Festival d'Aix-en-Provence (1) - La Calisto, 7 July 2025

Théâtre de l’Archevêché

Images: Festival d’Aix-en-Provence 2025 © Monika Rittershaus

 
Calisto – Lauranne Oliva
Giove – Alex Rosen
Diana – Giuseppina Bridelli
Endimione – Paul-Antoine Bénos-Dijan
Giunone, L’Eternità – Anna Bonitatibus
Linfea – Zachary Wilder
La Natura, Pane, Furia – David Portillo
Mercurio – Dominic Sedgwick
Destino, Satirino, Furia – Théo Imart
Silvano, Furia – José Coca Loza

Director – Jetske Mijnssen
Set designs – Julia Katharina Berndt
Costumes – Hannah Clark
Lighting – Matthew Richardson
Choreography – Dustin Klein

Dramaturgy – Kathrin Brunner  

Ensemble Correspondances

Sébastien Daucé (conductor)

Opera’s relationship to broader social and political movements is, like that of all cultural phenomena, complex, though sometimes clearer than in other cases. This holds at least as much for performance as for creation. Chance – the right person or persons at the right time, or indeed the wrong person(s) at the wrong time – can always play a role, albeit usually in combination with other factors. The world of seventeenth-century Venetian opera, of late Monteverdi and his pupil Francesco Cavalli, doubtless held a particular appeal for the Europe (and United States) of the Sixties and Seventies and changing social mores: women’s and gay liberation, repudiation of monogamy, and so on—just as the increasingly popular Così fan tutte did. Yet so did the singular figure of Raymond Leppard. Without him, it is difficult to imagine Cavalli having reached Glyndebourne when he did: first L’Ormindo (1967-8, on the back of Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, and receiving a subsequent guest visit to Munich in 1969) and then La Calisto (1970, 1971, and 1974, with guest appearances in the UK and continental Europe in the meantime). We should probably have approached Cavalli’s music at some point otherwise, yet this was the path taken. Leppard’s landmark recordings of those two operas, combined with editions and performances of other works, did much to establish them in a public consciousness that itself seemed ready for their decidedly un-Victorian (indeed un-1950s) morality. The final duet of Poppea is a locus classicus of ‘amoral’ conclusion, or rather elevation of ‘love’, desire, whatever you wish to call it, over all else; it was of course almost certainly not composed by Monteverdi and may indeed have been the work of Cavalli. At any rate, it sets the scene nicely for works such as La Calisto, given an intriguing, feminist directorial twist at its close here by Jestke Mijnssen. 

If the route has taken inevitable detours, Cavalli may now be heard regularly across the world. The Festival d’Aix-en-Provence gave L’Erismena in 2017, a welcome opportunity, though La Calisto is to my mind the more interesting and involving opera (and here received a considerably superior production and performance). That Glyndebourne Calisto was of course one of Janet Baker’s great triumphs, in the role of Diana. mercifully captured for the rest of us on record with Leppard, the London Philharmonic, and a generally splendid cast. We can hear there an absorbing conception of what Cavalli might sound like and once did, yet we should generally resist nostalgia and concentrate on what we might do today, a task rendered easier by what may well be the finest performance of an opera on period instruments I have experienced in the flesh. It also takes its place in that fraught yet fascinating history of why Cavalli’s works in general and this in particular might hold appeal to audiences at certain times, offering a far more erotic experience than any other I can recall, whilst still inevitably pointing to historical difference. The world of La Calisto is not ours, whether in morality or conceptions of gender, though it probably comes closer than it does to the worlds of La traviata or Tosca. 

Consciously or otherwise (it does not really matter), that tension came through in Mijnssen’s staging. Initially I wondered, without especially minding, why it had been updated to a sumptuous eighteenth-century, to a world of a decadent nobility redolent of Les Liaisons dangereuses, yet it became clear that this was intended to invoke – and did – a world of experimentation in sexual attraction as well as luxury and decadence almost for their own sake. Bored, cruel gods become bored, cruel aristocrats, perhaps thereby awaiting their comeuppance. With a set from Julia Katharina Berndt, whose impression of wood panelling conveys foundations of more than a century earlier, more general distance from and roots in that earlier period are readily apparent. Social differentiation is clear in the case of Endimione, a commedia dell’arte singer performing for the pleasure of his divine audience: at their mercy (or not). It seems, however, less clear in the case of Calisto, whose dress suggested equality with the gods. Perhaps that is the point, yet if that were the case, I am not sure why it not so across the board. It is nonetheless clear in her punishment by Giunone, transformed not into a bear, it seems, but a pauper in sackcloth: perhaps the ultimate disgrace, whether in lack of wealth or implied penitence. Hers, it seems, might actually be a Christian presence in a world ruled by depraved paganism.

