Tosca, English National Opera, 3 October 2016

Coliseum

(sung in English)

Tosca (Keri Alkema), Spoletta (Scott Davies), and Scarpia (Craig Colclough)
Images: Richard Hubert Smith

Floria Tosca – Keri Alkerna

Mario Cavaradossi – Gwyn Hughes Jones
Baron Scarpia – Craig Colclough
Cesare Angelotti – Andri Björn Róbertsson
Sacristan – Adrian Powter
Spoletta – Scott Davies
Sciarrone – Graeme Danby
Gaoler – Robert Winslade Anderson
Shepherd Boy – Alessandro MacKinnon
 

Catherine Malfitano (director)

Donna Stirrup (revival director)
Frank Peter Schlössman (set designs)
Gideon Davey (costumes)
David Martin Jacques, Kevin Sleep (lighting)
 

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: James Henshaw)

Orchestra of the English National Opera
Oleg Caetani (conductor)

 

Poor Puccini. He is far too often treated as a ‘box-office hit’ by our ‘major’ opera houses, at least in Anglophone countries. For so consummate a musical dramatist, that is something beyond a pity. Here in London, one is far better advised to go to Holland Park for interesting, intelligent productions, although ENO’s offerings have often had something to be said for them. Catherine Malfitano’s production once had a somewhat literalistic yet straightforward integrity to it; now it seems simply to flounder. When I saw it previously, in 2011, the Personenregie at least proved generally accomplished; here it veers (too little rehearsal time for a revival, perhaps?) between the non-existent and the all-too-local am-dram. The lack of any discernible concept thus matters far more than previously it did. We simply have sets and costumes and wandering around. Quite why the Sacristan looks as though he comes from Shoreditch-cum-Kandahar I have no idea. Nor do I understand the weirdly inter-galactic backdrop for the third act. The rest – well, the rest is unobjectionable, yet nothing more.

Cavaradossi (Gwyn Hughes Jones) and Tosca

The ENO Orchestra, as usual, was on excellent form. Oleg Caetani summoned up some luscious sounds, especially in the third act, although I found the first act a little jocular in tone. There was, in general, a reasonable sense of line, although Caetani fell some way short of the more distinguished ‘symphonic’ realisations. (No, it is not really quite the right word, but we all know what it means in this context.) Greater variegation would also have been welcome; I never felt Caetani was engaging with anything other than the score’s (impressive) surface. Choral singing was also of a high standard; let us never forget the sterling work the chorus undertakes day in, day out.

It was not, however, a vintage night for solo singing. Keri Alkerna offered an alert performance in the title role, but it rarely caught fire until the second act, and only intermittently then. Gwyn Hughes Jones clearly has quite a following at the Coliseum. Although he certainly has vocal heft, I was unable to discern much beyond that in his Cavaradossi: his singing was generalised – far too often a problem in this role, I have found – and his acting at best rudimentary. Craig Colclough’s underpowered Scarpia came across in strangely camp fashion, at least on those occasions when his voice rose above the orchestra and/or chorus. I am all for revisionist readings, but pantomime villain faces are not a satisfactory substitute for true malevolence. The smaller roles, however, tended to impress, Andri Björn Róbertsson’s Angelotti, Scott Davies's Spoletta, and young Alessandro MacKinnon’s Shepherd Boy were all especially well presented.

There was nothing bad here, then, but nor was there much over which to rejoice. Next time, might we have something that engages with the dramatic possibilities of the work, rather than pandering to the reactionary ‘taste’ of an imaginary ‘general’ audience? The Arts Council has behaved disgracefully towards ENO, but timidity never helped anyone, and it certainly does not help Puccini.

