The Turn of the Screw, English National Opera, 16 October 2024

Coliseum

Images: © Manuel Harlan
Peter Quint (Robert Murray), Flora (Victoria Nekhaenko),
Miles (Jerry Louth), The Governess (Ailish Tynan)

Governess – Ailish Tynan
Flora – Victoria Nekhaenko
Mrs Grose – Gweneth Ann Rand
Miles – Jerry Louth
Miss Jessel – Eleanor Dennis
Peter Quint – Robert Murray
Prologue – Alan Oke

Director, designs – Isabella Bywater
Lighting – Paul Anderson
Projections – Jon Driscoll

Orchestra of the English National Opera
Duncan Ward (conductor)

It had been a while since I last saw The Turn of the Screw, though there was a time when it seemed quite a regular . To my mind the strongest of Britten’s operas, it was last seen at the Coliseum in an excellent staging by David McVicar: again to my mind, one of his strongest. It now returns in a new ENO production by Isabella Bywater, also designed by her, with an impressive cast conducted by Duncan Ward. 

Flora, Miles, Mrs Grose (Gweneth Ann Rand), Governess

Bywater’s production seems generally to have been well received. Whilst acknowledging her effort to bring a new standpoint to the work, I am not convinced it succeeds; at least, it did not succeed so well for me as it apparently has for many. The drama is presented in the Governess’s flashbacks from a psychiatric hospital, events at Bly presumably at least having contributed to her committal. Scenic projections onto the hospital set lead us back to the house and its grounds: to my eyes, a little clumsily. This was clearly a traumatic, horrific experience for the Governess, all the more so as presented in a finely observed, deeply compassionate performance from Ailish Tynan. There is splendidly creepy – and chillingly meaningful – children’s play, for instance with Flora and her doll.

The problem – and I am not sure this was Bywater’s intention – is that in giving the impression the events may straightforwardly have been imagined by the Governess, the drama veers in a one-sided direction that has one ultimately question what the point of it might be. Asking ‘did the Governess see the ghosts’ is of course a reasonable and indeed necessary question; proceeding as Bywater does in her programme note and also, so it seems, onstage, to ask ‘Did she have a personality disorder?’ risks missing the point. ‘Ambiguity is what makes it unsettling,’ Bywater adds. Precisely, which is why it seems an odd move to rid it of most of that ambiguity; more disturbingly, it comes close to turning the Governess’s distress into a spectacle, and eclipsing the ‘real’ question of what has been done to the children. Having the Governess imagine so much seems both implausible and undesirable. It is perfectly possible, of course, to adopt a partial standpoint; many stagings of all manner of works do, with greater and lesser success. The Turn of the Screw, however, emerges somewhat shortchanged—whilst at the same time, to be fair, far from fruitlessly interrogated. 

Tynan’s performance was absolutely central to those fruits, both detailed and skilfully sketching the broader picture. Eleanor Dennis’s Miss Jessel and Robert Murray’s Peter Quint were similarly detailed portrayals, highly commendable, though the underlying premise perhaps worked all the more against them. Gweneth Ann Rand’s Mrs Grose, by turn warm and distanced, was permitted to offer greater ambiguity. Victoria Nekhaenko’s Flora and Jerry Louth’s Miles were both excellent too, walking dramatic tightropes with great skill and credibility, the latter’s icy delivery in particular both bringing home and into question the theme of innocence’s loss in work and staging. Alan Oke’s Prologue as medical consultant offered a masterclass in diction and framing, surtitles in fact proving unnecessary throughout.

Prologue (Alan Oke)

Ward’s musical interpretation seemed to have been formulated with Bywater’s concept in mind. Especially in the first act, a looser, more rhapsodic approach, suggestive of psychological disorder and even a shift from ghost story into outright horror, was prevalent. What I missed was a stronger sense of line, of the workings of scenic and longer-term construction, so crucial to this opera’s dramaturgy. Perhaps by design, this fell into clearer focus after the interval, suggesting a conflict between freedom and determinism far from irrelevant to the musical as well as stage action. Moments of horror registered in vividly pictorial fashion, at times presaging the desiccated late world of Death in Venice; their integration in this, perhaps Britten’s most constructivist score, was less clear.

