The Snowmaiden, English Touring Opera, 29 September 2024

Hackney Empire

Snowmaiden – Ffion Edwards
Lel – Kitty Whately
Kupava – Katherine McIndoe
Mizgir – Edmund Danon
Spring Beauty – Hannah Sandison
Grandfather Frost, Bermyata – Edward Hawkins
Tsar Berendey – Joseph Doody
Bobyl – Jack Dolan
Bobylikha – Amy J Payne
Spirit of the Wood – David Horton
Masienitsa – Neil Balfour
Tsar’s Page – Alexandra Meier

Director – Olivia Fuchs
Designs – Eleanor Bull
Lighting – Jamie Platt

Choral Ensemble
Orchestra of English Touring Opera
Hannah Quinn (conductor)

Images: Richard Hubert Smith
Snowmaiden (Ffion Edwards)

English Touring Opera’s new season opened, as is now customary, at the Hackney Empire, with an excellent follow up to its 2022 production of The Golden Cockerel in the guise of Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snowmaiden, both given in English and sharing some of their casts. Although there were, unsurprisingly, other points held in common, these ultimately proved very different works and productions, one from the early years of his operatic career (written 1880-81), the other his final completed opera (1906-7). Together, they pointed once again to the treasure trove awaiting curious audiences and performers in works that tend, admittedly, to be uneven in their achievement, yet are rarely if ever without interest. Here we saw – and heard – a folkloric passage from winter to spring that inevitably brought to mind Rimsky’s greatest pupil and his cataclysmic Rite, with a more tender heart than many might have come to expect. 

In ETO’s new version, Rimsky’s setting of Alexander Ostrovsky’s play is considerably cut, so that if one could hardly compare it to the concision of Janáček’s later Ostrovsky setting, Katya Kabanova, it certainly does not outstay its welcome. Interestingly, Tchaikovsky composed incidental music for the 1873 premiere of the play, sometimes employing the same folksong melodies. The work is reduced in another, perhaps even more fundamental way; instead of the typical large orchestra – no one would deny Rimsky’s mastery of orchestration – it is given by a very small one, with two strings per part (only one double bass), mostly single wind (two clarinets and horns), timpani, harp, percussion and keyboard instruments. In many ways, it offers a different standpoint on the composer. Some of this is doubtless the orchestral reduction, but some, I think, is a matter of earlier style. It was often a more Tchaikovskian Rimsky, a composer closer to earlier rather than later Wagner, with some characteristics difficult to place, yet, aside from somewhat characterless arioso writing early on, always of musical interest, if not always as we might have expected from later works. 

Snowmaiden, Lel (Kitty Whately)

Clarinet solos (Sascha Rattle) especially caught the ear: again, partly the writing, but partly the excellence of playing. And the folk derivation of some material intrigues without the undue repetition that can sometimes be the case when it makes its way into art music. Throughout, Hannah Quinn led orchestral and vocal forces in a fresh, direct account of the score. If big moments such as the third-act betrothal kiss necessarily lost some of their sensual quality, dramatic loss was surprisingly small. By that stage, we had listened our way in, and the fundamental musical method of structuring had firmly implanted itself in our consciousness. It may not be a ‘symphonic’ work in the way we understand that idea from Wagner – though nor is it trying to be – but there is interesting motivic development, as well as a good deal of ‘Russian’ lyricism. 

Alasdair Middleton’s English translation served the singers and audience comprehension well. Ffion Edwards gave a touching account, warm and precise, of the title role, with Katherine McIndoe a true, characterful foil as her friend-turned-rival Kupava. Kitty Whately made a fine impression as Lel, whether in expression of his youthful temperament or his role as conduit for song. Edmund Danon’s darker portrayal of Mizgir, keenly alert to his moodswings and their larger import, was equally successful. Joseph Doody’s Tsar Berendey, eye-catchingly frock-clad, presided over proceedings with graceful presence and elegance of line. Hannah Sandison’s compassionate Spring Beauty (Snowmaiden’s mother), Jack Dolan’s bluff Bobyl, and Edward Hawkins’s versatile dual turn as Grandfather Frost and Bermyata also stood out, but there were no weak links in the cast, who worked very well together. 

Olivia Fuchs navigated well the twin demands of telling what to most would be an unfamiliar tale whilst saying something with and about it. Russian, fairytale, and ultimately human lines of development came together in the figure of the Snowmaiden who yearns to love, yet cannot since her heart is made of ice. A strong sense was imparted of roots in the strife of her parents, Spring Beauty and Grandfather Frost, justifying at least dramatically what was perhaps less interesting in ‘purely’ musical terms. It merged more or less seamlessly with the long-desired passage of winter into spring and also, as Fuchs noted in the programme, allowed us to ‘reflect on our changed relationship with, and societal alienation from, nature’s cycles as well as our interference with them’. This was accomplished lightly rather than with overt didacticism, in a resourceful, suggestive staging that will travel to theatres of different sizes across the country. On top of that, a more feminist – or less misogynistic – twist was given, so as to save the central protagonist from merely being ‘rescued’ by a man who had ill-treated her. Here, then, was a tale of transformation in multiple, connected ways.

