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.

 

Die Zauberflöte, Royal Opera, 23 February 2015

Royal Opera House

Tamino – Toby Spence

Three Ladies – Sinéad Mulhern, Nadezhda Karyazina, Claudia Huckle
Papageno – Markus Werba
Queen of the Night – Anna Siminska
Monostatos – Colin Judson
Pamina – Jania Brugger
Three Boys – Michael Clayton-Jolly, Matthew Price, Alessio D’Andrea
Speaker – Benjamin Bevan
Sarastro – Georg Zeppenfeld
Priests – Harry Nicoll, Donald Maxwell
Papagena – Rhian Lois
Two Armoured Men – Samuel Sakker, James Platt

Sir David McVicar (director)

John Macfarlane (designs)
Paule Constable (lighting)
Leah Hausman (movement)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Cornelius Meister (conductor)

 

When, a couple of years ago, I last saw David McVicar’s production of The Magic Flute, I was pleased to note that Leah Hausman’s revival direction had brought new life to a staging which, at its previous revival in 2011, had begun to seem tired. In terms of staging, it seems to have perked up further in 2015. Part of the reason, I suspect, must be McVicar’s having returned to direct the revival himself: something I did not pick up on until after the event, but which, in retrospect, certainly told. Not only did the cast members appear perfectly clear what they were and what they should be doing; a considerable amount of movement (typically well planned by Leah Hausman) had been rethought, reinvented. I can be very touchy – many would doubtless say too touchy, but here I stand… – when it comes to Mozart, and regret what seemed to me a shift towards the merely comic. However, if my memory serves me correctly, and this is a production I have watched regularly on DVD too, it was a shift rather than a wrench. Many, in any case, will feel differently, should the widespread enthusiasm for Nicholas Hytner’s old ENO staging, an enthusiasm I never felt in the slightest, be anything to go by. There remains delight to be had in John Macfarlane’s designs; a visual, if less an intellectual, sense of eighteenth-century Enlightenment remains happily present too. At any rate, it is pleasing to see a twelve-year-old production – I shall never forget Sir Colin Davis’s conducting during its initial run – refreshed and reinvigorated.

Cornelius Meister’s conducting had its moments; comparisons with Davis would be pointless. Meister sometimes seemed hamstrung by the (presumably self-inflicted) size of his orchestra, nowhere more so than in an often scrawny account of the Overture. When will conductors recognise the crucial matter of the size of a house in suggesting the necessary, or at least desirable, number of strings? There was sometimes a tendency to rush, too, an especially noteworthy occasion being the merely glib conclusion to the first act; here, Mozart should sound at his most Beethovenian. However, there was orchestral beauty, albeit of a Fricsay-Abbado ‘light’, almost free-floating variety, worlds away from Klemperer, Böhm, or Davis, let alone Furtwängler. Harmony, then, might have been given more of its due. Some of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House’s woodwind playing was truly ravishing; I recall a particularly fruity bassoon line, but there were many other instances. If there were a few disjunctures between pit and stage, there was little that was grievous, and little, moreover, that seemed unlikely to be rectified in the progress of this run of performances.

Toby Spence proved an ardent Tamino, a little darker-hued than we often hear, and certainly none the worse for that. This was the first time I had heard his Pamina, Jania Brugger, but I very much hope that it will not be the last. Her performance balanced dignity and beauty of tone in properly Mozartian manner, her second-act aria an object lesson in pathos without exaggeration. ‘Bei Männern’ was an especial delight, given the participation of Markus Werba as Papageno. I do not think I have ever heard a less than excellent performance from him, and this was no exception. His Viennese way with the dialogue came as balm to the ears; but there was sadness too, as there must be beneath any clowning. Rhian Lois made the most of her role as his intended: an impressive Royal Opera debut. Anna Siminska’s Queen of the Night had the occasional slip, but this is a well-nigh impossible role; there was much nevertheless to admire. Georg Zeppenfeld’s Sarastro presented gravitas leavened by humanity, as did Benjamin Bevan’s Speaker. If the Three Ladies were not always ideally blended, the Three Boys proved delightfully aethereal, Mozart’s tricky chromaticism holding no fears for them. Colin Judson offered character that was more than mere caricature with his Monostatos. (Really, though, there should be a better solution to Sarastro’s line concerning the Moor’s blackness than stopping half-way through, pausing, and resuming later on!)

