Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, ENO, 16 February 2026

Coliseum

Images: Tristram Kenton

Announcer – The Company
Leokadja Begbick – Rosie Aldridge
Fatty the Bookkeeper – Mark Le Brocq
Trinity Moses – Kenneth Kellogg
Jenny Smith – Danielle de Niese
Jimmy MacIntyre – Simon O‘Neill
Jack O’Brien – Elgan Llŷr Thomas
Bank-Account Billy – Alex Otterburn
Alaska Wolf Joe – David Shipley
Jenny’s Girls – Joanna Appleby, Deborah Davison, Sophie Goldrick, Ella Kirkpatrick, Claire Mitcher, Susanna Tudor-Thomas
Jenny’s Boy, A Cloud – Damon Gould
Jenny’s Boy, A Typhoon – Adam Taylor
Toby Higgins – Zwakele Tshabalala

Director – Jamie Manton
Designs – Milla Clarke
Lighting – D.M. Wood
Choreography – Lizzi Gee, Spencer Darlaston-Jones
Sound design – Jake Moore
Intimacy and fight coordinator – Haruka Kuroda

Chorus and Additional Chorus of the English National Opera (director: Matthew Quinn) 

Orchestra of the English National Opera

André de Ridder (conductor)

In Berlin’s Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof, one of my favourite cemeteries, Hegel lies buried—as, very close, do Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel, as do many others. Brecht’s Chausseestrasse house and the room in which he worked overlooked that cemetery; the Marxist Brecht expressly chose it out of increasing fascination with Marx’s single most important intellectual forerunner, GWF Hegel. One summer, I lived ten minutes’ walk away and visited regularly. Karl Marx, of course, lies in another celebrated cemetery, in another great world city: Highgate in London, further from anywhere in London I have lived, yet not so far in the greater scheme of things. This tale of ‘my’ two cities, of two cemeteries, of three dead men and more – ‘Nothing you can do will help a dead man’ – shaped my experience of this new ENO production of The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, not least since I had seen Mahagonny only two months previously, in Berlin, in Barrie Kosky’s Komische Oper staging. 

In capitalist society as in its artistic production, then as now, the grit lies in contradiction. What Hegel the divined as ontology, Marx situated in particular social and economic conditions. We are not obliged to choose; both indeed may be true or at least contain truth. In any case, following in both Hegel and Marx’s wake, Brecht and Kurt Weill’s Mahagonny offers an illuminating instantiation of some of these contradictions: not only in subject matter but in aesthetics and its implications for performance and reception. Some art fails because it simply is not very good, or at least is not well presented. The contradictions here, though, are of a different nature, not to be smoothed over, concealed, or reconciled, but to be such stuff as dreams are smashed on—as indeed is patently the case wherever we look in our present social and political predicaments. No wonder, then, that this new ENO production, the last, I believe, before the company’s move to Manchester, is replete with more general resonance than those personal, albeit connected elements with which I began. 

The contradiction between advertisement and reality is key to the Mahagonny and the Mahagonny we visit with Jamie Manton and his team, yet so is the form of production we can all see – and hear – if only we open our eyes and ears. In the ‘real’ world, ideology mystifies, obscures, yet never quite conceals; here, contradiction is perhaps more glaring, but that is the (Brechtian) point. It all goes back to a lorry, a box of theatrical tricks. (In what I think is pure coincidence, it put me a little in mind of the van in Frank Castorf’s Bayreuth Ring, though vehicular function may hold something in common.) Great claims are made for the city the unholy trio – less a trinity than in Kosky’s staging with c.1930 religious symbols – have built. Perceived desire and demand play their part, whether for whiskey or women—and, in a welcome update, men too. Sex workers rather than prostitutes, Jenny’s girls and boys are available to all, though the outcome does not change. Any declaration of love is not necessarily entirely hollow, but its truth is fleeting and contradicted by the destructive self-interest of all (save, perhaps, the founding mother and fathers). Even the whiskey is diluted by grim recycling that suggests what comes out one end will go back in the other. 

