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.

Boris Godunov, Royal Opera, 14 March 2016

Royal Opera House

Boris Godunov – Bryn Terfel

Andrey Schchelkalov – Kostas Smoriginas
Nikitch – Jeremy White
Mityukha – Adrian Clarke
Prince Vasily Ivanovich Shuisky – John Graham-Hall
Pimen – Ain Anger
Grigory Otrepiev – David Butt Philip
Hostess of the Inn – Rebecca de Pont Davies
Varlaam – John Tomlinson
Missail – Harry Nicoll
Frontier Guard – James Platt
Xenia – Vlada Borovko
Xenia’s Nurse – Sarah Pring
Fyodor – Ben Knight
Boyar – Nicholas Sales
Holy Fool – Andrew Tortise

Richard Jones (director)

Miriam Buethner (set designs)
Nicky Gillibrand (costumes)
Mimi Jordan Sherin (lighting)
Ben Wright (movement)
Elaine Kidd (associate director)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Antonio Pappano (conductor)

 

I really only have one grumble, so I shall get it out of the way first. Why the original, 1869 version of Boris Godunov? Yes, it was a Royal Opera, although not a Royal Opera House, first? Yes, it has its particular fascinations; one might even argue it more radical or at the very least still less beholden to operatic convention than Mussorgsky’s revised version, first performed long before the original was exhumed. Yes, there is the very real advantage in the theatre of not having the action broken by an interval. But does anyone seriously think we are better off without the Polish act, without Marina? Does anyone seriously think that Mussorgsky’s sometimes drastic reworking of Pushkin is not more successful operatically (however we understand the term)? Does anyone seriously think the grander scale of the opera as a whole and the (still) greater opposition between tsar and people are not more or less unambiguously to the dramatic good? For seasoned opera-goers, one might argue that that is all less of a problem; we shall know the revision anyway. We might even know the Rimsky-Korsakov reorchestration. Indeed, we do, although I have yet, alas, to hear a performance of Rimskyfied Boris, and should like the opportunity to do so before I die. That said, I should hesitate before staging either 1869 or Rimsky in this country, at least, given that performances of any version have been bizarrely infrequent. I cannot imagine anyone would dispute the standing of the work as the greatest of all Russian operas. Perhaps it seemed less so on account of the version to the first-night audience; I cannot be sure. At any rate, I was surprised by the muted reception: quite undeserved. Maybe these were just people who thought they were in for Russian Donizetti.

 

If the 1869 version will always seem more akin to a fascinating draft to me, what a draft it is! This was a strong performance all around. Antonio Pappano sounded far more at home here than he ever has in German repertory. There were some oddities, not least the over-emphatic phrasing of the very opening bars. Even that, though, served to underline its Janáček-like vocal prophecy. More concerning, at times, was a tendency towards smoothing away some of Mussorgsky’s sparest, uncompromising writing, rather at odds with the version but, more importantly, occasionally suggesting a kinship with more conventional, even Italianate, operatic practice which, to my ears at least, should not be there. (Whatever Richard Taruskin might claim, I really do not hear a rapprochement with Verdi in the revised version.) That said, however, there was splendid playing from the orchestra, on as fine form as I have heard in some time. Pappano, moreover, should surely take some, at least, of the credit for the force with which particular musical moments stood out: not like a sore thumb, but with an underlining of a telling shift, harmonically, timbrally, or both. Pacing was sure, too: perhaps still more important in this succession of scenes, whose own formal radicalism – sorry to keep using that word, but it seems so apt in this case! – was enabled thereby truly to make its mark.

 

Bryn Terfel gave one of the finest performances I have seen from him. Truly, he embodied the role; and, in an opera so concerned with succession, it was truly unnerving to witness him grasp John Tomlinson’s mantle, as the latter gave an inimitable performance in the role of Varlaam. Not that Terfel sounded remotely like Tomlinson, of course; if one were expecting, and insisting upon, a ‘traditional’, deep, ‘Russian’, performance, one would doubtless have been disappointed. There is no more reason, though, to insist upon one correct way to perform Mussorgsky than there is with Elgar. Terfel’s care with the text – musical, as well as verbal – was striking; so was its visual incarnation. I had no doubt that this was Boris. As for Tomlinson, his larger-than-life assumption of Varlaam was spot on; the extraordinary double act, spoons and all, with Harry Nicoll’s Missail proved a joy, its grim humour well-nigh Shakespearean. Let us hope we shall one day see Tomlinson’s Lear.

 

David Butt Philip’s intelligent portrayal of the growth of a false Dmitri had one, rightly, both sympathise – why not have a go, in such a world? – with and suspect Grigory. Vocally as well as dramatically, this was a fine performance, which had one all the more regret the loss of the Polish Act. Ain Anger’s Pimen was something no one present is likely to forget, a world-weary yet canny chronicler more in control (perhaps!) than any other of these tormented – and tormenting – characters. This was, surprisingly, his Royal Opera debut; it will surely not be long before we see him at Covent Garden again. Ben Knight gave an astonishingly mature performance as Fyodor; this was the real thing, no doubt. The extraordinary versatility of John Graham-Hall took another turn with his Shuisky: wheedling, yes, but ultimately a sad figure, a more rounded assumption than one generally sees (and hears). Schchelkalov assumed greater, more chilling stature in Kostas Smoriginas’s performance than I can recall. Andrew Tortise’s Fool was, again, the Shakespearean thing; this talented singer deserves greater exposure on our opera stages. Were I to continue, and perhaps I ought to, I should simply be listing the cast and saying ‘well done!’ to each of them, for there was no weak link; there was, indeed, an abundance of fine character-singing and acting from all concerned.

