Peter Grimes, Royal Opera, 17 March 2022

Royal Opera House

Images: ROH 2022 (c) Yasuko Kageyama
The Boy (Cruz Fitz), Peter Grimes (Allan Clayton)

Hobson – Stephen Richardson
Swallow – John Tomlinson
Peter Grimes – Allan Clayton
Ned Keene – Jacque Imbrailo
Rev. Horace Adams – James Gilchrist
Bob Boles – John Graham-Hall
Auntie – Catherine Wyn-Rogers
First Niece – Jennifer France
Second Niece – Alexandra Lowe
Mrs Sedley – Rosie Aldridge
Ellen Orford – Maria Bengtsson
Bryn Terfel – Captain Balstrode
The Boy – Cruz Fitz
Aerialist – Jamie Higgins

Deborah Warner (director)
Michael Levine (set designs)
Luis F. Carvalho (costumes)
Peter Mumford (lighting)
Kim Brandstrup (choreography)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: William Spaulding)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Mark Elder (conductor)

London has proved fortunate with recent productions of Peter Grimes (and doubtless with older ones too). David Alden’s 2014 production for ENO and Willy Decker’s for the Royal Opera (in its 2011 revival) both had considerable virtues and received performances. This new staging from Deborah Warner and the performances that brought it to life were nevertheless in a class of their own, showing the Royal Opera at the top of its game.

All three productions will have displeased the Campaign for Real Barnacles, and thank goodness for that. Warner takes us into the dark underbelly of a contemporary, down-at-heel seaside town, with neither room nor appetite for prettified nostalgia for an early nineteenth century that never was (and certainly never was in George Crabbe). I thought of a poorer version of Margate, somewhere perhaps in Essex—and lo and behold, had that confirmed in Warner’s programme reference to ‘some of the extremely poor and socially deprived towns of the Essex coast, namely Jaywick Sands’, testament not to any great acuity on my part but to Michael Levine’s sets, Luis F. Carvalho’s costumes, and to the entire ensemble of Warner’s production, sharply, meaningfully choreographed by Kim Brandstrup. There is poverty here, also reckless abandon; there are drugs, alcohol, and sleaze; there is a ‘community’ that rounds on an outsider and in the violence of that rounding discovers a nativist identity and ‘morality’ that chills and kills. It takes back control, polices its borders, and deals with outsiders in a terrifying march of intimidation, fire, and nihilism. This Borough is UKIP, even BNP, country, in which shirtless neo-Nazis mix with dealers such as Ned Keene, one of the more sympathetic townsmen if ultimately untrustworthy on account of his habit; and bigoted, ‘respectable’ rentiers such as Mrs Sedley. It is not, however, an amorphous mass: not everyone is like that, and everyone has his or her own story. Warner takes immense care, as do all of those participating, every member of the chorus clearly directed individually and coming to life both in that individuality and as part of a deadly, group identity. Not only do Grimes and his apprentices—one hauntingly portrayed as a just out-of-touch aerialist vision—have no chance; nor does Ellen Orford, herself a victim of Grimes’s physical violence. ‘The more vicious the society, the more vicious the individual.’

 

There is no sign that Grimes is homosexual, or Muslim, or Polish for that matter; but this is undoubtedly the rough justice that would be meted out to him if he were. It is a similar social tragedy to that one sees in parts of Brandenburg or Saxony, doubtless across the world. But it has a particularly English flavour. They do like to be beside the seaside, and they do not like others, with no place to be there, to attempt to join them. Britten’s fraught relationship to England and Englishness, his (partly) thwarted internationalism, and the parochialism of some of his devotees are set in implied counterpoint, but with the work rather than its critics ultimately setting the terms of examination. It is slightly odd—maybe more than that—that, in the contemporary setting, Grimes’s apprentice should be so young a boy, but even that serves to remind us of another aspect of the ‘Britten problem’, which this contemporary Borough would doubtless address with savage, summary justice. 

There could not, I think, have been a better choice to conduct this production than Mark Elder, who led the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, on as fine form as I can recall, as if a man possessed. He clearly believes in every note of the score and, more to the point, revealed all manner of potentialities I had barely imagined were there. Musical processes are clear and generative, indicative of a serious attempt to address the problems of form that so often bedevil Britten’s music in work and performance. An account of titanic clashes and contrasts spanned, on the one hand, screaming echoes of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth and, beyond it, the Mahler of the Fifth Symphony; and, on the other, passages of translucent beauty that seemed to have all the time in the world, yet are fated to be cut short. Elder’s conducting was urgent, even when spacious, whipping up a sequence of storms of fatal consequence that not only framed, but incited, the action on stage. We were reminded that, here, the sea was a thing of danger as well as livelihood, a theatre of cruelty and redress far more than a picturesque landscape.

Another man possessed was Allan Clayton’s Peter. If I say it was the most beautifully sung account of the role I have heard that would unduly delimit its range, though in many respects it certainly was beautiful—and more youthfully vulnerable than the typical craggy old man. This, crucially, was a performance that dug deep psychologically, that suggested profound consideration of dilemmas and traumas faced by the character, and frankly admitted that not all could or should be answered. I could not help but think of Boris Godunov in Clayton’s final scene; the voice is different, as are music, drama, and almost everything else, yet psychological descent and devastation presented tragic parallels across the divide.