 

The Golden Cockerel, English Touring Opera, 5 March 2022

Hackney Empire Theatre

King Dodon – Grant Doyle
Prince Guidon – Thomas Elwin
Prince Aphron – Jerome Knox
General Polkan – Edward Hawkins
Amelfa – Amy J Payne
Golden Cockerel – Alys Mererid Roberts
Queen of Shemakha – Paula Sides
Astrologer – Robert Lewis

James Conway (director)
Neil Irish (set designs and costumes)
Rory Beaton (lighting)

Chorus and Orchestra of English Touring Opera
Gerry Cornelius (conductor)

No one could have known at the time of planning—a couple of years ago, I think—but in current circumstances it was eerie, even uncanny, to sit down to a performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s final opera, The Golden Cockerel. Composed in the aftermath of the disastrous Russo-Japanese war and only premiered, following extended disputes with the censor, in 1909 after Rimsky’s death, it portrays a lazy king persuaded once again to defeat in war following claims, once again, of enemy incursions at the borders of his realm. King Dodon and his two sons are, to be blunt, idiots; their advisors, official and otherwise (the Golden Cockerel, brought as an Astrologer’s gift) are not necessarily any better. A foreign queen who conquers the realm through conquering the king’s heart stands a little close to home too. Situations differ, of course, but it would have been strange indeed not to draw contemporary parallels, if only in hope that a cockerel might come to peck Russia’s latest autocrat to death. ‘What will the new dawn bring? What shall we do without a tsar?’ 

I found it fascinating, if not entirely convincing. In Iain Farrington’s extremely skilful chamber reorchestration, one would often not have known—at least up in the gods—that one was not hearing a larger orchestra. Rimsky’s meeting-point between the folkloric and more modernist, Stravinskian tendencies, mediated as so often by darker, Wagnerian roots, both delighted in itself and posed intriguing dramatic questions of its own, not least in combination with Pushkin. Gerry Cornelius’s command of detail and sweep in the score impressed greatly, as did the playing of the English Touring Opera orchestra. If the referential motivic elements of the composer’s writing sometimes seemed a little obvious, that was hardly a fault of the performance. The English translation by Antál Dorati and James Gibson sounded very dated, making the opera sound unfortunately close to Gilbert and Sullivan. Thank goodness we have now gone beyond attention-seeking rhyming couplets. 

Alas, the second act seemed considerably over-extended for its material. Whenever Rimsky comes closer to Verdi—as, for instance, in The Tsar’s Bride—his musical drama becomes less appealing to me, often bordering on the tedious. Overall proportions to a relatively brief work are a little odd, or felt so. That said, James Conway’s colourful yet darkening, subtly militarising staging offered a sense that knowing orientalism must by now offer its own self-critique—which may just offer us hope. The Astrologer, oddly uncredited in the cast list yet ultimately revealed in the biographies to be Robert Lewis, underwent a final revelation on stage as holy man Rasputin to the Queen’s Tsarina Alexandra. They were the only ones who had actually existed, the rest an illusion (as we had been warned, yet had probably forgotten). Make of that what you will. 

Lewis certainly made the most of his ritualistic appearances dramatically and vocally: a memorable assumption. Grant Doyle offered a fine comedic performance, with rich hints of something darker, to King Dodon, as verbally acute as it was centred of tone. Thomas Elwin and Jerome Knox shone, insofar as the work permitted, as the king’s useless, sailor-suited sons, contrasted and complementary. So too did Paula Sides’s Queen of Shemakha with bewitching coloratura and beguiling lyricism. All roles were cast from strength, detailed portrayals from the company at large contributing to a pervasive sense of barbed merriment. Closer interpretation was largely and, I think, fruitfully left to us.

Idomeneo, English Touring Opera, 8 March 2019

Hackney Empire Theatre

Images: © Richard Hubert Smith

Ilia – Galina Averina

Idamante – Catherine Carby

Idomeneo – Christopher Turner

Arbace, High Priest of Neptune – John-Colyn Gyeantey

Elettra – Paula Sides

Voice of the Oracle of Neptune – Ed Hawkins

James Conway (director)

Frankie Bradshaw (designs)
Rory Beaton (lighting)

Chorus and Orchestra of English Touring Opera

Jonathan Peter Kenny (conductor)

The greatest miracle in operatic history? On balance, I tend to think so. The distinction of Idomeneo’s forebears, be they operas of Mozart, Gluck, or anyone else, ‘reformist’ or otherwise, is too readily overlooked. Nevertheless, the leap from La finta giardiniera to Idomeneo remains a challenge to explain – or, better, a mystery at which to marvel, in which to rejoice. I remember, as an undergraduate, once noting an examination question with a quotation something along the lines of ‘It is impossible to explain the quantum leap Wagner took from Rienzi to Der fliegende Holländer,’ followed by the injunction, ‘Nevertheless, make the attempt.’ Something similar might be said here, and Wagner is surely the only comparable case; I wonder, though whether Idomeneo might not offer a miracle still greater.

Idamante (Catherine Carby), Chorus, Ilia (Galina Averiana)

Speaking of miracles, English Touring Opera does not come so very far off with a production and performance that, considered as a whole, mark the finest I have seen. We do not live in a golden age of Mozart stagings, nor do we live in a golden age of Mozart conducting; most likely, such golden ages never existed in the first place. There are exceptions, though, just as there most likely always have been. Idomeneo nonetheless seems to have proved particularly unlucky – or perhaps I have been particularly unlucky with it. If Jonathan Peter Kenny’s direction of the keen ETO Chorus and Orchestra occasionally seemed to err a little on the bright and bubbly side – this is, after all, a work as much in the tradition of tragédie lyrique as anything else, and one Mozart wished, in the case of subsequent revision to take further in that direction – then there remained, once past the strangely perfunctory opening bars, much to admire. Admirably flexible, there was enough in Kenny’s conducting to convey the dramatic power and dazzling originality of Mozart’s intimations of so much nineteenth-century practice: orchestral colour (yes, with roots in Gluck, even Rameau, yet peering forward to Weber, Berlioz, and beyond), and both a shorter- and longer-term harmonic strategy, the latter married to Wagnerian dissolution of formal boundaries and consequent alternative, often sonata-led constructivism, that at the very least rival Don Giovanni. Slight roughness around the edges was a price well worth paying for such musico-dramatic commitment.