 

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, English National Opera, 21 February 2015

Coliseum

(sung in English, as The Mastersingers of Nuremberg)

Walther – Gwyn Hughes Jones

Eva – Rachel Nicholls
Magdalene – Madeleine Shaw
David – Nicky Spence
Hans Sachs – Iain Paterson
Sixtus Beckmesser – Andrew Shore
Veit Pogner – James Creswell
Fritz Kothner – David Stout
Kunz Vogelgesang – Peter van Hulle
Konrad Nachtigall – Quentin Hayes
Ulrich Eisslinger – Timothy Robinson
Hermann Ortel – Nicholas Folwell
Balthasar Zorn – Richard Roberts
Augustin Moser – Stephen Rooke
Hans Folz – Roderick Earle
Hans Schwarz – Jonathan Lemalu
Night Watchman – Nicholas Crawley

Richard Jones (director)

Paul Steinberg (set designs)
Buki Schiff (costumes)
Mimi Jordan Sherrin (lighting)
Lucy Burge (choreography)

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Martin Fitzpatrick)

Orchestra of the English National Opera
Edward Gardner (conductor)
 

Although the English National Opera has been decidedly sparing with its Wagner for quite some time now, its recent track record, leaving aside a disastrous Ring, has perhaps been better than that at Covent Garden. Above all, I am thinking of Nikolaus Lehnhoff’s production of Parsifal, sadly revived but once, with estimable conducting from ENO’s soon-to-be Music Director, Mark Wigglesworth, and a fine cast (bar an unfortunate Kundry). The contrast with the Royal Opera’s recent Parsifal – a production that appeared to offer a bizarre tribute to Jimmy Savile, a Music Director quite out of his depth, and a tenor whose replacement with a pneumatic drill would have been more or less universally welcomed – was telling. Here, a Meistersinger production originally seen in Cardiff again proved preferable to Covent Garden’s most recent offering (an especially sad state of affairs at the sometime house of Bernard Haitink). If we quietly leave to one side the most extravagant claims heard over the past fortnight – surely more a consequence of sympathy with and support for ENO in the face of financial and managerial difficulties than of properly critical reception – this proved something to be cherished, something of which ENO could justly be proud: a good, and in many respects very good, company performance.

Edward Gardner’s conducting certainly marked an advance upon his 2012 Flying Dutchman. One would hardly expect someone conducting The Mastersingers for the first time to give a performance at the level of a Haitink or a Thielemann, let alone the greatest conductors of the past; nor did he. Yet, once we were past a fitful first-act Prelude – I began to wonder whether we were in for a Harnoncourt-lite assault upon Wagner! – Gardner’s reading permitted the score to flow as it should. (I shudder in horror when I recall Antonio Pappano’s hackwork – a generous description – at Covent Garden.) If there was rarely the orchestral weight, the grounding in the bass, that Wagner’s work ideally requires, relative lightness of touch was perhaps no bad thing for lighter voices than one would generally encounter. Moreover, Gardner seemed surer as time went on: not an unusual thing in this score, for even so fine a Wagnerian such as Daniele Gatti gave a similar impression a year-and-a-half ago in Salzburg, coming ‘into focus’ more strongly as the work progressed. Moreover, orchestral playing, considered simply in itself, was excellent throughout; a larger body of strings would have been welcome, but one cannot have everything. The ENO Chorus, clearly well trained by Martin Fitzpatrick, offered sterling service in the best sense: weighty where required, yet anything but undifferentiated. Orchestra and chorus alike have prospered under Gardner’s leadership; they are treasures the company and country at large have the strongest of obligations to protect.

What of Richard Jones’s production? Clearly, to anyone familiar with the work of Stefan Herheim, or, from an earlier generation, say, Harry Kupfer and Götz Friedrich, there has again been an excess of extravagant praise. The production rarely gets in the way: certainly a cause for celebration. Yet, by the same token, it has nothing in particular to add to our understanding, however diverting the ‘spot the German artist on the stage curtain’ might be. (I could not help but smile at the mischievous inclusion of Frank Castorf.) A predictably post-modern mix of nineteenth- and sixteenth(?)-century costume could have been used to say something interesting about Wagner’s donning earlier, anachronistic garb (that is, Bach rather than something ‘authentic’). It would need to have been more sharply defined and directed, though; here, it remains on the level of the mildly confusing, or at least incoherent. One has a sense of community, but it is difficult to discern much in the way of the darker side of the work – without which, the light makes less impression, just as its ‘secondary’ diatonicism remains predicated, both immediately and more reflectively, upon the chromaticism of Tristan. I can see why Jones might have opted – at least that is what I think he was doing – to present Hans Sachs as suffering from bipolar disorder, doing an irritatingly silly dance at one point, prior to slumping into depression. Had that been a personal illustration of the Schopenhauerian Wahn afflicting the world more generally, it would have worked a great deal better, though, than an all-too-simple explanation for Sachs’s mood-swings. The translation, similarly mistaking the personal for the metaphysical, certainly did not help: ‘Mad! Mad! Everyone’s mad!’ for ‘Wahn! Wahn! Überall Wahn!’ If that were misleading, though, far worse was the bizarre reference to ‘ancient Rome’ instead of the Holy Roman Empire in Sachs’s final peroration, rendering his warnings meaningless and merely absurd. There is enough uninformed misunderstanding of this scene as it is, largely born, it seems, by Anglophone audiences being unable or unwilling to read what Wagner actually wrote; further confusion such as that is anything but helpful.

