La Tragédie de Carmen, Pop-up Opera, 25 September 2018

Asylum Chapel, Peckham

Carmen (Chloe Latchmore)
Images: Ugo Soffientini

Carmen – Chloe Latchmore

Don José – Satriya Krisna

Micaëla – Alice Privett
Escamillo – James Corrigan

John Wilkie (director)
Anna Bonomelli (designs)
Mark Ruddick (movement)

Don José (Satriya Krisna)

Few companies are so worthy of our support than Pop-up Opera. Last time I reviewed one of their performances, they were giving a free-of-charge Mozart double-bill the morning after their props and equipment had been stolen from a van. Now they are offering Peter Brook’s barebones version of Carmen, as arranged by him, Marius Constant, and Jean-Claude Carrière. Not that director John Wilkie and his team are content to offer that ‘straight’; they approach it with the imagination and interrogation one would expect, if not always receive, of any repertoire work. There are losses, of course, and I am not entirely convinced that the updating to 1939 at the close of the Spanish Civil War fits quite so well with Brook’s version. Not only, however, has it made me think – and continue to think; there were on this first night, in Peckham’s wonderful Asylum Chapel, some fine performances to enjoy irrespective of such questions.

We have no chorus, just four principals; we have no orchestra, just a piano. The desire to recapture something of the work’s original opéra comique intimacy is a long-held one, quite valid. Even for the vast space of Salzburg’s Grosses Festspielhaus, Simon Rattle recently spoke and worked in such terms, albeit with decidedly mixed results. At any rate, surely no one would really wish to substitute those dreadful recitatives for the dialogue now. Brook’s determination to return to Mérimée is furthered – trumped? – here by the staging. At the dawn of Franco’s fascist new world, Don José is a disgraced, traumatised soldier, blood on his mind and on his hands. Having killed the cabaret performer Carmen on the street, having thus accomplished something similar to what his former Nationalist forces have done to the country as a whole, he now relives the experience in a series of flash backs. Much is cut; the whole performance lasts for eighty minutes. Film projections of war and its aftermath essentially take the place of the chorus, so that a sense of the social is retained. We gain perhaps an even stronger sense of Fate, not only from Don José standpoint but also from the cards’ foretelling.

 

Escamillo (James Corrigan)

Carmen is thus not decentred, as one might have expected; even in Dmitri Tcherniakov’s brilliant rethinking for Aix, her initial decentring paradoxically gave new birth to as character rather than icon. She is rarely off stage and becomes perhaps more than ever a progenitor of that ultimate operatic femme fatale, Berg’s Lulu. Problems persist: is she merely a projection of male violence? Yet our sympathy is engaged, which is surely the crucial thing. Chloe Latchmore’s performance here proved quite mesmerising, whether in vocal terms or stage-presence. Satriya Krisna, Alice Privett, and James Corrigan all proved deeply impressive, in both ‘traditional’ and ‘reimagined’ fashion. To be more than a caricature, Escamillo needs something. Here his return to war and parallel trauma certainly offered food for thought. Berrak Dyer’s musical direction from the piano proved duly heroic, offering a window onto what we might have heard, what we thought we remembered, as well as what we actually did. Which, in a way, is what La Tragédie de Carmen, both ‘in itself’ and in this further reinvention sought also to do.



Serse, Longborough Festival Opera, Young Artists Performance, 30 July 2015

Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music

Serse – Jake Arditti

Arsamene – Tai Oney
Amastre – Lucinda Stuart-Grant
Ariodate – Jon Stainsby
Romilda – Alice Privett
Atalanta – Abbi Temple
Elviro – Matthew Durkan
Chorus – Chiara Vinci, Laurence Painter

Jenny Miller (director)

Faye Bradley (designs)
Dan Saggars, Andy Bird (lighting)
Rebecca Hanbury (assistant director)
Michael Spenceley (choreography)

Longborough Young Artists Orchestra

Jeremy Silver (conductor)

What an excellent idea for the Longborough Festival to bring its Young Artist Production to London for a performance at the Royal College of Music! Yes, I know, a Londoner would say that, but like it or not, and I am sure we can all agree that centralisation in a not-remotely-central city is a curse upon all manner of activity in this country, London is the centre of English operatic life and metropolitan exposure can only help all concerned. (No one believes more strongly than I that the Royal Opera and ENO should tour, and to hell with the Arts Council’s absurd geographical demarcations! After its behaviour with respect to ENO alone, disbandment would, frankly, be too kind a fate for that organisation, presently headed by a friend of Jeremy ‘Hunt’, Peter Bazalgette, of Big Brother fame.) London performances are perhaps especially important in the case of young singers, all of whom performed creditably, and in most cases, considerably more than that. A taste of Longborough, especially for those of us without cars, is of course more than welcome at this end too. Perhaps we might even hope for more in the future? Would it not be wonderful, if the Proms were to invite the Festival next year, perhaps for Tannhäuser or Jenůfa?