Ultimately, then, Bywater’s production did not for me cohere as well as McVicar’s more straightforward yet deeply committed production or Anneliese McKimmon’s thoughtful, more properly ambiguous staging for Opera Holland Park in 2014. Likewise, the conducting of Charles Mackerras and Steuart Bedford on those occasions did more to enable and elucidate Britten’s turning of the musical screw. I was grateful nonetheless for the opportunity to have experienced it, not least for Tynan’s gripping Governess.

Miss Jessel (Eleanor Dennis), Peter Quint, Governess

Intermezzo, Garsington Opera, 6 June 2015

Images: Mike Hoban

(sung in English)

Garsington Opera House

Robert Storch – Mark Stone

Christine – Mary Dunleavy
Anna – Ailish Tynan
Franzl – Louis Hynes
Baron Lummer – Sam Furness
Notary – Benjamin Bevan
Notary’s Wife – Sarah Sedgwick
Stroh – Oliver Johnston
Commercial Counsellor – James Cleverton
Legal Counsellor – Gerard Collett
Singer – Barnaby Rea
Fanny – Alice Devine
Marie – Elka Lee-Green
Therese – Charlotte Sutherland
Resi – Anna Sideris

Bruno Ravella (director)

Giles Cadle (designs)
Bruno Poet (lighting)

Garsington Opera Orchestra

Jac van Steen (conductor)

 

Hats off to Garsington for championing once again some criminally neglected Strauss. I overheard someone there opine, ‘Of course, you can understand why it isn’t done very often.’ Well, only if you take as given the increasingly untenable assumptions some ‘major’ opera houses trumpet concerning their audiences – and perhaps not even then. That Birmingham Opera can sell out Stockhausen immediately and that the Royal Opera House – by any standards, a different animal – can sell out operas by Benjamin and Birtwistle puts paid to lazy talk and should put paid to lazy programming, though does so far less often than should be the case. If one takes as one’s core lazy listeners, consequences will follow; if one leads, and especially if one acts upon widespread thirst for modernist repertoire, broadly conceived, other, better consequences will do so. Strauss, it might be countered, is a different matter again, and perhaps he is. But he is hardly unpopular, and if many people have not heard Intermezzo, despite a recent staging at Buxton, then grant them an opportunity such as Garsington has.

An excellent performance was given by the Garsington Orchestra – only once, early in the second act, did I sense a little tiredness – under the baton of Jac van Steen. The conductor’s deep knowledge and understanding of the score, of its post-Ariadne idiom, of its opportunities and challenges had been displayed in my interview with him; it was displayed just as clearly here. Everything was in its place, as it must be; Strauss at his most unsparing allows no room for error. The orchestral interludes put me a little in mind of the ‘closed forms’ of Busoni and Berg, whilst very much retaining their own character. It was perhaps most of all, though, Strauss’s economy, which yet never denies his love of musical proliferation, that shone through. Not a note is wasted; nor was it in performance.

The cast proved persuasive advocates too. Mary Dunleavy’s vocal security was matched to a subtle reading of Christine’s character that extracted her from the realm of patronising, even misogynistic caricature: no mere ‘shrew’ here, but a credible woman of strengths, weaknesses, above all agency. Mark Stone made a powerful impression as her husband, perhaps the closest of all Strauss came to a self-portrait. (The creator of the role wore a mask so as to make him resemble the composer all the more closely. As Norman del Mar observed, this was a ‘striking volte-face after Strauss’s anxieties over the Young Composer in Ariadne’.) One could have taken dictation, verbal as well as notational, from most of his crystal-clear performance: Lied writ large in the best sense. Sam Furnes’’s Baron Lummer offered a well-judged mixture of vocal allure and immaturity of character. Ailish Tynan’s perky Anna proved just the right sort of knowing, informed servant. In a fine company performance, other singers to stand out included Oliver Johnston’s finely sung – and acted – Stroh, Gerald Collett’s equally impressive Legal Counsellor, and Benjamin Bevan’s honourable Notary. Everyone, however, made a considerable contribution.

