Don Giovanni, Vienna State Opera, 3 February 2023

Don Giovanni – Kyle Ketelsen
Commendatore – Ain Anger
Donna Anna – Hanna-Elisabeth Müller
Don Ottavio – Dmitry Korchak
Donna Elvira – Kate Lindsey
Leporello – Philippe Sly
Zerlina – Isabel Signoret
Masetto – Martin Häßler

Barrie Kosky (director)
Katrin Lea Tag (designs)
Franck Evin (lighting)
Theresa Gregor (costumes)
Sergio Morabito, Nikolaus Stenitzer (dramaturgy)

Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus director: Thomas Lang)

Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera

Antonello Manacorda (conductor)

Images: © Wiener Staatsoper / Michael Pöhn
Donna Anna (Hanna-Elisabeth Müller) and the Commendatore (Ain Anger)

One of Barrie Kosky’s great virtues as a director is that he does not impose a one-size-fits-all approach, or aesthetic, to his work with opera. There will sometimes, of course, be visual similarities – doubtless in part his, in part his design team’s – but they are intermittent and rarely, if ever, determining factors for the conceptual framework. (An especially vexing misconception of the AMOP crowd is that designs ‘are’ the production. No wonder they fail to understand anything they see.) And that framework, like it or otherwise—I have regularly fallen into either camp—is usually pretty clear. 

What puzzled me most about this Don Giovanni was a relative lack of clarity—whether in my perception or intrinsic. I think I managed to piece a bit more together afterwards, but much of it seemed, at least to me, a little undercooked: not a characteristic I readily associate with the director. Is that perhaps a by-product of its first outing having been at the height of the pandemic, when restrictions may have inhibited certain types of action? Characters certainly seem to spend a good deal of time, though far from all of it, some distance apart on a large stage. It is a rocky, rather grim landscape, many miles (literally, I suspect, as well as conceptually) from early-modern Seville (or the Venice Da Ponte’s libretto often seems fundamentally to suggest). Nothing is hidden, or concealed, in a wasteland that is anything but labyrinthine. It sprouts flora in the final scene of the first act, as do the chorus (who, whatever I said earlier on, resemble strikingly the chorus in Kosky’s Komische Oper Monteverdi Orpheus). But then it is back to the grey, rocky landscape—and latterly, a pool of water. 

That literal flowering seems to suggest some sort of Bacchic ritual, it would seem, albeit curiously shortlived. Perhaps that is the point: what does Giovanni do when things are not flowering, when the wine is not flowing—which does not even seem to happen at his feast, nor indeed ‘Finch’ han del vino’? He waits, it seems: a curious undermining of the kinetic energy that makes up his dramatic – in music and words alike – persona. Again, I imagine that is the point. Indeed, after, though only after, the performance, I sensed that, especially later on, this had been for Don Giovanni and Leporello, perhaps for the others too, a performance of Waiting for the Commendatore. Or had it? The idea of a Beckettian Don Giovanni is intriguing, but not very much more seems to be done with it. 

Don Giovanni (Kyle Ketelsen) and Masetto (Martin Hässler)

The other principal theme, perhaps related, is a centring of Leporello, who seems (not unreasonably, I suppose, given a standpoint of psychological realism) quite traumatised by his experiences with Don Giovanni. Is there a sense of abuse there? One might argue that that is intrinsic to the master-slave dialectic, though I am not sure that is quite how Mozart and Da Ponte see it. I think so, but more strong, again especially towards the end, is a sense of an ersatz father-and-son relationship. Perhaps, according to standpoint, that is intrinsically abusive. One might, truthfully yet not necessarily revealingly, observe that all of Don Giovanni’s relationships, if one may call them that at all, qualify as such. I sensed, though, that Kosky is saying more than that, without being quite clear (in my mind) what that ‘more’ is. Donna Elvira seems to be behaving rather unusually too. 

Don Giovanni and Leporello
(Philippe Sly)

Another Kosky virtue is that he knows his music. As with any director, indeed any musician, one might disagree with his response, but it would be unfair to claim that he has not considered it. A case in point here would be the concatenation of dances Mozart presents as a society of orders stands on the libertine – perhaps even revolutionary – precipice. For once, not only do we have the different bands of musicians on stage; the characters dance the appropriate dance, lending visual realisation of an extraordinary moment whose import may not always be recognised by a twenty-first-century audience. Too often, directors impose trademark silly dancing for all-comers. (There is a bit of that too, but not here.) I could not help, though, but wish that Kosky had interpreted the music, or at least how I hear it, a little more. It is not that music need always be doubled on stage, any more than the libretto need, but in the absence of a stronger conceptual lead, it might have helped. Herbert Graf’s Salzburg Felsenreitschule ipproduction for Furtwängler continues to score here. 