 

Choral singing was excellent, as were Richard Jones’s direction of the chorus and Ben Wright’s movement direction. Here, although there are of course losses with respect to the version, there is arguably considerable gain too. The truly extraordinary prose recitative of the Coronation Scene shocked as it should. In 1869, and indeed in 2016, we stood as distant from Rimskian Technicolor and, so it seemed, not so far from a mix of Monteverdi with Schoenberg – in Russian. It is here, ironically, that one is probably better off either with the original or with Rimsky. Renato Balsadonna will be leaving a chorus in very good shape for his successor, William Spaulding. (As any operagoer knows, Spaulding’s work at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin, augurs extremely well for London.)

 

Jones’s production is honest, straightforward, direct, with some of the tell-tale designs we expect, but nothing irritating. The upper, silent level of action in which assassins meet – a disturbingly Orientalist image here, I am afraid, although I doubt it was intended that way, nor is it necessarily intrinsically so – plotters scheme, and, above all, a child meets his cruel death is the realm of memory. We see as well as hear it haunt Boris; we sympathise, as we should, although, as with his would-be usurper, we do not only sympathise. Whether what we see be ‘true’ or no, we cannot know. The more disturbing question, or rather the implicit answer to that question, is: who cares?  Such is a crucial question in the work, and it is vividly, almost ritualistically instantiated here. Otherwise, below, a story is clearly and indeed colourfully told; it is difficult to imagine even the most ‘traditionalist’ of operagoers having any quarrel with Jones’s staging or – and, sadly, this is what such operagoers exclusively seem to mean by ‘productions’ – with the designs by Miriam Buethner and Nicky Gillibrand, all well thought out and finely executed.

I cannot help but wish that the production were a little more daring in its political terms of reference. If ever an opera cried out for a little contemporary or near-contemporary signposting, it is surely Boris. Is there a Russian regime to which the work could not be updated? Gorbachev’s might be trickier than most, although even then, Boris the reformer might intriguingly come into play. By the same token, however, we are free to draw our own comparisons, and anyone with half a brain cell will do so. In some ways, it is not unwelcome to have a construction – and Jones is too clever to approach the opera unmediated, whatever first impressions might suggest – of old Muscovy placed before us; if some silly souls take that as ‘fact’ or, God forbid, as ‘beautiful’, then that ultimately is their problem. At any rate, the evening offered a convincing, powerful musico-dramatic whole.

 

The performance on 21 March will be broadcast live to cinemas worldwide.

 

 

 

Die Zauberflöte, English National Opera, 5 February 2016

Coliseum

(sung in English, as The Magic Flute)

Tamino – Allan Clayton

Three Ladies – Eleanor Dennis, Catherine Young, Rachael Lloyd
Papageno – Peter Coleman-Wright
Queen of the Night – Ambur Braid
Monostatos – John Graham-Hall
Pamina – Lucy Crowe
Three Boys – Anton May, Yohan Rodas, Oscar Simms
Speaker – Darren Jeffery
Sarastro – James Creswell
Priests, Armoured Men – Rupert Charlesworth, Frederick Long
Papagena – Soraya Mafi

Simon McBurney (director)

Josie Daxter (revival director, movement)
Michael Levine (set designs)
Nicky Gillibrand (costumes)
Jean Kalman, Mike Gunning (lighting)
Finn Ross (video)
Gareth Fry, Matthieu Maurice (sound design)
 

Whilst the Arts Council - until recently plaything to that cultural luminary, Big Brother’s Peter Bazalgette, friend and appointee of Jeremy Hunt – has been doing its best to destroy the English National Opera, ENO has fought back in the best way possible: in the theatre. I felt ambivalent about this production of The Magic Flute first time around; it was certainly an improvement upon itspredecessor, but other than that, I was somewhat lukewarm. At the time, I welcomed its emphasis upon theatricality and the workings of that theatricality, whilst wondering whether a little less might have been more. That I still feel; it is not clear to me what is contributed by the writing of ‘The Magic Flute’ on a screen during the Overture, save, alas, for permitting noisy sections of the audience to laugh uproariously. If they find that – and, it would seem, pretty much anything – so utterly hilarious and/or conducive to loud discussion, then I might suggest that they seek help; the rest of us certainly needed help at times in order to hear the performance.

