Davies I and N/Bevan/Hobbs/Dunford - Dowland, 28 March 2026

Wigmore Hall

From The Third and Last Booke of Songs or Aires: ‘Behold a wonder ‘; ‘I must complain’; ‘Lend your ears to my sorrow’; ‘What poor astronomers are they’; ‘When Phoebus first did Daphne love’ (?); ‘Me, me and none but me’; ‘The lowest trees have tops’; ‘By a fountain where I lay’; ‘Time stands still’; ‘Say, love, if ever thou didst find Interval’; ‘What if I never speed’; ‘It was a time when silly bees could speak’; ‘Fie on this feigning’; ‘Love stood amazed’; ‘O what hath overwrought’; ‘Farewell too fair’; ‘Weep you no more, sad fountains’; ‘Come when I call’; ‘Farewell, unkind, farewell’
‘The Frog Galliard’
‘Lachrimae’

Iestyn Davies (countertenor)

Daisy Bevan (soprano)

Thomas Hobbs (tenor)

Neal Davies (bass-baritone)

Thomas Dunford (lute)

The Wigmore Hall has done John Dowland proud with a whole weekend, Friday to Sunday, commemorating the four hundredth anniversary of his death. The composer’s lute songs will surely always remain at the heart of his renown, but these concerts have also explored his instrumental and sacred writing. The concert I was able to attend offered almost all of The Third and Last Booke of Songs or Aires: nineteen of the twenty-one, I think, although, unless my ears deceived me, one listed on the programme, ‘When Phoebus first did Daphne love’ was not sung and thus – I assume – replaced with one of those remaining. (I may, though, have misunderstood; the programme above I have simply reproduced from that I was given.) In addition, we heard two exquisite lute solos, as well as skilful ‘preluding’ in between from Thomas Dunford. The 1597 Frog Galliard, which may ultimately refer to Elizabeth I’s pet name, ‘my little frog’, for her French suitor the Duke of Anjou, was nicely spun as a memory of court dance. The ‘Lachrimae’ pavan that would become the celebrated ‘Flow my tears’ from Dowland’s Second Book, was its second-half counterpart, on which a little more below. 

Dunford’s contributions ran throughout, of course, a masterclass in the lutenist’s art, ever tailored to song, singer, and moment. His partnership with Davies in the opening song, ‘Behold a wonder here’ announced a wonder indeed: endlessly varied music-making, not despite the strophic form but on account of the variation it suggests and received. All four singers had their moments in the sun, including a four-song sequence at the beginning in which each introduced him- or herself. Thomas Hobbs’s ‘I must complain’ presented his pleasingly lyrical tenor; Daisy Bevan’s ‘Lend your ears to my sorrow’ offered similar verbal sensitivity and a nice sense of inwardness, her style broadly ‘early’ but not aggressively so; a sprightly, witty ‘What poor astronomers are they’ from Neal Davies rounded off the quartet. 

Part songs such as ‘Me, me and none but me’ and ‘Love stood amazed’, subtly yet crucially directed by Iestyn Davies, offered textural variety, a keen, variegated sense of euphony, and a good deal of variety within. ‘By a fountain where I lay’, for instance, had solos, well taken, from soprano and tenor, whilst tenor and countertenor shared those honours in ‘Say, love, if ever thou didst find’. Collaborative singing was crucial in the brazen repetitions of ‘come’ in ‘What if I never speed?’ Likewise the duetting between Bevan and Iestyn Davies in ‘Come when I call’. Neal Davies’s expert use of the Earl of Essex’s verse in ‘It was a time when silly bees could speak’ suggested words of their own volition becoming song, art concealing art. His sign-off here was a particular moment to cherish. The closing ‘Farewell, unkind, farewell’ struck just the right note as a farewell in itself: slightly lingering, but not too much.

Other highlights were a plaintive ‘Farewell too fair’ from Hobbs, followed by a wonderfully somnolent ‘Weep you no more, sad fountains’ from Bevan, words and performance a powerful incentive to succumb to the ‘reconciling … rest that peace begets’, whilst at the same time reminding one why this could not be an option, given the quality of music-making on offer. Both, as well as the preceding four-voice ‘O what hath overwrought’, fell in the shadow of that ‘Lachrimae’ from Dunford. Here, one felt not only Dowland’s tears, but their salt, flavouring much of what was still to come.