I am wary, as anyone should be, of saying it would have been better to have done x than y. It seems more fruitful in general to concentrate on y, though consideration of x may have some heuristic use in sharpening critique of y. For me—surely also for Mozart and Da Ponte—Don Giovanni is unquestionably a religious, indeed a Catholic, work, profoundly concerned with sin and damnation. That does not mean it must be presented as such, but it suggests performance would do well at least to find a satisfactory alternative to doing so, rather than simply ignoring the issue. That may be why, assuming God rather than Nietzsche to be dead, Kosky steps, surprisingly tentatively, toward the Theatre of the Absurd and, perhaps, beyond it to Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty, though neither comes across so starkly as it might. But then, perhaps neither is supposed to; if something is a context, it is not necessarily for me to say that it should become something more than that. Is it, though, for an audience member to voice bemusement concerning what, if anything, the message might be? Surely it is; for if not, not only criticism but theatre itself must be dead. And, whatever Kosky’s message may be, whatever the strange intermittent lack of theatricality to a production that yet strains hard to be theatrical, I strongly doubt he would wish to propose that particular death. 

As it was, a strong cast of singers worked hard to bring theatrical as well as musical values to the stage. Kyle Ketelsen was an energetic, charismatic Don Giovanni, owning the stage when he needed to, yet not without a sense of the chameleon when musically as well as dramatically called for. Philippe Sly’s wounded yet spirited Leporello offered a tour de force in the service of Kosky’s strangely compelling conception. Hanna-Elisabeth Müller, an initial announcement notwithstanding, and Dmitry Korchak both shone as the unambiguously seria pair, Donna Anna and Don Ottavio. They understood how coloratura works dramatically—and made us feel that. Kosky’s Donna Anna is certainly no unwilling participant: a more controversial idea now than it might have been twenty or even ten years ago, but certainly not without warrant in the score, let alone Romantic tradition. Kate Lindsey’s ‘Mì tradi’ was worth the price of admission alone; not that the rest of this captivating artist’s performance was not similarly excellent. If I were unsure quite what Kosky was trying to suggest here, there was no doubting Lindsey’s dramatic and musical capabilities of doing so. Ain Anger’s Commendatore was intelligently sung, paying commendable attention to the words as well as to overall aura. Isabel Signoret and Martin Häβler’s spirited Zerlina and Masetto likewise made much, though never too much, of their words, marrying them with sweet satisfaction to melody and overall characterisation. 

Antonello Manacorda and the Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera (to all intents and purposes the Vienna Philharmonic) seemed neither at odds, nor completely of one mind. There was no discernible attempt made to stymie the Vienna sound, commendably full on occasion, and anything but puritanical. (Imagine: puritanism in this of all works!) Yet whilst generally choosing sensible tempi – I still cannot come on board with the fashionable alla breve for Overture and Stone Guest, however ‘correct’ it is held to be – Manacorda often seemed to remain somewhat on the surface: more, perhaps, of orchestra than score. He was supportive of the cast, though, and I cannot imagine anyone being seriously disappointed. I doubt use of the all-too-familiar conflation of Prague and Vienna versions was his doing. Whoever made that decision really should have known better, but no one ever does (well, hardly ever). The outcome, save in the most blistering, powerful of performances, is always dramatically unsatisfactory; this was no exception. Prague is, of course, the answer; it would be a good start were someone occasionally to ask the question.

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence (1) - The Rake's Progress, 11 July 2017

Théâtre de l’Archevêché

Actors, Chorus, Mother Goose (Hilary Summers), Tom Rakewell (Paul Appleby), Nick Shadow (Kyle Ketelsen)
Images: © Patrick Berger / artcompress

Ann Trulove – Julia Bullock

Tom Rakewell – Paul Appleby

Nick Shadow – Kyle Ketelsen

Nick Shadow 2, The Keeper of the Asylum – Evan Hughes

Trulove – David Pittsinger

Mother Goose – Hilary Summers

Baba the Turk – Andrew Watts

Sellem – Alan Oke

Actors – Antony Antunes, Kirsty Arnold, Nichole Bird, Karl Fagerlund Brekke, Andrew Gardiner, Chihiro Kawasaki, Maxime Nourissat, Jami Reid-Quarrell, Gabriella Schmidt, Clemmie Sveaas

Simon McBurney (director)

Gerard McBurney (dramaturgy)

Michael Levine (designs)

Christina Cunningham (costumes)

Paul Anderson (lighting)

Will Duke (video)

Leah Hausman (choreography, design assistance)

English Voices (chorus master: Tim Brown)

Orchestre de Paris

Eivind Gullberg Jensen (conductor)

Auction guests, Baba the Turk (Andrew Watts) and Tom 

I thought it was longer than it had been since my most recent Rake’s Progress. When I checked, I discovered that had only been a couple of years or so ago, at the Royal Academy: and very good it was too. Nevertheless, this new Aix production from Simon McBurney proves mightily refreshing. It has something in common with the RAM staging (John Ramster) in that it concentrated on the opera as an opera, rather than the debates surrounding it – although those can surely never be far away from most of our experience, whatever Stravinsky, with typical disingenuousness, might have suggested. But the emphasis and the illumination are different, which is surely just as it should be.

