausrine Stundyte is a bawdy, powerfully voiced Nastasya and Vladislav Sulimsky an appropriately arrogant Rogozhin.
The conductor Oleg Ptashnikov, taking over last-minute for Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, who canceled for reasons of health, led the Vienna Philharmonic with a natural sense of phrasing and coordinated well with the singers. The orchestra gave a virtuosic, detailed reading of the score. An occasional lack of precision can easily be forgiven under the circumstances.
Not unlike Weinberg, Ambroise Thomas was an influential composer of his generation, rivaling Gounod at the box office when his opera Hamlet premiered in 1868 and winning the admiration of Berlioz for his modern orchestration. A concert performance by the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra under Bertrand de Billy, seen on Aug. 16, follows a slow revival of the work since the 1980s. In 2023, it was staged by Warlikowski at its company of birth, the Opéra de Paris, for the first time since 1938.
The decidedly French score and plotline, in which Hamlet survives and is crowned king, are replete with ceremonious brass fanfares that can sound pompous to the contemporary ear but also proto-modern elements such as solos for alto saxophone. It was a treat to experience the music in pure concert form, and the Felsenreitschule was well exploited by placing the ghost of the murdered king (Clive Bayley), and the gong that introduces him, on stone balconies behind the stage. As the title character, Stéphane Degout gave a stoic, restrained but poignant performance. A highlight was his delivery of the aria “O mortelle offense.”
He appeared slightly stiff, however, alongside the Ophélie of Lisette Oropesa, who had an unfortunate tendency to chew the scenery even as she nailed the coloratura runs of the third-act mad scene and invested more lyric passages with her rich middle range. As King Claudius and Queen Gertrude, Jean Teitgen and Eve-Maud Hubeaux were a convincingly regal pair while also bringing out moments of irony in the score. De Billy led the orchestra in a generally elegant reading, although this is clearly not a piece that the ensemble has in its bones (whether this Hamlet is destined to enter the repertoire on a permanent basis also remains an open question, given its dramatic idiosyncrasies).
On the concert circuit, a matinee with the Vienna Philharmonic in Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony under Riccardo Muti was predictably exhilarating but not as polished as last year’s Seventh. The composer’s penultimate symphony is also not without its flaws, having gone through several different versions after it was rejected by the conductor Hermann Levi as unperformable in 1887. As played in the so-called Robert Haas version, the first movement is not as tightly structured as the following Scherzo and Trio although it is packed with drama which Muti and the orchestra brought out in characteristically operatic fashion.
The slow third movement yielded the sensuous string lines for which the orchestra is known. The recently instated concertmaster Yamen Saadi reached his stride here, and yet the violins still fell slightly short of the silky quality that the orchestra attains under the veteran concertmaster Rainer Honeck, who took first seat last year. Indeed, Philharmonic chairman and second violinist Daniel Froschauer at times appeared to be leading the way. But no matter. The Wagnerian motive of brass over ostinato strings in the Finale yielded a confirmation of faith following the composer’s search in the previous movements, and no orchestra could play this music with such conviction. Muti pumped his fist in the air.
Further highlights included a recital by pianist Alexandre Kantorow that featured immaculately virtuosic but poetic accounts of two works by Liszt and an expert reading of Rachmaninoff’s First Piano Sonata. I also had a chance to attend one of baritone Georg Nigl’s late-night “Kleine Nachtmusiken” concerts featuring Schubert Lieder accompanied on the clavichord (Alexander Gergelyfi), interspersed with texts from the Second World War era as recited by the actor August Diehl. If the program went on a bit too long, there were moments of great poignancy, such as when the narrator of “Der Wanderer” claims to be a foreigner everywhere just before Bertolt Brecht’s thoughts about exile in 1939.
Despite the undeniable success of The Idiot, the choice is not as trail-blazing as Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten, which catalyzed new productions in Europe following its staging in 2012, or Schubert’s Fierrabras, presented two years later. It may be symptomatic of the current opera landscape in general, but it also should be the responsibility of a festival with a scope as large as that of Salzburg to be more adventurous while maintaining the highest artistic standards.
