Munich Opera Festival (1) - Borgioni/Monteverdi Continuo Ensemble/Heumann - La Morte d'Orfeo, 28 June 2026

Prinzregententheater

Excerpts from:

Stefano Landi: La Morte d’Orfeo
Monteverdi: L’Orfeo
Giovanni Maria Trabaci: Durezze et ligature
Jacopo Peri: Euridice
Luigi Rossi: Orfeo

Interspersed with:

Lorenzo Allegri: Primo Ballo della Notte d’Amore
Monteverdi: Seventh Book of Madrigals: ‘Tempro la cetra’
Biagio Marini: Per ogni sorte di strumento musicale, op.22 no.21: Sonata sopra ‘Fuggi dolente core’
Alessando Piccinini: Intavolaturo di liuto: Toccata
Sigismondo d’India: Le Musiche: ‘Cara mia cetra’
Andrea Falconiero: Il primo libro delle canzone: ‘Battaglia de Barabaso yerno de Satanas’
Giovanni Legrenzi: La Cetra: Sonata
Monteverdi: L’incoronazione di Poppea: ‘Oblivion soave’

Mauro Borgioni (baritone)
Monteverdi Continuo Ensemble
Friederike Heumann (concept, director, viola and lira de gamba)

 

Founded to enable ‘historically informed’ performances of the three surviving operas of Monteverdi, Munich’s Monteverdi Continuo Ensemble both celebrated its thirtieth anniversary and commemorated the life of one of its founding members, lutenist Fred Jacobs, in a ‘Baroque concert’ contribution to the city’s annual Opera Festival. Gambist Friederike Heumann devised a programme around the idea of the death of Orpheus, in a sense creating a small(ish) concert opera in two acts, rejecting the happy end of so many retellings and exploring not only death but above all the power of music, through assembled texts revealing four protagonists: Orpheus, his lyre (in turn variously represented by harp, lira de gamba, and chitarrone), a narrator, and the ferryman Charon. 

At the heart of ‘La morte d’Orfeo’ stood excerpts from three seventeenth-century Orphic operas, by Monteverdi, Stefano Landi, and Luigi Rossi, as well as one from the oldest surviving opera of all, Jacopo Peri’s Euridice, written and first performed in 1600. It made for a fascinating evening, poised somewhere between concert and pasticcio, my only real cavil being the lack of titles to enable closer following and comprehension of the words. Yet so vividly communicative were the performances by baritone Mauro Borgioni, who has sung Monteverdi’s Orfeo (and Ulisse) in several productions, and the ensemble as a whole that the loss was mitigated: tribute, in its way, to the power not only of music, but that of its mysterious alchemy in song and in what we have come to know as opera. 

In the beginning was an overture: well, not quite, but music that served well in its new guise, Lorenzo Allegri’s Primo Ballo della Notte d’Amore, an ersatz-Sinfonia reflecting in its gathering momentum the interchange between lands north and south of the Alps that has contributed so much to the genre—and perhaps to Allegri’s life and work too, as a composer and lutenist at the Medici court in Florence sometimes referred to as ‘Lorenzino Tedesco’. Dance, we were reminded, in body as in spirit, has informed dramma per musica from the outset. The array of music, genres, and indeed styles that proceeded to feed into the whole reminded us ‘opera’ has, from the outset and arguably from before that outset, always found itself pulled between various poles: words and music, descriptive and prescriptive (even proscriptive), text and performance, and so much else. Sigismondo d’India’s ‘older’, more madrigalian harmony, for instance, registered in such richly expressive fashion that no one could seriously draw a straight line from any point a to any other point b. Indeed, if anything the later seventeenth-music could sometimes sound conventional, even restricted, in various modes of expression compared to what came earlier: Monteverdi, of course, yet far from only him. 

Peri’s Euridice stood, probably from coincidentally, at the centrepoint of the first ‘act’, voice and chitarrone (Michael Freimuth) opening a window on the world to be joined by their musical confreres. An ensuing sinfonia from Monteverdi immediately recalled to us why we consider his Orfeo to be the first operatic masterpiece – it remains hors concours even without words – but here the rewards in understanding through so many paths to and from his work and those of Landi and Rossi  were manifold. Monteverdi’s ‘Rosa del ciel’ was heart-rending, Rossi’s later lament was more ornate, in what we have come, rightly or wrongly, to consider more ‘Baroque’ style, echoed in fuller ‘orchestral’ response. Landi’s ‘It’ al sacro consiglio’ was perhaps more generic a setting, yet still interesting to hear in such context. The ‘Battaglia’ from Andrea Falconiero’s Primo libro delle canzone gently reminded us that opera is and always has been theatre too, two of the ensemble having slipped out returning with their instruments in a dialogue that here began, if only began, to approach some of our notions of music theatre. Orpheus and his instrument having travelled to Hades, other humans and their ‘musicking’ could join in musical sympathy.

For the second, shorter ‘act’, a Rossi passacaglia proved a splendidly apt and contrasting curtain-raiser: in later, more ‘orchestral’ style, yes, but also, more importantly, in dramatic mood. Landi’s narration, ‘Volge Orfeo gli occhi’, showed his artistry to more individually expressive effect, at least to my twenty-first-century ears, than the previous excerpt from his 1619 tragicommedia pastorale; here, perhaps conditioned by what had gone before, I found his simpler writing more allied to the later century and arguably in better company. Harp (lyre) music in both halves by Giovanni Maria Trabaci soothed the soul and furthered the action. For Orpheus’s farewell, Rossi and of course Borgioni rose magnificently to the occasion; no one could have entertained any doubt about what was happening and about to happen. A trio-instrumental treatment of the lullaby ‘Oblivion soave’ from L’incoronazione di Poppea, cornetist Gebhard David’s line rocking atop and against its continuo, worked its magic in winning new guise, prior to a splendidly theatrical change of mood for Charon/Caronte’s ‘Beva, beva secure l’onda’. This was Landi in festive mode, its strophic form nicely varied in Borgioni’s ornamentation and, of course, the Ensemble’ response. 

