Salzburg Festival (7) - Three Sisters, 24 August 2025

Felsenreitschule

Irina – Dennis Orellana
Masha – Cameron Shahbazi
Natasha – Kangmin Justin Kim
Tuzenbach – Mikołaj Trąbka
Vershinin – Ivan Ludlow
Andrei – Jacques Imbrailo
Kulygin – Andrei Valentiy
Anfisa – Aleksander Teliga
Solyony – Anthony Robin Schneider
Doctor – Jörg Schneider
Rode – Seiyoung Kim
Fedotik – Kristofer Lundin
Mother – Eva Christine Just
Protopopov – Henry Diaz
Girl – Johanna Lehfeldt

Director – Evgeny Titov
Set designs – Rufus Didwiszus
Costumes – Emma Ryott
Lighting – Urs Schönebaum
Sound design – Paul Jeukendrup
Dramaturgy – Christian Arseni  

Klangforum Wien

Maxime Pascal, Alphonse Cemin (conductors)

Images: © SF/Monika Rittershaus
Masha (Cameron Shahbazi), Solyony (Anthony Robin Schneider), Vershinin (Ivan Ludlow)

Chekhov operas are distinctly thin on the ground. I am not sure that is a bad thing. Adaptations that end up being little more – at least dramatically – than abridgements with music are rarely the most convincing of operas. There are splendid cases of plays more or less set to music and thereby transformed, but they are not especially common—and with good reason. Whatever one might say of Pelléas et Mélisande, it is an exceedingly uncommon work (with apologies to Mr Kipling). Some transformations much more than that, of course, yet remain strangely misunderstood. I cannot help but think, one year on from his death, of Alexander Goehr’s Brechtian reworking of King Lear, Promised End. Yet cases in which a work is truly rethought as a musical drama are fewer than one might hope for. Peter Eötvös’s first opera Three Sisters (Три сестры/Tri Sestry) triumphantly succeeds in that respect and in others, not only ‘in itself’ as a work but also in this estimable Salzburg production, a fine cast and Klangforum Wien conducted by Maxime Pascal (and Alphonse Cemin offstage) and directed by Evgeny Titov. 

I was interested to learn after the event that librettist and dramaturge Claus H. Henneberg had initially presented Eötvös with ‘a pared-down version … able to offer us an overview of the play’s dense content in just a few dozen pages’. It was, Eötvös went on, ‘a respectable piece of work. But as I read it, I realised that this was absolutely not the kind of thing I wanted. His endeavours to abridge Chekhov’s play had robbed it of all his drama. The subtle tensions between its characters had been completely lost. The drama had become empty.’ To the great credit of both composer and librettist, they started again, Henneberg affording Eötvös ‘complete freedom to change any aspect of his libretto at my own discretion, even if it meant writing a completely new text for the work I wanted to compose.’ That is what happened with ‘an utterly different approach’ that instead focused on different ‘sequences’ of events in the play, organised around three of the characters, Irina, Andrei, and Masha. It worked – and works – both as a drama in itself and indeed as a metadrama on the original Three Sisters, without ever falling into the trap of mostly being the latter. How so? Partly through skilful re-adaptation by Henneberg; partly through the drama’s coming into being as a musical drama, music integral to the text just as it would be in Mozart, Wagner, Debussy, Berg, or any other opera composer worthy of the name; and partly, of course, through staging and performance. Ultimately faithful to Chekhov through infidelity, the adaptation presents human relationships, missed opportunities, their detail, and their sadness, reimagined with great power and humanity, in and through the bleakness. 

Olga (Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen), Masha, Irina (Dennis Orellana)

Indeed, the opening Prologue impressed upon us not only the bleakness – though it did, in ineffably ‘Russian’ sound – but also the way suffering becomes memory, as the three sisters (not, be it noted, identical to the persons of the ensuing three Sequences) imagined themselves about, once more, to start again. There was an unmistakeably – if impossible to define – ‘Russian’ sound, both from the musicians in the pit and from the offstage orchestra. It complemented, was complemented by, and seemed almost to be in a state of co-creation with the memories turned to Felsenreitschule stone of Rufus Didwiszus’s set designs, as well as what we heard. And in one important sense, despite it all, this was a starting point, for the opera, as we moved first to Irina, the Baron, the fire and so on, leaving that first sequence with the Baron’s death—thus returning us to where we started, undermining it, and preparing the way for a different sequence. Triangular relationships – for Eötvös, the ‘primary construct’ for play and opera alike’ – characterise what we see and hear, transforming before us, but also offering a foundation for the composer’s dramaturgically generative use of triadic harmonies, ‘constantly changing … internal structure’. A post-Webern world of intervallic construction, even constructivism, merges with a sort of modern (in some ways, even pre-modern) world of Affekt, whilst instrumentation mirrors and contributes to characterisation: Olga ‘represented’ – to use Eötvös’s own term – by flute, Irina by oboe, Masha by clarinet, and Andrei by bassoon; likewise their spouses, in variants of those instrumental timbres, Natasha, for instance by saxophone, related to, yet perhaps mocking or holding in outrage Andrei’s essence. ‘Representation’ is not a static matter, of course; one follows their instrumental lines just as one does their words, vocal lines, and gestures. That is the performing text—and it is far from a reduction. 

