The Makropulos Case, LSO/Rattle, 15 January 2026

 

Barbican Hall

Emilia Marty – Marlis Peterson
Krista – Doubravka Novotná
Albert Gregor – Aleš Briscein
Baron Jaroslav Prus – Svatopluk Sem
Dr Kolenatý, Strojník, Machinist – Jan Martiník
Vítek – Peter Hoare
Count Hauk-Šendorf – Alan Oke
Janek – Vit Nosek
Cleaning lady, chambermaid – Lucie Hilscherová

London Symphony Orchestra
Simon Rattle (conductor)

Images: Mark Allan

 

Simon Rattle’s twin traversal of the Janáček operas in concert in London and onstage in Berlin has now reached The Makropulos Case in the former, Claus Guth’s staging for the Staatsoper Unter den Linden’s having been its first ever. I suspect this may also have been the LSO’s first performance, though shall happily be corrected. At any rate, from the very outset, both Rattle and the LSO sounded entirely ‘inside’ the work, with all the security of a repertory staple, yet with all the freshness and exhilaration of discovery. It is only two months ago that the Royal Ballet and Opera staged the opera, in what was reported to have been Katie Mitchell’s feminist farewell to the genre. If so, Mitchell certainly went out with a bang in one of those rare productions that will prove not only memorable but also to have transformed our understanding of the work forever, expertly conducted by the RBO’s music director Jakub Hrůsá, and with a fine cast headed by Aušrinė Stundyte. That will have been fresh in the memories of many in the Barbican audience, but that did not prevent the hall from apparently selling out for not one but two concert performances; indeed, I suspect it aided that success.

That first-act Prelude constructed a frame for our listening thereafter, strings, timpani, and the rest, offstage brass included, ‘speaking’ in just the right way for opera: musically generative and full of dramatic content and commentary, almost more Wagnerian than Wagner, without ever sounding especially Wagnerian. Czech speech rhythms met the time-honoured craft of something approaching orchestral accompagnato in Rattle’s conducting, so that the composer’s twin poles of cellular radicalism and lyrical expansion proved not only compatible but mutually dependent and generative. At the beginning of each act, there was an unmistakeable sense of where we were, how we (dramatically) had got there, and of anticipation. For the LSO was on outstanding form. It would be invidious to single out any instrument or section, since all, from trombones to xylophone, contributed so eloquently. What struck was a sense of a myriad of lines, orchestral and vocal, combining in ever transformative fashion to a harmonic, contrapuntal, and dramatic whole.

The essence of opera in concert performance is complex: what it is, what it is not, what it might or might not be. Those of us had recently seen Mitchell’s staging will doubtless have come to the performance with different views of the work from those who had not, and so on. What is incontestably the case for everyone is that the orchestra literally takes centre stage, and we both see and hear its music very differently from when it emerges from a sunken pit. Singers must prove at least as verbally and musically communicative, since there is less room for staged expression; Rattle’s latest Janáček troupe certainly impressed in that and indeed in all other respects. It was almost like reading – or having read to one – a sung novella. In a typically livewire performance, Peter Hoare, one of two singers common to the Barbican and Covent Garden, could not but help but act. That early liberation acted as if to inspire the rest of the cast.

Marlis Petersen as Emilia Marty seemed just ‘right’ in all she did: voice, bearing, and unmistakeable sympathy. Doubravka Novotná’s rich-toned, spirited Krista proved the perfect foil—or better, one of them. From Aleš Briscein’s ardent Albert Gregor to Alan Oke’s magnificently vivid cameo (the other role shared from Covent Garden) as Count Hauk-Šendorf, this performance had a true sense of company even without staging. Jan Martiník’s three characters were sharply drawn as individuals, as was Svatopluk Sem’s Jaroslav Prus. Vit Nosek and Lucie Hilscherová likewise made the most of their roles, created through words and music, yet as human as if we had seen them onstage.  Such vivid characterisation drew back even those of us won over by Mitchell’s alternative vision towards the work ‘itself’. Those new to the opera will surely have been enthralled. A roaring reception suggested so.