 

Whether the rest had been toned down a little, I am not sure; maybe I was just feeling less curmudgeonly, in which case I owe Simon McBurney and Complicité something of an apology; I certainly enjoyed the production more than I had last time. The sound booths, in which we see and hear the making or an impression of making of sound ‘effects’ is very Complicité, of course, and I suspect that some opera-goers loved it because it was new to them. I still wish that something more were actually done with these aspects of the production, that there were more interrogation of the work and what it might mean; yet, by the same token, there is an openness to interpretation that should not necessarily be confused with non-interpretation. There was, I thought or at least felt, a stronger sense of magic this time; whether that were a product of the production’s touring in the meantime, or of greater responsivity on my part, I am genuinely not sure. Stephen Jeffreys's translation is exemplary; if one is going to perform the work in English, a witty yet serious approach such as this is unquestionably the way to go. It enables one to approach the heart of the work rather than shouting 'look at me!'

 

For me, however, the strongest reasons to enthuse were musical. Mark Wigglesworth led an excellent account of the score. No, of course it was not Colin Davis; but we do not need to hear unconvincing imitation of past glories. Wigglesworth’s tempi tended to be swifter, although not unreasonably so; crucially, there was no sense of harrying the score, of preventing it from breathing. There was no absurd rushing through ‘Ach, ich fühl’s’, nor indeed through any of the most tender moments. Moreover, the ENO Orchestra and Chorus, fighting back again where it matters most strongly, were on excellent form throughout. Orchestral light and shade was present in abundance, even if I did not especially care for the use of natural trumpets. (That seems to be the latest fashion with modern orchestras, a fashion I confess to finding incomprehensible, when modern instruments are otherwise used.) The chorus, presently under threat from management cuts, showed incontrovertibly why it deserves our fullest support, its members as convincing individually as they were corporately.

 

Allan Clayton offered a fine vocal performance as Tamino, although I think the production might have made him a little more princely. Ardent and lyrical, he was a worthy successor to Ben Johnson. Lucy Crowe’s Pamina was as touching as one could hope for, musical and dramatic qualities as one; hers was a performance that would grace any stage. James Creswell’s Sarastro was unusually light of tone; there were times when I hankered after something darker, more traditionally Germanic, but on its own terms, this was an intelligent portrayal, with considerable stage presence. Ambur Braid may not have hit every note perfectly as the Queen of the Night – who does, at least on stage? – but hers was a committed, unusually human performance; I hope that we shall see and hear more from her. Peter Coleman-Wright’s Papageno confounded expectations. Here we had a highly convincing portrayal of a bird-catcher left on the shelf, the sadness arising from society’s contempt for the ageing as much as his usual predicament. (It seems a perfectly reasonable reappraisal in a work much preoccupied with age, which really had me thinking.) John Graham-Hall’s Cockney Monostatos showed what a truly versatile artist this is; it is only a few months ago that I saw him as Schoenberg’s Aron in Paris. All of the smaller roles were taken well, showing once again how crucial a sense of company is to performance; if only ENO’s management would watch and listen.

 

Moses und Aron, Opéra national de Paris, 20 October 2015

Images: © Bernd Uhlig

Opéra Bastille

Moses – Thomas Johannes Mayer

Aron – John Graham-Hall
Young Maiden – Julie Davies
Sick Woman – Catherine Wyn-Rogers
Young Man – Nicky Spence
Naked Youth – Michael Pflumm
Man – Chae Wook Lim
Another Man, Ephraimite – Christopher Purves
Priest – Ralf Lukas
Four Naked Virgins – Julie Davies, Maren Favela, Valentina Kutzarova, Elena Suvorova
Three Elders – Shin Jae Kim, Olivier Ayault, Jian-Hong Zhao
Six Solo Voices – Béatrice Malleret, Isabelle Wnorowska-Pluchart, Marie-Cécile Chevassus, John Bernard, Chae Wook Lim, Julien Joguet

Romeo Castellucci (director, designs, lighting)

Cindy van Acker (choreography)
Silvia Costa (artistic collaboration)
Piersandra di Matteo, Christian Longchamp (dramaturgy)

Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris

Opéra national de Paris and Maîtrise des Hauts-de-Seine Children’s Choir of the Opéra national de Paris (chorus masters: José Luis Basso and Alessandro di Stefano)

Philippe Jordan (conductor)

 

Moses und Aron remains a ‘special’ work, not unlike Parsifal. There are good reasons for that; as a greatly distinguished exponent of both dramas, Pierre Boulez, pointed out when at work on Parsifal at Bayreuth, Wagner was quite right to loath ‘opera houses … like cafés where … you can hear waiters calling out their orders: ‘One Carmen! And one Walküre! And one Rigoletto!’ Such was not merely an offence to the composer’s amour propre, but testament to Wagner’s works’ incompatibility with existing theatrical conventions and norms. Likewise what, Parsifal included, must surely be the most theological of all operas, Schoenberg’s unfinished, most likely unfinishable, masterpiece. There are bad reasons too, though. I have lost count of the times I have heard claims that Schoenberg is ‘box office poison’, or some other such drivel. I could not see an empty seat in the vast Bastille amphitheatre; likewise, the Royal Opera House was full, not a seat remaining, for Welsh National Opera’s two performances in London last year. Stockhausen’s Mittwoch in Birmingham sold out even more quickly.