The element of Japanese theatre often strong in Eötvös’s music, overtly dramatic or otherwise, is also pervasive here, not least in the use of male singers for all parts. Eötvös settled on the idea having originally intended to cast conventionally, then deciding to have all roles sung by women, an option rejected since he thought it would ‘come across as fetishism’. Here, the very different vocal qualities of the different counter-tenors, nonetheless retaining adherence to a certain vocal type that can suggest abstraction, felt as if it were performing a role not entirely dissimilar to use of masks. (Eötvös wrote the three sisters’ parts so they could be sung by men or women, but had his preference for male singers confirmed by experience.) Titov’s staging took a different route, rubble and memory all around, highly ‘dramatic’ in a more conventional Western sense, yet also alert to moments of humour, crisis, and much else. Indeed, homing in on the expressive and dramatic content of particular aspects of the sequences fulfilled a quasi-musical role of its own. There was something deeply moving, for instance, to Andrei’s difficult emergence from his fat suit, like a butterfly from its (in this case cruelly imposed) chrysalis, albeit shorn of hope at either end. Olga’s celebrated observation that her brother had grown fat and slothful had marked him until now (in his sequence, if not previously). Was this now an opportunity for him to sing or at least to lament freely? Yes and no. He was naked, literally and figuratively, onstage; inevitably, though, it changed nothing. We could not be in the business of happy endings. 

Kulygin (Andri Valentiy), Vershinin, Irina, Masha,
Tuzenbach (Mikołaj Trąbka), Doctor (Jörg Schneider)

None of this would have amounted to much without a set of excellent, often outstanding musical – and acted – performances. Klangforum Wien, with its two conductors, led us into a musical labyrinth that, whilst hardly Boulezian, certainly showed many points of contact, following the mini-series ‘À Pierre’, which had finished the afternoon prior to this performance. Pascal’s timing, whether of moments, sections, or the greater span of the constructed drama, had a sense of ‘rightness’ to it: both in itself and in combination with Titov’s staging. Balance, atmosphere, momentum, and magical moments of reflection all contributed to the greater whole. 

As our first ‘featured’ sister, Irina, Dennis Orellana offered a deeply sympathetic, emotionally complex reading, setting the stall, as it were, for further explorations and in fine counterpoint with Mikołaj Trąbka’s ardent Baron Tuzenbach. Cameron Shahbazi’s alluring, compelling Masha – neither quite drag-like or entirely un-drag-like – and the poignantly wise (if only up to a point) Olga of Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen were equally well drawn, both in themselves and in the constantly shifting ‘triangles’ of the work. Kangmin Justin Kim’s increasingly outrageous Natasha, at one point pulling her lover Protopopov (Henry Diaz) along with a leash, was perhaps all the more monstrous, all the more hateful than in Chekhov. Jacques Imbrailo’s Andrei both deserved better and yet did not, given a reading that helped explain, rather than simply depict, his personal tragedy. Aleksander Teliga made an outsize impression as the Prozorovs’ old nurse. Ivan Ludlow’s Vershinin did much to convey a hinterland that in context could often only be suggested. All contributed to the success of a production which deserves to be seen elsewhere. Let us hope other houses will take it up, thereby proving more than a melancholic memory.

This image: © SF/Marco Borrelli

Peter Grimes, Royal Opera, 17 March 2022

Royal Opera House

Images: ROH 2022 (c) Yasuko Kageyama
The Boy (Cruz Fitz), Peter Grimes (Allan Clayton)

Hobson – Stephen Richardson
Swallow – John Tomlinson
Peter Grimes – Allan Clayton
Ned Keene – Jacque Imbrailo
Rev. Horace Adams – James Gilchrist
Bob Boles – John Graham-Hall
Auntie – Catherine Wyn-Rogers
First Niece – Jennifer France
Second Niece – Alexandra Lowe
Mrs Sedley – Rosie Aldridge
Ellen Orford – Maria Bengtsson
Bryn Terfel – Captain Balstrode
The Boy – Cruz Fitz
Aerialist – Jamie Higgins

Deborah Warner (director)
Michael Levine (set designs)
Luis F. Carvalho (costumes)
Peter Mumford (lighting)
Kim Brandstrup (choreography)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: William Spaulding)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Mark Elder (conductor)

London has proved fortunate with recent productions of Peter Grimes (and doubtless with older ones too). David Alden’s 2014 production for ENO and Willy Decker’s for the Royal Opera (in its 2011 revival) both had considerable virtues and received performances. This new staging from Deborah Warner and the performances that brought it to life were nevertheless in a class of their own, showing the Royal Opera at the top of its game.