As an encore, the thwarted happy ending returned: again, emblematic of a key theme in the history of the genre. Borgioni and the players treated us to a solo rendition of the closing ‘chorus’ of L’Orfeo, ‘Vanne Orfeo felice a pieno’. Orpheus reborn once again: where should we be without him?

Orpheus/L'Orfeo, Komische Oper, 16 April 2022

(sung as Orpheus in German translation by Susanne Felicitas Wolf)

Orfeo – Dominik Köninger
Euridice – Josefine Mindus
Amor – Peter Renz
Sylvia/Proserpina – Maria Fiselier
Plutone, Caronte – Tijl Faveyts
Figures of Orpheus and Eurydice – Alexander Soehnle, Helen Schumann
Dancers - Meri Ahmaniemi, Martina Borroni, Ana Dordevic, Zoltan Fekete, Michael Fernandez, Paul Gerritsen, Claudio Greco, Marcel Prét, Tara Rendell, Lorenzo Soragni

Barrie Kosky (director)
Katrin Lea Tag (designs)
Katharina Tasch (costumes)
Ulrich Lenz (dramaturgy)
Otto Pichler (choreography)
Alexander Koppelmann (lighting)

  
Chorus (chorus master: David Caevlius) and Orchestra of the Komische Oper

Matthew Toogood (conductor)

Amor (Peter Renz), Orpheus (Dominik Köninger)
Images: Iko Freese / drama-berlin.de

Barrie Kosky’s advent as Intendant of the Komische Oper in 2012 was marked by a twelve-hour ‘Monteverdi Trilogy’, in which the three extant Monteverdi operas were given in new productions and in newly composed realisations by Elena Kats-Chernin (also new German translations by Susanne Felicitas Wolf). Avid Monteverdian, especially in non-‘period’ guise, though I be, I was unable to attend, but have tried to make up for that since. I saw Poppea five years later, in 2017; five years, after that, comes Orpheus/Orfeo. If I must wait another five for Ulisse, so be it, but I hope to have opportunity a little sooner.

Orpheus, as one would expect, was originally seen first. Although I was surprised how well Poppea adapted to German translation—testament, doubtless, to Wolf’s work, as well as to collaboration with Kosky and Kats-Chernin—this probably did still more so. It seemed, if anything, more conceived as a new whole. (Or perhaps I was more receptive. Who knows?) At any rate, Kats-Chernin’s opening suggests more powerfully something new, rising from a stable yet uncertain bass, to take in yet also go beyond Monteverdi (including leaving, with great regret, some elements of an acknowledged masterpiece). The sound-world in general speaks of the Mediterranean—all its shores, not just the north-west—though in more popular vein than, say, Henze’s extraordinary realisation of Ulisse. This, one might say, is Monteverdi for the Komische Oper rather than for Salzburg.

Orpheus, Eurydike (Josefine Mindus)

 

Kats-Chernin deploys a splendid array of continuo instruments (accordion, bandoneon, cimbalom, the ancient djoze, and double bass). Apparently, some listeners were unhappy with the use of accordion in particular, lamenting its lack of decay, which they associated, not entirely unreasonably, with continuo playing. It did not trouble me; quite the contrary, I found it atmospheric and duly flexible. I should also point doubters (on principle) to Monteverdi’s own use of organ, including the reedy regal, for Hades. Otherwise, we have six first violins, four seconds, two double basses, two flutes/piccolos, two clarinets, bass clarinet, contrabassoon, percussion (including vibraphone), celesta, and synthesiser; and, from the auditorium, used in sparing yet quite spectacular fashion, two antiphonal funeral bands (two bassoons; two horns, two trombones, tuba, and percussion; and two horns, two trumpets, bass trombone, tuba, and percussion). It is ‘interventionist’, I suppose. Whatever would be the point, especially in Orfeo, with its meticulous instrumentation, of not being so? But, with hints of a liminal electronic world, yet still rooted in worlds of Monteverdi and, one can fancy, of Thrace, it challenges us to locate ourselves and our responses within a lush, almost overgrown visual world prior to civilisation.

Kosky’s staging is, as one might expect, still more exuberant: literally, at times, all-singing, all-dancing. The energy of the opening wedding festivities must have come across as a powerful statement of intent, as well as a great deal of fun; it still does now, also as a fine testament to his years as Intendant. There are no inhibitions here, and somehow even fewer as time goes by. The sheer physicality and sensuality of by no means explicit portrayal, centred on Dominik Köninger’s sensationally sung, danced, and acted Orpheus (also a fine Nerone in Poppea) is impossible to resist. Amidst nymphs, fauns, a whole cosmogony of ancient-modern life, everyone can find his, her, or their part. One can see and more or less feel the sweat on their bodies, prior to tragedy and then again prior to what may or may not be apotheosis. La Musica becomes Amor/Cupid, signalling less a move away from the primacy of music as acknowledgement of its greater powers. Peter Renz I recognised from Poppea; he did a similarly characterful job here, and is clearly a crucial thread running between the three.