For it was in the third act, as it must be, that Janáček’s drama palpably touched all as if for the first time. Here was most clearly redrawn in exultant urgency the twin clarity and abandon of E.M. to the increasing irrelevance of the men (and women) surrounding her, reminding us that ultimately, Mitchell’s staging grew out of the work’s essence rather than being imposed upon it (as uncomprehending criticism claimed). Taking a view does not necessarily mean betrayal; it is often fundamental to fidelity. Petersen and the orchestra’s transfiguration sent shivers down the spine in what came to seem, if you can imagine such a thing, almost a female, even feminist, Gerontius. Now there might lie a challenge to staging.

 

Die tote Stadt, Bavarian State Opera, 22 November 2019

Nationaltheater

Images: © Wilfried Hösl

Paul – Jonas Kaufmann

Marietta, Marie’s Apparition – Marlis Petersen

Frank, Fritz – Andrzej Filończyk

Brigitta – Jennifer Johnston

Juliette – Mirjam Mesak

Lucienne – Corinna Scheurle

Gaston, Victorin – Manuel Günther

Count Albert – Dean Power

Simon Stone (director)

Maria-Magdalena Kwaschik (assistant director)

Ralph Myers (set designs)

Mel Page (costumes)

Roland Edrich (lighting)

Lukas Leipfinger (dramaturgy)

Chorus and Children’s Chorus of the Bavarian State Opera (chorus director: Stellario Fagone)

Bavarian State Orchestra

Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

I approached this evening as something of a sceptic regarding work and director. My sole prior encounter with Simon Stone’s work had not been, to put it mildly, a happy one. Nor do I count myself a subscriber or even affiliate to the Korngold fan club, considerable in number and still more considerable in fervency. Some of Korngold's music I have responded to warmly, some less so. (It would still take some persuasion, though now less than before, to drag me to another performance of Das Wunder der Heliane.) My experience with Die tote Stadt has been mixed too. That, however, is bye the bye, for this new production and still more the performances within it, superlatively conducted by Kirill Petrenko, made for a splendid evening that more or less had me forget reservations hitherto entertained.

Petrenko’s conducting and the playing of the Bavarian State Orchestra could hardly have been bettered. There was no doubting the care taken in his preparation, nor his ability vividly and meaningfully to communicate understanding of the score in the theatre. Once the harmony becomes more interesting, during the second and third scenes, Petrenko showed himself equally alert to its shorter-term expressive potential and, score permitting, longer-term tonal implications. There is greater progress in such terms here than in, say, Schreker’s more harmonically—and dramaturgically—adventurous Die Gezeichneten, which ends up going round and round in circles, having one thank God for Schoenberg and Stravinsky. Petrenko likewise showed skill surpassing that of any conductor I have heard in communicating Korngold’s motivic working as dramatic past, present, and future. The orchestra, moreover, offered a far more variegated sound than I heard from the Vienna Philharmonic in Salzburg in 2005; if that calorific frenzy impressed in its own way, this was ultimately a more revealing sound as part of an overall dramatic conception. Where some performances of what we may broadly call ‘late Romantic’ music—a term I generally avoid on account of chronological absurdity and levelling generalisation—all too readily become congested, here was a panoply of orchestral colour that shifted before our ears so as to suggest, at least during the most skilfully composed passages, ready understanding of Straussian phantasmagoria.