But it is not all grime and grimness: there would be no contradiction then. There is Weill, of course, on whom more soon, but there is also a lively sense of fun, of entertainment: not necessarily unmediated, but what is? There are plenty of witty moments to occasion a wry smile or more, whilst the framing – the Coliseum’s staging and technical equipment a container for, in turn, the container – reminds us this is theatre. Announcements are made by alternating members of the company, part Brechtian remnant with loudspeaker, part Handmaid’s Tale entertainment imitation. (Before the interval, that is; after, they are more clearly themselves, unmasked.) And whilst the production in general shies away from specific contemporary reference – we can hardly fail to make it – the trial as gameshow surely gives the Trumpian game away. Resourceful designs impart a sense both of using what was to hand and also of what one might see, or have seen, at the Berliner Ensemble. In the contradiction between expectation and reality, a weathervane (we have plenty of them in our world) tapdancing hurricane points the way to just destruction of the city, only suddenly to change direction in a triumph of the knowingly underwhelming that prefigures God’s forlorn, defeated attempt to visit justice on this world at the end, drawn out Weill’s Bachian chorales bleakly yet thrillingly subverting Christian passion. Likewise, a cloud dances in counterpoint to Weill’s delicious parody of overwrought, out-of-tune Romantic salon music, edging out Jimmy’s act in more ways than one. 

For the tension and indeed contradiction between Brecht and Weill will, should always lie at the heart of this work and its performance. Can, should music do what Brecht seems to imply it should? Where does that leave the songs, the tunes, the band? André de Ridder, music director designate, drew out biting and seductive playing from the ENO Orchestra. One could sympathise with Jimmy on his last night, traduced and betrayed, as for once strings soared, but not too much—and then it was over. Structurally, closed forms – how they do (and do not) add up to more – were clear and did far more than reproduce those of the libretto. It can be all too easy hearing Weill in the twenty-first century to succumb to nostalgia for a ‘Weimar’ that never was. Here, edge was maintained without entirely denying us pleasure; banjo and Hawaiian guitar could be heard amidst ominous, bass-led hemming in. If only Jeremy Sams’s translation could have decided what it wanted to be and stuck with it, much would have bitten still more savagely. Much was good, but there were too many instances that simply jarred, and the crucial Biblical element to Brecht’s writing was too often lost. 

One less productive contradiction, at least for me, lay between operatic voices and miking. The Coliseum has never offered an ideal acoustic for opera, but here balances were too often awry. The chorus suffered more than most, words sometimes more or less inaudible. Rosie Aldridge and Danielle de Niese offered nicely contrasting and complementing female leads, equally at home in more operatic moments and something closer to the street, both fine singing actors. Simon O’Neill proved a tireless Jimmy, ably supported by his friends, Alex Otterburn, Elgan Llŷr Thomas, and David Shipley. Alongside Kenneth Kellogg and Mark Le Brocq, all offered individual performances founded on the text and on a recognition that the text has contradictions of its own, not least between words and music. Ultimately, I found there was in all respects no need to choose: Berlin and London offered different experiences, in contrast, complement, and yes, contradiction. In some ways, the latter, perhaps ironically, seemed the more Brechtian in its reluctance – refusal would be too strong – to concede to opera, even in Weill’s idiosyncratic conception. It was, in any way, a properly barbed, defiant way for ENO to bid us au revoir. 

London Sinfonietta/de Ridder - Haas, Xenakis, Levi, and Vivier, 27 February 2015

Purcell Room

Georg Friedrich Haas – Open Spaces (United Kingdom premiere)

Xenakis – Aroura

Mica Levi – Greezy (world premiere, London Sinfonietta commission)

Claude Vivier – Zipangu

London Sinfonietta

André de Ridder (conductor)

 

This was the first of two London Sinfonietta concerts, collectively called ‘Spectrum of Sound’. The second would take place the following evening, presenting works by Scelsi, Ligeti, Murail, and Haas; I only managed to catch the first. It was, I suppose, encouraging that it sold out – except for those who failed to secure tickets! – but I was a little surprised that it took place in the Purcell Room rather than the next-door Queen Elizabeth Hall, which would have enabled a larger audience to hear an interesting programme.