My only real doubt concerned whether some aspects of the performances fell a little too strongly on the polite side: not only for itself but because it precluded the greater variety that might have come from more clearly developing the lead set by Dunford and Davies (Iestyn) in that respect. If not quite Choral Evensong, it was not entirely not of that world either. It might seem silly to criticise a performance of English music for being too English, even Anglican, and this was an intermittent matter of degree. This is a hesitant cavil, though, nothing more, and doubtless in part a matter more of taste than of judgement. There could, in truth, be no gainsaying the intelligence and musicality of these performances.

Saul, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, 8 June 2025

 

© Glyndebourne Productions Ltd. Photography by ASH

Saul – Christopher Purves
David – Iestyn Davies
Merab – Sarah Brady
Michal – Soraya Mafi
Jonathan – Linard Vrielink
Abner, High Priest, Doeg, Amalekite – Liam Bonthrone
Witch of Endor – Ru Charlesworth
Dancers – Lucy Alderman, Robin Gladwin, Lukas Hunt, Dominic Rocca, Nathan Ryles, Daisy West

Director – Barrie Kosky
Revival director – Donna Stirrup
Designs – Katrin Lea Tag
Choreography – Otto Pichler
Revival choreography – Merry Holden
Lighting – Joachim Klein

The Glyndebourne Chorus (chorus director: Aidan Oliver)
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Jonathan Cohen (conductor)

Saul (Christopher Purves)

I found myself listening at home to Saul a few months ago (Charles Mackerras’s outstanding Leeds Festival recording with Donald McIntyre, James Bowman, Margaret Price, et al.). It made for often uncomfortable listening, the ever-problematical identification of Handel’s Protestant England with the ‘children of Israel’ all the more when daily we see the Philistines’ successors mercilessly slain in the name of a latter-day ‘Eretz Israel’, itself the product of the imperialism on which the new, fiscal-military state of Great Britain had been founded. Culminating in news from the Amalekite – David’s ‘Impious wretch, of race accursed!’ – that Saul has been slain and Israelite exortation to ‘Gird on thy sword, thou man of might’, it seemed both a work both for now and absolutely not. At least it was not Joshua or Judas Maccabeus, I thought; and indeed its central dramatic concerns are not necessarily those, however glaring they may stand out now. The work’s political dimension is important, but is one of several and arguably not the most important. In any case, it extends beyond war and empire to broader questions of kingship—not least given the precedent of the Whig establishment’s treasonous support for the Dutch invasion that had removed ‘the Lord’s anointed’ within living memory, and without which George II would stand nowhere near the throne. 

Barrie Kosky’s Glyndebourne production of Saul was first seen in 2015: what may now seem a very different world, prior to Britain’s fateful referendum, Trump’s election, Covid, the invasion of Ukraine, and of course genocide in Gaza. None of those things came out of nowhere, of course, but the world was different. He was – and is – perfectly entitled to explore other aspects of the drama, and it is neither his nor revival director Donna Stirrup’s fault that events have overtaken us. Kosky offers a typically pugnacious, persuasive defence of staging such works at all and of his particular aesthetic in the programme. ‘But when you put Handel’s oratorios on stage you know that there will be a flood of opera reviewers who’ll say these pieces were not written for the stage, so why are we staging them? Get real! Opera is not about rules and regulations. Handel’s oratorios are sometimes more dramatic than his operas. We know that because we can hear it. Their musical landscapes are often more radical than those of the operas.’ I agree with every word. Why, then, beyond the inevitable unease concerning aspects of the drama, did I have my doubts—as someone who has long thought it cried out for the stage? 

There are problems intrinsic to the work, of course, as there always have been, lying beyond the cul-de-sac of alleged intention. The chorus’s role is one: how to deal with it onstage? Kosky certainly makes the most (as, for instance, in his Komische Oper Hercules) of his opportunities in this respect. An opening festal tableau, gestures arrestingly frozen, draws one in, Kosky’s detailed direction of each member of a crowd that also combines with excellence en masse dovetailing with Katrin Lee Tag’s painterly vision.An eighteenth-century audience, so it seems, participates, mirroring the dual function of the chorus itself, roots in Greek tragedy apparent and brimming with dramatic potential. 