London stands at the heart of this Rake. Not, thank God, in a particularist sort of way: that would be especially absurd for a staging in Provence. This is not only the city of Hogarth, but also the city that was, for all its flaws, indeed in many ways on account of them, until recently the greatest in the world. It destroyed itself in part, of course; ‘its’ greed, both in the eighteenth century and under neoliberalism, rightly provokes revulsion, none greater than that of those who live or have lived there and are not members of the ‘banking community’ and other such delightful trades. But for those of us estranged from our country at the moment, Theresa May’s ‘citizens of nowhere’, we know who really did it. We are also able to recognise our city with all the delicious agony of an exile, internal or external, in what we see before us, without collapse into the merely didactic. For the great, indeed diabolical con trick that is capitalism, whether neoliberal or in an early mutation, is in large part the parable here; it always was, whatever Stravinsky or even Auden might have told us. (Repeat after me. Intention is not everything; sometimes it is very little at all.) When Tom goes to London, he goes to the City; he goes to one of those plush, joyless, ‘pleasurable’ towers, from which one may see other towers. He has well-dressed, superficially attractive – very attractive – people fawn over him, change his clothes, transform him into one of them. He is – and this would hit home as strongly as I have ever known it do – ‘weak’, as Ann tells us. Christina Cunningham’s costumes are a profoundly important – and knowingly shallow – contributor to the drama; they make us envious, even complicit, wishing or at least in danger of wishing we were part of the tragedy we know this pleasure garden to be.

Nick, Tom, and images of Baba

When Mother Goose’s establishment comes into view, the emphasis shifts to eroticism that is both blatant and subtle. Again, most of us probably want it, although we know we should not. A subtle orgy might seem a contradiction in terms, at least to those of us on the outside of this world, but Leah Hausman’s choreography really does its work here. Far more is suggested than actually depicted; our minds, our imaginations are made to do the dirty work. Pornography, the pornography of late capitalism, is thus dramatised and accused. I could not help but think of Antonio Negri’s Constitution of Time. In all the pleasure, the beauty of the young bodies, there is of course neutralisation too. Everything becomes the same; it does not matter whom one chooses, whom one adds to one’s iPhone collection. And so, after Tom has taken his pictures – displayed to the world, as they would be, although in this case on the walls of the set – of his final nubile companion of the evening, Nick Shadow, the capitalist Devil himself, shows him pictures of Baba the Turk. The rest you know – save for the twist here that Baba is now played by a counter-tenor. Her whole life is performance, an act, of course, and this takes its place in her line of publicity strategies. There is no especial jolt to our – or at least to my – understanding; that, I suspect, is part of the point. The auction is full of typical metropolitan ‘style’, that of the empty, expensive sort in which the drama has been mired all along: Mayfair, not Whitechapel.

On the other side, however, Ann seems, and I think probably is, more present than ever. She sometimes, earlier on, walks past. Tom appears to see her, but does he? And would what that even mean if he did? She is good, a symbol of goodness, but she is not just that; I felt her more as a character than I can remember doing so before. That is partly a matter of Julia Bullock’s tremendous performance, touchingly pure, and with every word readily audible (far from always the case in this role). But it is partly McBurney’s conception too. She is, perhaps, a social critic too, no mere inegénue. There is indeed, as McBurney suggests in a brief programme interview, ‘dans une certaine mesure une figure révolutionnaire’ to be perceived there too. Baba knows that, it seems. She has her own roles to play, but she is convinced by Ann, and actually sends her on her way to attempt, however vainly, redemption.

Ann Trulove (Julia Bullock) with auction guests behind

Before that, moreover, Ann walks through a typical Tube subway, cleverly conjured up with design technology: a bit of that South Kensington pedestrian tunnel to it, actually, although more ‘desolate’, ‘poorer’, to the non-London, or con-comprehending, eye. That actually means more alive, of course; the homeless people and the busker – playing solo trumpet, in a nice touch – are, for us Londoners, for us human beings, the real story, the real tragedy. And in a final, potentially Foucouldian twist, the man running the show in Bedlam is Nick Shadow’s shadow. Madness has of course always been a way to deal with criticism. Had Tom perhaps an inkling of what was going on; or might, at the very least, Ann have helped him enlighten him had he not fallen ‘mad’? The voices in his head are the voices we hear all around us: ‘unelectable’, ‘sensible’, ‘moderate’, and so forth? They are the voices that will do all they can to prevent us make London, not what it was, but what it should have been, could have been, all along – and in many ways still is.