 

It is not Apollo, but a woman—Sylvia (Maria Fiselier), albeit singing Apollo’s words—who beautifully calls Orpheus to the stars. I am not quite sure why; at the time, I simply assumed it was, for some reason, a female Apollo. Contrast with Tijl Faveyts’s dark-hued bass (Pluto/Charon) is also heightened. It does no harm, though, and perhaps reflects a greater surrounding fluidity, to which all contribute, ambiguous puppet figures of Orpheus and Eurydike included. The latter’s return to Hades is accomplished in moving vocal terms by Josefine Mindus, as well as by a finely conceived—and executed—moment of stage decision, returning her to those depths from which she had never quite risen. In that connection, what happens at the close is interesting, Orpheus re-entering, at Cupid’s behest, the pool into which he had descended to find his love in Hades. Perhaps this is not, after all, the after-life he has been promised. Happy Easter.

Musikfest Berlin (1) – Monteverdi, L’Orfeo and Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, 2 and 3 September 2017

Philharmonie

Orfeo – Krystian Adam

La Musica/Euridice – Hana Blažiková

Messenger – Lucile Richardot

Proserpina – Francesca Boncompagni

Caronte/Plutone – Gianluca Buratto

Speranza – Kangmin Justin Kim

Apollo – Furio Zanasi

First Shepherd – Francisco Fernández-Rueda

Second Shepherd/First Spirit/Echo – Gareth Treseder

Third Shepherd – Michał Czerniawski

Fourth Shepherd/Third Spirit – John Taylor Ward

Second Spirit – Zachary Wilder

Nymph – Anna Dennis

Ulisse – Furio Zanasi

Penelope – Lucile Richardot

Minerva/Fortuna – Hana Blažiková

Telemaco – Krystian Adam

Eumete – Francisco Fernández-Rueda

Iro – Robert Burt

Eurimaco – Zachary Wilder

Melanto – Anna Dennis

Giove – John Taylor Ward

Giunone – Francesca Boncompagni

Ericlea – Francesca Biliotti

Amore – Silvia Frigato

Umana fragilità – Carlo Vistoli

Tempo, Neptune, Antinoo – Gianluca Buratto

Pisandro – Michał Czerniawski

Anfinomo – Gareth Treseder

Rick Fisher (lighting)

Isabella Gardiner, Patricia Hofstede (costumes)

Elsa Rooke, John Eliot Gardiner (directors)

Monteverdi Choir

English Baroque Soloists

John Eliot Gardiner (conductor)

I am delighted, for the first time to be able to attend – and indeed to report from – the Berliner Festspiele and, in particular, from the Musikfest Berlin. How I rued having neither the time nor the money to be here for its Schoenberg year in 2015. Still, Monteverdi is the focus, if not quite so strongly so, in this, his anniversary year, so how could I resist? (One of the things that first drew me to the music of Alexander Goehr was his twin reverence for Schoenberg and Monteverdi; at last, I had found someone – I now know there are many more of us – for whom the two could stand as equal gods.) And so, although not quite the opening of the festival, the opening of my festival came with the first two of the three surviving operas of Monteverdi, L’Orfeo and Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria. L’incoronazione di Poppea will also be given; that I heard in a rather different setting and realisation, at the Komische Oper earlier this year.

John Eliot Gardiner has, of course, for several decades been a byword for English ‘authenticity’ – or whatever it is called now. (Somehow I doubt he childishly defines as ‘HIP’, which certainly reflects well upon him, but who knows?) But has he really? The curious thing about much of what I heard here was how curiously dated it sounded. I am the last person to complain about that in some ways; so far as I am concerned, there are many ways to perform great music well. Yet, if claims to ‘authenticity’ – and yes, I use the word in slightly baiting fashion – have always been dubious, to say the least, here we seemed to have entered a strange twilight world in which, certain yet only certain aspects of instrumental ‘hardware’ aside, any authenticity was to a world of ‘1970s Early Music’. Fair enough, if that is your thing – it certainly seemed to be, for many people in an enthusiastic audience – yet perhaps not quite what was said or implied ‘on the tin’.

What struck me about much of the singing – especially, yet not only, from the Monteverdi Choir as choir – was that it sounded very ‘English choral scholar’, even when it was not. In some ways, I sympathise with a degree of resistance to an all-purpose ‘Mediterranean’ approach to this music, which has no more to do with Monteverdi than any other of the phantasms of ‘correctness’ that have haunted performances of his music over the year. There is something troubling about the claim that Italian – in what meaningful sense was or is Monteverdi ‘Italian’, at least as we might understand the 'nation' today? – musicians will always know best here, or still worse, have the music ‘in their blood’. We all need to go beyond petty nationalism here. On the other hand, the whiteness of tone here really tended too much, at least for me, towards the bland. It was all very well-drilled – arguably too much so – yet sounded for all the world, and despite the presence of female voices, more like something one might have expected from David Willcocks and King’s College Choir than an operatic performance, ancient or modern. I’m not aiming for anything fundamentally different,’ Gardiner claims, quite truthfully, one might say, ‘than I was back in 1964.’ That seems to me rather a sad way to approach performance, be it of Monteverdi or Stockhausen. Gardiner’s strange habit of conducting all the recitatives seemed to attest to a control-freakery that is perhaps not the best claim to ‘authenticity’, or more important, towards drama.