All three productions will have displeased the Campaign for Real Barnacles, and thank goodness for that. Warner takes us into the dark underbelly of a contemporary, down-at-heel seaside town, with neither room nor appetite for prettified nostalgia for an early nineteenth century that never was (and certainly never was in George Crabbe). I thought of a poorer version of Margate, somewhere perhaps in Essex—and lo and behold, had that confirmed in Warner’s programme reference to ‘some of the extremely poor and socially deprived towns of the Essex coast, namely Jaywick Sands’, testament not to any great acuity on my part but to Michael Levine’s sets, Luis F. Carvalho’s costumes, and to the entire ensemble of Warner’s production, sharply, meaningfully choreographed by Kim Brandstrup. There is poverty here, also reckless abandon; there are drugs, alcohol, and sleaze; there is a ‘community’ that rounds on an outsider and in the violence of that rounding discovers a nativist identity and ‘morality’ that chills and kills. It takes back control, polices its borders, and deals with outsiders in a terrifying march of intimidation, fire, and nihilism. This Borough is UKIP, even BNP, country, in which shirtless neo-Nazis mix with dealers such as Ned Keene, one of the more sympathetic townsmen if ultimately untrustworthy on account of his habit; and bigoted, ‘respectable’ rentiers such as Mrs Sedley. It is not, however, an amorphous mass: not everyone is like that, and everyone has his or her own story. Warner takes immense care, as do all of those participating, every member of the chorus clearly directed individually and coming to life both in that individuality and as part of a deadly, group identity. Not only do Grimes and his apprentices—one hauntingly portrayed as a just out-of-touch aerialist vision—have no chance; nor does Ellen Orford, herself a victim of Grimes’s physical violence. ‘The more vicious the society, the more vicious the individual.’

 

There is no sign that Grimes is homosexual, or Muslim, or Polish for that matter; but this is undoubtedly the rough justice that would be meted out to him if he were. It is a similar social tragedy to that one sees in parts of Brandenburg or Saxony, doubtless across the world. But it has a particularly English flavour. They do like to be beside the seaside, and they do not like others, with no place to be there, to attempt to join them. Britten’s fraught relationship to England and Englishness, his (partly) thwarted internationalism, and the parochialism of some of his devotees are set in implied counterpoint, but with the work rather than its critics ultimately setting the terms of examination. It is slightly odd—maybe more than that—that, in the contemporary setting, Grimes’s apprentice should be so young a boy, but even that serves to remind us of another aspect of the ‘Britten problem’, which this contemporary Borough would doubtless address with savage, summary justice. 

There could not, I think, have been a better choice to conduct this production than Mark Elder, who led the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, on as fine form as I can recall, as if a man possessed. He clearly believes in every note of the score and, more to the point, revealed all manner of potentialities I had barely imagined were there. Musical processes are clear and generative, indicative of a serious attempt to address the problems of form that so often bedevil Britten’s music in work and performance. An account of titanic clashes and contrasts spanned, on the one hand, screaming echoes of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth and, beyond it, the Mahler of the Fifth Symphony; and, on the other, passages of translucent beauty that seemed to have all the time in the world, yet are fated to be cut short. Elder’s conducting was urgent, even when spacious, whipping up a sequence of storms of fatal consequence that not only framed, but incited, the action on stage. We were reminded that, here, the sea was a thing of danger as well as livelihood, a theatre of cruelty and redress far more than a picturesque landscape.

Another man possessed was Allan Clayton’s Peter. If I say it was the most beautifully sung account of the role I have heard that would unduly delimit its range, though in many respects it certainly was beautiful—and more youthfully vulnerable than the typical craggy old man. This, crucially, was a performance that dug deep psychologically, that suggested profound consideration of dilemmas and traumas faced by the character, and frankly admitted that not all could or should be answered. I could not help but think of Boris Godunov in Clayton’s final scene; the voice is different, as are music, drama, and almost everything else, yet psychological descent and devastation presented tragic parallels across the divide.

