Salzburg Festival (7) - The Greek Passion, 22 August 2023

Felsenreitschule

Grigoris - Gábor Bretz
Manolios - Sebastian Kohlhepp
Katerina - Sara Jakubiak
Yannakos - Charles Workman
Lenio - Christina Gansch
Andonis - Matteo Ivan Rašić
Michelis - Matthäus Schmidlechner
Kostandis - Alejandro Baliñas Vietes
Panais - Julian Hubbard
Nikolio - Aljoscha Lennert
Old Woman - Helena Resker
The Patriarcheas - Luke Stoker
Ladas - Robert Dölle
Fotis - Łukasz Goliński
Old Man - Scott Wilde
Despinio - Teona Todua

Director - Simon Stone
Set designs - Lizzie Clachan
Costumes - Mel Page
Lighting - Nick Schlieper
Dramaturgy - Christian Arseni

Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus director: Huw Rhys James)

Salzburg Festival and Theatre Children’s Choir (chorus director: Wolfgang Götz)

Angelika Prokopp Summer Academy of the Vienna Philharmonic

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Maxime Pascal (conductor)

Images: © SF/Monika Rittershaus

Salzburg’s new production of Bohuslav Martinů‘s opera The Greek Passion has much going for it, but alas one major thing against, at least for me. The latter I shall come to, but let us first consider the positives. The theme of the opera and Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel from which it is adopted could not be more timely. A tragedy in which refugees are rejected by a stern, unbending, mendaciously ‘Christian’ society, shown for what it is by the ostracism and death of one of its own for showing proper Christian charity, has a multiplicity of resonances today. It surely follows on well in the wake of Nono’s Intolleranza, which Covid had me miss.

Performances were generally very good, often excellent. Maxime Pascal, known primarily for more overtly modernist music, a complete cycle of Stockhausen’s LICHT underway with his ensemble Le Balcon, could hardly have offered more committed advocacy at the helm of the Vienna Philharmonic. A wild, often bewildering, variety of musical styles was vividly characterised. Playing was sharp, warm, weighty, delicate, and so much more, as required. Choruses were equally impressive, hymnal and more violent confrontation of two great masses of human beings brought to equally vivid aural life. 

Sebastian Kohlhepp gave a powerful, vulnerable portrayal of Manolios, the shepherd given the role of Christ in the village Passion play and ultimately murdered for taking Christ at His word. Gábor Bretz made for an implacable priestly foe as Grigoris, whose social rigidity and machinations set the tragedy in motion. Charles Workman as the compassionate pedlar Yannakos, Łukasz Goliński as Fotis, the priest at the head of the refugees, Christina Gansch as Lenio, who transfers her affections from Manolios, and Sara Jakubiak as the other object of his affections, preparing to play the role of Mary Magdalene, all impressed in detailed interpretations, well sung and acted. So did others in smaller roles, of which there are a good few.

Simon Stone’s production did its job well enough too, perhaps at its best in using the great space of the Felsenreitschule stage to show the two communities at odds. Painting a wall with the words ‘REFUGEES OUT’ is not subtle, but subtlety is hardly what is called for here. The appearance of live animals, a donkey and goat included, onstage brought back unwelcome thoughts of Francesca Zambello’s School of Zeffirelli Carmen. It seemed to entertain the audience, especially when the donkey refused to budge, but what it offered beyond that, I really do not know. I wondered whether more might have been done to help the innocent viewer understand who was who on a more detailed, personal level, but responsibility for that really lay elsewhere.