Elettra (Paula Sides)

Much of that came, of course, from the singers, more than a match for any other cast I have heard in the theatre. Christopher Turner’s Idomeneo was certainly the best I have heard: vulnerable, thoughtful, utterly secure of line, and possessed of all the necessary vocal firepower, wisely deployed. Galina Averina and Catherine Carby made for a beautifully matched, yet also contrasted, Ilia and Idamante, moral examples through struggle, without a hint of didacticism. Paula Saides’s Elettra proved little short of sensational, an object lesson in the combination of line, colour, and dramatic involvement to create in time something so much greater than the sum of its parts. John Colyn-Gyeantey combined the thankless role of Arbace with the slight role of the High Priest. A little confusingly, the roles were elided rather than simply sung by the same artist, but that was not his fault. Coloratura was, throughout the cast, deployed not only with accuracy but with meaning; much the same might be said of ornamentation.

Idomeneo (Christopher Turner)

James Conway offered a typically resourceful production: not only, of course, for the Hackney Empire, but for a host of theatres up and down the country, many of them in towns that will otherwise see and hear no opera all year. He proceeded from trusting the work, from seemingly – however much of a theatrical illusion this may be – permitting it to speak for itself. Costumes, lighting, facial expressions, especially from the chorus of Trojans and Greeks, hinted at the political backdrop, without reducing the work to the all-too-easy, if understandably appealing conception of a ‘wartime drama’. A Mediterranean, even Cretan setting was likewise apparent, without dominating or overwhelming. This was above all a drama of sacrifice, in the line of Antoine Danchet’s original Idomenée at least as much as the Abbé Varesco’s revision (much transformed by an often frustrated Mozart). Lest that all sound a touch too werktreu, an excellent twist, drawn out of the drama rather than imposed upon it, was brought to us in Elettra’s final attempt to hold Ilia hostage, perhaps even to slaughter her.

The only real disappointment one might have entertained lay in the considerable cuts visited upon the score. If I could live with them, I suspect anyone of good will would also have been able to do so. Richard Strauss, after all, conducted far more drastic surgery, especially to the recitative, eliminating the harpsichord entirely – alongside, of course, acts of wholesale recomposition. Might I have preferred to hear a more ‘complete’ version, leaving aside for the moment the lack of what we – or Mozart – might consider a definitive text? (Many would consider the Munich ‘original’ preferable to the single Vienna performance; I should broadly, not without qualification, agree.) Of course. That, however, is quite beside the point. Within all manner of unavoidable constraints, not least the needs of touring, it would have to have been this, something like it, or nothing at all.

Idamante and Idomeneo

That ‘this’ emerged superior to any other Idomeneo I have experienced in the theatre thus says all the more, given its regrettable – in a utopian sense – constraints. Magnificent, musically and dramatically, though the ballet music may be, we could hardly expect the company to stage that too. Martin Kušej’s 2014 Covent Garden production, sadly let down by atrocious conducting and a still more atrocious Idamante, offered a one-off solution of no dance whatsoever, a provocative frieze of shell-shocked regime change; such, however, is hardly a negative coup de théâtre gladly to suffer repetition. There is often much to be said for straightforwardness; there is pretty much everything to be said for conviction. This production and these performances offered both – and more.

Il tabarro, Gianni Schicchi, and Le nozze di Figaro, English Touring Opera, 2 and 3 March 2018

Hackney Empire Theatre

Stuart Haycock, Don Curzio; Devon Harrison, Antonio; Ross Ramgobin, Figaro; Dawid Kimberg, Count
Image: Jane Hobson

Michele – Craig Smith

Giorgetta – Sarah-Jane Lewis

Luigi – Charne Rochford

Talpa – Timothy Dawkins

Tinca – Andrew Glover

Frugola – Clarissa Meek

Young lovers – Galina Averina, Luciano Botelho

Stevedores – Luciano Botelho, Ed Ballard, Ian Beadle, Maciek O’Shea, Jamie Rock, Bradley Travis

Song Vendor, Stevedore – Dominic Walsh

 

Gianni Schicchi – Andrew Slater

Lauretta – Galina Averina

Zita – Clarissa Meek

Rinuccio – Luciano Botelho

Gherardo – Andrew Glover

Nella – Joanna Skillett

Betto – Bradley Travis

Simone – Timothy Dawkins

Marco – EdBallard

La Ciesca – Emma Watkinson

Maestro Spinelloccio – Maciek O’Shea

Ser Amantio – Dominic Walsh

Witnesses – Ian Beadle, Jamie Rock

 

Countess Almaviva – Nadine Benjamin

Count Almaviva – Dawid Kimberg

Figaro – Ross Ramgobin

Susanna – Rachel Redmond

Cherubino – Katherine Aitken

Marcellina – Gaynor Keeble

Bartolo – Omar Ebrahim

Don Basilio – John-Colyn Gyeantey

Don Curzio – Stuart Haycock

Antonio – Devon Harrison

Barbarina – Abigail Kelly

 

James Conway, Blanche McIntyre, Liam Steel (directors)

Neil Irish (designs)

Rory Beaton, Guy Hoare (lighting)

Rosie Purdie, Rory Fazan (assistant directors)

Orchestra of English Touring Opera

Michael Rosewell and Christopher Stark (conductors)

 

It is always a joy, or at least has always been to date, to return both to English Touring Opera and to the Hackney Empire. Hellish weather, or rather travel, conditions made the business of returning somewhat less of a joy on this occasion, as did my no longer living in the East End. Once there, however, I was treated once again to two delightful evenings, more than recompense for the travails of the first night in particular.