Ellen Orford (Maria Bengtsson), The Boy

Maria Bengtsson gave us a profoundly human, refreshingly unhackneyed Ellen Orford, a force for good whose goodness went so cruelly punished. Her ‘Embroidery Aria’ could not have been more touchingly sung, its difficult intervals navigated with ease and in perfect harmony with the orchestra. Jacques Imbrailo’s Ned Keene offered a fascinating study in ambiguity, perhaps beyond mere good and evil. Powerfully and, again, beautifully sung, so much more lay in the acting: a drug-addled hedonist who exerted a mysterious yet undeniable attraction, not an outside as such, yet never quite to be assimilated. Bryn Terfel’s Balstrode may well be the finest opera performance I have seen from him, fully in command of the role and its possibilities, throughout exuding deep humanity and a wisdom that again set him apart without excluding him. Catherine Wyn-Rogers gave us a world-weary yet lively Auntie of experience, Rosie Aldridge a properly vicious Mrs Sedley, more insidious than John Graham-Hall's nicely buffoonish Bob Boles. There were no disappointments in a strong supporting cast, which seemed to grow out of that minutely observed direction of the chorus: a community of individual and mass imperatives. Choral singing was likewise outstanding, the Royal Opera Chorus on better form than I have heard for a long time, fully engaged in portrayal of Britten, Warner, and Elder’s visions (as well, doubtless, as their own).

 

This enthusiasm comes from a place of ambivalence toward the work itself. I am not yet persuaded that swathes of the second act in particular are not a little dull, nor that the influence of Wozzeck at the beginning of the third is not a little too close for comfort, ‘Arias’ still seem to stand out awkwardly from the rest, and so on. If you are going to be influenced, though, you will struggle to find a better source of influence than Wozzeck, and not every opera can attain the perfection of Figaro or Tristan. This was an outstanding night of theatre, strongly to be recommended to everyone: to the Britten devotees who will not give two hoots about my reservations; to fellow Britten-agnostics, who may also find previous reactions challenged; and even to those more hostile, whose road to conversion may have its point of departure. Not to be missed.

Les Pêcheurs de perles, English National Opera, 19 October 2016

Coliseum

Zurga – Jacques Imbrailo

Nadir – Robert McPherson
Leïla – Claudia Boyle
Nourabad – James Creswell

Penny Woolcock (director)

Dick Bird (set designs)
Kevin Pollard (costumes)
Jen Schriever, Ian Jackson-French (lighting)
Andrew Dawson (movement)
59 Productions (video)

Orchestra of the English National Opera

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

Images: Robbie Jack

 

Devotees of The Pearl Fishers: perhaps you should avert your eyes now. If it is a work you love and/or admire, nothing I might say about it will convince you otherwise, quite the contrary. Nor do I harbour any wish to do so. However, coming to it for the first time, I can only say that it must rank amongst the worst few non-Verdi, non-Donizetti operas I have seen from the benighted ‘repertoire’. That is not a comment on the production, dire though it may be; it is not a comment on the mixed bag of musical performances. The work ‘itself’, though, is something whose alleged attractions I cannot begin to discern.

 

Carmen it is not; even the blandest of bland Micaëla’s music seems red in tooth and claw compared to anything heard here. Indeed, the best music, such as it was, seemed to lie in the couple of minutes or so of very straightforward orchestral introduction, its slight promise ever remaining unfulfilled. And the story, such as it is? If we are to have Orientalism, might it not at least be a little more interesting than this? Perhaps bored members of a nineteenth-century Parisian audience might have found it mildly, although only mildly, ‘escapist’. To us, it is at best akin to what I imagine a Mills and Boon plot summary to be, albeit without the sex. There is no character development; there are barely any characters. If the relationship between Zurga, the village headman and Nadir, the pearl fisher, might be drawn out to include something homoerotic – it is surely impossible to take seriously the claim that either has any real interest in Leïla, our cipher ‘Priestess of Brahma’ – then that did not happen here.

Nadir (Robert McPherson) and Zurga (Jacques Imbrailo)

For Penny Woolcock’s production, ‘Made for the Met’ written all over it, is almost as bad as the opera itself. Its disingenuous nod to ‘relevance’, pretending somehow to be ‘about’ poverty, even natural disaster, whilst treating the ‘picturesque’ lives of others – Others – in touristic fashion to match any nineteenth-century colonist is unsatisfactory at best. Writing words such as this in a programme note confers in itself meaning and coherence neither upon the note nor upon the production allegedly related to it:

Despite its genesis, the preoccupations of The Pearl Fishers are fiercely contemporary. Climate change and rising sea levels have made ten million people homeless in the Bangladesh Delta alone and they survive on a wing and a prayer. After all, the sea rises higher, we still fall in love with people we’re not supposed to fall in love with, and irrational behaviour is not the exclusive province of others.