For whereas in Salzburg, Willy Decker’s staging (later seen at Covent Garden too) was very much in ‘period’ keeping not only with Korngold but also with George Rodenbach’s Bruges la morte, Fernand Khnopff, et al.—and as such will I suspect greatly have appealed to enthusiasts—Stone’s production offered a welcome contemporary—to us—alternative for those who, like me, find the opera’s laboured symbolism both stifling and a little empty (as well as curiously dated for 1920). Here, Paul’s house (no.37: no evident symbolism to me, though you may know otherwise) is the focus for a cancer bereavement—as we learn when we later behold Marie’s apparition—from which he shows no sign of recovering. One room’s every wall is covered with pictures of her; he hangs her hair in his bedroom; some of the house, furniture covered, goes unused; and so on. His housekeeper, Brigitta, and friend, Frank, are clearly, justifiably concerned. However, a psychonalytical dream sequence appears to offer the route to recovery. Having at least begun to work out some of his issues with Marie/Marietta in a dream in which all manner of strange things can happen and do—the dead town comes into its own, multiplying Doppelgänger, Pierrot-troupes, accusations thrown as freely as underwear, etc.—there is perhaps some hope for the future in what uncannily looks and sounds like the morning of a fresh start. Ralph Myers’s revolving set permits the house to transform itself, almost as if it were turning itself inside out, as do the characters, their acts, and their neuroses. ‘It was all a dream’ may or may not be a satisfactory solution; if not, that remains a problem with the work itself. Stone’s production makes uncommon, if arguably reductive, sense of a text that can readily seem somewhat silly.

Vocally, this was unquestionably an evening to savour. Jonas Kaufmann’s voice is a very different instrument from that of a few years ago. Sounding more baritonal than ever, Kaufmann had lost nothing, however, of his ability to float and turn a long line, nor to forge from word and tone that particular, peculiar alchemy of song. In opera, further alchemy is required, of course, with the art of gesture; this was as compelling a stage performance—and I have seen a few—as I have seen from him. Kaufmann’s Paul remembered, lived in, and came close to final suffocation from times past, but in its final freshness, shared in the hope suggested, if only suggested, by Petrenko and Stone alike. Marlis Petersen’s Marietta proved the perfect foil, a high-spirited heir to Strauss’s Zerbinetta, albeit with the vocal reserves and finely spun line of something more Wagnerian. Her acting skills proved just as impressive, as did those of other partners onstage. Jennifer Johnston’s no-nonsense yet compassionate Brigitta, Andrzej Filończyk’s sympathetic and beautifully sung Frank, the rest of an excellent supporting cast, estimable choral forces: all contributed to a dream performance in every sense. In the intelligence of its accomplishment of values both musical and theatrical, I suspect this Munich Tote Stadt will set a gold standard to successors.

Salzburg Festival (11) - BPO/Petrenko - Berg and Beethoven, 25 August 2019

Grosses Festspielhaus

Berg: Lulu-Suite

Beethoven: Symphony no.9 in D minor, op.125

Marlis Petersen (soprano)

Elisabeth Kulman (contralto)

Benjamin Bruns (tenor)

Kwangchul Youn (bass)

Berlin Radio Chorus (chorus director: Gijs Leenaars)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

Image: Salzburger Festspele / Marco Borrelli

Leave aside recorded comparisons, at least for now. If I have heard a better Berg Lulu-Suite in the concert hall, then I have momentarily forgotten it, which seems unlikely. The first time I heard Kirill Petrenko was in 2006, at Covent Garden, conducting a Schoenberg-Bartók double-bill (Erwartung and Bluebeard’s Castle). He greatly impressed me then; he impressed me just as greatly in Berg here. Beethoven, as in last year’s Seventh Symphony, again with the Berlin Philharmonic, was considerably more mixed – at least for me, though the Salzburg audience once again reacted with great enthusiasm, indeed a standing ovation.

Petrenko’s emphasis on line, or rather on lines, was what struck me most of all in the first movement. Thinking of his Berlin predecessors, I imagined both Herbert von Karajan and Claudio Abbado, in their very different ways, appreciating this (not that others would not have done). Its flow seemed ideal, but so too did its translucency. There was less to the bass line than I imagine in my head, but this is surely a work, surely a composer, in which one performance can give only a taste of the possibilities inherent. Workings were certainly clear, without pedantry. Not that it was anti-Romantic, or un-Romantic: how could it be? It was loved, clearly, without being smothered. In the ‘Hymne’ section, serial processes seemed to become all the clearer, vertical and horizontal more equal. Had this been a deliberate strategy, to help the audience orient its ears? Who knows? I suspect it helped, anyway.