Otherwise, games, disguises, transformation, and violence extend from beginning to end, especially at the hands of the shepherd Endimione’s sylvan persecutors: bookended by a prophetic funeral, gods in mourning, and a closing scene in which, to our shock and the gods’, Calisto turns on Giove and kills him. The scene frozen, funeral music sounds. Is this the death of Giove in human form – it seems more than that – or a fuller death enabled by his transformation into human form? If the chief of the gods dies – can die – what might the future hold? More awkward are questions of gender transformation. A production cannot be held entirely responsible for audience reaction, of course, and there was a certain element that would probably have found male assumption of female roles, let alone a male god assuming his daughter’s form, intrinsically hilarious, no matter what; I fear some such people might even have felt and reacted similarly to any suggestion of lesbianism. That said, especially in the case of gender fluidity, the production was not entirely innocent of encouragement. That may have roots in the work; it certainly has roots in the story of Cavalli’s Venetian operas. If, though, we could have a feminist twist, a broader gender twist might also have helped. Another plus, though: we had dancing, even when comedic, that listened to and responded to the music rather than merely inflicting itself upon it. Many thanks to choreographer Dustin Klein for that rarer-than-it-should be boon. 

Sébastien Daucé led the Ensemble Correspondances with flexibility, a keen sense of dramatic narrative, and an equally fine sense of sensuality: just what was called for—and without a hint of dogmatism. A splendidly varied – always with discernible reason – continuo group proved the foundation on which much else rested, including what may well be the sweetest toned ‘period’ strings I have heard whilst retaining capacity for delicacy, and cornetts that managed both to affect and to hold their tuning in the outdoor theatre of Aix’s archepiscopal palace. I only read this afterwards, but how refreshing to hear an early-music conductor take into account just what needs to be in performance: ‘On that basis – i.e. all these different scenarios that remain open in the score – we will come up with a theoretical line-up, an adaptation of the counterpoint, of the intermediate parts, etc., but without ever touching what already exists.’ 

That latter point may be thought conservative by some standards, yet it is far from absurdly so. More important, ‘this adaptation means that our version will sound less like the one performed in Venice in 1651 than the one that might have been performed instead of Ercole amante in Paris in 1661 [1662, but no matter],’ commissioned by Cardinal Mazarin in celebration of Louis XIV’s marriage to Maria Theresa of Spain.

The idea is to have a five-part score that makes greater use of the instrumentalists and is suitable for an outdoor venue with a capacity of around 1300. When it was premiered, there were an average of 100 people per evening. While we cannot simply apply a coefficient based on the number of spectators, because the acoustics also play a role in how the music is heard [Amen to that!], it is safe to say that there will be at least ten times as many instrumentalists, i.e. an orchestra of 60 musicians. We are not quite there yet, but that is the idea! …until we have tested them at the Archevêché, we won’t know if we have too many or too few of this or that instrument. 

It is refreshing not only to read those words, but also and all the more so refreshing, stimulating, and frankly overdue to hear their musical results in a world that still mostly insists on pitifully small forces quite unmatched to performing spaces, let alone to twenty-first-century ears. I hope to hear more from Daucé and his ensemble, who whilst not in any meaningful way sounding ‘like’ Leppard and his, seem more attuned to his and to the work’s creators’ creative, more properly historical anti-puritanism than the greater part of what we have heard over the intervening half-century. 'Inauthentic' yet atmospherically Mediterranean percussion leading us into the interval would surely have surprised Leppard, yet made him smile. Cavalli too, I should like to think.

A good number of the cast will be familiar to those who have seen earlier instalments of seventeenth-century Venetian opera, Monteverdi and Cavalli, in Aix, so much so that one can almost speak of an Aix Venetian ensemble with a mutable core, rather as once one could for Salzburg and Mozart. That experience tells, I think, as does its developmental nature. All singers seemed fully at home in Giovanni Faustini’s libretto, Cavalli’s response, and that of their twenty-first production and musical team too. Lauranne Oliva gave a touching performance of the title role, growing in steel, yet ultimately true to the character’s innocence, well supported as elsewhere by Hannah Clark’s costumes. Alex Rosen’s necessarily multifaceted Giove took in not only counter-tenor assumption of Diana’s form, but increasingly strong hints of something deeper than his fellow deities might have understood. Diana herself benefited from a comprehending, flexible assumption, divine yet what we know as human, from Giuseppina Bridelli, notwithstanding loss of opportunity to act as Giove. Anna Bonitatibus offered an imperious star-turn as Giunone, lifting every scene in which she appeared insofar as that were possible. Dominic Sedgwick’s Mercurio was quite the energising presence, indeed properly mercurial. My pick of the rest would have to include Paul-Antoine Bénos-Djian’s truly human, lovelorn Endimione and a strutting, peacock Satirino from his fellow countertenor Théo Imart. This premiere, however, showed that however clichéd the expression may be by now, this was a company performance, very much more than the sum of its appreciable parts from 1651 onwards.

