Joanna has been travelling again but with Sophie in tow this time…
A few weeks ago, Sophie blogged about our excursion to see Wagner’s opera Parsifal at Glyndebourne. You may recall that, although we had a wonderful day at Glyndebourne, we all found Parsifal a bit, ahem, weird. (Or, in Sophie’s words: unhinged.) And now we’ve done it again. Sort of. The same trio went to Lake Constance, surrounded by Germany, Austria, Switzerland (and Liechtenstein, too, if you want to be pedantic) to see Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz (The Marksman) on the open-air floating stage on the lake at the Bregenz Opera. This opera was pretty much bonkers, too. But much more fun than Parsifal.
Mind you, the setting helped. Glyndebourne is gorgeous and paradise for Sophie, but Lake Constance is huge, beautiful as only a lake backed by mountains can be, and full of fascinating places to visit. Zeppelin museum, anyone? One of the many Bodensee ferries will take you there. And you can have a flight in a working Zeppelin, too, if you’re up for that. (We were not.)
Bregenz Festspielhaus (Bregenz Festival Opera)
Bregenz is in Austria, not far from the German border. I’ve blogged about the Bregenz Opera before, but that was years ago and I make no apologies for repeating myself here.
Bregenz is at the eastern end of Lake Constance. I’ve arrowed it in this satellite image. To give you an idea of scale, the lake is 63 km long (39 miles) and is the third largest freshwater lake in central Europe. The north shore is mainly Germany, the south is mainly Switzerland and the eastern end is Austria. (Liechtenstein doesn’t actually border the lake.)
The Bregenz Opera festival has been running every year since 1946 (apart from a cancellation in 2020 for Covid). It has produced a wide range of operas by composers including Mozart, Verdi, Puccini and Bizet. In pre-climate change days, audiences could be pretty sure that the weather would be good but, these days, it’s less predictable. We sat through Puccini’s Turandot, back in 2016, in the rain. This time, it rained almost every day while we were staying on the lake but, mercifully, the rain stopped just after our ferry dropped us at the Opera House. This is a second ferry arriving against a rather splendid sunset as you can see…
Der Freischütz: is the opera really bonkers?
I’m going to try to give you a coherent account of the story. Sophie says I’m wasting my time even to try, but here goes…
Think Grimm’s fairytale. Set in the period just after the Thirty Years’ War. The poor peasants have suffered a lot but the ruling class is just fine. In a tiny, ruined village, Agathe, daughter of the hereditary forester, is in love with Max, a scribe. But if she is to marry him, he has to be able to take over from her aged father and, for that, he has to be a marksman. In the village shooting contest, he loses abysmally. And next day, the real test is to take place, in front of the sovereign prince. Max can never win, surely?
Enter the devil. Well, actually, in this production, the devil appears right at the beginning, dressed in priest’s robes and officiating at Agathe’s funeral. Eh? Yes — I warned you it was bonkers — the production starts at the end and then goes back to the beginning. The end was that Max had shot Agathe and was hanged for murder. The execution happened on stage, right before our eyes. Max died, hanging, suspended over the water. In the image below, he’s being forced to dig her grave before the opera proper begins.
But then the devil winds time back so that we can see how it came about. It’s a classic fairytale bargain. The devil’s human sidekick, who has already sold his own soul, offers Max seven magic bullets. Six of them will always hit the mark. Max does not know that the seventh will hit the devil’s mark. Oh dear. We can see how this is going to pan out, can’t we?
The devil has all the best tunes? Not exactly…
The devil is the narrator and puppet master of this production. He doesn’t have the best tunes because it’s purely a speaking part. Sophie and I were sure that the producers had amplified it a lot. In the original opera, of 1821, the devil seems to appear only briefly in the second act. In the Bregenz Opera version, he’s there, front and centre, throughout. I’ve discovered since we came home that Sophie and I were right. The director (Philipp Stölzl) and his author collaborator (Jan Dvořák) extended the devil’s part enormously, as a German press article explains (in English).
The devil, dressed in red (of course) appears everywhere: at the top of a tree (video still shown above), on the roof of the church tower, on the hill behind the village playing a cello, in the water, riding a huge skeleton horse and later a fire-breathing dragon (video stills below)… You’ve probably got the idea by now.
The special effects were amazing. Have a look at this video and you’ll see some of them and how they were constructed.
But isn’t opera about the music?
What about the music? Parsifal had beautiful moments. So too did Der Freischütz — though possibly not in Wagner’s league. You can hear some of the music in this video. Note too that it starts with a shot of the devil up that tree. Only for an actor with a head for heights, I’d have said. It was a very tall tree. (He had to perch at the top of the clock tower as well, so he definitely earned his crust, did that actor.)
And the tragic ending?
Max proves his amazing shooting ability with the first six magic bullets. Evidence is brought onto the set, including a convincingly floppy deer carcass. Then the sovereign prince arrives dressed in powder-blue velvet trimmed with what looks like swansdown. Slightly camp, possibly? He oversees the real shooting trial and that is when, with the seventh bullet, Max kills Agathe. Victory for the devil, no?