The second movement offered contrast that was riotous yet related, with an unmistakeable, highly welcome, whiff of Weimar to it. If the first movement seemed to have edged closer to Boulez as time had gone on, this went closer still, making me wonder whether Petrenko would continue the orchestra’s tradition in Boulez’s own music, whether from the composer himself or Simon Rattle. Let us hope so. Wonderful liminal passages as phantasmagorical as anything in Strauss prepared the way for Marlis Petersen’s entrance. Petersen’s uncommonly verbal approach – with no discernible loss, at least to me, of accuracy of coloratura – enabled a shift in balance and thus character for the ‘Lied der Lulu’. A slinky fourth movement seemed especially to relish the tonal implications of Berg’s music, whilst remaining very much in the line of what had preceded. An evocative musical wasteland duly moved for the final movement’s opening: third-act Parsifal in Whitechapel? Yet as the wasteland become more overtly urban, I speculated as to Petrenko’s Varèse as much as his Weill. How Berg’s phrases were turned, moreover: with meaning, never mannerism. Mahler (at last?) came to mind, the Mahler of the Tenth Symphony, in that chord and its aftermath. The music – music ‘itself’ – stopped with a wondrous, Wozzeck-like chill.

D minor was always a special key for the Second Viennese School. It was hardly less special for Beethoven, nor indeed for Mozart before him. I should love to hear a brazenly modernistic Ninth, but have yet to hear one; even Michael Gielen, so refreshing, so inspiring, in the other Beethoven symphonies seemed to lose his way here. It is surely not impossible, however much we may theorise and fantasise about a certain Romantic resistance. If truth be told, almost no one seems able to bring it off; the only living conductor I have heard do so is Daniel Barenboim, though Bernard Haitink has also come close. There was much of interest in what we heard from Petrenko, but it was doubtless asking too much, too soon.

It was striking how non-mysterious the opening of the first movement sounded, though it was not without defiance: materialism rather than metaphysics, then? Perhaps, there was certainly plenty of Berlin precision. It was very different from how I imagine the music, but that is no bad thing: I was intrigued enough to want to hear more. (Just as well, at that point!) At its best, this perhaps came closest to Abbado’s ‘designer Beethoven’; it has its admirers, I know, though his Vienna Beethoven from earlier decades has always seemed to me more convincing. I tried, and, as I said, found much to admire, but ultimately Beethoven, still less the Ninth, without meaning – and that may ‘mean’ all matter of things, verbal, musical, or otherwise – does not seem to me really to be Beethoven at all. Much was skated over, however great the clarity and rhythmic definition. The coda was magnificent, but where had it come from? It was as if an unexpected ocean-liner had sailed in.

The scherzo, however, was much more like it: clear, driven (not too hard, and transparent. Conductor and strings alike relished Beethoven’s antiphonal play, here refreshingly ludic. The problem was more coming after a first movement such as that; again, where had it come from, and where was it going? The trio, alas, veered dangerously close to the glib; a little relaxation, and a great deal more stress on harmony, would have been of benefit. Likewise, of course far more so, in the slow movement. It opened with genuine, almost Schubertian sadness, but its depths went resolutely unplumbed. Sometimes cheerful, even amiable, often pretty and sometimes beautiful, it again felt quite bereft of meaning. If Beethoven trying to be Mendelssohn and not really getting there is your thing, you would probably have liked it more than I did.

