Munich Opera Festival (4) - Die Walküre, 1 July 2026

Nationaltheater

Images: Monika Rittershaus

Siegmund – Joachim Bäckström
Hunding – Ain Anger
Wotan – Nicholas Brownlee
Sieglinde – Irene Roberts
Brünnhilde – Miina-Lisa Värelä
Fricka – Ekaterina Gubanova
Helmwige – Dorothea Herbert
Gerhilde – Julie Adams
Ortlinde – Elaine Gvritshvili
Waltraute – Claudia Mahnke
Siegrune – Niina Keitel
Rossweiße – Christina Rock
Grimgerde – Natalie Lewis
Schwertleite – Noa Beinart
Loge – Charith Pidikiti

Director – Tobias Kratzer
Assistant director – Matthias Piro
Designs – Rainer Sellmaier
Lighting – Michael Bauer
Video – Manuel Braun, Jonas Dahl, Janic Bebi
Dramaturgy – Bettina Bartz, Olaf Roth

Bayerische Staatsorchester
Vladimir Jurowski (conductor)

 

As a student in Berlin, Ludwig Feuerbach attended lectures from, among others, GWF Hegel and Friedrich Schleiermacher: far from an unusual combination, but prophetic for his subsequent development as the pre-eminent Young Hegelian philosopher of love-communism. Although he lectured at Erlangen, Feuerbach failed to obtain a university position, an ambition rendered impossible following revelation of his authorship of the atheistic Thoughts on Death and Immortality published anonymously in 1830, a year in which revolutions once again began to sweep Europe. His writings, including those Thoughts, The Essence of Christianity, and Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, inspired many radicals in the next wave of revolutions (1848-51), although Feuerbach remaining personally aloof from revolutionary activity. One of those, of course, was Richard Wagner, who, shortly after publication of Feuerbach’s Thoughts, had gained his first experience, direct and reported, of revolution, inspired by events in Paris, Leipzig, and even the previously quiescent Dresden. The seventeen-year old Saxon would recall in his autobiography Mein Leben ‘the world of history’ having come to life: ‘Saxony was not spared: in Dresden it even came to street-fighting’. He began to attend Leipzig University lectures on philosophy and aesthetics, and henceforth considered himself a ‘fervent partisan of the revolution’. Wagner would go on read at least all three of the Feuerbach books named above and, in contrast to one of his great intellectual mentors, stood anything but aloof from revolutionary political activity—be it in practice, during the 1849 Dresden uprising, or in the fruits of his post-revolutionary exile in Zurich. Among those were The Artwork of the Future, dedicated to Feuerbach, its very title a homage, and of course Die Walküre, perhaps his single most Feuerbachian drama—in that the positive, as well as negative, side of a religion purer than yet related to Christianity, founded on love, features most strongly in the love of Siegmund and Sieglinde, and Brünnhilde’s conversion to their creed, crucially at the ‘price’, in reality an elevation, of losing her own immortality. 

With this Walküre, newly premiered, Tobias Kratzer’s Munich Ring reaches its second instalment. I was unable to see Das Rheingold; but on the evidence of this, as well as much of his other work – his near-universally loved Bayreuth Tannhäuser, various Deutsche Oper productions, and more – I hope to put that right before long. Even considered on its own, Kratzer’s Walküre has numerous distinctions, but perhaps its most distinctive feature, at least until the third act, is a more overt Feuerbachian element than any other I can recall. I suspect it would seem so all the more in light of the Rheingold, but that must remain a matter of speculation by now. What it certainly does is put the gods, even here, centre-stage, not only as ‘the gods’, characters in this drama, but emphatically as gods—and emphatically not, as Ernst Bloch put it, ‘called gods without being gods’.

