Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, ENO, 16 February 2026

Coliseum

Images: Tristram Kenton

Announcer – The Company
Leokadja Begbick – Rosie Aldridge
Fatty the Bookkeeper – Mark Le Brocq
Trinity Moses – Kenneth Kellogg
Jenny Smith – Danielle de Niese
Jimmy MacIntyre – Simon O‘Neill
Jack O’Brien – Elgan Llŷr Thomas
Bank-Account Billy – Alex Otterburn
Alaska Wolf Joe – David Shipley
Jenny’s Girls – Joanna Appleby, Deborah Davison, Sophie Goldrick, Ella Kirkpatrick, Claire Mitcher, Susanna Tudor-Thomas
Jenny’s Boy, A Cloud – Damon Gould
Jenny’s Boy, A Typhoon – Adam Taylor
Toby Higgins – Zwakele Tshabalala

Director – Jamie Manton
Designs – Milla Clarke
Lighting – D.M. Wood
Choreography – Lizzi Gee, Spencer Darlaston-Jones
Sound design – Jake Moore
Intimacy and fight coordinator – Haruka Kuroda

Chorus and Additional Chorus of the English National Opera (director: Matthew Quinn) 

Orchestra of the English National Opera

André de Ridder (conductor)

In Berlin’s Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof, one of my favourite cemeteries, Hegel lies buried—as, very close, do Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel, as do many others. Brecht’s Chausseestrasse house and the room in which he worked overlooked that cemetery; the Marxist Brecht expressly chose it out of increasing fascination with Marx’s single most important intellectual forerunner, GWF Hegel. One summer, I lived ten minutes’ walk away and visited regularly. Karl Marx, of course, lies in another celebrated cemetery, in another great world city: Highgate in London, further from anywhere in London I have lived, yet not so far in the greater scheme of things. This tale of ‘my’ two cities, of two cemeteries, of three dead men and more – ‘Nothing you can do will help a dead man’ – shaped my experience of this new ENO production of The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, not least since I had seen Mahagonny only two months previously, in Berlin, in Barrie Kosky’s Komische Oper staging. 

In capitalist society as in its artistic production, then as now, the grit lies in contradiction. What Hegel the divined as ontology, Marx situated in particular social and economic conditions. We are not obliged to choose; both indeed may be true or at least contain truth. In any case, following in both Hegel and Marx’s wake, Brecht and Kurt Weill’s Mahagonny offers an illuminating instantiation of some of these contradictions: not only in subject matter but in aesthetics and its implications for performance and reception. Some art fails because it simply is not very good, or at least is not well presented. The contradictions here, though, are of a different nature, not to be smoothed over, concealed, or reconciled, but to be such stuff as dreams are smashed on—as indeed is patently the case wherever we look in our present social and political predicaments. No wonder, then, that this new ENO production, the last, I believe, before the company’s move to Manchester, is replete with more general resonance than those personal, albeit connected elements with which I began. 

The contradiction between advertisement and reality is key to the Mahagonny and the Mahagonny we visit with Jamie Manton and his team, yet so is the form of production we can all see – and hear – if only we open our eyes and ears. In the ‘real’ world, ideology mystifies, obscures, yet never quite conceals; here, contradiction is perhaps more glaring, but that is the (Brechtian) point. It all goes back to a lorry, a box of theatrical tricks. (In what I think is pure coincidence, it put me a little in mind of the van in Frank Castorf’s Bayreuth Ring, though vehicular function may hold something in common.) Great claims are made for the city the unholy trio – less a trinity than in Kosky’s staging with c.1930 religious symbols – have built. Perceived desire and demand play their part, whether for whiskey or women—and, in a welcome update, men too. Sex workers rather than prostitutes, Jenny’s girls and boys are available to all, though the outcome does not change. Any declaration of love is not necessarily entirely hollow, but its truth is fleeting and contradicted by the destructive self-interest of all (save, perhaps, the founding mother and fathers). Even the whiskey is diluted by grim recycling that suggests what comes out one end will go back in the other. 