Ellen Orford (Maria Bengtsson), The Boy

Maria Bengtsson gave us a profoundly human, refreshingly unhackneyed Ellen Orford, a force for good whose goodness went so cruelly punished. Her ‘Embroidery Aria’ could not have been more touchingly sung, its difficult intervals navigated with ease and in perfect harmony with the orchestra. Jacques Imbrailo’s Ned Keene offered a fascinating study in ambiguity, perhaps beyond mere good and evil. Powerfully and, again, beautifully sung, so much more lay in the acting: a drug-addled hedonist who exerted a mysterious yet undeniable attraction, not an outside as such, yet never quite to be assimilated. Bryn Terfel’s Balstrode may well be the finest opera performance I have seen from him, fully in command of the role and its possibilities, throughout exuding deep humanity and a wisdom that again set him apart without excluding him. Catherine Wyn-Rogers gave us a world-weary yet lively Auntie of experience, Rosie Aldridge a properly vicious Mrs Sedley, more insidious than John Graham-Hall's nicely buffoonish Bob Boles. There were no disappointments in a strong supporting cast, which seemed to grow out of that minutely observed direction of the chorus: a community of individual and mass imperatives. Choral singing was likewise outstanding, the Royal Opera Chorus on better form than I have heard for a long time, fully engaged in portrayal of Britten, Warner, and Elder’s visions (as well, doubtless, as their own).

 

This enthusiasm comes from a place of ambivalence toward the work itself. I am not yet persuaded that swathes of the second act in particular are not a little dull, nor that the influence of Wozzeck at the beginning of the third is not a little too close for comfort, ‘Arias’ still seem to stand out awkwardly from the rest, and so on. If you are going to be influenced, though, you will struggle to find a better source of influence than Wozzeck, and not every opera can attain the perfection of Figaro or Tristan. This was an outstanding night of theatre, strongly to be recommended to everyone: to the Britten devotees who will not give two hoots about my reservations; to fellow Britten-agnostics, who may also find previous reactions challenged; and even to those more hostile, whose road to conversion may have its point of departure. Not to be missed.

Philharmonia/Pons - Schubert and Mahler, 16 October 2016

Royal Festival Hall

Schubert – Symphony no.8 in B minor, ‘Unfinished’, D 759

Mahler – Das Lied von der Erde


Catherine Wyn-Rogers (mezzo-soprano)
Robert Dean Smith (tenor)
Philharmonic Orchestra
Josep Pons (conductor)

First Christoph von Dohnányi had to withdraw, then, at the last minute, Matthias Goerne. Schubert and Mahler remained, though, alongside the Philharmonia Orchestra and Robert Dean Smith. They were joined by Catherine Wyn-Rogers and Josep Pons, in a decent enough concert, which neither truly disappointed, nor truly inspired, although I must admit that I felt more moved at the end of Das Lied von der Erde than I had done during its performance: testament, no doubt, to the enduring greatness of the work itself.

Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony probably received the better of the two performances. The first movement’s opening was dark – how could it not be? – although I have certainly heard darker, not least from Bernard Haitink, in an identical programme with the LSO a few years ago. The Philharmonia’s playing was cultivated throughout, a keen sense on offer of the players listening to each other as chamber musicians. Pons proved somewhat rhetorical at times, arguably a little too much, but not unduly disruptively. I was struck once again by the harmonic daring and sheer darkness of the developmental night of the soul: there were no extraneous histrionics applied to the music, simply a sense of a great Romantic speaking truth about out human condition. A shadow, then, was cast over a nevertheless variegated recapitulation, the coda proving both dignified and defiant. The second movement flowed well, although its pulse was perhaps a little too close to that of its predecessor. Mood was contrasted enough nevertheless, if somewhat bright for my taste at times. Darker passages received their due, though, and there was a concluding sense of contentment in culmination.  
 

Das Lied von der Erde took a while, arguably a movement, to settle down. The opening was brusque, even brash. Woodwind shrillness made its point, but Pons drove too hard all in all. One can hardly fail to feel sympathy for the poor tenor in this work, but Dean Smith’s unpleasantness of tone sounded distinctly superannuated. He almost always managed to make himself heard, though. ‘Der Einsame im Herbst’ was more sympathetically conducted, flowing in a way one might trace back to Schubert. There was strength beneath the surface too. Wyn-Rogers proved dignified and sincere: the Mahlerian heart was certainly weary, but humanity nevertheless survived. The third movement proved nicely rhythmical, with necessary flexibility. Dean Smith had the notes, but his expressionless delivery did little for me. ‘Von der Schönheit’ had a welcome sense of symphonic ‘following on’. Occasional lapses in orchestral ensemble surprised, although they were nothing too grievous. Both orchestra and voice imparted a sense of the pictorial, courting comparison with Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder, without any danger of veering into contradiction between ‘drama’ and ‘music’. Dean Smith’s charmless, colourless singing overshadowed some at least of the considerable orchestral detail to be heard in ‘Der Trunkene im Frühling’. His vibrato was on the wide side, even for me. Pons conducted it briskly, but not without feeling: probably the best course of action in the circumstances.