Another curious feature, especially in L’Orfeo, but also in quite a few sections of Ulisse, was quite how slow Gardiner’s speeds tended to be. Again, I am hardly someone to insist on breathless tempi, quite the contrary. Yet, in a performance of the first opera that lasted twenty minutes longer than had been advertised, I missed some expressive variation of tempo; ‘expression’ was conveyed rather more through somewhat arch dynamic contrasts. The orchestral forces used were large and somewhat ‘modern orchestral’ by today’s standards. Orfeo employed six violins, four violas, a cello, a viola da gamba/lirone, a double bass, two recorders, three cornetts/trumpets, five baroque trombones, dulcian, harp, harpsichord/organ, regal, and four chittarones/baroque guitars; Ulisse had more or less the same, minus the dulcian, the trombones, and one of the cornetts, and with a second harpsichord. The orchestral sound tended to be fuller – not only on account of instruments used – in Orfeo, but that is as much a matter of the nature of the work as anything else. And the playing of the English Baroque Soloists was excellent; too often in this music, what one hears is painfully out of tune. Not here: all was greatly assured throughout. I could not help but wonder, though: why not actually use a modern orchestra, given the general ‘smoothness’ – the sort of thing Gardiner et al. would surely decry in, say, Karajan – of approach? Indeed, Gardiner decries in the programme the ‘indulgence of Raymond Leppard’. I should say this was a great deal more indulgent, and a great deal less dramatic – in any sense. The Philharmonie is a large hall; just imagine how wonderful it would be to hear in a more genuinely recreative approach, the Berio Orfeo or the Henze Ulisse, there. After all, what could be more ‘inauthentic’ than performing Monteverdi in a space such as that?

The semi-staging seemed of another, non-'early' era too. ‘It was not a matter of not fully staging the work, but that there seemed to be at the very least implied resistance towards a fuller acceptance of opera as staged, fuller drama – Regietheater, if you must, although the term remains problematical, at least to me. Pretty-ish costumes, especially in Orfeo, somewhat dated body language and contrived interaction: that was about it. Moreover, I had the strong impression that was all Gardiner, credited with co-direction, wanted. Drama, though? Perhaps not so much, and I say that as someone who has found concert performances of the Ring some of the most intensely dramatic experiences of all. Then, looking in the programme afterwards, I read: ‘I have a natural antipathy to the proscenium arch as the only way to present opera. It carries baggage with it, a certain preconception on the part of the audience that the eye should dominate over the ear, and that to me is limiting.’ Straw men, anyone? ‘I think,’ Gardiner continued a little later, ‘an audience’s imagination, once stimulated, is infinitely richer than anything a clever stage director can come up with.’ Maybe it is, but might one not say the same about anything a conductor, clever or otherwise, can come up with? In that case, should we not just all sit at home and read a score (of whatever edition)?

There was more to enjoy in the solo singing, although that tendency towards blandness was not entirely absent there either. Indeed, Orfeo in particular sounded more akin to an oratorio than an opera, of whatever age: the genres are far from distinct, of course, yet even so. There were two serious disappointments: an almost painfully out of tune countertenor, Kangmin Justin Kim, as Speranza in Orfeo, and a strangely miscast – or so it sounded – Lucile Richardot as Penelope. Not everyone can be Janet Baker, of course; indeed, no one else can be. Yet Richardot seemed hardly to possess the higher notes required, sounding merely petulant –hardly Penelope’s thing – above a richer lower, yet highly restricted, range. Her Ulisse, Furio Zanasi, sounded somewhat old, even wooden, some of the time, yet had stronger, more expressive moments too. He made little impression, however, as Apollo, and again gave the impression of having been miscast. Encountering the tenor of Krystian Adam, though, was almost worth the price of admission alone. It is not a big voice, but nor did it need to be. Adam showed manifold clarity, agility, and tenderness in his performances as Orfeo and Telemaco. I certainly hope to hear more from him. Zachary Wilder and Anna Dennis imparted a greatly needed injection of ‘Mediterranean’ chemistry to Ulisse, as Eurimaco and Melanto. In both operas, Francisco Fernández-Ruedo stood out as a tenor not only mellifluous but musico-dramatically astute; his Eumete in particular often proved quite heart-rending. There was definitely a sense of the vocal performances as offering more than the sum of their parts; it was a pity, then, that the framework within which they had to operate was not more conducive to the modernity – and antiquity – of the composer.

L'Orfeo, Royal Opera, 13 January 2015

Roundhouse

Orfeo – Gyula Orendt

Euridice – Mary Bevan

Silvia (Messenger) – Susan Bickley

First Pastor – Anthony Gregory

Second Pastor (Apollo) – Alexander Sprague

Third Pastor – Christopher Lowrey

Charon – James Platt

Pluto – Callum Thorpe

Proserpina – Rachel Kelly

Nymph – Susanna Hurrell

Michael Boyd (director)

Tom Piper (designs)

Jean Kalman (lighting)

Sound Intermedia (sound design)

Liz Ranken (movement)

Lina Johansson (circus director)

 

Vocal Ensemble from Guildhall School of Music and Drama

Dancers from East London Dance

Orchestra of Early Opera Company

Christopher Moulds (conductor)

 

I am all in favour of our London opera companies moving outside of their West End homes – perhaps preferably a little further afield than Camden, but even that change of scenery can act as a liberating agent. For that, the Royal Opera is fully deserving of praise, and it certainly feels ‘different’ taking the Tube to Chalk Farm and arriving at the Round House, venue for a good number of Pierre Boulez’s BBC Symphony Orchestra concerts, given when he similarly wished to break free of some of the stultifying conventions of bourgeois concert life and to seek new, more receptive audiences. It is a lovely touch to have children from local schools compose and perform fanfares – audibly related to Monteverdi’s celebrated opening Toccata – in the bar beforehand. As with Boulez’s innovation, one cannot but praise the broadening of repertoire too, Monteverdi, one of the very greatest of all opera composers, being conspicuous only by his absence from Covent Garden’s endeavours.

