Paride ed Elena, Bampton Classical Opera, 24 September 2021

St John’s, Smith Square

Paride – Ella Taylor
Elena – Lucy Anderson
Amore/Erasto – Lauren Lodge-Campbell
Pallas Athena – Milly Forrest
Trojans – Lucy Cronin, Adam Tunnicliffe, Lucy Cronin, Alex Jones
Dancers (Spartans, athletes) – Oliver Adam-Reynolds, Oscar Fonseca

Jeremy Gray (director, designs)
Alicia Frost (choreography)
Jess Iliff (costumes)
Ian Chandler (lighting)

CHROMA

Thomas Blunt (conductor)

Least popular of Gluck’s reform operas, Paride ed Elena shows what little store we should set on popularity. (Do not Gluck’s operas more generally?) Bampton Classical Opera once again deserves our thanks in bringing a ‘neglected’—frankly, ignored—eighteenth-century opera to performance, first in Oxfordshire and now in its annual visit to St John’s, Smith Square. That it should do so at all is praiseworthy enough, that it should do so in ‘current circumstances’ all the more so. If I found some elements of staging, costumes in particular, a little makeshift, it is not worth labouring the point; circumstances were far from ideal. 

The role of Paride, written for a soprano castrato, poses a problem in that one will end up with a cast of five sopranos—or one will transpose it down for a high tenor. Allegedly, for the nature of the alleged ‘problem’ is unclear when one listens, especially to so accomplished a performance as we heard from Ella Taylor. Taylor’s Paris—we may as well use English, since the opera was sung in an English translation by Gilly French—evinced youthful strength and vulnerability through Orphic song, rising to more militaristic clamour where required. Their portrayal both contrasted with and complemented Lucy Anderson’s equally multi-faceted Helen, knowingly beguiling and resistant, ultimately moved—perhaps musically as much as verbally—to confront and acknowledge the transformation of her own feelings. As cunning agent of that transformation, Cupid posing as royal counsellor Erasto, Lauren Lodge-Campbell shone and sparkled. Milly Forrest, a late replacement as Pallas Athena, commanded attention as the deus ex machina, as did members of the small chorus, Lucy Cronin first among equals given her accomplished first-act solo. So too did dancers Oliver Adam-Reynolds Oscar Fonseca, who brought to proceedings a highly physical eroticism otherwise lacking from the staging.

Thomas Blunt led CHROMA in a well considered, flowing account of considerable cumulative drama. Here there was none of the stiffness I observed in a Bampton performance earlier this year of La corona under a different conductor. Blunt judged ebb and flow with due regard for instrumental and vocal sensibilities, but above all with an ear to the greater whole. Cuts were judicious and did little damage, which is not to say that one might not wish to hear them restored in other situations. Here, no one could have tired, in the way some people unaccountably seem to do so, of Classical drama lyricised and rendered visible. Rarely if ever did a small instrumental ensemble have one wishing for larger forces, the St John’s acoustic weaving its magic. Gluck and Calazbigi will surely have won more converts, and willingness to explore dance as musical drama augurs well for further Bampton explorations. Dare we hope, perhaps, for a little Rameau or even Traetta? To be fair, more Gluck would also be highly welcome. We shall see—and hear; at least I hope we shall.

La corona, Bampton Classical Opera, 18 May 2021

St John’s, Smith Square

Atalanta – Samantha Louis-Jean
Meleagro – Harriet Eyley
Climene – Lisa Howarth
Asteria – Lucy Anderson
Narrator – Rosa French

CHROMA

Robert Howarth (conductor)


La corona: Bampton Classical Opera certainly selected a title for our times. However, the English translation under which it was promoted, The Crown, not only has televisual contemporary resonance, but reminds us that every crown, though arguably a misfortune, is not quite a sign of a deadly virus. Not that the eighteenth century, at least until its close, saw things that way. In Europe, at least, monarchies seemed the height of modernity, the path to the future. The old prize of universal monarchy retained currency, albeit in conflict with more novel notions of the balance of power. Those few republics remaining were ailing, unlikely models for human flourishing. And at the centre of Europe remained the Holy Roman Empire and Habsburg monarchy, recently separated yet now once again reunited under Francis (Stephen) I and Maria Theresa.


This was the last of the dozen Metastasio libretti the Vienna court poet named ‘azione teatrale’: that is, a serenata, with definite action and to be staged. We should not get too hung up on the term, more a vague description than a genre; it is difficult to say why, say, L’isola disabitata (as set by Haydn, among many others) and Il sogno di Scipione (as set by many before Mozart, and at least one after him) should be considered such and other, similar works should not, let alone why the Orfeo of Calzabigi and Gluck, quite un-Metastasian, should originally have received that designation.


Gluck’s music, now lost, for an Iphigenia in Aulis ballet, first written for the Imperial Castle at Laxenburg, had been given once more a few months later at Innsbruck for the 1765 wedding of the Archduke Leopold (later Leopold II) to Infanta Maria Luisa (who later notoriously dismissed Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito as ‘una porcheria tedesca’). Having left the theatre at its conclusion, Francis suffered a fatal stroke in his carriage. The theatres closed and the azione teatrale in preparation for Francis’s name-day, in performance by a quartet of his daughters (the Archduchesses Maria Elisabeth, Maria Amalia, Maria Josepha, and Maria Carolina), went unperformed until a 1966 Austrian radio broadcast. Staging had to wait until 1987, in Schönbrunn’s Salon de Bataille, where Gluck’s premiere would have taken place.


The present performance, however, was given in concert, like the British premiere, also from 1987, slightly earlier, at the City of London Festival. In place of secco recitatives, we had a linking English narration. Having drawn inevitable reference to the other ‘corona’, it clearly told us where we were, what was going on, and sketched a broader mythological and literary context, lightly yet learnedly allusive. Context, that is, to the slight tale of who should take credit for the Calydonian boar hunt: ultimately neither Atalanta nor her sister, Climene, neither Princess Asteria nor or Prince Meleagro, but the goddess Diana. It culminates in bestowal of the crown of laurels on the keen royal huntsman Francis. Rosa French delivered her narration with elegance and wit.