The finale, taken attacca, opened with fury, Beethoven’s ensuing cello and bass recitative marked by a depth of tone previously missing, even if wind sounded at times merely petulant. Ghosts of earlier movements were vividly apparent; indeed, they often seemed more ‘real’ than the ‘real thing’ had been. Petrenko’s basic tempo for the main theme was very much on the swift side, but such is his prerogative; if only he had not driven it so hard, however beautiful the playing of the BPO. Again, harmony seemed weirdly minimised; thank goodness it had not been in the Berg. Kwangchul Youn set the scene for other soloists and indeed the chorus, in eminently musicianly singing that yet rarely ventured – the excellent Benjamin Bruns a striking exception – beyond the precise and pleasant. Taken in isolation, a good part of what we heard might have moved in a different, more consequent performance; here it beguiled yet ultimately baffled. A jubilant close delighted many. Where had it come from, though, and what did it mean?

NDR Chorus/Konzerthausorchester Berlin/Spering - Bach and Schubert, 3 April 2015

Großer Saal, Konzerthaus

Bach – Cantata: ‘Lass, Fürstin, lass noch einen Strahl’, BWV 198 (Trauerode)

Schubert – Mass in A-flat major, D 678

Marlis Petersen (soprano)

Katrin Wundsam (mezzo-soprano)

Colin Balzer (tenor)

Michael Nagy (bass)
 

NDR Chorus (chorus master: Michael Gläser)

Konzerthausorchester Berlin

Andreas Spering (conductor)

 

Mourning for the Saxon Electress, Christiane Eberhardine, ‘die Betsäule Sachsens’ (Saxony’s pillar of prayer), was deeply felt by her husband’s subjects, although neither he, nor their son, attended the funeral. Unlike Augustus the Strong, who had converted to Roman Catholicism to ascend the Polish throne, she had remained faithful to Protestantism. Protestantism thus remained faithful to her, not least in the guise of  Bach’s Trauerode, the text by Johann Christoph Gottsched, first performed in St Paul’s Church, Leipzig, in 1727. One of the touching aspects of the text is the sense of place: references to city, river, residence, and so on. Even in the Prussian capital, with a North German chorus, I could imagine myself back in Leipzig – not least since I tend always to think of that city on Good Friday, even when not attending a Passion or Parsifal.

In performance, Bach was not badly done by, although Christoph Spering might have offered greater ‘heart’ to a somewhat chilly account. The opening chorus, ‘Lass, Fürstin, lass noch einen Strahl,’ was taken very fast, bur rhythms were well pointed. Here and throughout, the clarity of the NDR Chorus was beyond reproach. ‘An dir, du Fürbild großer Frauen,’ the chorus closing the first of the two parts, proved tumultuous, redolent of one of the turba choruses in the Passions. (Flutes struggled a little there, though.) The final chorus did not entirely dispel the suspicion that Spering had a train to catch, and phrasing might have been less choppy, but again, counterpoint was communicated clearly, even as the weight of harmonic meaning was lessened.

The extraordinary orchestra Bach employs made its mark, as it always does: visually as well as aurally transitional, two gambas (to the fore in ‘Wie starb die Heldin so vergnügt!’) and lutes placed in the centre, the ‘modern’ orchestra surrounding them. (Hermann Scherchen’s recording is a typically provocative exploration.) The alto recitative, ‘Der Glocken bebenes Getön,’ sounded wonderful orchestrally, flutes against pizzicato violins and violas.  Flute and oboe obbligati sounded splendid in the tenor aria with which the second part opens. Once again, I was reminded of Bach’s almost modernistic exploration of instrumentation, a feature of his music to which Boulez has, perhaps unsurprisingly, drawn attention. Marlis Petersen offered a keenly dramatic account of her recitatives and arias, harking back to Bach’s seventeenth-century forebears. Some might have cavilled at the evident difference of approach to vibrato, she largely eschewing it, the strings warmer, but it did not especially bother me. Katrin  Wundsam’s aria (that one with the gambas) exposed the differences in tone between different registers in her voice, but again, that was not unduly distracting, and it is partly a consequence of the particularities of Bach’s vocal writing. Colin Balzer proved the weakest of the soloists, intonation variable, and coloratura less than perfect. (The writing is difficult, but even so.) Michael Nagy navigated with great success the transitions between recitative and arioso, likewise achieving an excellent balance between declamation and the longer line.

