Iolanta and L’Enfant et les sortilèges, Royal Academy of Music, 18 March 2019

Susie Sainsbury Theatre

Images: Robert Workman

Iolanta – Samantha Quillish

Brigitta – Emilie Cavallo

Laura – Yuki Akimoto

Marta – Leila Zanette

Vaudémont – Shengzhi Ren

Alméric – Joseph Buckmaster

Robert – Sung Kyu Choi

Ibn-Hakia – Darwin Leonard Prakash

Bertrand – Niall Anderson

King René – Thomas Bennett

L’enfant – Olivia Warburton

La princesse, La chauve-souris – Alexandra Oomens

Le feu, Le rossignol – Lina Dambrauskaitė

La théière, Le rainette, Le petit vieillard – Ryan Williams

Maman – Tabitha Reyonolds

La tasse chinoise, La libellulue – Hannah Poulsom

La bergère, Une pastourelle, La chouette – Aimée Fisk

La chatte, L’écureuil – Gabrielė Kupšytė

L’horloge comtoise, Le chat – James Geidt

Le fauteuil, L’arbre – Will Pate

Oliver Platt (director)
Alison Cummins (designs)

Jake Wiltshire (lighting)

Emma Brunton (movement and puppetry)

Royal Academy Opera Chorus and Sinfonia

Gareth Hancock (conductor)

Tchaikovsky’s one-act Iolanta seems to have gained in popularity recently. London, at any rate, has two different productions this year: this, at the Royal Academy of Music, and at Holland Park this summer. As ever, the question with a one-act opera is what, if anything, to pair it with. (That hardly applies with Salome or Elektra, though couplings have been known, but it will generally do so with shorter works.) Ravel’s L’Enfant et les sortilèges is a popular choice, and rightly so, from the one-act stable. Without much – although not without any – in the way of overt connection being made, the two operas complemented each other nicely, both proving excellent showcases for their young singers, both proving substantially more than that too.

Oliver Platt, one of our most accomplished young directors – last year, I saw two (!) fine productions of Così fan tutte (here and here) – once again offers us stagings both intelligent and involving. Like their hero(ine)s, they take their own paths, yet where those paths intersect, the results are thoughtful and intriguing. Iolanta seems to me greatly misunderstood – or at least too often mostly understood in a way that limits rather than sets it free. The subtext seems obvious – a blind girl, kept safe by her father, eventually freed from her imprisonment by a stranger – and yet, too often ignored. Here, it certainly is not, a greenhouse, a place of hothouse care and incarceration, placed firmly on stage, its flourishing yet stifled plants both inspiring and warning, could Iolanta but see them. Likewise the surgical gloves of her companions, weirdly static in aestheticised presentiment of Maeterlinck and Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. But when, finally she can see, finally she can become – in the eyes of men, in the eyes of society more generally – a ‘woman’, Iolanta turns suddenly away from the sun’s blinding rays, from adulthood. It is too late: orchestra and chorus have rejoiced, she gives out a cry of anguish, but no one cares – other, perhaps than us, in the audience. Now she is on her own, awakened, seeing; or rather, captive once again, this time without the alleged protection and solace of childhood.

The boy in L’Enfant et les sortilèges – a trouser role, naturally, in this most elegantly queer of operas – is on his own too; or is he? This is certainly an opera very much about childhood, an irredeemably adult idea, rather than a children’s opera. And so there is, or should be, always something enticing and yet disturbing about that penetration of an imagined child’s lair, here very much centred upon the imaginings of his bedroom. Here, the constructivism of our imagination, that of the work’s creators, most likely that of the ‘child’ too, is put centre stage. We see, lightly worn, the workings: puppetry, other short-trouser children, books, fabrics, a tent from his – our? – own life, creating a world that is, yes, imagined, but also equally his, Ravel’s, Colette’s, our own. It is never predictable, always with an element of the dream, of the unconscious, yet one can hazard a guess where it has come from, at least in retrospect. We are all psychoanalysts now, are we not? And when the Princess emerges, from the tent in the garden – here, as in Iolanta, a place of magical enticement, which may or may not be quite what it seems – she is dressed as Iolanta was. Will the boy do to her what the earlier princess’s prince charming was set to do to her? Most probably: not, however, quite yet, for childhood, whatever that might be, and its enchantments, its gifts, still reign. Light and dark take a related, yet different path. At least, we believe so…