The music is fresh, in many respects glorious, certainly well deserving of greater acquaintance, though this is no drama in the sense of the ‘reformist’ Gluck. (Nor was it intended to be.) Robert Howarth’s direction from the harpsichord of CHROMA was forthright and unfussy, well judged in balance and tempo, if occasionally a little four-square for my ears in negotiating Gluck’s structures. (We clearly hear Gluck differently, which is no crime. Far better this, in any case, than egoistic conducting that aims above all to draw attention to itself.)


All four singers acquitted themselves with honour, complementing and lightly contrasting as befitting. The extremity of Atalanta’s coloratura—could the Habsburg-Lorraine princesses really have come anywhere near singing this music?—was effortlessly tamed by Samantha Louis-Jean. Lucy Anderson’s spirited Asteria and Lisa Howarth’s sincere Climene were equally stylish. So too did Harriet Eyley’s Meleagro, whose heroism en travesti, both bright-toned and variegated, proved just the ‘early Classical’ ticket. If the splendid penultimate number, a duet between Atalanta and Meleagro, left both in peril of being outshone by Emma Feilding’s oboe, then that is Gluck’s doing. A joy from beginning to end, whatever our views on crowns, viruses, and their intersection.

Philip Venables, 4.48 Psychosis, Royal Opera, 24 April 2018

Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith

Images: ROH/Stephen Cummiskey

Gwen – Gweneth-Ann Rand

Jen – Lucy Hall

Suzy – Susanna Hurrell

Clare – Samantha Price

Emily – Rachael Lloyd

Lucy – Lucy Schaufer

Ted Huffman (director)

Hannah Clark (designs)

D.M. Wood (lighting)

Pierre Martin (video)

Sound Intermedia (sound design)

Sarah Fahie, Rc-Annie (movement)

CHROMA

Richard Baker (conductor)

Philip Venables’s 4.48 Psychosis, based on Sarah Kane’s final play, seems to have received a largely rapturous reception, at least from opera critics, on its first outing in 2016. I missed it then, so was very curious to catch it on its revival: one of the Royal Opera’s ventures outside Covent Garden – perhaps aptly, in a theatre, the Hammersmith Lyric, known for its spoken theatre rather than for opera. I seem to be somewhat out on a limb here – only somewhat, since my impressions are far from uniformly negative – but I am afraid I found myself, on the basis of a first encounter, more troubled by doubts than some. (I should certainly not put it stronger than that.) It is genuinely not my intent to find fault for the sake of it; I suspect, moreover, that much may more be a matter of my own aesthetic preconceptions and preoccupations. However, given so enthusiastic a reception, there is perhaps room also for a moderately dissenting voice; it is not as if anyone won over is going to have his or her mind changed by someone who failed to ‘get it’.

Effort has certainly been extended, by composer, production team, and performers alike, in transforming this enigmatic, fragmentary play into an opera. As is often, although far from always the case, that has involved an element of simplification. We have characters and a more concrete setting, the latter still at a relative level of abstraction and/or malleability. The same could be said of the former, barring the protagonist, Gwen, and her psychiatrist (one presumes), Lucy, and even they can come together in the mass of five voices so as to present something beyond, or perhaps before, mere individuality. The use of ensemble often works well, breaking down or not, as the case may be – not unlike what we see on stage. A central narrative is much clearer: if, in the play, we know where everything is heading, even without knowing that that was precisely where Kane’s life was heading, temporal sequence is perhaps clearer, or at least less fragmentary, which may or may not be the same thing.

There is genuine musico-theatrical imagination, arguably innovation, too. Use of titles to present unspoken or unsung thoughts and words is not unknown, often playing, as here, with mismatch between what we see and what we hear. Here, however, it often seems an especially apt response. If an oft-posed – too often, perhaps – question in opera, is ‘Why are they singing?’ then here one might ask, ‘Why are they not singing?’ Two percussionists in the ‘pit’ – actually above the stage, adding, alongside some of the multifarious musical styles employed, to something of a nightclub feel – correspond syllabically with each other, ‘their’ or rather the ‘characters’’ words ‘typed’ out below. Likewise the psychiatric test of counting down in sevens makes its near-deadly appearance on that wall of further action between instrumentalists and stage. There was certainly no gainsaying the excellence of the musical performances either. Gweneth-Ann Rand and Lucy Schaufer stood perhaps as first among equals, but this was a vocal ensemble to be reckoned with by any standards. Likewise the players of CHROMA under Richard Baker’s clearly expert direction proved a match for any new music ensemble. Without knowing the work at all, there seemed little doubt that we were hearing what we should, in duly incisive performances.

And yet, I had a nagging suspicion, sometimes more than that, that it was performative and production excellence that were pulling this together in the direction it wanted – or we wanted it – to go. Was there actually that much more to the mélange of sections of music, often perhaps on the verge of noise – a meaningful distinction or not? – here? After all, a confused barrage of sounds may perhaps lend itself a little too readily to depiction of or engagement in psychosis. What of the clichés of Bach quotation and a modernised – post-modernised? – early music ‘lament’? Perhaps, though, that is the point. I readily acknowledge that it might be. Is not treating operatic music simply ‘as music’ almost always to miss the point? As a scholar of Wagner and opera more generally, I can hardly deny that. Likewise to make comparisons to original source material; again, as a scholar and indeed devotee of… Perhaps, then, it was more of a matter of my not necessarily having ‘liked’ the often popular musical styles, whether taped (presumably) or live. Again, that may well be the, or at least a, point. It is hardly much of a criticism to say ‘I did not like that.’

