Prince Igor, Met Opera Live, 1 March 2014

Cineworld, West India Quay

Prince Igor – Ildar Abdrazakov

Prince Galitsky – Mikhail Petrenko
Vladimir Igorevich – Sergey Semishkur
Skula – Vladimir Ognovenko
Yeroshka – Andrey Popov
Yaroslavna – Oksana Dyka
Polovtsian Maiden – Kiri Deonarine
Konchakovna – Anita Rachvelishvili
Ovlur – Mikhail Vekua
Khan Konchak – Štefan Kocán
Yaroslavna’s Nurse – Barbara Dever
Dmitri Tcherniakov (director, set designs)
Elena Zaitseva (costumes)
Gleb Filhtinsky (lighting)
Itzik Galili (choreography)
S Katy Tucker (projection designs)

Metropolitan Opera Chorus (chorus master: Donald Palumbo)

Metropolitan Opera Orchestra
Gianandrea Noseda (conductor)

 

Of the three Met Opera Live broadcasts I have seen, this was far and away the best. No one, I assume, would speak of it quite in the same breath as Boris Godunov or Khovanschina, but one cannot but think of it in relation to them, especially to the latter, its libretto by Vladimir Stasov, who also created the scenario from the original epic for Borodin to write his own text.

 

The only real adverse criticism I have relates to that ‘positioning’ within Russian opera. Gianandrea Noseda conducted very well on the whole; the Met Orchestra sounded on excellent form throughout, again quite the best I have heard it in any of these broadcasts. One could imagine its magnificent fullness of tone reaching even the farthest-flung reaches of that vast barn in which the company is stranded. However, though this was certainly far preferable to the sub-Toscanini Beethoven I have heard from this conductor’s baton, there were sections, especially earlier on, in which the music veered too close to soft-centred Verdi (or, if you like, to Ruslan and Lyudmila). On a crude ‘Russian’ scale, surely it should at the very least sound on the Mussorgsky- rather than on the Verdi-side of Tchaikovsky. Otherwise, Noseda, who, it seems, had compiled the edition employed in tandem with the director, Dmitri Tcherniakov, shaped the musical drama well, only occasionally driving too hard, and investing the final act in particular with a pessimistic historical weight that brought us back to the world of Khovanschina. The chorus, here of course allotted a huge role, sang – and acted – with exemplary commitment throughout, and not just in the celebrated Polotsvian dances. (What an effect they must have had on French listeners when Diaghilev had them performed in 1909!) Chorus master, Donald Palumbo must share a good deal of the credit for that.

 

I am no Borodin scholar, so am more than a little wary of pontificating about, or even delineating, the new ‘version’ we heard. Briefly, then – and I shall happily be corrected – we seem to have been given an edition in which the order of Borodin’s first two acts is reversed, allegedly with some justification in the composer’s intentions, a little-used version of Igor’s third-act monologue, and brings in at the close music from Borodin’s contribution to the composite, also incomplete Mlada, not to be confused with Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera-ballet of the same name and to the same libretto (!) Already things are becoming far too complicated for me. (For a short summary of earlier performing versions, I recommend looking at Richard Taruskin’s New Grove article upon the opera. And for the textual issues relating to this particular version, Zerbinetta’s review is well worth a read, as it is for her review itself.) The ending for me remains a problem: the opera seems more to stop rather than to conclude, but even here, Tcherniakov’s conception of Igor’s internal struggle is suggestive. Taruskin’s summary of the work as ‘a magnificent farrago, a smorgåsbord from which all listeners and critics seem to find some morsel to their taste’ seemed in this context to under-appreciate its virtues. But maybe that was a measure of my naïveté in this repertoire. Certainly the remark made by the composer in a letter, cited by Taruskin at the end of his article, rang true:

Curiously enough, all the members of our circle seem to come together on my Igor: from the ultra-innovatory realist Modest Petrovich, to the hyric-dramatic innovator César Antonovich [Cui], to the martinet with respect to outward form and musical tradition Nikolay Andreyevich, to the ardent champion of novelty and power in all things, Vladimir Vasil’yevich Stasov. Everyone is satisfied with Igor, strongly though they may differ about other things.