But it is not all grime and grimness: there would be no contradiction then. There is Weill, of course, on whom more soon, but there is also a lively sense of fun, of entertainment: not necessarily unmediated, but what is? There are plenty of witty moments to occasion a wry smile or more, whilst the framing – the Coliseum’s staging and technical equipment a container for, in turn, the container – reminds us this is theatre. Announcements are made by alternating members of the company, part Brechtian remnant with loudspeaker, part Handmaid’s Tale entertainment imitation. (Before the interval, that is; after, they are more clearly themselves, unmasked.) And whilst the production in general shies away from specific contemporary reference – we can hardly fail to make it – the trial as gameshow surely gives the Trumpian game away. Resourceful designs impart a sense both of using what was to hand and also of what one might see, or have seen, at the Berliner Ensemble. In the contradiction between expectation and reality, a weathervane (we have plenty of them in our world) tapdancing hurricane points the way to just destruction of the city, only suddenly to change direction in a triumph of the knowingly underwhelming that prefigures God’s forlorn, defeated attempt to visit justice on this world at the end, drawn out Weill’s Bachian chorales bleakly yet thrillingly subverting Christian passion. Likewise, a cloud dances in counterpoint to Weill’s delicious parody of overwrought, out-of-tune Romantic salon music, edging out Jimmy’s act in more ways than one. 

For the tension and indeed contradiction between Brecht and Weill will, should always lie at the heart of this work and its performance. Can, should music do what Brecht seems to imply it should? Where does that leave the songs, the tunes, the band? André de Ridder, music director designate, drew out biting and seductive playing from the ENO Orchestra. One could sympathise with Jimmy on his last night, traduced and betrayed, as for once strings soared, but not too much—and then it was over. Structurally, closed forms – how they do (and do not) add up to more – were clear and did far more than reproduce those of the libretto. It can be all too easy hearing Weill in the twenty-first century to succumb to nostalgia for a ‘Weimar’ that never was. Here, edge was maintained without entirely denying us pleasure; banjo and Hawaiian guitar could be heard amidst ominous, bass-led hemming in. If only Jeremy Sams’s translation could have decided what it wanted to be and stuck with it, much would have bitten still more savagely. Much was good, but there were too many instances that simply jarred, and the crucial Biblical element to Brecht’s writing was too often lost. 

One less productive contradiction, at least for me, lay between operatic voices and miking. The Coliseum has never offered an ideal acoustic for opera, but here balances were too often awry. The chorus suffered more than most, words sometimes more or less inaudible. Rosie Aldridge and Danielle de Niese offered nicely contrasting and complementing female leads, equally at home in more operatic moments and something closer to the street, both fine singing actors. Simon O’Neill proved a tireless Jimmy, ably supported by his friends, Alex Otterburn, Elgan Llŷr Thomas, and David Shipley. Alongside Kenneth Kellogg and Mark Le Brocq, all offered individual performances founded on the text and on a recognition that the text has contradictions of its own, not least between words and music. Ultimately, I found there was in all respects no need to choose: Berlin and London offered different experiences, in contrast, complement, and yes, contradiction. In some ways, the latter, perhaps ironically, seemed the more Brechtian in its reluctance – refusal would be too strong – to concede to opera, even in Weill’s idiosyncratic conception. It was, in any way, a properly barbed, defiant way for ENO to bid us au revoir. 

Mozartists/Page - Haydn, Applausus, 15 March 2018

Cadogan Hall

Haydn: Applausus, Hob. XXIVa:6 (UK public premiere)

Ellia Laugharne (soprano)

Elspeth Marrow (mezzo-soprano)

Thomas Elwin (tenor)

John Savournin (bass-baritone)

David Shipley (bass)

It is not every day one attends a Haydn premiere, even if only a UK public premiere. Haydn’s Applausus, written 250 years ago, for the fiftieth anniversary of a Cistercian Abbot’s vows, seems never to have been performed again until 1958, for a BBC studio recording under Harry Newstone, the soprano one Joan Sutherland. (She must have relished the coloratura!) Despite a few performances elsewhere in the meantime, and three recordings, it does not seem to have been performed in concert in this country until now.