Sarah-Jane Lewis, Giorgetta; Charne Rochford, Luigi
Image: Richard Hubert Smith

 

Two of Puccini’s Trittico were on offer first. Doubtless some would have been moaning about the loss of Suor Angelica, but then, some will moan about anything: let them. The performance of Il tabarro confirmed my sense that this is one of Puccini’s finest achievements: a perfect tragedy in miniature, penetrating far deeper than many realise. The realism of James Conway’s production struck just the right – or at least a right – aesthetic for the work. We need not set it on the Moon just for the sake of doing so. Hints of an external, Zola-like world are there, but the emphasis lies upon character and action, quite rightly so. And there is no character more important, of course, than the Seine: somehow both the colours of score, orchestral performance, and stage alike seemed specifically to speak of that river, not just a generic one. (Or perhaps it was that anywhere, let alone Paris, would have seemed better than London in one of its collective fits of transport hysteria.)

 

At any rate, Michael Rosewell’s direction of the excellent orchestra – a little short on strings, perhaps, by the standards of a ‘large’ house, yet hardly the worse for it – proved uncommonly attentive to the barcarolle that is there even when it is not, to the Seine, not unlike the castle in Bartók’s Bluebeard, as the most important character of all. All the while, its flow formed and bound the horizons, the possibilities, the ambitions of those we saw on stage, leaving us with the inevitable conclusion that their lives were always fated to be lived and to end in misery. Not that the lighter moments went unnoticed: who can fail to smile at the quotation from La bohème? In any case, darkness without even the possibility of light will often struggle to be darkness at all. Charne Rochford and Sarah-Jane Lewis made for an ardent pair of lovers, hopeful and thus all the more hopeless. Craig Smith sealed their fate with due sadism. A fine ‘supporting’ cast greatly enhanced the chiaroscuro, even as the dramatic scales were ever more tilted towards the ‘scuro’.

 

Image: Richard Hubert Smith

Rosewell and the orchestra seemed equally at home in the scherzo that is Gianni Schicchi. How often does one hear, say, Stravinsky there, thus marvelling at Puccini’s receptivity to the art of his younger colleagues, only to wonder whether one has it the wrong way around? The sharpness of Liam Steel’s staging, holding in equipoise, like the opera itself, the style and fashions of the early twentieth century and the age-old traditions of the commedia dell’arte. ‘Period’ (to Puccini) clothes with clown faces that were both of the time and of another seemed to me an excellent prism through which to conduct, in more than one sense, the drama. No, the ‘joke’ itself is not nearly so hilarious as some seem to think, but who cares? It is the beginning, not the endpoint, of Puccini’s play, as the cast seemed very well to understand. Andrew Slater’s comic timing in the title role did not preclude a sense of something deeper, yet not too deep, beneath the glittering surface. Galina Averina proved quite a discovery as Schicchi’s daughter, Lauretta, she and Luciano Botelho finely matched as a fresh-toned pair of lovers. Again, there was not, as the cliché has it, a weak link in the cast. And more, perhaps than in any performance I have previously seen, Steel, his assistant director, Rosie Purdie, and the cast as a whole showed an affectionate awareness of just what, and what is not, placed in inverted commas here. Thank goodness ‘O mio babbino caro’ fell into the former category: a fleeting moment the more touching for its unquestionable irony. Puccini is so much better than ‘great’ opera houses will generally allow…

 

So too, of course, is Mozart, infinitely so: doomed always to fail in performance, since he demands perfection. If conducting Puccini is a difficult task, its true difficulty only revealed on those few occasions when the music has properly taken flight, then conducting Mozart verges upon the impossible. More depressingly still, the fashion now has become for composers to inflict themselves upon the score, to insert sub-Harnoncourt roadbumps like moles upon the Mona Lisa, and to receive admiring plaudits for the ‘revelations’ such idiocies have afforded to a cast of audience fashion victims. (René who? It is apparently now all about the preposterous Teodor Currentzis.) On the morning of the Puccini performance, I had led an undergraduate class on The Magic Flute, and had found it especially moving to welcome back Sir Colin Davis on DVD to lead the excerpts we watched and to which we listened. It was thus an especial joy, not only to take some of my students to so estimable a Figaro, but to hear it conducted with a warmth and, yes, a wisdom of which Sir Colin himself would surely have approved. Not once did Christopher Stark draw attention to himself; he let the music, however apparently, speak and breathe for itself. The orchestra, again, on excellent form, seemed to love playing for him – just as it should have done. Tempi were broadly ‘traditional’, yet never staid; there were one or two surprises, never unreasonably so, always justifiable within the greater framework of work and performance. Cuts in this work are always regrettable; here we must sacrifice the choruses too. We survived though, as did Mozart. Such losses are a price eminently worth paying for a production that will tour parts of this country far less fortunate, musically or otherwise, than our capital city, snowridden or not.

 

Nadine Benjamin, Countess
Image: Jane Hobson

One might object that Blanche McIntyre’s production is a little on the basic side, but again, one needs to remember that ETO plays to considerably smaller theatres than this. After an initial flourish to the metatheatrical – singers dressing on stage during the Overture – the story is told faithfully, lovingly, and without undue fuss. There is much to be said for that, from time to time. (Not that I should ever want to be without, say, Claus Guth.) Again, the emphasis falls upon the characters and indeed upon the performances – which brings me perhaps to ETO’s signal achievement here. A sparkling cast, with, I think, a majority of non-white faces offered a standing rebuke to the casting practices of pretty much every house in the world, large or small. There were no ‘allowances’ to be made; indeed, it is surely past time to realise that allowances are being made every day to those in a position of privilege. The diversity of the cast certainly did not go unnoticed amongst my students, for which many thanks indeed!