These are not in any way easy operas for students, however accomplished, to perform. The young musicians of the Royal Academy acquitted themselves very well indeed. Without repeating the cast list, I should like to mention a handful of singers who stood out for me. All, however, performed creditably, whether individually or as a company. Samantha Quillish’s Iolanta was heartfelt, moving, possessed both of heft and subtlety: everything, at least, anyone could reasonably have asked. Shengzhi Ren’s Vaudémont proved honest, ardent, again moving: just what the Tchaikovsky brothers wanted, allowing us, should we wish, to question their assumptions whilst affording them the dignity of being taken seriously. Thomas Bennett’s King René grew in strength and compassion as the evening progressed, whilst Sung Kyu Choi’s Robert offered quite a taste of what might have been, had characters’ choices been different. Olivia Warburton’s Child (L’Enfant) impressed in every possible way: her French, her demeanour, her elegance of line. This was a character, both ‘real’ and constructed, in whom one could believe, ably supported and abetted by a near faultless cast.

It was perhaps inevitable that the orchestra, conducted by Gareth Hancock, would sometimes fall a little short. Orchestras twice its size will find these tough nuts to crack, let alone together. There was much to savour, though, and if I sometimes missed the flexibility of the finest Tchaikovsky performances, that was hardly the point here. Hancock supported his singers with skill and care, permitting them, like those flowers in the greenhouse and the garden, to bloom as they would. As to what happens next, we shall see – and hear.

Petrushka and L’Enfant et les sortilèges, Komische Oper, 2 March 2017

Komische Oper, Berlin

Images: Iko Freese | drama-berlin.de

Petrushka – Tiago Alexandre Neta Fonseca

Ptitschka – Pauliina Räsänen
Patap – Slava Volkov
 

L’Enfant – Nadja Mchantaf

Le Feu, La Princesse, Le Rossignol –Talya Lieberman
Maman, La Tasse Chinoise, La Libellule – Exgi Kutlu
Une Pastourelle, La Chauve-Souris – Elizabeth Holmes
La Chatte, L’Ecureuil – Maria Fiselier
L’Horloge comtoise, Le Chat – Denis Milo
La Bergère, La Chouette – Mirka Wagner
Le Fauteuil, L’Arbre – Carsten Sabrowski
Le Petit Vielliard, La Théière, La Rainette – Ivan Turšić
Un Pâtre – Katarzyna Włodarczyk
 

Suzanne Andrade and Esme Appleton (directors)

Paul Barritt (animations)
1927, Pia Leong (set designs)
1927, Katrin Kath (costumes)
Diego Leetz (lighting)
Ulrich Lenz (dramaturgy)

Vocalconsort Berlin (chorus master: Andrew Crooks)

Children’s Choir (chorus mistress: Dagmar Fiebach) and Orchestra of the Komische Oper

Markus Poschner (conductor)

1927’s Magic Flute has been well-nigh universally lauded, both at the Komische Oper and subsequently on tour. I say ‘well-nigh’, since I felt more ambivalent, applauding some aspects of the reworking, whilst lamenting a lack of seriousness at its heart: for me a perennial problem with many stagings of that work. Maybe I was not in a very good mood, or maybe the combination of æsthetic and work was just not for me; maybe I missed the point. Or perhaps I was right: who knows? I am not terribly easy to please when it comes to Mozart. At any rate, I am delighted to welcome its successor, a double-bill of Petrushka and L’Enfant et les sortilèges.

 

Petrushka is 1927’s first completely non-verbal work, and, of the three I have seen, I think it comes off best of all. (A counter-argument might be that I know less of ballet than I do of opera, but I should like to think that I know a little about Stravinsky, at least.) Here we see it via the offices, once again, of Paul Barritt’s animation – and with three humanised puppets: Petrushka as ‘awkward clown’, alongside a ‘sensitive acrobat’, Ptitschka, and an ‘unrefined but good-natured muscle-man,’ Patap. The animations are a period-influenced, but not period-restricted, delight: from a little later than the writing of the work, as the company’s name, ‘1927’, might suggest. Russian constructivism and the world of silent films more generally loom large. Colours, aptly, are gloriously bright (even if the curmudgeon in me might have wished for the original score rather than the more ‘practical’ 1947 revision), yet monochrome plays its part too. We tumble headlong – not unlike Petrushka himself, a little later – into the world of the fairground. ‘Roll up, roll up,’ the Russian speech-bubble (thank goodness for the Komische Oper’s multi-lingual titles) beckons us; it really felt to me as though we were making an individual and collective decision to attend the show within a show.  