Mahler marks the opening to ‘Der Abschied’ schwer, heavy; and that was just how it sounded. Mezzo, flute arabesques, and cello pedal soon combined to underline the music’s – our – desolation. If Wyn Rogers’s intonation were not always perfect, musical and poetic sense was always conveyed: a far more important a thing. Schoenberg seemed already to be with us in some of the orchestral textures – which he is, to all intents and purposes. Pons was sometimes a little deliberate, underlining figures that might have flowed, even flown, more freely, but I should not exaggerate. A cold wind indeed blew at times, chilling me to the bone, but there was consolation, if far from unalloyed, to be had through the bitterness, the sardonicism, the ghostly, echt-Mahlerian marionettes. If the orchestral interlude, if one can call it that, sounded a little thin of tone to begin with, it grew in symphonic stature, reminding us that this is not ‘just’ a song-cycle. The ‘liebe Erde’ was, ultimately, what we heard and felt; it was that Earth that won through.

 

Why o why, though, the instant applause? Are these people not only hard of hearing, but hard of humanity?

 

Der fliegende Holländer, Royal Opera, 5 February 2015

Images: ROH/Clive Barda

 

 

Royal Opera House

The Dutchman – Bryn Terfel

Senta – Adrianne Pieczonka
Daland – Peter Rose
Erik – Michael König
Mary – Catherine Wyn-Rogers
Steersman – Ed Lyon

Tim Albery (director)

Daniel Dooner (revival director)
Michael Levine (set designs)
Constance Hoffmann (costumes)
David Finn (lighting)

Chorus of the Royal Opera House (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Andris Nelsons (conductor)

 

I wonder whether we need a new way of thinking – and talking – about operatic ‘revivals’. Perhaps the term is more meaningful when it comes to works that have been dead and buried for years, before being rediscovered by subsequent generations. However, when it comes to productions, I cannot help but think that it increasingly obscures rather than aids understanding. Where, after all, has the production been in the mean time? Hades? More to the point, though, I think we tend to underestimate, at least in many cases, the role of the revival director. (The often problematical ‘repertory’ system employed in many German theatres is a different matter; I am thinking here of theatres operating according to what is essentially a stagione principle.) In this particular case, Daniel Dooner seemed to make a better job of ‘reviving’ Tim Albery’s production of The Flying Dutchman than Albery had made of presenting it in the first place. Or was it a matter of a better-adjusted cast? The one does not exclude the other, of course; indeed, the two are not unlikely to have been related.

Steersman (Ed Lyon)

The 2009 ‘premiere’ had greatly disappointed, eschewing Wagner’s interest in myth for a  form of dreary realism, quite out of place and seemingly determined – understandably, I suppose, given its misguided premise – to downplay the figure of the Dutchman as much as possible. It did not make sense and it did not involve. The irritants have not entirely gone away, especially during the third act, in which the drunken antics of the townsfolk – here, it must be admitted, very well portrayed by the chorus and Ed Lyon’s Steersman – still seem to be far too much ‘the point’. But they are counterbalanced and, on occasion, supplanted by a stronger sense of the Dutchman’s plight and its consequences. ‘Revival’ seems something of a misnomer for a hugely beneficial shift of emphasis, unless we mean that the work itself experiences something of a revival – which, I think, it does, at least vis­-à-vis its outing six years ago.

 

The Dutchman (Bryn Terfel)

Bryn Terfel’s performance certainly seems less ‘revived’ than brought to life for the first time. In 2009, he had disappointed perhaps even more than the production. There were still occasional unwelcome tendencies towards crooning, especially towards the end of his first-act monologue. They were occasional, though, and Terfel followed up his excellent Proms Walküre Wotan – almost certainly the best thing I have heard him sing – with a world-weary Dutchman who, moments of tiredness aside, yet had powers of something mysterious in reserve for when the moment called.  This time the words were not only crystal-clear – always a formidable weapon in Terfel’s armoury – but invested with a true sense of dramatic meaning. Adrianne Pieczonka’s Senta was at least his equal in terms of dramatic commitment; arguably, this thrilling, unmistakeably womanly performance went still further. I say ‘womanly’ since this was a reading that seemed thoroughly in keeping with a recent, welcome understanding of Wagner’s earlier heroines to be more than virginal male projections. Peter Rose made the most of Daland’s character: venal, yes, but also looking to the future for his daughter as well as himself. Michael König offered an alert Erik, Catherine Wyn-Rogers a properly maternal Mary. Often threatening to steal the show was Lyon’s Steersman, as fine a portrayal as I can recall: an everyman, perhaps, but one with agency, for which verbal and musical acuity alike should be thanked.

 

Senta (Adrianne Pieczonka) and Erik
(Michael König)

Andris Nelsons’s conducting for the most part brought out the best from the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. However, the interpretation as a whole did not seem quite to have settled; I strongly suspect that subsequent performances will impress more. The Flying Dutchman is a difficult work to bring off; despite fashionable claims for overplaying its (alleged) antecedents, it really works best as a whole when viewed, as Wagner would later do so, in the light of his subsequent musico-dramatic theories. Senta’s Ballad may not originally have been its dramatic kernel, but it has become so. Nelsons sometimes seemed unclear which way to tilt, especially during a drawn-out Overture, whose extremes of tempo threatened to negate any sense of unity. There were sluggish passages elsewhere: not hugely drawn out, but enough to make one wonder where the music was heading. The third act emerged tightest, and may well be a pointer to what audiences will hear later in the run. Choral singing was not entirely free of blurred edges, but there was much to admire, and again, I suspect that slight shortcomings will soon be overcome. This remained an impressive ‘revival’, all the more so, given its manifest superiority to the production’s first outing.  