 

I have enjoyed watching Ross Ramgobin’s artistic development for a few years now. He shone at the Royal Academy, and here he shone for ETO as Figaro, in a performance imbued both with good humour and with something deeper, more complicated. His Susanna, Rachel Redmond did likewise, in as graceful and as intelligent an assumption of the role as anyone could have asked for. Nadine Benjamin’s Countess went deeper, of course, as her character must; one truly felt her pain, her dashed hopes, but also the ambivalent joys inscribed upon the other side of the Mozartian coin. McIntyre seemed oddly concerned to present the Count as a stock character, very much in the line of the eighteenth-century commedia dell’arte. I could not really understand why, in what was otherwise a non-interventionist staging. Dawid Kimberg’s performance sometimes seemed a little blunted by that relative neutering, but there was nevertheless much to admire in it. And Katherine Aitken’s Cherubino proved unambiguously a joy, a joy to be experienced in all its youthful, lusting fullness. Once again, there was a true sense of company, not just to the performances narrowly considered, but to the valiant, in many cases life-changing enterprise that is English Touring Opera. If ever a company deserved our support, it is this.

Iphigénie en Tauride, English Touring Opera, 5 March 2016

 

Images: Richard Hubert Smith

Hackney Empire Theatre

Iphigénie – Catherine Carby

Oreste – Grant Doyle
Pylade – John-Colyn Gyeantey
Thoas – Craig Smith
Scythian Guard – Simon Gfeller
Ministers of the Sanctuary – Ashley Mercer, Bradley Travis
Priestesses of Diana – Susanna Fairbairn, Samantha Hay

James Conway (director)

Anna Fleischle (designs)
Guy Hoare (lighting)
Bernadette Iglich (choreography)

Orchestra and Chorus of English Touring Opera
Martin André (conductor)

At last, an opera company bothering, in London, to perform an opera by one of the most important composers in the history of the genre! (When the Royal Opera performed Orphée et Eurydice, it condescended to Gluck by hiving him off to an external orchestra, as if he somehow were not good enough for its own players.) One grows weary of lamenting, year after year, Gluck’s absence from our programmes. This performance at the Hackney Empire sold out, showing that there is a keen audience, both of devotees and newcomers; if Gluck is not programmed, just as when Schoenberg, say, is not programmed, it is because companies have decided not to do so, not because no one will go. It is all the better, then, that English Touring Opera will take the production to many theatres around the country that would otherwise receive no opera at all, let alone any Gluck operas.

What most, me included, would consider the crowning masterpiece of Gluck’s career will win converts from any willing to treat opera as a serious art form; those who are not might as well remain in front of the television. For Johann Joachim Winckelmann, the great German art historian and archaeologist, ‘the only way for us to be great, and if at all possible, immortal,’ was ‘by imitating the ancients’. Such was the context for Gluck’s crystallisation of plans for operatic reform, opera, which should have been the inheritor of Attic tragedy, being seen instead to have degenerated into an undramatic farrago of vocal and scenic exhibitionism. (It is hard not to sympathise in the case of, say, Vivaldi’s operas, and many others.) Gluck’s (well, Ranieri de’ Calzabigi’s) 1769 Preface to Alceste remains a landmark document in operatic history, the archetypal declaration of operatic reform. It was very much what we heard here:

I have striven to restrict music to its true office of serving poetry by means of expression and by following the situations of the story, without interrupting the action or stifling it with a useless superfluity of ornaments; and I believe that it should do this in the same way as telling colours affect a correct and well-ordered drawing, by a well-assorted contrast of light and shade which serves to animate the figures without altering the contours. Thus I did not wish to arrest an actor in the greatest heat of dialogue in order to wait for a tiresome ritornello … nor to wait while the orchestra gives him time to recover his breath for a cadenza. … I have sought to abolish all the abuses against which good sense and reason have long cried out in vain. ... Furthermore, I believed that my greatest labour should be devoted to seeking a beautiful simplicity.

Moreover, it was what we saw too. James Conway’s production, focused on Anna Fleischle’s resourceful single set will doubtless transfer well to other, smaller theatres. It proves eminently adaptable, focusing our attention, like Gluck’s music, on the drama, not upon extraneous ‘effects’. That is not to say that there is anything bloodless to it. Quite the contrary, in fact, the blood-drenching of the opening scene, Iphigénie and her priestesses compelled to perform their appalling task, hits home powerfully, the well-nigh psychoanalytical quality of Gluck’s writing – storm external and internal – powerfully conveyed. Conway concentrates on the characters and their plight, permitting the drama to do its own work, or so it seems. One especially welcome aspect is his willingness to follow the homoeroticism of the relationship between Oreste and Pylade. (Quite why many other directors decline to do so remains a mystery to me.) Their second-act kiss is a splendidly handled moment. Have they (physically) been lovers all along? Perhaps, but I had the impression that, at this moment, facing death and the prospect of never seeing each other again, they could finally act as their romantic friendship had all along urged them. However difficult Oreste had become, perhaps even tried to be, they now found themselves helpless, compelled by Fate to snatch the moment. The openness of Conway’s staging allows one to read that moment as one will; there is no doubt, however, that this is the truest of love. Nothing, however, detracts from the playing out of the tragedy, Guy Hoare’s lighting clearly focusing our expectation and concentration.