 

Do not worry, ‘colourful’ people: we are irrational too, and we feel your pain! Lengthy scene changes with ill-thought-through, cartoon-like ‘special effects’ do not help. It all looks ‘lovely’, though, especially to a middle-class white audience, amused by colourful make up and costumes, and a few children running around for no obvious reason. It might almost be Deborah Warner’s notorious Messiah ‘on location’. All-out ‘escapist’ fantasy might have been a better bet, or engagement with real colonialism and its aftermath: perhaps even some real attempt at interaction between the two. Naturalism with the figleaf of a socially concerned programme note is not just embarrassing; it is tediously embarrassing.

The ENO Orchestra and Chorus were, as usual, on good, often very good, form. Would that they had had more interesting material with which to work, the choruses in English sounding redolent of minor nineteenth-century anthem-land. Roland Böer’s conducting was somewhat stiff at times, but he seemed to know his way around a work hardly worth getting to know one’s way around. People rave about ‘the duet’; I found it excessively long and inconsequential, not helped by the fact that a considerably superior performance – as throughout – was to be heard from Jacques Imbrailo’s Zurga vis-à-vis Robert McPherson’s strained Nadir. (The character’s name is unsuited neither to the opera as a whole, nor to some of the tuning we endured.) Claudia Boyle handled Leïla’s coloratura well; however, her tone was often pinched earlier on. James Creswell sang well enough as the High Priest, Nourabad. Unsurprisingly, though, I have heard more involving performances from him. Perhaps a great performance and production might have lifted the opera; probably not. In any case, that did not in happen here.

Judith Weir, Miss Fortune, Royal Opera, 12 March 2012 (British premiere)

A member of Soul Mavericks
Images: Royal Opera/Bill Cooper

Royal Opera House

Tina (Miss Fortune) – Emma Bell

Lord Fortune – Alan Ewing

Lady Fortune – Kathryn Harries

Fate – Andrew Watts

Hassan – Noah Stewart
Donna – Anne-Marie Owens
Simon – Jacques Imbrailo

Chen Shi-Zheng (director)
Tom Pye (set designs)
Han Feng (costumes)
Leigh Sachwitz (video)
Ran Arthur Braun (movement)

Soul Mavericks (breakdancers)
Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Paul Daniel (conductor)


Let me try first to ‘accentuate the positive’ (as the libretto might have it). Judith Weir’s Miss Fortune, in a co-production with the Bregenz Festival, where last year it received its world premiere (as Achterbahn), is arrestingly staged by Chen Shi-Zheng. Tom Pye’s colourful designs capture the eye throughout, whether in the initial relative abstraction of the opening scene or the sight – though is it really necessary? – of having a kebab van lowered from the stage. (Could it not just have been wheeled on, at what would surely have been less expense?) The garment factory looks like a factory, and its workers look like factory fodder. Han Feng’s costumes for the most part do the trick, the sharp suit allotted to rich boy Simon for instance presenting an immediate contrast with those around him. Video (Leigh Sachwitz) is put to good use, swift falls in share prices immediately apparent.

Simon (Jacques Imbrailo), Fate (Andrew Watts),
and Tina (Emma Bell)

The Royal Opera fields an impressive cast. Emma Bell could not really be said to inhabit the role of Tina, for there is no character really to inhabit, but she sang with spirit, handling the occasional piece of coloratura with aplomb. Alan Ewing and Kathryn Harries did likewise in the caricatured roles of her parents. Noah Stewart made an impressive house debut as Hassan, the sincerity of his delivery nicely counterpointed by Jacques Imbrailo’s beautifully sung Simon. Andrew Watts did what he could with the sketchily observed role of Fate, and Anne-Marie Owens attended nicely enough to her job as ‘laundromat’ owner, Donna. They all sang well, and Imbrailo in the second act came as close as anyone could reasonably be asked to stealing the show. The breakdancers of Soul Mavericks do a splendid job in their own terms, though whether their inclusion was anything other than a desperate bid to make a dull, inconsequential work more diverting remains at best an open question.