 

However, in this case, it is not entirely clear what remains of the Royal Opera, beyond its name as an umbrella organisation and presumably some degree of financial support. To bring in a ‘period’ orchestra at the same time as relocating gave the impression of Monteverdi being compartmentalised, surrendered to those whom Boulez so aptly summed up as ‘specialists in nullity’; moreover, what does it say about the worth the company attributes to its own, very fine orchestra, perfectly capable of performing repertoire from Monteverdi to Birtwistle? The world is full of ‘period’ performances of ‘early music’; is it really too much to ask that someone, somewhere might actually show the courage to stand up to ‘authenticke’ fatwas and use rich, modern forces? Or perhaps, even, to use one of the several ‘reimagined’ versions of Monteverdi’s score for our own or other times? Berio’s would perhaps have been the most obvious in this case, but there are many others; indeed, the task would have made a wonderful commission for an imaginative young (or old) composer.

 

The situation seems odder still in the light of a staging that is certainly not attempting some form of historical recreation. Nothing wrong with that, at all, of course; indeed, the idea is as silly onstage as in the pit – or here, onstage again, given that there was no pit. The post-modernism, in the worst sense, of mainstream ‘authenticity’, however is shown up for what it was, given the incoherence of approach. As Boulez once again put it with respect to the kindred movement of twentieth-century neo-Classicism, ‘People gather up all manner of bits and pieces and say, “O.K., I’ll put a Corinthian column on a metal base and it will look post-modern.” Obviously, this is all quite superficial.’

 

Alas, a greater problem with Michael Boyd’s staging lies in its incoherence even on its own terms. Rarely have I been so unclear as to what an opera staging was seeking to achieve. A host of theatrical clichés listlessly compete to amount to considerably less than the sum of their parts. We have a play within a play, vaguely nodding both to the work’s courtly origins (a royal couple, later revealed to be Pluto and Proserpina, seated above, under a crest) and some sort of modern-ish fascism-lite (hints of a prison, which soon vanish, security forces (?) all in black, and so on). The ‘look’ comes across as a mixture of student production and 1990s RSC, whilst the addition – I hesitate to say ‘incorporation’ – of dancers, a laudable community initiative in itself, is less than fully integrated, giving the impression of a school talent show. The choreography itself is embarrassing enough to make one think of David McVicar’s West End-musical assault on The Trojans. Piling more art forms upon each other – a ‘circus director’ is credited, though I am not quite sure for what – seems a grave misunderstanding of the Gesamtkunstwerk, itself a concept unduly emphasised by those who have most likely never read Wagner in the first place. Above all, given the overall incoherence, there is little sense of who these people actually are, let alone, most crucially, of how they relate to one another. Had I not known the opera, I suspect I should have found myself utterly at a loss, instead of only partly so.

 

Related to that is the most baffling aspect of all: what seems to be a Christianising concept, signalled not only by the transformation of shepherds into robed priests with crucifixes (‘pastors’, a play on words or at least upon origins only likely to register, let alone to be appreciated, for those with a cast list and who have checked it) and the English translation furnished by Don Paterson. Orfeo – why not ‘Orpheus’, if we are in English? – is presented in Christ-like imagery to start with, prefiguring his death; but it is far from clear that death is in itself a Christian concept, and little is done to explain why or even how we should plausibly consider the action in this sense. The final act in particular now takes upon itself an oddly Christian, or perhaps better, anti-Christian tinge, with words such as 'grace' in context accorded unsettlingly prominent emphasis. Quite apart from the question of why the work is being performed in translation – there are surtitles, which should surely be enough – the appearance of concepts such as ‘grace’ sit as awkwardly as the Christian elements in Britten’s Rape of Lucretia. Orfeo is not Parsifal, nor did it become so on this occasion. Given the choice, I should unhesitatingly stick with Alessandro Striggio – not, I hasten to add, on account of a nasty bout of Werktreue, but because transformations, should they be attempted, need to be considerably more coherent than these. I am not sure what the cuts are supposed to achieve, either; Orfeo is certainly not a lengthy work.

 

There was, however, much to admire in the singing; indeed, it was as a showcase for (mostly) younger voices that this performance really found its raison d’être. The undoubted star of the show – something would have gone wrong, had this been otherwise! – was Gyula Orendt, as Orfeo. A member of the Berlin State Opera, the Hungarian-Romanian baritone offered as powerfully-acted a performance on stage as I have seen for a long time. His facial expressions: tearful, hopeful, joyous, and, towards the close, benumbed, drew one in to his character as happens all too rarely on the operatic stage. (That may, of course, be partly a matter of the relative intimacy of the venue, at least for those of us fortunate enough to have been in the Stalls.) Although his vocal performance was not entirely flawless – he was not the only cast member to experience occasional difficulty with the hemiolas – to say more would be to nit-pick in the face of so committedly dramatic a performance. Mary Bevan offered a lovely Euridice, words and music as one – insofar as they could be in translation. Susan Bickley made the most of the Messenger’s pivotal appearances: one saw as well as heard the import of her news. Callum Thorpe and Rachel Kelly were equally impressive as the ‘royal’ (?) couple, Pluto and Proserpina. My only regret was that they did not have more to sing, but their acting was to be enjoyed more or less throughout. All members of the cast, though, impressed. Their ensemble, together with the splendid postgraduate singers from the Guildhall, offered a true instance of what opera should be: more, rather than less, than the sum of its part. (Mostly) subtle amplification dealt pretty well with the problematical acoustics, although certain oddities were unavoidable in a non-static staging.

