Customer Reviews

Schumann: Genoveva [Blu-ray]

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I have seen this production live at the Zurich opera house february 2008.

Musically, people tend to think of Schumann as the composer of small miniatures. As a result, he is not easily associated with larger orchestral works such as Szenen aus Goethe`s Faust and the genre of opera. These works are therefore unfortunately hardly ever performed. When I heard that Mr. Harnoncourt wanted to do a scenic production of this opera and that it has been a 15-year old wish of his to do so I did not hesitate and drove the 600+ miles to Zurich to see this production twice.
Harnoncourt is a strong advocate of Schumann`s music and has been for a number of years. An older ecording of Genoveva with him is available on cd. This performance is completely different, though. Contrasts are much sharper, musical lines longer, tension more evident. What really stands out is the richness of the orchestral sound. The performance makes it evident that Scumann is a great composer, not only of miniatures but also, perhaps especially, of great vocal works. Every detail is audible in the orcestra as well as the chorus, singers stand out when the score calls for it and blend when this is indicated. What beautifull music! Why is this piece never ever performed?! And how is it possible that an almost 80 year old Harnoncourt still treads new ground in choice as well as performance? It is incredible how he takes you by the scruff of the neck, as it were, and forces you to see what a complete musical genius Schumann really is..
The music as well as the story has a sort of `holiness`to it that reminds me of the great oratoria sich as Haydn`s Creation, for example. In this respect Schumann breaks new ground with this opera. It is almost as though he wants to focus on the inner drama of the characters, much more than on dramatic development in the story itself.

Martin Kusej (stage director) has used this aspect to create a psycho-trip. In his rendition we see the story unfold through Golo`s eyes, the eyes of a warped mind. To do so, a box has been erected on-stage, in which most of the handling takes place. The box is completely white inside and only holds a chair, a mirror and a wash-stand. I tend to think that what takes place out of this box, which is open only at the front, is the only part of the action in which we do NOT look into the mind of Golo. The effect is overwhelming allthough I must admit that if you do not know the opera it can be extremely confusing. Some details I still do not understand. There is a scene for example where a female chorus sings to a mute, nude Genoveva. They are dressed as nurses and hold raw fishes in their hands. Halfway the chorus the fish are thrown to the nude Genoveva who as a result stands in a pile of fish. What does this mean? It takes place out of the bos and therefore not in Golo`s mind. I should be able to understand it but am at a loss. Kusej loses his audience there.

The singers are excellent. I belive that they are all part of the regular group of the zurich opera house but am not sure. Alfred Muff stands out, as allways, for his extremely dramatic performance. Particularly where he stands on the wash stand of Genoveva`s prison cell as the sink gives back blood.. Ruben Drole sings excellently allthough his parts are restricted to the opening and the final scene. That one will grow very large in my opinion, so young and allready so excellent. Juliane Banse a very convincing Genoveva. The chorus should be mentioned here as well, very tight, disciplined and dramatic to the extreme at the same time.

Martin Gantner should also be mentioned here. I did not know him before. What a beautifull, rounded voice. Excellently sung.
One negative point: Felix Breisach did not do a good job cutting for the screen. As mentioned before, the box on stage is very important as it suggests that action takes place outside of reality. On the dvd this does not become clear because of the many, way too many close ups that are made. In my opinion, the overview is relevant. The cutting does not give you that. I believe that Martin Kusej knows exactly what he wants to show and how it looks when you sit in the theatre. It is a great pity that this is not captured in the cutting. Obviously, Breisach has not understood the stage direction.


For me this opera was one of the greatest musical experiences of the last 10 years and I am really glad that it will now be brought out on dvd. If you want to hear beautifull music performed at its best, get it! If you are looking for a modern staging that will hold a mirror in front of you and may very well change you, get it! If you like classical performances and traditional costumes on stage, this adventurous production is not for you.

This DVD was a tremendous disappointment.

I knew that Harnoncourt has been an advocate for "Genoveva" for years, and I was really looking forward to seeing and hearing the opera. I found the music attractive, even moving. The plot stretched credibility, but no more so than "Norma" or "Il Trovatore," both of which I have seen repeatedly and love.

I found the performance superior musically, but I suspect that Harnoncourt's tempi, which have generally slowed in the past few years, were too slow to present the opera at its best.

The staging, however, was a major disappointment. It was Eurotrash at its very worst. Medieval knights and peasants were garbed in Edwardian(?)dress. Most of the performance took place in a white box with only a chair, a sink, and a mirror. All the major characters stood on the chair at one time or other, and most of them hid behind it from time to time. They also stood on the sink, and Genoveva climbed into and out of it several times while the libretto said that she was being forced by peasant captors to struggle up hill. Characters who left the scene, according to the libretto, often simply remained in the box and looked bored. And then there was the chorus throwing fish at a nude Genoveva--whatever that meant.