The curtain rises on a rural, possibly suburban chalet; by deduction, it may be somewhere outside Munich, though it need not be. This, of course, is Hunding’s house, at the end of the driveway a quasi-Marian shrine, albeit to Fricka. That is, Kratzer follows Wagner absolutely in presenting a dramatic critique of religion, mostly yet not only Christianity, albeit shrouded, as it were, in the guise of Germanic paganism. (Wagner is doing other things with reference to the Eddas and sagas too, but he is certainly doing that, in unambiguously post-Feuerbach fashion.) It is here, under Fricka as well as Hunding, also under a larger, indoor ecclesiastical shrine, not unlike a tabernacle or reliquary, perhaps denoting the rule of Valhalla/religion/Christianity more generally, that Siegmund takes refuge. Sieglinde is clearly a member of this religion too, since she genuflects before the shrine even when Hunding has gone—and, initially shamefully, later with abandon, celebrates her wholesale abandon(ment) only after covering it. When, in the second act, Wotan comes to earth, like the gods of old (though also, if we believe the New Testament, ours too), he is distressed not only by Fricka’s demolition of the new religion he has ultimately inspired, but by the destruction of the shrine within: his old religion, one might say. Just as Wagner’s god is torn, so is he, visibly as well as audibly so. 

That Hunding, whose cause Fricka takes, should be a devotee of her understanding of this religion – sect, perhaps – will surprise no one, but it is clear, not assumed. She even recognises herself in it; I am tempted to add, in Biblical style, ‘and it was good’, save that obviously it was not for humanity. We even see a ram, albeit a dead one; hers is a chariot, if only metaphorically, of death—as in Wagner. When death occurs, moreover, it is unquestionably violent; we are no more spared than its more direct victims. When Wotan, in anger, bids Hunding kneel before Fricka, Wagner’s goddess of ‘custom’ (as he explained in a letter to August Röckel), the bourgeois property- and motor-owner does just that: not something I have seen before. She and other gods – I assume, Froh, Donner, and Freia – whom we have already seen, in a drawing projected at some point during Wotan’s monologue, observe events on the battlefield. Dressed in designer Rainer Sellmaier’s mediaeval, even Burgundian-Nibelungenlied garb, they offer strong connection to the mediaevalism of work, Wagner’s selection and adoption of sources, and to the hostile, Young Hegelian critique of church and state such as had been mystically united in states such as the Prussia of Frederick William IV.

Another such example, if less fanatically so, was the Saxony in which Kapellmeister Wagner threatened to burn it all down—and took delight in seeing just that in his opera house: ‘8 May (Monday) Morning once again by roundabout route via barricades to Town Hall. At S. Anne Barricade guard shouts “Well, Mr Conductor, joy’s beautiful divine spark’s made a blaze.” (3rd perf. 9th Symphony at previous Palm Sunday concert; Opera House now burnt down. Strange feeling of comfort.)’ Another important point, I suspect, from Wotan’s monologue: in his proto-Parsifalian wandering, he passes a church. Out of it ran two hooded figures, disaffected youth, it would seem. Something within me wondered whether one might be Alberich, in the one Ring drama in which he ‘should’ not appear onstage. I think it was, for during the Ride of the Valkyries, a hooded figure with child, surely Hagen, watches. We shall see. To be reminded, at any rate, of Wagner’s contemporary and fellow Feuerbach enthusiast (for a while), Marx, and his more or less contemporaneous observation, in explicit Young Hegelian critique of Hegel, that ‘the relationship of industry [Alberich] and, in particular, the world of wealth to the political world [the gods] is one of the principal problems of modern times,’ was salutary—and I should be surprised to learn that it had merely been my interpretative fancy. 