That brings me, alas, to the real culprit for me: the work itself. This is the second, 1961 version of the work, written after rejection by Covent Garden. According to Michael Beckerman’s programme note, the first ‘is considered more experimental, is perhaps more conventionally dramatic, and has much more spoken dialogue.’ For the first two of those criteria, I cannot help but wish we had heard the first, for what we saw and heard was anything but ground-breaking and, far more important, lacking in the basic dramatic tools to which it seemed to aspire. There is nothing discernible in the way of musical characterisation, making Beckerman’s hyperbolic claim ‘Martinů had much in common with Mozart’ especially unfortunate. (I could probably suggest points I have in common with Dame Joan Collins, but that would not make me a natural Alexis.) There is little in the way of musical continuity, and the libretto, Martinů‘s own, is at times shockingly bad. I had to check that it was not a hamfisted ENO translation. I sympathise: I could not write a libretto in, say, German; I doubt I could write one in English. But the composer’s word-setting is also un-idiomatic. And, to be fair, I do not try to write operas. I do not think it would be helpful to go into great detail and should note this was one of the most enthusiastic receptions I encountered at this year’s Festival. Mine was a minority view, though shared still more vehemently by my companion.

I had assumed the spoken scenes were Stone’s, it seeming unlikely Martinů would have used, for instance, the word ‘donkeyfucker’, for instance. Whoever wrote them, they added nothing to what we knew already, coming across mostly as an attempt to sound ‘edgy’. Alas, everything seemed at best caught between largely incomparable stools. To do something for refugees is, of course, admirable and necessary. Despite the obvious objections, that can include artistic endeavour, indeed arguably must. Intolleranza is a case in point. It would need, though, to be more convincing than this. In the meantime, donation to a refugee centre would be a better way forward.

Lohengrin, Royal Opera, 24 April 2022

Royal Opera House

Henry the Fowler – Gábor Bretz
Lohengrin – Brandon Jovanovich
Elsa – Jennifer Davis
Friedrich von Telramund – Craig Colclough
Ortrud – Anna Smirnova
King’s Herald – Derek Welton
Brabantian Nobles (‘Four Followers of Telramund’) – Elgan Llŷr Thomas, Thando Mjandana, Matthew Durkan, Thomas D. Hopkinson
Pages (‘Four Women at the Wedding’) – Katy Batho, Deborah Peake-Jones, Renata Skarelyte, Louise Armit
Gottfried – Alfie Davis

David Alden (director)
Peter Relton (revival director)
Paul Steinberg (set designs)
Gideon Davey (costumes)
Adam Silverman (lighting)
Tal Rosner (video)
Maxine Braham (movement)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus director: William Spaulding)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Jakub Hrůša (conductor)

Considering the first night of David Alden’s (then) new production of Lohengrin in 2018, I found ‘a conceptual weakness at ... [its] heart. I suspect it can be remedied: if a shell, it is a fine shell. It will not, however, remedy itself.’ Rather to my surprise, I found this first revival, notably under a new director, Peter Relton, much stronger. It is not always easy to be sure what has actually changed, and what one is viewing differently for oneself. I shall not try; the earlier review remains for anyone who wishes to read it. In at least partial recantation, then, I am happy to say this made for a far more satisfying evening, dramatically and musically, than that experienced four years ago. Moreover, for Wagner to have returned so emphatically to one of the city’s main houses marked a step-change in London’s operatic recovery. However much one wished it to succeed, ENO’s autumn Walküre proved a bitter disappointment. If Lohengrin did not quite match the success of Covent Garden’s astonishing recent Peter Grimes, it stood closer to that than to November’s dispiriting evening at the Coliseum. 

An interwar fascist regime, on the verge at least of further war, is the setting (albeit with certain irritating Alden anachronisms of the sort that conceive postmodernism as style rather than philosophy). The aftermath of war, presumably the Great War, that haunts the first act in particular, every character seemingly damaged, mentally and often physically too. The charge of war and of preparations for another has obvious resonances to spring 2022; they could hardly fail to speak. If King Henry cowers like a question mark—in his throne, with crown, he seems an all-too-obvious rip off from Hans Neuenfels at Bayreuth—and the Herald wears his injuries anything but lightly, others struggle to stand too. Telramund and Elsa act and react in caricatured expressionist style. Even Lohengrin adopts a foetal position of comfort with Elsa, presumably seeking a mother figure lacking in the Grail brotherhood. (As Nietzsche did not say, let us not go there.) 