David (Iestyn Davies)

The problem for me comes with elements of the conception of the protagonists. Not all of it: much shows great insight. A brazenly opportunist David is the trump card: charisma born of body and battle, seemingly willing to do anything – or anyone – to further his clear yet unstated lust for power. Why bother to spell it out, when the crowd will for him? ‘Saul, who hast thy thousands slain, welcome to thy friends again! David his ten thousands slew, ten thousand praises are his due!’ There is, moreover, a creditable effort to make more of Saul’s daughters and their roles, though that also leads us to more difficult territory. In that programme interview, Kosky states his dislike of realism, but that seems to refer to aesthetics rather than to psychology. (I actually would not have minded more on the former side and less dance, however finely accomplished; but that is a matter of taste, no more.) It is a particular form of psychological realism that, though I can see the temptation, also leads the drama to become less interesting and arguably less coherent. If one portrays calculation in such realistic way, there is nothing ‘mad’ about Saul’s reaction. Michal and still more Jonathan must simply be in love with David, which is obviously part of what is going on but surely not the only or overriding dramaturgical concern. And the decision to present Saul for much of the time as if already in Bedlam – perhaps even as if a flashback – is ultimately reductive, again crowding out other concerns. 

Set against that, the darker turn following the interval makes an undeniably strong impression. There is a splendid star-turn (literally) from the revolving solo organist onstage. When Saul visits the Witch of Endor, Kosky offers a nice sense of Tiresias in Beckettland, to the weird, disconcerting extent that Saul feeds from one of the Witch’s breasts. The doomed monarch also voices Samuel’s words himself: possessed or merely delusional? If Kosky and Tag’s Beckettland looks surprisingly (or unsurprisingly) close to that seen for their Castor et Pollux (ENO and elsewhere) and Don Giovanni (Vienna), most production teams have recognisable correspondences over time. Richard Jones & Co. anyone? The important question is what one does with them. 

Jonathan Cohen’s conducting I found more difficult to get on with: not only aggressively ‘period’, but of a variety that too often skated over Handel’s strengths as a musical dramatist. There was little grandeur, if often much rasping noise. The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment strings might surely have been permitted fuller tone at times. Excellent woodwind fared better: characterful and dramatically telling. Handel’s writing for bassoon – not only in the Witch of Endor scene – is worth an essay alone from someone. It certainly sounded so here. Greater variety of tempo was achieved as time went on, if there were still cases, especially in choral numbers, when breakneck speed disrupted ensemble. 

Merab (Sarah Brady), Michal (Soraya Malfi), and Jonathan (Linard Vrielink)

Christopher Purves’s Saul was superbly acted, if sometimes a little close to Sprechgesang (leaving aside purely spoken interjections further to enhance the impression of insanity). There was often, though, a thinness of tone to his delivery that complemented Cohen’s way with the orchestra, but which on ‘purely’ musical terms left me at least missing something more bass-like. Iestyn Davies’s David was outstanding in every respect: word, tone, and gesture a model of characterisation.  Sarah Brady and Soraya Mafi offered a haughty Merab and an attractive, calculating Michal, in fine dramatic contrast both with one another and with the honeyed, imploring sincerity of Linard Vrielink’s Jonathan. Kosky’s amalgamation of Abner, High Priest, and Doeg, into a single Fool-like character elicited sinister ambiguity from Liam Bonthrone, who also took on the ‘cursed’ role of the Amalekite, mysteriously hooded in the auditorium. Ru Charlesworth offered a darkly vivid portrayal for Kosky and Handel’s strange conception of the Witch of Endor. The Glyndebourne Chorus likewise responded to a varied set of challenges – Handel’s, Kosky’s, and Cohen’s – with fine musical and dramatic dedication. 

My reservations, then, were relatively minor. Audience enthusiasm suggested they were little shared. This was a highly enjoyable occasion, though might it have offered more dramatically? To my dismay, I could not help but wonder whether a concert performance, albeit differently conducted, might have come closer in that respect.