That show is beautifully presented, not only showing but dramatising a keen sense of the thin line between comedy and tragedy. Puppet shows have always done that brilliantly, or at least the best ones have, so why should not a multi-media reimagining of the format, a work about puppetry? Petrushka is the latter anyway, of course, and here the figure of the puppeteer looms large – not visually, although his (I think we can presume ‘his’) actions certainly do. The heartlessness with which Petrushka is toyed with – which yet endears him to Ptitschka, and indeed also elicits sympathy from Patap, following his necessary moments of self-display – moves us, as does the excellence of the onstage performers, seemingly effortlessly moving between the worlds of stage and film. The sad clown, for Barritt close to Buster Keaton, and dressed as such, is not for nothing one of our culture’s perennially recurring figures. He lacks the grace of Ptitschka, the physique of Patap, but he is human, he feels sadness even when, particularly when, he amuses us. The manipulator of his emotions – the puppeteer, that is – does not entirely succeed in manipulating ours.

 

As for the other manipulator, the composer who so notoriously declared music’s inability to express anything other than itself, his score in performance exuded colourful rigour, its opening nicely, intriguingly deliberate, as if the forces were limbering up yet undoubtedly in control. Like what we saw, what we heard sounded audibly ‘Russian’ in origin and spirit, but with some degree of distance from time to time as well: not unlike Stravinsky, one might say. A few minor frayed edges aside – one can readily forget what a difficult piece this is – the orchestra under Markus Poschner did it proud, reminding us that recreation is not simply a matter of a new production; it happens, or should happen, every time we play and hear Petrushka.

In a programme interview, Suzanne Andrade likens the figure of the puppeteer in Petrushka to that of the Mother in L’Enfant et les sortilèges. It makes for a good connecting motif: meaningful rather than merely neat. It also helps make the ‘moral’ of Colette’s story – I think Ravel remains more circumspect; does he not always? – both more explicit and open to question. (Perhaps it criticises itself anyway; I am genuinely not sure. If so, that tendency is stronger here.) Andrade says that she and her collaborators had originally intended the boy (sung by a woman, let us never forget) to be like ‘one of those upper-class boys from Great Britain … they are naughty and learn nothing from the experience, because the societal status quo is such that they need not learn anything.’ If those overgrown schoolboys (and their aspirant hangers-on) have ‘had enough of experts’, we, not least those of us recently pushed into exile, have had more than enough of their running amok with our lives and futures; it is therefore something of a relief to experience contrition and forgiveness, before asking ourselves: ‘but whose, and on what authority?’ Who is the Mother, whether personally or more broadly, and what does she intend to be the outcome of those trials through which she means to get her own way?

 

The visual inspiration here comes from comics and films involving naughty little boys. Andrade names Dennis the Menace and the American film series, Our Gang (which began in the 1920s). Again, the transitions between animation and staging are deftly, wittily presented. (They also help with doubling or tripling of parts: one need not always see the singer in costume.) If I did not feel that as much was added to my thoughts about the work as in Petrushka, beyond that intellectual and dramaturgical question of overarching agency, perhaps I am showing myself a little more resistant, as I suggested, in opera than ballet (if, indeed we consider Stravinsky’s work primarily as such). Perhaps I also missed the nostalgia evident in Ravel’s sophisticated conception of childhood: no child could or would ever think of its ‘hood’ like that. One might counter that the score is there to do that anyway.

 

The Komische Oper’s welcome change of language policy – are you listening, ENO? – meant that we did not have to hear Ravel in German. If not everything was delivered with the most assured sense of what we have come to accept as French style, it rarely, or never is, even with Francophone singers. Moreover, one could hear every word – which is not always the case with such singers. Nadja Mchantaf made for a splendidly tomboyish boy – if that makes any sense. As hapless and as clumsy as Petrushka, he will at least have another chance. (Those privileged boys always do.) Orchestra and conductor seemed – or perhaps this was just my imagination, given the context – to play the score as if informed by some Stravinskian elements, rhythm perhaps playing a more prominent role than harmony at times, although such hierarchies will always be a matter of degree. In keeping with what we saw, there was much in bright, primary colours, and an evident delight in the mastery of that ‘Swiss watchmaker’, as Stravinsky called him. The rest of the cast proved very much more than the sum of its parts. If I do not relist the singers, it is not out of disrespect, but at least in part to emphasise, as so often in this house, the nature of the achievement of the company in an emphatic sense.

