The Snowmaiden, English Touring Opera, 29 September 2024

Hackney Empire

Snowmaiden – Ffion Edwards
Lel – Kitty Whately
Kupava – Katherine McIndoe
Mizgir – Edmund Danon
Spring Beauty – Hannah Sandison
Grandfather Frost, Bermyata – Edward Hawkins
Tsar Berendey – Joseph Doody
Bobyl – Jack Dolan
Bobylikha – Amy J Payne
Spirit of the Wood – David Horton
Masienitsa – Neil Balfour
Tsar’s Page – Alexandra Meier

Director – Olivia Fuchs
Designs – Eleanor Bull
Lighting – Jamie Platt

Choral Ensemble
Orchestra of English Touring Opera
Hannah Quinn (conductor)

Images: Richard Hubert Smith
Snowmaiden (Ffion Edwards)

English Touring Opera’s new season opened, as is now customary, at the Hackney Empire, with an excellent follow up to its 2022 production of The Golden Cockerel in the guise of Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snowmaiden, both given in English and sharing some of their casts. Although there were, unsurprisingly, other points held in common, these ultimately proved very different works and productions, one from the early years of his operatic career (written 1880-81), the other his final completed opera (1906-7). Together, they pointed once again to the treasure trove awaiting curious audiences and performers in works that tend, admittedly, to be uneven in their achievement, yet are rarely if ever without interest. Here we saw – and heard – a folkloric passage from winter to spring that inevitably brought to mind Rimsky’s greatest pupil and his cataclysmic Rite, with a more tender heart than many might have come to expect. 

In ETO’s new version, Rimsky’s setting of Alexander Ostrovsky’s play is considerably cut, so that if one could hardly compare it to the concision of Janáček’s later Ostrovsky setting, Katya Kabanova, it certainly does not outstay its welcome. Interestingly, Tchaikovsky composed incidental music for the 1873 premiere of the play, sometimes employing the same folksong melodies. The work is reduced in another, perhaps even more fundamental way; instead of the typical large orchestra – no one would deny Rimsky’s mastery of orchestration – it is given by a very small one, with two strings per part (only one double bass), mostly single wind (two clarinets and horns), timpani, harp, percussion and keyboard instruments. In many ways, it offers a different standpoint on the composer. Some of this is doubtless the orchestral reduction, but some, I think, is a matter of earlier style. It was often a more Tchaikovskian Rimsky, a composer closer to earlier rather than later Wagner, with some characteristics difficult to place, yet, aside from somewhat characterless arioso writing early on, always of musical interest, if not always as we might have expected from later works. 

Snowmaiden, Lel (Kitty Whately)

Clarinet solos (Sascha Rattle) especially caught the ear: again, partly the writing, but partly the excellence of playing. And the folk derivation of some material intrigues without the undue repetition that can sometimes be the case when it makes its way into art music. Throughout, Hannah Quinn led orchestral and vocal forces in a fresh, direct account of the score. If big moments such as the third-act betrothal kiss necessarily lost some of their sensual quality, dramatic loss was surprisingly small. By that stage, we had listened our way in, and the fundamental musical method of structuring had firmly implanted itself in our consciousness. It may not be a ‘symphonic’ work in the way we understand that idea from Wagner – though nor is it trying to be – but there is interesting motivic development, as well as a good deal of ‘Russian’ lyricism. 

Alasdair Middleton’s English translation served the singers and audience comprehension well. Ffion Edwards gave a touching account, warm and precise, of the title role, with Katherine McIndoe a true, characterful foil as her friend-turned-rival Kupava. Kitty Whately made a fine impression as Lel, whether in expression of his youthful temperament or his role as conduit for song. Edmund Danon’s darker portrayal of Mizgir, keenly alert to his moodswings and their larger import, was equally successful. Joseph Doody’s Tsar Berendey, eye-catchingly frock-clad, presided over proceedings with graceful presence and elegance of line. Hannah Sandison’s compassionate Spring Beauty (Snowmaiden’s mother), Jack Dolan’s bluff Bobyl, and Edward Hawkins’s versatile dual turn as Grandfather Frost and Bermyata also stood out, but there were no weak links in the cast, who worked very well together. 