I almost – almost – believed, then, in the ‘love story’ that comes almost sentimentally to the foreground of work and production alike. Bullock played her part in that, of course. So did Paul Appleby’s lovable, lovably weak Tom: the sort of character one knows one should distrust, and yet desperately wishes to do otherwise. He never seemed quite the author of his own actions; which amongst us is, whilst Nick is at play? More than that, though, his sappy tenor proved just as sympathetic and manipulative as Bullock’s crystal-clear soprano. Kyle Ketelsen’s Nick was every bit as persuasive as he should be – and more so. He was reassuringly ‘normal’, ‘as things are’, until one really looked and listened: just like capital itself, and with all the dangerous, often surprisingly understated, attraction it exerts. Evan Hughes proved an excellent shadow to the shadow: the same, and yet different. A more real ‘normality’ was offered by David Pittsinger’s splendidly sane Trulove; or is Trulove just a better actor, the voice of old-school conservatism? Hilary Summers made for a fantastic Mother Goose: ruler of her own world, not least vocally, and with a splendidly naughty sense of genuine fun. Is she not a ‘revolutionary’ in her way, too? Or are we just meant to think so? Andrew Watts made much of Baba’s staginess; how could he not? But there was definitely a human heart beating strongly there; the appeal to her fans is far from entirely to be dismissed. Alan Oke’s Sellem imparted a fine sense of slightly camp insidiousness: all the better to sell Tom’s goods with. 

The graveyard scene

There was a ruthless dryness to much, not all, of Eivind Gullberg Jensen’s conducting which was not only echt neo-classical Stravinsky, but very much of the dramatic idea. The orchestra, both unlike and not unlike Wagner, was telling us something. A delight in contrivance, moreover, fused perfectly with the score’s well-nigh miraculous forging of continuity out of what ‘should’ merely stop and start. Stravinsky’s cellular method here is, in many ways, not so very different either from his late serial masterpieces or, dare I suggest it, The Rite of Spring. The miracle is his – and, in a way, that of capital too. If the Orchestre de Paris had its soloistic moments and was for the most part commendably sharp of rhythm. If there was certainly nothing wrong with its performance, though, there was perhaps a slight lack of presence, even of commitment, that slightly detracted from the musico-dramatic whole. Maybe it was as much an acoustical matter as anything else: outdoor performances, notoriously, take a good deal of getting used to. There was certainly no such fault to be found with the singers of English Voices, all of whom played their individually directed performances to a tee. They, like the rest of us, were both enthralled and ultimately destroyed by the game afoot.

The Rake's Progress, Royal Opera, 22 January 2010

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Trulove – Jeremy White
Anne Trulove – Rosemary Joshua
Tom Rakewell – Toby Spence
Nick Shadow – Kyle Ketelsen
Mother Goose – Frances McCafferty
Baba the Turk – Patricia Bardon
Sellem – Graham Clark
Madhouse Keeper – Jonathan Coad

Robert Lepage (director)
Sybille Wilson (revival director)
Carl Fillon (set designs)
François Barbeau (costumes)
Etienne Boucher (lighting)
Boris Firquet (video)
Michael Keegan Dolan (choreography)
Rachel Poirer and Milos Galko (revival choreography)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Stephen Westrop)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Ingo Metzmacher (conductor)

First time around, I had rather liked Robert Lepage’s production of The Rake’s Progress, writing: ‘Lepage made a good case for the updating to 1950s America, for instance through his mention of Stravinsky's great interest in the new medium, delineation of Hollywood's 'false historicism', and citation of an essay in which Auden made clear his opposition to naturalism. The best case, however, was on stage, in which one was perfectly at liberty to consider the parallels between the setting and its original form, yet without feeling unduly constrained.’ A little later, I quoted Lepage saying that he had not ‘“set out to make a piece of social criticism, so the political and social dimension to the production has arisen through choices that seemed right to me”. This is interesting, since the political and social dimension came across strong and clear. Today's “celebrity”-fuelled culture, we were reminded, is in many respects nothing new, although it may somehow be even more vacuous than it once was. Hollywood and advertising, as we saw on stage, pursued this cult from the very earliest years, and the figure of Baba the Turk reminds us that notoriety was a great selling-point - literally - during the eighteenth century too. What could be more Hogarthian, post-war, or contemporary than setting off to the City in search of riches and losing them - and much else in the process?’

What, then, had changed? First, I suspect that the production itself is subject to diminishing returns. The Hollywood trappings – Nick Shadow filming, Tom Rakewell’s trailer, the swimming pool and so on – do not seem to offer up any more upon a second viewing. The loss of London grated rather more than it had, since the replacement did not seem adequate, an especially unfortunate moment coming during the third act when it was suggested that Tom had fled ‘to America’. Had he ever been away? Second, the revival direction seemed to me significantly less sharp than the original. Social criticism might not have been intentional the first time around, but it shone through nevertheless. Here, one wondered whether Hollywood were being enjoyed for its own sake; there was certainly little if any hint of McCarthyism. And third, the audience really did not help. Expecting anything much from the greater part of a Covent Garden audience is doubtless foolish, but this seemed to be an especially unimaginative, uncomprehending bunch. Applause and laughter could be heard all over the place, sometimes at the most truly inopportune moments. (What on earth was amusing about the graveyard scene?) The multiple alienations Stravinsky, Auden, and, one might at least have hoped, the production set before us went as pearls before swine; a friend of mine heard someone next to her exclaim that ‘the show’ reminded him of Hello, Dolly! Many of the people, moreover, would appear to have been deaf – rendering opera an eccentric choice for their evening’s ‘entertainment’ – since they could not even hear when numbers came to a close, applauding some time beforehand, sometimes whistling too (?!). These people, apparently determined to show off however much they have paid for their tickets, do not seem prepared even to attempt to think, and lessen the experience for the rest of us.