Only Ortrud, doubtless significantly, operates as normal. Perhaps it is her ‘magic’, or perhaps that magic is a metaphor for something broader; that is really up to us. A fine touch, at the close of the second act, is her apparition in a box, toasting (cursing) with champagne the unhappy couple. Hemmed in by Paul Steinberg’s sets, their crossings and their disjunctures a striking visualisation of catastrophe, the action is never likely to end happily. This, after all, is a tragedy, probably the purest in Wagner; a signal strength here is that we do not forget that. That is not, of course, to say that it always need be played exclusively as such, but there is an ultimate trajectory here less in evidence than last time, which certainly strengthens the drama in this context. 

So too did Jakub Hrůša’s conducting of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House—and the golden orchestral playing itself. Hrůša is not afraid to take his time, the first act feeling especially broad, though never merely slow. Careful attention to detail and to its place in the whole had Wagner’s score veritably glow with inner life. The old operatic forms on which much of Wagner’s conception is ultimately based were clear. In Mein Leben, Wagner recalls Schumann’s puzzlement at a Dresden reading of the poem; he ‘liked it, yet couldn’t figure out the musical form I had in mind for it, as he couldn’t find any passages suitable for traditional musical numbers. I then had some fun reading him different parts of my poem just as if they were in aria and cavatina form, so that in the end he smilingly conceded the point.’ Full performance can heighten that sense further—yet also more dialectically. For equally clear were the development of those forms and the forces energising that development: harmony (especially that of Ortrud), of course, but also an energised conception of Gluckian accompagnato arising from Wagner’s work as conductor, editor, and director. 

At any rate, not only did Hrůša show a fine Wagnerian’s ability to hear vast structures—acts, at least—in a single breath, but he inspired the finest playing from all sections of the orchestra throughout. Each act had its own way of unfolding; no one-size-fits-all approach, but rather a patient, powerful strategic ear and mind. Moreover, he often favoured—unfashionably—long, quasi-vocal orchestral lines: not so much Straussian as with kinship to the Wagner of a conductor such as Karajan. The vertical was not ignored, but experience suggested ultimately a more horizontal conception of Wagner’s—‘endless melody’, perhaps—and convincingly so. 

Brandon Jovanovich offered a finely judged portrayal of Lohengrin, as acute in verbal as musical terms, its clarion heroism shielding—and sometimes not—a vulnerable and decidedly ambiguous inner core. Craig Colclough’s Telramund, tragically in thrall to Anna Smirnova’s sensational Ortrud, presented similar ambiguities, those similarities engaging sympathy and our appreciation of dramatic complexity. If there was something winningly ‘old-school’ to Smirnova’s vocal delivery and sheer star presence, that was not at the cost of more ‘modern’ engagement with directorial concept, far from it. Jennifer Davis’s movingly human Elsa grew in stature throughout a committed performance. Gábor Bretz vividly captured the King’s instability. Derek Welton made for an uncommonly vivid Herald, hinting intriguingly at psychological complications from a wartime past. 

Last but far from least, William Spaulding’s Royal Opera Chorus sounded on as fine form as I can recall for some time. How welcome, moreover, it was to have a large chorus seemingly unrestricted—reality may have been different—by pandemic restrictions in what it could do and, above all, how it could sing. Ultimately, then, it was that crucial, yet often elusive, sense of a dramatic whole that served to distinguish revival from first incarnation.