Munich Opera Festival (3) - Agrippina, 28 July 2019

Prinzregententheater

Images: Wilfried Hösl

Claudio – Gianluca Buratto

Agrippina – Alice Coote

Nerone – Franco Fagioli

Poppea – Elsa Benoît

Ottone – Iestyn Davies

Pallante – Andrea Mastroni

Narciso – Eric Jurenas

Lesbo – Markus Suihkonen

Barrie Kosky (director)

Rebecca Ringst (set designs)

Klaus Bruns (costumes)

Joachim Klein (lighting)

Nikolaus Stenitzer (dramaturgy)

Bavarian State Orchestra

Ivor Bolton (conductor)

And still they come. The opera world’s obsession with Handel’s operas shows no sign of abating. The Bavarian State Opera has, since Peter Jonas’s Intendancy, stood at the forefront of Handel staging; this new production of Agrippina was dedicated to him. As ever, I was pleased to see one of these operas for the first time in the theatre – how could I not be pleased to see almost anything in Munich’s wonderful Prinzregententheater – but again, as ever, I was left unable ever quite to put to one side the dramaturgical difficulties/problems/flaws/inadequacies. (Call them what you will.)

That Agrippina tells us next to nothing about ancient Rome is neither here nor there. One might say the same of La clemenza di Tito (in whichever version one cares to take it). It benefits also, I think, from being one of Handel’s earliest works. The freshness of his Italian writing is often very much apparent, even though some of the music he recycles – his own, that is, though Reinhard Keiser puts in guest ‘borrowed’ appearances too – perhaps breathes more easily in its earlier manifestations. There is certainly wit in Cardinal Vincenzo Grimani’s libretto; that seems to have appealed to Barrie Kosky, who somewhat oddly speculates in the programme on the cardinal’s sexual orientation on the basis of in-jokes, as he sees them. Again, that is really neither here nor there, but Kosky, for all the intelligence with which he writes otherwise in that programme, seems unable or at least unwilling to prevent himself from inflicting acts of arbitrary silliness. They do little to clarify or to further the action, and serve instead to suggest that it is not to be taken seriously. (If not, then what is the point at all? It is certainly not an intrinsically amusing work.) Silly dancing, that plague of so much vaguely ‘modern’ opera staging, recurs with wearying regularity; likewise gratuitous over-acting, which serves, it seems, only to dare one ‘humourlessly’ to decry it. As for the bizarre transformation at one point of Agrippina into nightclub singer, the less said the better.

Agrippina (Alice Coote)

There is, moreover, little or no sense of what might actually be at stake in the plot, most notably the very real danger in which Ottone, fallen foul of imperial favour, finds himself. The work’s dramaturgical difficulties are thus heightened rather than addressed, let alone resolved. Deferring an interval until the middle of the second act does not really help. The three-act structure is clear and meaningful; there is no obvious reason to present us with one-and-a-half acts at a time, other perhaps than cost-cutting. The descent of Juno to bless the final arrangement is – somewhat oddly, given the length of the evening – omitted. So too is the ballet that would follow; instead, we have an aria from L’Allegro, Il Penseroso ed Il Moderato. That all does no harm, I suppose; presumably divine intervention stood at odds with whatever the production’s prevailing sensibility of the production is held to be. (Apart from vaguely modernised silliness, I remain at a loss.) Its inclusion might well, though, have offered opportunity for more of a critical, reflective stance than ever emerges.

Ivor Bolton’s tempi were sensible enough, at least for a while. It was not long, though, before one realised that the conductor had little or no sense of harmonic rhythm, and was simply treating the score as recitative-aria-recitative-aria, ad infinitum. Given some arbitrary pulling around of certain numbers, others remaining unpleasantly hard-driven, the work’s longueurs were again heightened rather than addressed. Orchestral playing was generally excellent, the Bavarian State Orchestra’s woodwind especially delectable. If strings would have benefited from warmer tone at time, that was clearly a consequence of Bolton’s allegedly ‘period’ style. Continuo exhibitionism was largely absent, for which, in the present climate, we should all be grateful, even though what remained was often somewhat staid.