 

 

The allegedly ‘realistic’ guardians of the ‘possible’, Fafner-like protectors of the strangely uncompelling operatic repertoire and its practices, are no more to be trusted than their political counterparts, still screaming ‘unelectable’ at Jeremy Corbyn, long after his election has procured the Labour Party more new members than the Conservative Party has existing ones. If you do not want to stage Schoenberg or Stockhausen; if you do not want Corbyn to lead your (or someone else’s) party: fine, give your reasons for doing so. Such disingenuousness might have fooled the crowd, easily swayed as Schoenberg’s Children of Israel show, for a while. No longer. Sometimes the impossible is fruitfully impossible, as the apophatic theology of Moses suggests; most of the time, it is simply the weapon of those in power.

The only way to perform such works is, of course, to do them proud. There could be no gainsaying the achievement of the Opéra national de Paris in this case: a fitting achievement in its own right, but also a clear statement of intent from its new leadership under Stéphane Lissner. Signs matter, as Aron would counsel; so, too, does Moses’ Idea. Both are present here, in Romeo Castellucci’s thoughtful production, which opens up mental possibilities rather than closing them down. (Presumably, that is what, as usual, the fascist booing contingent objected to; if they do not wish to be made to think, Schoenberg might not be for them.)

 

 

The first act takes place in front of and, mostly, behind a white curtain, the characters – if we may call them that: somehow it does not quite seem the right word – in white too, although Moses is sometimes black. (Who is he? Or, as the Chorus will ask, where is Moses? Is he the Moses we know from the Bible, Freud’s putative non-Jewish Moses, an all-purpose founding father/Lycurgus, a dictator? How mutually exclusive are those identities?) Moses hears the Voice of the opening, prior to language (prior even to the nonsense language of the Rhinemaidens, for this is the Almighty Himself) and receives his inspiration (as an artist) or his command (as a politico-religious leader) in the clearer light of what we might call day, even if it be darker – one of many dialectics at work here – than the all-too-light world of obscurity, which may or may not be its opposite, or negation. The wilderness of the first act, the strange, flock-like behaviour of the Israelites (sheep, of course, are white, or black…) is an object of dim, perhaps in more than one sense, perception by us – and, one suspects, by those participating too. The commands God issues via Moses – if indeed Moses has not interpreted them himself – are, we should remember, unpresentable, incomprehensible, negatively defined; which is why it seems that we might need Aron in the first place. Words appear in front of the curtain: prohibitions? Some of them, doubtless. Others have more of an unclear status, just like most of what is written in, say, Leviticus, for most of us. To begin with, we can ‘process’ them, even if we cannot understand quite why they are there, or how we should act upon them. Eventually, we can take in but a few, if any, so quickly do they come and go: ‘information overload’.

Red seeps in briefly, via the mysterious, mystifying technology – God at work, or the necessary curse of modern communication and its theory? – that follows upon the initially comprehensible conjuring trick of Aron’s rod. As the Book of Numbers has it, ‘And it shall come to pass, that the man's rod, whom I shall choose, shall blossom.’ But we still have to trust both God, Moses, Aron, and probably their popular reception for that; should we? After all, there is not a single agent, perhaps with the exception of the Divinity – although, as with Kant, how can we know? – which does not err, which does not mislead. (Yes, Moses, that includes you.) Red is blood, Aron tells us, and the technology and – still white – costumes suggest something medical. But is this another conjuring trick? Is it perhaps even the Red Sea, a reminder – to what end? – of Pharoah and the Egypt in which many might place prince Moses himself?

 

Black enters. Or rather re-enters, for it had initially appeared as tape reel from which Moses had initially heard the Voice. Recording is a difficult business in itself; what is it we hear when we hear, say, Boulez conducting Moses und Aron at home? Philosophical questions, perhaps unanswerable, yet which cannot go unasked, continue to present themselves. Commandments, as any reader of the Pentateuch will tell us, issue thick and fast, perhaps too thick and fast. The thickness and the fastness confuse, capture, even enslave: tape here is black rather than red. Its sacerdotal quality is confirmed by its colouristic alliance – Holy Alliance? mésalliance? false friend? Again, how do we know? The epistemological challenge of Moses und Aron… – with the black which increasingly invades the stage and all but Moses in the second act, the obscuring curtain now vanished, drama as more conventionally understood to the fore. Whatever the tar-like liquid might be to Castellucci’s painterly imagination, and sometimes paint is just paint, even oil is just oil, its emergence from and apparent subsidence into, religious marking, from an undeniable achievement, however uneasy, of instrumental reason, marks an Adornian negative dialectic it would be willful to ignore.

 

The totemic object of worship – is it Aron, in fetishistic black, ‘fetish’ both old and new in our understanding? Or is it the (real) bull, apparently having undergone several weeks of dodecaphonic training prior to appearing on stage, and mysteriously disappearing from stage? – is bound to fail; we know that. And yet, we cannot write off – as Moses would do in anger with the words inscribed upon his tablets? – what has happened during Moses’ absence. Nor should we. Collapse suggests a Wizard of Oz, or a new lease of life and death for the Feuerbachian psychology of religion so enthusiastically adopted by Wagner, and so ambiguously retained even unto Parsifal. Aron, the people have made this new god; that is what modern politics and communications do; it is what ancient politics and communications did too. The (recorded) word of a one, true God might have triumphed briefly, just as Orpheus might once have tamed whatever and whomever it was he tamed, but the rest will not have gone away. Politics and religion, art too: are they destined, Beckett-like, to end in failure?