The musical performances varied. Patricia Bardon once again proved a strong Baba, touching in a way one rarely experiences, a trouper of the old school. (Stephanie Blythe had pulled out, likewise the anticipated Kate Royal as Anne Trulove.) There was nothing one could reasonably complain about in Kyle Ketelsen’s Nick, but he seemed to take time to warm up. Certainly by the second act, and then especially during the graveyard scene, he seemed properly possessed by the demon and his demons. Rosemary Joshua seemed to me a considerably stronger Anne than Sally Matthews had: purity of voice and character did not this time entail an inability to make her words tell, far from it. Graham Clark’s Sellem was more character actor than singer; his voice faltered alarmingly more than once. But sadly, the principal disappointment was Toby Spence’s Tom. There is a degree of blankness to the character, I appreciate, yet I was surprised nevertheless by Spence’s woodenness. The developmental aspect I noted to Charles Castronovo’s portrayal in 2008 was considerably less apparent. Moreover, there were times when the vocal line was not nearly so well shaped as it might have been. Choral singing improved, but was disturbingly unfocused in Mother Goose’s brothel.

Ingo Metzmacher’s account of the score ultimately proved puzzling, almost a mirror-image of that of Thomas Adès, whose conducting had proved the major drawback a year-and-a-half ago. There was much greater bite to the first two acts, a proper Stravinskian desiccation, which both repels and fascinates. For this, the fine form of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House must be credited. I longed for greater warmth – but that is just as it should be. To give in would be to risk collapse of the neo-classical conceit. However, the Bedlam Scene proved interminable, weirdly sentimentalised. Clearly a contrast was being drawn, but I wish it had not been, since much of the earlier good work was undone. Nothing though could quite detract from the brilliance of the graveyard scene, where Stravinsky achieves the near-impossible in harpsichord writing that does not make one long for the piano. Is this the mask dropping? It is probably just another mask, but at least the question is posed.

Philharmonia/Salonen, 23 September 2008

Royal Festival Hall

Bartók – The Miraculous Mandarin: Suite, op.19
Prokofiev – Violin Concerto no.2 in G minor, op.63
Stravinsky – Œdipus Rex

Vadim Repin (violin)

Œedipus – Stephen Gould
Jocasta – Ekaterina Gubanova
Creon/Messenger – Kyle Ketelsen
Franz-Josef Selig – Tiresias
Andrew Kennedy – Shepherd
Simon Russell Beale – Speaker

Philharmonia Voices
Philharmonia Orchestra
Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)

This ‘gala concert’ marked the beginning of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s tenure as Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Philharmonia Orchestra. Thankfully, there was little of the ‘gala’ to it; so far as I could tell, it was simply the season’s opening concert, which in general augured well for the new regime.

Certainly the Miraculous Mandarin suite fared very well indeed. Salonen ensured a commendable clarity throughout, married to a fine sense of rhythm – security, not stiffness – and not just in the faster music. One was never able to forget that this was music for the stage and a ballet at that, even in suite form, although as ever, I could not help regretting that the complete ballet was not being performed. The introduction (‘The thugs instruct the girl’) was splendidly thuggish, each subsequent episode being just as well characterised. As the prostitute enticed the old roué, we heard a thoroughly enticing yet menacing clarinet solo against undoubted menace from the ’cellos. The nastiness of the later clarinet duet was if anything still more impressive, as was the slightly earlier entry of the harp and trombones. Sleazy trombone slides made their mark, another example of the straightforwardly superlative work throughout from the trio of Philharmonia trombones. And the concert ending proved viscerally exciting, even if we missed the end of the ballet proper.