Olivia Fuchs navigated well the twin demands of telling what to most would be an unfamiliar tale whilst saying something with and about it. Russian, fairytale, and ultimately human lines of development came together in the figure of the Snowmaiden who yearns to love, yet cannot since her heart is made of ice. A strong sense was imparted of roots in the strife of her parents, Spring Beauty and Grandfather Frost, justifying at least dramatically what was perhaps less interesting in ‘purely’ musical terms. It merged more or less seamlessly with the long-desired passage of winter into spring and also, as Fuchs noted in the programme, allowed us to ‘reflect on our changed relationship with, and societal alienation from, nature’s cycles as well as our interference with them’. This was accomplished lightly rather than with overt didacticism, in a resourceful, suggestive staging that will travel to theatres of different sizes across the country. On top of that, a more feminist – or less misogynistic – twist was given, so as to save the central protagonist from merely being ‘rescued’ by a man who had ill-treated her. Here, then, was a tale of transformation in multiple, connected ways.

 

Lucio Silla, Salzburger Landestheater, 4 June 2024

Images: SLT/Christian Krautzberger

Lucio Silla – Luke Sinclair
Cecilio – Katie Coventry
Giunia – Nina Solodovnikova
Lucio Cinna – Nicolò Balducci
Celia – Anita Rosati
Aufidio – Joseph Doody

Director – Amélie Niermeyer
Set designs – Stefanie Seitz
Video – Janosch Abel
Costumes – Kathrin Brandstätter
Dramaturgy – Frank Max Müller and Vinda Miguna
Lighting – Tobias Löffler

Chorus of the Salzburg Landestheater (chorus director: Tobias Meichsner)

Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra

Carlo Benedetto Cimento (conductor)  

The Salzburg Landestheater’s new production of Lucio Silla, generally accorded the finest of Mozart’s three opere serie for Milan, was first seen in January of this year. Though I was actually in Salzburg for the second performance, I was unable to see it then, so I was delighted to have opportunity to catch up with a thoughtful staging and fine performances, worthy of anyone’s attention—and which it would be highly desirable, if at all possible, to have preserved on film. The sixteen-year-old composer’s relish for the forces, chorus included, at his disposal in Milan was vividly brought to life. If he had not yet learned the dramatic virtues, at least from time to time, of concision such as one experiences in later dramas, it is difficult to imagine anyone having minded. Such was the expertise with which this young cast made Mozart’s recitative and da capo arias, coloratura in particular, vividly meaningful as well as vocally thrilling, that more modern prejudices against the genre were thoroughly dispelled. The quality of staging and performances also offered a welcome opportunity to (re-)assess Giovanni De Gamerra’s admittedly very early libretto. 

De Gamerra has come in for a bad press, then and now: to my mind, at least a little unjustly. Lorenzo Da Ponte, who perhaps, having been compelled to leave Vienna, had his own reasons for dissatisfaction with those who had remained, reported in a footnote to his memoirs:

 

Leopold [II, Holy Roman Emperor] took [Giovanni] Bertati to his opera. A year later came [Giovanni Battista] Casti: and that wretched dramatic cobbler was dismissed. But Casti was not fond of hard work. He asked for an assistant and obtained one in person of Signor Gamerra, a poet famous for his Corneide, a poem in seven or eight fat tomes wherein he mentioned all the horns that had appeared in Heaven or on earth from the birth of Vulcan down to those of his own grandfather. This ungrateful cornifex had not been a year in Vienna before he began butting with his benefactor, accusing him of Jacobinism; and poor Casti … was enjoined to depart from Vienna at once.

 

This is both odd and intriguing, given that Leopold himself spoke harshly of the poet, advising his brother Ferdinand, governor of the Duchy of Milan, in a letter John A. Rice discovered in the Vienna archives, that De Gamerra was ‘fanatic to excess, hot-headed, imprudent concerning … liberty, very dangerous,’ a startling extreme judgement coming from one who was far from reactionary, and which certainly attests to strong political sentiments on De Gamerra’s part. We might also note, though, that Leopold was none too complimentary about Ferdinand, dismissing him in a secret memorandum on members of his family (!) as ‘a very weak man, of little intellect and paltry talent, but who has a very high opinion of himself’. Make of that what you will. (I shall resist the temptation to go into greater detail about the House of Austria and Mozart’s operas here, but more will follow both in articles and, when finished, a book on the complete operatic œuvre.)