There was much to admire in the singing, save for Franco Fagioli’s dreadful squawkathon as Nerone. His bizarre facial expressions were certainly matched by grotesque vocal production. Why anyone should wish to experience either is quite beyond me. The best that could be said was that his display was less atrocious than as Covent Garden’s Idamante a few years ago; at least he sang a few more of the right notes in Munich. Alice Coote offered a generous, beautifully shaded performance in the title role, coloratura a dramatic tool, rather than, as in Fagioli’s case, a mere object of (fallible) display. Elsa Benoît’s Poppea proved finely contrasted in tendency – Kosky’s more girlish conception of her was perhaps a little much – but possessing many of the same musical virtues. Oddly, the one aria in which accuracy of intonation left much to be desired was the one vigorously applauded by a sadly undiscerning audience. (It lapped up Fagioli too.) Iestyn Davies put Fagioli to shame in his unfailingly musical performance as Ottone. ‘Ti vuo’ giusta e non pietosa,’ which here came immediately before the interval, offered all the musical sensitivity and verbal acuity so conspicuously absent chez Nerone. There were otherwise no weak links, Gianluca Buratto’s Claudio perhaps especially impressive in his matching of style and temperament.

Claudio (Gianluca Buratto) and Elsa Benoît

Ultimately, though, none of the problems seemingly inherent in performance of Handelian opera seria were solved; a good few were not even acknowledged. Handel is unquestionably a fine composer. Is it too much, though, to ask that we look more to the music – and indeed to the musical dramas – in which he stands at his greatest? Most of the oratorios – pretty much any of them, other than Messiah – remain bizarrely neglected. They offer thoughtful singers, as well as audiences, considerably greater nourishment, on the whole. And can we not at least rid ourselves of this fad with vocal exhibitionism, especially when it fails so manifestly even on its own terms? There is room for Handel and Gluck; a surfeit of the former, however, tends only to have one longing for the ‘noble simplicity’ of the latter.

Salzburg Festival (1) - Adès, The Exterminating Angel, 5 August 2016




Images: Salzburger Festspiele/Monika Rittershaus
Francisco (Iestyn Davies), Silvia (Sally Matthews), Leticia (Audrey Luna),
Leonora (Anne Sofie von Otter), Doctor (John Tomlinson)

Haus für Mozart

Lucía de Nobile – Amanda Echalaz

Leticia Maynar – Audrey Luna
Leonora Palma – Anne Sofie von Otter
Silvia de Ávila – Sally Matthews
Bianca Delgado – Christine Rice
Beatriz – Sophie Bevan
Edmundo de Nobile – Charles Workman
Raúl Yebenes – Frédéric Antoun
Colonel Álvaro Gómez – David Adam Moore
Francisco de Ávila – Iestyn Davies
Eduardo – Ed Lyon
Señor Russell – Sten Byriel
Alberto Roc – Thomas Allen
Doctor Carlos Conde – John Tomlinson
Julio – Morgan Moody
Lucas – John Irvin
Enrique – Franz Gürtelschmied
Pablo – Rafael Fingerlos
Meni – Frances Pappas
Camila – Anna Maria Dur
Padre Sansón – Cheyne Davidson
Yoli – Leonard Radauer
Servants – Maria Hegele, Silke Redhammer, Harald Wurmsdobler, Jakov Pejcic
Dancers – Uli Kirsch, Sophia Preidel, Stine Rønne, Pim Veulings, Eva Svaneblom

Tom Cairns (director)

Hildegard Bechtler (designs)
Jon Clark (lighting)
Tal Yarden (video)
Amir Hosseinpour (choreography)
Christian Arseni (dramaturgy)

 

Coming relatively late in the run to Thomas Adès’s new opera, The Exterminating Angel, I was unable to insulate myself entirely from what others had thought about it. I found people whose judgements I respect both fulsome in praise and in negative criticism. Seeing it here in Salzburg, I found myself in the somewhat unaccustomed situation of the juste milieu; I certainly did not find it a terrible work, far from it, but nor did I hear – or indeed see – anything in it that suggested it might hold the key to the operatic future. I was happy to have seen it, and should happily see it again, in order to see whether my mind would change; however, I cannot imagine travelling to do so. In what follows, I shall try to explain why, as well as paying tribute to the excellent performances from all concerned; I have little doubt that the opera received as fine a baptism as anyone could reasonably have hoped for.

