Munich Opera Festival (1) - Borgioni/Monteverdi Continuo Ensemble/Heumann - La Morte d'Orfeo, 28 June 2026

Prinzregententheater

Excerpts from:

Stefano Landi: La Morte d’Orfeo
Monteverdi: L’Orfeo
Giovanni Maria Trabaci: Durezze et ligature
Jacopo Peri: Euridice
Luigi Rossi: Orfeo

Interspersed with:

Lorenzo Allegri: Primo Ballo della Notte d’Amore
Monteverdi: Seventh Book of Madrigals: ‘Tempro la cetra’
Biagio Marini: Per ogni sorte di strumento musicale, op.22 no.21: Sonata sopra ‘Fuggi dolente core’
Alessando Piccinini: Intavolaturo di liuto: Toccata
Sigismondo d’India: Le Musiche: ‘Cara mia cetra’
Andrea Falconiero: Il primo libro delle canzone: ‘Battaglia de Barabaso yerno de Satanas’
Giovanni Legrenzi: La Cetra: Sonata
Monteverdi: L’incoronazione di Poppea: ‘Oblivion soave’

Mauro Borgioni (baritone)
Monteverdi Continuo Ensemble
Friederike Heumann (concept, director, viola and lira de gamba)

 

Founded to enable ‘historically informed’ performances of the three surviving operas of Monteverdi, Munich’s Monteverdi Continuo Ensemble both celebrated its thirtieth anniversary and commemorated the life of one of its founding members, lutenist Fred Jacobs, in a ‘Baroque concert’ contribution to the city’s annual Opera Festival. Gambist Friederike Heumann devised a programme around the idea of the death of Orpheus, in a sense creating a small(ish) concert opera in two acts, rejecting the happy end of so many retellings and exploring not only death but above all the power of music, through assembled texts revealing four protagonists: Orpheus, his lyre (in turn variously represented by harp, lira de gamba, and chitarrone), a narrator, and the ferryman Charon. 

At the heart of ‘La morte d’Orfeo’ stood excerpts from three seventeenth-century Orphic operas, by Monteverdi, Stefano Landi, and Luigi Rossi, as well as one from the oldest surviving opera of all, Jacopo Peri’s Euridice, written and first performed in 1600. It made for a fascinating evening, poised somewhere between concert and pasticcio, my only real cavil being the lack of titles to enable closer following and comprehension of the words. Yet so vividly communicative were the performances by baritone Mauro Borgioni, who has sung Monteverdi’s Orfeo (and Ulisse) in several productions, and the ensemble as a whole that the loss was mitigated: tribute, in its way, to the power not only of music, but that of its mysterious alchemy in song and in what we have come to know as opera. 

In the beginning was an overture: well, not quite, but music that served well in its new guise, Lorenzo Allegri’s Primo Ballo della Notte d’Amore, an ersatz-Sinfonia reflecting in its gathering momentum the interchange between lands north and south of the Alps that has contributed so much to the genre—and perhaps to Allegri’s life and work too, as a composer and lutenist at the Medici court in Florence sometimes referred to as ‘Lorenzino Tedesco’. Dance, we were reminded, in body as in spirit, has informed dramma per musica from the outset. The array of music, genres, and indeed styles that proceeded to feed into the whole reminded us ‘opera’ has, from the outset and arguably from before that outset, always found itself pulled between various poles: words and music, descriptive and prescriptive (even proscriptive), text and performance, and so much else. Sigismondo d’India’s ‘older’, more madrigalian harmony, for instance, registered in such richly expressive fashion that no one could seriously draw a straight line from any point a to any other point b. Indeed, if anything the later seventeenth-music could sometimes sound conventional, even restricted, in various modes of expression compared to what came earlier: Monteverdi, of course, yet far from only him. 

Peri’s Euridice stood, probably from coincidentally, at the centrepoint of the first ‘act’, voice and chitarrone (Michael Freimuth) opening a window on the world to be joined by their musical confreres. An ensuing sinfonia from Monteverdi immediately recalled to us why we consider his Orfeo to be the first operatic masterpiece – it remains hors concours even without words – but here the rewards in understanding through so many paths to and from his work and those of Landi and Rossi  were manifold. Monteverdi’s ‘Rosa del ciel’ was heart-rending, Rossi’s later lament was more ornate, in what we have come, rightly or wrongly, to consider more ‘Baroque’ style, echoed in fuller ‘orchestral’ response. Landi’s ‘It’ al sacro consiglio’ was perhaps more generic a setting, yet still interesting to hear in such context. The ‘Battaglia’ from Andrea Falconiero’s Primo libro delle canzone gently reminded us that opera is and always has been theatre too, two of the ensemble having slipped out returning with their instruments in a dialogue that here began, if only began, to approach some of our notions of music theatre. Orpheus and his instrument having travelled to Hades, other humans and their ‘musicking’ could join in musical sympathy.

For the second, shorter ‘act’, a Rossi passacaglia proved a splendidly apt and contrasting curtain-raiser: in later, more ‘orchestral’ style, yes, but also, more importantly, in dramatic mood. Landi’s narration, ‘Volge Orfeo gli occhi’, showed his artistry to more individually expressive effect, at least to my twenty-first-century ears, than the previous excerpt from his 1619 tragicommedia pastorale; here, perhaps conditioned by what had gone before, I found his simpler writing more allied to the later century and arguably in better company. Harp (lyre) music in both halves by Giovanni Maria Trabaci soothed the soul and furthered the action. For Orpheus’s farewell, Rossi and of course Borgioni rose magnificently to the occasion; no one could have entertained any doubt about what was happening and about to happen. A trio-instrumental treatment of the lullaby ‘Oblivion soave’ from L’incoronazione di Poppea, cornetist Gebhard David’s line rocking atop and against its continuo, worked its magic in winning new guise, prior to a splendidly theatrical change of mood for Charon/Caronte’s ‘Beva, beva secure l’onda’. This was Landi in festive mode, its strophic form nicely varied in Borgioni’s ornamentation and, of course, the Ensemble’ response. 

As an encore, the thwarted happy ending returned: again, emblematic of a key theme in the history of the genre. Borgioni and the players treated us to a solo rendition of the closing ‘chorus’ of L’Orfeo, ‘Vanne Orfeo felice a pieno’. Orpheus reborn once again: where should we be without him?

Turandot, Opera Holland Park, 23 June 2026

Images: Pablo Strong

Princess Turandot – Anne Sophie Duprels
Calaf – José de Eça
Liù – Fflur Wyn
Timur – Jihoon Kim
Ping – Josef Jeongmeen Ahn
Pang – Joseph Buckmaster
Pong – Zwakele Tshabalala
Emperor Altoun – Robert Burt
Mandarin – Wonsick Oh
Prince of Persia – Jamie Formoy
Young Turandot – Lara Ronxin Quattrone

Opera Holland Park Youth Chorus (chorus master: Joe Cummings)

Opera Holland Park Chorus (chorus master: Richard Harker)

City of London Sinfornia

Naomi Woo (conductor)

Celebrating its thirtieth anniversary and the centenary of Puccini’s death, Opera Holland Park completed its set of the composer’s operas with a semi-staging of his final, unfinished work, Turandot. One might wish for a full staging, but one cannot have everything—and relatively little was lost. This made for a fitting crown to a season far from over, or perhaps better an extended encore to its new Fanciulla del West.