Even, at a more fundamental level, my doubt as to how much of an opera this was, interest in the voice, whether ‘intrinsic’ or ‘dramatic’, not always immediately apparent, might well be answered with many historical and contemporary examples of that too being the point. I could not help but think of Stravinsky’s typically artful twin avowal and disavowal of participation in such debates: ‘The Rake’s Progress seemed to have been created for journalistic debates concerning: a) the historical validity of the approach; and, b) the question whether I am guilty of imitation and pastiche. If the Rake contains imitations, however – of Mozart, as has been said – I will gladly allow the charge (given the breadth of the Aristotelian word), if I may thereby release people from the argument and bring them to the music.’ Was I involved in the drama, wherever that lay? Yes. If so, does it matter what my ‘ideas’ of opera might be? Probably not. After all, there is, or at least was, a long operatic tradition, both non-Wagnerian and non-Stravinskian, in which ‘the work’ takes less than centre-stage, in which the performative, contingent element is stronger. Perhaps Venables’s opera, then, lies closer to Rossini and Donizetti than to those works with which I stand more at home, and therein lies my ‘problem’; perhaps that problem is mine, and mine alone.

My next London opera visit will be to hear George Benjamin’s new work, also from the Royal Opera. Who knows what that will hold? I suspect, however, based upon his first two operas, that it will prove more to my taste, perhaps to my understanding too.

Bauci e Filemone (Gluck) and The Judgment of Paris (Arne), Bampton Classical Opera, 13 September 2016

St John’s, Smith Square

Pallas (Catherine Backhouse), Venus (Aoife O'Sullivan), Juno (Barbara Cole Walton)

(sung in English)

Bauci – Barbara Cole Walton

Filemone – Catherine Backhouse
Giove – Christopher Turner
Chorus – Aoife O’Sullivan, Robert Anthony Gardiner, Robert Gildon
Actors – Marieke Bernard-Berkel, Niamh Adams, Sophie Lyons


Mercury – Robert Anthony Gardiner
Paris – Christopher Turner
Juno – Barbara Cole Walton
Pallas – Catherine Backhouse
Venus – Aoife O’Sullivan
Mechanic – Robert Gildon
 

Jeremy Gray (director, set designs)

Vikki Medhurst (costumes)


CHROMA

Paul Wingfield (conductor)

We have a great deal for which to be grateful to Bampton Classical Opera, here making its annual staged visit to St John’s, Smith Square. Who else is interested in this country is interested in the broader hinterland of opera in, roughly, the second half of the eighteenth century? Gluck, by any standards, one of the most important composers in the history of opera, not just eighteenth-century opera, is all but ignored by our ‘major’, non-touring companies, although English Touring Opera offered a fine Iphigénie en Tauride earlier this year. (I also plan to report from the new staging in Paris in December.) If ‘reformist’ Gluck is so shamefully ignored, however, his earlier and concurrent ‘non-reformist’ self suffers a fate worse still.

 

Giove (Christopher Turner)

And yet, the dividing lines are not nearly so distinct as one might suspect. Filemone e Bauci, here sung in Gilly French’s English translation as Philemon and Baucis, was actually written as one act of a festa teatrale, La feste d’Apollo – not unlike a Ramellian opéra-ballet – whose final act was a revised (shortened) version of Orfeo ed Euridice. Intended for the 1769 wedding of Ferdinand, Duke of Parma, to Maria Theresa’s daughter, Maria Amalia, there was a rich, personal operatic past on which to draw, the Archduchess herself having sung in Viennese performances of two earlier Gluck operas, Il parnaso confuso (performed by Bampton forces in 2014) (as Apollo himself), and La corona. Gluck, moreover, for all the alleged purity of his operatic æsthetic, was far from averse to reusing music elsewhere, and there is some splendidly insane coloratura to be handled here too, no more banished to the dustbin of operatic history than a good number of other aspects of Metastasian opera seria. That La feste d’Apollo immediately followed Alceste – of the celebrated Preface – counsels us against parroting too readily all manner of supposed generalisations, turning points, and so forth, concerning operatic history. That said, whilst Bauci’s one aria offers us coloratura to make the Queen of the Night seem almost an amateur, the rest of Gluck’s style here is relatively simple. As so often, the truth is more interesting, more complicated, than received opinion would have us believe. We might know that in theory, of course, but we also need opportunities to experience that in performance, such as here.

 

It is not, perhaps, the most dramatic of works, certainly of libretti, but Giuseppe Maria Pagnini’s libretto, after Ovid, makes certain interesting modifications – I hesitate to say ‘metamorphoses’ – and Jeremy Gray’s production follows suit; both offer a setting for Gluck’s opera to shine forth, playing with the distance between antiquity, the eighteenth century and our time. Chez Pagnini, Philemon and Baucis – I shall now use the English forms – are not an elderly couple, but a pair of young lovers. They nevertheless show kindness beyond the call of duty towards the disguised Jupiter, and, following a storm of divine petulance, receive their priestly reward. Picking up on ideas of travel, disguise, and liminality, the action takes place – not didactically, but with an awareness of what a change of scene might do, to make us consider meaning – in the strange, modern world of the airport: not an uninteresting substitution for pastoral Phrygia. There can certainly be no doubting the helpfulness of these particular honest airline employees.

 

Mercury (Robert Anthony Gardiner) and Paris (Christopher Turner)

That is also the world, with different, yet related, designs for Thomas Arne’s The Judgment of Paris, Arne Air (‘no frills, plenty of trills’) itself – perhaps – a disguised –version of something else. The work is a little earlier than many, though by no means all, of Bampton’s works. To begin with, I even thought that Arne’s 1742 setting of William Congreve’s competition-entry libretto (1701) might have the edge over Gluck’s. It was a splendid opportunity to hear such a rarity, of course, but, as time went on, and with no disrespect to Ian Spink’s excellent Musica Britannica reconstruction of the dry recitatives and chorus music, Arne’s music, superficially similar to Handel’s, became somewhat predictable and perhaps stood in need of the occasional cut to admit of dramatic flow: quite the opposite, then, to Gluck, whose virtues, as so often, quietly crept up upon us. The witty presentation of Paris making his judg(e)ment as a passenger upon divinely-conjured air hostesses again has the virtue of permitting reflection, without forcing it upon us. Jupiter may be absent in person, but his messenger, Mercury again offers another lightly worn connection between works.