 

The religious rituals we have seen in the meantime, something akin to baptism – the River Jordan come early? – included, seem to have had meaning, but did they perhaps have none at all? Schoenberg and Castellucci continue to answer questions with questions. Not quite Socratic, but not entirely un-Socratic either: perhaps more dialectically Wagnerian? I always smile when I see Schoenberg’s marking of an ‘erotic orgy’. What would an ‘unerotic orgy’ be? A failure? Well, yes, but are both perhaps not failures; what would be success? There is nothing of the crowd-pleasingly ‘erotic’ or, alternatively, of its conservative-crowd-repelling alternative, to what we see on stage; it is restrained, perhaps or perhaps not an acknowledgement of the idolatry of artistic representation. The ritual around the Golden Calf that is not golden seems almost more akin to Parsifal, although I do not of course intend to imply that there is nothing of the erotic to Wagner’s drama. The excess, the twelve-note Meyerbeerian tendencies of the Orgy are countered both scenically and musico-theologically: the row remains, as do the controlling hands of the conductor, the director, and, dare one suggest, I AM.

 

 

Is this partial? Of course it is. But so, equally was the saturation in gold – colour, and the lucre of advertising – of Reto Nickler’s production for the Vienna State Opera (available on DVD). Perhaps a production has to be partial; indeed, it must almost certainly be so. Perhaps, as with the work itself, part of the greatness here lies in failure, in the modernistic fragment. Ours is a fractured, fragmented world, which longs all the more for unity, and might sometimes delude itself into believing it has once again found it. Visions of decidedly un-Sinai like, perhaps Alpine mountains appear like a kitschy mirage, inviting the acrobatic attempt at scaling we witness, still more so inviting the failure and collapse we know to be forthcoming. Is the tent-like image remaining a hint at the religion to come, at tabernacles and temples from which the instrumental reason, domination, and murder of the nation will come?

 

We do not, then, know entirely what is going on, and that is clearly the point, or part of it, or is it? We can certainly tell that what we are seeing is what the director intends to see; even when ‘meaningless’, this is not ‘merely’ arbitrary. Is that subsequent doubt part of the point? And so on, and so forth. If Adorno and Horkheimer, in Dialectic of Enlightenment, charted the domination of instrumental reason since Homer, did Schoenberg and does Castellucci attempt something similar since Moses? Such might indeed be understood to be part of the meaning of Adorno’s Philosophy of New Music. And to hear so stunningly played a performance of the orchestral music furthered that understanding further.

 

For this was an astonishing musical achievement from Philippe Jordan and the orchestra of the Paris Opéra: on top form, indeed magnificent form. (With the best will in the world, the smaller forces of WNO last summer at Covent Garden could not begin to match it, estimable though their performance was on its own terms.) I am not sure I have heard a conductor stress the individual nature of scenes and their subdivisions so much as Jordan, suggesting something a little closer to the closed forms of Berg in Wozzeck than I had ever contemplated. ‘Right’ or ‘wrong’, it convinced. There was Wagnerian chamber music, which yet had more than a little hint of the allegedly more ‘autonomous’ writing of works such as Schoenberg’s Serenade, op.24 and the Variations for Orchestra, op.31, and even perhaps of Hindemith, certainly of Bachian counterpoint. (Listen to Götterdämmerung from, say, Karajan or Boulez, or look at the score, if you doubt the preponderance of chamber writing in Schoenberg’s great musico-dramatic predecessor.) There were Viennese waltzes, of all degrees of straightness, evoking Mahler, Berg, even the ‘Marzipanmeister’, as Schoenberg once denounced him, Richard Strauss, although not necessarily in his case with fondness. There was all manner of orchestral colour, especially, although not only, in the Golden Calf Scene; the mandolins (Florentino Calvo and Cécile Duvot) registered more strongly with me than I can previously call, again evoking Schoenberg’s Serenade, but also Mahler, not least his attempt at religious synthesis in the Eighth Symphony. And it was the opening of the ‘Adagio’ to the Tenth Symphony which inevitably came to mind in the closing unison. What should we make of that? A gateway to another musical world? A recognition of the necessity and yet impossibility of further synthesis? The more committed the performance of Moses, the more negative the way that both opens up and vanishes.

 

Thomas Johannes Mayer’s Moses was stentorian, his stage and vocal presence seemingly one physical and intellectual whole. Tragically flawed, noble yet with all the dangers increasingly apparent of charismatic leadership, shading into dictatorship, we saw and heard on one level a political parable all-too-familiar to Schoenberg – and to us too, with æsthetic consequences just as important. It was not only Walter Benjamin who warned of the ‘æstheticisation of politics’. And it was certainly not only a danger, however superior the æsthetics might have been, for Schoenberg’s time. Mayer’s diction, as with that of everyone else on stage, was beyond reproach; his pitch, insofar as that were an issue for the notoriously thorny, negatively ‘unanswerable’ question of Sprechstimme, seemed to me pretty impressive too.