Hannigan/Uchida/Philharmonia/Salonen - Dutilleux and Ravel, 12 February 2015

Royal Festival Hall

Dutilleux – Correspondances

Ravel – Piano Concerto in G major

Ravel – L’Enfant et les Sortilèges 

Barbara Hannigan (soprano, Princess)

Dame Mitsuko Uchida (piano)

Child – Chloé Briot

Mother, Chinese Cup, Dragonfly – Elodie Méchain

Louis XV Armchair, Shepherd, White Cat, Squirrel – Andrea Hill

Shepherdess, Bat, Owl – Omo Bello

Fire, Nightingale – Sabine Devieilhe

Grandfather Clock – Jean-Sébastien Bou

Teapot, Arithmetic, Frog – François Piolino

Armchair, Tree – Nicola Courjal

Irina Brown (director)

Quinny Sacks (movement)

Ruth Sutcliffe (designs)

Kevin Treacy (lighting)

Louis Price (video)

Philharmonia Voices (director: Aidan Oliver)

Philharmonia Orchestra

Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)

Henri Dutilleux’s music has its devotees. I am yet to join their ranks, but had no reason to think this was not an admirable performance of his song-cycle, Correspondances. Following its brief, opening Rilke (in translation) setting, ‘Gong’, ‘Danse cosmique’ offered Barbara Hannigan greater dramatic possibilities, well taken. The Philharmonia under Esa-Pekka Salonen provided vivid, often pictorial playing. Singer and orchestra proved tender indeed during the treatment of ‘solitude’ in the oddly-chosen extract from a letter from Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn to Mstislav Rostropovich and Galina Vishnevskaya. Hannigan’s closing repetitions of ‘toujours’ faded away nicely, as did the orchestra. ‘Gong II’ provided something a little more labyrinthine, even perhaps Bergian, although Pli selon pli this certainly is not. The closing ‘De Vincent á Théo’ brought beguiling sonorities and, in Hannigan’s performance, a stunning vocal climax.

Mitsuko Uchida joined the orchestra for Ravel’s G major Concerto. There were a few occasions when I wondered whether the Philharmonia had had enough rehearsal here, lapses in ensemble uncharacteristic for both orchestra and conductor. Otherwise, Salonen proved general cool but not cold, even though a little more freedom at times might not have gone amiss. Uchida’s playing was a model of clarity, energy, an of course grace. It is all too easy to make Mozartian comparisons here, but they did not seem especially relevant; this was Ravel, and sounded like it. Uchida’s second-movement cantilena was beautifully judged, a product of harmonic understanding as much as her melodic voicing itself. Woodwind solos were exquisitely voiced, with just the right degree of general orchestral languor. The scampering energy of the finale was occasionally hampered by a couple more lapses in ensemble, but the ‘sense’ of the music was there, especially in Salonen’s building of tension. Uchida’s choice of encore was inspired: the second of Schoenberg’s Six Little Piano Pieces, op.19, that repeated major third, G-B, making its point of continuity.

L’Enfant et les sortilèges followed the interval. Salonen’s tendency, especially at the start, was towards fleetness of tempo; there was certainly no hint of sentimentality. Indeed, a keen sense of forward motion was maintained throughout the performance. The action took place on a ‘stage’ surrounding the stage proper, a resourceful semi-staging giving all that we really needed, not least thanks to imaginative animation (for instance, the confusion of the clock) and atmospheric lighting. There was great character and chemistry to be experienced between the singers, François Piolino often stealing the show, whether by himself or in his interactions with others. Chloé Briot presented a convincingly boyish Child, never forgetting – nor did the performers as a whole – that this is not really a children’s opera at all, but an opera about that most adult of preoccupations, childhood. Hannigan, when she reappeared, now as the Princess, was very much a woman in a man’s creation of a supposed child’s world. Scenes were very sharply defined as almost self-contained units; Salonen seemed, at least to my ears, to perceive Ravel’s opera almost as a cinematic dream-sequence. Certain figures recalled the sound-world of the piano concerto, but there was no mistaking the heady atmosphere of the night.