Tcherniakov’s typically thoughtful direction played no small part in that outcome – though I am a little surprised that it did not cause a riot at this most reactionary of major houses. (Perhaps it was easier to do something interesting in a work not so many of the audience would have known, or indeed which the more reactionary elements in a typical audience would not have attended? Or maybe, just maybe, excellent direction opened their eyes and ears, in which case three cheers to them as well as to production and performances!) Tcherniakov places much of the action (earlier twentieth-century) in what seems to be a dream world, and which is clearly no mere fantasy. Or rather, it is a fantasy in which we are complicit, orientalism and all, Tcherniakov’s treatment pointing to and indeed working out out one of the potential problems with the score: a musical as well as a critical move. Following a chilling, militaristic Prologue – does Russian historical drama ever fail to be relevant to our present? – Igor falls at the opening of what is now the first act, video footage illustrating the fate of ‘our’ boys on the battlefield. (I suspect the projections would have registered more strongly in the theatre, a cinema broadcast not being the ideal mode of presentation. We got the idea, though.) The Polotsvian world thus becomes Igor’s dream – and ours. Sickly eroticised choreography as well as personified, characterised temptations of the flesh question our Orientalist fantasies as well as those of the Khan’s ‘guest’. A spectacular poppy field prompts thoughts both of opium and of Flanders carnage. Quite whether the second and third acts are ‘real’ or not remains in question. The relatively conventional – knowingly so –setting for the political machinations at Igor’s court in the second act suggest reality as well as Mussorgskian realism. But we question, as indeed we do in the third act, to what extent this world and the need for Igor’s return are the prince’s own construction. Shades, then, of Rienzi and countless other charismatic heroes, are suggested, but the audience is treated in adult fashion, prompted to make up its own mind, to make its own way through what may or may not be more than Taruskin’s ‘smorgåsbord’. This, undoubtedly, is opera as drama – as my clearly-impressed mother, seeing her first cinema broadcast of opera, commented afterwards.

 

In the title role, Ildar Abdrazakov was superb, doing more than anyone could reasonably have asked of him. Neither musical nor dramatic commitment – in reality, and even in ‘high definition’ reality, they were as one – could be faulted, in a tireless performance, both troubling and moving. Mikhail Petrenko brought shades of his controversial Hagen to the role of Prince Galitsky: what a deliciously devious villain he can be! As Yaroslavna, Igor’s Penelope, as it were, Oksana Dyka offered a dignified portrayal, conflicted yet ever true, both to husband and to her people. Anita Rachvelishvili, whom I had thought sadly miscast as Covent Garden’s Carmen,  was here utterly in her element as the embodiment of Oriental temptation, Konchakovna. There was gravedigger-style mendicant humour from the accomplished Skula and Yeroshka of Vladimir Ognovenko and Andrey Popov, a beautifully-sung and –acted Nurse from Barbara Dever, a nicely menacing Khan Konchak from Štefan Kocán, and much more: not, for me at least, a weak link in the cast, and Tcherniakov’s detailed direction paid enormous dividends in every case.

A sprawling, problematical epic, then, was revealed through performances and staging alike to have more than enough worthy of salvage. Borodin’s unfinished opera – here fascinatingly, if not always quite convincingly, finished by others – emerged as a wayward yet honoured successor to the masterpieces of Mussorgsky. This co-production with the Dutch National Opera demands a DVD release.

Prom 74: BBC PO/Noseda - Schubert, Schumann, Holloway, and Mozart, 9 September 2010

Royal Albert Hall

Schubert – Symphony no.8 in B minor, ‘Unfinished’, D 759
Schumann – Introduction and Allegro appassionato, in G major, op.92
Robin Holloway – RELIQUARY: Scenes from the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, enclosing an instrumentation of Schumann’s ‘Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart’ (BBC commission: world premiere)
Mozart – Symphony no.40 in G minor, KV 550

Dorothea Röschmann (soprano)
Finghin Collins (piano)
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
Gianandrea Noseda (conductor)


This was not, thank goodness, the Last Night of the Proms, a jamboree better left to readers of the Daily Mail, but my last night of the 2010 BBC Proms. The principal attractions a priori were the Schumann Introduction and Allegro appassionato, a rarity in performance, and Robin Holloway’s new RELIQUARY: Scenes from the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, enclosing an instrumentation of Schumann’s ‘Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart’. In practice too? By and large, for the performances of the two symphonic masterpieces on either side, whilst benefiting from fine orchestral playing, were marred by insensitive conducting from Gianandrea Noseda.

I did not necessarily expect Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ Symphony to sound so shattering as upon the last occasion I had heard it in concert, in a truly great performance from Bernard Haitink and the London Symphony Orchestra. However, I was nevertheless disappointed when an intriguingly nervy opening gave way to the merely abrupt, with stabbing accents that would have been out of place in Beethoven, let alone Schubert. Worse still, the music was never permitted to breathe. Toscanini-followers – perhaps a few still exist somewhere – might have enjoyed this, I suppose, but no one who has responded to Furtwängler. There were occasional oases of mystery in the development section, when Noseda was not hurrying – or better, harrying – the music along, but this remained a bandmaster’s reading. The swift ‘slow’ movement was similar: not only could one hear every bar-line, every beat; one could predict where those following would fall too, and a good deal hence. Beautiful playing, judged in itself, above all from the BBC Philharmonic’s woodwind section, was hidebound by such regimentation.