Above all, I cannot answer the question ‘why an opera?’ To my shame, I had not seen Buñuel’s film before, but seeing the opera has sent me back to watch it. Even from a single viewing, it seems fully to merit its hallowed status. It is far less clear to me that it merits the transformation into an opera. In a sense, the answer to my question is simply, ‘because its creators wanted it to be’. It seems to me, though, that a great deal is lost and the work that emerges is, in some respects, not entirely free of sprawling self-indulgence. The cast is huge: in this case, a line-up of many of Covent Garden’s finest regular singers. (The production will move to London next year.) If one is going to transform a film into an opera, is it perhaps not better to offer more radical surgery? The stilted quality, even the superficiality, of high bourgeois conversation is clearly part of the point: as Bunuel, quoted in dramaturge, Christian Arseni’s admirable programme note, put it, ‘It wouldn’t be the same if I had used working-class characters, because they would have found a solution to their incarceration. … Because workers are more in touch with life’s difficulties.’ I cannot say that I found that critical element come to the fore here, though; is there perhaps too much all-purpose irony? I certainly would not go so far as to say that operatic characters need to elicit sympathy, but often it helps. Here, it is the Doctor – played in typically barnstorming fashion by John Tomlinson – who offers a voice of reflection, of reason; the problem is that he often seems in danger of being in a different opera altogether.

 

The first act, then, seemed pretty tedious to me in the theatre. The dramatic exposition does not lend itself especially well to musical treatment, although, as always with Adès, there are splendid vignettes: for instance, Blanca at the piano. (The request for her to play some Adès should really have been cut, though. Tom Cairns’s libretto – he also directs – is generally skilful indeed, but an in-joke should be funnier than that.) As the opera opens out, the composer’s exploration of situation and of relationship seems stronger, indeed more well-suited to conventional operatic writing. For, whatever this work is, it is not remotely experimental. Not that it need be, but it is far from clear to me that the operatic future, nor the better part of the operatic present, lies in neo-Verdian realism.

 

Parody is, unsurprisingly, a strong presence. I could not help but wonder whether the Johann Strauss waltzes – intriguingly, Adès, according to an enlightening interview with Cairns and Arseni, hears them as asking, ‘Why don’t you stay a little longer? Don’t worry about what’s going on outside’ – might have been a little less directly introduced. ‘When panic breaks out among the guests in Act Two,’ the composer continues, ‘I have layered motifs derived and distorted from various Strauss waltzes over one another in a Fugue of Panic, transforming them into a kind of whirlpool.’ To me, by contrast, it all sounded too obvious; elements sounded to me rather more than motifs and transformation did not seem to go very far. The explanation sounded more interesting than the musical reality, although the latter was certainly – like the dinner guests, or at least their conception of themselves – not without charm. The tolling bells with which the work starts and ends frame it well enough, although – presumably deliberately – they betoken a seriousness, an apocalyptic presence barely perceptible elsewhere. Adès’s employment of the ondes Martenot (yes, you guessed it: the excellent Cynthia Millar), apparently his first ever use of an electronic instrument, as the voice of the exterminating angel is clear enough, but it often just sounds a bit peculiar, even appliqué. Perhaps that is the point; nevertheless, I am not sure that the musical elements or indeed the musico-dramatic elements, insofar as they might be separated, really cohere. And yes, as you may have expected, we have a chaconne at the end.

 

Cairns’s productions looks wonderful in itself, Hildegard Bechtler’s set designs are imposing, her costume designs exquisite (as, dramatically, perhaps they should be). As with the work itself, I wondered whether something a little less straightforward might have helped one adopt more of a complex standpoint, both more distanced and more involved. But it does its job well enough, in terms that seem to be those of the opera itself. Adès’s conducting of the outstanding ORF SO sounded to me incisive and authoritative. To go through the cast, most of whom do not have very much to do, would not seem, at least on a first hearing, to do much more than repeat the cast list above. I mentioned Tomlinson earlier; others who stood out – and this may be as much a matter of their roles as anything else – were Amand Echalaz’s Lucía, Christine Rice’s Blanca, and Iestyn Davies’s Francisco, his vocal performance offering in its inflections a strong sense of the conflict in the character’s personality. Audrey Luna offered a trademark stratospheric performance, going far beyond Leticia’s role of the evening: Donizetti’s Lucia. Choral singing – there is not much of it – was excellent. Did the whole add up to more than the sum of its parts? Not really, although some of the parts were diverting enough.