 

Baucis (Barbara Cole Walton)

The playing of CHROMA, under Paul Wingfield, proved excellent throughout. We may have come to expect that, but it is certainly not to be taken for granted. From the typically contrasting material – and its dramatic implications – of Gluck’s Overture to the final Arne chorus we were not only in safe, but colourful, harmonically aware hands, well capable of permitting the operatic action to ‘Sing, and spread the joyful News around’. Barbara Cole Walton proved every inch the star with that fiendish coloratura writing from Gluck. As Arne’s Juno, she took her part in an excellent team of competitors, her Juno complementing and contrasting with Catherine Backhouse’s wise, yet far from un-sensual Pallas, also a rich-toned, good-natured Philemon, and Aoife O’Sullivan’s spirited, highly characterful Venus. Christopher Turner’s Paris (and Jupiter) revealed to us a sensitive, agile tenor: many challenges here, met with formidable success. Robert Anthony Gardiner’s Mercury also impressed, with similar vocal virtues, and a keen sense of the stage. Members of the ensemble all made their mark. This was unquestionably a company triumph; the next Bampton opera(s) is or are eagerly awaited.

 

La grotta di Trofonio, Bampton Classical Opera, 15 September 2015

(sung in English, as Trofonio’s Cave)

St John’s, Smith Square

Aristone – James Harrison

Dori – Aoife O’Sullivan
Ofelia – Catherine Backhouse (sung)/Marieke Bernard-Berkel
Artemidoro – Christopher Turner
Plistene – Nicholas Merryweather
Trofonio – Matthew Stiff
Ladies’ Maid – Triona Adams

Jeremy Gray (director, set designs)
Triona Adams (movement)
Vikki Medhurst (costumes)

CHROMA

Paul Wingfield (conductor)

The best and most important production and performance I have seen yet from Bampton Classical Opera, on its annual visit to St John’s Smith Square! I cannot have been the only member of the audience seeing a complete Salieri opera for the first time; to say that it exceeded my expectations would be an understatement. I had previously heard a few operatic excerpts, some of his sacred music (treated with all the respect it deserves by Riccardo Muti) and some instrumental music. La grotta di Trofonio emerged, with the usual caveats concerning a first hearing, not only as a work I should happily hear again, superior to many operas in the dread repertoire, but as a musical achievement not so far off the operas of Haydn. (Any regular readers will know that is no idle compliment from me.) The Gluckian side of Salieri, about which we hear more often, is considerably less in evidence, but this is a comedy, and Salieri marshals his resources accordingly.

 

Indeed, it is the symphonic Haydn who comes immediately to mind in the Overture, its slow, mysterious Introduction, swiftly put to side by high yet directed spirits, having, in a display of long-term musico-dramatic thinking, sown the seeds for the mysteries of Trofonio’s cave. Over the work’s two acts, a full Classical orchestra engages the mind and the senses to a degree I should never have imagined. Vocal writing is at the least accomplished throughout, and often rather more than that. Ensembles are perhaps a particular revelation, reminding or informing us that both the genesis of opera buffa and its musical modernity are a more complicated story than many would have us believe. What we lack, you may not be surprised to hear, is what we lack in Haydn: depth of characterisation and of emotion, a hint of those musico-dramatic epiphanies which change one’s life forever, etc. And, like many operas, it goes on longer than it need, especially in the second act. (You see how hard I am struggling not to mention someone else by name.)

 

The plot is easily dealt with. A father, Aristone, is – unusually! – happy with his two daughters’ choice of suitors. They enter Trofonio’s cave, emerge, following his incantations, with their personal qualities reversed: bookish to fun-loving and vice versa. The reversal is reversed, but then the daughters, tempted into the cave, suffer the same fate. After similar incomprehension, their reversal too is reversed. A wedding can be prepared. You might think there a similarity with a certain libretto of Lorenzo da Ponte (which Salieri actually began to set); I couldn’t possibly comment.

This revival, almost certainly the first British production, is the project of Gilly French (the English translation is also hers) and Jeremy Gray, who also directs and provides set designs. There is no attempt to offer the depths that the opera itself lacks. What might seem simply to be of the surface for a certain opera whose premiere came not so much as five years later, in 1790, also at Vienna’s Burgtheater, proves well suited to the different nature of Salieri’s collaboration with the far-from-unintellectual Giovanni Battista Casti (whom many of us will know both from Prima la musica e poi la parole and its role in the genesis of Strauss’s Capriccio). Action moves to 1910; I know, because I was the lucky recipient of a dated ‘Downton Abbey’ wedding invitation during the performance. That seems to be a favoured period of the company – attractive, doubtless, to the English country-house opera scene, and also easy to dress, but here, in its Importance of Being Earnest atmosphere, perhaps particularly appropriate. Trofonio’s cave is the TARDIS: make of the time-travelling what you will. It is decidedly unclear whether the Tom Baker-clad Trofonio himself should be a charlatan (a few years later, someone might have offered a Mesmerist slant) or someone who enables self-reflection. Does the one exclude the other? Such invitations and ambiguities are anything but heavy-handed interventions; indeed, they are present in the work, whether intentionally or otherwise. Most importantly, they offer one space to think beyond the bare bones of the plot. (You might be surprised how many people complain about misogyny and a lack of ‘realism’ in one Ferrarese entertainment, how many take it at its librettist’s apparent word.)

 

The playing of CHROMA under Paul Wingfield was nothing short of magnificent, aided by the excellent acoustic of St John’s, Smith Square. I cannot recall a single tempo choice that did not convince, and the array of musical colour, not least in the woodwind section, showed quite why a young composer from, say, Salzburg might have chosen to make his living in Vienna. The orchestral contribution was not the least, indeed was arguably the greatest, musical offering of all, given the scale and ambition of Salieri’s writing.