 

Britten Sinfonia/Delfs - Mendelssohn, Elijah, 7 March 2012

Barbican Hall

Simon Keenlyside (baritone)
Catherine Wyn-Rogers (mezzo-soprano)
Lucy Crowe (soprano)
Andrew Kennedy (tenor)
William Carne (treble)

Britten Sinfonia Voices (chorus master: Eamonn Dougan)
Britten Sinfonia
Andreas Delfs (conductor)


The Barbican’s six-month series celebrating the English oratorio, has now reached Mendelssohn’s Elijah – or perhaps we should follow the Victorians and refer to it as ‘the Elijah’, given that it was performed in English, in William Bartholomew’s translation. My preference for the German version is neither here nor there, really, given the commission for the Birmingham Festival, and certainly not when it is performed in a series devoted to English-language oratorios. However, it is interesting to note the difference in sound; indeed, it is almost impossible not to notice it. Bach seems more distant, at least for much of the time, though it is not necessarily the case that Handel seems closer. For better or worse, we seem closer to the world of Victorian piety. (Consider, in a celebrated example, how different ‘O for the wings of a dove’ and ‘O könnt' ich fliegen wie Tauben dahin’ sound.)

One aspect, however, of the present performance could not have been more different from the world of the Victorian choral society, namely the size of the forces involved. This was a chamber Elijah, both in terms of choir and orchestra. The Britten Sinfonia’s strings were scaled 8:6:4:4:2 whilst Britten Sinfonia Voices numbered thirty-four in all, quite a contrast with the previous time I had heard the work, from a fully symphonic London Philharmonic Orchestra and London Philharmonic Choir under the baton of Kurt Masur (in German). The soloists were fewer in number too, limited to just the five, including a treble. The Barbican is a smaller venue than the Royal Festival Hall, though it is certainly not a chamber venue, and there were times when I missed the heft that could be imparted by larger forces – not because they are in some dubious sense ‘authentic’, but more on account of the near-Wagnerian dramatic scale they can assist to convey. One’s ears adjust, though, at least to an extent, and clarity provided some degree of compensation.

The Britten Sinfonia is generally acknowledged to be one of this country’s most enterprising ensembles, its programmes regularly proving more interesting, more imaginative, than many longer established groups. Based in Cambridge – during my time there, I attended a good number of its lunchtime and evening performances – it has recently been appointed an Associate Ensemble at the Barbican. Though that appointment will begin in autumn 2012, coinciding with the Sinfonia’s twentieth anniversary, this concert offered Barbican audiences a taste of what will be on offer: obviously not so much in programming terms – Elijah is Elijah – as in musicianship. My only real doubt concerning a fine orchestral performance was a certain stinginess concerning string vibrato during the Overture. Otherwise, all sections of the chamber orchestra emerged with great credit, from the opening sepulchral, stentorian woodwind, to the blaze of the final ‘Amen’. There was some very fine solo work too, for instance from obbligato cello (Caroline Dearnley) in Elijah’s recitative, ‘It is enough,’ and oboe (Alun Darbyshire) in his arioso, ‘For the mountains shall depart’. Elijah, though, needs a decent organ, not the electronic version the Barbican can offer.

Likewise Britten Sinfonia Voices, recently formed under the leadership of Eamonn Dougan, acquitted themselves extremely well. There were indeed times when I had to remind myself that they were relatively few in number. Diction and clarity were excellent; there was never the slightest hint of (pseudo-)Victorian staidness. Only once did I find the choral singing a little tame, in the chorus ‘Baal, we cry to thee,’ but the lack of wildness – and this is Mendelssohn, after all – seemed more a matter of direction by Andreas Delfs than of the singing as such. At any rate, the call of the priests of Baal to their god to ‘hear and answer … Mark how the scorner derideth us!’ soon registered less ‘tastefully’ and with far greater dramatic force.

Delfs I was less sure about. For the most part, his was a capable performance. Only occasionally, most notably during the Overture, did he drive the music too hard. On the other hand, and despite a truly thrilling chorus to conclude the first part, this was not a reading to grip one dramatically as Masur’s had done. The comparison may be odious, but, especially when we are dealing with a work and indeed genre that remain unfashionable, an extra ounce of musico-dramatic conviction can work wonders. It is probably fair to say that Mendelssohn’s inspiration is uneven here, not least in some of the numbers towards the end of the second part, but fiery advocacy can help persuade one otherwise. Some of these numbers dragged, alas, lending an impression of chamber-scale neo-Victoriana, petering-out Stanford rather than invigorating Handel.