Bruno Ravella’s production takes the work seriously, on its own terms, and succeeds accordingly. Giles Cadle’s resourceful set moves us in and out of a Garmisch-style villa, modern (to Strauss), without being avant garde. There is always a strong sense of who everyone is, and why he or she is acting in the manner we observe. The card game is, as the conductor observed to me, wonderfully, knowingly realistic; such understanding could hardly be feigned. The crucial element of communication and its speed – the telephone, the telegram, Strauss’s pace of conversation delivery – offered an excellent example of musical performances and production acting as one.

One can speak of the plot being trivial, if one wishes. (I suppose one can speak about anything if one wishes, so that was an especially meaningless claim!) But some of that seems to be snobbery; would we think differently, were these gods, or indeed from another class, ‘higher’ or ‘lower’. In his original Preface, replaced when the score was published, Strauss not unreasonably claimed to break genuine new ground in the variety of everyday life he had brought to the stage; Hindemith and Schoenberg would follow suit in Neues vom Tage and Von heute auf morgen. Still more to the point, though, (high) bourgeois domesticity matters to those involved in it; it certainly matters to the little boy caught at the centre of marital dispute and potentially breakdown, as countless children, sleepless with worry at raised voices downstairs, will tell you. (Young Louis Hynes deserved great credit for his portrayal of that difficult role, here rendered more difficult still.) Now Intermezzo is not essentially ‘about’ that, although I think it is more concerned with it than, say, Elektra is; but a subtle yet perceptible shift in that direction from the production did no harm in opening up the work.

Only one gripe, really: it was a great pity that the opera was sung in English, and that Andrew Porter’s translation was the version used. Given surtitles, there really is no need; Strauss really does not sound right in translation, still more so as here, when odd words remained in German, the contrast jarring. Moreover, accents tended to slide – or at least to slide more noticeably to an English ear. But, as ever with Strauss, in the battle of Wort with Ton, there was little doubt which would emerge victorious. This was a far from insignificant victory over Strauss’s critics, Garsington’s latest estimable contribution to a hero’s after-life.

 

Philharmonia/Maazel - Mahler, Symphony no.8, 9 October 2011

Royal Festival Hall

Mahler - Symphony no.8 in E-flat major

Sally Matthews (soprano, Magna Peccatrix)
Ailish Tynan (soprano, Una pœnitentium)
Sarah Tynan (soprano, Mater Gloriosa)
Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano, Mulier Samaritana)
Anne-Marie Owens (mezzo-soprano, Maria Ægyptiaca)
Stefan Vinke (tenor, Doctor Marianus)
Mark Stone (baritone, Pater Ecstaticus)
Stephen Gadd (baritone, Pater Profundus)

The Choirs of Eton College (precentor and director of music: Tim Johnson)
Philharmonia Voices (chorus master: Aidan Oliver)
Philharmonia Chorus (chorus master: Stefan Bevier)
BBC Symphony Chorus (chorus master: Stephen Jackson)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Lorin Maazel (conductor)


Following Lorin Maazel’s lifeless first movement from Mahler’s Tenth Symphony (reviewed here, with Das Lied von der Erde), I could not believe that the Eighth would prove worse. It did – considerably so.