 

Christopher Moulds might, however, have presented a more bracing account. Rhythms too often were on the soggy side; Ivor Bolton, in Munich last summer, had offered much more in the way of dance and, indeed, more general dramatic contrast. (He also had the benefit of an excellent production, one which it would be well worth the Royal Opera, ENO, or someone else considering bringing to London.) The continuo group proved far more impressive than the rest of the orchestra, its brass and, less but still too frequently, its strings sometimes excruciatingly out of tune. I can scarcely imagine the reaction, were such flawed playing to be served up by the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House; quite why audiences and critics are willing to put up with this in the name of ‘period performance’ remains an utter mystery to me. But then, so does the ideology as a whole; whatever it might be, it is certainly not ‘historically informed’.

 

Munich Opera Festival (3) - L'Orfeo, 20 July 2014

Images: © Wilfried Hösl

 

 

Prinzregententheater, Munich

Orfeo – Christian Gerhaher

Euridice – Anna Virovlansky
Messenger, Proserpina – Anna Bonatibus
Caronte – Andrea Mastroni
Hope, La Musica – Angela Brower
Plutone – Andrew Harris
Apollo – Mauro Peter
Shepherd I, Spirit I – Mathias Vidal
Shepherd II, Spirit III, Echo – Jeroen de Vaal
Shepherd III – Gabriel Jublin
Shepherd IV, Spirit II Thomas Faulkner
Nymph – Lucy Knight

David Bösch (director)

Patrick Bannwart (set designs)
Falko Herold (costumes, videos)
Michael Bauer (lighting)
Daniel Menne, Rainer Karlitschek (dramaturgy)

Zürcher Sing-Akademie (chorus master: Tim Brown)

Monteverdi-Continuo-Ensemble
Members of the Bavarian State Orchestra
Ivor Bolton (conductor)

 

Orfeo (Christian Gerhaher) and Euridice
(Anna Virovlavsky) returning to him

Monteverdi’s Orfeo may take after Jacopo Peri’s Euridice but there is a gulf in terms of quality between the two works. Renaissance opera though Orfeo may be – it really is very different from Ulisse or Poppea – it stands head and shoulders above any preceding essay in the genre, so much as to mark a ‘qualitative leap’ in the history of music. (Monteverdi’s dramatic madrigals are, without question, equally worthy of respect and connected in some respects of style, but they remain something of a different matter.) I knew all that, of course; ‘everyone’ does. However, I think it took this excellent Munich performance not only to make me realise quite how true it is, but truly to feel the greatness of Orfeo as dramma per musica. Perhaps that is not so surprising; it was, after all, my first Orfeo in the theatre – and what a wonderful theatre Munich’s Prinzregententheater is! But it could not have happened without such committed performances, and a largely convincing staging. Even Ivor Bolton, a conductor for whom I have rarely felt any enthusiasm, seemed at his best, certainly far more at ease than in later music, be that later Monteverdi or Handel, let alone Classical or Romantic music.

 

 

After two somewhat depressingly routine evenings of Mozart, this new production premiere certainly reinvigorated the Munich Opera Festival. I wondered at first whether David Bösch’s production would prove irritating. However, the flower-power setting of the first act does not get in the way thereafter and a band of musicians is, after all, far from entirely inappropriate to a telling of the Orphic myth. (Who, in any case, has a decided ‘idea’ of archaic Thrace, and on what could it conceivably be founded, even if it were appropriate for a twenty-first-century performance of an early-seventeenth-century opera?) There is an excellent sense of nuptial delight before the trials to come, in which music – on which more below – and production seem very much to be at one. As the plot thickens and darkens, so in any case does the staging. The story is told well; it is perfectly clear who everyone is, and what the characters’ relationship to each other would be. The underworld is properly like the underworld, Charon’s (or Caronte’s) gruesome throng transforming the tone, whilst there is humour without undue exaggeration in the domestic yet divine relationship between Proserpina and Plutone. A post-catastrophic setting for the final act is just the ticket, though some may cavil at Apollo’s decidedly mortal appearance as something akin to a war veteran.

 

The Messenger (Anna Bonatibus) arrives

If Bolton occasionally let the dance music run away with itself, it was a failing of the right kind, both bowing to and leading a properly infectious account of festivities. Otherwise, I really have nothing to grumble about at all with respect to his direction. Monteverdi’s extraordinary scoring – nowhere is the difference between Orfeo and the ‘Baroque’ operas clearer than here – does a great deal of the work of course, but the delineation of place, character, and mood were instantiated with great dramatic flair. A large continuo group offered a ravishing variety of sound, and, just as important, guided not only the harmony but also everything that unfolded above. What a treat to hear the regal organ of Hades; what a delight to hear the celebratory percussion! The Zürcher Sing-Akademie sometimes sounded oddly churchy: was that a matter of having had an English choral conductor, Tim Brown, train them? The sound was beautiful, but seemed more akin to Choral Evensong than to court at Mantua – or Munich. At other times, however, a more properly madrigalian instinct kicked in, and their musicality was beyond reproach.