There was much, nevertheless, to relish in the solo singing. Simon Keenlyside made an excellent Elijah, not a bluff prophet, but a thoughtful, sometimes even conflicted soul, sensitive to an unusual degree, whether in terms of characterisation or verbal acuity. The pathos to his delivery of ‘It is enough…’ reminded one, despite the language, of Bach: recitative it might be, but Keenlyside – and, I think, Mendelssohn too – brought the music, not for the first time, closer to arioso. Mendelssohn at his most Handelian, in the aria ‘Is not his world like a fire?’ was conveyed with equal success, echoes of Messiah – or the Messiah – readily discerned. Lucy Crowe offered a particular highlight with the aria that opens the second part, ‘Hear ye, Israel’. Clear of tone and direct of expression, this was model oratorio singing, as were the contributions from Catherine Wyn-Rogers. Wyn-Rogers had considerable ground to cover, but moved effortlessly between Angel and Queen. The latter – Jezebel, of course – exuded menace and feminine wiles, whilst the Angel’s ‘O rest in the Lord’ revelled, for better or worse, in Mendelssohn at his loveliest. After an unfortunate start, treble William Carne made up lost ground and offered a number of well-turned phrases. The only real disappointment was tenor, Andrew Kennedy. Oddly, his single line as Ahab offered properly dramatic impact, but much of the rest of his performance suffered from an awkward combination of overt emoting and a tendency to croon. Obadiah was bad enough, but the final, tenor aria, ‘Then shall the righteous shine forth,’ sounded as if it were excerpted from a West End musical, vibrato so wide as to disconcert. Fortunately, there was some excellent choral and orchestral playing still to come.

Eugene Onegin, English National Opera, 12 November 2011

Coliseum

Madame Larina – Diana Montague
Tatiana – Amanda Echalaz
Olga – Claudia Huckle
Filipievna – Catherine Wyn-Rogers
Eugene Onegin – Audun Iversen
Lensky – Toby Spence
Monsieur Triquet – Adrian Thompson
Zaretsky – David Stout
Prince Gremin – Brindley Sherratt
Captain – Paul Napier-Burrows
Peasant Singer – David Newman

Deborah Warner (director)
Tom Pye (designs)
Chloe Obolensky (costumes)
Jean Kalman (lighting)
Kim Brandstrup (choreography)

Chorus and Additional Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Martin Merry)
Orchestra of the English National Opera
Edward Gardner (conductor)

Images: Neil Libbert

Was this ENO? Or had I nodded off and slipped into a living Met nightmare? Actually, ‘nightmare’ is too harsh, too interesting, for Deborah Warner’s production of Eugene Onegin, actually conceived, I discovered, as a co-production with the Metropolitan Opera, is just plain dull, a strange throwback to the 1970s or further back still, in which singers sing their lines against a pretty – to some – backdrop in ‘period’ dress that might well have come from a television serial. The ‘period’ in question seems to be slightly later than Pushkin, to no obvious end. Now there is nothing necessarily wrong with ‘traditional’ productions, but this one offered no discernible view upon the work, no discernible insight, save perhaps for a tired, slightly misandrist suggestion that the work might be better off entitled ‘Tatiana Larina’, into the characters and their development, and no discernible provocation or even invitation to think. It is, I think, the first time I have witnessed members of the audience even –  I assure you, I am not making this up – applaud a Coliseum set, in this case as the curtain rose for the third act, obscuring Tchaikovsky's Polonaise. (They indulged in plenty of disruption elsewhere too, a selfish couple seated behind me a particular menace, speaking throughout the performance, unresponsive to the iciest of glares.)

Even from a literalist perspective, there are problems beyond the slight ‘updating’. Once one engages upon such a path, fetishising costumes, scenery, and the like, any deviation tends to stand out like a sore thumb. Thus, whilst a more neutral or suggestive space would doubtless double up without too much trouble for the first three scenes of the first act, we are left wondering in literalist mode why Tatiana appears to sleep in a capacious barn. (It will doubtless be more capacious still in New York.) Child ‘extras’ running around for no particular reason are an irritant; they seem to be a favoured device of the director, her ENO Messiah a case in point. Are not the costumes for the celebration of Tatiana’s name day a little on the dour side for such an occasion? Why does the final scene not appear quite where it ‘should’?

Lensky (Toby Spence)

More serious is the problem alluded to above, whereby Warner’s sympathies seemed only to be elicited by the female characters. It used often to be a critical plaint that the opera should not have been entitled Eugene Onegin; this production, whether by design or by default, comes across as an attempt to revive that view. Everything is centred upon Tatiana. The subtext – at times, it is barely ‘sub-‘ – of Romantic friendship or more between Onegin and Lensky is ignored. Surely it does not take even a leap of the imagination to appreciate how Tchaikovsky would have understood Onegin’s rejection of Tatiana, herself of course in many respects a projection of male homosexuality. To take at face value without any further probing the description of Onegin as an ‘outsider’ seems in this context merely bizarre: would one not at least ask what is meant by ‘outsider’, just as one would in Peter Grimes? The following words surely speak for themselves:

If I had wished to pass my life
within the confines of the family circle,
and benevolent fate had decreed for me
the role of husband and father,
then I should most likely not choose
any bride other than you.

Krzysztof Warlikowski’s Munich production (reviewed here by Jens Laurson) made explicit what might though need not remain implicit. One can remain relatively reticent, though, and still address this central issue of the opera: take Steven Pimlott’s woefully underrated production for Covent Garden, ‘traditional’ in look, but so much more dramatically alert than Warner’s production. Had the action been centred upon Tatiana in especially dramatic, more revisionist, fashion, I am sure that would have been a valid approach, but Warner’s focus seemed more a default setting than anything else.