L'Egisto, HGO, 5 June 2021

The Cockpit

Egisto – Martins Smaukstelis
Climene – Astrid Joos
Lidio – Alex Pullinger
Clori – Caroline Taylor
Hipparco – John Holland-Avery
Amore – Helen Lacey
Semele, Bellezza, Hora Seconda – Charity Mapletoft
Venere, Dedra, Hora Quarta – Oliva Carrell
Dema – Emily Kyte
Volupia, Didone, Hora Terza – Helen Daniels James
La Notte – Laurence Gillians

Marcio de Silva (director, lighting)
Madeline de Barrié (assistant director)
Christian Hey (designs)

HGO Baroque Orchestra

Marcio da Silva (music director)


HGO (formerly Hampstead Garden Opera) led the way after the first lockdown with opera’s return to London, in the guise of an outdoor performance of Holst’s Sāvitri at Lauderdale House. Five miles or so away, at Marylebone’s Cockpit Theatre, it proved if not quite the earliest, then one of the earliest, to return to the fray this time round, with Francesco Cavalli’s (and Giovanni Faustini’s) L’Egisto of 1643.


The second of Cavalli’s collaborations with Faustini, L’Egisto proved influential and popular beyond Venice, travelling to Naples and many other nascent centres of opera across the Italian peninsula. It even travelled with Cavalli to Paris, to be performed in 1646 at the behest of Cardinal Mazarin, determined yet frustrated in his every attempt to establish Italian opera on a permanent basis in the French capital. (Mazarin would later commission Cavalli’s Ercole armante for Louis XIV’s marriage to Maria Theresa of Spain, though neither opera nor théâtre à machines was ready in time. It would be performed two years later, in 1662, Cavalli’s Xerse quickly substituted—and highly popular.) The renaissance in Cavalli’s fortunes, if not quite initiated by Raymond Leppard, then nonetheless incalculably in his debt, saw L’Egisto among the earlier Cavalli operas to return to the stage, Leppard realising the work for Santa Fe in 1974 and Scottish Opera eight years alter. Marcio da Silva, acting both as stage and music director, now gives a reading for our time, doubtless less lavish than Leppard’s, but our moment is hardly one given to lavish operatic presentation. Rightly or wrongly, it tends to favour ‘original instruments’ and a less ‘interventionist’ approach than what Jane Glover described, in her review of Leppard’s score, as ‘look[ing] upon the surviving material rather as a lump of modeller’s clay, which he [Leppard] moulds skilfully into shapes which he knows will please modern audiences. In so doing, he departs from original practice, often quite violently.’


There was certainly no such violence here, whether in the pit or on stage. Given in the round, the boundary was not in any case entirely distinct, though there was no dramatic mixing of function to match that combination of roles in our dual director’s case. The ebb and flow of the score and its realisation—or whatever we want to call it—by Marcio da Silva and Cédric Meyer very much complemented the scenic action, presented in some ways simply, yet far from neutrally. A small yet colourful band—harpsichord, organ, lute, baroque guitar, two violins, gamba, cello, two recorders, and sparingly employed percussion—did not suggest, at least not in this small, socially distanced theatre, that Cavalli’s music cried out for more. Rather, it furnished a crucial harmonic backdrop of imagination, against which the human voice could be heard and human gesture seen. If I cared less for the folk-like excursions now expected in early opera performances of a certain school, they were rare and clearly relished by the players, whose pleasure it would be churlish unduly to begrudge. With Sebastian Gillot, assistant music director, at the keyboard, much was possible and realised in aural tapestry, but also much was offered in support to the singers, the continuo ensemble flexible enough to be reinforced with a minimum of fuss where necessary.


A staging that relied on distance, on separation, and on mischief and anguish in their wake was doubtless developed with our current predicament in mind, yet fitted very well with a plot in which two couples, separated, must find, recognise, and learn to love one another again (though do they?) The passing of a single day, respecting the old dramatic unities, is symbolised by the passage of the sun above (this Egisto a descendant of Apollo, not the Aegisth we know from Elektra). Curtains of separation that could be seen through, or not, did much that was necessary. Singing to and past each other, touching or, more often, failing to do so, spoke to us clearly yet far from clinically. Touches of blood-red brought colour with dramatic impact predicated on an overall economy of means. Elements of cross-dressing reminded us of where Cavalli, much to Leppard’s sorrow, ended up: ‘plots … of such a ridiculous complexity that it is doubtful if anybody could ever have known, or cared, what was happening on the stage once the disguises had got under way’. But with Faustini, as Leppard remarked in the liner notes to his recording of L’Ormindo, Cavalli ‘responded to the best libretti with his best music’.


