Il tabarro, Melos Sinfonia/Zeffman, 1 May 2016

LSO St Luke’s

Michele – Simon Thorpe

Giorgetta – Sarah-Jane Lewis
Luigi – Charne Rochford
La Frugola – Fiona Mackay
Tinca – Robin Jeffcoat
Talpa – Arshak Kuzikyan
Song-seller – Luis Gomes

Ella Marchment (director)

Chorus (chorus master: William Cole)

Melos Sinfonia

Oliver Zeffman (conductor)

 

This was a May Day performance of Puccini’s opera to match what one might hear in the most exalted of houses, with all the advantages of observing the action at close hand. In this concert staging. there were no sets, but there was keen, telling direction (Ella Marchment). Imaginative use was made of the space too, the chorus and certain other solos being heard from above and around, reinforcing the sense of being trapped, fatally so, upon a river barge.

 

The Melos Sinfonia under Oliver Zeffman offered a duly hypnotic, post-Debussyan opening, the Seine immediately announced as a major, arguably the major, character. Zeffman’s care for orchestral balance was a richly rewarded as his dramatic pacing throughout; try as I might – and of course, I was not really trying – I could not find anything to fault. Dramatic tension and the needs of the moment were as well balanced as the orchestral lines (both with each other and with the voices). Just when one began to think that Puccini might be veering a little too close to Debussy for comfort, orchestral swells proclaimed his identity all the louder. The twists and turns in the score, for instance when Luigi offers his men a drink, were navigated with a sharp ear for rhythm and colour – and splendidly executed by the orchestra. Rhythm, perhaps in this of all Puccini’s score, proved properly generative, progenitor of as well as aqueous participant in the drama.

 

There was no doubt, moreover, of the existential tragedy when Luigi took to the stage to respond to Tinca; one could have cut the atmosphere with a knife; Paris, another existence, certainly called to the lovers in their duet. A duly symphonic conception that yet did not forget this was an opera underlined, indeed in every sense underscored, the inexorable human tragedy. The icy chill of the strings’ knife-twisting thus took its place not as a mere ‘effect’ but as a necessary outcome of what had gone before. Stravinskian ostinato – surely at least as much to the point as the organ-grinder’s colourful reminiscence of Petrushka – looked forward to Œdipus Rex.

 

I had no more reservations concerning the singing than I did the rest of the performance. Simon Thorpe’s darkly tortured – and torturing – Michele was at least as powerful a portrayal of the role as I have heard. The same could be said of the rich-toned Giorgetta of Sarah-Jane Lewis, whose plight and character could not have done more to engage our sympathy. Charne Rochford’s powerful yet subtly attentive Italianate reading of Luigi’s part was to be heard at just as impressive a level. Fiona Mackay and Arshak Kuzikyan developed their characters, La Frugola and Tinca, with excellent eyes and ears for detail: there was nothing incidental about their roles. Nor was there in the case of Robin Jeffcoat’s lugubrious yet, in more than one sense, ‘realistic’ Tinca or the finely-observed Song-seller of Luis Gomes. The small chorus, well trained by William Cole, was on equally excellent form, whether corporately or in the case of other solos. At no point did it occur to me to miss this panoply of full staging.

Aleko (concert performance), Melos Sinfonia/Zeffman, 7 July 2014

 

St John’s Smith Square

Aleko – James Platt

Zemfira – Sara-Lian Owen

Young Gypsy – Luperci de Souza

Old Gypsy – Arshak Kuzikyan

Old Gypsy Woman – Nelli Orlova

Chorus (chorus master: William Cole)

Melos Sinfonia

Oliver Zeffman (conductor)

 

Aleko, the libretto by Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, after Pushkin, was assigned in 1892 to three members of Anton Arensky’s composition class at the Moscow Conservatoire. Rachmaninov’s setting, made at the tender age of nineteen, was the only one to be published (though not in full score until 1953) or performed, winning the young composer the ultimate prize of a gold medal. In truth, it needs all the dramatic help it can get, more a reflection upon the libretto, which amounts to little more than a succession of numbers rather than a real dramatic development, than upon the score itself. Nevertheless, even a concert performance is of interest. One hears the influences, as one always does in immature works. Tchaikovsky looms largest; he was so impressed that he suggested Aleko form a double bill with his own Iolanta. The choral writing echoes Eugene Onegin; the orchestral writing often echoes the symphonic as well as operatic Tchaikovsky. There are hints of the Mighty Handful too, certainly of the Liszt of the symphonic poems, and perhaps also of Wagner.

 

If there is little that suggests Rachmaninov’s mature voice, the writing is remarkably assured, and so it sounded in this generally excellent performance from the Melos Sinfonia and its artistic director, Oliver Zeffman. If there were a few rougher moments, the string sheen and the sheer power of the orchestra as a whole, brass and all, proved mightily impressive, with a splendid sense of idiom. Zeffman guided the score’s progress wisely: flexible, without a hint of stiffness. The chorus, trained by William Cole, sang very well too, as did most of the soloists. If James Platt as Aleko and Sara-Lian Owen as Zemfira took a little time properly to settle, it was only a little time. Their diction, dramatic commitment, and musical line were excellent, Owen had one believe more in the gypsy girl who transfers her affections – shades of Carmen, though it was Pushkin’s narrative poem that would have influenced Merimée – more than one might have thought possible, in a performance which increasingly yearned for the stage. Arshak Kuzikyan revealed a passionate, dark-hued bass voice as the Old Gypsy, his lines shaped intelligently throughout: his was a compelling performance indeed, having one wish that there was more to hear from him. Nelli Orlova’s brief appearance as the Old Gypsy Woman had one wish for more too. Only Luperci de Souza’s performance as the Young Gypsy for whom Zemfira falls fell flat, audibly strained, at times seriously struggling. Perhaps it was just an off-night; everyone has them.

 

At any rate, this marked a wonderful opportunity to hear a fascinating early work. The Melos Sinfonia will next be heard in September at the Grimeborn Opera Festival and the Rose Theatre, Kingston, in a coupling of Walton’s Façade and Peter Maxwell Davies’s Eight Songs for a Mad King, whose Russian premiere they well give in St Petersburg in November.