So far, so excellent—all accomplished in fine Personenregie and response thereto. This is no mere concept; it is an absorbing drama. That of the third act is hardly less so in the latter respect, although it seems strangely distant from what has gone before. Perhaps more will be revealed in Siegfried or Götterdämmerung, but once past a video ‘Ride’ that took in much of Munich, Brünnhilde at the helm of Apocalypse Now helicopter, an original ‘Bavarian host’ of the Siegestor, thus returning to source as it were. Naturally, the local audience loved it, and why not, numerous aspects of the city eliciting gasps of recognition and, less laudably, actual applause. Surely one can appreciate a coup de théâtre or de cinéma without Pavlovian response. That nonetheless we should end up in the Nationaltheater may have particular warrant, given it was here that, against Wagner’s wishes, Ludwig II had it all begin. Perhaps Kratzer anticipated the applause or such reaction, and turned it against the audience avant la lettre. We can read it that way anyway. And perhaps subsequent events will play out more fully in that respect—and not too closely to Stefan Herheim’s metatheatrical Deutsche Oper Ring. But it seemed a slight pity. There is still much to admire in the emergency repair work – and religious rebirth? – offered by Valkyrie body-snatchers to heroes, as well as in the passionate direction and portrayal of Wotan and Brünnhilde thereafter. That the demi-god Loge appears as bidden, with flame, at the close, ties all neatly together. Yet I could not help but think – this is really my sole cavil – a more apt setting might have been found, unless the point be that the opera house is now our dubious temple. If so, I shall happily recant; again, we shall see.

In one sense, though, even that helped point, in the unlikely event anyone should have needed pointing, to the truest heroes of all: the orchestra that first performed this work. Wherever you may have heard it, in Berlin, Bayreuth, Dresden, Vienna, or elsewhere, it is unlikely to have been played better than this. Strings were dark yet incisive, ‘old German’ in a way Furtwängler might have recognised, ‘dramatic’ in a way Boulez might have done. The rest of the playing was equally outstanding, the Ride far more than showpiece, but rather quite rightly a symphonic movement taking its place in Wagner’s dramatic whole. Vladimir Jurowski’s conducting had its moments in better and worse senses. To begin with, too often one could hear as well as see him conduct. Wagner became a miniaturist in a sense too close to Nietzsche’s jibe. It was all too effortful, though to Jurowski’s credit, he never tried to get this great orchestra to sound like anything other than itself. The third act was more at ease with itself, with far fewer odd impositions upon it; it flowed in a way closer to the Rhine (or Isar) and thus the orchestra’s mysterious, Delphic oracle sounded more unbidden—save, in the eternal riddle, for who might have created its own gods.

Speaking of heroes, Joachim Bäckström made for a fine Siegmund, his chemistry with Irene Roberts’s increasingly ecstatic Sieglinde – what a foretelling of Siegfried she offered! – thrilling and, at times, disturbing to watch. For Kratzer did not follow Wagner in his understanding of incest. These twins, even the religious Sieglinde, were positively excited by the prospect of incest, as opposed to loving each other and its revelation not mattering. Again, film revealed some of the backstory, adding to rather than merely mirroring what we learned from narration—at least after the first, slightly disappointing instalment. Nicholas Brownlee’s Wotan we had thus seen and known already, his fireside sadness, seen by the siblings’ mothers, projected into a wise, multivalent portrayal of the ‘sum of present-day intelligence’ (Wagner on the character, immediately prior to starting work on the score of this opera).  

Ekaterina Gubanova’s imperious, haughty, godlike Fricka was all one might hope for, in general and in context. Ain Anger’s self-assured Hunding was no mere thug, though he was certainly given to violence; here was a man who knew his beliefs and his patriarchal rights, and was willing to fight for them. Miina-Lisa Värelä’s Brünnhilde’s journey to the brink of losing immortality absorbed us through excellent, Wagnerian command of words, music, and gesture. Other Valkyries offered singing and acting of the highest order. For not the least of the work’s and performance’s virtues was a celebration of Wagner’s Feuerbachian conception of the ‘purely human’ and its socialist expansion into a vision, political, social, religious and more, that only in cooperation might we begin to achieve our potential as a species.