I found the staging almost unwatchable, and had great difficulty sitting through the entire opera. I certainly was not going to sit through it again, and immediately sold it back to the store from which it was purchased. If you're curious about "Genoveva" rent or borrow the DVD, but don't buy it.

After watching this fantastic production of "Genoveva" one wishes Schumann would have lived to create more operas. It is a masterpiece ahead of its time, achieving the kind of dramatic and musical unity found in Wagner, yet given a more pensive and subtle treatment than on Wagner's grand scale. I loved the concept of taking the medieval tale into Schumann's own time--a brilliant move on the part of the director. In my opinion, the minimal set only served to heighten the drama aided by some very skilled and courageous performers. I have rarely been so captivated by an opera; that is a testament not only to the genius of Robert Schumann, but to Nikolaus Harnoncourt, the director, and the brilliant cast of singers.

Martin Kusej is one of my favourite stage directors and although I have to admit that I didnt get everything he tried to convey here, it is nontheless a very clever production.
To have all the main characters on stage or rather in this white cube most of the time, let them position to each other (reminded me of family constellation) and act whats going on in there head, was not very subtle, but psychologically very interesting. Also that the white cube got stained with dirt and blood as the plot progressed was a reminder in the final scene - the music suggests a happy ending - that after what happened there is a bitter aftertaste and it takes time to recover from that experience.
The music in this opera is great, but the libretto would be pretty dull if Kusej wouldnt have tried to put on stage the psychology behind the plot rather than the plot itself.

Honestly, these must be dreadful times for opera lovers with fuddy-duddy taste. Those whose hearts and ears are indelibly imprinted with late 20th C Romanticism, I mean, who earnestly believe that nearly all the Grrrreat Operas were composed by Wagner, Verdi, and Puccini, with Mozart to be tolerated as long as the singing is "can bellow" rather than bel canto. Hard knocks for 'conservatives', I mean, when the best singers and conductors are all in the vanguard of "historically informed" performance practices, like the doyen thereof Nikolas Harnoncourt, while the most energetic stage directors and set designers are all frumiously bandersnatching for modernist shock-value. So what do HIP and 'Euro-trash' have that makes them ready allies? They both wholeheartedly reject the Romantic Performance Tradition of the second half of the 20th Century; they both aspire to resuscitate the mummy of music and to rebuild an audience for opera that doesn't totter-dodder to the lobby before the curtain falls.

Dyed-in-the-wool Schumann lovers must be thrilled just to have "Genoveva" championed by an influential conductor like Harnoncourt, to have it actually staged and then released on a DVD. Harnoncourt asserts that Robert Schumann's only opera is a mighty masterpiece, the finest opera of the latter 19th Century. I've only heard it once, on this DVD, and I reserve judgment. It certainly stands comparison with Wagner and Strauss in compositional rigors, yet somehow it seems too episodic to me, a reaction that might be just a result of unfamiliarity.

This staging is not only 'modern' -- an incongruous leap into modernity for a tale based on the Frankish resistance to Saracen invasions of the 9th Century -- but it's also static. Deadly static! That's its weakness, if you hope to find it entertaining. That static/symboliste quality the only concession to the Romantic Tradition, a legacy of the bare-stage stylized Wagner in post-war Bayreuth. All four principals remain on stage nearly throughout, though viewers are expected to imagine them NOT there. The set is a sterile room with white walls and a hotel sink. Singers brace themselves against the blankness like lines and cubes in a Mondrian painting. It's not merely visually boring; it's outright gruesome. Two friends who started watching it with me both bailed out after the first act and went for a walk in the drizzle. But it's intended to be gruesome. Shocking and appalling. A powerful psychodrama, this production effectively declares, has lain concealed within Schumann's libretto and score, an agonistic portrayal of Christian guilt that no audience was prepared to appreciate until now.

Schumann himself wrote most of the libretto. Though the language has no craft to it, the dramatic conception is quite intriguing, a portrayal of the madness and misbehavior that inevitably threatens the Hero, the Romantic Individual, the man whose passionate genius redeems his base deeds. On the other hand, the music is decidedly inchoate and at times anticlimactic against the drama. The overture is beautiful but prepares nothing. The chorus of soldiers gathering to fight for Charles Martel sings stirringly, but what they sing is a Lutheran chorale! How can anyone complain about a modern stage when the music itself is so anachronistic? And on and on. Frankly, the music fails to build in intensity as I suppose it should. Possibly Harnoncourt could have done more to develop such intensity with a bolder assertion of tempi.