Was it worth the wait? Unquestionably, although I fear that contemporary audiences, longing for superficially ‘exciting’ substitute film music, will not necessarily react kindly or even comprehendingly to a celebration of monastic virtues on a suitably monastic time-frame. There is no plot of which to speak; the work might almost be characterised as an allegory without an allegory. There can certainly be no questioning the quality of the music in this cantata. (Would it fare any better if we called it an oratorio, the two terms being more or less interchangeable? Hummel, after all, recorded The Seasons as an ‘oratorio’ in his 1806 catalogue of the Esterházy collection.) Conductor Ian Page offers sage advice, moreover due food for thought, when he writes, ‘If an aria is beautiful, why should it bother us if it lasts for more than ten minutes? If the same line of text is repeated a couple of dozen times, how do these repetitions affect us as we consider and contemplate the text? How should we best prepare ourselves for the experience of listening to a complete performance of the work?’ It would be interesting to know how it would fare in an abbet such as that at Zwettl, in Lower Austria, for which it was written. How would the acoustic and the visual experience of the architecture shape our experience? In the meantime, though, this concert hall experience gave a fine account. So too did Classical Opera’s splendid documentation, the concert programme a model of its kind, with an excellent note by Page, as well as an important reproduction of a letter by Haydn concerning the work.

By way of an introduction to the opening recitativo accompagnato, we heard, as seems often to have been the case in the work’s relatively few performances, the first two movements of Haydn’s Symphony no.38 in C major. Hand on heart, my preference remains for modern instruments in such music, but it is always good thing from time to time to revisit one’s preferences and prejudices, and I found much to jolt me from ‘modern’ complacency in the sound, especially from the wind instruments. The Mozartists, Classical Opera’s ‘period’ band, certainly sounded preferable to my ears to the current, peculiar fashion for mixing and matching modern and period instruments. Even the echoes of the second movement, marked by a certain intonational fragility, were well shaped enough to render that fragility more touching than anything else. And there was something to the sound, here and elsewhere, that brought the music close to the world of the eighteenth-century – and not just Haydn’s – Missa solemnis figuraliter, trumpets, drums, and all. The opening of that first recitative, moreover, seemed to speak of Handel, even if this were similarity rather than influence as such. (The period of Handel’s true influence on Haydn, nurtured by Gottfried van Swieten’s Vienna concerts of alte Musik, lay a good few years in the future.)

By the time we reached the first quartet, ‘Virtus inter ardua quaerit habitare,’ there was, moreover, little doubt concerning the quality of the soloists either. The coordination and blend of their often highly melismatic writing was second to none. Ellie Laugharne’s silver-toned soprano and Elspeth Marrow’s richer mezzo proved well matched and contrasted; Thomas Elwin’s fresh, truly Mozartian – for that matter, Haydnesque – tenor proved fully equal to the extraordinary challenges Haydn afforded him, especially later on in two highly ornate arias of truly ‘heavenly length’. John Savournin’s bass-baritone and David Shipley’s bass likewise offered a pleasing degree of comtrast, the former truly coming in to his own in the rage aria, ‘Si obtrudat ultimam,’ the latter ably handling the fascinating tonal plan of the first aria of all, ‘Non chymaeras somnitatis’. Harpsichordist Steven Devine and violinist Steven Devine offered fine solo work too. Throughout, one could only marvel at the care lavished by Haydn on this more or less unknown music, never to be heard again in his lifetime. Page’s tempi were judicious; this is not music to be hurried, let alone harried, nor was it in practice.

The closing chorus, here taken as quintet, is an ‘Amen’ in all but name – and words. It is a delightful one at that, and proved a true culmination, a point of arrival. ‘I hope,’ Haydn wrote in the aforementioned letter, ‘that this Applausus will please the poet, the worthy musicians, and honourable revered Auditorio, all of whom I greet with profound respect.’ It certainly pleased this member, honourable and revered or otherwise, of the Auditorio, who hopes against hope that he will not have to wait too long until the next audition.