There followed a puzzling performance of Prokofiev’s second violin concerto, which I have always – unfashionably – much preferred over his first. Salonen contributed a fine ear for orchestral detail, imparting to the score a transparency that it often lacks. There were, however, some odd decisions concerning tempi, whether from him, Vadim Repin, or both. I know that the first movement is marked Allegro, but I felt that it would have benefited from a slightly slower tempo; the music often sounded a little skated over. There was also a marked lack of ‘Russianness’. Rather surprisingly, given the soloist, we often sounded closer to the Ravelian world of The love for three oranges than to the works of Prokofiev’s Soviet period. With regard to the composer’s inimitable bittersweetness, Repin generally veered more towards the sweet than to the bitter. The end of the movement, however, was very slow and downbeat in mood, which seemed to be more Salonen’s doing. The Andante fared best of the three movements. It sounded fastish for such a tempo marking but it flowed nicely. Here, the detail of Repin’s line was very special; every note sounded deeply considered both in itself and in relation to the others. He evinced a rapt lyricism wholly in tune with Prokofiev’s score. The Philharmonia’s woodwind sounded simply ravishing. And yet, there was a strange parallel with the end of the first movement: the final statement of the principal theme was taken very slowly and Salonen let it slow down further, until it pretty much ground to a halt. After this, the speed of the final Presto in moto perpetuo announced a sudden mood change. Again, there was much finely-etched orchestral detail, especially from the woodwind, although the castanets sounded disappointingly lacklustre. Repin could really sound the virtuoso here – and he did. However, there were times when the music came dangerously close to veering out of control, although it never quite fell apart. I wonder how much joint rehearsal time the violinist and orchestra had been permitted.

Salonen clearly knows his Œdipus Rex, having recorded the work with Swedish forces for Sony and presenting a fine performance here. The last two times I had heard Œdipus Rex were both performances under Valery Gergiev, one with his Mariinsky forces and one with the London Symphony Orchestra. Gergiev unsurprisingly presents a far more ‘Russian’ conception of the work, sometimes breathtakingly so. If I might prefer that, I have to admit that Salonen’s greater emphasis on the neo-classical probably stands closer to the heart – or lack of it – of Stravinsky’s opera-oratorio. The choruses framing the work packed quite a punch indeed, both from the orchestra – which sounded superb throughout – and from the Philharmonia Voices. Indeed, the choral contribution was always excellent, although a larger chorus would ultimately have been beneficial. That control of rhythm on which I remarked in the Bartók was just as evident here, with equally fine results. One could never escape the ominous, properly fatal ostinati, just as Œdipus cannot escape the snare of Fate. There sounded – disconcertingly – some of the emptiness Schoenberg heard in the work but that is no criticism of the performance, nor even – at least in my case – of the work itself. I might have liked it less but I cannot deny that it serves its dramatic purpose magnificently. (I would certainly deny Schoenberg’s claim that it is ‘all negative: unusual theatre, unusual resolution of the action, unusual vocal writing, ... [etc.] without being anything in particular.') Simon Russell Beale was everything one could have asked for as the Speaker. This may be a profoundly, unsettlingly, artificial work, but that need not mean we should endure over-the-top ac-tor-li-ness in it. He sounded as ‘natural’ as one could envisage, to the work’s great benefit. Stephen Gould was not a great Œdipus. He seemed incapable of presenting a modulated account of his line or even his part. Much was shouted although he showed himself perfectly capable of reining in his voice on occasion. It did not help that he looked as though he might have been the father of Ekaterina Gubanova’s Jocasta rather than her son. I liked her very ‘Russian’ portrayal, wide vibrato and all, although I can imagine that some might have thought it jarred a little with the rest of the performance. Kyle Ketelsen, fresh from his triumphant Leporello for the Royal Opera, proved every bit as adept – and therefore displayed considerable versatility – as Creon and the Messenger. His cries ‘Divum Jocastæ caput mortuum’ (‘The divine Jocasta is dead!’) were spine-tingling, as was their interaction with the Chorus. Andrew Kennedy sounded most odd – almost as if he were attempting an impression of Peter Pears – when he appeared as the Shepherd, although he was greatly improved in his duet with the Messenger. So if the vocal contribution, at least considered as a whole, was not at the level of the orchestral or of Salonen’s direction, this remained a considerable account of Œdipus Rex.

Don Giovanni, Royal Opera, 12 September 2008

Royal Opera House

Don Giovanni – Simon Keenlyside
Donna Anna – Marina Poplavskaya
Don Ottavio – Ramón Vargas
Donna Elvira – Joyce DiDonato
Leporello – Kyle Ketelsen
Masetto – Robert Gleadow
Zerlina – Miah Persson
Commendatore – Eric Halfvarson

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)
Sir Charles Mackerras (conductor)

Francesca Zambello (director)
Duncan Macfarland (associate director and revival choreographer)
Maria Björnson (designs)
Paul Pyant (lighting)
Stephen Mear (choreography)