Jones certainly did score, though, in his adroit direction of the cast on stage, although much of that credit should certainly go directly to members of that cast. Andrew Shore’s Beckmesser was an unalloyed joy, treading the difficult line between comedy and dignity as surely as anyone was is likely to see today. His diction was beyond reproach, seamless integration of Wort und Ton almost having one forget the problems of translation. James Creswell’s rich bass similarly impressed, having one wish that Pogner’s role might be considerably expanded. David Stout’s Kothner elicited a not dissimilar reaction from this listener. Iain Paterson’s voice is less ideally suited to his role, that of Sachs, but there was no doubting his commitment to role and performance, the thoughtfulness of which offered many compensations. The other Masters and Nicholas Crawley’s sumptuously-clad Night Watchmen were an impressive bunch too. I wondered whether, to begin with, Gwyn Hughes Jones’s Walther was a little too Italianate in style; that is doubtless more a matter of taste than anything else, though, and either the performance or my ears adjusted – or both. He certainly went from strength to strength in the second and third acts, experiencing no difficulties whatsoever in making himself heard above the rest of the ensemble, without any recourse to barking. Nicky Spence’s characterful David – it would, admittedly, be an odd David who was not characterful! – struggled a little with his higher notes in the first act, but, like the cast as a whole, offered a portrayal considerably more than the sum of its parts. I was less keen on Rachel Nicholls’s somewhat harsh-toned Eva, having the distinct impression that her voice was being forced, perhaps on account of the size of the theatre. (But then, Wagner tends to be performed in larger theatres.) Madeleine Shaw’s Magdalene was straightforwardly a joy to hear, as impressive in its way as the assumptions of Shore and Creswell. Again, it was difficult not to wish for more.

So, despite certain reservations, this was a Meistersinger to be reckoned with. On a number of occasions, especially during the third act, work and performance brought a lump to my throat, even once a tear to my eye. That, surely, is the acid test – and it was readily passed.

La bohème, English National Opera, 29 April 2013

The Coliseum

Marcello – Richard Burkhard

Rodlofo – Gwyn Hughes Jones
Colline – Andrew Craig Brown
Schaunard – Duncan Rock
Benoit, Alcindoro – Simon Butteriss
Mimì – Kate Valentine
Parpignol – Philip Daggett
Musetta – Angel Blue
Policeman – Paul Sheehan
Foreman – Andrew Tinkler

Jonathan Miller (director)

Natascha Metherell (revival director)
Isabella Bywater (designs)
Jean Kalman, Kevin Sleep (lighting). Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Genevieve Ellis)

Orchestra of the English National Opera

Oleg Caetani (conductor)

 