For the plot, let alone its mode of expression, really does not amount to anything much at all. Tina’s parents, Lord and Lady Fortune lose their money in a financial crisis, so Tina decides to make her way in ‘the world, the real world’. Working in a factory (destroyed) and left in charge of a kebab van (ditto), she finds herself at the mercy of Fate, before her luck changes. Fate gives her a lottery ticket. She is on the verge of winning, but, one number out – thirty-eight instead of thirty-nine, or is it the other way around? – she does not. Cue general disappointment. However, Tina is able to call upon Fate to repeat the last few seconds and she wins after all. Simon, however, has already told her it does not matter; he wants him to join her in any case. She therefore tosses her winning ticket into the crowd and leaves with him: it is better, you see, to take a chance oneself than to await a deus ex machina. Nothing, alas, is developed. We gain no insight into any of the characters; instead, we are left with the wisdom of the fortune cookie. This may have its basis in a Sicilian folk-tale (Sfortuna), but in its ‘contemporary’ retelling, Weir’s opera would appear to have lost any of its teeth.

Hassan (Noah Stewart)

Apparently stuck between vaguely neo-Romantic style and not-quite-minimalism, the score offers little to interest, even as orchestral music, let alone as word setting. (Though, as I mention below, the worst of Tippett sometimes sprang to mind, he always had an ear for setting the English language.) The passages when Weir sounds more minimalistic sometimes seem to offer a little more – and believe me, I am surprised to find myself longing for anything more akin to minimalism! – but they never quite seem to cohere into something more than sound-track. At times, I thought Paul Daniel could have offered more in the way of rhythmic precision, but without having seen the score, it is difficult to know for sure. Doubtless it is not the point that almost all of the harmony could have been offered by an unadventurous composer from a century ago. But when precious little goes ‘beyond’ Walton or Shostakovich, for instance, and the only hint of something a little more ‘advanced’ would seem to be the most occasional hint of second-hand Berg and the use of a few drums, then there is perhaps something of a problem. More seriously, though, and despite the use of different sound worlds and indeed different generative material, I found it impossible to discern anything of a particular compositional ‘voice’, let alone for any of the music to lodge itself in my memory. The score certainly does nothing to engage one’s sympathy with either the characters or the apparent ‘moral’.



Simon and Tina

 It is, though, Weir’s own libretto that presents the greatest problem. One could hardly imagine that anyone with the slightest ear for language, let alone verse, let alone verse to be set to music, would not have realised that, at the very least, radical revision was required. If the plot plumbs no depths, the language combines to equal degree banality of expression and concept. There were times when I was put momentarily in mind of Tippett’s late libretti, albeit without the weird eccentricity. Lord Fortune’s ‘You make your own destiny, no pain, no gain’ gives a taste: far from the worst, but typical, and without a hint of satire. References to the need to rid oneself of ‘negative energy’ are bad enough – I should like to say that I thought the phrase was used ironically, but I am not so sure – but a new low is hit by Simon’s entrance into Donna’s ‘laundromat’ to tell her that she had produced the most beautifully laundered shirt. The psychobabble was not even interesting or amusing – at least Tippett would try to explore potentially interesting ideas – but merely dull. For the most part, the language, though not alas the drama, resemble a poorly-scripted soap opera. ‘In the end, we’re all dead,’ we are informed at some point. Quite.

Miss Fortune will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 19 May at 6 p.m.

Billy Budd, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, 22 June 2010

Glyndebourne Opera House

Captain Vere – John Mark Ainsley
Billy Budd – Jacques Imbrailo
Claggart – Paul Whelan
Mr Redburn – Iain Paterson
Mr Flint – Matthew Rose
Lieutenant Ratcliffe – Darren Jeffery
Red Whiskers – Alasdair Elliott
Donald – John Moore
Dansker – Jeremy White
The Novice – Ben Johnson
Squeak – Colin Judson
Bosun – Richard Mosley-Evans

Michael Grandage (director)
Christopher Oram (designs)
Paule Constable (lighting)
Tom Roden (movement)

Glyndebourne Chorus (chorus master: Jeremy Bines)
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Sir Mark Elder (conductor)

Glyndebourne’s first Billy Budd must be accounted a resounding success. (I have one principal reservation, which I shall leave to the end, but it is hardly the fault of Glyndebourne.) First and foremost are the extraordinary contributions of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Sir Mark Elder. I have heard the LPO on good form many times, but never more so than here. The Glyndebourne acoustic doubtless helped, but even so, richness and roundness of tone from the pit were first class. Woodwind solos, chattering or plangent, were superbly taken, whilst the deeply expressive cellos would have fitted right in to a top Continental string section. Elder’s command of the score never faltered, guiding light through the fog and chief dramatist at the climaxes. The broad sweep never eclipsed smaller detail, that ‘conflict of thirds’ (Arnold Whittall) from which the ‘Rights o’Man’ motif evolves properly at the centre of so much of the action, properly haunting, and properly generative. Echoes of Berg were stronger than I recall hearing previously too: not just Wozzeck but Lulu too. The Glyndebourne Chorus was on equally exceptional form; it is some time since I have heard such accomplished singing, full of body yet never fuzzy, in the opera house. The two principal London companies should look to their laurels.