To make it so, of course, requires not only sensitive continuo realisation but also sensitive—and dramatic—vocal artistry. Here a number of singers excelled, showing considerable stage gifts too. Martins Smaukstelis was first among equals as Egisto, wounded, external heroism and inward anguish expressed by all manner of subtle gradations. Astrid Joos as Climene and Caroline Taylor as Clori offered complement and contrast in their soprano roles, expression lying very much within the precision of their performances. Helen Lacey’s Amore schemed and sulked by turn, vocally and visually. This was, however, very much an ensemble piece, with all involved, musical and directorial teams alike, contributing to the musico-dramatic whole. Recommended—even without the bonus of drinks brought to your seat. There are two, alternating casts; I saw the second.

Prom 26: Prohaska/Il Giardino Armonico/Antonini - Purcell, Graupner, Sartorio, Handel, Costello, Cavalli, and Hasse, 2 August 2018

Royal Albert Hall

 

Purcell: Dido and Aeneas: Overture and ‘Ah! Belinda, I am pressed with torment’
Christoph Graupner: Dido, Königin von Carthago: ‘Holdestes Lispeln der spielenden Fluthen’
Antonio Sartorio: Giulio Cesare in Egitto: ‘Non voglio amar’
Matthew Locke: The Tempest: ‘The Second Musick: Curtain Tune’
Sartorio: Giulio Cesare: ‘Quando voglio’
Graupner: Dido: ‘Der Himmel ist von Donner … Infido Cupido’, ‘Agitato da tempeste’
Handel: Concerto grosso in C minor, op.6 no.8
Handel: Giulio Cesare in egitto: ‘Che sento? Oh dio! … Se pietà di me non senti’
Dario Costello: Sonata no.15 in D minor
Cavalli: Didone: ‘Re de’ Getuli altero … Il mio marito’
Hasse: Marc’Antonio e Cleopatra: ‘Morte col fiero aspetto’
Purcell: The Fairy Queen: ‘Chaconne – Dance for Chinese Man and Woman’
Purcell: Dido and Aeneas: ‘Oft she visits this lone mountain’, ‘Thy hand, Belinda … When I am laid in earth’
 

Anna Prohaska (soprano)

Il Giardino Armonico
Giovanni Antonini (conductor)
 

In this, her Proms debut, Anna Prohaska offered something akin to a cantata of two queens, complementary and contrasted: Dido and Cleopatra. Returning in a sense to her ‘early music’ roots – her career has always been far richer, more varied, but that world has always played an important part – she collaborated with the Italian ‘period’ ensemble, Il Giardino Armonico and Giovanni Antonini. It made for a splendid late-night concert, a fine mix of repertoire familiar and (to me, at any rate) unfamiliar, any minor reservations I may have entertained relating entirely to the orchestra and conductor. Prohaska, if I may be forgiven for saying so, crowned herself queen of this repertoire, notwithstanding the frankly unpromising surroundings of the Royal Albert Hall.

 

We began, as indeed we should end, with Purcell, with Dido and Aeneas: one of the very greatest of English operas and indeed of ‘Baroque’ operas, if that problematical term may be held to mean anything at all. ‘Tristan und Isolde in a pint pot,’ that legendary conductor of what was then not quite ‘early musicke’, Raymond Leppard, called it. There was no question from the Overture that Antonini was more at home with these, ‘his’ musicians than he had been with members of the LSO Chamber Orchestra in a concert last year at the Barbican. For one thing, the acoustic was kind to the instruments, lessening intonational problems, which were in any case rarely grave. Resplendent, regal in gold, our soprano walked onto the stage as the Overture drew to a close, ready to give a rich-toned, clear, beautifully ornamented account of Dido’s first number. Here, as elsewhere, what struck me about her ornamentation, aside from the awe-inspiring ease with which it and any other coloratura were despatched, was how it did not really register as ‘ornamentation’. It was musical and indeed verbal expression, created seemingly on the spot. (Whether that were actually the case is neither here nor there.) Her lightly acted performance also proved just the ticket. In homage perhaps to Goldilocks, another queen of sorts, it was neither too much nor too little.