An unfortunate exception came with the decision to present the deus ex machina in the guise of a little girl Diana, splashing around in the puddles. It makes for an undeniably arresting moment of theatre. Alas, its vocal effectiveness stood in inverse proportion to the element of visual surprise. Another aspect of vocal weakness came with Craig Smith’s stiff Thoas, king of Tauris. It is not the most grateful of roles, perhaps, but he sounded elderly rather than barbarous. Otherwise, there was much to admire in the cast. Catherine Carby’s gave a heartfelt performance as Iphigénie; how could one not deeply sympathise with her plight? Grant Doyle’s Oreste came across as properly conflicted, properly stunted by his appalling experiences, growing in humanity and self-knowledge. If John-Colyn Gyeantey’s Pylade was not always vocally secure, sometimes possessed of an unduly distracting vibrato, he had one believe in his character and his motivations, which is of greater importance; moreover, ‘Divinité des grandes âmes’ proved a proper climax to the third act. An excellent small chorus made its mark in various guises, as did those taking the smaller roles.

What a joy, moreover, to hear Gluck performed on modern instruments! If Martin André’s direction sometimes veered a little towards the frenetic for my taste, one hears far more extreme examples. Rarely did the instruments sound circumscribed, even if a little warmer string tone would not have gone amiss at times. More importantly, though, the bubbling of this well-nigh proto-Wagnerian (and proto-Berliozian) wordless Chorus told us so much of what we needed to know, explained so much of what we saw on stage and heard in the vocal line. Continuity and variety were impressive, André ensuring that both emerged as sides of the same dramatic coin. This was not a performance on the grand scale of, say, Riccardo Muti’s legendary recording from La Scala, but one would not have expected it to be. ETO does in many respects a far more important job, for which we should all offer thanks. There could be no doubt that it gave us the opportunity to hear just what Louis Petit de Bachaumont wrote of, in the account he gave in his Mémoires secrets of the 1779 premiere:

It is a new genre. It is truly a tragedy, … a tragedy in the Greek style. There is no Overture, … no arias [an exaggeration, but one knows what he means!]; but many indications of passion expressed with the greatest energy; they arouse an interest hitherto unknown on the lyric stage. One can only congratulate Chevalier Gluck for having discovered the secret of the ancients, and he will raise it to a pitch of undoubted perfection.

Now, more Gluck, please!

 

 

Pelléas et Mélisande (arr. Annelies van Parys), English Touring Opera, 1 October 2015

Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music

Arkel – Michael Druiett

Geneviève – Helen Johnson
Golaud – Stephan Loges
Pelléas – Jonathan McGovern
Yniold – Lauren Zolezzi
Mélisande – Susanna Hurrell 

Oliver Townsend (designs)

Mark Howland (lighting)
Bernadette Iglich (movement)
Zakk Hein (video)
James Conway (director)

Orchestra of English Touring Opera

Jonathan Berman (conductor)

 

In a better world, or even the same world with better audiences, the proportion of performances given by our opera houses of Pelléas et Mélisande and La traviata would at the very least be reversed. As it is, we find ourselves forced to make a virtue out of the relative rarity of performances of a work all consider to be a towering masterpiece. We are grateful when they come, and perhaps treasure them all the more. We are, or at least should be, especially grateful when a touring company with financial resources far more limited than our great opera houses, stages Pelléas, all the more so when it does so with such success. Once again, then: hats off to English Touring Opera!

 

Debussy’s opera is given in an arrangement for chamber ensemble by Annelies van Parys. One could, if one wished, spend the time wishing that one had the Berlin Philharmonic and Karajan, but that would seem a pointless pursuit. What strikes, with respect to a sound that is decidedly un-Karajan-like, although no closer, say, to Abbado, Boulez, or, for that matter, Désormière, is how much it convinces on its own terms. Balances are different, and perhaps not always at their optimum, wind instruments inevitably coming more to the fore without the cushion of massed strings. By the same token, however, solo strings sometimes evoke the Debussy of his chamber music, not least the String Quartet. One hears lines differently and yet, at some level, the same. Malevolence still stretches its fungal tentacles; elegance that is never ‘just’ elegance remains (as so often, when speaking about this work, one is tempted to lapse into French, and say demeure instead).

Two scenes are omitted entirely: a pity, perhaps, although I missed them far less than I should have imagined. Director James Conway takes the radical step of reintroducing words in spoken form at the end of the first ‘act’ (part way through the third). Golaud’s warning to Pelléas in some ways chills all the more for being spoken. Perhaps that is founded on the knowledge of what we ‘should’ be hearing, perhaps not, but I found it an elegant and dramatic solution.

In such circumstances, it is very difficult, perhaps impossible, to distinguish too strongly between instrumentation and performance. However, the playing of the Orchestra of English Touring Opera seemed to me throughout as alert and as sensitive as anyone could reasonably have expected, perhaps more so. What was being asked of these solo musicians was no mean task, and they played with the excellence we have come to expect. Jonathan Berman’s conducting was another strength. If I say that, for the most part, I barely noticed it, I do not mean that negatively. The ebb and flow of Debussy’s score rather seemed – and ‘seemed’ is surely the operative word here – to take care of themselves, with only occasional awkward corners, which may well be smoothed as the run progresses. One would not expect such a performance to be a ‘conductor’s performance’ as from those great names of the past I mentioned earlier; this was more a matter of subtly enabling and, yes, leading a company effort. In that and much else, it proved a great success.

Conway’s production emphasises, especially in the designs of Oliver Townsend and lighting of Mark Howland, the suffocation of the fin-de-siècle environment from which Pelléas springs. Light use of video (Zakk Hein) enhances rather than distracts. Characteristic wallpaper and costumes remind us that the castle here is as important a ‘character’ as it would be some years later in Bluebeard’s Castle, an opera which owes much to Debussy’s example. Longing for escape in nature and, perhaps, Tristan-esque oblivion may be vain but it is no more real for that. It is striking how much can be done with a single set and clever, well-achieved shifts of lighting: what will clearly be a necessity for touring here takes on unifying, escape-denying, imaginative virtue of its own. There seems, moreover, a hint at least of the road to the Poe opera Debussy would never complete.