This second revival of Jonathan Miller’s La bohème was the first time I had caught the production. Miller has often been over-praised, particularly by those ‘of a certain age’, apparently unaware or unwilling to accept that the world has moved on from the 1960s of their youth; indeed, Miller’s Royal Opera Così fan tutte is not simply bad, but one of the most objectionable stagings I have seen of anything. This Bohème, whilst hardly groundbreaking, does its job reasonably enough. For some reason, the action is updated to the Paris of the 1930s. Beyond imparting a certain cinematic quality – though not necessarily nearly so much as Miller and his designer, Isabella Bywater seem to think it does – it is not clear what is gained, but nor for that matter is a great deal lost. An individual’s fondness for the photography of George Brassaï does not in itself seem to me justification for a production, but anyway... The characters are for well directed on stage, for which revival director, Natascha Metherell should doubtless receive much of the credit. (Both Metherell and Miller appeared on stage to take a bow.) Occasionally, I wondered whether the action were a little too prey to domestification of the wrong way; the meeting between Rodolfo and Mimì is decidedly low-key, more akin to a neighbourhood watch meeting than an ignition of passion. However, the selfishness of ‘Bohemian’ youth comes across at least as strongly as I can recall upon other occasions: are not these boys to some extent playing at poverty, whilst Mimì’s suffering is the real thing?

 

Described in the publicity blurb as a ‘cast of young British talent’, that is for the most part what it is. I have little patience with those who castigate ENO – or Covent Garden, for that matter – for ‘failing to promote British artists’. The arts world has, let us be grateful, yet to capitulate to the insidious yet hysterical nationalism pervading much of our political class and media. What we want are singers, artists in general, who are good, and preferably more than that. With the exception of Gwyn Hughes Jones, we did pretty well. Though his Rodolfo improved somewhat during the third and fourth acts, and was not without sensitivity, there was too much that was simply crude, almost an allegedly ‘Italianate’ parody, or strangely faceless. The vacuum extended to stage presence too; it would have been well-nigh impossible to believe in him as a Romantic lead. Kate Valentine’s Mimì, on the other hand, was a credit to her and to ENO. Nobility of spirit was allied to sterling, necessary musical values of phrasing and tonal variegation. It was a delight to make the acquaintance of the charismatic American singer, the splendidly named Angel Blue (an exception in terms of nationality, but certainly not quality). She sang as well as she acted, holding the stage without effort, imparting both ‘artistic’ superiority to Musetta as singer and, increasingly, warm humanity to her as woman. Richard Burkhard’s Marcello impressed too, as did the excellently sung – and acted – Colline of Andrew Craig Brown and Schaunard of Duncan Rock. It was a pity that Simon Butteriss over-acted – ‘silly voice’ rather than expression of the text through singing – in the role of Benoit; maybe he was doing so under orders. A greater pity was the banality of Amanda Holden’s translation; making Puccini sound satisfactory in English is not the easiest of tasks, but too often, a tin ear revealed itself in the straightforward incompatibility of words and vocal line.

 

Oleg Caetani made a very welcome return to the Coliseum. His direction of the ENO Orchestra was splendid, rich in tone – sometimes, a little more, alla Daniele Gatti, would have been appreciated there, but then Gatti, last summer, had the Vienna Philharmonic – but above all, dramatically alert. Temptations to linger, to sentimentalise, were eschewed, without draining the drama of its lifeblood. Wagnerisms – I noticed some especially Tristan-esque progressions – and modernisms were not necessarily underlined, yet, given Caetani’s ear for balance and line, caught one’s ear nevertheless. I should love one day to hear a properly modernistic Bohème – or Tosca. This was not it, but refusal to play to the gallery, and underlining of solid, yet certainly not stolid, musical virtues proved a great relief for a work in which superficial gloss can all too readily hold sway. Choral singing and direction of the chorus also proved estimable throughout.

Tosca, English National Opera, 26 November 2011

Coliseum

Floria Tosca – Claire Rutter
Mario Cavaradossi – Gwyn Hughes Jones
Baron Scarpia – Anthony Michaels-Moore
Cesare Angelotti – Matthew Hargreaves
Sacristan – Henry Waddington
Spoletta – Scott Davies
Sciarrone – Graeme Danby
Gaoler – Christopher Ross
Shepherd-boy –Jacob Ramsay-Patel

Catherine Malfitano (director)
Frank Schloessmann (set designs)
Gideon Davey (costumes)
David Martin Jacques, Kevin Sleep (lighting)

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Nicholas Chalmers)
Orchestra of the English National Opera
Stephen Lord (conductor)