Celia (Anita Rosati), Aufidio (Joseph Doody), Lucio Silla (Luke Sinclair)

Perhaps more significant has been the view that the libretto, in particular its ending, is not very good. Mozart found himself having to make revisions in light of criticism (of the libretto) by Metastasio. In his New Grove article, Julian Rushton calls the denouement ‘unconvincing’ and the libretto as a whole ‘turgid’, whilst allowing Lucio Silla nonetheless to be ‘musically the finest work Mozart wrote in Italy, … [ranking] with opera seria by the greatest masters of the time’. I certainly should not dissent from the latter, either in principle or in light of this performance, but I find the judgement of the libretto unduly harsh, both in general and with respect to the ending, demanded by the conventions of the genre but also foreshadowed more than many allow both in libretto and score. A virtue of Amélie Niermeyer’s production is its taking the ‘problem’ of the ending, on which more shortly, on board. Greater faith in the work, one might well argue, might make such a strategy unnecessary; but in light of the decisions made, reasonable and justified for a contemporary production, its subversion (or, if you prefer, extension) makes good sense.

 

Neirmeyer takes her leave from the historical Lucius Sulla’s dictatorship. That did not necessarily hold quite the same implications as now, but such qualification is largely beside the point if it makes for good drama, which, on the whole, it does. In this world of modern dictatorship, rebels, resisting a new, brutal régime, in which opponents, pictured in placards held up by those resisting, have been ‘disappeared’. Lucio Silla exists and is amplified by propaganda, photographed snaps retouched and enhanced by his friend, the tribune Aufidio to portray the essence of strong, masculine leadership. Cecilio, Lucio Cinna and others are in hiding, clothing suggestive of a guerilla movement, and crucially are being watched (at least part of the time) through electronic surveillance rom the dictator’s palace.

Lucio Silla

 

Silla vacillates and is persuadable, picking up on the mediating role of his sister Celia as well as his love for Giunia, she of the old regime, so that his sudden decision for clemency (a recurring theme, we might note, through Mozart’s entire œuvre, as well as much other eighteenth-century opera) seems less unmotivated than has been alleged. But there is a twist. Since we have moved to a world of modern psychological realism, heir to the ‘Romantic critical tradition’ Rice highlighted as having done such damage to understanding of the composer’s final instantiation of operatic clemency, La clemenza di Tito, the change of heart is a ruse. The dictator who, it has seemed, might prefer a lengthy retirement in which he can indulge himself with whisky and women, has had a plan all along. Acclaimed by the people for forgiveness of those who have plotted against him, he has in fact seized the moment to add them to the ranks of the disappeared, chillingly undercutting the final vocal and orchestral rejoicing,whilst, in a sense, remaining true to the claims to total knowledge on which clemency insists. (Think of Sarastro as well as Tito.) If, sometimes, the relentless activity during arias threatened to detract from moments of musical reflection, it was a finely balanced thing. Mozart survived—and rather more than that. If anything, the classic AMOR/ROMA conflict gained by its rethinking.

 

Luke Sinclair’s performance in the title role was fundamental to this dramatic success. Vocally strong and agile, his stage portrayal helped fill in many of the gaps. Ably assisted by Joseph Doody as Aufidio, no mean singer and actor himself, Sinclair’s Silla offered psychological depth in instability, whilst maintaining something quite other to the external world. Those in whom he almost met his match were equally impressive, complementing and contrasting like a fine wind ensemble. Katie Coventry as Cecilio offered an extensive range of dramatic colour, not entirely unlike an early piano. Nicolò Balducci’s coloratura and the dramatic use he put to it in the soprano castrato role of Cinna would have more than convinced even the most countertenor-sceptical of listeners. Nina Solodovnikova’s warmly sympathetic, yet unswervingly committed Giunia brought her music and role thrillingly to dramatic life, poignantly in tandem with the spirit world (and others) conjured up by Carlo Benedetto Cimento and the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra, as well as the Chorus of the Salzburg Landestheater. Anita Rosati’s Celia proved a musical as well as dramatic lynchpin, stylistic command second to none. But then, I could almost have exchanged the descriptions given for each singer at will. All had cruel vocal demands placed upon them, all succeeded not only in fulfilling them, but in creating an ensemble drama that was far more than the sum of its parts.

Cecilio (Katie Coventry)

Cimento’s alert musical leadership from the pit, allied to the long Mozartian experience of the orchestra, was just as impressive—and crucial. Tempo decisions were wise. Dramatic momentum was created and maintained. Artists on stage were given freedom to act as singing actors, nonetheless bound together by careful ensemble preparation and finely judged orchestral incitement. Affective use of keys, E-flat major in particular, was meaningfully conveyed. That is Mozart’s doing in the first instance, of course, yet it still needs – and received – sensitive, dramatically alert conducting and orchestral performance. Likewise, the composer’s extraordinary orchestration, veiled, muted strings, tender woodwind, sepulchral trombones and all, disconcerted, beguiled, and thrilled. 