 

Georg Friedrich Haas seems popular at the moment – at least in certain new music circles. The London Sinfonietta gave a wonderful performance not so long ago of his in vain. This later, 2007 work, written in memory of James Tenney, was the only one to add to the evening’s basic string ensemble. In addition to six violins, two violas, two cellos, and two double basses (all strings ‘retuned’, that is, along microtonal lines), we heard also the excellent work of two stereophonic percussionists. The swarming sounds to be heard throughout the string ensemble at times put me in mind of Ligeti, although I am not sure whether that were ‘influence’ as such, nor whether it would matter if it were. There was revealed, as in in vain, a fine sense of instrumental drama, not least in a great, almost orchestral crescendo. Interest – dramatic in its way – also lies in the ‘shadowing’ of one half of the strings (that is, three violins, one each of viola, cello, and double bass) by the other half, each tuned a sixth of a tone lower. (The composer’s helpful note made this clear.) Open strings, not quite as one might expect them to sound, perhaps resound all the more overtly, or rather might seem to do so, in the new context.

Xenakis’s presence on concert programmes remains all too rare. This most uncompromising of composers never fails to make the strongest of impressions, at least in a remotely competent performance. Here, as throughout, the London Sinfonietta under André de Ridder certainly offered more than that, allowing one to trust in its guidance – always a crucial matter in new music (and I think we can still call a Xenakis piece from 1971 that). ‘Aroura, Homer’s earth,’ to quote the composer, ‘precedes Antikhthon, and represents the sound textures of the earth (the word is from the same root as “area” or “arena” in the Romance languages). The first impression the eyes receives of the earth is of textures, e.g., fields, words, or bare soil; similarly, the first impression the ear receives of sound is of textures.’ As ever with Xenakis, ‘elemental’ very much seemed the apt word for such impressions, however clichéd it might have become. One heard kinship in the swarming, but difference too in the variety of interplay, continuation, and imitation between instruments. Lines interlocked but also seemed to continue determinedly according to their own (would-be scientific?) necessity. There was drama too, perhaps more ‘conventionally’ framed than one might have expected – or perhaps that was a matter of the narrative coherence the conductor and ensemble imparted to their performance. Glissandi, for instance, could considered as a group be considered to generate form, necessarily heard through time – and ‘felt’, as it were, through time, too, given the undeniably visceral nature of Xenakis’s music.   

Following the interval, we heard the world premiere of Mica Levi’s Greezy, the title, according to the composer, denoting ‘a word used to describe a character who shows no remorse, who will do something bad without worrying about the consequences. It’s a kind of “hard core” description of strength through lack of compassion and fearlessness’. The work’s processional quality – Levi herself spoke of it as dirge-like – seems preoccupied with slowing, not just slowness, of time. A pair of cellos seems almost to step back in time, evoking to this listener’s ears resonances of Purcellian viols. The performance as a whole benefited from a splendidly rich string sound from the London Sinfonietta. Perhaps one of the work’s most immediately notable features is a wide oscillating vibrato, to which de Ridder drew attention, inspired, it seems, by the sound of electronic synthesisers.

Claude Vivier’s Zipangu shares with Greezy an opening concerned with what we might consider to be ‘repeated notes’, but which in context had a rather different effect, soon sonically modulating, from that which they might have had in broadly Classical repertoire. Simon Blendis’s virtuosic violin solo, superlatively played, initiated – or at least seemed to initiate, though it was not quite the first instance of such writing – responses from other instrumentalists, within what Vivier considered to be ‘the frame of a single melody’. (Zipangu, by the way, is a name given to Japan at the time of Marco Polo.) Differentiated bowing techniques contribute to the sonic tapestry, through which structure seems both to emerge and to be mediated. A ‘Spectrum of Sound’, then, was certainly what we heard.

 

This concert will be broadcast on Hear and Now, BBC Radio 3, on Saturday 11 April, 10 p.m.