Anne-Sophie Duprels and José de Eça (previously Dick Johnson) came together to do something strikingly both similar and different as Turandot and Calaf. Their performances proved to be on a similarly outstanding level too, once again as fine a dramatic soprano and tenor as I can recall hearing at Holland Park—and considerably superior to those one might encounter at many of the opera firmament’s starriest houses. Whatever the dramaturgical depravity of the work – a big ‘whatever’ – both navigated its difficult, some might say impossible, relationship between fantasy and realism with all the fine attention to words, line, and their combination one could hope for. Duprels’s Turandot stood and sang on the threshold of a new life, slowly warming as much as melting. De Eça’s ardour swept all before it, Fflur Wyn and Jihoon Kim’s compassionate Liù and Timur included—which, alas, is as it should be. Wonsick Oh’s Mandarin was a chilling, yet human – indeed, human partly on that account – master of ceremonies, ably assisted by the protean solo-ensemblists of Josef Jeongmeen Ahn, Joseph Buckmaster, and Zwakele Tshabalala’s Ping, Pang, and Pong. Robert Burt’s Emperor Altoun and Jamie Formoy’s Prince of Persia afforded vivid, crucial, ‘smaller’ contributions.  

The role of the chorus is particular important in this opera. Opera Holland Park’s Chorus and Youth Chorus both impressed, both in themselves and in combination with the City of London Sinfonia, which again gave a mighty impression of a much larger band. The CLS now sound like old Puccini hands, which of course they are: warm, incisive, steely by turns, relishing and communicating the ripe post-Wagnerism and still astonishing modernism of the score in equal measure. If there were a few moments when any orchestral reduction would suffer by comparison with the full score, Tony Burke’s resourceful work, strange electronic organ intervention aside, contributed greatly to the success of the performance. A panoply of percussion enhanced the musical theatre of cruelty, as well as looking forward to the later twentieth century.

So too did Naomi Woo’s conducting, screwing up the tension where required and richly expansive where called for. Echoes of Debussy, Stravinsky, Schoenberg and others were relished, as, equally important, were the many cases in which Puccini takes the lead and others follow. It was difficult not to hear sentiments of Dallapiccola’s Il prigioniero, for instance, not least in the arguably still more twisted combination of torture and hope on offer here. As ever, that tantalising early morning conversation between Puccini and Schoenberg, when the ailing elder composer travelled to Florence for the Italian premiere of Pierrot Lunaire, hovered in the musical air. Holland Park’s celebrated peacock chorus contributed vocal embellishments, apparently as engaged with the sadistic dramaturgy as the rest of us. If Franco Alfano’s completion remains unsatisfactory, we cannot always hope for Berio. It has the merits at least of bringing to the surface in its listless wagnerismo parallels – arguably more than that – with Siegfried and Brünnhilde. 

Eleanor Burke’s direction was an equal partner in that (as, of course, were our Calaf and Turandot). The semi-staging concentrated, naturally, on character and narrative, and did so very well, whilst nonetheless framing their unfolding with reference to a child, the young princess, first having opened her music box and later handing it to the cruel princess she was to become. The importance both of childhood experience and of the problematical yet fascinating tension between Carlo Gozzi’s commedia dell’arte and Puccini’s realism was brought to our attention, for us to ponder and experience as our minds and mindsets permitted. This was not the place really for an overarching concept, though we were free to contribute one as we wished. Dress, as opposed to full-scale costume, was stylish in red and black. 

This was, then, another distinguished production from Opera Holland Park. A good number of audience members raised their hands at the outset, when asked by CEO and Director of Opera James Clutton if this were their first time. It is difficult to imagine they would have been anything other than greatly impressed, just as the rest of us were. For there was no mistaking the warmth and sincerity of the final applause. What next? Dare we hope for the aforementioned Dallapiccola, perhaps in tandem with Busoni’s Turandot? Someone should, at any rate.

Hardenberger/MCO/Harding - Haydn, Hummel, and Beethoven, 22 June 2026

Barbican Hall

Haydn: Symphony no.85 in B-flat major, ‘La Reine’
Haydn: Trumpet Concerto in E-flat major, Hob. VIIe/1
Hummel: Trumpet Concerto in E-flat major, S.49
Beethoven: Symphony no.4 in B-flat major, op.60

Håkan Hardenberger (trumpet)
Mahler Chamber Orchestra
Daniel Harding (conductor)

Images: Mark Allan

This felt like an unseasonal Barbican concert: the weather, the time of year, even perhaps the programme. It was a welcome tonic, though, once one had reached the brutalist musical oasis in the City, and confirmed, among other things, the excellent, indeed outstanding musicianship of both Håkan Hardenberger and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, and the wisdom of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in its appointment of Daniel Harding as next Music Director. Great music and music-making are, of course, never out of season—or at least should not be. A sadly small audience found itself well rewarded. 

One can tell much – I am tempted to say almost everything – about a musician with respect to the seriousness with which (s)he approaches Haydn. Without him, as much as without Beethoven, there would straightforwardly be no Austro-German symphonic tradition—or it would be so radically different as to constitute a different tradition entirely. The fourth of his Paris Symphonies, ‘La Reine’, opened darkly: perhaps to my taste a little too so, for I should not have reminded something in the way of string vibrato. But there is not one way in such matters. What must surely lie beyond debate is the crucial role of harmonic rhythm: in the first-movement introduction and beyond, indeed throughout the symphony. And that was present. Harding’s way here was often highly rhetorical, phrases ‘speaking’ in quasi-operatic fashion, but not at the cost of coherence. There was always a keen sense of momentum and, beyond that, of building up and releasing tension at just the right points: harmonic rhythm again. A small orchestra (strings 8.7.5.4.3) showed that it could make an almighty sound, scaling down to a whisper when called upon to do so. If anything, I found the latter a bit much, but again tastes differ. Gorgeous woodwind playing graced this and all that was to come. Haydn says Allegretto for the second movement and that is what we heard, even if it came as a slight shock to ears such as mine. So too did the well-nigh Beethovenian outbursts within: no bad thing at all, though perhaps they edged a little close at times to the traffic-calming school. Again, there is more than one way to play such music; ultimately, it progressed well—and consequently. The minuet was rustic rather than stately: perhaps a little de trop for Marie Antoinette, even in Petit Trianon mode. I was more troubled by a repeated agogic accent, whose purpose remained unclear. Harding’s reading certainly had a point of view, though, and conveyed it well. The trio was not entirely without mannerism, but less so. It had plenty of charm, even grace. The finale was beautifully judged: ever inch a Haydn finale, tempo as much a matter of character as mere speed, helter-skelter without losing control. Its sterner, more Beethovenian moments registered strongly but never too strongly. 

We remained with Haydn for his late Trumpet Concerto, surely still the most celebrated of the genre. Hardenberger has played a central role in expansion of the instrument’s repertoire; he nonetheless played this with all the devotion that would rightly be lavished on a new work. Solo playing was beyond compare and the orchestra shifted effortlessly to ‘accompaniment’, not only in terms of its role but of partnership in a conception that was perhaps more the soloist’s than the conductor’s (not necessarily to impute conflict or even contrast). String playing sounded significantly warmer. Above all, from the outset, it was a joy to be reminded what a supremely well judged piece this is. The lyrical slow movement and another inescapably Haydnesque finale were beautifully characterised. 