Aurora Orchestra/Collon - Bach, St John Passion, 16 March 2013

Hall One, Kings Place

 

Evangelist: John Mark Ainsley
Christus: Roland Wood

Malin Christensson (soprano)

Iestyn Davies (alto)
Andrew Tortise (tenor)
David Stout (Pilate/bass)

Choir of Clare College, Cambridge

Aurora Orchestra

Nicholas Collon (conductor)

 

 

I hope readers will forgive me if I make this review relatively brief, the reason being that events outside the control of the performers, or indeed the hall, made it rather difficult to come to a conventional judgement concerning the performance. A good part of the second part fell under the shadow of an audience member apparently losing consciousness, collapsing, and receiving medical treatment, most of that going on, immediately next to my seat, whilst the performance continued. I mention that not to over-dramatise, and certainly not in any sense to complain, my thoughts being very much with the man concerned, but simply to explain why inevitably, I am not in the best position to go into great detail.

 

This was the first time I had heard the Aurora Orchestra in Baroque repertoire, though I have had quite a bit of Mozart from them and from Nicholas Collon. The swift tempo for the great opening chorus had me worried, as did the relative reticence of the strings, but my fears were confounded; tempi were, at least by present-day standards, remarkably unobjectionable, and more than that well-chosen. Nor was there for the most part a lack of flexibility such as one all too often hears now in this repertoire. The orchestra was very small (strings 4.4.3.2.1) – though doubtless the ayatollahs of one-to-a-part ‘authenticity’ would dissent – but Hall One at Kings Place is not a large space, and for the most part, it was only in making mental comparisons with great recorded performances such as those by Gunther Ramin, Eugen Jochum, and Richter that one keenly felt the loss. Likewise, though warmer string tone would at times have been desirable, there was commendably little of the hair-shirt to the performance. I am having to rely on the evidence of my ears, but it sounded to me as though some at least, perhaps all, of the violins were employing gut strings. Vibrato was mercifully not absent – a noteworthy feature in our Alice in Wonderland world of Bach performance. The woodwind were especially fine, every obbligato solo assumed with excellence of technique and feeling. Oliver Coates’s cello stood out from the continuo group and indeed as a superlative obbligato instrument.

 

The Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, offered fine performances, by turn angry and devotional, as text and role required. The turba choruses were vivid, the chorales heartfelt but clear-eyed. Diction, moreover, was thoroughly excellent. The tiny part of the Maid, taken by one of the choir members, was unfortunate in intonation, but otherwise there was little about which anyone might reasonably complain. John Mark Ainsley occasionally took his Evangelist to the limit of what might be desirably in terms of hectoring, but there was no doubting his commitment and understanding and, so long as one did not insist upon the mellifluous tones of an Ernst Haefliger, much by which to be moved. Roland Wood’s Christus was less individual, but well delivered, and that may indeed have been the point. He is not, after all, a ‘character’ in the conventional sense. All of the other soloists shone, Malin Christensson striking a fine balance between an almost operatic beauty of tone and attention to the text, likewise Iestyn Davies, the ‘operatic’ quality of whose outburst in the extraordinary ‘Es ist vollbracht!’ could hardly have been more arresting. (If I still find a counter-tenor more apt for Handel than Bach, still preferring the warmth of a mezzo or contralto, then that is arguably just a personal matter.) Andrew Tortise offered plangency and, again, detailed attention to the text, whilst David Stout’s baritone suggested a consolation consonant with that offered by the Aurora woodwind.    

 

That, then, is indicative of my experience, compromised though it was by events. It certainly augurs well for a December Aurora/Clare Mass in B minor. I wish, however, that the Kings Place website had not described the work as ‘Bach’s iconic St John Passion’. It is surely now time that that much-abused word be proscribed until further notice, if only so that it might regain a little meaning.