 

L’Heure espagnole and L’Enfant et les sortilèges, Royal College of Music, 7 December 2013

 

Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music

 

Concepcíon – Kezia Bienek

Gonzalve – Gyula Rab

Torquemada – Peter Aisher

Ramiro – Luke D Williams

Don Iñigo Gomez – Bradley Travis

 

L’Enfant – Rose Setten

Le Feu, Le Rossignol – Natasha Day

La Princesse – He Wu

L’Arithmétique, La Rainette – Craig Jackson

Maman, La Tasse Chinoise, La Libellule – Maria Ostroukhova

La Bergère, La Chouette – Elizabeth Holmes

La Chatte, L’Ecureuil – Katie Coventry

L’Horloge comtoise, le Chat – Nicholas Morton

Le Fauteuil – Jerome Knox

L’Arbre – Matthew Buswell

La Chauve-Souris, Une Pastourelle – Josephine Goddard

Un Pâtre – Amy Williamson

La Thêière – Daniel Farrimond

 

James Bonas (director)

Ruari Murchison (designs)

Wayne Dowdeswell (lighting)

 

Chorus

Royal College of Music Opera Orchestra

Michael Rosewell (conductor)

 

 

Gyula Rab (Gonzalve), Kezia Bienek (Concepcion)

A delightful end-of-term show from the Royal College of Music International Opera School. Ravel’s two operas were performed with charm, style, and not inconsiderable magic – and I am sure I should have said that even had I not sampled some of the Institut français wine beforehand (a definite recommendation, should you be looking for somewhere to drink in the bewilderingly tricky environs of South Kensington).

L'Enfant (Rose Setten), La Princesse (He Wu)



James Bonas’s stagings treat them as independent works, which of course they are; there is no discernible attempt to forge a link between them, but then nor is there any need to do so. With the help  of Ruari Murchison’s designs, we thus find ourselves for the first half where we should expect to do so: the shop of a Toledo clockmaker. The clocks that the muleteer, Ramiro, must carry up and down the stairs and the staircase itself are our guiding presence: plot device and environment working well together. Costumes hint at a Frenchman’s view of Spain, reminding us not only of the circumstances of this particular opera but also of the old quip, fair or otherwise, that the best Spanish music has been written by Frenchmen. The characters are sharply directed, enabling the young singers’ considerable acting and vocal abilities to shine to the full.

 

 

Concepcion and Ramiro (Luke D Williams)

 

 

Kezia Bienek offered a properly feminine Concepcíon, housewifely languor and determination to avail herself of what her visitors can – and cannot – provide alternating as the situation demanded. Peter Aisher deputised for an indisposed Nick Pritchard as her husband, Torquemada, though one would hardly have known; he seemed fully at ease with role and production alike. Gyula Rab’s Gonsalve provided humour – the very parody of a poet’s self-absorbed conceit – and vocal excellence, well partnered in those respects by his rival, Bradley Travis’s Don Iñigo Gomez. And last but certainly not least, Luke D Williams offered a fine assumption of the muleteer’s role, this Ramiro’s vocal and physical attraction perfectly clear, whilst he remained properly clueless about the games unfolding around him.    

 

The nocturnal setting for L’Enfant et les Sortilèges contrasted appealingly with the Spanish sun of its predecessor. There was something properly dream-like, even trippy, to the stage realisation of Colette’s and, above all, Ravel’s world. We were free to follow our own interpretations, Freudian or otherwise, and there was certainly implied menace to an opera that emerged as far from innocent; at the same time, the production does not seem to impose any particular view upon us. It evokes, maybe even provokes, but does not constrain.

 

 

 

 

The Royal College of Music Opera Orchestra under Michael Rosewell had proved excellent during its Spanish hour, and once more did so here, though perhaps there is still more opportunity for it to shine in L’Enfant. Despite its smallish size (strings 8.6.4.3.2), it never sounded undernourished; indeed, it sounded just right for the Britten Theatre. Ravel’s heady blends of wonder and precision, of Gallic suavity and infectious orientalism, sounded perfectly fitted to the child’s adventures on stage – though arguably I should have expressed that the other way round. Again, the cast offered a great deal to enjoy; I heard not a single weak link. Rose Setten captured admirably the truculence and receptivity required of the child, Maria Ostroukhova a splendid complement both in maternal and other roles. Without listing every assumption, I should especially like to single out He Wu’s Princess: again precise in musical terms, yet ambiguously inviting with respect to the drama. Is this a child’s awakening? ‘Probably yet not necessarily', remains the answer – as so often proves to be the case with Ravel.