 

 

Boulevard Solitude, Welsh National Opera, 13 March 2014

(sung in English)

Milton Keynes Theatre

Armand des Grieux – Jason Bridges

Manon Lescaut – Sarah Tynan
Lescaut – Benjamin Bevan
Lilaque père – Adrian Thompson
Francis – Alastair Moore
Lilaque fils – Laurence Cole
Mr Man – Tomasz Wygoda

Mariusz Treliński (director)

Boris Kudlicka (set designs)
Marek Adamski (costumes)
Felice Ross (lighting)
Bartek Macias (video)
Tomasz Wygoda (choreography)

Welsh National Opera Chorus (chorus master: Stephen Harris)

Welsh National Opera Orchestra
Lothar Koenigs (conductor)

 

As I took the unlovely walk towards the theatre from the railway station, up Midsummer Boulevard, I began to wonder whether I was the victim of a hoax. Was the claim that the Welsh National Opera would be staging Boulevard Solitude in Milton Keynes simply a way of sending up the absurd pretension of the street-naming in this most notorious of England’s ‘new towns’? Whatever would I find when my long march came to an end? The answer proved to be: a first-rate performance of Henze’s first full-scale opera, in a rather impressive, small but not too small, municipal theatre, boasting friendlier staff than I can recall encountering in any opera house, large or small.

 

Indeed, though I have not seen so very many of WNO’s productions, this was undoubtedly the finest in my experience. A few frayed moments aside, the orchestra showed itself well matched to Henze’s protean, eclectic idiom(s), Lothar Koenigs’s direction equally adept. Each scene was well characterised, whilst a sense of onward progression was maintained throughout. Whether the echoes of Lulu – near-plagiarism or tribute, according to inclination? – or the strains of Stan Kenton-like jazz, each style had its due in a performance that winningly conveyed the sheer exuberance of Henze’s youthful explorations.  After the Hanover premiere in 1952, a journalist compared Henze with Judas Iscariot; 500 marks had allegedly been the price for betrayal of German art. Here one heard renewal, not afraid, Stravinsky-like, to use rather than venerate tradition, yet in that use nevertheless manifesting a truer respect than the pieties of misplaced nationalism. Already, moreover, one hears –and in performance, heard – the unwillingness of the composer to settle for serialist orthodoxies, twelve-note writing not only interspersed with frank diatonicism, whether parodic or relatively unmediated, but also, Berg-like, dramatising its own working out. The dramatic contrast between Schoenberg and Stravinsky expressed in, say, Der Prinz von Homburg sounds, if anything, more adventurously, certainly more freshly here.  

 

Mariusz Treliński’s production works impressively in tandem with score and performance. The chic emptiness of Boris Kudlicka’s sets, occasionally visited by cinematic flashes  and clashes, not least thanks to Felice Ross’s skilful lighting, convincingly evokes the mood of background and foreground and the dubious ‘modern’ atmospheres of railway station and hotel bar comings and goings, permitting the central tragedy to speak for itself, growing out of that setting. One can perhaps make too much of the filmic quality, whether of work or staging, since this remains very much a theatre piece, but it was certainly present. Indeed, as Henze would write in his autobiography, Bohemian Fifths, this ‘was a subject that had suggested itself to me … [partly] as a result of Henri-Georges-Clouzot’s recent film, which was set at the time of the French Resistance and starred Cécile Aubry’. I wondered to start with whether Treliński was focusing too much on Manon and not enough on Armand, but then reconsidered: to an extent, that is what Henze does himself, allowing Armand to emerge from the depths of the story’s pre-history as anti-hero rather than being imposed upon it from the outset.  

 

The cast was excellent. Jason Bridges portrayed movingly and sensitively the descent of Armand into seasonal and metaphorical winter. Well supported by Koenigs and Treliński, the sudden rush as Armand did his first line of cocaine packed quite a punch; so too did the plaintive moments in which Bridges had him rise above mere self-pity. Sarah Tynan made for an excellent Manon, those Lulu echoes ever-present and yet not overpowering; this was not simply a tribute act, but a woman with at least a degree of agency of her own, even vis-à-vis Benjamin Bevan’s suitably thuggish Lescaut. The rest of the cast did far more than make up the numbers, the Lilaques (Adrian Thompson and Laurence Cole) nicely contrasted yet sharing the benefits of financial and social privilege, both spoken and unspoken. Alastair Moore offered an intelligently sung and acted Francis.

 

The British premiere took place at Sadler’s Wells, in 1962; I therefore assume that would have been given in English too. After a minute or two, I more or less forgot that I ‘should’ have been hearing the work in Grete Weil’s original German, such was the conviction of the performance. Three cheers, then, for WNO!