Munich Opera Festival (3) - Turandot, 30 June 2026

Nationaltheater

Images: Geoffroy Schied

Turandot – Sondra Radvanovsky
Altoum – Kevin Conners
Timur – Christian Van Horn
Calaf – Yonghoon Lee
Liù – Golda Schultz
Ping – Vitor Bispo
Pang – Tansel Akzeybek
Pong, Prince of Persia – Samuel Stopford
Mandarin – Bálint Szabó

Director – Carlus Pedrussa/La Fura dels Baus
Designs – Roland Olbeter
Costumes – Chu Oruz
Video – Franc Aleu
Lighting – Urs Schönebaum
Dramaturgy – Andrea Schönhofer, Rainer Karlitschek
Revival director – Lejila Selfried

Chorus, Children’s Chorus, and Extra Chorus of the Bavarian State Opera (chorus director: Christoph Hell)
Extras, Children Extras, and Opera-Ballet of the Bavarian State Opera
Bavarian State Orchestra
Conductor – Andrea Battistoni

 

How curious. I learned what this Turandot had been about only upon consulting the programme post-performance. To be honest, I wish I had not done so. A quotation from La Fura dels Baus’s website will do: ‘In 2046 Europe is completely under Chinese rule. More than 30 years, China had rescued Europe from a financial crisis by buying up the debt, the ownership and natural resources. China is now the new world power. Turandot, the princess of ice control, as “Big Brother” every European, in order to pay back every last penny and pay off the debt of their parents’ generation.’ There is, I suppose, nothing like a bit – a lot – of paranoid Western Sinophobia to knock the work’s tamer racism into perspective. How this was depicted onstage I am at a loss to describe, but there you have it. 

For, if that sounds like the sort of thing a US Republican might utter or like to hear, what we saw often suggested something devised to hold the attention of an octogenarian man-baby president. There was certainly something going on all the time: less an evocation of the circus, or on engagement with the idea of one, commedia dell’arte or otherwise, than a circus in itself. If not so vacuous as, say, the Cirque du soleil, Carlus Pedrussa’s production was not so far off as it appeared to think itself. Breakdancers, acrobats, rollerskaters: someone was and often many people were doing something or many things all of the time. Quite why remained obscure, at least to me. I wondered whether some comment was being made about visual overload, and perhaps it was. But its relation to Turandot I could only hazard to tell you, until the final scene when things calmed down and the characters were directed rather well. Titles instructed us when to put on our 90s-style 3-D glasses, red and blue, which promised far more than they delivered. Apart from turning much of what we saw, well, red and blue, they enabled us to see a few objects flying around between us and the stage. Spectacle has always been a dramatic – or, indeed a postdramatic – tool in opera. Here, I am afraid, things tended towards Wagner’s celebrated denunciation of Meyerbeer as effect without cause.

Pedrussa’s decision – again, I quote La Fura dels Baus’s website – to present a Turandot ‘strictly pure and original’ mighty suggest conflict, productive or otherwise, with visual hyperactivity. Did it ‘respect the composer’s music’? Arguably so, in that it presented it as one might expect, save for one exception of ultra-‘respect’, ending ‘when the choir says “Liú poesía”.’ I had not heard it done this way before, so was curious to discover how it might turn out. Not very well, alas. It can plausibly be argued that there is no entirely satisfactory solution to this particular problem, not even Berio’s—and certainly not Franco Alfano’s. But this not only sounded quite at odds with what we had seen; it also presented an oddly muted winding down to an opera for which subtlety may hardly be a priority, but tonal dramaturgic strategy certainly is. Wozzeck stops rather than closes; no one would wish it otherwise. For Turandot more or less to peter out proved an unnecessary disappointment. 

Andrea Battistoni’s conducting of the Munich orchestra offered a proverbial curate’s egg. Tremendous Stravinskian precision early on, hammering home Puccini’s inheritance from Petrushka and The Rite of Spring, met with frustrating listlessness later on. If the reading never lost sight of the gorgeousness of the orchestral tapestry, relative lack of structural command doubtless contributed to the disappointment of the close. Much was loud, very loud, although considerably more varied in tone than Yonghoon Lee’s ear-splitting Calaf. Again, this may not be the world’s most subtle opera; nor is Calaf’s the most of operatic characterisation. There is nonetheless more to it, or should be, than unrelieved shouting. Sondra Radvanovsky was cold and imperious as Turandot, and considerably subtler in, say, ‘In questa reggia’. It was difficult not to feel the loss of additional music in her case. Golda Schultz’s Liù was heart-rending: lovelorn and sincere, a star-turn without trying to be a ‘star’. Christian Can Horn’s verbally and musically attentive Timur impressed similarly for adding much that was absent elsewhere. Indeed, all the singing, bar that of Lee, was of excellent quality or better, massed choral forces included. I could only wish the singers – and we – had benefited from a production that had extended beyond School of Franco Zeffirelli, albeit more by default than design.