I have until now remained steadfastly sceptical, or downright hostile, concerning Sir Charles Mackerras in Mozart. His widely-praised Figaro earlier this year had seemed to me mercilessly hard-driven and often far too fast for the singers to be able to project the words, let alone the music. In a sense, it had mirrored David McVicar’s irritating, manic production, but this had seemed more coincidence than shared (seriously flawed) approach. I retain my incomprehension at why one would employ natural brass instruments; their rasping sound, especially during the Overture, adds nothing but coarseness. And there were occasions when I worried about speeds. To stick with the Overture – and its counterpart in the Stone Guest Scene – one can play alla breve without robbing the music of its cataclysmic grandeur. Here it sounded more like the opening of Mozart’s D minor piano concerto than the voice of something eternal and unworldly: not an uninteresting link to make but nevertheless robbing the music of its astounding proto-Romanticism. Where would Romanticism, let alone Romantic music, be without Don Giovanni? There is no wonder that E.T.A. Hoffmann delivered a panegyric to this ‘opera of all operas’. However, there was much to admire elsewhere. Whereas the strings had often sounded wiry and under-nourished in Figaro, that was not the case here; nor did they stint unduly on vibrato. I should have preferred greater orchestral weight, as Daniel Barenboim had provided in a miraculous Berlin performance last December, but at least lightness was not now confused with inconsequentiality. Tempi were mostly sensible – and varied. There was even at times, if not so often as I might have liked, a graceful yielding I should have considered inconceivable from prior experience. Perhaps above all there was a dramatic drive, an attentiveness to the drama, which I had previously found to be confused with a headlong rush to the finishing line.

However, I was a little disappointed that we heard the ‘traditional’ composite version of the work. I am no purist when it comes to such matters and appreciate that many singers will relish, perhaps even insist upon, their additional arias. There may even be occasions when the production facilitates use of this version (thankfully without the dreadful, rarely-heard duet between Zerlina and Leporello), although not here. The Prague version, however, almost always maintains a dramatic superiority over that for Vienna or any composite. Additional arias, however heart-rendingly beautiful, undeniably hold up the action. To use the composite version also seems to me to sit a little uneasily with any claims to ‘authenticity’ – although I suppose the accusation might well be turned round upon me, to say that preference for Prague might sit uneasily with reverence for tradition.

There remain many conductors from the past and a few from the present whom I should prefer to hear in Mozart, ranging from Furtwängler, Klemperer, Böhm, and Giulini, to Barenboim, Colin Davis, and Riccardo Muti. (These are examples, not an exhaustive list.) Yet I shall now be interested rather than reluctant to hear Mackerras again. He was of course helped by the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. It might not have sounded as it had for Così fan tutte under Davis – never have I heard a better Mozart performance, although it was betrayed by a crass production – but there was some fine playing, not least from the woodwind. I may disagree with Mackerras, as I often do with Nikolaus Harnoncourt; that should not entail automatic disregard. Contrast this with the cynical, marketing-led exhibitionism of, say, a René Jacobs or a Roger Norrington: ‘The wisdom of tradition is naught. Let us strike up a brazenly ugly noise; let us rid the music of any meaning, let alone beauty, and show the world or at least the gullible how it must be done. In other words, let us create a provocation.’ The distinction between musical intelligence and charlatanry is clear.

There was certainly no charlatanry when it came to the singers. Simon Keenlyside offered a scrupulously musical and sometimes seductive Giovanni. I suspect that I might have been more enthusiastic, had I not experienced Erwin Schrott’s assumption of the role in the same production a little over a year ago. I am not convinced that Keenlyside is so at home with the demonic and Faustian as with the various guises of touching naïveté required in such varied roles as Pelléas, Papageno, or Billy Budd, yet there was nothing really to complain of here. Kyle Ketelsen was at least as good as he was last year, if anything better. Those – and I have heard them – who claim that Leporello is but a stock buffo character should have heard and seen him, to appreciate how the genius of Mozart’s music transforms an ordinary servant into a human being. There was once again a more or less perfect balance between comedy, charisma, and class struggle. His shaping of the musical lines was as impressive as Keenlyside’s. Marina Poplavskaya was certainly vastly improved upon last year, when I had heard her step in at the last minute for the second act. Her tuning on this occasion was secure, but I still missed a sense of style. I can imagine her in Verdi roles, or as Tatyana, but here the line is too full of steel and somewhat lacking in grace. Joyce DiDonato presented quite a revisionist Elvira. There was none of the usual eroticism, such as we heard last year from Ana María Martínez. Yet in its place there was a striking transformation from a wronged yet determined woman, with none of the essentialist hysterical caricature that often characterises the role, to someone who really is driven mad by her experience. I suspect that DiDonato’s experience in Baroque opera informed this portrayal, as it did her flawless coloratura, even in a swift ‘Mi tradi’ that pushed towards the bounds of the acceptable in tempo. Ramón Vargas was a more Latin-sounding Ottavio than I am used to, but there is nothing wrong with that. He sang with great musicality, quickly recovering from a slight difficulty in a treacherous passage from ‘Il mio tesoro’. Robert Gleadow proved a fine Masetto, never sacrificing musical line for peasant gruffness, yet touching in the artful simplicity of his portrayal. As Zerlina, Miah Persson was quite outstanding: maintaining throughout a beautiful, sensitively spun line and supplying plenty of the eroticism lacking from Elvira. Only Eric Halfvarson was disappointing as a lightweight Commendatore.

