Carmen, English National Opera, 9 February 2023

Coliseum

Carmen – Ginger Costa-Jackson
Don José – Sean Panikkar
Micaëla – Carrie-Ann Williams
Escamillo – Nmon Ford
Zuniga – Keel Watson
Moralès – Christopher Nairne
Frasquita – Ellie Laugharne
Mercédès – Niamh O’Sullivan
Dancaïro – Matthew Durkan
Remendado – Innocent Masuku
Lillas Pastia – Dean Street
Mercédès’s daughter – Fatima Hammad

Children’s Chorus and Additional Chorus

Chorus (chorus director: Mark Biggins) and Orchestra of the English National Opera

Kerem Hasan (conductor)

Images: Adiam Yemane

Whatever happened to Calixto Bieito’s Carmen? I have seen it twice previously at ENO, in 2012 and 2015, and enjoyed it greatly. It has been revived since in London, but it dates back to the 1999 Festival Castell de Peralada and has been seen at a number of houses, Barcelona, San Francisco, and Oslo included. Maybe it has just had its day; with occasional, intriguing exceptions, few things date so quickly as stage productions. I think it is probably more than that, though. By the time of its third ENO revival, the link with Bieito seems tenuous, as if those involved would rather be at work on a new production, a production of their own. We are left with sets and costumes that have often lost their freshness, in seems to be quite a different overall approach, sitting uneasily, even incoherently, with Bieito’s radicalism: a softer radicalism, admittedly, than in many of his stagings, yet radicalism nonetheless. Sadly, many of the objects of Bieito’s critique have either more or less disappeared or found themselves (unwittingly?) transformed into objects of appreciation. 

One looks in vain for any real sense, beyond the uniforms, that this might be the dying days of Franco’s Spain – and uniforms, especially in a drama involving army officers, are hardly restricted to that time and place. The violence is more generalised, less clearly motivated. These are, it seems, simply a bunch of nasty people, Don José included. It is a point of view, I suppose, yet not to my mind an especially illuminating one. Perhaps more seriously, the idea of ‘Spain’ as a perpetual, arguably degenerating recreation, dating back to this opera and beyond seems to have been replaced by a taking at face value, if not quite celebration, of the tackiness and tourist vulgarity at which Bieito took aim. This Carmen now often seems less designed for the Opéra Comique, more to be straining at the commercial West End – without ever quite being able to fill the vast space of the Coliseum as would surely be necessary if taking, however misguidedly, that route. That said, the ballet of the fourth act retains much of its force and bite. 

A vicious toxic masculinity remains, even on occasion continues to shock: Don José striking Micaëla and verbally abusing her as she departs, for instance, that first scene surely echoed at the close when he brutally slits Carmen’s throat. But surely there is more to Carmen, indeed more to Don José, than that. One need not necessarily go down DmitriTcherniakov’s route, decentring Carmen and transforming the opera into Don José’s therapy session, fascinating, provocative, and rewarding though that was. A degree greater sympathy, or at least searching, for all the characters would not have gone amiss here.

 

More consistently strong performances might have helped. One principal towered above the others, Sean Panikkar’s Don José. The range of his performance, vocally and dramatically, came close to an object lesson, even within parameters that have become unsympathetic. He acted as an energising presence for others too. Rarely, moreover, have I heard such clear diction in this theatre’s cavernous spaces. If that brought the shortcomings of an oddly unsettled English translation more strongly to the fore, that is firmly the fault of that translation. (And really, Carmen in English is ultimately not a very good idea.) Ginger Costa-Jackson’s Carmen grew in stature as the evening progressed, at her strongest (wonderfully acted here) when later showing fear and vulnerability, strangely patchy earlier on. 

A lively, charismatic stage portrayal from Nmon Ford’s Escamillo was not always matched vocally in the lower range, but there was no doubting the commitment of the performance. Carrie-Ann Williams’s late-substitution Micaëla had its moments, more in the third act than the first, but never quite settled. There were, truth be told, several rather mixed performances, and one, the Zuniga, in which the singer seemed lacking, whether on the night or more fundamentally, in the necessary vocal equipment. Fortunately, Christopher Nairne’s Moralès (another late substitution), as well as Ellie Laugharne and Niamh O’Sullivan Frasquita and Mercédès, offered highly convincing, individual performances in their smaller roles.

The ENO Orchestra, meanwhile, was on excellent form, offering precision, warmth and sheen in near-equal (where appropriate) measure. Conductor Kerem Hasan’s tempi were well chosen and communicated, with plenty of drive and tenderness as the score required. The chorus and additional chorus did good work in all that was asked of them. I just wish the parts, many of them good, had added up to a more satisfying theatrical experience, as had been the case previously, whilst noting that mine seems to have been a minority view.