BPO and Academy/Rattle - Gruber, Bartók, Ravel, and Berio, 18 March 2017

Philharmonie

HK Gruber – Piano Concerto

Bartók – Bluebeard’s Castle, Sz 48
 

Ravel – Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé

Berio – Sequenza III
Berio – Laborintus II

Emanuel Ax (piano)

Magdalena Kožená (mezzo-soprano)

Rinat Shaham (mezzo-soprano)

Gábor Bretz (bass)

Ulrich Noethen, Dino Scandariato (narrators)

Members of the Berlin Radio Choir and Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart

Paul Jeukendrup (sound direction)

Orchestral Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Simon Rattle (conductor)

In this pair of concerts, the first a ‘standard’ Berlin Philharmonic concert, the second a shorter, ‘late night’ event with members of the orchestra’s academy, both conducted by Simon Rattle, we found our ideas concerning musical drama subtly challenged. The ‘principal’ event featured a somewhat odd pairing of HK Gruber’s Piano Concerto, receiving its first German performances, and Bluebeard’s Castle. Many stronger works would pale alongside Bartók’s opera; Gruber’s new offering certainly did. Its opening showed promise, as if straining to remember the 1920s jazz age, muted trumpet and all, then gradually appreciating that it did not need to remember; it could try something new. Except then it did not, at least to these ears. The piano seemed oddly to be on a different track from the orchestra, whether harmonically or rhythmically. In its part, ably performed, so far as I could tell, by Emanuel Ax, there was perhaps something at least analogous to the potential circularity of early twelve-note writing, but it did not seem to move beyond that circularity, to become generative. Otherwise, there was much post-Berg, post-Weill meandering – just as in any other work by Gruber I have heard. Dance rhythms – yes, waltzes and others – came and went. Perhaps the material might have lent itself better to a shorter piece: ten minutes? Two-and-a-half times that felt much too long.

 

That out of the way, there was a great deal to enjoy in the Bartók performance, Ulrich Noethen’s Prologue (in German) setting the scene nicely, with a fine balance between the theatrical and what a concert can provide much better, the suggestion of theatre. Rattle’s conducting of the Berlin Philharmonic was for much of the time, especially earlier on, unobtrusive, seemingly content (however illusory this impression might have been) to follow the highly dramatic performances, concert garb and setting notwithstanding, of Rinat Shaham and Gábor Bretz. Bretz showed considerable, even irresistible charm, as well as darkness, in a dangerous, silken-smooth performance. Dark violas, piquant woodwind solos accompanied, questioned him, even held him to account, although we knew that we, like Judit, must ultimately submit. His repetitive questioning – ‘Félsz-e?’ – had great cumulative force, as much musical as verbal. Shaham’s wilful yet sensitive portrayal was well matched, equally well contrasted; one followed her decisions, understanding them even as one knew how foolish they were. Her fear was very real, no mere recitation. Their interaction, visual as well as vocal, came across as the key to unlocking the particular secrets of this evening. Without slipping into banal psychological realism, their portrayals treated Bluebeard and Judit as characters, not simply archetypes. Words and, more broadly, drama came first, one felt, but where does the drama lie?

When the orchestra moved, as it were, centre stage, one certainly knew, for instance in the ominous yet never exaggerated ostinato writing following the closing of the iron door behind our unhappy pair. The effect was not entirely un-Wagnerian (Act II of Die Walküre, for instance): not the only time I thought of that particular predecessor in this performance. Each door brought full tragedy a step nearer; one felt that, score and performance telling one so, rather than ‘merely’ knowing it. Golden enchantment would have tempted us all, and doubtless did, all the more so for the fatalism surrounding it. And when that moment, the opening of the fifth door, came, not only did the earth tremble, as it never could on a recording, but the Berlin orchestra glowed – again, as it never could except in the flesh. As the world darkened, the orchestra increasingly took over: not to the detriment of Bluebeard and Judit, but to seal their fate: implacable, irresistible. Here, Rattle’s shaping proved just the thing, alert to the narrative, without imposing upon it. Judit’s pride, as she insisted on opening the final, seventh door, led to quite the orchestral climax, almost Wozzeck-like. Thereafter was the tale, in every sense, of Bluebeard coming home, the evening glow again more redolent of Wagner than of Strauss. The forbidden question of Lohengrin, then, turned dark indeed.