Not quite. Not in this version. After a moment of triumph, the devil addresses the audience directly and says, basically, “But you lot want a happy ending, don’t you? Oh well, OK then.”
And he winds back time, again, and on the second running of the shooting trial, Agathe doesn’t die and Max wins. Sort of.
Everyone happy? Well…
When the powder-blue prince discovers how Max acquired his bullets, the prince forbids their marriage. Disaster. Loss of happy ending.
And then the deus ex machina appears. This is a hermit — resplendent in glowing cobalt blue silk and gold head-dress which makes him, ahem, an interesting kind of hermit, I’d say — and begs for clemency.
The prince agrees that Max and Agathe can marry after all, provided Max serves a year’s probation. Happy ending. And, finally, the devil loses and he and his sidekick disappear beneath the surface of the water.
But there was much more…
I haven’t done this bonkers opera justice at all. For starters, there were lots more people in the cast. There was the devil’s sidekick, Kaspar, with a fabulous bass voice and who made the magic bullets within a ring of real fire.
Then, there was Agathe’s mate, Ännchen, who sang gloriously and who confessed to love of Agathe at one point. What’s more, Agathe reciprocated. The two women were even planning to run away together. (Not, I fancy, a plot point in the 1821 version.)
Then there’s the fact that Agathe is apparently pregnant. Her wedding dress will no longer meet round her middle. But now the wedding is to be postponed for a year…? Hmm. Possible plot problem there? In a bonkers opera like this one, it wasn’t resolved and no one seemed to notice. (Except picky authors Sophie and Joanna, natch.)
Throughout the opera, the singers were wading through the water and, occasionally, disappearing into it. We wondered how they managed. The answer, apparently, was specially designed wet suits and shoes so that they wouldn’t slip. In places, the water was only just above the ankles. Elsewhere, it was really deep, deep enough to hide people and for Kaspar and the devil to be dragged completely under. To the audience, watching, it looked as if it was all deep enough to drown in. The effects were fantastic.
There was lots more, but this blog is already too long so I’ll simply leave you with the pictures and videos. Enjoy. Sophie and I certainly did.
Note to readers who get our blog by email:
I have a feeling that the videos won’t be visible on the email versions. But if you visit the blog itself you’ll be able to see them in all their glory. They’re worth it, so do have a look if they don’t work in your email.
PS A quick heads-up that book 1 of the Aikenhead Honours, His Cavalry Lady, is free this week on most platforms (not including Amazon). On Amazon, you can buy all four books in a single volume. However, if you’re a subscriber to Kindle Unlimited, you can read the whole 4-book set there for free. What’s more, all three of Liz’s Maybridge Mysteries are now on offer as a box set for just 99p/99c. Why not indulge yourself?
Total envy here! The videos were wonderful – I loved the one about the background. What a spectacle and, frankly, who cares that the plot is bonkers when it looks so fabulous! Thank you for sharing, Joanna.
Yes, the videos are fabulous, I agree. And actually the music was pretty good, too, as Sophie says. The orchestra (in the opera house behind, keeping their instruments dry) is the Vienna Symphony (not the Vienna Philharmonic as I originally thought) and they are splendid. There were some wonderful solos, like when the devil was playing the cello. It’s interesting that almost all the Bregenz audience, throughout the whole month it runs, is from surrounding countries (and therefore German-speaking). Only about 3% of the audience comes from further afield. They (and Brits apart from us 😉 ) don’t know what they’re missing.
You almost make it sound as if it made sense.
I just felt the devil had won because Agathe ended up with a baby and the ludicrous Max when she really wanted to run away with Ännchen. And I thought the camp hermit was the devil in (very) fancy dress, condemning her with his “clemency” to live in the beastly wood and be a good wife. But Kaspar and the devil certainly went to hell spectacularly.
And you slightly underplayed the weatherly discomforts. We sailed across the lake to the opera in a mighty cloud burst. It was still raining so heavily that when we arrived, everyone had to stay on board and only when it eased up a were we allowed to disembark. Everyone was in protective clothing when we did so.
And we milled about for a good 15 minutes in the big arrivals hall that links the main opera house to the outdoor amphitheatre. When they eventually decided to go ahead, the attendants pressed swatches of brownish kitchen roll into our hands – to mop the soaking seats.
But then there was that spectacular sunset, just right for the devil’s junketing.
A truly spectacular evening. And the band was brilliant too.
Actually, you’re right about the weather. I’d forgotten just how bad it was and about being held on the boat till they were sure the jetty was safe to walk on. But everyone was in their protective clothing and absolutely up for sitting in the rain, if necessary, I felt. We certainly were, since we’d done it before.
In the sense you mention, the devil did win. In the performance we saw, the devil and the hermit were two different characters, but in one of the videos, the hermit turns out to be the devil when he strips off that distinctly unhermitish blue and gold rig. So your feelings weren’t wrong. Totally bonkers, as we agreed.