I really have nothing but praise for the singing. The cast worked very well together, more than the sum of its parts, which in itself was considerable. At chronological extremes, Michael Druiett and Lauren Zolezzi convinced as ancient Arkel and young Yniold. Arkel’s ambiguity – what really is the nature of his fondness for Mélisande? Is that even the right question to ask – came through very strongly; so too did the boyishness of Zolezzi’s portrayal. Geneviève’s letter-reading generally makes a fine impression; that is no reason not to praise it again when it does, as it did with Helen Johnson. Susanna Hurrell’s Mélisande seemed to hark back in its light, bright quality to early assumptions; she achieved, for me, just the right balance between what might be self-assertion and discomfiting willingness – inability to do anything else? – to act as a blank canvas for male projections. In her first scene, I thought of Kundry; later, I found myself thinking of Lulu. Jonathan McGovern’s Pelléas initially came across with striking, almost but not quite child-like naïveté, and developed into something that was perhaps no more grown-up, but equally striking in its self-absorption: more pathological than one often sees, and all the more intriguing for it. The wounded masculinity of Stephan Loges’s powerfully-sung Golaud, quite contrasting in timbre, was a singular dramatic achievement both in its vocal essence and its dramatic consequences.  ‘Perhaps no events that are pointless occur,’ Arkel says. If a production has succeeded, one’s reply will most likely be ‘perhaps’. And indeed it was.

Pelléas et Mélisande will be performed again in London on 3 October, and will travel to Buxton, Malvern, Durham, Harrogate, Cambridge, Bath, Snape, and Exeter. For more details from ETO, click here.
 

 

La bohème, English Touring Opera, 14 March 2015

Images: Richard Hubert Smith

Hackney Empire

Rodolfo – David Butt Philip

Mimì – Ilona Domnich
Marcello – Grant Doyle
Musetta – Sky Ingram
Schaunard – Njabo Madlala
Colline – Matthew Stiff
Benoît – Adam Player
Alcindoro – Andrew Glover
Pa’Guignol – Dominic J. Walsh
Soldier – Gareth Brynmor John

James Conway (director)

Florence de Maré (designs)
Mark Howland (lighting)

Children from St Mary’s and St John’s Church of England Schools, Hackney
Chorus and Orchestra of English Touring Opera
Michael Rosewell (conductor)

 

I am not sure that I have seen and heard so well-integrated a production of La bohème in the theatre. Yes, it is over-exposed, but one cannot accuse English Touring Opera of conservative repertoire choices in general, and much of the country in any case has far less variety than London is. (For what it is worth, it is quite a relief to see some opera in East London: in this case, at the splendid Hackney Empire.) There is no translation: Puccini in any language other than Italian starts at a grave disadvantage. One might have thought the same about a small orchestra, but no. I was astonished quite how full a sound Michael Rosewell drew from his forces, not least from the strings: doubtless partly a matter of a helpful acoustic, but only partly. Rosewell’s conception began in relatively Classical style, but that that was an interpretative decision rather than a response to necessity became ever clearer following the interval. This was not, of course, the Vienna Philharmonic under Daniele Gatti, but no one would expect it to have been; such a performance would in any case hardly have been conceived for smaller theatres. And if the presence of Wagner were less than one often hears, Wagner – and Puccini – can cope with that.  

 

David Butt Philip proved himself an ardent, Italianate Rodolfo, so communicative with the text that the surtitles would almost have been superfluous, even for a newcomer to the work. That point regarding delivery of the words held for pretty much the entire cast, which worked very well indeed as an ensemble, as if its members had already been performing together for weeks. Ilona Domnich was a properly engaging Mimì, feminine yet never sentimentalising, her vocal performance increasingly encompassing tragic proportions. Sky Ingram’s characterful Musetta duly stole the second-act show, Grant Doyle’s Marcello giving very much as good as he got in their sparring. Matthew Stiff and Njabulo Madlala offered fine support as the other Bohemians, the nonchalance of their student existence more powerfully conveyed than I can recall. Adam Player and Andrew Glover put in notable turns as Benoît and Alcindoro: neither weak nor merely passable links here. Choral singing and acting, both from adults and children, impresses throughout.

 

James Conway’s production seems well set up to withstand the ordeals of touring, but is far more than that. It liberates the imagination and yet at the same time informs it. The ludicrous extravaganzas of luxury outsize garrets have no place here. Instead, Florence de Maré’s designs and the interactions of the characters within them have us think about memories – of the work, of the nineteenth century, of our lives, of those we have known – and respond to them. As the designer put it, ‘Bohème is certainly influenced by the quality and style of photography during the late 19^th century; there’s a real sense of playfulness and performance amongst those experimenting with a new artistic medium. … We wanted this opera to look and feel like a memory; some areas of the stage have the vivid surrealism of a dream whereas others are hazily devoid of detail.’ Crucially, that comes across without having read the interview (which I only did later). The Paris of Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon) comes to life but also to death, Schaunard's demise apparently impending; the perils as well as the 'progress' of art in an age of reproduction inform the trajectory of the drama. As Conway observes, ‘we have not tried … to join the dots between these four brief scenes of shared youth’. The music, to an extent, does that, but the scenic quality, not entirely unlike that of Eugene Onegin, remains an important aspect of the construction. Touches such as the puppet show of ‘Pa’Guignol’ add to the anti-Romantic menace without overwhelming. Stefan Herheim’s brilliant production (available on DVD), easily the greatest I have seen, has one entirely rethink the work; Conway’s ambition is lesser in scope, yet finds itself just as readily fulfilled.