 

It was unlikely, indeed undesirable, that, having attended the earlier concert, one would not approach the ‘late night’ event with Bluebeard in mind. Berio’s works in particular shone in that light, as well as immediately providing their own illumination. First, however, Magdalena Kožená, the Academy musicians, and Rattle offered us a fine performance of Ravel’s Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé. One cannot but hear these songs and fail to appreciate the depth of Ravel’s response to, as well as his distancing from, Schoenberg. Debussy hovers too, of course, with all the (fruitful) problems of that relationship both in general and with particular reference to Mallarmé. Hearing the instrumental lines so soon after Bartók, though, one also felt a kinship in that respect: twin responses rather than ‘influence’ as such, no doubt, but no less interesting for that. The timbral radicalism of the very opening might almost have come from a chamber arrangement of Bluebeard or The Wooden Prince. Ravel’s word-setting, though, sounded as particular as ever, Kožená, like Shaham’s Judit before her, shaping the tonal universe before her, even as the conductor and instrumentalists might actually have been doing it for her. The precision and style of these young musicians left nothing to be desired; they might have been a crack new-music ensemble, and indeed that is precisely what they were.

 

Kožená turned Berio’s Sequenza III very much into a piece, if this is not too much of a paradox, of music theatre for voice. (I do not think it is too much, when one considers what Berio is doing both in his Sequenzas more generally and in this in particular.) Language emerged from music, drama from both, but the relationships were never one-way. She was almost a Mélisande torn between her husband (Rattle sat at the corner of the stage, ready to make a percussion intervention) and a younger man suddenly lit up above. She gestured, shouted, sang. Did she decide? Was she even interested in decision, or indeed in those apparitions? The ‘shadows of meaning’ of which Berio spoke were ever apparent, ever new: such is the essence of performance. Drama lay not only in ‘portrayal’, but in the relationship between the performer and her voice, again just as Berio envisaged – yet doubtless, in another sense, quite different. ‘The voice,’ to quote the composer, ‘carries always an excess of connotations, whatever it is doing.’ So it did here.

 

Laborintus II proved, if anything, more invigorating still. It is, of course, quite an occasion to have opportunity to hear it, to experience it in the flesh. Expectations were not only fulfilled; they were perhaps even exceeded. Members of the Berlin Radio Choir and Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart were, just as the soloists in the Bartók and Kožená in her pieces, active participants in shaping, in making the drama: no mere executants. So too were the instrumentalists. Berio is not a composer to erect barriers; this performance proceeded very much, then, in his vein, wisely directed by the collegial Rattle as first among equals. Musical references from Monteverdi onwards took their place in what one might, perhaps misleadingly, think of as a musico-dramatic collage, but which in ‘reality’, whatever that may be, was both ever connecting with anything and everything else, and yet never anything but itself. Memory rules, it seems: but do we remember or misremember those Biblical genealogies, those journeys of Dante, even the passages conventionally written, as it were, by Eduardo Sanguineti himself? Dino Scandariato proved, rightly, both a sure and questioning guide to our humanistic labyrinth. As often with Berio, Italo Calvino came to mind; La vera storia beckoned. If other works had tended towards music theatre, and if in some senses this might even have looked forward towards a reimagining of opera, this was nevertheless the real music theatre thing, however intangible definition and reality might be. My immediate reaction was to wish to hear it again, except differently; or, as Wagner put it, ‘Kinder, macht Neues!’

 

BBC SO/Karabits - Schnelzer, Ravel, and Bartók, 13 March 2015

Barbican Hall

Albert Schnelzer – Tales from Suburbia (world premiere)

Ravel – Suite: Ma mère l’Oye

Bartok – Bluebeard’s Castle

Judit – Michelle DeYoung

Bluebeard – Gábor Bretz

João Henriques (director, narrator)

 

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Kirill Karabits (conductor).