A Handel opera, in any case, made for an eminently sensible choice in the present situation. Focused on singers, with a small (too small?) orchestra, Serse fared well in musical terms, save for the somewhat scrawny playing of the strings. I think they were modern instruments, but it was not easy to tell, testament to the near-total victory of ‘period’ imperialism. Apart from that, Jeremy Silver directed (from the harpsichord) a mostly sensitive performance, tempi appropriate, with little of the absurd rushing (with occasional, equally absurd grinding to a halt) that characterises the Handelian exhibitionism of our allegedly ‘authenticke’ times. For a full, noble orchestral sound, we must return to first-choice Rafael Kubelík in Munich (in German, with a tenor Xerxes, no less than Fritz Wunderlich!) or, in an Italian-language performance, Brian Priestman (with Maureen Forrester) in Vienna.

But as I said, the singing was really the thing. Jake Arditti offered a bravura yet eminently sensitive assumption of the title role: as well acted, with proud petulance and wounded humanity, as it was heroically sung. For those sceptics who (still) doubt the ability of the counter-tenor voice to portray the requisite range of emotions, the performances of Arditti and Tai Oney as Arsamene would surely have proved a useful corrective. Oney’s beautifully-sung performance pulled off without any difficulty the task of sufficient difference in timbre and character, without a hint of the hootiness which, in days gone by, infected far too many such performances. Alice Privett threw herself into the role of Romilda, passing with flying colours: a properly high dramatic performance. If they were my pick of the cast, that is probably as much a reflection of the opportunities their roles offer as anything else. I should certainly not be able to offer you a weak link, nor should I wish to. Longborough’s programme clearly engenders a real sense of company, something that cannot be feigned.

My principal reservation concerned Jenny Miller’s production. It was very pink, which may or may not be one’s taste. I learned afterwards, upon reading the programme, that it had been set in a ‘contemporary setting, more immediately familiar and neutral – a nightclub or hotel bar’. I could then see that it had been, but if I am honest, whether through stupidity or inattention on my part, or a lack of clarity on the director’s, I had not realised at the time. Initially, my thought was that we were amongst Mafiosi, but then it all turned surprisingly camp – and not a little silly. Anyway, we were supposed to have asked whether it was ‘Xerxes’s bar … [whether] he owns a string of them, planning global expansion,’ and so on. By ‘shedding many of the specifically period references, we can concentrate on the comedy of the lessons in love being handed out’. Perhaps; I certainly hold no brief for confining a work to its period, although some of the satire here might have worked better, had we experienced more of a dialogue between ‘period’ and ‘contemporary’. (Or perhaps I am too content with Nicholas Hytner’s seemingly evergreen ENO production, which can be caught on DVD with Charles Mackerras and Ann Murray.) I think Miller is probably right to say, with respect to the work itself, that ‘satire about the exercise of unlimited power … is not the main theme of the power’. However, I cannot help but wonder whether a more absorbing theatrical experience might be the outcome of a production that treated it as if it were. The cast did its best to make us care about the characters, but there is a limit to what can be done in that respect within the confines of a Handel opera seria. Besides, if the ‘period references’ can be rejected, cannot a too rigid conception of ‘intention’? Much of the audience seemed, however, greatly to enjoy the sometimes outlandish costumes and antics of the entertainment, and what I say immediately above should be considered as musing rather than prescription. I look forward to Longborough’s next visit to the capital.

 

 

 

 

‘Vienna Revisited’ – Schoenberg and Berg, 18 and 20 September 2014

Hall One, Kings Place

Schoenberg – Verklärte Nacht, op.4

Lied der Waldtaube

Chamber Symphony no.1, op.9

Berg – Seven Early Songs

Schoenberg – Brettl-Lieder

Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano)

Alice Privett (soprano)

Chad Vindin (piano)

Members of the Aurora Orchestra

London Sinfonietta

Nicholas Collon (conductor)

 