Schubert’s choral works are, by contrast, cheerfully South German: nominally Catholic, without any obvious evidence of great belief. (Nor is there any evidence of Beethovenian struggle, despite the similarities with, and perhaps influence of, the Missa solemnis.) As one might have expected, this was not the most ‘symphonic’ of readings, but so long as one could, at least for a few minutes, put Wolfgang Sawallisch from one’s mind, a good enough account was given of the work in, the Berlin Konzerthaus notwithstanding, more church-like fashion. Strangely, given Spering’s lack of what we might call ‘Romanticism’, I was nevertheless put in mind of Bruckner and indeed twentieth-century writing. Perhaps that was in part testament to the long-lasting influence of Caecilianism. Quite why a chamber organ was used I am not entirely sure, but such seems almost to be de rigueur in ‘early music’ performances, even when a perfectly decent instrument is present in the hall.

The opening ‘Kyrie’ set the tone for much of the performance, in its strong contrast between passages for solo voices (whether individually or in ensemble) and those for chorus. The dramatic quality of the imploring ‘Christe’ solos was rather winning. Spering’s way with the ‘Gloria’ I found unduly fast and brutal, rather as if Toscanini were back with us; others will doubtless have felt differently. There were times when a greater body of strings too would have been of benefit. Spering’s conducting of the concluding fugue proved wooden too, leading to loss of much of its dynamism, though matters improved as it progressed. Again, at the opening of the ‘Credo’, although the performers (chorus and orchestra) were excellent, the conducting was four-square. The strings, however, dug in nicely upon the word ‘crucifixus’, especially important on this of all days. The closing ‘Amen’ sounded glorious – from all concerned. A well-shaped ‘Sanctus’ followed: lyrical, yet with a strong sense of underlying power. Phrasing was a bit odd in the ‘Osanna’ section, for no evident reason. The ‘Benedictus’, perhaps predictably, was taken very fast. It flowed nicely enough, but I remained unmoved. The ‘Agnus Dei’, though on the swift side, was imbued with greater feeling than earlier, although the contrast between choral and solo passages was perhaps excessive. Still, there was no doubting the prowess of the excellent chorus.



 

LSO/Egarr - Haydn: The Creation, 12 January 2013

Barbican Hall

Marlis Petersen (soprano)

Sally Dodds (mezzo-soprano)
Jeremy Ovenden (tenor)
Gerald Finley (bass-baritone)

London Symphony Chorus (chorus master: Simon Halsey)

London Symphony Orchestra

Richard Egarr (conductor)

 

 

It is not an enviable task, to take over from the late Sir Colin Davis in almost any repertoire, let alone in Haydn. That said, the failings of Richard Egarr in this performance cannot simply be attributed to invidious comparisons. His perverse insistence that the LSO, by general consent London’s finest orchestra, play for much of the time as if it were some rough-and-ready pseudo-‘period’ band was bad enough. If you want a period orchestra, then go ahead and employ one, but why on earth belittle a modern orchestra in such fashion? Even if we leave that aside, Egarr’s manifest difficulty in maintaining a dual role as harpsichordist and conductor told of ambition exceeding competence. Continuo playing veered between the nondescript and the inappropriate, whilst there was great palaver to be had each time he switched one role for the other: a stool to be moved, arms flailing all over the place, and, oddest of all, a practice of conducting with the left hand whilst doodling at the keyboard with the right. Surely if a continuo instrument is to be employed at all in combination with the orchestra – it is unnecessary in Haydn – then the part should be founded upon a solid bass line. Tempi were often not only too fast, but rigidly driven to the point of caricature, a glaring exception being the weirdly distended recitative between Adam and Eve, a point at which the harpsichord became unduly distracting too.