 

Christian Gerhaher made for a magnificent Orfeo. Without in any sense abandoning the beauty of tone and verbal attentiveness that characterise his Lieder performances, he managed yet to seem perfectly at home in this quite different repertoire. Stylistically, he was spot on: neither too heavy with vibrato nor parsimonious in a largely-discredited old ‘Early Musicke’ sense. Perhaps most telling, however, was the realisation that it was in many cases the very virtues of his performances in later repertoire that made this also an outstanding performance; after all, if ever musical performance required equal attention to words and music it is in Monteverdi and Wolf. (And if you ever harboured a desire to see Gerhaher in the somewhat unlikely guise of ageing pop-star, first a little reluctant, then throwing physical caution to the wind, this may well be your only chance!) Anna Bonitatibus made a huge impression as Proserpina, ‘operatic’ in the best sense: opening a new era for the fledgling form. Her Messenger also tugged at the heartstrings, sentiment never tipping over into mere sentimentality. Angela Brower’s Hope (Speranza) and Music were distinguished in a similar fashion. Andrea Mastroni and Andrew Harris  cultivated distinct roles as Caronte and Plutone, whilst Anna Virovlansky’s immensely likeable Euridice had one wishing to hear more. Mauro Peter's Apollo offered on a smaller scale the textual and musical virtues of Gerhaher's Orfeo. All of the smaller roles were well taken. Here was casting in depth and in style: a credit both to the singers listed above and to the Bavarian State Opera.

Monteverdi, then, lived in the present, as he always magnificently does, putting to shame many of his Baroque successors. It would, however, be a shame to forget some of the other versions of this extraordinary work. How about an outing somewhere not only for Orff’s Orfeo – the first Munich performance in 1929, in the Cuvilliés-Theater, was given in one of his versions too – but for Berio’s too…?

Proms Summer Matinee 3: I Fagiolini/Britten Sinfonia/Wigglesworth - Dowland, Britten, Gesualdo, Dean, Monteverdi, and Olivero, 21 August 2010

Cadogan Hall

Dowland – Flow, my tears
Britten – Lachrymae: Reflections on a song of Dowland, for viola and orchestra
Gesualdo – Responsories of the Office of Tenebrae for Maundy Thursday – II: ‘Tristis est animas mea’
Gesualdo – Sixth Book of Madrigals: ‘Moro, lasso, al mio duolo’
Brett Dean – Carlo
Monteverdi – Madrigali guerreri et amorosi: ‘Lamento della ninfa’
Monteverdi – L’Orfeo – Act II, Messenger Scene
Betty Olivero – Neharot, Neharot (United Kingdom premiere)

Lawrence Power (viola)
Ian Watson (accordion)
I Fagiolini
Robert Hollingworth (director)
Britten Sinfonia
Ryan Wigglesworth (conductor)


Preliminaries out of the way as quickly as possible: first, the innovation of Proms Saturday Matinees at the Cadogan Hall is welcome, and programming appears to have been liberated by the smaller space; second, programme booklets could do with greater attention. Though free of charge, a welcome change from the excessive prices charged at the Royal Albert Hall for what is often little more than a collection of advertisements, that ‘little more’ at the main venue at least includes a modicum of information concerning works and composers. Texts and translations are provided, as are biographical notes on the performers, but it is a controversial hierarchy that considers them more important than works. There is, admittedly, a degree of spoken introduction, but I heard a few members of the audience comment that they would have liked to know who Brett Dean was. It is, moreover, not mere pedantry to wish that Monteverdi’s ‘Lamento della ninfa’ had been ascribed to his eighth book of madrigals, Gesualdo’s madrigal to his sixth book, and so forth.

As I said, the matinee programmes seem more intelligently constructed than some of their ‘big brothers’ in Kensington Gore. This concert examined three twentieth- and twenty-first century responses to ‘early’ or ‘Renaissance’ music: both descriptions beg more questions than they answer, but the same could be said of any categorisation. Dowland’s Flow, my tears thus preceded Britten’s Lachrymae. Clare Wilkinson sang, to Eligio Quinteiro’s sensitive, musicianly accompaniment on theorbo. Indeed, it is probably fair to say that Quinteiro impressed more consistently than his ‘soloist’. Wilkinson adopted a very ‘Early Music’ style of voice: strictly no vibrato, but little modulation in any respect. More worryingly, there were a couple of occasions on which her breath ran out before her words, leading to faltering at the ends of lines. Diction, however, was impeccable, and by the end of the song, we had become attuned to Dowland’s characteristic melancholy.

His tears flowed into Britten’s Lachrymae, which I had heard the Britten Sinfonia perform in Cambridge in 2008. The orchestra has been extremely fortunate in its viola soloists: first Maxim Rysanov, now Lawrence Power. Once again, I was struck by the way in which Britten’s music finds its voice, emerging out of something between nothingness and Dowland’s music. Melancholy has not only transposed but transmuted. I was also again reminded of Britten’s kinship with Berg: not just the Violin Concerto, whose Bach chorale foreshadows the full statement of Dowland at the end of Britten’s work, but also the febrile writing for string orchestra, suggestive of the Lyric Suite, blossoming under the firm yet generous hand of Ryan Wigglesworth. Moments of ecstasy raised the temperature in a gripping, arguably more dramatic account than that I had heard in Cambridge: both were fine performances, with similar and different virtues. There was not a hint of the intonational difficulties that can sometimes plague performances of works such as this. If only all ‘Early Music’ were performed with the passionate commitment devoted to the Britten…