‘Vienna Revisited’ has been the title of Kings Place’s mini-festival, ‘curated’ by Nicholas Snowman. I managed to attend two out of the four concerts, missing the Quatuor Diotima (Beethoven, Schoenberg, and Brahms) and the Aurora Orchestra (Webern, Berg, and Mahler). First up was an intriguing performance of Verklärte Nacht by six members of the London Sinfonietta (Clio Gould, Joan Atherton, Paul Silverthorne, Yuko Inoue, Tim Gill, and Jonathan Ayling), a performance which once again confirmed the superiority of Schoenberg’s original sextet version over its later orchestral incarnation. I say ‘intriguing’, since, especially for the sextet version, the spectre of Brahms was far less present than one might have expected, Wagner instead proving more a guiding force in a highly dramatic account, which might almost have been an operatic scene without words. One also had a very strong sense of six individual musicians – coming together, yes, but also with particular things to say. The veiled opening signalled, at least in retrospect, a dramatic ‘extreme’, for wonderfully expressive – not indiscriminate – vibrato was to come. Expressionism beckoned too. Without going to any perversely anti-Romantic extreme, there was great clarity; in some respects, I was put in mind of a Domaine musical recording, supervised by Boulez. Sections were clearly demarcated; one would not always want to hear it like this, but there was a stronger than usual sense both of the poem and almost of something akin to versicle and response. It was almost as if one were reading an illustrated short story. There was moreover, a strong impression given of the character – and meaning – of particular keys and their relationship to one another. An unfortunate instance of electronic interference, just before the final transfiguration, could not disrupt a fine performance.

 

Sarah Connolly joined a larger Sinfonietta ensemble under Nicholas Collon for the chamber version of the ‘Lied der Waldtaube’ from Gurrelieder. Connolly as soloist offered a wonderful range of colour and expression, her use of words just as impressive as her command of vocal line. Increasing richness of tone marked hers out very much as the ‘mittlere Stimme’ Schoenberg prescribes – even if I continue to love the recording Jessye Norman made with Boulez and the Ensemble Intercontemporain. After a somewhat wayward cor anglais opening line, the orchestra imparted an excellent sense of the febrile quality to this reduced instrumentation, although Collon’s conducting was somewhat fussy, stronger on the paradoxical clockwork element than the equally important late-Romantic profusion.

 

Collon fared better in the First Chamber Symphony, though the very fast tempo adopted at the beginning – whatever Schoenberg may have prescribed – perhaps proved self-defeating, and I could not help but wish for this, perhaps the sunniest of Schoenberg’s inspirations, to have smiled, Haydn-like, a little more. Expertly performed by old hands, this account was not inflexible, but sometimes a little too moulded by the conductor, at least for my taste. Still, there was incredible virtuosity to be heard, great clarity, and a fine blend of lines, all despatched with an impressive sense of kinetic energy.

 

The other, short concert I attended two days later, was given by soprano, Alice Privett and pianist, Chad Vindin, with a brief appearance from members of the Aurora Orchestra (Rebecca Larsen, Chris Deacon, and Sarah Mason). Berg’s Seven Early Songs came first. ‘Nacht’ displayed from the outset excellent diction. A slightly deliberate tempo worked very well, permitting detail and decadence alike to tell. And those harmonies, threatening to float, Jakobsleiter-like, into the ether! The paradoxical sense of convivial Einsamkeit was very well conveyed. ‘Schilflied’ struck a lighter note, without losing expressivity; we heard here Berg as heir to Liszt and Wolf. ‘Die Nachtigall’ was passionate, if perhaps a little strident. I wondered whether ‘Traumgekrönt’ might have been a little less deliberate, but it benefited from Vindin’s strong sense of the labyrinthine tendencies, even at this stage, to Berg’s harmonies. ‘Im Zimmer’ showed keen attention from soprano and pianist alike to the shifting moods and registers of the poem, for instance to the crackling fireplace, as well as the music ‘itself’. ‘Liebesode’ was grand, even grandiloquent, as arguably befits the poem, whilst the final ‘Sommertage’, if again a little strident in the vocal line, had a fine sense of the song as a whole.

 

Schoenberg’s Cabaret Songs followed. ‘Der genügsame Liebhaber’ immediately displayed a different mood: more playful, even ‘acted’, in short that of cabaret. Perhaps the piano was a little more reticent than it might have been, but that would not be a problem in subsequent songs. The mock stridency of ‘Einfältiges Lied’ was captured well by both artists, pictorial elements in the piano part coming across with admirable clarity. ‘Nachtwandler’ had the Aurora musicians join in. Those Musikanten, as the text would have them, did not always blend together so well as they might, but it is a tricky thing to walk on and perform for a single song. The real disintegrative tendencies to what might seem on the surface a simple song received fine, commendably flexible attention in the piano part. ‘Jedem das Seine’ was then taken more slowly, more reflectively than usual: more Romantic Lied, less evident cabaret, after which ‘Mahnung’ registered with proper Brettl-archness. (Weimar culture did not come from nowhere.)  A nicely coquettish account of ‘Gigerlette’ , a lively ‘Galathea’ (with a lightly post-Tristan fourth stanza), followed. Although there were a few slips in the final ‘Aus dem Spiegel von Arkadien’, this remained an impressive recital throughout.