A different voice registered immediately for Hummel’s concerto. It has attractive moments and passages, but is not really the most coherent of works. Hardenberger, Harding, and the MCO nonetheless made as good a case as you can imagine being made for it and its kinship – let us be generous – with composers from Mozart to Rossini, as well as the odd, intriguing presentiment of Mendelssohn. Hardenberger’s playing was commanding throughout, the finale dazzling. It was quite a surprise and a welcome one, having noticed Mark-Anthony Turnage in the audience, to be treated to an ‘encore’ performance of his Nocturne: in effect, an additional piece on the programme, atmosphere, precision, and fine command of idiom combining to offer a tone poem in its own right. 

Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony concluded the programme—and in many ways, brought it to new heights. Again, whilst this may have been a small orchestra for Beethoven, there was nothing scaled down about the performance. The first movement’s introduction was full of potentiality, dark-hued and broad. Harding shaped the movement as a whole well without unduly moulding it. If some way from how I think of it – Furtwängler, Klemperer, Barenboim, and others will always loom large – his was the most compelling symphonic Beethoven I have heard for some time. It may have been abrasive at times, but so is Beethoven. This was fresh music-making in the best sense and refreshingly unmannered. Pretty much the only thing about which I could take issue was a strangely throwaway final chord: a point of view, I suppose, but to my ears an odd one. The slow movement flowed with deceptive lyricism, for as soon as one truly listened, it proved as deep as the North Sea in a striking, captivating, utterly convincing post-Eroica reading. Throughout the symphony, all came together and cohered, granted the right amount of space for detail as for line. A gruff yet tigerish scherzo permitted its trio to relax just enough, yet no more. And then a related yet different type of finale, rooted in Haydn, yet very much Beethoven. It was hard-won yet gracious, boasting perhaps the bubbliest woodwind I have yet heard in this music. Here was music-making that seemed to come as much from the orchestral musicians as from the podium, and was all the better for it.

Quatuor Diotima 30th anniversary concert - Mason and Beethoven, 7 June 2026

Théâtre des Champs-Élysées

Christian Mason: Towards a not yet remembered past (French premiere)
Beethoven: String Quartet no.15 in A minor, op.132

Yunpeng Zhao, Léo Marillier (violins)

Franck Chevalier (viola)

Alexis Descharmes (cello)

Founded at the Paris Conservatoire in 1996, the Quatuor Diotima celebrated its thirtieth anniversary at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in typically forward-looking fashion: nowhere more so than when looking back, whether in Christian Mason’s Towards a not yet remembered past, which they premiered six weeks ago, or to Beethoven’s A minor Quartet, op.132. The quartet is more readily associated with twentieth- and twenty-first century music, but it has always performed earlier music too, bringing that distinctive standpoint to Beethoven, Schubert, and others. Having recently recorded and released a set of Beethoven’s late quartets – now, as then, the absolute summit of the repertoire – the Diotima offered programming and performance that were typically revealing, refreshing, and rejuvenating. 

Responding to earlier works for string quartet, both the 2020 The present moment used to be the unimaginable future and transcriptions and recompositions in his Tuvan (2016) and Sardinian (2018) Songbooks, the seven movements of Towards a not yet remembered past alternates application of the latter approach to the ars subtilor of the Chantilly Codex by (Jean?) Solage, Jacob Senleches, Guillaume de Machaut, and Baude Cordier, with ‘original’ composition, although how meaningful the distinction might be is, if not the point, then at least a point. In listening to recordings of the late-fourteenth-century works, Mason says he was struck by the extent to which the scores are not fixed, but rather offer the seeds of possibility for different development, depending on the manner in which they are cultivated, hoping also that the same might be true of the ‘original’ movements in his work. 

Solage – perhaps better, ‘Solage’ – emerged slow, yet febrile, gradually developing in the way one fancied (misremembered?) an ‘old’ quartet introduction doing. When ‘new’, one sensed something ‘old’, yet never fixed, behind. Which art is the more playful, the more complex? The question seemed almost, yet not quite, beside the point—as in any interpretation, or layers thereof. Sudden violent eruption, pizzicato intimacy, and more: were they sides of the same coin, necessary responses, or a handful of possibilities among many? The second movement began, it seemed, not entirely dissimilarly, though developed quite differently, its lyrical vein suggesting if not exactly the Classical procedure of a slow movement, not exactly not that either (even when it sped up). Senleches seemed – though this may have been my ears adjusting – more clearly of the past, though certainly not without contemporaneity with its impression of modern as well as earlier modality.

If the second movement were not entirely unlike a slow movement, the fourth was not entirely unlike a scherzo, at least in initial bearings (mine, perhaps, rather than anyone else’s). Like those of Chopin and Brahms, though not Beethoven, there was nothing joking about it, but tension and rhythmic propulsion were clear in work and performance. Was there something of a particular sense of witness here? I fancied so, even if I could not necessarily explain what I mean by that. Listening, historical and contemporary, can be like that—as can performance and indeed composition. Muted Machaut, upper strings chattering against a cello melody – at least in ‘our’ terms – drew a ‘modern’ response whose intensity grew and subsided in a way one could imagine Beethoven might have recognised and admired. The Cordier movement was very much a finale: ‘old’ joy to be had in dancing, but also in quasi-Classical function as a movement. This was, then, a fascinating musical tour and progress, which I hope to make again.      

Without a great break – not attacca or anything like that, but no interval – Beethoven began, similarly almost as if a response to what we had heard previously: Mason and the fourteenth century, although soon going very much its own way. (Again, this may have been more my ears than anything intrinsic to the work, or even the performance—but perhaps not.) The first movement received, at any rate, an intensely dramatic, modern(ist) reading: not imposing anything from without on the work, but rather taking nothing for granted. I thought of Michael Gielen’s symphonic Beethoven: highly recommended to those who do not know it. Form emerged from the material, just as it should. In the shadows, there was sadness, perhaps even tragedy, but resistance inevitably grew too. Beethoven is nothing if not dialectical—and again, we had this prefigured in Mason. Beethoven is also nothing without his human spirit—and this was unquestionably present. 

There are no easy answers in this music; nor was there here, the minuet quizzical, Beethoven too at play with music of the past, albeit a more recent past. The trio undoubtedly recalled Haydn, as much from the Diotima’s standpoint as Beethoven’s. But there was something darker hinted at too, the tightrope between disturbing delirium and delightfully tipsy skilfully navigated. The ‘Heiliger Dankegsang’ reimagined the Lydian mode, again recalling Mason’s play, albeit with an overriding effort at reconciliation through the fissures which was very much of Beethoven and his time. The Diotima did not take this as holy ground in the sense of something not even to be questioned, but rather as music of such stature that all must be summoned in approaching a fragile peace in dialogue between the two periods. If the joy that emerged was hard-won, so should it be. This was music of kinship with the Missa solemnis, in which nothing can or should come without a struggle, but above all without integrity. Moving through the fourth-movement transition to the finale, we likewise knew that the journey was far from complete. Indeed, the latter’s progress, even when one ‘knew’, constantly surprised. Beethoven – late Beethoven in particular – is always like that, or should be.   