Onegin (Audun Iversen) and Lensky

There was considerable compensation, however, to be heard from Edward Gardner’s conducting: undoubtedly the best I have heard from him at the Coliseum. If I have been spoilt by my most recent two hearings of the work in the theatre, both conducted by Daniel Barenboim, Gardner nevertheless impressed, Shape and sweep almost unfailingly present. There was a fine swagger to the choral numbers and the dances (in which the dancers made a good impression), which the more intimate moments – insofar as the production permitted them to exist – were executed with tenderness and genuine sympathy. If Gardner’s reading did not quite scintillate in the way that some can, there is plenty of scope for intensification as the run of performances proceeds. He certainly has the ENO Orchestra on fine form, though a few more strings would have been welcome. The chorus, trained by Martin Merry, returned to form too, though all suffered from Martin Pickard’s clunky English translation: if we must do without the Russian text and its inimitable sonorities, then we need a superior substitute.

Toby Spence shone out from the cast. (Lenskys often do.) Though his ardent sincerity was somewhat robbed of context by the production, it nevertheless left its mark. Audun Iversen was likewise hamstrung in the title role, though earlier on, fine English diction notwithstanding, he rarely seemed truly to get inside the part even in musical terms. His performance in the third act heated up nicely, however, so maybe first night nerves were a factor. Amanda Echalaz merely seemed miscast as Tatiana. Her high soprano often seemed thin and disengaged; attempts to compensate skirted dangerously close to Puccini-caricature. Claudia Huckle’s often blowsy Olga struck a discordant note in more than one sense. Adrian Thompson, however, made a fine impression with a sensitive rendition of Monsieur Triquet’s couplets, even if one could have done without the assumed 'French' accent. One dry patch apart, Brindley Sherratt shaped Prince Gremin’s aria well. Catherine Wyn-Rogers and Diana Montague contributed a focus to the roles of Filipievna and Mme Larina that was not always present elsewhere. I could not help wishing that they might be offered a little more to do.

Tatiana (Amanda Echalaz) and Prince Gremin (Brindley Sherratt)

For those weary, then, of Konzept-heavy productions, this Onegin might offer some balm; it is certainly worth hearing for Gardner and Spence. Yet there remains ample room for a more ‘traditional’ production that does not forego interpretation, of whatever variety.

The performance on 23 November will be recorded by BBC Radio 3 for subsequent broadcast.

Recommended performances on CD and DVD:

Peter Grimes, Royal Opera, 21 June 2011

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Peter Grimes – Ben Heppner
Ellen Orford – Amanda Roocroft
Captain Balstrode – Jonathan Summers
Swallow – Matthew Best
Mrs Sedley – Jane Henschel
Auntie – Catherine Wyn-Rogers
Ned Keene – Roderick Williams
Hobson – Stephen Richardson
Rector – Martyn Hill
Bob Boles – Alan Oke
First Niece – Rebecca Bottone
Second Niece – Anna Devin
Dr Crabbe – Walter Hall
Boy (John) – Patrick Curtis

Willy Decker (director)
François de Carpentries (revival director)
John Macfarlane (designs)
David Finn (lighting)
Athol Farmer (choreography)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Sir Andrew Davis (conductor)


London is doing well by Britten at the moment: Christopher Alden’s outstanding ENO production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is now joined by a fine Covent Garden revival of Willy Decker’s Peter Grimes. There was, I recall, indignation in certain quarters upon the production’s first London outing in 2004 – it was first seen at La Monnaie – but it is now difficult to imagine why. One would have to be a paid-up member of the Campaign for Real Barnacles to object to John Macfarlane’s powerful designs, which are hardly abstract in conception. Costumes are inoffensively in period, contributing to the sense of the Borough’s stifling bigotry and hypocrisy, the scarlet of the evening dance bringing out into the open the real interests of those erstwhile clad in monochrome. I suspect that hostility must have emanated from the quarters of those who are now outraged by Alden’s reimagining A Midsummer Night’s Dream: generally of an older generation, wishing to confine Britten to the safe, unthreatening pigeonhole of an ‘English composer’, when it is his demons that make him most interesting.

Claustrophobia and provincial small-mindedness are very much the order of the day in all aspects of Decker’s staging. (We, alas, know only too well the consequences of harrying outsiders, of hysterical accusations, of cynical pleas to ‘law and order’; it was a sad irony that this production opened on the very same day that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom announced wholesale capitulation to the tabloid press in terms of reductions in prison sentences.) The Established Church becomes a powerful presence, not least in terms of the Cross carried by the witch-hunters. We are also reminded that Bob Boles, as a Methodist, has a dissenting edge to him, protesting rightly at the practice of buying apprentices from the workhouse. Unpalatable though many of their views may have been, Evangelicals would after all take a lead in a great deal of nineteenth-century social campaigning. Assent to the norms of the Borough is enforced congregationally both at the beginning of the first act and in the final scene. Even Ellen Orford raises her hymn sheet at the last, to complete a closing of ranks: a final, chilling unanimity, in which the true villain of the piece, the Borough, emerges tragically triumphant.

