L'Heure espagnole and Gianni Schicchi, Royal Academy of Music, 25 November 2021

Susie Sainsbury Theatre

Concepcíon – Bernadette Johns
Ramiro – Will Pate
Don Iñigo Gomez – Michael Ronan
Torquemada – Ryan Vaughan Davies
Gonzalve – Liam Bonthrone

Gianni Schicchi – Patrick Keefe
Lauretta – Kathleen Nic Dhiarmada
Rinuccio – Ryan Vaughan Davies
Gherardo – Samuel Kibble
Simone – Wonsick Oh
Betto – Daniel Vening
Marco – Will Pate
Nella – Sophie Sparrow
La Ciesca – Luiza Willert
Zita – Bernadette Johns
Spinelloccio, Notary – Michael Ronan
Gherardina – Clara Orif
Pinellino – Johannes Moore
Guccio – Charles Cunliffe
Buoso Donati – Tom O’Kelly

Stephen Barlow (director)
Yannis Thavoris (designs)
Jake Wiltshire (lighting)

Royal Academy Sinfonia
Alice Farnham (conductor)

Images: Craig Fuller

 

How wonderful at last to return to opera at the Royal Academy of Music. (I caught an excellent concert of chamber music by Bartók and Eötvös from musicians coached by Tamara Stefanovich earlier this term.) Many of London’s best opera performances come from our conservatoires, young, enthusiastic musicians aided to act as a company, with none of the grind of repertoire routine, the ‘star system’, or worst of all, agent-determined casting that can blight bigger stages. The smaller size of theatres helps too. To see characters’ faces, especially in a fast-moving, highly reactive ensemble piece such as Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, is worth a great deal.

 

It is a work that tends to bring out the best in its performers—and certainly did here. Stephen Barlow directed a staging set roughly halfway between the time of composition and the present day. I do not think I have ever seen a production set in 1299, and cannot say I have any particular desire to do so. An abiding idea of Florence will always loom large, though, and so it did here: in this case, tinged with music. Composer Buoso Donati’s grand piano helped fill the stage, a drunken Betto (Daniel Vening) occasionally hammering out a tune on it. Monuments to past greatness, or at least renown, included a Maggio Musicale poster for one of Donati’s operas. A large instrument case inherited from the set for L’Heure espagnole, provided a place to hide the body where necessary. But the crucial action lay, as it were, in the interaction, clearly well planned and rehearsed both by Barlow and conductor Alice Farnham. Yannis Thavoris’s costumes contributed to the framework for delineation of character: Bernadette Johns’s Zita every inch the wheelchair-ridden (malingering?) battleaxe with airs, Will Pate’s Marco and Luiza Willert’s La Ciesca a uniformed policeman and ambitious, voluptuous wife, and so on. Patrick Keefe’s Schicchi necessarily took centre-stage once present, and figuratively once announced. His was a fine, detailed performance, as were those of his daughter Lauretta (Kathleen Nic Dhiarmada, with a lovely, snapshot-like ‘O mio babbino caro’) and her eager lover Rinuccio (Ryan Vaughan Davies). But there is little point in merely repeating the cast list. All contributed to the greater whole, as did incisive orchestral playing and conducting. Puccini’s score glistened as it should and must; the opera’s wit duly scintillated.

 


Ravel’s L’Heure espagnole had taken place in a musical instrument repair shop El Tempo, time more overtly met music in the guise of instrument cases with time signatures and tempo markings: ‘4/4’, ‘Assez vite’, and so on. The largest functioned as clock cases to be hiked up- and downstairs by Ramiro. Again set, costumes, and lighting (Jake Wilshire) made a considerable contribution to the overall mise-en-scène. What I missed somewhat, even at the time, though still more so in retrospect, was a sense of musical urgency and utmost precision, the latter surely a sine qua non for all Ravel performance. Farnham was supportive to her singers—and that, of course, may well have been to the point—but there were times when tempi dragged a little. The small orchestra (strings 4.4.3.2.2) seemed less at home in Ravel too, sonorities and balances somewhat variable. That cavil notwithstanding, Johns offered a lively, seductive Concepión, Pate properly under her spell, growing in (the character’s) masculine confidence. So too were the other male singers, Vaughan Davies a nicely fussy Torquemada, Liam Bonthrone and Michael Ronan properly preening suitors in their different ways. Much to enjoy, then, in both cases.

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.