Following a series of filmed tributes in multiple languages from composers with whom the Diotima has worked, ranging from a joint appearance from Rebecca Saunders and Enno Poppe, through Georges Aperghis to (spoken and written, but not seen) Helmut Lachenmann, the players launched into a Happy Birthday encore which, wonderfully in keeping both with the programme and the ensemble’s broader identity and activity, took us on a whistle-stop variation tour through musical history and styles. Key figures in the history and pre-history of the string quartet were present, Beethoven still the core, Shostakovich an insistent guest. There was a tango, a waltz, and – my favourite – a surprise ‘guest appearance’ from Wagner, courtesy of the Siegfried-Idyll. If ever you had wondered how that song might be transformed into that tone poem, this would have been your moment. And likewise, if ever you had wondered what the Wagner ‘Starnberg’ Quartet might have sounded like, if it had ever been more than a hopeful misunderstanding, this would too. Above all, though, it was a moment of celebration for a fine, enterprising quartet it is difficult to believe has been together for thirty years—but which bids fair to be so for at least thirty more.

Komsi/Fauchère/EIC/Bleuse - Illès, Mundry, Feierabend, and Kurtág, 5 June 2026

Salle des concerts, Cité de la musique, 

Márton Illés: Four SkEtches (French premiere)
Isabel Mundry: The I’s (French premiere)
Tobias Feierabend: Précipitations (world premiere)
Kurtág: Messages de feu Demoiselle R.V. Troussova

Anu Komsi (soprano)

Hélène Fauchère (mezzo-soprano)

Emmanuelle Ophèle (flute)

Carlo Laurenzi, Augustin Müller (IRCAM electronics)

Sylvain Cadars (IRCAM sound diffusion),
Ensemble intercontemporain

Pierre Bleuse (conductor)

György Kurtág’s centenary celebrations continue to delight and enrich the musical world, paying tribute only to his undeniable artistry, but also of course to the extraordinary rarity of a working composer still being around to experience them for him- or herself. Has anyone else been present at his second opera, premiered in his second century? It is conceivable that Betsy Jolas, 100 later this year, might beat that, having exceeded Kurtág’s operatic tally already; we shall see. At any rate, it would always have been a rare treat, centenary or no centenary, to hear live his Messages de feu Demoiselle R.V. Troussova, all the more so from the Ensemble intercontemporain, for whom it was written between 1976 and 1980, premiered the following year, and itself celebrating its 50^th anniversary this year, as part of the now-49-year-old IRCAM’s ManiFeste 2026 feast of contemporary music. Needless to say, the friendly ghost of Pierre Boulez, now also in his second century, haunted proceedings, not least given the Cité de la musique venue, and his 1983 recording of Troussova, made in Kurtág’s presence at IRCAM.

My first live experience of the work that truly introduced Kurtág to the French public, did not disappoint. Quite the contrary: it confirmed its status as an unqualified masterpiece, a non-operatic monodrama that seems with every hearing to rank alongside defining works such as Pierrot lunaire and Le Marteau sans maître. The EIC, conducted by Pierre Bleuse, conjured up a world before our ears even before Anu Komsi’s entry, somehow announcing, though neither we nor they could know for certain, that every number would play it allotted place in the span of an almost Mahlerian-symphonic whole. With Komsi we had a soloist, to be sure: a soloist who offered detail, character, and line in equal, expressive, virtuosic measure. We had in equal measure, though, an instrumentalist, a member of the ensemble, whose instrument’s counterpoint with others was the stuff of a chamber music that took its leave from Schoenberg and Webern, without ever sounding ‘like’ them. Stravinsky (The Soldier’s Tale in particular) and the songs of Bartók were other ghosts at the feast, perhaps even on occasion the Berg of Lulu. (Is it a coincidence that the three-act version came into being during the work’s composition?) But if any earlier composer shone more brightly than others, it as Kurtág’s beloved Bach. We were led through a vocal and instrumental laboratory that seemed to bring the myriad expression of the cantatas, perhaps even their expressionism, once again to life, possessing and in turn possessed by the fire of Rimma Dalos’s verse (even though mediated, as for me it must, via French surtitles). Beguiling, mesmerising, and terrifying, this non-operatic, Beckettian monodrama reminded us why, for all its visceral thrills, it took Kurtág so long to come to opera. He had no need to—until he did. 

It was preceded by Emmanuelle Ophèle’s world premiere of Précipitations for solo flute by Tobias Feierabend, a performance so assured one might have thought it a   piece. Indeed, I can imagine it may well one day become one, such were the similar assurance and rewards of the writing. In four short movements, it showed an almost Classical sense of structure, converted into form with a hint of theatre—not so much in the sense of music theatre, the soloist’s move across the stage notwithstanding, but something intangibly, perhaps imaginarily ‘dramatic’ rather than narrative. Arabesques connected to, yet not of, the past announced the first movement, itself followed by almost traditionally contrasting slower, often haunting music. There was grace in both writing and performance, with the final music, for bass flute, offering both synthesis and conclusion. 

The first ‘half’, significantly longer, presented two works new to France, both IRCAM commissions, by Márton Illés and Isabel Mundry. Initially bemused, I realised at a certain point the announced order must have been reversed, and was relieved to find that confirmed by Illés receiving applause at the end of the first. It was an interesting test and experience, though, initially to be approaching the work as if it were by Mundry, especially since I had not yet read the programme note for either. Illés’s Four SkEtches for ensemble and live electronics, premiered in Vienna this April, has roots in an earlier work for violin and electronics, though not having heard the latter I cannot say more. What we heard was bold and ambitious, painted on a large, three-dimensional canvas, at times in near-surround sound that evoked an almost sci-fi, monstrous ‘beyond’ – whether friendly, hostile, ambivalent, or plain indifferent remained ambiguous – but growing and shrinking before our ears. A quizzical opening of multifarious voices proliferated polyphonically, as instruments extended themselves electronically in almost biological fashion. Out of an electronic world of possibility and of shadows, there could emerge an acoustic sound – a xylophone arabesque, a piano flourish, or a flute breath – as if newly minted. Both sounded as if sides to the same coin, clash and combination in similar measure. 

Mundry’s The I’s embeds a vocal setting of words by M’barek Bouhchichi from his series The Silent Mirror. Hélène Fauchère’s rich-voiced performance had me think a little of 1950s Boulez: the thread of Pli selon pli, with the tone of Le Marteau. But this world was very much our own, urban too, in which instruments seemed to ‘speak’ almost operatically in contradistinction to a menacing, electronic, yet live collectivity. It was a sense of theatre, of an invisible stage, that immediately struck me even before the first vocal entry. In a highly accomplished, beautifully ‘finished’ work, the voice’s slow, often melismatic progress, whether sung or tilting towards the spoken, created and evoked, as did each of the works heard this evening, another world that was bound in strong, if complex, ways to our own.