Solo singing was of a high standard too. Paul Whelan, understudy to Phillip Ens, had nothing to fear from any comparisons he might have courted, for his Claggart was a more subtle interpretation than the part might have had right to expect. Musically and dramatically detailed, his interpretation truly made the words tell.  There was no stronger portrayal on stage. Jacques Imbrailo’s Billy was less bright-eyed than that of Simon Keenlyside for ENO, and certainly less acrobatic. There was, though, at least some of the time, a strong sense that this might be a plausible character: not an easy thing to accomplish. He can act – and he did; he can also sing handsomely – and he did. John Mark Ainsley probed the ambivalence of Vere, properly Pilate-like, for better or worse. There were moments in the second act when his tuning wandered, but he regained focus. Standing out amongst the other men were Jeremy White’s loyal, generous-hearted Dansker and Ben Johnson’s credibly-led Novice, once spirited, now broken.

Michael Grandage’s production takes the work pretty much at face value. It takes place on a ship at the appointed time. One can tell what is happening and why, without the distraction of production ‘features’ that fail to cohere. Christopher Oram’s set is mightily impressive, again doing just what is supposed to do and perhaps a little more besides. Paule Constable’s lighting was evocative indeed. I cannot say that any especial insight struck me from the production, but nor did anything irritate. The lack of eroticism, however, was surprising, to say the least. One has only to follow the words, let alone the music, to discern it, but little was on visual display. Had this been subordinated to another angle, I could have understood; as it was, I was left wondering: why so coy? We are not in the 1950s now, thank God.

So most, if not quite all, was well and good. And yet… There remains the problem of the work itself. Even when granted so strong a performance as this, the dramatic cracks cannot quite be papered over. Motivation remains abrupt, even at times obscure, unless it is all really about something else. And if it is, can we not bring that out at least a little more strongly? We need to know more about Claggart if he is to become interesting, or at least plausible. Do men really hero-worship their captain as these men do? If so, why? What I really cannot stomach is the heavy-handedness of the Christian symbolism, quite incompatible in form and content with what otherwise seem to be the libretto’s concerns. Vere’s Pilate act is bad enough, but the Christ of Billy Budd? It borders uninterestingly upon the blasphemous. As for the reference to the peace that passes understanding, the reference perhaps surpasses anything in The Rape of Lucretia.The constant references to goodness and beauty are little more than creepy. Ultimately, Britten’s music is stronger than Forster’s libretto deserves, yet does not emerge untainted.

Ariadne auf Naxos, Royal Opera, 16 June 2008

Royal Opera House

Prima Donna/Ariadne – Deborah Voigt
Composer – Kristine Jepson
Music Master – Sir Thomas Allen
Dancing Master – Alan Oke
Wigmaker – Jacques Imbrailo
Lackey – Dean Robinson
Officer – Nikola Matišić
Tenor/Bacchus – Robert Dean Smith
Zerbinetta – Gillian Keith
Harlequin – Markus Werba
Scaramuccio – Ji-Min Park
Truffaldino – Jeremy White
Brighella – Haoyin Xue
Naiad – Anita Watson
Dryad – Sarah Castle
Echo – Anna Leese
Major Domo – Alexander Pereira

Christof Loy (director)
Andrew Sinclair (revival director)
Herbert Murauer (designs)
Jennifer Tipton (lighting)
Beate Vollack (choreographer)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Mark Elder (conductor)

Of the three occasions on which I have now seen this production of Ariadne auf Naxos, I enjoyed this the least. It still had its good points but there was in general less focus than upon either of the previous outings. Christof Loy’s production had been the first of Antonio Pappano’s new regime at Covent Garden. As such, it had made a considerable impression, with smart theatrical values lavished upon an extremely well-chosen work: in some senses, the ultimate ‘opera about opera’, which manages both to celebrate and gently to send up all of our ideas concerning what the art-form is and what it should be.