Munich Opera Festival (2) - Of One Blood, 28 June 2026

 

Nationaltheater

Production images: Monika Rittershaus

Elizabeth Tudor, Queen of England – Johanni von Oostrum
Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots – Vera-Lotte Boecker
Female Consorts I-IV – Seonwoo Lee, Mirjam Mesak, Lotte Betts-Dean, Meg Brilleslyper
Female Consort V, Jane Kennedy – Freya Apfellstaedt
Male Consort I, Lord Darnley – Michael Butler
Male Consort II – Joel Williams
Male Consort III, Rizzio – Andrew Hamilton
Male Consort IV, Scottish Lord I – Armand Rabot
Male Consort V, Scottish Lord II, Executioner – Pawel Horodyski
Solo harpsichord – Mahan Esfahani

Director – Claus Guth
Set designs – Etienne Pluss
Costumes – Ursula Kudrna
Sound design – Bob Scott, Sven Eckhoff
Lighting – Michael Bauer
Choreography – Sommer Ulrickson

Dramaturgy – Yvonne Gebauer, Lukas Leipfinger
Chorus of the Bavarian State Opera (chorus director: Christoph Hell)
Bavarian State Orchestra
Vladimir Jurowski (conductor)

I remember, as a schoolboy, reading in a newspaper about ‘The Hecklers’, a pair of composers with highly reactionary aesthetics, who objected so strongly to Harrison Birtwistle’s Gawain that they protested against its revival at Covent Garden. I would hear Gawain at a subsequent revival, as a student, and be swept off my feet. But at the time, I recall being puzzled by the idea that one would protest against something being performed simply because one did not like it, or even because one thought it not very good. I did not know much about the repertoire of opera houses at the time, but the idea that they were overloaded with new, or even modernist, work was patently absurd. I was equally puzzled, at the end of this performance of Brett Dean’s new opera Of One Blood, to hear loud booing from certain quarters of Munich’s Nationaltheater, when the composer, librettist Heather Betts, and (I think) director Claus Guth came onstage. It was not a premiere, so their appearance was slightly unexpected, if welcome. Could people who had contentedly, so it seemed, sat through two acts of a new opera have felt so strongly about its music – it could, I suppose, have been its libretto, or even its staging – that they felt they must bellow farmyard noises in an attempt to drown out applause? If they had not liked the opera, or had considerable criticisms of it, fair enough, but what was it that had led them to such a display? It was neither a mindlessly reactionary nor a vigorously avant-garde work; it was well crafted, well performed, and well directed. Would not refraining from applause – as, I am sure, many of us have done on occasion – have been enough? I am afraid reflection has left me none the wiser, but the experience was unsettling and has continued to be, not least from concern for those at the sharp end of that strange, bullying response.

 

The phrase ‘of one blood’ refers to a phrase Mary (Stuart), Queen of Scots used in a letter to her cousin and antagonist – historical and, here, dramatic – Elizabeth I, here ‘Elizabeth Tudor’: ‘We be both of one blood, of one country, and in one Island’. In their communications and other sixteenth-century sources lie the seeds of Betts’s libretto, assembled and constructed after the manner of many a dramatic confrontation between the two. Betts is a visual artist: an interesting case for a librettist in terms of scene-setting, for instance the opening and close of the work in contemporary or perhaps, in Guth’s staging, a future Westminster Abbey, in whose Henry VII/Lady Chapel the two queens lie at opposite ends, at the command of their mutual successor, James VI and I, who also commissioned their tombs. That struck her when visiting, as it might anyone, but its visual element seems to have been especially important to the librettist dramaturgically, focusing the action and the way it plays out, thereby also influencing the staging, as well as providing elements of a solution for the perennial problem of what to do in a drama concerning the entwined lives of two central figures who never met. Contriving an occasion on which they did is a common solution; it is good to welcome an alternative to the fold, in an intriguingly clinical white setting, albeit beneath a hint of English Perpendicular Gothic (which tilted at one point, perhaps as a reflection of changing fortunes and/or danger). 