 

Moreover, the cast would have graced any house. As Aristone, James Harrison made much of the musical and verbal text, providing a crucial anchor of stability, but never dullness, as identities switched around him. Matthew Stiff proved an engaging, properly ambiguous agent of disruption as Trofonio; his invocation of the spirits, bolstered by an able chorus, had me thinking of Saul’s visit to the Witch of Endor.  Nicholas Merryweather and Christopher Turner proved equally successful in both of their personalities, offering as much character, generally born of subtlety in vocal colouring, as such an opera permits. Likewise Aoife O’Sullivan as Dori, in her transformation from fun-loving daughter to would-be Platonist, her brightness of tone never wearing. We should have heard Anna Starushkevych as Ofelia, but visa problems – is this not a country to be proud of? – prevented the Ukrainian mezzo from travelling, so instead we were treated to a collaboration from the side-of-stage singer Catherine Backhouse and the centre-stage acting of Marieke Bernard-Berkel. It was no distraction at all; indeed, there was arguably an intriguing dramatic alienation – think of the subject matter, assumption of different personas – to be had from the situation. More to the point, perhaps, Backhouse’s short-notice performance showed her to be an excellent artist, rich of tone and admirably clear of diction, and Bernard-Berkel’s stage presence proved equally impressive.   

 

No, of course it is not an opera by you-know-who. It is an opera by Salieri. The action remains largely on the surface, but does not prevent one from thinking further for oneself, and arguably invites one to do so. There is none of the agony, indeed none of the greatness in any respect, of Così fan tutte – all right; I shall finally name it and him by name – but if we are to restrict ourselves to the level of Mozart, then survivors will be well-nigh non-existent.  Bampton Classical Opera has done La grotta di trofonio and Salieri proud. May our opera houses take note. Alas, I shall not hold my breath; after all, is not another revival of La triviata a more pressing artistic requirement?

Glare, Royal Opera, 18 November 2014

Alex (Amar Muchhala) and Lea (Sky Ingram)

Images: ROH/Stephen Cummiskey

Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House

Alex – Amar Muchhala

Lea – Sky Ingram

Christina – Clare Presland

Michael – Ashley Riches

Thaddeus Strassberger (director)

Madeleine Boyd (designs)

Matt Haskins (lighting)

CHROMA

Geoffrey Paterson (conductor)

 

 

 

Offerings at the Linbury have looked up greatly since Kasper Holten ditched the previous regime’s ROH2 experiment and reintegrated the studio theatre’s programming. That has not precluded visiting ensembles, such as Music Theatre Wales and English Touring Opera, from giving their shows there – and giving them very well indeed, when one thinks of, for instance, Greek and King Priam. But there has been a distinct improvement in the profile of the Royal Opera’s own stagings, last season’s brilliant Francesconi Quartett a case in point, and a newly commissioned work is always – well, almost always – to be welcomed in principle.

 

What, then, of Glare, a new opera by Søren Nils Eichberg and his librettist, Hannah Dübgen? It certainly does not reach such heights; nor does it seem really to aspire to them. But an enterprise with a commitment to contemporary music, indeed a commitment to broadening the repertoire and the terms of its presentation, needs to offer space to fail. Glare does not do that; this is no Miss Fortune, to recall an unfortunate new work from the ‘main’ stage, let alone ENO’s nadir of Two Boys. What is offered in about an hour and a quarter might seem like a superior version – it would not be difficult! – of the latter work’s genre, coming across more like a sung version of a television drama than an opera as we generally understand it. And frankly, it is difficult imagining many wanting to grant it repeated listenings, or viewings, the plot-driven nature of the piece seemingly being more the thing than we tend to expect. Yet, on those terms, should we accept them, it passes the time and even has one think a little.

 

Michael (Ashley Riches) and Lea

Glare, then, is clearly driven, or so it seems, by Dübgen’s libretto. It is not always brilliantly written and, frankly, shouts of ‘fuck!’ are not in the slightest bit ‘edgy’ in themselves. Put another way, this is no angry Steven Berkoff shout, thinking again of Greek; but then, nor is it trying to be. However, despite the banalities, whether of language or indeed of a story in which a man, Alex, meets a ‘perfect’ woman, only to discover, or so he thinks, that his supposed friend, the scientist Michael, has designed her as an android, one is prompted to think, if a little too obviously, of what it might mean to be human, of how we exist in relationship to one another. There are finer libretti, of course, but for every Hofmannsthal or Da Ponte, there are many – well, fill in the gaps at your leisure.

 

Where, for me, the opera is weaker is in the score. Again, I am sure that part of the claim will be that it is not trying to be desperately original or searching. Its derivative rather than positive eclecticism, its drum-kit-heavy orchestration – this is an urban tale, is, I assume the point – and above all its unremarkable vocal writing and lack of musical characterisation conspire to ensure that the opera never really takes off as it might. Just when the android – or is she? – Lea seems to hint at an Olympian (Tales of Hoffmann) sound-world or at least vocal line, she is cut short and normal service resumes; I am not convinced that that is a deliberate musico-dramatic strategy. Eichberg’s writing is, to be sure, competently written on its own terms, but it trails rather than mirrors, questions, or transcends the ‘thriller’ story – which again makes one unlikely to wish to hear the work again. Perhaps that is the point: a ‘disposable’ opera for disposable times; perhaps I am too wedded to the idea of a ‘repertoire’ to be expanded. Perhaps, but I shall need more convincing than this.

 

Opera is also of course about performance. And here the Royal Opera scored very highly. Geoffrey Paterson and the ever-excellent musicians of CHROMA seemed very much on top of the score: precise, colourful, rhythmically taut. One was left in little doubt that this was what we were supposed to be hearing. A cast of young, attractive – vocally and physically – singers invested their roles with much of the character that was lacking in the music. Amar Muchhala proved nicely equivocal as Alex: always a difficult thing, strongly to portray (relative) weakness. (Ask any Don Ottavio!) Sky Ingram engaged considerable sympathy as Lea, despite having tediously to observe that the noise-level was so many decibels and so on. (That is an indication of her robotic nature, in case you were wondering.) Ashley Riches convincingly moved from Mephistopheles to sadistic rapist as Michael, his rich bass voice dramatically as well as musically convincing. He also proved a dab hand at pool, not least whilst singing. Clare Presland as Christina, Alex’s former girlfriend, appeared, again vocally as much as visually, properly bewitched by Lea, hinting at a greater humanity on both their parts.