The ‘Veni, creator spiritus’ opened in strong, muscular fashion, yet ominously, not only was it metronomic but one could hear every beat, just as in the previous concert. Then there came an extraordinary slowing down, or rather grinding to a halt and staying there, for the entry of the soloists, who, cushioned by a Philharmonia Orchestra reduced for some time to the level of mere accompaniment, sounded more like a Verdi ensemble than voices in the heavenly firmament. The solo voices, moreover, were weirdly positioned: not just in the sense of being behind the orchestra (though raised), but also placed antiphonally at the uppermost two corners of the stage, as if the conductor or management were worried where co-educational singing might lead. The soloists coped variably: Stefan Vinke’s voice stood out, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, amongst the men, whilst Sarah Connolly proved strongest from the opposing camp. Sally Matthews often sounded strained – though who would not at such a tempo? – whilst Ailish Tynan occasionally contributed an unpleasant edge to proceedings. Even when the pace sped up dramatically, only rapidly and arbitrarily to slow a little later, there was no sense of what any of the words, let alone the music, might mean. It all sounded very hard work, certainly not ecstatic, or even joyful. Whilst the Philharmonia played well in purely technical terms, the orchestra had forced upon it, especially during the development section, an inappropriately fierce attack, a fair aural reflection of Maazel’s stabbing beat. Even string pizzicato sounded as though it might slice one’s hand off. A painful horn fluff in the lead up to the double fugue can be readily forgiven, but the vulgarity with which Maazel directed the brass thereafter cannot: even Solti would surely have blanched at such a loud, brash, artificially ‘exciting’, indeed deafening, noise. And so it went on and on, recapitulation without end.

The Introduction to the second part took us back to the painful audible micromanagement of the Tenth’s ‘Adagio’: every subdivision of every beat bludgeoned into the collective consciousness, every note a thing-in-itself, apparently unconnected to any other, everything taken very, very slowly. There was no sense of line, let alone of landscape – and that in this most extraordinary of aural canvases. It felt like an unpleasant visit to the dentist rather than a view of the forest, let alone a voyage into a world of metaphysics. Though the strings sounded resplendent here, one could only regret the sad waste of their talents. Later on, it became increasingly apparent that, the skill of the players notwithstanding, both orchestra and hall were simply too small. In a decent performance, that might have mattered more.

Back, then, to the slow progress of the second part. The chorus – and there was little or no fault to find in any of the choral singing, always impressive in tone and heft – entered to the most rigid of conducting, as if at rehearsal speed. When Pater Ecstaticus responded, at something akin to a reasonable tempo, that inevitably sounded disconnected from what had gone before. Stephen Gadd, a late replacement for Brindley Sherratt, sounded somewhat threadbare as Pater Profundus: whatever his vocal type (he was listed as a baritone), ‘profundus’ was not the first description to come to mind. Tempi continued to veer arbitrarily, though more often than not they continued to be eked out, sub-division of beat to next sub-division, a test of endurance that did not quite correspond with my understanding of the work. The Mater Gloriosa seemed less to ‘float’ into view than to crawl. He-si-tant-ly.

Again, the soloists proved a mixed bunch. Vinke’s intonation wavered, which is perhaps putting it mildly. (His voice seems to have deteriorated markedly since the first occasions I heard him in Leipzig, where he truly seemed a new Heldentenor hope.) Connolly again proved the most interesting and vocally refulgent of the women, assisted by baleful trombones, which, in a rare moment of musical insight, seemed to transport us back to the Second Symphony. Anne-Marie Owens, however, was tremulous, and blurry of diction. Ailish Tynan proved bizarrely lacking in purity of tone: an impetuous Gretchen is as bad an idea as it sounds. The first syllable of ‘Hülle’ (as in ‘der alten Hülle sich entrafft’) varied between at least three, probably more, different pitches. As for her closing attempt to present Gretchen as diva, one can only respond wearily that that is not quite what Mahler, let alone Goethe, had in mind. Sarah Tynan, however, delivered her lines with palpable, winning sincerity from one of the boxes.

Immediately after those words from the Mater Gloriosa’s, there came, sadly, the only moment with true power to disconcert, to trouble. An unfortunate double bass player fell from her chair and apparently knocked over her instrument, having to be helped from the stage by other members of her section. It was a highly unnerving accident, but the show, alas, went on. Whatever redemption might be, Maazel’s performance lay beyond it. The conclusion to the 'Chorus Mysticus', it will not surprise anyone to learn, was dragged out mercilessly, quite negating occasional signs of life at its opening.

I am not someone who usually notes, or indeed notices, durations of performances, but there was something of a discrepancy between the programme’s anticipated timing (eighty minutes) and a 7.30 p.m. concert, which, whilst admittedly starting six or seven minutes late, came to an end slightly after 9.15. The first movement alone must have lasted half an hour. Slow tempi can often be revelatory: consider Klemperer. And then try not to consider Maazel. Nevertheless, the moment Mahler was finally put out of his misery, some members of the audience began to holler loudly and rose to their feet. It was time to catch the bus home.