 

Christoph Graupner’s Singspiel for Hamburg, Dido, Königin von Carthago (1707), was quite new to me. It is one of those curious – to our ears, yet not necessarily to those of the time – works written in German and Italian, standard Italian arias doing their thing whilst the action was largely advanced in the vernacular. I should certainly be keen to learn more. The Egyptian princess Menalippe’s ‘Holdestes Lispeln der spielenden Fluthen’ proved vividly pictorial. One could almost see – one could certainly hear – those rippling waters through ravishing instrumental playing. This may be too early and the wrong country too, but Poussin more than once came to my mind. When later Prohaska turned to the Queen of Carthage herself, we heard first a German accompagnato (‘Der Himmel ist von Donner Keylen schwer…’) followed by its Italian aria, ‘Infido Cupido’. This was very much music written and communicated in the terms of early eighteenth-century opera seria. Hearing it in this particular context, we understood both its roots in earlier opera and much of what distinguished it from its predecessors too. Prohaska’s stylistic awareness is never a sterile thing, ‘dogma’ in the slightly misleading popular understanding of the term; it is and here was always put to expressive, dramatic use. Much the same might be said of her performance of the tempest aria that ensued: of a genre yet not over-determined by it.

In between the Graupner excerpts, we heard music by Antonio Sartorio and Matthew Locke. The former’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto contains, according to the programme note, no fewer than sixty-five arias. Prohaska gave us two, ‘Non voglio amar’ and ‘Quando voglio’, the first furious – with foot-stamping – and, that inescapable word, tempestuous. I could not help but wonder whether the musicians might have been better off without a conductor in the first; Antonini looked a little awkward and the results might have been a little freer. No harm was done, though, and his provision of a recorder obbligato in the latter aria offered winning counterpoint to the woman of desires revealed by our queen of song. The Locke excerpt offered an ineffably ‘English’ contrast, much of it mysteriously veiled, harking back to the days – still current, of course, yet somewhat old-fashioned – of the viol consort.

 

Handel was next on the menu. Antonini’s way with the Concerto grosso, op.6 no.8, made me long for something a little grander, a little more aware of harmonic motion. This is, after all, orchestral music. Tastes being what they are today, that was never likely to be the case, though. I liked the way the Siciliana, its fifth movement, harked back in context to the seventeenth century. A hard-driven account of its Allegro successor proved less welcome. Handel’s own Giulio Cesare followed, its libretto derived by Nicola Francesco Haym from that of Giacomo Bussani for Sartorio. What a wonderful idea – obvious, one might think, yet unusual – it was to offer excerpts from both operas. In Cleopatra’s ‘Che sento? Oh dio! … Se pietà di me non senti’, Prohaska’s shading to dramatic ends opened up a new creative, expressive world. I felt – and I suspect much of the audience did likewise – a window into understanding of the queen’s character had been opened wide, even just by this account of a single aria. More please!

Dario Castello’s D minor Sonata, published in 1629, performed its bridging role well. It is perhaps not especially thrilling music, but it has its moments of interest; it also benefited, I think, from being given as chamber music, without a conductor. Moving forward a few years, yet remaining in Venice, we heard from Cavalli’s Dido, Prohaska adopting just the right – to my ears, at least – slightly post-Monteverdian air. (Yes, the great man was still alive in 1641, but that is hardly the point.) I can hardly offer greater praise than to say that her singing brought Frederica von Stade to mind, both in command of line and in its generosity of spirit. Hasse’s aria, from his Marc’Antonio e Cleopatra, sounded very much again from the world of later opera seria. Prohaska’s coloratura probably deserves another endorsement here: impeccable, both ‘musically’ and ‘dramatically’, not that the distinction is especially meaningful.

 

And so, we returned to Purcell. The Chaconne from The Fairy Queen had me long for Britten’s more generous way with such music, yet unquestionably it danced. A vivid narration from Dido and Aeneas, the Second Woman’s ‘Oft she visits this lone mountain’, was imbued with quite the sense of drama, given brevity and (relative) lack of context. Dido’s Lament was sung with expressive freedom that never approached licence, a reminder of Leppard’s Tristan­ designation, dignified without a hint of sentimentality. As an encore, we heard ‘Fear no danger to ensue’, the duet part taken by Antonini on recorder. A lovely concert, then, but in the best sense an educative one too. Bildung, one might say, is an excellent thing indeed.