 

Lea and Christina (Clare Presland)

Thaddeus Strassberger’s staging provides an effective enough frame for the opera to play itself out. It is difficult, indeed impossible, in such situations to know how much is his doing and how much the librettist’s; wherever the responsibility lies, Alex’s falling down upon his bed is perhaps overdone, especially when he masturbates during his sleep. The realism of the æsthetic seemingly militates against a reading that he is imagining Lea and Christina becoming better acquainted with each other, though perhaps that is the point. Perhaps, though, the lack of ambition, the ordinariness of a science-fiction conceit, is again part of the point.

Gluck and Bertoni: Il Parnaso confuso and Orfeo, Bampton Classical Opera, 16 September 2014

St John’s Smith Square

(sung in English)

Apollo – Aoife O’Sullivan

Melpomene – Gwiawr Edwards

Erato – Anna Starushkeych

Euterpe – Caryl Hughes

Orfeo – Anna Starushkevych

Imeneo – Thomas Herford

Euridice – Aoife O’Sullivan

Friends of Orfeo/Furies/Blessed Spirits – Gwawr Edwards, Caryl Hughes, Thomas Herford, Robert Gildon

CHROMA

Thomas Blunt (conductor).

Jeremy Gray (director, set designs)

Fiona Hodges, Pauline Smith (costumes)

Karen Halliday (movement)

 

Painting of the premiere of Il Parnaso confuso, attributed to Johann Franz Greipel.
The Archduke Leopold may be seen at the harpsichord in the pit, his sisters on stage.

The response, or rather lack thereof, of London's ‘major’ opera companies to the Gluck anniversary has been nothing short of a disgrace. It would not matter, if they deigned to perform his operas the rest of the time, but they might at least have made token amends this year: instead, absolute silence has reigned, whilst the more artistically pressing business of endless revivals of uninteresting stagings of still more uninteresting works by Verdi and Donizetti has continued apace. After all, a season without a surfeit of Traviatas  is no season at all for some houses; it is as if Gluck’s reforms, let alone Wagner’s, had never happened. Bampton Classical Opera, however, has performed a real service, in mounting the first British staged performances – at least that is the claim, and I have found no evidence to the contrary – of Il Parnaso confuso. Performances, especially in this country, of Gluck’s reform operas are so thin on the ground that it seems an almost indecent luxury to see one of his other works. It should not, however, and such works require no apology, simply a hearty welcome – and of course good performances.

 

This one-act festa teatrale, here performed in tandem with Bertoni’s Orfeo (on which more anon), was composed to a libretto by Metastasio, for performance at Schönbrunn in 1765. For the marriage of the Archduke Joseph, shortly to be Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, to Maria Josepha of Bavaria, Gluck was commanded to write no fewer than three works, the others being a full-scale opera, Telemaco, ossia L’isola di Circe, and a pantomime-ballet, Sémiramis. (If we think his operas neglected, just consider the fate of his ballets, with the partial exception of Don Juan.) The concept of Il Parnaso confuso was that it would be a surprise for the wedded couple, performed by four of Joseph’s sisters and directed from the harpsichord by his brother, Leopold. Were this Strauss and Hoffmansthal we should doubtless all be hymning the metatheatricality of a work in which four of the Muses are suddenly called upon by Apollo to provide an entertainment for Joseph and his ‘stella bavaria’ and hasten to do so, only to find out that the wedding has already taken places and that their services are required not very soon but immediately. Indeed, there are more than shades avant la lettre of Ariadne auf Naxos. (Strauss, far from incidentally, was a great devotee of Gluck’s operas.) That the libretto is by Metastasio, and mocks as old-fashioned and merely conventional earlier Gluck works, written for Joseph’s first marriage in 1752, offers irony aplenty, especially when one considers the shortly-to-be-penned Preface to Alceste, in which the Caesarian Court Poet would find the reformist boot very much on the other foot. Both Gluck and Metastasio show a light, even comedic touch that confounds such expectations as we might generally have today.

 

Performances did this work – perhaps slight, but far from negligible – proud. Thomas Blunt showed a true, and rare, sense of eighteenth-century style, which is certainly not what many people nowadays think it to be. Tempi were well chosen, orchestral colour within its bounds well balanced, and the singers well supported. The musicians of CHROMA are of course equally to be credited; small numbers notwithstanding, the band, placed behind the stage, never sounded meagre, the acoustic of St John’s Smith Square doubtless proving of considerable assistance. Jeremy Gray’s production offered an Alpine Parnassus, replete with Dirndl, Lederhosen, and beer, which allowed the action – and above all, the music – to proceed without unnecessary interference and yet which, at the same time, provided a witty framing for further metatheatrical reflection, should one have wished to indulge. (The question of Gluck and ‘nationality’ is complex and fascinating.) All of the singers had a good deal to offer, Gwawr Edwards being perhaps my pick of the bunch, the surprisingly difficult technical demands – how did the princesses cope with them? – having little fear for her, but never being a mere end in themselves. She and her sisters, played by Anna Starushkeych and Caryl Hughes distinguished well between their respective roles, without attempting unduly anachronistic ‘characterisation’ in the modern sense. Aoife O’Sullivan’s Apollo sounded perhaps a little strained at times, but otherwise impressed.