A welcome and apt surprise came at the beginning of the second part (the third act) when an entr’acte not a million miles away from Mozart, but which I did not recognise and which I was 99.5% sure was not Mozart, was heard. I later discovered that it was the first part of the second movement and all of the third from Johann Christian Bach’s Symphony in G minor, op.6 no.6. Not only did it accompany the pantomime action very well; it served to remind us both of Mozart’s close connection to the ‘London Bach’ and the latter’s own Mannheim Lucio Silla, to a revised (I admit, improved) version by Mattio Verazi of De Gamerra’s libretto. Perhaps Salzburg might tackle this next? It would be a fine thing indeed to be able to see and hear the two together one day. In the meantime, this did nicely indeed.

Il barbiere di Siviglia, Pop-up Opera, 21 June 2016

Images: Richard Lakos



 

Thames Tunnel Shaft, Brunel Museum, Rotherhithe

Rosina – Katie Slater

Count Almaviva – Ciarán O’Leary, Joseph Doody
Figaro – Leif Jone Ølberg
Bartolo – James Schouten
Basilio, Fiorello – Tom Asher
Berta – Emily Blanch

James Hurley (director)

Fiona Johnston, Kate McStraw, Clementine Lovell (producers)

Berrak Dyer (musical director, piano)
 

Having been ground down almost beyond endurance by the referendum ‘debate’, I was surprised and delighted to be picked up so splendidly by Pop-Up Opera’s Barber of Seville. The Thames Tunnel Shaft might not, on the face of it, have seemed an obvious venue for Rossini, but neither I, nor, I suspect, anyone else had any doubts, let alone complaints, once down the steps. The intimacy of the occasion more than compensated for any acoustical issues; my ears soon adjusted, and all that remained was to sit back and enjoy.

 

The performance was sung in Italian, with silent film-style titles projected on the wall (sometimes text and translation, sometimes translation, sometimes commentary, sometimes wittily and only vaguely ‘after’ the original). Soloists and piano (with a mercifully brief outing for deliberately-inappropriate synthesiser as Figaro’s guitar) well-nigh perfectly captured the often elusive essence of Rossini’s opera. In all but the best performances, it can readily seem over-extended, even tedious, the composer’s clever formulae all too quickly losing their sparkle. Not here; indeed, I am not sure I have witnessed a more committed performance. Berrak Dyer’s sterling work on the piano was such that I never missed the orchestra; indeed, in conjunction with those titles, the sound of the piano seemed especially apt. James Hurley’s stage direction and the work of a fine team of producers (see above) left nothing to be desired. Disguises were donned, simple props telling employed, but above all, it was the characters who came so vividly to life – both as opera buffa types, which is surely crucial here, but also with a degree of humanity that yet did not sentimentalise.

 

For that, of course, we have primarily to thank a highly talented cast of young sisters, all of whom I should more than happily see and hear again. Rossini’s technical demands held no fears for any of them, nor did the quicksilver stage action that must accompany, indeed incite, it. Katie Slater’s coloratura impressed greatly as Rosina; so did her knowing glances. Ciarán O’Leary, suffering from an allergy, nevertheless made the most of the first act as Almaviva, revealing a lovely tenor voice, and technique to match; having had to withdraw, he was ably succeeded by the similarly accomplished, eminently likeable Joseph Doody. James Schouten’s handsome baritone proved another joy to hear as Bartolo. Tom Asher – who, I have just noticed from the programme, hails from my home town of Rotherham, and is therefore necessarily a good thing – revealed excellent comic and musical talent as Basilio and Fiorello. Emily Blanch, long relegated to the sidelines in her role as Berta, nevertheless made the most of her aria, warmly received.



Figaro (Leif Jone Ølberg)

 

 

If I had to choose, though, my first prize would go to the outstanding Leif Jone Ølberg as Figaro. Ølberg inhabited the role at least as completely as any artist I have seen. His baritone voice is darkly attractive, seemingly effortlessly agile, capable of all manner of subtlety – and he can act. Such an energising presence would have melted even the sternest of hearts. If he were first among equals, though, that achievement would never have registered without so fine a sense of company from all concerned: on and off stage. The most heartening opera performances often to be found where you least expect them, even at the foot of a tunnel shaft.

For details of Pop-Up Opera’s nationwide tour, please visit their website here.