Sir Andrew Davis made a welcome return to the pit, summoning up as visceral and intelligent an account of the score as I can recall. Doubtless this will be anathema to the elder Brittenites, but I found it a more moving condemnation even than Britten’s own recording. The orchestra was on splendid form throughout, clearly responding with enthusiasm to Davis’s dramatic impetus, the brass in particular searing. There remain weakness in what is after all Britten’s first opera – Paul Bunyan is a rather different kettle of fish – but I cannot imagine them being better papered over than here. The sooner Britten shed outmoded taints of Verdi – the thin ‘Embroidery Aria, for instance – the better. Talk of Berg often seems like special pleading, but the reminiscences of Wozzeck – and Mahler – at the evening dance for once seemed real enough, a telling correspondence with Berg’s tavern scene, even if the latter’s music remains on an entirely different compositional level. I have never, moreover, heard the introduction to the second act sound so Stravinskian, the tightness of rhythm recalling the Russian master’s anti-symphonic ‘symphonies’. Britten only gains by relation to continental developments: those who would confine him to visions of an Aldeburgh that never was do him nothing but harm, and would do well to remember his fervent desire to study with Berg.

What, then, of the vocal performances? Ben Heppner’s portrayal of the work’s anti-hero is powerful indeed. The flawed vocalism will doubtless dismay many: it certainly would me, if this were Tristan or Siegfried, but somehow it seems to matter less in so damaged a role as this. There is certainly vocal power, though unpredictably so: more Jon Vickers than Peter Pears, if without the former’s steely determination. One also needs to overlook, and I can imagine many being unable to do so, what are sometimes severe difficulties not only with respect to intonation but concerning wholesale pitching of lines, the entry to the Boar Inn the ultimate case in point. No, this is not a musical performance on the level of the three recently deceased artists to whom the present revival is dedicated: Robert Tear, Philip Langridge, and Anthony Rolfe Johnson. But it moved me nevertheless, since it exhibited such sympathy with Grimes’s predicament. Moreover, I was surprised by the improvement in Heppner’s acting. Partly it is a matter of his somewhat awkward stage presence chiming with the demands of the role, but it is not only that. He puts what might be a disadvantage to good use, intensifying the lumbering quality, ever a loner. Amanda Roocroft also suffered from vocal insecurities, especially at the top, but by the same token also threw her dramatic all into the role of Ellen. Her goodness not only shone through, but seemed credible rather than sentimental. This is clearly an artist who requires careful casting, her recent Meistersinger Eva an unfortunate mistake, but there was much to admire on the present occasion.

A number of other assumptions stood out, none more so than Roderick Williams’s excellent Ned Keene: ever attentive to words and musical line, with finely judged, disconcertingly ambiguous stage presence. Balstrode seems to me a quintessential Thomas Allen role, but Jonathan Summers evoked a powerful human presence that was far from disgraced by the comparison. Alan Oke’s Boles captured well the air of the righteous fanatic, without ever resorting to mere caricature. Catherine Wyn-Rogers made for an unusually subtle portrayal of Auntie: nothing was ever straightforward with her kindliness or her slight brashness. Again, there was no need for caricature, and one could not help but respond to the warmth of her voice. Her ‘nieces’, Rebecca Bottone and Anna Devin both made strong impressions too, their proper air of grotesquerie never allowed to proceed too far. Then there was Jane Henschel’s wonderfully malicious Mrs Sedley. Somehow even the American accent did not jar, granting an air of Angela Lansbury to the crime addict’s already potent brew of Frau ohne Schatten Nurse and Anne Widdecombe. I could not take my eyes off her. Once again, there was a credible air of character rather than caricature, for which some of the praise must surely be accorded both to Decker and to revival director, François de Carpentries.

For there was certainly nothing of the routine to this revival. Even when something went wrong, a failure in a stage motor necessitating alterations to the second-act scene changes, the reworking was accomplished so professionally that I have to admit I did not notice, only learning of the difficulty afterwards. Finally, no praise is high enough for the magnificent contribution of the Royal Opera Chorus, as trained by Renato Balsadonna. Weight, intensity, diction, stage performance: all of these were irreproachable. Britten was well served indeed. And, just as Theodor Adorno in 1951 urged the necessity to defend Bach from his puritanical ‘devotees’, so should we, even those of us sometimes ambivalent in our response to the music of Benjamin Britten, defend him from his.

Messiah, English National Opera, 27 November 2009

The Coliseum, London

Sophie Bevan (soprano)
Catherine Wyn-Rogers (contralto)
John Mark Ainsley (tenor)
Brindley Sherratt (bass)
Harry Bradford (treble)

Deborah Warner (director)
Tom Pye (set designs)
Moritz Junge (costumes)
Jean Kalman (lighting)
Leo Warner, Lysander Ashton, and Tom Pye (video)
Kim Brandstrup (choreographer)

Orchestra of the English National Opera
Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Martin Merry)
Laurence Cummings (conductor)

Just when I had begun to wonder whether ENO had gained a certain edge over its Covent Garden neighbour, along came this. Deborah Warner’s staging of Handel’s Messiah does not, as she admits in the programme, entail ‘turning it into an opera’. Apparently, she has introduced ‘a visual element which is a quite different process to dramatising it’. I am not sure what she means by this; more importantly, I am not at all sure what it was that we saw on stage. The ‘narrative thread ... woven clearly through the three parts of the evening’ – does Handel’s work not already possess a narrative thread of some import? – eluded me, though, goodness knows, I tried. What I saw was an extraordinary mixture of pretentious irrelevance and bizarre literalism, united only by their common thread of banality. Much to my astonishment, what remained of the audience seemed to love it.