 

The passage from opera seria to ‘reformism’ was neither linear nor uniform, as both the ‘reform operas’ and chronology will attest. Il Parnaso confuso was composed after Orfeo, though I should defy anyone to guess so. Moreover, just as Metastasio’s libretti would be set by a multitude of composers – Mozart had at least forty predecessors, Gluck included, when it came to La clemenza di Tito – Gluck was not the only composer for Ranieri de’ Calzabigi’s Orfeo. Here we heard what was intriguingly billed as the first ‘modern-times’ performance of Ferdinando Bertoni’s 1776 version in the United Kingdom; I can only assume that there must therefore have been an eighteenth-century performance somewhere in this country, and should be grateful for confirmation and details. Doubtless the strangeness would have been greater had we not heard the work in English translation, but even so, it is a slightly odd business hearing a text – even when cut – one knows so well, set to different, yet clearly ‘influenced’ music. The impression is generally of pleasant, perhaps more ‘up-to-date’ music, somewhere between imitation Gluck and Johann Christian Bach, but deeper acquaintance might possibly ascertain greater individuality (or not). It is well-crafted and certainly to be preferred to many of those aforementioned undistinguished nineteenth-century works our houses continue to foist upon us. An exception seemed to be offered by certain odd tonal jumps in the recitatives; without consulting a score, I cannot say whether that was Bertoni’s fault, or a matter of the performing edition. Maybe it would have been too much to hear both Orfeo settings back to back, but it would have been intriguing: an idea for another occasion, perhaps?  

 

Again, performances were generally impressive. Blunt, clearly a force to be reckoned with, and someone from whom I hope to hear more soon, again led his players in a stylish, committed performance, which enabled parallels with as well as distinctions from Gluck to be drawn. Gray’s modern-dress production again permitted the work to progress without fuss. The lion’s share of the singing is Orfeo’s; here, Anna Starushkeych was a little more variable, perhaps a little tired at times, but nevertheless gave a good sense of what was at stake. Thomas Herford and Aoife O’Sullivan provided very good support, as did the small soloists’ chorus. Charles Burney’s doubts concerning Bertoni’s inventiveness may have been justified, but so, for the most part, was his discernment of a style that was ‘natural, correct, and judicious; often pleasing, and sometimes happy,’ both in work and here in performance.

 

Elspeth Brooke, The Commission, and Francisco Coll, Café Kafka (London premieres), Royal Opera, 17 March 2014

Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House

Craftsman/Man 3/Gracchus/Policeman – Andri Björn Robertsson

Silversmith/Man 1 – Daniel Norman
Daughter/Woman – Anna Dennis
Pope/Surgeon/Man 2 – William Purefoy
Girl – Suzanne Shakespeare

Annabel Arden (director)

Joanna Parker (designs)
Matt Haskins (lighting)
Dick Straker (video)
Pete Malkin (sound engineer)

CHROMA

Richard Baker (conductor)

 

Man 2 (William Purefoy), Woman (Anna Dennis), Man 1 (Daniel Norman), Girl (Suzanne Shakespeare)
Images: © ROH - Stephen Cummiskey

These two new one-act operas had been given their first performances on 14 March at Snape Maltings; three days later, they came to London, where they will be performed three times, before moving to Leeds’s Howard Assembly Room for a performance there. That reflects the excellent idea of having Aldeburgh, the Royal Opera, and Opera North jointly commissioning and sharing productions on an annual basis. Much as one might regret the language in which the statement, ‘Nurturing Opera Makers of the Future’ is couched, for instance, ‘The motivation is that in recent years this middle-scale opera sector has changed,’ the commissioners’ hearts are doubtless in the right place. They rightly point to the sad demise, for which our political masters bear heavy though not sole responsibility, of companies such as English Opera Group, Kent Opera, and Almeida Opera; let us hope that this initiative continues to bear fruit as it did here.

 

Craftsman (Andri Björn Róbertsson)

 

 

It was interesting to note that the programme suggested composers and librettists as creators of equal stature, billing ‘Elspeth Brooke and Jack Underwood’, and ‘Francisco Coll and Meredith Oakes’. Such seems to be part of an ongoing tendency. Though we are not likely any day soon to return to the eighteenth century, when Metastasio would be billed above the legions of composers who set his libretti, it is interesting to note the increasing literary claims advanced, far from unreasonably. Certainly in the case of The Commission, my attention was more or less equally divided between Underwood’s libretto and Brooke’s music, the former based upon a poem from Michael Donaghy’s 1993 collection, Errata. It is well suited to musico-dramatic treatment, the tale of a Craftsman’s revenge upon the wealthy Merchant he holds – we never learn whether this were actually the case – to have abused and killed his brother. Brooke’s setting is resourceful, written, as indeed are both operas, for small instrumental and vocal forces, but in this case supplemented by certain electronic sounds. Jazz is one clear reference; indeed, in a brief composer’s note, Brooke credits Miles Davis’s soundtrack for the Louis Malle film, Ascenseur pour l’échafaud. But the sonorities of cimbalom, mandolin, and accordion also make their mark, as does repetition of what I suppose one might call motifs, that repetition acquiring genuine dramatic impetus that takes it beyond minimalism. Perhaps the vocal writing is less distinguished; for me, at least on a first hearing, it did its job, but did not seem especially inspired by voices as such. However, I am loath to say more than that, given that this was a first hearing, and it is more than possible that my ears were at fault. Moreover, the sense of transformation, when the Silversmith’s Daughter finally finds her voice suggests very real genuine musico-dramatic ability; the contrast was clearly (part of) the point.

 

Café Kafka offered a bracing, sardonic contrast – one to which I admit I responded more readily, but again, that may be more about me. Meredith Oakes may now, I think, be forgiven that doggerel reduction of The Tempest for Thomas Adès, since this offers a genuinely provocative treatment of, in her words, ‘the vertigo and intoxication people feel not just from trying and failing to understand the world, but also from trying to deal with the actual details of their own and other people’s behaviour’. The point is made more than once that the search for coherence may be in vain: a point we should at least consider, even if it prove well-nigh impossible for us as humans entirely to acquiesce. Two men and two women’s flirtations and conversations in a café attempt and fail to make sense of their lives, when suddenly the mood and tone change (as well, in this case, as the excellent lighting: Matt Haskins), and, in the words of director Annabel Arden’s synopsis, ‘Into this hermetic world comes the inexplicable figure [from a Kafka short story] of the Hunter Gracchus who died a long time ago, but whose death ship cannot truly cross into the realm of death.’ Francisco Coll’s score is bright and angular, rhythm and instrumentation working in often scintillating tandem. Here undoubtedly is a major talent, as was also suggested a couple of years ago at a London Sinfonietta performance of his Piedras. Vocal writing and differentiation were for me more readily apparent here, and a similar degree of resourcefulness, albeit of quite different nature, was undoubtedly apparent.