A proper post-Romantic 'psychological' staging of an opera -- "Euro-trash" for short -- has to include a bit of nudity, and indeed Genoveva, sing by Juliane Banse, gets naked briefly in Act Three. No doubt aspiring sopranos in conservatories worldwide are now being coached out of any bashfulness, as well as dieted and exercised in readiness for such roles. Banse looks the part of Genoveva, the faithful wife vilely accused of adultery. Tenor Shawn Mathey looks even more convincingly the part of Golo, the tormented villain/vassal who assails his Lord's wife. "Looking the part" is a consideration, naturally, in these days of filmed operas and DVDs, but it's also an expression of the post-Romantic aesthetic, rejecting the old "grand opera" opulence directed at an audience of wealth and social prominence in favor of an audience of intellectual ardor and (as the impresarios hope) Youth.

One needs to get past the First Act in this production before this gruesome symboliste staging gets gripping. That's a weakness; two friends who started watching this DVD with me bailed out after the First Act in favor of a walk in the evening drizzle. But it's a short opera, only 146 minutes, and dramatically concise. In the end, ironically enough, for most viewers the drama will upstage the music and burn a deeper impression in the memory.

I agree with the reviewer who called it EUROTRASH. Absolulely true. I can't add anything to what was written about this production. What a shame that such productions are staged. I have a list of names of stage directors I avoid in any DVD that comes out. I won't go to see their productions in the opera house either. Some day I would like to see a production of a classical themed opera (such as Orpheus and Euridice) that actually had appropriate sets and costumes representative of the time period of the story. Avoid this DVD at all costs. I bought it and regret the purchase.

I know we viewers are in trouble when the director indicates he doesn't like music by staging the overture. I agree with all those who find the staging perfectly ridiculous. There are many incongruous oddities such as why the servants and Margaretha have dirty faces. Surely one would want cleaner servants. Is this to convey that they are evil? (Golo is grimy at one point.) There are other absurdities too numerous to mention and the crowds move around aimlessly like zombies. One would have hoped that in the centennial of Schumann's birth someone would honor him by reviving this opera as he intended it to be seen. Musically the conductor and singers do a fine job. However one needs to cut off the picture and just listen. Directors who stage operas in this way do so because they are ignorant, untalented, and egotistical. What I can't understand is why opera companies hire them.

I absolutely agree with the previous reviewers,specially with Mr.Cahill.
This DVD is pathetic and why would someone watch it or go see the production at the opera house is beyond my reckoning...
I would love to see his list of "banned" stage directors,since I likewise
have one and we probably coinicide.
If you want to appreciate GENOVEVA get the audio MASUR set on BERLIN CLASSICS,.That is "THE GENOVEVA."

Fernando Funes

As the overture begins, we see four characters in a brilliantly lit, antiseptically white room, reminiscent of an operating theater. The room and the costumes are done in a 19th Century style, despite the fact the opera is set in the 8th Century. As the music plays, the characters all silently exhibit symptoms of schizophrenia: fearfully attempting to stamp out invisible insects on the floor, laughing uncontrollably for no apparent reason. One character fondles a knife. Then, out of nowhere, another character produces a dead fish, and several of them pass it back and forth in a panic-stricken manner. At other times, the four stare off into space, gripped by existential misery, as Schumann's lovely music continues incongruously in the background.

Schumann viewed himself as a keeper of the flame for the tradition of Bach and Beethoven, which was under attack from the "futurists" such as Liszt. One of the tactics employed by the "futurists" was the deliberate misperformance of the masterworks of earlier times. Now, 200 years later, we see the same tactics being used against Schumann, to shameful effect.

When the singing begins, the audience feels a flicker of hope; the characters seem to behave in a more human fashion (although the chorus stands in complete darkness.) However, the situation soon deteriorates. Golo, servant of Siegfried, sings an aria, during which he stands on a chair, as his fellow inmates examine him curiously. Another servant, Margaretha, her face smeared with a brown substance that one hopes is merely mud, captures him in an ominous embrace him from behind. Soon thereafter, Siegfried and Genoveva execute a bizarre robotic dance while singing a duet. Genoveva seems to lose control of her motor functions, tilting inexplicably to the right from time to time. Mimicking Golo, Siegfried also stands on the chair.

It was around this time that I turned off the DVD.

The problem with this opera is director Martin Kusej. I tried to watch it to the end, but in vain; it's just too bizarre and boring. The set is a sterile white box and the action is just plain weird. Where have I seen this trash before? Answer: In the only Don Giovanni production I've ever seen that I didn't like. Ditto, Die Zauberflote. Both productions were directed by Martin Kusej. Beware of wasting your time and money on any further projects of his! Although it does take an unique "anti-talent" to transform a work of art into trash.