Herrenchiemsee Festspiele, Bavaria, 14 – 26 July 2009
Published in "Opera Now"
Issued on January-February 2010
Reviewed By Amanda Holloway
Bregenz, Savonlinna – both venerable festivals that rely for their charm on an idyllic lakeside setting. Now add to these Herrenchiemsee, a wooded island on the beautiful Chiemsee lake, 50 miles east of Munich.
The Herrenchiemsee experience starts on the jetty at Prien, where you board a paddle steamer for the 15-minute journey to Herrenchiemsee island, disembark and take a horse-drawn carriage (or a romantic stroll) through the woods. And suddenly you arrive at Herrenchiemsee Palace, an extraordinary copy of Versailles built in the late 19th century for Ludwig II of Bavaria, as homage to his hero Louis Quatorze.
The annual music festival, based in this fairytale castle, has at its heart an opera production, but with a majority of choral and symphonic concerts, it is not yet an opera festival. Given the budget, festival founder Enoch zu Guttenberg would love to do more. A Composer and conductor of the KlangVerwaltung orchestra, Guttenberg is a Bavarian aristocrat whose son happens to be the defence minister of Germany. It was Guttenberg’s musical achievements that attracted the attention of Deutsche Bank chairman, Josef Ackerman, and led to significant sponsorship for the Herrenchiemsee Festival. Guttenberg had initially been approached by Bavarian politicians to start a festival in the palace, but was doubtful about how it would pay for itself when the concert hall seated only 600. As he recalls, „We were lucky, because Josef Ackermann is a musician at heart, and now Deutsche Bank pays for the whole festival. €1.4m every year. And we need it!“
Sponsorship is guaranteed for the next four Years, at which point Ackermann steps down. It will be a challenge finding a replacement in the current economic climate, but Guttenberg is determined that ticket prices won’t rise. „We don’t want only rich people, we want everybody to come.“ With Munich and Salzburg so near, it must be hard to attract people to this relatively small venue, but Guttenberg says the festival has a different approach. „Each year we choose a theme, or concept, which makes people think about politics and society.“
The last three festivals have seen semi-staged productions of La Traviata, Nabucco and Cavalleria rusticana, led by Italian conductor Ljubka Biagioni zu Guttenberg. She is the wife of the artistic director, but she’s also an international conductor in her own right. And crucially, she has a vision of how opera can work in these extraordinary surroundings. A 98-metre Hall of mirrors doesn’t immediately suggest the poverty-stricken Sicialiar landscape of Cavalleria rusticana, for example. But dramatically and musically, this semi-staged performance worked. Genuine human emotion radiated from the stage across the acres of glittering gold leaf and chandeliers, drawing the audiance into the unfolding tragedy from the opening bars of the overture. With a few props from her own garden – a chair, a brightly painted horsecart – and costumes depicting generic village folk, Guttenberg created a thoroughly believable world for her vivid characters.
The orchestra, Sinfonia Varsovia, sat in the centre of a stepped stage with the action swirling around them. With vibrato kept to a minimum, the colours and dynamic contrasts of this responsive band were thrilling to the ear (their former conductors have included Yehudi Menuhin and Nigel Kennedy), in spite of very limited rehearsal time.
Though the front stage was the focus of the drama, there was much use of the anterooms for dramatic entrances and exits. Turiddu’s first lovely aria floated through the mirrored doors before he appeared, and what a spine-tingling sound it was. It’s the first time I’ve heard the Latvian Aleksandrs Antonenko, and his rich, dark tenor, handsome face and burly frame was well suited to the role of Turiddu. His Santuzza (Dimitra Theodossiou) was every inch the wronged woman, her powerful soprano ragged with emotion.
Much of the emotional veracity of the performance came from Guttenberg, elegant in a black silk coat, hair upswept, and completely in command of her orchestra and the singers swirling around her. The standing ovation went on for hours, and she deserved nothing less.
The 2010 festival will take place from 13 to 25 July, with a programme of choral and orchestral music from Bach to Penderecki, Enoch zu Guttenberg’s signature Bruckner and, for opera lovers, a semi-staged Die Zauberflöte and a spectacular Rigoletto. Not hard to find the political and social message in that!
For programme and travel details of the 2010 Herrenchiemsee Festival go to www.herrenchiemsee-festspiele.de
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