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 Turn of the Screw, Opera Holland Park, 1 July 2014

Holland Park

The Governess – Ellie Laugharne

Peter Quint – Brenden Gunnell
Mrs Grove – Diana Montague

Miss Jessel – Elin Pritchard

The Prologue – Robin Tritschler

Miles – Dominic Lynch

Flora – Rosie Lomas

Annilese Miskimmon (director)

Leslie Travers (designs)

Mark Jonathan (lighting)

City of London Sinfonia

Steuart Bedford (conductor)

The absurdity of last year’s Britten over-saturation seemed to prove to the converted that their hero conquered all; to the rest of us, it confirmed us in our scepticism or, better, selectivity. Opera Holland Park did well to defer its first staging of a Britten opera until this year, and did better still to select The Turn of the Screw, by some distance the finest of the composer’s operas. It is not entirely free of the mere cleverness that bedevils many of Britten’s other scores, but the commands of construction and form keep that and other shortcomings more or less in check throughout. Indeed, the dialectic between the serial turnings of the screw and the development of the story, the impedimental and yet ultimately generative grit thereby ensured, are as much part and parcel of the drama as the ghost story itself.

A successful staging should recognise that as much as a successful performance; at the very least, it will not stand in the way. Anniliese Miskimmon’s production seems to me to do just that. It provides space for the score to ‘turn’, not in a hands-off abdication of responsibility, but with stage direction that treads a properly uneasy – and properly productive – line between freedom and determinism, an antimony lying at the root not only of many a philosophical problem, but equally many a dramatic problem. Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron is surely the operatic exemplar in that respect, but Britten’s great respect for the Austrian master (as well as for his pupil, Berg, whose closed forms in Wozzeck have such profound implications for The Turn of the Screw) tends in any case to underpin, audibly and visually, his stronger works. What might on occasion therefore seem an uncertainty as to how the Governess is reacting, what she will do, is actually better understood as an indication of the extent to which she is trapped. Likewise with the premonitions of past and future, the latter presented by the directorial innovation of an old-fashioned, blackboarded schoolroom in Leslie Travers’s excellent designs, starkly atmospheric, with room for the drama to emerge from between the cracks. The regimented processions of schoolboys seek not, or at least so it seemed to me, to hammer home a point, but to present a possibility for reflection. Who are they? Are they ‘real’, whatever that might mean? Do they evoke a past, whether the work’s or the composer’s, a present, or a future? Again, they work in tandem with the score.

It is more or less impossible for us, especially in the light of recent and ongoing legal cases, not to pick up on the barely suppressed paedophilia in Britten’s opera. That is not shied away from, especially in the case when Miles, quite unsensationally, apparently quite ‘naturally’, removes his shirt, ready for his bath. But again, the point is not hammered home; it is perfectly possible for a production successfully to highlight this element, as indeed did David McVicar’s superlative ENO staging, but it is not the only way. Here, the space left for reflection enabled the possibility at least – it is largely up to the audience member whether to take it up – of asking him- or herself the difficult questions concerning personal and social complicity. To what extent is ‘childhood’ an adult, even voyeuristic, construct? Again, the construction of the opera, just as much as biographical knowledge, suggests answers that many will not want to hear.

Musical performance is most crucial of all, of course, in enabling the heightened state at which we might be compelled to ask ourselves such questions. I was slightly disappointed – and surprised to be slightly disappointed – at Steuart Bedford’s conducting of the first act. It certainly was not bad, and I suspect that there was an element of becoming used to the acoustic: both for the performers, with an audience, and for us in the audience too. But everything seemed tighter after the interval. The cruel, glistening beauty of Britten’s score registered more powerfully in the City of London Sinfonia’s now-expert performance; so too did the deadly constructionism of the composer’s musico-dramatic method. I should very much have liked to hear the first act again, if only to discover whether a second performance would have emerged the more tightly, or whether indeed the failing had been mine.

At the heart of the drama stood Ellie Laugharne’s Governess. Her helplessness and her goodness – not saccharine, but human – came across powerfully indeed, torn as she was between incompatible, maybe impossible, paths to take. Brenden Gunnell’s Peter Quint was eerily, at times frighteningly seductive: all too easy to succumb to, all too difficult to pin down with simplistic oppositions between ‘real’ and ‘imaginary’. As his accomplice – or is she that at all? – Elin Pritchard’s Miss Jessel added a feminine complication that seemed intriguingly wilder. The compromised ‘normality’ of Diana Montague’s Mrs Grose registered with startling immediacy, little short of a master-class in the role. Robin Tritschler’s Prologue contributed ambivalence and ambiguity from the outset: perhaps not an unreliable narrator, but one we at least asked ourselves whether we should trust. As the children, Dominic Lynch and Rosie Lomas both impressed greatly. Lynch’s Miles conjured up just the right sort of all-too-pure innocence, disconcerting and provocative in context, as surely it was for Britten. Lomas’s Flora offered an interesting foil, slightly controlling, productively poised between ‘childhood’ and something else. It is difficult, of course, to discern precisely where personal performance ends and directorial conception begins; but that is the hallmark of a fine opera production. This is certainly one of the finest performances I have witnessed at Opera Holland Park.