That leaves the production. It has not improved with age. To stress the Christianity and indeed the Catholicism of the work and its predecessors is an excellent idea, which one might have expected to have represented some sort of norm, though alas not. Yet nothing is really done with this crucial background; instead, we have once again a backdrop of religious tat and that is just about it. Lavish and somewhat garish designs add to the feel of an upmarket musical, almost as much as in Francesca Zambello’s Carmen, also for the Royal Opera. If this is what attracts customers – judging by the Philistine applause following the stage pyrotechnics of Giovanni’s descent into Hell, I fear that it might – then let them stay at home. As for the confusion regarding the lack of a statue – to which Leporello nevertheless sings – and the appearance of a large, pointing, National Lottery finger, I despair. Producing Don Giovanni is an extremely difficult task, almost as difficult as performing it. The downright vulgarity of ‘bread and circuses’ is not an answer. Still, the music was the thing – and it was very good.

Don Giovanni, Royal Opera, 4 July 2007

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Don Giovanni

Royal Opera House, Wednesday 4 July 2007

Don Giovanni - Erwin Schrott
Commendatore - Robert Lloyd
Donna Anna - Anna Netrebko and Marina Poplavskaya
Don Ottavio - Michael Schade
Donna Elvira - Ana María Martínez
Leporello - Kyle Ketelsen
Masetto - Matthew Rose
Zerlina - Sarah Fox

Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House
David Syrus (conductor)

Francesca Zambello (director)
Duncan Macfarland (revival director)

The Overture, and especially the first section of the Overture, did not augur well. Strings sounded wiry and anaemic; the natural brass (why, oh why...?!) sounded as it perforce would: alternating between feeble and rasping; there was little space (not just a matter of tempo) to breathe. Part of this, I suspect, was a product of David Syrus taking over simply for the final two performances, and therefore dealing with an orchestra versed in a reading that in large part would have been Ivor Bolton's. Bolton has been a curious case when I have heard him conduct Mozart: a haplessly frenetic Mass in C minor in which the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra was split between glorious woodwind and the rest as signalled above, a surprisingly fine Entführung (aided by a superb production), and a Symphony no.34, which, despite a few irritating 'period' touches and a recklessly fast 'slow' movement, displayed elsewhere a festive weight that would not have sounded out of place chez Klemperer or Colin Davis. After the Overture, however, things settled down. Whilst this in no sense ranked as a great interpretation - prepare to forget Furtwängler, Giulini, Klemperer, Böhm, Davis, Haitink, Muti, et al. - it supported the singers well and rarely drew narcissistic attention to itself. How much of this was Syrus and how much Bolton is impossible, at least for me, to say. I should add that parts of the Stone Guest scene, sadly, reverted to the hard-driven, underpowered tendencies of the Overture. And the natural brass remained, well, like natural brass: nothing could be done about that...

The cast was generally fine. Anna Netrebko, her cold notwithstanding, managed to convey dignity and glamour (and fine musicality) as Donna Anna. Unfortunately, her illness rendered her incapable of singing for the second act. Her last-minute replacement did well enough under the circumstances, though her tuning was often alarmingly awry, and there was little attempt at modulation of her rather strident voice. Michael Schade acquitted himself with honour in the thankless role of Don Ottavio. Ana María Martínez presented a wholly credible Elvira - and one who was far more than a wronged harridan. In 'Mi tradi', she lent a suitably erotic, proto-Wagnerian or -Straussian element to her interpretation, without ever overdoing such premonitions. Bringing off Leporello is often difficult, but Kyle Ketelsen had clearly thought through the balance of comedy, charisma, and class struggle, and was unfailingly musical in his shaping of lines.

This, however, was Erwin Schrott's show. I can say without hesitation that, of the various Giovannis have seen on stage, his was the most complete. He exuded charisma through stage presence and through his dangerous, honeyed tones, hued with a quicksilver, predatory dialectic between darkness and light. One felt that he could have had anyone in the theatre. His libertine defiance was duly heroic, although the orchestra and its direction unhelpfully threatened to run away with themselves during his final moments. Nevertheless, Schrott's confrontation with Robert Lloyd's predictably fine Commendatore was gripping enough for Mozart's truly extraordinary re-dramatisation (one almost dare call it intensification) of the Fall. It would take a sterner, more puritanical constitution than mine not to consider - and perhaps rather more than consider - siding with the Devil on the strength of this magnificent performance.

This brings me to the production. Francesca Zambello was clearly thinking along the right lines, in presenting a world suffused with Catholicism. Everything about Mozart's opera - and in this, he goes far beyond da Ponte's libretto - shows awareness of the theological stakes, which could hardly be higher. Unfortunately, Zambello, as is her wont, seemed too easily seduced by concessions to theatrical spectacle, not least the fires of the climactic scene. More worryingly, the 'religion' remained stubbornly at the level of religious tat. Whilst there may be good reasons for displaying highly visible manifestations of such Mediterranean piety, it should never be an end in itself. This was a pity, because the approach promised a great deal. It could have strengthened Schrott's astonishing portrayal, rather than provided a merely picturesque backdrop thereto. This was undoubtedly, however, a Don Giovanni to remember, if largely for its hero.