Hänsel und Gretel, Royal Opera, 23 December 2010

Royal Opera House

(Images: Royal Opera/Johan Persson)

Hänsel – Christine Rice
Gretel – Ailish Tynan
Gertrud – Yvonne Howard
Peter – Sir Thomas Allen
Witch – Jane Henschel
Dew Fairy – Anna Devin
Sandman – Madeleine Pierard
Echo – Kai Rüütel
Angels, Children

Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier (directors)
Elaine Kidd (revival director)
Christian Fenouillat (set designs)
Agostino Cavalca (costumes)
Christophe Forey (lighting)

Members of Tiffin Boys’ Choir and Tiffin Children’s Chorus (director: Simon Toyne)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Rory Macdonald (conductor)

After being appointed Music Director of the Vienna State Opera, Franz Welser-Möst made a remark to the effect – I cannot remember the precise words – that how a house handled a week-day repertory Figaro was just as crucial to its flourishing as a starry new production. Indeed. Whilst the situation at Covent Garden is somewhat different, in that it does not have a repertory system along the lines of many German houses, there is a case to be made that the quality of revivals matters as much as that of more ‘newsworthy’ new productions. One does not necessarily employ quite the same criteria; it depends. And so, this first revival of Hänsel und Gretel, whilst it lacks in some though by no means all cases the star quality of some participants from the first run, may be accounted a considerable success. One does not expect a young conductor to evince the lifetime’s experience of Sir Colin Davis, though Rory Macdonald did an increasingly fine job as the night went on. Likewise, it would perhaps be unreasonable to expect Angelika Kirchschlager and Diana Damrau on every occasion. But if the performance took a little while to settle down, notably assisted in that respect by the appearance of Yvonne Howard and Sir Thomas Allen, the sole survivor from the original cast reprising the role of Peter, this proved an enjoyable and ultimately moving evening.

Part of that is down to the delights of Humperdinck’s score. Derivative it might be, but the fairy-tale Wagnerisms enchant rather than irritate, though the Meistersinger-ish opening scene perhaps remains excessively dependent upon its weightier model. During much of the first act, I felt a slight lack of focus, never damaging, and something that I suspect will soon dissipate once the run of performances beds down. The luxuriance of Sir Colin’s interpretation lingered in the mind. However, as time went on, Macdonald imparted a different quality to the score, marking this out very much as his own reading. Woodwind suggested Mozart and Strauss; indeed, I was at times taken aback at quite how much the score’s textures seemed to presage the latter: hardly Elektra, but perhaps Ariadne.

I do not really have anything to add to what I said about the production last time (click here for the DVD). It works well, and has surprisingly dark moments given that it is at least partly aimed at children. There is proper contrast between the magical dream of Christmas and the industrial scale oven of the Witch’s house. Like a true fairy tale, there is more than tinsel to this Christmas offering. Elaine Kidd’s work as revival director seems assured.

Christine Rice presented a suitably boyish Hänsel, looking as well as sounding the part. Though I find it difficult to warm to Ailish Tynan’s thin tone, this Gretel certainly provided the best performance I have heard from her, and again she acted credibly. The parents, Yvonne Howard and Sir Thomas Allen, both impressed, as one might have expected. I was amazed once again how Allen could make so much out of so relatively little. His diction, vocal presentation, and stage presence once again proved second to none. Anja Silja had assumed the role of the Witch in 2008; I very much liked her portrayal, though some were more affected by its vocal shortcomings. Here, Jane Henschel proved a more than worthy successor. I could not help but think of her wonderful assumptions of the role of the Nurse in Die Frau ohne Schatten: a more ambivalent character, to be sure, but perhaps not wholly unrelated. In any case, she combined stage presence and a more secure vocal line than her predecessor. Sir Charles Mackerras was to have conducted; the performance was dedicated to his memory.