Tosca (Claire Rutter) and Cavaradossi (Gwyn
Hughes-Jones)
Images: Mike Hoban

The swift return to the Coliseum of Catherine Malfitano’s production of Tosca, premiered in 2010, contrasts strongly with the increasingly disposable nature of many recent ENO productions. Malfitano’s staging makes a refreshing change both from the likes of the floundering first-time spoken theatre and film directors often recently engaged by the company, and from the ludicrous, dramatically-null vulgarity of the Zeffirelli brigade. It doubtless helps to have someone at the directorial helm who knows the work from the inside, having sung the title-role a good many times herself. There is nothing here – with the possible exception of the third act – to frighten self-appointed ‘traditionalists’, although in such repertoire and with respect the audiences it tends to attract, I cannot help but wish that someone would occasionally shock the horses. (Just imagine what Calixto Bieito might make of Tosca!) Despite the sometimes bizarre specificity of the libretto, there seems to me no reason why intelligent relocation or abstraction could not work: the opera is not in any meaningful sense ‘about’ the experience of the French Revolution in Rome. Malfitano, however, elects successfully to retain the settings and for the most part the attitudes of the work’s creators, respecting as do they the classical unities.

Scarpia (Anthony Michaels-Moore)

The first act is therefore set in S.Andrea della Valle at noon, convincingly represented in realistic fashion by Frank Philipp Schlössmann’s designs. The force of Cavaradossi’s painting registers straightforwardly, but none the worse for that. One strongly feels the menace of the Church as pillar of the (re-)established order at the entrance of clergy and acolytes for the Te Deum. (I cannot help but find the anti-clericalism shallow, verging on the puerile, but that is no fault of the production.) Likewise, the second act is set at evening in Scarpia’s quarters in the Palazzo Farnese, furnished as one might expect, though without excess. The third act therefore comes as a bit of a surprise, at least in terms of designs . Doubtless taking as its cue references in words and stage directions to the stars, perhaps even those to the saints in heaven, we see the skies as if from a space ship, though something akin to the battlements is still present. It did not bother me in the slightest, though nor, by the same token, did I find the image revelatory. Throughout, Malfitano’s direction of the characters on stage proves quietly accomplished, providing neither mishaps nor particular flashes of revelation. I do not mean to imply that it is dull, for it is not, but nor does this in any sense approach reinterpretation, for which many will doubtless be relieved. If I found the final melodrama as difficult to take as ever, a not-entirely-fitting conclusion to so well-crafted a score, then clearly I am in the minority; rightly or wrongly, it receives faithful treatment here.

Stephen Lord’s conducting was impressive. Lord is not a conductor I have previously heard, but I should certainly be interested to do so again. Despite the occasional instance of perhaps driving the score a little hard, the full yet variegated sound conjured from the orchestra was as fine as I have heard at the Coliseum for quite some time. Alert to Puccini’s Wagnerisms without overplaying them, there was a fine continuity to Lord’s traversal of the score, which here in both harmony and orchestration at times sounded, to its great benefit, appreciably more modernistic than one often hears. It was not for nothing that both Schoenberg and Berg were admirers. Even Mahler, in his scathing description of a Meistermachwerk, acknowledged the skill of orchestration – an undoubted advance upon so many of Puccini’s Italian forebears – though added that any cobbler nowadays could merely ‘orchestrate to perfection’.



If the singing did not truly scaled the heights, it was professionally despatched. No one is going to replicate Callas, and Claire Rutter wisely did not attempt to try: hers was an intelligent enough stage portrayal, a little lacking in charisma perhaps, likewise in creation of the diva-status of Floria Tosca as singer, but, despite occasional weakness in sustaining her line, there was nothing grievous to worry about. Gwyn Hughes-Jones’s Cavaradossi was not entirely free of crooning tendencies, nor did it revel in subtleties, but it was well enough sung, and would doubtless have sounded better in Italian. Anthony Michaels-Moore seemed to experience vocal difficulties in the first act but his Scarpia sharpened up in the second, albeit without ever quite capturing the sheer danger and malevolence of the most notable interpreters. The smaller parts were all well taken. Choral singing, not always the strongest point recently at the Coliseum, was similarly accomplished.