Così fan tutte, Opera Holland Park, 2 June 2026

Fiordiligi – Madeline Braham
Ferrando – Osian Wyn Bowen
Dorabella – Shakira Tsindos
Guglielmo – Paul Grant
Don Alfonso – Paul Carey-Jones
Despina – Elizabeth Karani

Director – Cecila Stinton
Designs – Neil Irish
Lighting – Robert Price

Opera Holland Park Chorus (chorus master: Lindsay Bramley)
City of London Sinfonia
Charlotte Corderoy (conductor)

 

Così fan tutte may be my favourite opera; it is certainly one of those about which I am touchiest. To have me come away from a performance not verging upon spitting blood is rarer than it should be: doubtless a reflection on me as well as much contemporary Mozart staging and conducting. At any rate, there was no such problem here at Holland Park: no need for a transfusion of any kind, and an intelligent, enjoyable production and performance of a Neapolitan warmth to belie London’s torrential downpour, plunging temperatures, and transport misery. 

Doubtless we romanticise the past. Societies often have, though equally often they have trashed it—and continue to. The idiocies that abound in contemporary liberal discourse on the Enlightenment are frustrating, not least given their flattening effect on a movement far more varied, diffuse, and interesting than the Guardian letters page to which it is too often reduced. Their defamation is nonetheless less grievous than those served up then and now concerning the Middle Ages. Da Ponte and Mozart’s Naples shows more things in heaven, earth, and indeed somewhere warmer still than any ahistorical philosophies might dream of, Its strikingly ‘modern’ laboratory treatment, musically as much as verbally dramatic, and a key to understanding its nineteenth-century rejection is balanced and/or contested by the quackery of Mesmerism; sadly, the theological heart beating at its core remains ripe for rejection or straightforward incomprehension by bears of insufficient historical imagination. 

What of more recent ages? Like any period, the 1960s will suggest different things to different people, indeed different things to the same people at different times. In Cecilia Stinton’s production, however, there was a degree of postwar glamour and prosperity evoked through intercontinental tourism, in this case by a pair of US American women, both to be deceived by and yet also assert a degree of vengeance upon their soldier lovers and their hosts and hostesses. Titles help further establish the new world, knowingly distant in a world of ‘Yanks’ and the like from Da Ponte’s Italian. Despina and Don Alfonso navigate the show from the airport onwards, taking us to the fatally named Hotel Caligula to a Pompeii that has more than a little of the overseas Italian restaurant to it. One sees what one expects rather, necessarily, than what is there: surely a considerable part of the point. A romanticised view of a Roman antiquity that never was, yet which governed much of our self-understanding, both as individuals and societies, in the eighteenth century as now, comes to life through disguise, games, and commercial and other forms of exploitation. Statues come to life or turn to death, but will anyone notice? Perhaps they are mere plaster-casts anyway, if indeed that matters. It is necessary to complete at least an initial course from the (summer) school for lovers even to be aware that one has taken it. 

And all is accomplished with a greater sense of humour than I have seen for some time. If my view of the work is darker, Stinton’s conception convinces and, yes, entertains, as well as turning the tables, without ever neglecting – as so many do – the difficult, necessary lessons of which travel, tourism, and ‘heritage’ are mere vehicles of passion and, ultimately, Passion. There is proper bleakness at the end, as Mozart’s chillingly perfunctory, automaton-like close shows up the surface meaning of Da Ponte’s ‘moral’ for what it is. Mock-heroic gestures and acts have throughout performed a similar role, bringing Mozart’s horrifying parodies to scenic life for those who might otherwise take them at face value—or not even notice. It is a difficult work for many, precisely because of its musical suppositions. A helping hand here does no harm at all, especially when the titles veer in another, less literal direction. If we are all Romantics as well as romantics now, that only renders our need to learn from those who were not, or who were less straightforwardly so, all the greater. 

Mozart’s ambiguity is absolutely fundamental to the drama, nowhere more so than in his orchestral writing and long-term harmonic plan. Few have understood and communicated this so well as Sir Colin Davis, and no one in my theatrical experience. But again, whether we romanticise the past or not, we cannot live in it. Charlotte Corderoy’s conducting of the City of London Sinfonia was warm and broadly sympathetic, supportive of the singers yet leading them as necessary. Tempi were often, though not always fast without being harried. Ensembles are numerous in Così, presenting musical as well as dramatic challenges; there were, as is often the case, a few instances of disjuncture between pit and stage, but nothing grievous and swiftly, decisively remedied. Balance, moreover, was generally impeccable. There was, moreover, a palpable sense of staging and musical interpretation having been conceived and proceeding as one, not least in emphatic, if far from exclusive, tilting of the scales towards comedy. 

Such collaborative, collegial work was also a hallmark of the vocal performances. Madeline Braham was a wonderful Fiordiligi, finely supported by both director and conductor, yet with a fresh and thoughtful artistry very much her own. Shakira Tsindos’s Dorabella proved a proper foil: both contrast and complement in musical and dramatic terms. We felt as well as observed a growing division as well as distinction between them, as also between Osian Wyn Bowen’s Ferrando and Paul Grant’s Guglielmo. These lively, human portrayals were well framed and complemented by Paul Carey-Jones’s Don Alfonso and Elizabeth Karani’s Despina: both hugely charismatic performances, often in tandem with the excellent chorus—and Despina’s own troupe of adoring ragazzi (shades of Zerbinetta).  Coloratura held no fear for anyone, all of whom knew how to put it to excellent dramatic as well as musical use. And in this, arguably the ensemble opera par excellence, the whole was quite properly more than the sum of its estimable parts.

La fanciulla del West, Opera Holland Park, 26 May 2026

Minnie – Amanda Echalaz
Jack Rance – Robert Hayward
Dick Johnson – José de Eça
Nick – Zwakele Tshabalala
Ashby – Alaric Green
Sonora – Aidan Edwards
Trin – Jamie Formoy
Sid – Joe Ashmore
Bello – Michael Temporal Darell
Harry – Dominick Felix
Joe – Hugh Beckwith
Happy – Matthew Duncan
Jim Larkens – Samuel Snowden
Billy Jackrabbit – Freddie Tong
Wowkle – Kezia Bienek
Jake Wallace – Blaise Malaba
José Castro – Ronald Nairne
Pony Express Rider – Robert Jenkins

Director – Martin Lloyd-Evans
Designs – Anna Reid
Lighting – Jamie Platt
Choreography – Róisín Whelan
Fight director – Haruka Kuroda

Opera Holland Park Chorus (chorus master: Dominic Ellis-Peckham)

City of London Sinfonia

Matthew Kofi Waldren (conductor)

Images: Craig Fuller

This year, Opera Holland Park celebrates its thirtieth anniversary. Now a fixture in London’s operatic calendar, it continues to put many allegedly starrier stages to shame, not only through the quality of its productions and a wise stewardship that continues to build on its particular artistic strengths, but also through the genuine warmth of its welcome to newcomers and seasoned operagoers alike, and to its commitment to community and sustainability. Puccini has always stood at the heart of its offerings, so opening the 2026 season with a new production of La fanciulla del West, directed by Martin Lloyd-Evans and conducted by Matthew Kofi Waldren, was fitting and welcome. It turned out to show the company at its best: an interesting, intelligent staging, with excellent musical values, including a City of London Sinfonia one would never have guessed from the sound included only five first violins and a well assembled team of seasoned and newer vocal artists.