Albert Schnelzer’s Tales of Suburbia, written in 2012 as a co-commission from the BBC and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, here received its first performance. Lasting about a quarter of an hour, it seemed to me akin more to a vaguely, generically ‘atmospheric’ television score – doubtless fine in its place – than a concert work. Written for a large orchestra in a language at least a century out of date, it sounded like a diluted version of early-twentieth-century conservatism. The composer wrote, ‘… this is where I live. Mahler once said that he wanted his symphonies to encompass the whole world. I would settle for just suburbia.’ The seemingly aimless meandering that ensued suggested his commentary had not been intended ironically. My previous encounter with Schnelzer’s work had been a performance, the first in this country, of his Emperor Akbar. If that had left me nonplussed, this left me less than that. Mention, though, should be made of the solos from leader, Natalie Chee; if only she had been playing Szymanowski…

 

Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite was played charmingly, if not necessarily with quite the enchantment or precision that the greatest performances bring. Still, there was much to admire in this account from the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Kirill Karabits. A stately opening ‘Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant’ seemed perfectly poised – as, of course, the movement is – between the Pavane pour une infante défunte and the later Ravel of Le Tombeau de Couperin. It did not lack a little luxuriance either. I wondered whether ‘Laidoronnette’ was taken too quickly; its treatment verged upon the harrying. However, there remained a sense of the parts contributing to a greater whole, never more so than in the concluding ‘Le Jardin féerique,’ which pretty much lived up to its name.

Bluebeard’s Castle was given a fine performance: unquestionably the highlight of the evening for me. I look forward next month to reporting back from Calixto Bieito’s new staging, in a double-bill with Gianni Schicchi, but here, a spare concert staging, imaginatively conceived by João Henriques, kept the work where it arguably belongs, in the theatre of the imagination. Henriques acted as Narrator too, offering (in English translation) an inviting, probing reading of that crucial Prologue. It seemed to offer choices; yet, at the same time, we knew that Fate would win. We certainly did once Bartók’s score began its work. (If only a good few other operas could say as much as it does, in the time it takes to do so!) Arriving with seven suitcases upon a trolley, one for each door, this pairing of Bluebeard and Judit increasingly suggested both that there were things better left packed up, and that the Forbidden Question – those inevitable shades of Lohengrin – would be asked.

Michelle DeYoung was strong yet imploring, totally assured in her delivery of Bartók’s lines, bringing them, quite rightly, close to a Hungarian Pelléas. She shuddered with the orchestra, if not necessarily at the same time (if that makes any sense!) This Judit was transformed before our very ears, De Young expertly tracing Bartók’s – and Béla Balázs’s – arc from triumph to tragedy. Gábor Bretz sounded more youthful and, indeed, more aristocratic than one often hears, exercising a dark, mysterious allure; one could understand why she had fallen for him. One sensed that there was not only more to him than we knew; there was probably more than Bluebeard himself consciously knew. For this is a sadistic drama of the mind (perfectly suited, one might say, to next month’s pairing with that master-sadist, Puccini).

All the while, the orchestra under Karabits shaped and commented upon the drama – unlike but also unlike Debussy in his sole completed opera. (There are surely few more singular operatic masterpieces than Pelléas and Bluebeard’s Castle.) Maybe this was because Ravel had been heard before the interval, though I think not entirely so; in any case, I felt there were a few occasions upon which colour and ‘atmosphere’ were perhaps exalted at the expense of more ‘Teutonic’ structural concerns. (I am doubtless, however, consciously or otherwise, making odious comparisons, having heard Boulez conduct the work twice. What I should give to have that opportunity just once again!) The opening of that fifth door overwhelmed as it must, the disappointing electronic organ notwithstanding. (Another cause for Sir Simon Rattle to address?) And yet, Karabits seemed to impress upon us that this was not to be, that there was something unreal to what our ears led us to ‘see’. That was an exaltation of colour that was worth hearing.

