At the end, a Hawaiian dancer in ceremonial dress, Brittne Mahealani Fuimaono, tenderly lifts Elettra as though raising the dead with heartbreaking yet hope-giving grace.Bayreuth is a very different festival than Salzburg. The cast includes, from left, Jonathan Lemalu, Paula Murrihy, Ying Fang and Russell Thomas.Set designer George Typsin puts the “Idomeneo” cast in a plastic-clogged ocean.Director Peter Sellars, second from the right, at the “Idomeneo” curtain call with, from left: Russell Thomas, Ying Fang, Paula Murrihy, Nicole Chevalier and Brittne Mahealani Fuimaono.Klaus Florian Vogt as Lohengrin, with his lightning bolt, at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany.Michael Gniffke in wings and Camilla Nylund as Elsa in Yuval Sharon’s “Lohengrin.” His sword is shaped like a lightning bolt.The deal is that Elsa is not supposed to ask who he is and he’ll marry her and be the people’s savior. But thanks to Wagner’s magical realism, her younger brother reappears. Ortrud, evil in the opera for putting doubt about Lohengrin in Elsa’s mind, in fact inspires her to take control of the situation.Gottfried returns a little grass-covered green man, and he and Elsa are left, I’m guessing, to restore the earth.Unlike with Sellars’ wholly integrated “Idomeneo” production, though, Sharon was left with the sum of disjoint parts, including an ever-changing and not entirely sympathetic-seeming cast. All care for the other but are paralyzed by their own suffering, and none more than Russell Thomas’ haunted Idomeneo. Idomeneo 2019: Issachah Savage (Gran Sacerdote), Jonathan Lemalu (Nettuno / La voce), musicAeterna Choir of Perm Opera, Freiburger Barockorchester © SF/Ruth Walz Salzburg generally does Mozart exceptionally well. In the end, Sellars and Sharon practice a new progressive approach to opera as an agent for societal transformation and environmental activism that goes far beyond the usual directorial updating of opera beloved in Europe, too often for little more than show-business pizzazz. That person turns out to be his son, Idamante. Climate change has altered their form, and plastics have toxified their substance. The orchestra and conductor work in a hidden pit. Camilla Nylund, left, portrays Elsa in a study of power dynamics. We give the marching orders. Elena Pankratova dominated excellently as an Ortrud worth paying attention to, and Tomasz Konieczny made her husband, Friedrich, who loses a battle to Lohengrin, an unusually effective tragic figure.The real dominating presence, however, was the figure you never saw until the curtain call. The men have the wings of insects on their backs.The set would work for a Frankenstein movie, and Elsa’s hairdo looks like it would be fetching for the monster’s bride.
No matter how much you might question Wagner’s intentions dramatically, his music, especially in the hands of a master like Thielemann, who is revered in Wagner circles, the musical intent remains inviolable. The set by George Tsypin is an ever-present collection of plastic globules of various sizes and shapes, the biggest ones becoming the man-eating monster.Opera in the 18th century required a love interest. This production is in the Felsenreitschule, a former riding stable turned into a theater shaped like a Greek amphitheater and equipped with vibrant acoustics. Bad gifts! From all appearances, Sharon took an already complicated approach and added his own philosophical context.The production is not especially easy to follow. For them, Lohengrin comes to Brabant to empower empire builders and consumers. Your free will belongs to the cult.But Wagner also meant for theater to involve all the arts, and for many years this has also been a home for experimental, even radical and irreverent productions. He’d been subjected to a magic spell and, as in “Idomeneo,” we’re left with the hopes of idealistic young new leaders.Of course, Sharon and his design team are not buying this kind of patriarchy. But as the founder of the L.A. opera company The Bayreuth assignment, though, was complicated. In this production there is what looks like a large electric phallus to which Lohengrin ties up Elsa and then sits back and watches impotently. Sharon was invited only after the original director had dropped out and the painters Neo Rauch and Rosa Loy had developed a concept for sets and costumes. In playing a famous woman whose every move is scrutinized and judged, the “Friends” actress finds catharsisHBO docuseries “Hard Knocks” had already taken on a new challenge by highlighting two teams this season — the L.A. Chargers and L.A. Rams. Peter Sellars’ production of Mozart’s “Idomeneo” is at the Salzburg Festival in Austria. But this year Salzburg did very little well, including Mozart. Lohengrin is no longer the white knight of the Holy Grail who rides in on a swan to save Elsa, falsely accused of murdering her younger brother and heir to the throne of Brabant. What Elsa needs, however, is not a hero but an actual fixer.Musically, Wagner already makes sure that on their wedding night everything that can go wrong in bed does. It was more true to the moment than balloons and confetti.After a wave of complaints from those working on the comedian’s long running show, three top producers depart.The former Bush White House communications director will see her daytime show “Dateline: White House” expand to two hours daily.L.A. Sellars ends his production with dances by the Samoan-bornThe Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, which plays with most musicians standing throughout the three-hour opera, made even these slight dances sound momentous. Mark Swed has been the classical music critic of the Los Angeles Times since 1996. After their take on La Clemenza di Tito in the same venue in 2017, there would have been little doubt that the 2019 Salzburg Festival production of Idomeneo would be controversial; the only question being whether it would be Peter Sellars or Teodor Currentzis who would be most wayward in their in interpretation of one of Mozart's most interesting operas.