 

That was the case also for John Graham-Hall’s Aron. We think of Graham-Hall as a ‘character’ tenor, a Basilio or a Monastatos, yet his repertoire is far more varied than that, and who would want a ‘non-character’ tenor? (Sadly, many do.) Aron has been portrayed by tenors of many varieties, including bel canto ‘specialists’ – the reality is always more complex – such as Chris Merritt, for Boulez no less, and of course many a Heldentenor. A great strength of Graham-Hall’s performance was his complexity; Aron emerged more as a chameleon than one often sees – or hears. He could adapt, marshal his resources to the situation. Even at the moment of apparent defeat, a Mime-like obsequiousness or infantilism, immediately following upon Moses’ outburst, resolved itself into some of Aron’s initial composure, faith, and/or advocacy.

 

The power relationship, then, continually shifted, according to circumstances. That was just as much the case for the relationships between the two principal characters and others, whether soloists or the chorus. There was not a weak link, and the nature of the work is such that other soloists do not really stand out; that is not to gainsay their achievement. However, there was a triumph at least on the level of that of the orchestra from the chorus. It is difficult to overstate the task a chorus faces in taking on this immense part, or rather these immense parts. José Luis Basso and his deputy, Alessandro di Stefano, had clearly done their work with a thoroughness one rarely encounters, and which, in the modern opera house, is rarely permitted. So had the singers themselves. They seemed capable of doing whatever they were asked, whether by composer, by conductor, by chorus master, or by director. That, of course, contributed immeasurably to the success of their performance, and to the questions such ‘success’ continues to ask of us. If authority can achieve so much, that is both, as Moses und Aron acknowledges, a cause for celebration and a staging-point to catastrophe.

 

 

Birtwistle at 80 (1) - Gawain, 16 May 2014, BBC SO/Brabbins

Barbican

Gawain – Leigh Melrose

The Green Knight, Sir Bertiak de Hautdesert – Sir John Tomlinson

Morgan Le Fay – Laura Aikin

Lady de Hautdesert – Jennifer Johnston

King Arthur – Jeffrey Lloyd Roberts

A Fool – John Graham Hall

Guinevere – Rachel Nicholls

Bishop Baldwin – William Towers

Agravain – Ivan Ludlow

Ywain – Robert Anthony Gardiner

Sound Intermedia (sound design)

Aqamera (projections)
John Lloyd Davies (direct0r)

BBC Singers (conductor: Andrew Griffiths)

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Martyn Brabbins (conductor)

 

 

 

This was a truly outstanding performance, thoroughly worthy of its standing ovation. The only problem now will be of upholding such standards throughout the Barbican’s Birtwistle at 80 series. This was something no one present is likely to forget: a masterpiece, whose absence from opera houses, not just in this country but across the world, stands as a devastating indictment to all concerned, was given a ‘concert staging’ to match the finest efforts of any established house.  Last year’s Salzburg staging – incredibly, the only one since Covent Garden’s premiere and revivals – performed a signal service in bringing Birtwistle’s opera to an international audience, but a questionable production detracted somewhat from the impact of an excellent musical performance. Here, John Lloyd Davies’s unfussy direction did all that was necessary – or at least seemed to be necessary – with the support of excellent lighting. Quite whether the projections were necessary, I have my doubts, but they did no especial harm either.

 

A happy surprise was the reinstatement of the full version of the Turning of the Seasons, which I had never heard before. What utterly magnificent music this is – and, equally to the point, musical drama which strongly reinforces the power of ritual in this opera. Gawain’s year-long journey reminds us of the crucial importance of the passing of time; actions are not here merely repeated, revisited, viewed from different standpoints. There is surely a strong comparison to be drawn here with Siegfried’s going out into the world, ‘zu neuen Taten’, and of course both Wagner and Birtwistle question, indeed deconstruct the notion of heroism. As the disillusioned Gawain insists, he is not, almost certainly never was, that hero the court, the world had imagined him to be. That unnerving experience of returning to a place, to people, and it, they having carried on without one registered all the more powerfully, even chillingly. A stronger sense of the passing of time was gained, then, but so was a stronger sense of the sheer power of ritual, in this case of the calendar and of man’s relationship to it, ambivalently positioned as it is in this case between Church and something closer to paganism. Speaking to other audience members during the interval, some, though by no means all, seemed to have struggled with the consequent greater length of the first act. I did not feel that at the time, but admit to noting thereafter a certain imbalance with respect to the first and second. That need not necessarily be a bad thing, but I could not help but wonder whether a second revision might be in order. Perhaps the Turning of the Seasons could become a second act tableau in itself; perhaps it might be split between the two acts, for, as Birtwistle has noted, many of his works have a tendency to ‘stop’ rather than to ‘end’. (I am not sure that that is really the case with this work, which is in many ways more conventionally operatic than many give it credit for, but the point may still stand in general.) At any rate, experiencing this additional music for the first time was an overwhelming experience in itself; moreover, it permits more to be heard from Guinevere, Bishop Baldwin, and the chorus. I understand – I think – the case for the revised version, but I should now never wish the cuts to be reinstated. In practice, though, I shall have to take what, if anything, I am given.