 

Arden’s stagings did, so far as I could tell, very well by the works. The smartness of sets and actions for Café Kafka was especially welcome, lending a skilfully ‘empty’ credibility to the loneliness and incomprehension of modern social life. Richard Baker and the players of CHROMA were excellent throughout, their incisiveness in the latter opera suggestive almost of lengthy acquaintance with a repertory work rather than a second performance. The singers did an excellent job too. Andri Björn Róbertsson’s dark-toned – and dark of character – Craftsman was well-matched by his scene-stealing transformation from barman into mysterious Gracchus. Anna Dennis proved equally adept in the transition from unintelligible to communicative daughter, and thence to the new world of Coll’s opera. Suzanne Shakespeare’s vocalism in the latter very much matched the éclat of the instrumental writing. Daniel Norman and William Purefoy did fascinating, dramatically credible masculine battle there too, contrast and blend between Norman’s tenor and Purefoy’s countertenor not the least virtue of these performances, nor indeed of Coll’s score, the composer’s willingness and ability to write for voices in duet proving especially refreshing.

La finta semplice, Bampton Classical Opera, 17 September 2013

 St John’s, Smith Square

(performed in English, as Pride and Pretence)

Rosina – Aoife O’Sullivan

Don Cassandro – Nicholas Merryweather
Don Polidoro – Robert Anthony Gardiner
Giacinta – Caryl Hughes
Ninetta – Nathalie Chalkley
Fracasso – Adam Tunnicliffe
Simone – Gavan Ring

Jeremy Gray (director)

CHROMA

Andrew Griffiths (conductor)

 

 

Bampton Classical Opera’s annual visit to St John’s Smith Square this year offered La finta semplice, the twelve-year-old Mozart’s three-act opera buffa to a Goldoni libretto as modified by Marco Coltellini. Coltellini had settled in Vienna in the early 1760s, having been appointed as Metastasio’s successor as court poet. Libretti included that for Tommaso Traetta’s 1763 Ifigenia in Tauride, in some ways a precursor of Gluck’s reform operas, incorporating as it did many elements of French tragédie lyrique into the typically more Italianate Viennese opera. Indeed, Gluck would set Coltellini’s Telemaco in 1765, and Salieri his Armida in 1771.

 

La finta semplice, composed in 1768, came between those two works. Though rehearsed in Vienna in 1768, it was not performed, seemingly the victim of Leopold Mozart’s failure to gain a contract, Mozart’s father having acted upon Joseph II’s suggestion – Joseph was now Holy Roman Emperor, and Co-regent of the Habsburg lands with Maria Theresa, though she still very much wore the imperial trousers – that Mozart might write a work for performance by the court opera. Intrigues that would not have been out of place in Amadeus thwarted the expected performance, and the Mozarts abruptly returned to Salzburg, where La finta semplice would be performed the following year at the Archbishop’s Palace, probably on 1 May. We can be reasonably sure that that performance, employing local musicians including Michael Haydn’s wife, Magdalena Lipp, as Rosina, was the only one during Mozart’s lifetime.

 

Though occasionally staged since, it remains a rarity. My only previous theatrical encounter with it having been during the heavenly anniversary year of 2006, when Salzburg staged all of Mozart’s operas, though this particular opera received an anything-but-heavenly staging, recitatives being ditched in favour of a gameshow format, in which a squeaky-voiced woman clad in a bright yellow jumpsuit shouted directorial inanities. Michael Hofstetter’s conducting of the Camerata Salzburg was not much better, abrasively harrying an orchestra that bore all too readily the wounds of its Norringtonian passion. (Though I have proved unable to bring myself to return to it, the production is available on DVD, lest the reader think it a figment of my fevered imagination.)

 

It was, then, with eagerness that I travelled to Westminster for a second chance, sad perhaps that the opera was being offered in translation, yet grateful that it was to be performed at all. The ‘new English translation’ by Gilly French and Jeremy Gray was one of those translations more akin to a new ‘version’: not a problem if it works and proves a thoroughgoing recreation, but in this case tended more towards the merely silly. Words and sometimes whole couplets seemed chosen more on account of the opportunity for an attention-seeking rhyme, such as ‘boozing’ and ‘snoozing’, than because they were dramatically fitting, let alone faithful. Nevertheless, when making a mental comparison with the jumpsuit gameshow ‘version’, one could breathe a sigh or two of relief. Gray’s staging, insofar as one could tell, given its transporting from Bampton to Westminster, offered manic – sometimes a little too manic – action against a vaguely surrealistic backdrop. In that, it was doubtless consistent with the conception apparent from the translation of kinship to farce, though I am not sure that it thereby displayed any real appreciation of Goldoni’s buffa form, Coltellini’s revisions, or indeed Mozart’s music. Partly for that reason, I shall not delve more deeply into the plot; synopses are readily available, and in the circumstances, the musical performance became more evidently the thing.

 

Certain overheated moments apart, though, it did not particular harm either. Andrew Griffiths was able as conductor to show a far keener appreciation of the score, pacing it well, offering both contrast and, especially during the second and third acts, a proper sense, even at this stage in Mozart’s career, of dramatic development. Griffiths yielded where appropriate, without succumbing in any sense to the mannerisms that so bedevil present performances of eighteenth-century repertoire. If there were occasions when one missed the sound of a full orchestra, the CHROMA ensemble offered for the most part finely honed, sensitive playing: stylish without affectation. Charlotte Forrest deserves special mention as the excellent harpsichord continuo player. A young cast offered an ensemble that was definitely more than the sum of its parts, not that they were negligible. If in many cases some numbers proved more strongly sung than others, there was a high level not only of promise but accomplishment.   Aoife O’Sullivan’s account of Rosina, the baroness, was perhaps the high point, its musical sensitivity matching that of the players. But a general sense of commitment and exuberance went a long way.