 

 

L'Heure Espagnole and Gianni Schicchi, Royal Opera, 24 October 2009

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Torquemada – Bonaventura Bottone
Concepcion – Ruxandra Donose
Gonsalve – Yann Beuron
Ramiro – Christopher Maltman
Don Inigo Gomez – Andrew Shore

Gianni Schicchi – Sir Thomas Allen
Lauretta – Maria Bengtsson
Rinuccio – Stephen Costello
Simone – Gwynne Howell
Zita – Elena Zilio
Betto di Signa – Jeremy White
Marco – Robert Poulton
La Ciesca – Marie McLaughlin
Gherardo – Alan Oke
Nella – Janis Kelly
Maestro Spinelloccio – Henry Waddington
Ser Amantio di Nicolao – Enrico Fissore
Pinellino – Nicholas Garrett
Guccio – Paul Goodwin-Groen
Buoso Donati – Peter Curtis
Gherardino – Alexander Howard-Williams

Richard Jones (director)
Elaine Kidd (revival director)
John Macfarlane (set designs)
Nicky Gillibrand (costumes)
Mimi Jordan Sherin (lighting)
Lucy Burge (choreography)
Paul Kieve (illusionist)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Paul Wynne Griffiths (conductor)

After the dismal Christof Loy Tristan und Isolde, which I saw again in the vain hope that I might yet see the light, the Royal Opera has provided a much-needed tonic, gratefully imbibed. There was more to enjoy in almost every minute of L’Heure espagnole than, singing apart, there had been in a double measure of that misconceived presentation of Wagner’s drama.

Ravel’s score is a joy, well communicated here by the splendid performance, colourful and precise, of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, conducted by Paul Wynne Griffiths. Vocal performances were equally splendid. Ruxandra Donose replaced Christine Rice, whose pregnancy ironically precluded her from assuming the role of Concepcion. There was no sense of second best here, however. As alluring of voice as she is on stage, Donose ascribed just the right kind of airy Hispanic sultriness – the apparent paradox is surely Ravel’s – to the part of the bored housewife. Christopher Maltman was a cheekily naïve Ramiro, the same going for that near contradiction. Maltman’s dark, handsome baritone was as well fitted to the part as his display of the bulging biceps of which we hear so much in the libretto. Yann Beuron, Bonaventura Bottone, and Andrew Shore all made a great deal of their supporting roles, dependent upon single characteristics, as such comic parts tend to be, without betraying the Gallic sophistication of Ravel’s comedy.

Richard Jones’s production, here revived by Elaine Kidd, is at least as felicitous. The clockwork goings on – not for nothing did Stravinsky liken Ravel to a Swiss watchmaker – were punctiliously and lovingly observed in a riot of colour, so ably realised in John Macfarlane’s designs. If the audience’s response was somewhat over-the-top in its uproarishness, one can only assume that certain members of matinée audiences do not get out that much – or perhaps they do, lucklessly find themselves at Loy’s Tristan, and are grateful for the light relief. The arrival of the dancing girls for the closing habanera provided a marvellous apotheosis, even, if with Ravel, one is not quite sure of what.

The production of Gianni Schicchi is just as fine: an updating from the libretto’s very specific 1299 to a magnificently awful vision of 1950s Italy. The garishness of the frocks alone, credit to Nicky Gillibrand, would sear it upon one’s memory. And of course, the family of the deceased Buoso Donati is magnificently awful. Production and opera agree upon injecting a certain amount of soap into the opera. I only wish that Puccini, in what must rank as one of his best scores, did not lapse into sentimental mawkishness for the music of Rinuccio and Lauretta, though Jones’s cinematic freeze-frame ending captured the change of mood wonderfully. Yes, I know that the contrast makes a dramatic point, but the heartless Puccini is so much more palatable, at least for me. Orchestra and conductor once again revelled in the fantasy of – much of – the score, doubtless well prepared by Antonio Pappano, who had conducted the earlier performances.

There was not a weak link in the cast. Stephen Costello was the real thing as an ardently youthful Rinuccio, with Maria Bengtsson, whom I had previously admired in the very different role of Gluck’s Armide, as elegant a Lauretta as the role permits. ‘O mio babbino caro,’ was well sung, though I cannot help but find it a fly in the ointment. (Audible and visual relaxation of some otherwise inattentive members of the audience made the point all too clearly.) Elena Zilio simply was Zita; one would never have guessed, save of course for the richness of her voice, that she was not a contemporary of the recently deceased. And Sir Thomas Allen made a triumphant Gianni Schicchi, fully justifying the glowing terms in which he described both role and work when I spoke with him a couple of weeks earlier. His comic timing, his attentiveness to Giovacchino Forzano’s text, the musicianship of his response to the score, and the sheer winningness of his stage presence combined in a memorable portrayal. His next stop for the Royal Opera: another role debut as Faninal...