The next pairing was Gesualdo and Dean. Gesualdo was presented in sacred and profane modes: the ‘Tristis est anima mea’ from his Tenebrae Responses, followed by the madrigal, probably to his own vers, ‘Moro, lasso, al mio duolo’. Christ’s words from Gethsemane, heard as the lights go out on Maundy Thursday, were given a very English reading by I Fagiolini. Hints of something more Italianate upon the word ‘fugam’, referring to the disciples’ flight, were more than balanced by a restraint that had more in common with Choral Evensong than Counter-Reformation Catholicism. Many works can take different performing ‘voices’, and I think Gesualdo’s can, but it was perhaps a pity not to hear something more full-blooded. The madrigal was less restrained, though a degree of vibrato would have imparted some sense of the sensuality the performance lacked. Dissonances and weird melodic twists nevertheless made their mark. However, Robert Hollingworth, the group’s director, is not, on the basis of this performance, possessed of the most ingratiating countertenor voice.

Brett Dean’s Carlo (1997, not that one would know from the booklet) followed, its title implying a response to the man and his scandal – at least to modern audiences – as well as to his music. Nevertheless, the work opens and closes straightforwardly with Gesualdo the composer on tape: the madrigal we had just heard. The downward chromaticism of the madrigal’s opening forms a thread through much of the composition, not least at the end of a glorious orchestral blaze, which put me in mind of a dubiously glorious auto da fé. Falling intervals, hand in hand with a beautifully judged diminuendo, prepared the way ultimately for the final statement of Gesualdo himself. But much had gone on between, all superbly realised by the Britten Sinfonia’s strings under Wigglesworth. Here one heard an ensemble of string soloists, not dissimilar to Richard Tognetti’s Australian Chamber Orchestra, for whom the work was written. The fractures of sampled sound provoked disapproval in a woman sitting in front of me, who turned to all and sundry, hoping, it seemed, to elicit a similar response. Fracture led, however, more often to mediated unity than to further fracture, though the breathy sounds heard later on belied the polite Englishness of the earlier performance. I was a little surprised by the reaction of the American woman seated next to me, who had more than once been politely requested to desist from her distracting fanning during the performance. At one point, she exclaimed, ‘total crap!’ It was still more surprising, then, to see her applaud vigorously at the end of the performance: perhaps she changed her mind; perhaps she was as sane as she was considerate. At any rate, this intriguing piece, which I should be keen to hear again, received a splendidly synchronised performance, complementary in the best sense to the Gesualdo on tape.

Monteverdi and the Israeli composer, Betty Olivero, formed the third and final pairing. Whilst there was none of the exhibitionism that characterises certain modern Italian groups in Monteverdi, there was much less inhibition in I Fagiolini’s performance than there had been in Gesualdo. Emma Tring proved a winning nymph in the lament: a pleasing voice, sensitive to the text and to the music with which it is intertwined. The magic of Monteverdi’s ground bass construction won through, from a continuo group comprising harpsichord (Catherine Pierron), theorbo (Quinteiro, again excellent), and organ (Hollingworth). This led on to the Messenger Scene from L’Orfeo. I Fagiolini’s presentation was somewhat puzzling, in that the Shepherds’ parts were shared out between various singers, confusing the two roles the audience would have seen listed in the programme. There seemed no obvious reason for this – and indeed it highlighted the relative weakness of one particular voice. However, Wilkinson really came into her own here as the Messenger, drawing on a considerably more varied vocal palette than she had employed for the Dowland. Nicholas Hurndall Smith’s Orfeo was not on the grand scale, but he proved as attentive to the text as Tring had in the previous piece. Whatever shortcomings there may have been in the performance, however, the sheer genius of Monteverdi shone through. Gesualdo may have the better biography, but Monteverdi has the infinitely more subtle, more ravishing, more truly dramatic music, even in 1607.

Fast-forward four hundred years to 2007, when Betty Olivero’s Neharot, Neharot was first performed. Distressed by scenes of the Israeli military onslaught upon the Lebanon the previous year, Olivero composed a tribute not only to Monteverdi, but to voices of female suffering. Seeking out such voices from Kurdistan, the Yemen, and elsewhere, she had them recorded by professional Israeli mourners, to provide the tape element for this work. ‘Neharot’, she explained, is the Hebrew for ‘rivers’, so Neharot, Neharot, ‘rivers, rivers,’ might be taken to refer to rivers of tears, rivers of blood. (Tears thus took us back to Dowland and Britten.) Solo viola (Powers again) and accordion (Ian Watson) joined the string orchestra for a clearly committed performance. Olivero considers the viola, not unreasonably, the ‘most intimate’ of the stringed instruments, whilst the accordion is a folk-like ‘voice of humanity’. Certainly the soloists’ performances lived up to these expectations, Powers rhapsodic yet purposeful, Watson soulful yet perhaps hopeful too. Here, of course, it was Monteverdi’s turn to be refracted not only across the centuries, but also geographically. The world of the Mediterranean and beyond is the scene for Olivero’s lament, with hints of the Voci of her teacher, Berio, doubtless drawing on Olivero’s Sephardic upbringing. As with the Dean piece, I should hesitate on the basis of a single hearing to hazard further predictions, but equally, I should be interested to hear the work again, and indeed to hear other works by Olivero. There is an interesting interview between the composer and Jessica Duchen in the Jewish Chronicle (click here).

Once again, then, kudos to the Britten Sinfonia for such imaginative and enlightening programming. Symphony orchestras and concert programmers, please take note…