And so, we see the two queens act separately in the beginning, later appearing partly at the same time in their own halves of the stage, with ‘consort’ retinues – I was puzzled before realising the word was intended musically rather than maritally – so as to react one another’s words and deeds, coming tantalisingly close, yet never quite meeting. Tellingly, their union in duet, as opposed to ‘written’ dialogue, takes place when both are offstage. There are oddities to the libretto, or at least features I did not understand: the archaic ‘-eth’ third-person singular is employed, yet we hear ‘will’ rather than ‘wilt’ with thou. It all serves its purpose well enough, though—and perhaps such inconsistencies, if inconsistencies they be, are simply reflections of a language that has always been in change. Titles were used not simply to convey but, at certain points, to add to the libretto, including indication of place, such as Richmond Palace, Holyrood, or of course Fotheringhay Castle.

Collaboration between husband and wife librettist (their daughter one of Mary’s excellent consort) seems to have been fruitfully close. What comes ‘first’, whether chronologically or aesthetically, is ever a fraught question in any such relationship, but there were no obvious signs of tension and many of complement. Likewise between them and Guth, the extraction of both tombs for cleaning and their return at the end an interesting element of the aforementioned framing rather than contrast or contradiction. A low opening pedal – electronic rather than acoustic, I think – sounds, Rheingold-like yet -unlike, the musical beginning, subsequent scraping noises, like a dental implement writ large, partaking of the drama and ushering in the Bayerische Staatsorchester, here on excellent form under Vladimir Jurowski’s wise, invigorating direction. Two worlds, then, collided and coincided in more ways than one: multidimensional yet bilateral dramatic conflict, one might say. This was further layered in the Elizabethan scenes with harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani onstage. Few if any harpsichordists have done more for new music than Esfahani; here his role once again bridged divides between old and new, his instrument inciting orchestral and electronic material, and on at least one occasion – if my ears did not deceive me – prefigured in the ‘purely’ electronic material of the very opening. The dramatic possibilities of such time travel were manifold—perhaps all the better for being left to us not necessarily to resolve but to ponder, and thus to engage as active dramatic participants.

Similarities with Berg – first a chord close to Wozzeck, then broader harmonic fields – suggested themselves to my ears at the opening of the second act, but I am not sure this was so much influence as my ears making sense of a new harmonic world with music I knew. More fundamentally, the expertise and artistry with which both acts, of roughly equal length, were planned and realised was striking, still more so in the second (perhaps a matter of my having become more at home with the work). In that, the role of the equally excellent chorus was apparent: first liturgical, in Westminster Abbey, but changing its role, like the Greek chorus so as both to comment and participate, in acclamation, rebellion, and more. 

In what was perhaps an inevitable nod to or at least coincidence with Donizetti, coloratura featured in both queens’ lines, but there was far more to them than that, especially as brought so vividly and sympathetically to life by Johanni von Oostrum and Vera-Lotte Boecker. Amongst the rest of a very fine cast, I might put in a word for Michael Butler’s feckless Darnley and Pawel Horodyski’s Executioner, but this was emphatically an ensemble performance as well as one of warring queens. Designs and choreography were stylish and suggestive throughout. Maybe our hecklers disliked the black coals of ruin that occupied much of the second-act stage, before being swept away by restoration workers in the present/future. I am grasping at straws, though. Who knows? Ultimately, who cares?

Applause from the premiere: Geoffroy Schied

 

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.