The Lighthouse, Royal Opera (Jette Parker Young Artists), 22 October 2015

Samuel Sakker as First Officer, Yuriy Yurchuk as Second Officer. David Shipley as Third Officer. All images: (C) ROH. Photographer: Clive Barda

 

 

Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House

Sandy, First Officer – Samuel Sakker

Blazes, Second Officer – Yuriy Yurchuk
Arthur, Third Office – David Shipley

Greg Eldridge (director)

Alyson Cummins (designs)
Warren Letton (lighting)
Jo Meredith (movement)

Southbank Sinfonia

Jonathan Santagada (conductor)

 

 

Peter Maxwell Davies’s chamber opera, The Lighthouse, made an excellent showcase for three singers from the Royal Opera’s Jette Parker Young Artists Programme. More to the point, they made an excellent case for the opera, which has been fortunate indeed in London over the past few years.

 

The opera, as I wrote when reviewing English Touring Opera’s 2012 production, has the gripping quality of a superior detective – and ghost – story. Inspired, as the cliché has it, by a true story, in this case an account from Craig Mair’s A Star for Seamen: The Stevenson Family of Engineers, the opera’s unsettling mix of courtroom drama, in almost modern televisual terms, and all-too-real (or is it?) Revelation-style apocalypticism presents both narrative and self-critique, verbally and musically. It makes sense out of, or at least deals with contradictory ‘truths’ – and the magpie tendencies, which yet synthesise, of Davies’s score lie at the heart of that achievement. Words and music from characters in ensemble come together to present something that may or may not be more or less truthful than what it is they and we think they are saying individually. The difficulties of the three men’s relationship – they have been penned together for several months – is menacingly conveyed, though not without affection either. Parody is present, of course, most evidently in the reimagination of the ballads – a street variety from Blazes and Sandy’s sickly drawing-room version – and hymns. Arthur is the sort of pig-headed Protestant fundamentalist who has always drawn Davies’s ire, but there is an element again of affection, such as memories so often bring in spite of themselves, as well as anger in Davies’s presentation and subversion of the hymn tunes. The rhythm of the closing automation – ‘The lighthouse is now automatic,’ we hear at the end of the Prologue – sounded as stubbornly memorable as ever in this performance from the Southbank Sinfonia and Jonathan Santagada.

 

Their performance had been a little hesitant at first. Indeed, a lack of definition at times, mostly from the strings, had made the Prologue drag somewhat. There were no such problems in ‘The Cry of the Beast’, in which the players and Santagada seemed very much in their element, a far more colourful and rhythmically alert performance. In that screwing up of dramatic tension, the orchestra seemed at one with Greg Eldridge’s period staging: straightforwardly presented, yet seething with menace later on. Alyson Cummins’s designs proved a major contributor, likewise Warren Letton’s lighting; in Eldridge’s words, he and his designer had ‘tried to capture the dichotomy between the naturalistic action and the heavy supernatural elements present throughout the score. In the world of the music everything is metaphor and this sis a theme that we have continued in our design. Everything on the stage … is physically real … but also serves a representative purpose that underscores a symbolic element of the story.’

 

Within that staging – that imprisonment, we might say – our singers brought the drama to life. Samuel Sakker’s lyric tenor covered an array of musico-psychological states as Sandy. He even pulled off the difficult trick of questionable singing – in the ballad – as character portrayal, rather than from inability to sing it ‘right’. Yuriy Yurchuk’s diction was on occasion a little occluded, yet for the most part his was a powerful performance as Blazes, again encompassing a good deal of musical and dramatic virtuosity (to refer to a concept the composer has suggested is necessary, and surely is). David Shipley’s Arthur was possessed of as well as by frightening fanaticism, all founded upon a splendidly deep bass voice. Interaction between all three soloists was convincing throughout. I look forward to hearing them again.