The Schumann piece emerged similarly, though mitigating circumstances of rarity and some impressive piano playing lessened the disappointment. The ‘Introduction’ actually sounded relatively relaxed, chamber-like, if still too obviously directed. One only had to recall Claudio Abbado’s conducting of the Berlin Philharmonic for Murray Perahia’s recording to realise how this fell short. Yet, if Finghin Collins is not Perahia, his pearly tone proved not wholly dissimilar. He managed to conjure up moments of true Schumannesque delicacy and fantasy, before being corralled by the bandmaster at his side. Occasional moments of orchestral intimacy again suggested what might have been, but they seemed snatched by the players rather than part of Noseda’s strategy. Ultimately, and despite real promise from Collins, this wonderful piece sounded both rushed and laboured – and insubstantial.

After the interval, it was, then, a great pleasure to turn to the premiere of Holloway’s orchestration and encasing of and commentary on Schumann’s Songs of Mary Stuart. In a new work – well, new and old, in this case – one is less likely to be distracted by interpretation and more likely to focus upon the work itself, whatever that might mean. Moreover, this premiere proved a splendid follow up to the Nash Ensemble’s Proms matinee performance of Holloway’s Fantasy-Pieces (on the Heine ‘Liederkreis’ of Schumann). I was intrigued by the Prologue, Holloway’s own. Marked ‘Brief, lamenting, calming,’ the orchestration sounds relatively ‘German’, but the harmony surprisingly Gallic, recalling Poulenc at his more solemn. The Abschied von Frankreich is characterised by ever-present harp, and occasional hints of Webern-like instrumentation, Wagner becoming more present in Holloway’s re-imagining of the epilogue, highlighting its Tristan-esque tendencies. Nach der Geburt ihres Sohnes is more radical, with an orchestral ‘halo’, including iridescent celesta and woodwind, shining, in different tempo and tonality, above the song itself. Violins evoke a refractory dreamlike world somewhere between Rosenkavalier and early Schoenberg. The gravity of the concluding vocal ‘Amen’, here perfectly delivered by Dorothea Röschmann, draws attention back to the sombreness that has essentially characterised the contrasting vocal setting itself. An entr’acte of sarabande and bourrée, evocative of Mary’s happier days in France, prepares the way for her imploring, yet reproachful song to her cousin, An die Königin Elisabeth. Wagner again sprang to mind, and this time it was more Schumann’s doing than Holloway’s. These songs have been so undervalued!

Woodwind solos in the ensuing entr’acte provide Wagnerian presentiments of material that will follow, but also assist the sense of moving downwards, a perky enclosed miniature scherzino notwithstanding, to the sombre business of saying farewell to the world. Sadly, this most Mahlerian (almost inevitably so) of the songs, Abschied von der Welt, was disrupted by a barrage of coughing excessive even by the standards of this year’s Proms. A Romantic cello solo lies at the heart of the next entr’acte, harp and other strings prominent, woodwind responding thereto. The drum’s intervention hints ominously at Mary’s fate. The final song, Gebet (‘Prayer’) brings resignation, but also more play with the ‘past’. The vocal line, ‘Ersehne ich Dich,’ is echoed movingly by plangent viola, apparently joining cause with the viols of another age. And the arch-Romantic horn provides the solo that echoes, hopelessly, Mary beseeching her God to rescue her. Holloway’s ‘Epilogue’ provides a neat encapsulation of the conflict and synergy between centuries, the sarabande reprised, likewise material from the Prologue. As a whole, the song cycle appeared transformed, more akin to an operatic scena, and yet restrained, fastidious enough to mark the difference. Röschmann’s performance seemed beyond reproach, equally responsive to words and music, her vocal line modulated yet never strained.

Finally, Mozart’s Symphony no.40. This performance, again not unimpressive in purely orchestral terms, started off better than the Schubert, preferable to the appallingly mannered reading I endured from Sir Simon Rattle last year. The first movement was swift, on the light side, but nevertheless possessed grace. It was hardly Karl Böhm, and would have benefited from a more open response to Mozart’s astonishing proto-Romanticism – or, as ETA Hoffmann had it, simply Romanticism, and he should have known – but Mozart was not entirely misrepresented either. The slow movement flowed, more quickly than one used to hear, but it is an Andante. Noseda’s was a highly vocal conception, more Figaro-like than knocking at the Beethovenian door: a valid standpoint, even if somewhere in between might have revealed more. Repeats, though, made it a bit of a long haul. The third movement, however, took a turn for the worst. Noseda took it far too fast, almost waltz-like, albeit without the slightest hint of relaxation. It turned out rather choppy, each phrase here and in the inconsequential-sounding trio – how does one make Mozart sound inconsequential? – being merely followed by another, with no sense of overall line. The finale was fast – fair enough – but fatiguingly hard-driven. Tragedy is so much more interesting than this.