 

Martyn Brabbins led a superlative performance from the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the splendid BBC Singers (conducted offstage with equal excellence by Andrew Griffiths) and what I suspect may be the finest cast the work has yet received. The BBC SO’s contribution was almost beyond praise, every inch the equal of its Vienna counterpart last summer. It is perhaps all too tempting to resort to ‘national’ stereotypes, and maybe this was as much a matter of staging and venue, but I think I perceived a more generally internationally modernist Klang from the ORF Vienna Radio SO, and a more deeply English – but certainly not remotely nationalist – melancholy from the BBC orchestra. That is not to say that the violence of Birtwistle’s score did not register; it most certainly did, to searing effect. Nor that the powerful Stravinskian antecedents did not register. One may hear a fascinating struggle between a world born of Symphonies of Wind Instruments and one born of The Rite of Spring: doubtless an over-simplification, but perhaps not entirely gratuitous. The welding together of primitivism, mediævalism, and (Northern) English landscape was perhaps achieved still more idiomatically by Brabbins than by Ingo Metzmacher, matching the distinguished contribution by Elgar Howarth on the CD recording from the Royal Opera House. (Alas, that was made at a revival, so has the revised version of the score, but it remains an absolute ‘must’ for anyone who remotely cares about twentieth-century opera.) The brass – including three tubas and a euphonium – proved as powerful as any more celebrated section, but with none of the brashness one sometimes encounters from American orchestras in particular. A battery of percussion unleashed its fire at times, yet also offered true delicacy, not least in the guise of that unforgettable cimbalom part. Uneasy magic was conjured up – the observed and observing malevolence of Morgan le Fay? – from the woodwind, whilst the strings worked over-over-time throughout: incisive and, yes, at times beguiling. Courtly love and eroticism were given their due; one cannot deconstruct without in some sense having constructed.

 

Such was also the tale of the vocal performances. Leigh Melrose summoned up memories of his fine ENO Wozzeck as Gawain, and yet went further still. Very human choices, fears, and disappointments made the descent – or should that actually be ascent? – from his initial swagger all the more affecting. Sir John Tomlinson was his inimitable self, a true force of nature, if the more or less unforgivable cliché may be forgiven, as the Green Knight. An ‘objective’ review would have to mention the indulgence that needs to be offered to his higher range, here not so often employed, but frankly such cavils seem irrelevant in the face of so all-encompassing a dramatic assumption. The day will come – at least, we hope it will, if our opera houses will listen – when another bass will have to take on the role, but for the moment, the archetypal, apparent timelessness of this performance makes it impossible to imagine. For Tomlinson, moreover, there was no need for a score. Jennifer Johnston made a glorious impression as Lady de Hautdesert the wife of his alter ego: rich, even voluptuous, of tone, nicely ambiguous of purpose, and yet imparting something very important concerning the human and perhaps especially the female condition as constructed here. Laura Aikin was equally magnificent as Morgan le Fay. The cruel demands of the role clearly hold no fears for her; far more than ever before, I had the sense of her as a real character, as the moving force of events. Perhaps the longer version played a role in that; her manipulative appearance onstage – unseen to the hero – when Gawain arrived at the Hautdeserts certainly did. It was, however, an interpretative consequence too, born of vocal strength and palpable musical intelligence.

 

Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts and Rachel Nicholls made for an excellent royal couple, as attentive to words as to vocal line. William Towers made more of the role of Bishop Baldwin – again, doubtless partly a matter of the version, but not only that – than I had previously heard. His is a virile counter-tenor, put to piercing, perhaps sanctimonious use here. I certainly found myself asking more about the character, his role, his motivations, than I had done so before. John Graham-Hall fully inhabited the role of the Fool; there was an entirely appropriate correspondence with King Lear to be made in this case. Ivan Ludlow and Robert Anthony Gardiner offered finely sung portrayals of Agravain and Ywain. There was not a weak link in the cast, just as there was not in the evening as a whole. A resounding triumph! Now which company will do its duty and give us a properly thought-through new staging?

 

 

Death in Venice, English National Opera, 14 June 2013

The Coliseum

Gustav von Aschenbach – John Graham-Hall

Traveller, Elderly fop, Old gondolier, Hotel manager, Hotel barber, Leader of the players, Voice of Dionysus – Andrew Shore
Voice of Apollo – Tim Mead
Polish Mother – Lauda Caldow
Tadzio – Sam Zaldivar
Tadzio’s sisters – Mia Anglian Mather, Zhuliana Shehu
Governess – Joyce Henderson
Jaschiu – Marcio Teixeira
Hotel porter – Peter van Hulle
Strawberry-seller, Strolling player – Anna Dennis
Strolling player – Adrian Dwyer
Guide – Charles Johnston
English clerk – Marcus Farnsworth
Glass-maker – Richard Edgar-Wilson
Lace-seller – Constance Novis
Beggar woman – Madeleine Shaw
Restaurant waiter – Jonathan McGovern
Lido boatman. Gondolier, Priest in St Mark’s – Paul Napier-Burrows
Hotel waiter – David Newman
Newspaper-seller – Lyn Cook
Gondoliers – Philip Daggett, Anton Rich
Ship’s steward – Gary Coward
Hotel guests from many countries – Allan Adams, Deborah Davison, Natalie Herman, Suzanne Joyce, Graeme Lauren, Lydia Marchione, Claire Mitcher, Ronald Nairne, Emily Rowley Jones, Paul Sheehan, Andrew Tinkler, Susanna Tudor-Thomas