The opening scene, in which the house of the ‘richest man in Vienna’ is displayed, the ground floor gradually rising to reveal beneath stairs the multifarious preparations for the forthcoming entertainment, remains a considerable coup de théâtre. However, the recurrence of a problem from the very first night, in which the change of scenery had necessitated an interval longer even that that planned, seemed less excusable and more irritating on a second revival. The point of the production is surely that, by mirroring in the Prologue the surroundings of the Royal Opera House itself, the audience realises that the attitudes being expressed on stage relate to its own preferences and opinions. To quote Horace, as so many have since, ‘Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur’ (‘Change but the name, and the tale is told of you’). If attention is unduly drawn to the stage machinery, especially the on-stage lift, in itself, then the work is vulgarised; one can step out to the foyer during the interval, should one really wish to watch a lift in action. It seemed to me, then, that the tightness of Loy’s original production was lost in Andrew Sinclair’s revival. The Personenregie seemed at times somewhat aimless, more so in the Opera than in the Prologue. This applied especially to Zerbinetta’s troupe. The original delight one had taken in the inappropriate juxtaposition of the antics of a motley commedia dell’arte crew with Ariadne’s opera seria was replaced, at least at times, with a sense of the arbitrary. For one thing, the choreography sometimes seemed straightforwardly embarrassing, rather than representing embarrassment. I was also puzzled by an inconsistency, which I assume must have been there all along, although I do not recall it. It was not clear why Zerbinetta’s men all changed into white tie and tails at the end of the Prologue, in order to appear on stage, only to emerge on stage during the Opera dressed quite differently. I then realised that the other characters also emerged alternatively attired. If the preparation we had witnessed had not indeed been preparation at all but something quite separate, dissociated from the following entertainment, then Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s finely-wrought interplay between Prologue and Opera was considerably slighted.

Musically too, this was a less impressive performance than had previously been the case. Pappano’s direction of the initial performances remains one of the best things I have heard him do, although it was eclipsed by the subsequent wisdom of Sir Colin Davis. Mark Elder received extremely warm applause on arriving in the pit, which was perhaps a response to the news that he too will soon be a musical knight. His view of the work, however, did not really seem to have settled; it certainly lacked coherence. There were moments, often the most Romantic ones, at which everything, or almost everything, came together and sounded glorious, not least the daringly slow speeds at which some of the Composer’s most beautiful music was taken. During the Opera, however, some stretches of the score merely sounded inappropriately slow, even dragging. The earlier stages of the Prologue, moreover, often sounded rushed and there was little sense of a greater symphonic whole. Insofar as one may consider the orchestra separately from its direction, it generally sounded good, though not outstanding. There were some magical Mozartian moments from the woodwind and the strings, when given their head, soared as if they were no longer of chamber-sized proportions. On the other hand, there were a few rough edges and minor slips.

The cast also proved more mixed than on previous occasions. Sir Thomas Allen approached perfection in reprising the role of the Music Master. Every word and every phrase were made to tell, although it was a pity that he was saddled with a silly wig. Jacques Imbrailo presented a vivid, wonderfully camp cameo as the Wigmaker; this Jette Parker Young Artist deserves to go far. I was less sure about the Scaramuccio and Brighella, who were adequate, no more. As for the rest of Zerbinetta’s troupe, Jeremy White acted well and sang reasonably, but Markus Werba was truly first-class. Possessed of a charismatic and most imaginatively dark stage presence, he proceeded to lavish a Lieder singer’s attention to verbal and musical detail upon his part. He may be renowned as a Papageno, a role he assumed splendidly for the Salzburg Festival under Riccardo Muti, but I should now dearly love to hear – and to see – him as Don Giovanni. He and Allen outshone the rest of the cast, which is not really as it should be. It was nevertheless fun to have Alexander Pereira, director of the Zurich Opera, add another wryly nonchalant - and on this occasion, unscheduled - appearance as the Major Domo to his roster; it was also good to see the health fascists confounded by having him smoke on stage. Gillian Keith seemed to grow into the character of Zerbinetta during the Opera, having sounded a little too anonymously light of voice in the Prologue. She delivered her coloratura fearlessly but wanted the depth of character that many artists have brought to this most delightful of roles. Kristine Jepson was no Irmgard Seefried. Her closing moments, in which the Composer appears finally to be voicing Strauss’s own beliefs, were movingly delivered, yet too many of her earlier lines were curiously lacking in shading. It is a cliché to describe Bacchus, or indeed any of Strauss’s tenor roles, as thankless, yet it is and they are. Robert Dean Smith sounded better than many, although there were uncharacteristic moments of strain after Bacchus’s arrival. He rose splendidly, however, to the demands of his final peroration. Deborah Voigt, however, delivered rather less than I had expected. She proved a convincing Prima Donna but an oddly wayward Ariadne. There were moments at which her soprano sounded truly glorious: both secure and lustrous. There were also far too many passages in which not only was her vibrato unflatteringly wide but she was also simply out of tune. I have heard her in a number of Strauss roles; this was by some degree her weakest.

Of course, one must try to make the best of what circumstances throw at one. Such is the message of the Prologue. Yet, despite those three truly estimable performances to which I have referred, the sheer enchantment of Ariadne deserved better than it generally received here; its intricate constructivism needs surer hands on the directorial and musical tillers.