The Tempest, Met Opera Live, 10 November 2012

Metropolitan Opera, New York, viewed at Cineworld, West India Quay

Ariel – Audrey Luna

Miranda – Isabel Leonard
Trinculo – Iestyn Davies
Ferdinand – Alek Shrader
Caliban – Alan Oke
King of Naples – William Burden
Antonio – Toby Spence
Prospero – Simon Keenlyside
Stefano – Kevin Burdette
Gonzalo – John Del Carlo
Robert Lepage (director)

Jasmine Catudal (set designs)

Kym Barrett (costumes)
Michel Beaulieu (lighting)
David Leclerc (video)

Metropolitan Opera Chorus

Metropolitan Opera Orchestra
Thomas Adès (conductor)

 

‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.’ That was how I began my review of the Met broadcast of Robert Lepage’s production of Götterdammerung. I feared that it would do again for The Tempest, yet, although this was no triumph, save for some of the singers and indeed the splendid Met orchestra, nor, at least on the big screen, did it prove the excruciating embarrassment I had feared, largely due to excellent performances. I wonder how much of the rest of the salvage was due to clever filming, given that the voices of those in the theatre earlier on during the run, voices I respect, seem to have been united.

Let there be no misunderstanding: Lepage’s production was mindless in the extreme. No change there. The half-hearted attempt at meta-theatricality – are we not all tired of that now, unless it be the work of someone who really engages with the work as well – was one of the worst I have seen. All it seemed to involve was setting the opera at La Scala, for no other reason than that Prospero was once Duke of Milan, and then leaving a confused nonsense to play itself out, sometimes in front of the Scala theatre and some (eighteenth-century?!) spectators, sometimes not. Prospero, Ariel, and still more Caliban looked as if they were refugees from one of Lepage’s Cirque du Soleil shows. At one point there is an apparently non-ironic – though maybe I am just too stupid to plumb its deaths – of a filmed couple (Miranda Ferdinand) walking off into the sunset. There really is nothing more I can think of to say about the production, so I shall leave it there. 

Let there be no further misunderstanding: Adès’s stature remains inflated far beyond his talent. Still, that is not his fault; nobody forces others to stage his works, even though there may be a host of better claimants – or at least I assume no one does. The greater part of the first two acts was undistinguished in the extreme, rarely if ever rising above the level of a typical soundtrack for a middlebrow television serial. There is certainly nothing to frighten away even the most timid of horses, though I suspect that even equine or indeed bovine audience members might wonder what the point in such an enterprise might be. There is often a certain skill with orchestration, but then any decent postgraduate composition student ought to be able to manage that. Otherwise, harmonies are resolutely unchallenging – Britten sounds adventurous by comparison – and direction is unclear. O for a touch of Birtwistle! The third act picks up considerably. Whilst no masterpiece, there is greater dramatic focus, more of a sense of responding to the story, and the passacaglia towards the end, if obvious beyond the call of duty, does its business. Ariel must be one of the most irritating characters – if one can call her that – in the operatic repertoire, but at least that her insanely vertiginous coloratura adds a dash of interest. The shades of Couperin work better in context than when taken as a suite, but perhaps that is because the dullness of the score as a whole sets them in positive relief.

As for Meredith Oakes’s ghastly libretto, let there be no additional misunderstanding.  I cannot bring myself to recall, let alone to repeat, its doggerel. Not wishing to set Shakespeare ‘straight’ is perfectly understandable, but the only relief in this banal effort is the unintentionally comic. (Again, I cannot recall a particular instance, so the humour remains a relative concept.)

The Met Orchestra played splendidly for Adès, who, like Britten, except at a far lower level, consistently seems a more impressive performer than composer. (The moment we have a Turn of the Screw it will be worth a change of heart, but I am not sure we have yet heard the equivalent of the Britten Piano Concerto yet.) Incisive, full of tone, splendidly colourful: it is difficult to imagine a better performance than this. If only the orchestra’s talents had been lavished on a more worthy contemporary score. The Mask of Orpheus, perhaps? The chorus sang and acted well too. Moreover, there was a good deal of fine singing, most crucial of all Simon Keenlyside’s Prospero, whose performance at times came as close as humanly possible to moving, given the material. Audrey Luna’s Ariel was apparently effortlessly despatched, a splendid achievement. Alan Oke was creepily ‘different’ and yet unfailingly musical as Caliban, though something a little more threatening might have been in order. (Perhaps that was a matter of stage direction though.) Isabel Leonard and Alek Shrader were as beautiful and handsome of voice as of aspect, the latter especially touching in his sadness and his joy. Toby Spence and Iestyn Davies were as impressive as one would expect, Davies almost managing to convince one that his was a genuine Shakespearean – or Monteverdian – character. If only...

Maybe I set the bar too low, but this was better than Götterdämmerung. However, I beseech you not to take that claim out of context.