 

Festival d’Aix-en-Provence (5) - L’Erismena, 15 July 2017

Images: Festival d’Aix-en-Provence 2017 © Pascal Victor / artcompress

Théâtre du Jeu de Paume

Erismena – Francesca Aspromonte

Idraspe – Carlo Vistoli

Aldimira – Susanna Hurrell

Orimeneo – Jakub Józef Orliński

Erimante – Alexander Miminoshvili

Flerida – Lea Desandre

Argippo – Andrea Bonsignore

Alcesta – Stuart Jackson

Clerio Moro – Tai Oney

Diarte – Jonathan Abernethy

Jean Bellorini (director, lighting, set designs)

Véronique Chazal (set designs)

Macha Makeïeff (costumes)

Cappella Mediterranea

Leonardo García Alarcón (conductor)

Whose first thought when Cavalli is mentioned is anything other than Raymond Leppard? Certainly not mine. Whilst many, indeed pretty much all, such associations will be simplifications of varying degrees of grossness, and some bizarrely, often chauvinistically, incorrect – Bernstein and Mahler, for instance – Leppard’s role in the rediscovery and revival of Cavalli’s operas can hardly be gainsaid. What I should have given to hear one of his imaginative, luscious realisations in the flesh. Much has changed in the meantime, of course: save for the very occasional actual ‘reorchestration’, it has long been a capital offence to perform seventeenth-century music on modern instruments. I suppose we should be grateful that the fatwas of ‘authenticity’ have extended less frequently towards staging, although the vaguely ‘stylish’ mishmash that often results tends at best to be a mixed blessing.

What we saw and heard here was much in that line, and proved enjoyable enough in its way, although I could not help but wish that something more daring had been attempted. The theatre itself, the Théâtre du Jeu de Paume, is a delight. However modernist one’s view of other matters may be, the growth of opera houses into outsize monsters should surely be deplored by all. Presumably someone will object that it is an eighteenth-century theatre; in which case, kindly get thee to seventeenth-century Venice and leave the rest of us in peace. Leonardo García Alarcón and his small, yet far from shy, Capella Mediterranea played in the accustomed ‘we’re Mediterranean and thus “sensual”’ style, or alternatively, ‘sex please, we’re not Christopher Hogwood’ – which is certainly preferable to, well, Christopher Hogwood and other puritans. It is, though, all a bit predictable after a while, not nearly so ‘interesting’ or indeed ‘sensual’ as it thinks it is – or, indeed, as audiences in thrall to ‘authenticity’ have been trained to believe it is. Have a ‘colourful’ continuo group, turn as much as you can into dance music, accompany that with a good deal of silly dancing on stage, hint at largely spurious parallels to other traditions, be they folk, jazz, anything other than the dread ‘symphonic’, and you are ‘counter-culturally’ away.

It is a business, of course, and it has succeeded greatly in those terms, not least by its ruthless suppression of the ‘competition’. And unlike those frankly unlistenable-to Northern European puritan forerunners – the Leonhardts, Goebels, Hogwoods, et al. – it is in many respects welcoming. Perhaps it is too much so, or at least too complacent in its remarkably non-reflective conception of history. (Nikolaus Harnoncourt was an exception in that latter respect; his greatest problem was a peculiar inability to phrase.) There is more, though, to ‘Mediterranean’ culture, and indeed there is more to Cavalli, than that. Moreover, violin intonation was sometimes little short of excruciating, although no one else seemed to mind.

Whatever one’s thoughts on the orchestra and conducting (how ‘inauthentic’!) though, the singing was excellent. A young cast, with acting abilities largely to match, held the drama, such as it is, in its hands and projected it with the vocal excellence that has long been the trump card of so much of the ‘early music’ movement. If I were compelled to single out one soloist, I should unhesitatingly opt for the bright, clear, and yes, sensual countertenor of Jakub Józef Orliński; it was a great pity he did not have more to sing. But this was a true company achievement. Orliński’s countertenor companions, Carlo Vistoli and Tai Oney also greatly impressed, each voice and character ‘naturally’ differentiated from the others. So too did Susanna Hurrell’s Aldimira and Stuart Jackson’s properly outrageous nurse-in-drag, Alcesto. There is a good deal of ensemble writing here, yet I cannot recall a single case of problematical balance.

Jean Bellorini’s staging falls into the aforementioned stylish-‘modern’ category. No particular point of view or framing seems apparent. Clothes are ‘modern’ and a good deal of attention is productively paid to movement and interaction. Again, though, I could not help but think that something a little more than having light bulbs  disintegrate at critical moments might have been done with the opera. For it is, frankly, difficult to care too much about the characters and their fate; this is neither Monteverdi nor top-drawer Cavalli. There is probably too much silliness; Leppard, anything but humourless, nevertheless remarked upon an all too easy tendency towards disguise and cross-dressing for the sake of it in a good number of Cavalli works. Indeed, Leppard was actually highly selective concerning those he selected for editing and performance. We, however live, for better or worse, in an age of completism. Not that that problem arose here; this is an opera eminently worth performing. Perhaps, though, at some stage, it might be done in a realisation and staging a little more interested in stretching our eyes, ears, and minds.