 

Fidelio, Hungarian State Opera, 10 October 2008

Budapest Opera House

Don Fernando – Gábor Bretz
Don Pizarro – Béla Perencz
Florestan – Thomas Moser
Leonore - Tünde Szabóki
Fidelio – Virgil Horváth
Rocco – Friedemann Kunder
Marzelline – Zita Váradi
Jaquino – Fekete Attila
Two prisoners – Gergely Boncsér and Kázmér Sárkány

Orchestra and Chorus of the Hungarian State Opera (chorus master: Máté Szabó Sipos)
Ádám Fischer (conductor)

Balázs Kovalik (director)
Balázs Kovalik and Angelika Höckner (designs)
Mari Benedek (costumes)

Things aren't what they used to be at the Hungarian State Opera – at least, so I am told, given that this was my first visit. What had remained a bastion of 'traditional' opera production has now felt the sweep of a new broom from its ambitious new leadership, more internationally inclined, headed by Ádám Fischer and Balázs Kovalik. Certainly no one could accuse this Fidelio of hidebound traditionalism.

Sadly, what we had instead was an ill-thought through mishmash, which piled layer of symbolism upon layer of symbolism, with apparently little regard for coherence or even comprehensibility. Yes, the work is concerned with sacrifice, but that does not necessarily mean that it is a good idea to portray the Passion of Christ in confusing tandem with the narrative. (It is also in questionable taste at best to present a Christ with tacky electronic 'bleeding heart' at one point.) Nor is at at all clear how this tallies with presenting what would seem to be Leonore's dream, by having her stand at the bottom level of the stage, in vaguely 'operatic' garb, whilst having a male 'Fidelio' act out her moves on another - until, of course, she reveals her true self, although even then she remains down below. And the garish colour-coding did not seem to mean anything in particular, although it was preferable to the multicoloured 'celebration' of the final scene, in which we seemed for no particular reason to have entered the world of Flower Power. Embarrassed and embarrassing clapping from the chorus disrupted the music then too. And what was the point of the strange Angela Merkel look-alike, who strolled along the stage at the end? Kovalik and his team needed to go back to the drawing board.

Musically, the story was more mixed. The orchestra played superbly throughout, its strings glowing with warmth and the woodwind especially characterful. The horns, bar the very odd cracked note - an almost unavoidable hazard - were beautiful indeed, crucial in this work. I thought the all-important off-stage trumpet a little too distant, but never mind. Ádám Fischer's reading did not quite seem to have settled down. There were some good things in it, although it never really acheived the symphonic stature that characterises great performances of Fidelio. On occasion, there was a distinct Italianate tintá; the music might have been by Rossini. This, however, merely stood out rather than giving the impression of a particular idea. Some might have found such an idea refreshing; I suspect that I should still have thought it quite inappropriate.

There were also some odd decisions regarding the version of the work used. This was not straight 1814, since the 1805 ordering of the opening was employed. I am not sure that anything is really gained by this; tonal development tends rather strongly to suggest that the later ordering is better. Far more questionable was the reversion to the ‘tradition’ of performing the Leonore III overture prior to the final scene. I am quite aware of the distinguished pedigree for such a practice, yet here as ever the music overpowered what came after - not least given the deflating tendencies of the production. What could work under Furtwängler and doubtless under Mahler simply did not here, although the performance considered on its own terms was good, if somewhat removed from the outstanding performance the audience thought it had heard. Could there be a worse point at which to applaud?! The situation was rendered far worse by Fischer having the orchestra stand twice (!) to acknowledge the applause.

Tünde Szabóki was not a great Leonore; nor was she a particular disappointment. She sang for the most part musically but without truly making her mark upon the role as many great artists have done. The competition is terrifyingly fierce, of course, but such is life. Thomas Moser was adequate, though little more than that, as Florestan. (I have heard worse but then one nearly always has in such roles.) Smaller roles were once again generally adequately taken, with three exceptions. Zita Váradi was simply terrible as Marzelline, her tuning all over the place. Friedemann Kunde could act as Rocco but no longer appeared to possess a voice, as was painfully evident in his duet with Béla Perencz's lightweight yet musical Pizarro. It was a relief, then, to hear in Gábor Bretz a Fernando as handsome of voice as of face; nevertheless, a Fernando can hardly a Fidelio make.