When talking about how differently an opera – or any other performing artwork – has struck one on different occasions, it is always difficult to know how much to attribute to the performance, broadly conceived including production, and how much to oneself. It will often be a combination of both; the important thing to remind oneself is that one may be more or less receptive at different times. I suspect, as an astute critic said to me during the interval, that Fanciulla may be a work that speaks more readily to those of a certain age. Its themes become more apparent, as well as more meaningful. (That may also be in part a reflection of coming to know it better.) But I am pretty sure it was only that; much in Lloyd-Evans’s production skilfully drew out the work’s dramatic concerns without overt interventionism, tracing a careful and involving path between its tricky combination of realism and redemption, neither of which it seems desirable, even possible, to underplay, let alone jettison. 

First among these themes is surely loneliness; at least, it felt so here. I do not doubt a more overt, even contemporary thematization could work too, but a hallmark of this production was to draw it out of what we could imagine the work ‘itself’ to be. Related to that and with similar contemporary resonance, period setting notwithstanding, is the theme of migration. For these are people who have come to California from across the world, not only the continent. In that lie their hopes, their fears, their sadness, and their possibilities to build something new—such as love. The dramatic, emotional point of the first scene, of men meeting at the Polka saloon, unsure of how they can and should relate to one another, whether missing their ‘homes’ elsewhere or otherwise, comes across strongly. Minnie and Dick Johnson are not so different, though they step out from that generality. And, as Minnie reminds us, none of them, her included, has clean hands: this could readily tilt into a Brecht-Weill Mahagonny, although ultimately its direction could hardly stand more strongly opposed. 

That is all in the work, one might say, and in many ways that is so, but one is led to understand and feel that with greater clarity and indeed emotional depth than I can previously recall. Dancing with another, faute de mieux, is touching in its heterosexual wariness but also its brief joy, though the ‘real thing’ lies between the central couple—and between them alone. We follow its origins, its rekindling, its blooming, its crisis, and its victory, through detailed, yet never fussy direction that supports every character onstage to trace a plausible path. There are set-piece moments, as there are in the work. They make reference, or at least conform, to our ideas of the Western, brought further to life in Anna Reid's resourceful designs and Jamie Platt's lighting. But they are never mere clichés: they have a function, narrative and emotional, and effect that function well.  

Waldren’s direction of the CLS and its playing were first-class. If you would have me down as a sceptic for chamber orchestra Puccini, even in so skilful a reduction as that by Ettore Panizza, you would be right. Not only, though, was I convinced from the outset; the question never arose in the first place. Here was a sound that was throughout just right, a gorgeous string sheen the icing on a cake of many ingredients, often dissolving in strikingly modernist fashion before our ears, whilst never forgetting its ‘Italian’ – forgive the essentialism – heart. Flexible yet directed, warm yet variegated, here was a Fanciulla that evoked the Puccini of his past and future, whilst reminding us how close much of it stands to Tristan und Isolde, to Debussy, and to the operas and film scores of Korngold and company. If I had a slight doubt, I wondered whether it might move on a little faster at times, but such matters come down to taste more than judgement. Passages of suspended time had their own dramatic motivation, palpably received throughout a packed audience.

 

Amanda Echalaz’s Minnie was similarly world-class: a far more complex character than I have seen and heard before and all the better for it. There were goodness and wisdom there, to be sure, but also pride and even resentment: as was very much her right. Her alchemy of words and music was shared by the charismatic José de Eça, at least as lovelorn and with all the greater need for a redemptive arc. One could not but root for them, much as one feared (even when one ‘knew’) darker forces would win out. Robert Hayward’s Jack Rance married a Scarpia of the West with something deeper, doubtless drawing on his experience in Wagner up to and including Wotan. No one sentimentalised, crucial in this of all composers, and the drama was all the richer for it. Cast from depth, a community was brought to life by singers such as Zwakele Tshabalala’s Nick, Alaric Green’s Ashby, Aidan Edwards’s Sonora, and many others, not least Kezia Bienek’s loyal Wowkle. This, though, was very much a company effort, with an outstanding chorus trained by Dominic Ellis-Peckham at its beating heart. All contributed to something greater than the sum of its considerable parts.

 

For the ending not to seem trite, even silly, it needs broader, redemptive resonance: not an easy task for our age. It is arguably here that the work needs a little help, and the question is raised as to what sort of work it really is. Clearly it is not a tragedy, though it has seemed to be leading that way. Nor is it a comedy, save in the sense that it is not a tragedy. It is easier, I think, to take Turandot as a perverted, even repellent version of the latter. It might be easier to take Fanciulla as such, if it had a greater mythological element to it, as Wagner does even in Die Meistersinger. Tristan is a tragedy that, in the older or at least George Steiner sense, turns aside too. Whilst one might draw a comparison here, perhaps the problem is that it does not feel appropriate, for various reasons, of which realism is only one. The point is not, of course, classification, Aristotelian or otherwise, for its own sake. It is perfectly fine for a work simply to be itself; ultimately it must be. But when doubts linger concerning the happy ending, such questions more or less inevitably arise. A potential future carved out for the lovers is hard-won in its way, It is difficult to argue with Minnie’s admonitions and persuasion: she deserves it. But do we believe in it? In Così fan tutte, of course we do not: that is the point. If I am still not entirely clear what the point is here, first the problem may well be mine, and second this came far closer to convincing me than any performance previously, the dress rehearsal I was fortunate enough to attend included. So there was an emotional truth to what we saw and heard in committed performance, as in staging, as in work. The three came together in just the way opera of most kinds should.

Happy thirtieth anniversary, then, Opera Holland Park. It has been a pleasure to share a good few of those years with you, and I hope to share many more of them.

Quatuor Ébène - Beethoven, 14 May 2026

Wigmore Hall

String Quartet no.5 in A major, op.18 no.5
String Quartet no.4 in C minor, op.18 no.4
String Quartet no.12 in E-flat major, op.127

Pierre Colombet, Gabriel Le Magadure (violins)
Marie Chilemme (viola)
Yuya Okamoto (cello)

I have never been disappointed by a Quatuor Ébène concert, whether at the Wigmore Hall or elsewhere. This all-Beethoven programme offered no exception. Almost my only reservation I shall get out of the way immediately: some surprising intonational difficulties, which should not be exaggerated yet nevertheless were to be heard, in parts of the two quartets from the op.18 set. They seemed related to a similarly surprising withdrawal of vibrato from time to time in the violins: not that this is unusual in itself nowadays, but rather that it is not something I at least associated with this ensemble. Trying new things in performance is generally to be applauded, but that aspect seemed to me something of a work-in-progress. 

Otherwise, the first movement of the A major Quartet, op.18 no.5, benefited from a finely judged balance between Beethoven’s twin inheritances from Haydn and Mozart. It was always given space to breathe, without ever sagging, in a performance of balance, variegation, and intensity. There was an appealing Janus-faced quality to the Menuetto, both harking back to Beethoven’s forebears but also forward to the second part of the recital. Its counterpoint told, whilst greater warmth and rusticity in the trio formed a winning contrast. Haydn would surely have nodded and approved. In the third movement, the theme was touching enough, but it was in the variations that Beethoven’s character truly manifested itself, movingly so whether in slower or more rumbunctious music. Variation form was always special to him; here it felt so. After that, a post-Haydn finale, with just the right degree of properly Beethovenian vehemence, was very much the ticket. It constantly confounded, just as it should. 