Prohaska/Arcangelo/Cohen - Lachrimae, 2 August 2015

Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

Dowland – Lachrimae Pavane

Tarquinio Merula – Hor ch’e tempo di dormir
Purcell – The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation
Cavalli – Gli amori d’Apollo e di Dafne: ‘O più d’ogni richezza’
Giovanni Felice Sances – Usurpator Tiranno
Purcell – Sonata in G minor, Z.807, from Ten Sonatas in Four Parts
Strozzi – Diporti de Euterpe, op.7: ‘Lagrime mie’
Dowland – Flow my Tears
Strozzi – Che si può fare
Salomone Rossi – Sonata terza sopra l’aria romanesca
Purcell – The Fairy Queen: ‘The Plaint: O let me weep’
Scarlatti – Sonata in D minor, K.90, arranged for violin and continuo
Cavalli – La Calisto: ‘Restino imbalsamate’
Purcell – An Evening Hymn

Anna Prohaska (soprano)

Arcangelo
Jonathan Cohen (director)

I apologise that this will not be a ‘review’ as such. That is not primarily because Anna Prohaska, the soloist, is a friend of mine. (I think a lot of nonsense is spoken about such things. It is the nature of things that, sometimes one has to write about a performance, a book, a musical work by someone one knows. It may in some ways render the task more difficult, but it may also afford insights. Honesty is the best policy here – and indeed anywhere else.) However, I was unable to buy a programme – the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse ran out very soon, and only offered them again for the second half, which struck me as extortion – and was thus unable to follow the texts and translations, and indeed in many cases was unaware what was being performed. Quite a good test of one’s ear in many ways: I was delighted to recognise one of Cavalli’s two arias and to guess that he was the composer of another (from a work I thought I knew, but which I clearly do not know well enough!) I was still more delighted to hear works by Barbara Strozzi, whose music I have long admired, but whom we hear far too little: alas, we all know why. I wanted simply to post the programme, discovered from Arcangelo’s website after the event, to remind me what I had seen and heard.

 

If you will permit me – and even if not – I should like to say that Anna gave an intensely dramatic performance, quite befitting the theatrical location. I very much liked the way the various works fitted together and suggested moods and even narratives greater than the sum of their parts. A hint, and sometimes more than that, of the wilder world of the Mediterranean was sometimes present, especially in Strozzi’s music. (I know I am being ungrateful, but a little Monteverdi would have been greatly appreciated too. When, however, would that not be the case?) Moreover, whilst I am, as any regular readers will know, anything but a paid-up member of the period-instrument lobby, I found Arcangelo’s performances, on their terms and indeed often on mine, mostly highly convincing, even if I could not quite work out what an arrangement of a Scarlatti keyboard sonata was doing there. The Playhouse is, whatever its acoustical problems for the performers, an interesting and, yes, beautiful space; I look forward to seeing a play or an opera there. I shall stop now, lest this turn into an actual review, whatever that might be…

Giasone, English Touring Opera, 4 October 2013

 

(sung in English, as Jason)

Image: Richard Hubert Smith
 

Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music

Giasone – Clint van der Linde

Medea – Hannah Pedley
Isifile – Catrine Kirkman
Ercole – Andrew Slater
Apollo/Demo – Peter Aisher
Deifa – Michal Czerniawski
Egeo – John-Colyn Gyeantey
Oreste – Piotr Lempa

Ted Huffman (director)

Samal Blak (designs)
Ace McCarron (lighting)

Old Street Band

Joseph McHardy (conductor)

 

Once again, one can only applaud English Touring Opera’s sense of adventure – and commitment. Its autumn season comprises three Venetian operas: L’incoronazione di Poppea, Giasone, and Agrippina, all in translation. Francesco Cavalli’s Giasone, or Jason, offered perhaps the most enticing prospect: an opera whose historical importance can hardly be gainsaid, and yet which we rarely have chance to hear. Giasone came more or less in the middle of the astonishing period from 1639 to 1666, in which Cavalli composed no fewer than forty operas. This drama musicale to a libretto by the Florentine poet, Giacinto Andrea Cicognini, their only such collaboration, was the tenth and the most popular of Cavalli’s stage works, indeed the most frequently performed of all seventeenth-century operas. Ellen Rosand’s New Grove entry lists, following the first, 1649 carnival performance at Venice’s Teatro San Cassione, possible performances in Milan as soon as 1649 and 1650 and in Lucca in 1650; moreover, published libretti attest to revivals, as Rosand’s list continues, in 1650 (Florence), 1651 (Bologna), 1652 (Florence), 1655 (Piacenza), 1658 (Vicenza), 1659 (Ferrara and Viterbo), 1660 (Milan and Velletri), 1661 (Naples), 1663 (Perugia), 1665 (Ancona), 1666 (Brescia), 1667 (Naples), 1671 (Rome, as Il novello Giasone, edited by Stradella), 1672 (Naples), 1673 (Bologna), 1676 (Rome, again as Il novello Giasone), 1678 (Reggio), 1685 (Genoa, as Il trionfo d’Amor delle vendette) and 1690 (Brescia, as Medea in Colco). Given that the history of seventeenth-century opera is often far more the history of libretti than music, a surprisingly large number of those performances have bequeathed scores to us. It may even have reached Vienna, and though we know nothing of this particular opera having reached English shores, a score of Cavalli’s Erismena in English translation suggests some degree of knowledge of the Venetian master’s œuvre. Such, at any rate, was the fame of Giasone, that it also became a rare example of an opera inspiring a play rather than the other way around.