The first part I found straightforwardly incomprehensible. Opening with some metropolitan video footage – all of the filming was very well presented, though its end remained dubious, to say the least – the first ‘scene’, as I suppose we should call it, appears to show John Mark Ainsley leaving orders of service on some makeshift pews, whilst other people in everyday dress go about their daily business. Somehow having a woman do the ironing and someone else look at a computer screen is held to illuminate ‘Comfort ye ... Ev’ry valley shall be exalted’. Lots of other people in everyday dress – all different, attesting to considerable effort on Moritz Junge’s part, however dubious the end... – come on to mill around for the first chorus. And I must not forget the hyperactive child who runs around for a great deal of the proceedings. Whether he is doing Warner’s bidding or his own thing, I neither know nor care. Doubtless some people, sentimental at the very mention of children and animals, found this winning; I wished I had a revolver to reach for. For some reason, the child collects in the pieces of paper almost as soon as Ainsley has handed them out. Perhaps this signals that we are not going to proceed along the usual track; perhaps it signifies nothing at all. We see a photographed scene from a school nativity play for the nativity itself. From time to time, depictions of Christ and other ‘ordinary’ faces appear on screen. Nothing seems to bear any relation to anything else. I can only assume that these are various facets of the ‘community’ to which the programme makes repeated reference: good for New Labour-style ‘inclusivity’, ‘access’, and other such buzzwords, I suppose.

The second part is worse still. Banal dance routines become more common. (Again, they seem very well delivered by the dancers; it is certainly not their fault.) The opening numbers feature a strangely literalistic, albeit bloodless, representation of scourging and so forth, whilst members of the ‘community’ look on. ‘All we, like sheep,’ displays lots of people scurrying up and down escalators at what appears to be Liverpool Street station. ‘Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron’ appears to show a camp display of conjuring: more ‘community entertainment’ perhaps? After that, the ‘Hallelujah’ chorus simply has people walk around and hug each other, as if it were a particularly lame Home Counties celebration of New Year’s Eve, before all coming together – ‘community’? – at the front of the stage, to face the audience. To have ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’ sung from a life-support machine is risible enough, but then slowly to have the sun rise and other people get up from their hospital beds, as we hear of the Resurrection of the dead, is downright offensive in the banality of its ‘response’ to the text: a bizarre form of secular, content-free televangelism. People I had not seen before venture on stage towards the end of the final ‘Amen’ chorus. One resembles the late Bea Arthur; another, I was unsure whether this ‘character’ were male or female, is a Clare Short lookalike.

Is there any good news (let alone Good News)? The singing was better than the staging. Catherine Wyn-Rogers was excellent, even if I missed a deeper contralto sound, such as one used to hear. Sophie Bevan was very good too: singing ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’ lying in a hospital bed was, in its way, impressive. Ainsley, however, was underpowered – try Jon Vickers for size here – and his feyness in the aforementioned ‘Thou shalt break them’ was merely embarrassing. Brindley Sherratt made a reasonable job of the bass part, though he could sometimes sound constricted, and struggled with ‘The trumpet shall sound’. (Unfortunately, its middle section was included, as were many of the traditionally ‘optional’ numbers.) Treble Harry Bradford was a most welcome addition, taking on the ‘Nativity’ numbers with musical intelligence and winning purity of voice. All soloists displayed excellent diction. The choral singing was often surprisingly ragged, especially amongst the female voices. Thus what should be the real location of ‘community’ amounted to very little.

Last and, in a way, least was the lamentable conducting of Laurence Cumming. Never have I heard the slow introduction to the Overture sound so lacking in import and, indeed, rhythmically slack. Tempi were either rushed or drawn out almost beyond endurance, with no apparent justification in either sense. The ‘Pastoral Symphony’ sounded unrecognisable, over in less than the twinkling of an eye. To make the ‘Hallelujah’ chorus so underwhelming requires a perverse skill, I suppose, but not one deserving of wider dissemination. Perhaps most infuriating of all was the reduction of what has so often proved to be a fine orchestra to the sound of an especially malnourished ‘period’ band. I could not see how many musicians were in the pit, but they sounded few; what managed to emerge was thin gruel indeed. Devotees of ‘period style on modern instruments’ will doubtless hail this achievement; I cannot understand what the point of using modern instruments would be, if one is intent upon ignoring or suppressing their manifold advantages. Weird kettledrums and short-breathed, out-of-tune brass sounded as if they actually were period instruments. The difficulties experienced by the trumpeter in ‘The trumpet shall sound’ seemed to confirm that beyond reasonable doubt.

Recently, Warner seemed entirely to miss the point of Brecht in her National Theatre production of Mother Courage. The weird rock-star presentation of the anti-heroine was embarrassing enough, but the attempt, magnificently realised by Fiona Shaw, to render her sympathetic was at best misguided. Again, a largely middle-aged, middle- class audience lapped it up. Now Warner seems entirely to have missed the point of Messiah, the clue perhaps lying in the work’s title. Strangely enough, the opening curtain displayed dictionary definitions of the word and a brief etymology; perhaps the director might have taken the trouble to read them, or even, perish the thought, the text and the score. Warner says that she is ‘not someone who would be queuing for the choral society’s annual performance in the local church’. Perhaps if she had shown a little respect for what used to be, and perhaps still is, a true sense of ‘community’, she might not have gone so wildly astray. I know which queue I shall join next time.