Deborah Warner (director)

Tom Pye (set designs)
Chloe Obolensky (costumes)
Jean Kalman (lighting)
Kim Brandstrup (choreography)
Finn Ross (video)

Paul Brough (chorus master)

Orchestra of the English National Opera
Edward Gardner (conductor)

 

ENO is on fine form at the moment. Its recent Wozzeck deservedly received well-nigh universal acclaim. If Death in Venice did not have anything like the same dramatic impact, then that is more to be ascribed to the work than to the performances, which were generally excellent. In certain quarters, it is heresy to question Britten’s standing; for those with a greater sense of discrimination, it is patently obvious that his output is highly variable. The overrating of Peter Grimes offers an especially extreme example: a great story, with some memorable music, interspersed with some that is really rather dull. The Turn of the Screw stands head and shoulders above the rest of Britten’s operas, not least since it suffers less from the formal problems that so often beset his work. ENO, however, has served Britten very well, Christopher Alden’s riveting production, for instance, having elevated the slight, often tedious Midsummer Night’s Dream far above the intrinsic qualities of the work. Death in Venice is a better work than that, but it is not without tedium; an idea, at least as converted into this opera, which might have been better suited to a short one-act work, is drawn out far too long, seeming to take about as long as it would to read Thomas Mann’s novella. And if Britten’s display of his workings helps impart unity, that display, whether in terms of sonorities – the all too ready resort to gamelan echoes – or twelve-note process often sounds too obvious. It is difficult not to conclude that the opera would have benefited from wholesale revision, perhaps from a good editor.   

 

Edward Gardner necessarily conducted the score as if he believed in every note of it; there is every reason to think that he did. If there were a few occasions when greater tightness might have been achieved, that is a minor criticism of a performance as dramatic as orchestral writing that is sometimes more thin than spare would permit. The ENO Orchestra was an estimable collaborator without, fully playing as if this were a repertory work inside the composer’s idiom. If the percussionists inevitably deserve special mention, that is no reflection upon the standard of performance elsewhere in the pit, from which sinewy woodwind lines and dark brass punctuation emerged with equal conviction.

 

John Graham-Hall’s voice is not especially beautiful; nor does it need to be. Whatever claims one might make for Peter Pears’s artistry, that would be an eccentric place to start, and Gustav von Aschenbach is a Pears role par excellence. Graham-Hall offered something far more telling: elusive yet unmistakeable dramatic truth. One felt that this was Aschenbach’s story; one both saw it through his eyes and saw him through the eyes of the story, if that makes any sense. It is a strenuous role indeed, but Graham-Hall used its very difficulty to great effect. Beauty, after all, is to be espied from afar, as it was here, not only in the guise of Sam Zaldivar’s gracefully nonchalant assumption of Tadzio, not only even in the æsthetic contemplation and temptation of the Games of Apollo, but in the society as a whole of which Aschenbach both is and is not a part. Tim Mead’s beautifully sung – and acted – Apollo seemingly tilted the dramatic scales further, though of course it would be the Voice of Dionysus that would eventually, tragically capture him. (That tragedy is perhaps one of the weaker aspects of the opera, pushing it too far in the direction of melodrama; but again, that is not the performers’ fault.) Andrew Shore managed a serious of roles with equal facility, as convincing as the oleaginous Hotel Manager as the ludicrous Leader of the Players (his heightened absurdity perhaps a consequence of Aschenbach’s condition?) A plethora of small roles – is the cast not excessive, especially for an opera concentrating so heavily upon a single protagonist? – emerged with similar qualities of observance.

 

Deborah Warner’s production is perhaps the best I have seen from her. The action takes place when and where it ‘should’, but unlike, for instance her dull Eugene Onegin, that provides a frame for imaginative performance. The first, dark scene in Munich, Tom Pye’s excellent set weighed down by the writer’s words, gives way to a plausible journey to illusory, indeed deadly light. For Jean Kalman’s lighting – the initial view from the hotel a fine coup de théâtre – stands as central as Chloe Obolensky’s beautifully-designed period costumes to the often spellbinding success of the staging. Graham-Hall of course deserves the lion share of the credit for the dramatic truth of his descent, but Warner’s direction of him onstage, for instance in the tentativeness of his approaches to Tadzio, must also have played an important role. Kim Brandstrup’s choreography highlights the boys’ natural athleticism, highly successful in conveying its crucial non-reflective quality. Reflection, after all, is Aschenbach’s lot.