Die Zauberflöte, English Touring Opera, 7 March 2014

(sung in English, as The Magic Flute)

 

Queen of the Night (Samantha Hay)
Images: Robert Workman

Hackney Empire

Tamino – Ashley Catling

Papageno – Wyn Pencarreg
Pamina – Anna Patalong
Queen of the Night – Samantha Hay
Sarastro – Andrew Slater
Speaker – Piotr Lempa
Three Ladies – Camilla Roberts, Amy J Payne, Helen Johnson
Monostatos – Stuart Haycock
Two Priests – Henry Manning, Simon Gfeller
Papagena – Caryl Hughes
Two Armoured Men – Adam Tunnicliffe, Maciek O’Shea
Three Boys – Abigail Kelly, Emily-Jane Thomas, Laura Kelly

Liam Steel (director)

James Hurley (revival director)
Chloe Lamford (designs)
Guy Hoare (lighting)

Chorus of English Touring Opera

Orchestra of English Touring Opera
James Southall (conductor)

 

I find myself running out of superlatives to describe the work of English Touring Opera. From what is now a good number of performances of different works, I have attended, I have only had one bad experience – a better proportion than with pretty much any other company. More to the point, though one cannot but consider the shoestring operation, the extraordinary endeavour of bringing opera to towns that would otherwise have none whatsoever, one actually need make no allowances whatsoever. It is a splendid thing to stage works such as Promised End and King Priam, and to stage them so well, but it is perhaps a taller order still to perform a work such as The Magic Flute, whether in London or elsewhere, and in many ways to put both Covent Garden and ENO to shame.

 

Papageno (Wyn Pencarreg), Chorus, Sarastro (Andrew Slater), Tamino (Ashley Catling)

 

I certainly cannot think of a single instance in which ENO’s staging earlier this season proved preferable to this. Where a series of Complicité clichés added up to considerably less than the sum of their whole, here Liam Steel’s production, revived by James Hurley, offers a relatively straightforward, yet far from unimaginative, retelling of the work, engaging with it rather than taking it is an opportunity to do much the same as one might have done with any other piece. Chloe Lamford’s set, which will have to do service on a good number of stages of very different sizes, remains constant in each scene, yet its eighteenth-century presents various opportunities not only for the action to fill it out on stage, but for our minds to make connections between ourselves and the historical period we ourselves imagine. We are enabled rather than dictated to; we ask questions rather than have dubious answers, or more likely evasions, foisted upon us.

 

Just as in 1791, there is trap-door theatricality, but again, just as in Mozart’s time, there is great seriousness too: the order remains mysterious, as it should, rather than being reduced to a gang of Scientologists, or whoever we may be. But Sarastro’s leadership is in no sense unambiguously a good thing. Without – apparently – exaggerating, and without, indeed, adding anything that is not in the text (and let us remember, for the last time, that ‘the text’ includes music as much as words), we feel his cruelty and the very real ambiguities of the work’s presentation of ‘good’ and ‘evil’: a matter of experience, including ours, not of unfounded, frankly ludicrous, conspiracy theories concerning the authorship of the libretto. The Overture, scenically as well as musically, offers us a ‘way in’, a party framing the events to come, whether in Tamino’s head or otherwise, a conga metamorphosing into the serpent that would slay him. We play, as we wish, with a world of fantasy and imagination, and much of the work is ours to do. It is not perfect; I have to go back to Achim Freyer’s celebrated circus-staging for Salzburg to recall a production that satisfied me completely – and even there, my memory may be playing tricks with me – but, oddities such as the presentation of the Three Boys (here played by women) as mechanical dolls aside, there is much to praise and little at which to quibble. Even in that case, the integrative resourcefulness of employing lampshades from the room as their costumes merits a commendation.

Chorus and Tamino

 

The orchestra sounded excellent throughout, beguiling woodwind in particular. James Southall’s conducting was generally convincing, often rather more than that, great sensitivity being displayed at many of the grander and more intimate moments. Mannered double-dotting in the Overture and a breackneck speed at the end of the first act were exceptions – and, by the standards of today, moderate ones at that. In Ashley Catling and Anna Patalong we had a sweet-toned Tamino and Pamina, credible on stage as well as of voice (though, in a rare miscalculation from the production, we have a little too much of them kissing, in a move that merely sentimentalises). Andrew Slater’s conflicted Sarastro made an excellent mark, as did Samantha Hay’s truly excellent Queen of the Night: quite the best I have heard since Diana Damrau. The Three Ladies were a splendid trio, no mere cyphers, but flesh and blood individuals: Camilla Roberts, Amy J Payne, and Helen Johnson deserved great credit for their portrayals. So do their counterparts as the Three Boys: Abigail Kelly, Emily-Jane Thomas, and Laura Kelly. It was difficult not to miss the sound of trebles here, but that is presumably a consideration of touring. Wyn Pencarreg’s spirited Papageno showed himself alert to the sadness as well as to the high spirits, and Caryl Hughes made a perfect foil for him, insofar as the brevity of her role permitted. The Speaker (Piotr Lempa), his Priests (Henry Manning and Simon Gfeller), and the Two Armoured – please, not ‘Armed’ – Men (Adam Tunnicliffe and Maciek O’Shea) all offered gravity and yet also humanity, a balance in keeping both with work and staging. Stuart Haycock’s Monostatos was sharply observed, making the most of his words. If I were to carp, I might point to the smallness of the chorus, but in so estimable a performance, who cares? Above all, there was a true sense of company, an increasingly rare thing today, but which augurs very well for the trials of touring to come.