 

ETO’s production is severely cut, lasting just over two hours (including an interval), offering slightly less than half of the work, if one judges by the duration (3 hours, 55 minutes) of the recording by René Jacobs (so far as I am aware the only such recording). There were times when I could not help but wonder how much we might have benefited from hearing more, not simply in musical terms, but also in terms of progression of the plot and development of characters. By the same token, however, dramatic continuity was for the most part admirably maintained; one experienced far more than a mere ‘taste’. We should also do well to remind ourselves that the concept of the musical work with respect to the seventeenth century is unstable and problematical. We are not dealing with Tristan und Isolde here. One loses something in translation, too, no doubt, but Ronald Eyre’s version proves admirable: rich in vocabulary, as Anthony Hose’s programme appreciation noted, and in wit.

 

Such would go for nothing, of course, without performances to match. I cannot deny my preference for modern instruments. However, if I may try to leave that upon one side, not least in light of the sad impossibility of today hearing seventeenth-century-repertoire so performed, the Old Street Band offered a generally spirited account, intermittent sourness in the strings notwithstanding. Continuo playing was for the most part colourful without veering into exhibitionism, Joseph McHardy’s direction of ensemble from the harpsichord well-paced and alert both to shifts and continuity in register – that ever-fascinating relationship between aria, recitative, and what comes in between. As Raymond Leppard once put it, Cavalli, ‘of all his contemporaries, never lost sight of the early ideals of recitative as a form of intensely heightened speech which, more than the aria, formed the basis for operatic effectiveness. And at his best, although in a different way from Monteverdi, his arias and ariosos grow out of and merge into the recitative-like jewels set in a crown, but not separate from it.’ And in Rosand’s words, this time in the programme, the arias of Giasone, ‘are specifically justified by the dramatic circumstances: rather than undermining verisimilitude, they promote it.’ Both of those observations fitted very well with my experience in the theatre, no mean feat.

 

The singers must also take a great deal of credit for that. Clint van der Linde pulled off very well the tricky task of portraying a compromised, even at times weak, character without vocal compromise or weakness. Indeed, his countertenor Giasone offered a fascinating blend of vocal strength and character fragility. Hannah Pedley and Catrine Kirkman proved just as successful as his twin loves, Medea and Isifile: credible characters of flesh and blood, emotionally as well as dramatically convincing. The travesty role – always popular in Venetian opera of this time – of Delfa offered another opportunity for a countertenor to shine, in this case Michal Czerniawski. Piotr Lempa displayed to good effect his deep bass as Oreste, though some of his vowels went a little awry. Peter Aisher, a Royal College of Music student, was a late replacement for an ailing Stuart Haycock as Apollo and Demo; he took a little time to get into his stride, the Prologue being somewhat barked, but as time went on, showed considerable musical and theatrical ability.

 

Ted Huffman’s production mostly lets the action speak for itself. I was not quite convinced by the mishmash of styles in terms of designs, whilst appreciating his aim ‘to create a world that is neither classical nor contemporary, but rater an invented world, constructed from recognisable historical elements’. Abstraction might have worked better in that case, for inevitably one begins to wonder why someone is dressed in clothes of a certain period and someone else in those of another. Yet such matters do not really distract, and the conversion of Samal Blak’s set for the first act into that for the second proves both economical and dramatically effective. The decay of Lemnos during the absence of the ‘hero’ and the waiting of his wife is instantly, powerfully conveyed. Stage direction is for the most part keenly observed, the balance between comedy and darker emotion well handled.  Documentation is excellent too, the programme offering a general essay by Guy Dammann, as well as individual pieces on the three operas of the season.

 

ETO’s autumn tour takes in London, Rochester, Snape, Malvern, Crediton, Bath, Harrogate, Durham, Newcastle, Buxton, Sheffield, Warwick, Cambridge, and Exeter. Click here for details.