In its C minor predecessor (in the set, rather than this programme), Beethoven the Romantic more fully manifested himself: not only in tonality, but in coiled-spring concision. The players relaxed slightly for the second subject in the opening Allegro ma non tanto, but not only slightly, and this was more a matter of the composer’s writing than performing intervention. The exposition repeat, notably, was no mere repeat but was music transformed by its first playing (and hearing), leading to a development section of great intensity. Here was Beethoven’s C minor daemon—likewise in a further-transformed recapitulation and second development unleashed in its coda. A somewhat stern scherzo opened out a little as it progressed. If it occasionally lost a degree of ension – this is a difficult movement to bring off – there was no such problem in an absorbing Menuetto that was nonetheless anything but an easy listen. The finale again proved full of surprises in the best sense. 

I was immediately struck by the richness of sound in the Maestoso introduction to the first movement of the op.127 Quartet. It is, again, partly a matter of the writing, but only partly. Not that what we heard was unvaried, far from it, but the first movement’s ‘base line’ was different. So too, for that matter was the bass line, vividly brought to life by cellist Yuya Okamoto. There was concision here too, again strikingly so, but of a very different kind—and so it felt. Here was music that offered that sense and an apparently contrary sense of expansiveness, as two sides of the same coin. Wagnerian ‘unendliche Melodie’ characterised the Adagio ma non troppo. This was rare ground, albeit inhabited without preciosity. It is difficult not to describe such music and such music-making as sublime, and frankly why should one try? Beethoven’s interventions registered with a due sense of shock, yet always made sense in retrospect, all within a single, miraculous breath. A quizzical yet deeply felt scherzo seemed to extend its human reach still further in the radicalism of its trio material. The finale’s perfect sense of character and function was fully realised in practice: uncompromising, without ‘effects’ or astringency. There is truly no music ‘like’ this. Its ultimate eruption felt all the more joyous for being so hard-won.

The Rape of Lucretia, Royal Academy of Music, 13 May 2025

Susie Sainsbury Theatre

Tarquinius (Oliver Heuzenroeder), Collatinus (Pavel Basov), Junius (Harrison Robb)
Images: Craig Fuller

Director – Paul Carr
Costumes – Michelle Bradbury
Lighting – Jake Wiltshire

Female Chorus – Madeleine Perring
Male Chorus – Yihui Wang
Lucretia – Ella Orehek-Whitford
Tarquinius – Oliver Heuzenroeder
Collatinus – Pavel Basov
Junius – Harrison Robb
Bianca – Viktoria Melkonian
Lucia – Ellie Donald

Royal Academy Sinfonia

Lada Valešová (conductor)

Male Chorus (Yihui Wang)

Hot on the heels of HGO’s Rape of Lucretia has come another excellent young-artist production, this time from Royal Academy Opera. (English Touring Opera also gave performances, here in London and elsewhere, in November.) It is for me one of Britten’s stronger works, the sometimes excessive wordiness of Ronald Duncan’s libretto notwithstanding; this opportunity to see it again so soon, not so much to compare as to experience it from another, related standpoint, was readily taken.

Paul Carr’s production puzzled me at first, probably because I had come with overly realist expectations to something that unfolded with a more abstract aesthetic, indeed aestheticism. What seemed to be a punk-meets-S&M look for the beginning of the first act, soldiers meeting on an edgy, even dangerous street, turned out not to be a setting as such, but rather a look, contrasted with a more Roman sense, achieved more through lighting than costumes, for the domestic sphere of Lucretia’s villa. Not that there was anything much here as a set: this focused on the characters, their deeds, and their interactions, all viewed through a prism of black, white, and red, a long red rope both prophetic and eventually summative. In the masculine sphere, Tarquinius was a ‘panther’ indeed, not only ‘agile’ and ‘virile’ but also in thrall to his pleasures and desires—and not necessarily restricted to women. Mad, bad, and definitely dangerous to know, then, in a memorable stage animal portrayal by Oliver Heuzenroeder. 

Lucia (Ellie Donald), Lucretia (Ella Orehek-Coddington), Bianca (Viktoria Melkonian)

Ella Orehek-Whitford’s Lucretia contrasted vividly with his Tarquinius: good, honourable, and with undeniable inner strength, though how could that ever be enough? Her way with words, music, and their combination enabled her fully to inhabit her role. Pavel Basov’s Collatinus was multi-dimensional, to begin with barely distinguishable from the other men, thrust by direst fate into his role as Tarquinius’s antagonist. Harrison Robb’s Junius was, more clearly than usual, the real manipulator, through vocal and stage means alike. (Both characters pointed us to the Roman republican future.) Viktoria Melkonian’s Bianca and Ellie Donald’s Lucia were nicely contrasted in voice, more to the point intelligently sung and acted throughout; likewise Madeleine Perring’s Female Chorus, very much part of the action. For me, though, it was Yihui Wang’s Male Chorus who emerged as first among a team of fine equals, his diction and musical line quite superlative, all a means to a properly ambiguous dramatic end. The production asked much of this cast and received all it asked.

Madeleine Perring (Female Chorus)

The musicians of the Royal Academy Sinfonia proved just as impressive in the pit, incisively led by Lada Valešová. An ensemble of steel that could melt before our ears and the morning Roman sun, it drove and structured the action, ensuring that Britten’s opera for the most part overcame the limitations of its libretto and even hinting that there might be some post-Bachian truth in that problematical claim of redemption at the close. For if Duncan’s work has its problems, it also bears genuine dramatic fruit, especially though not solely in combination with the score—all the more so in so compelling a performance as this.

Lugansky - Schumann and Chopin, 12 May 2026

Wigmore Hall

Schumann: Kinderszenen, op.15; Humoreske in B-flat major, op.20
Chopin: Preludes, op.28

Nikolai Lugansky (piano)

The first movement from Kinderszenen announced, if a little stiffly, an absorbing recital of Schumann and Chopin from Nikolai Lugansky. We can all, to be fair, take a little time to get going. Thereafter, I had few, if any, reservations concerning playing that combined musical integrity and superlative playing to great effect. Indeed, recalling my previous most recent visit to the same hall, Lugansky’s performance was, if not necessarily superior to, certainly less wilful than Pavel Kolesnikov’s markedly different conception and execution last month. The relationship between pieces penetrated to the heart of opposing forces in Schumann’s music. Dazzling fingerwork in ‘Hasche-Mann’ seemed to enable, even to necessitate, yielding in ‘Bittendes Kind’, which in turn led to greater freedom in ‘Glückes genug’. ‘Träumerei’ dreamed, yet carried on, finely shaped without sounding unduly moulded, instigating an infectious response in ‘Am Kamin, that yet at the outset seemed possessed of an almost Mozartian sadness beneath the surface, albeit soon dispelled. For contrasting characteristics were certainly present within pieces too, as in ‘Ritter vom Steckenpfered’, indeed there almost disturbingly so. Changes of mood and complexity led us seemingly inexorably to ‘Der Dichter spricht’, blessed by touching nobility and considerable poetic depth. 

Humoreske furthered that kaleidoscope of moods, unfurled both within and between movements. The ambiguity of the first, for instance, suggested very much a knife-edge, which could go either way. Ultimately, it was Schumann’s poetic idea, once more, that held things together—an idea, of course, brought into being in performance by Lugansky. That Schumann was a Romantic and Romanticism was above all a literary movement that came to influence and shape other art forms may seem obvious points to make, but they can readily be forgotten; certainly not here, as a parade of characters and narrators made their presence felt. Voicing of lines unlocked many a door, to exultation as well as quandary. The work’s undeniable formal complexity was shown, ultimately, to rest above all upon questions – perhaps answers too – of feeling. 

Chopin’s Preludes followed, again very much a cumulative sequence, the C major opening succinct, laconic, Webern-like in essence if hardly language, a brief-curtain raiser to a further parade of characters, emotions, and more. Lugansky’s A minor Prelude captured beautifully both tension and ultimately marriage between hands: a technical problem (and opportunity) brought to étude-like musical life. Bright, gymnastic, liberated by the keyboard, its G major successor in turn necessitated both sadness and inner strength in its E minor counterpart. We heard and felt Schumannesque flickering in volatility, engrossing tumult, Bachian homage in harmony and counterpoint, and jet-black malevolence (as in the E-flat minor and F minor preludes). There was also plenty of time and space for reflection, the D-flat Prelude – ironically, given its ‘Raindrop’ nickname – clearing the skies magically, only for them to darken again in its ominous middle section, the close nicely ambiguous as to which had won out. If, in the end, blistering, tragic vehemence won out (G minor as well as the final D minor) then memories of much else, as in the Schumann works, persisted. There was no either/or. 

Nor, indeed, was there in three finely contrasted encores, at least taken as a whole. The A-flat ‘Duetto’ Song Without Words brought Mendelssohn closer still to Schumann, Chopin’s Fantaisie-Impromptu no less magical, yet more overtly thrilling. I am not sure I have ever heard the latter better played. Likewise Rachmaninov’s C minor Prelude, op.23 no.7, sounding as the composer’s piano music always should: music for the Steinway.

Das Rheingold, Opéra de Marseille, 10 May 2026

Opéra Municipal de Marseille

Images: Camille Rovera

Fricka – Marion Lebègue
Freia – Élodie Hache
Erda – Amandine Ammirati
Wellgunde – Marie Kalinine
Flosshilde – Lucie Roche
Wotan – Alexandre Duhamel
Alberich – Zoltán Nagy
Mime – Marius Brenciu
Donner – Yoann Dubruque
Froh – Éric Huchet
Loge – Samy Camps
Fasolt – Patrick Bolleire
Fafner – Louis Morvan

Director – Charles Roubaud
Assistant director – Jean-Christophe Mast
Costumes – Katia Duflot
Set designs – Emmanuelle Favre
Lighting – Jacques Rouveyrollis
Video – Julien Soulier

Orchestra de l’Opéra de Marseille

Michele Spotti (conductor)

Thirty years since Das Rheingold – or L’Or du Rhin, as it was dually advertised – was last staged in Marseille, it returns as part of what I assume to be a new Ring, directed by Charles Roubaud and conducted by the Marseille Opera’s music director (also incoming Principal Guest Conductor of Berlin’s Deutsche Oper), the energetic and highly talented Michele Spotti. Marseille’s handsome art deco opera house is celebrating the occasion in some style, including an outing on the staircase for Erda’s stylish costume of thirty years ago (director also Charles Roubaud, designer Katia Duflot). 

This too is stylishly conceived, evoking a time when the house was new: round about 1930, I should guess. The opening scene takes place, as in a sense it should, beneath the bank of the Rhine, albeit in the guise of a ‘Rheinbank’ vault. As the Prelude progresses and the curtain rises, a cleaner goes about his business, dreams of ‘higher’ things on his mind as his theatrical sweeping, in time with the music’s close, suggests. This is Alberich, soon to be teased by glamorous employees indeed, Rhinemaidens with keys to the safe and its gold bars. So, if Wagner dramatises primal conversion of value-free gold into capital, here we see a redramatisation such as happens every day, indeed every second, in our accursed age of capital. There never was a golden age: on that Wagner is clear. As we did with Patrice Chéreau at Bayreuth and have done many times since, we witness a specific case of Alberich’s ‘theft’ – in essence, he simply offers the asking price, though that is already to argue in the language of private property and capital – in a world created by the gods and yet already shaped by his forerunners.   

The second scene introduces us, as one might expect, to older ‘money’ and power. Here, is a gilded age, redolent in particular of the United States, the age of Gatsby – they were careless people, Wotan and Fricka – with art deco to boot. It does not portray the house or its origins directly, but one might be led, as one is with the North American trappings, to reflect in kind. A nice touch is an ornamental, visibly protected tree in the corner, the light of Freia’s apples extinguished following her abduction. Another is that an Empire-State-Building like Valhalla can be partially seen, through the mists: yes, as Wagner intended, albeit for the age of King Kong. Video projection enables us to witness Alberich’s transformations in Nibelheim, whilst we hear him when invisible via totalitarian tannoy. Such points of detail are welcome, not because everything necessarily has to be done in this way, but because they anchor the drama with stage action that has been thought through. The beginning of the final scene I found a little disappointing: empty, without much to look at or have one think, but perhaps that was the point, prior to entry into the new tower via gilded lift (ring any bells, Donner(ld)?) 

Spotti’s musical direction was resourceful, given the relatively small orchestra at his disposal. Wind naturally came more to the fore than they might usually do, but that opportunity was seized to have us hear a good deal of that detail. Not that the Marseille strings were underwhelming, far from it; at their best, they played with an appropriately golden sheen. Some musicians were heard from beyond the pit, a pair of harpists in a box above included. The latter certainly worked hard for their gold. If there were a few awkward corners – this is far from an easy score for any orchestra – Spotti marshalled his forces with flair and assurance. It was a relatively broad reading - just over two-and-a-half hours, I think – but only occasionally, above all during the beginning of the final scene, did tension sag. I have heard many performances considerably more lacking in starrier houses. 

Zoltán Nagy’s Alberich would have graced any house, conceived and brought to life with a theatricality that did not preclude but rather gave birth to musical excellence. His way with Wagner’s words was similarly captivating. Much the same could – and should – be said of Samy Camps’s Loge, a definite star turn. Alexandre Duhamel’s Wotan was more mixed: initially sounding somewhat parted and unusually vibrato-laden, though it improved. Marion Lebègue made the most of Fricka, bringing words and music vividly off-page on-stage. Gangster giants – dead ringers, as it were, for Babylon Berlin’s Ringverein – were presented by Patrick Bolleire and Louis Morvan, the dark brutality of the latter’s Fafner properly chilling. A fine trio of Rhinemaidens and, in general, a cast with excellent ensemble contributed to the important lesson, familiar to many of us in London from Regents Opera’s ringside events, that Wagner should not, should not be left solely to our metropolitan theatres. Emphasis, in both cases, on story-telling and character definition, not eschewing conceptual apparatus yet also not being overwhelmed by it, forms a crucial part both of our operatic ecology and of a continuing tradition of Wagner as nineteenth-century theatrical drama that can yet speak to us today.