 

It was, then, a tribute to the LSO, the London Symphony Chorus, and at least to Gerald Finley, that there remained a good deal in isolation to savour from this performance of Haydn’s late masterpiece. The ‘Representation of Chaos’ was disappointing: a truly dispiriting thing to have to write. Not only was this astonishing movement taken with a swiftness that verged upon the absurd; more damaging still, peculiarities of scoring and rhythm were crudely underlined, rather than permitting Haydn’s genius to speak for itself. (Such would prove a recurring problem, not least when the composer was at his most pictorial.) Here and throughout the work, Egarr seemed incapable of thinking, let alone communicating, with the symphonic breadth that Haydn requires: Fernhören does not seem to be in his vocabulary. The arrival of ‘Light’ was loud rather than grand. Here, as elsewhere, memories of Davis, whether in performance or on record, and of course, Karajan, died hard. Choral singing was in itself of a typically high standard: real drama was imparted to the episode of the fallen angels. But one felt a certain lack of interest on the conductor’s part in the text: especially odd, given Egarr’s opting for the English version.

 

Moreover, despite the aforementioned tendency to crude exaggeration of detail, when it came to what Nicholas Temperley called ‘the most extraordinary tonal surprise in the whole work – perhaps in all classical music,’ the ‘In native worth’ modulation to A-flat major, it passed for relatively little. Pleasant rather than epiphanic, God’s breath was reduced to an everyday occurrence. A great orchestra can rarely be kept down entirely. For instance, the darkness of the lower strings in Raphael’s Fifth day accompagnato was breathtaking; too often, however, violins were compelled severely to ration vibrato, sounding grey and thin through no fault of their own. (Contrast the variegated beauty of their sound on Davis’s LSO Live recording!) Trombones sounded splendid as they greeted the ‘tawny lion’. The opening of the Third Part, three flutes and all, sounded paradisiacal indeed, though the ensuing Hymn was almost ruined by the ragged, rasping race to the finish imposed upon it by the conductor. As for the martial quality of the following duet, it is difficult to imagine the music sounding less erotic. Again, I could not help but wonder whether Egarr had taken any notice of the libretto.

 

Finley excelled from his first recitative onwards, even if the brass section was forced to adopt a rasping sound quite at odds with its typical excellence. He offered subtlety of shading and of verbal response that was generally lacking elsewhere. He even almost made one forget the strangeness of some of Gottfried van Swieten’s adapted text – except when he, alas, opted for over-pictorial emphasis on the Sixth Day. Marlis Petersen had her moments, and her English was excellent, but she proved surprisingly shrill at times. Jeremy Ovenden’s light English tenor was not to my taste; I found myself hearing Janowitz and Wunderlich in my mind’s ear. Not to mention an imaginary conflation of the best of the rest from Davis and Karajan…

 

Henze, Phaedra, Ensemble Modern/Boder, 17 January 2010

Barbican Hall

Phaedra – Maria Riccarda Wesseling
Aphrodite – Marlis Petersen
Minotaur – Lauri Vasar
Artemis – Axel Köhler
Hippolytus – John Mark Ainsley

Ensemble Modern
Michael Boder (conductor)

This concert performance of Henze’s latest – he seems now to have stopped speaking of his ‘last’ – opera, Phaedra, marked the end of the Barbican’s Henze weekend and also the beginning of its Present Voices 2010 series, which will also include performances of Peter Eötvös’s Angels in America and Michel van der Aa’s After Life. Many, though not quite all, of the same performers gave the first performances at Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden; certainly they seemed very much at home here with Henze’s style and musical demands.

In two short acts, the work re-tells the celebrated tale first of stepmother Phaedra’s love for Hippolytus and the latter’s consequent death, and then of Hippolytus’s after-life as Virbius, culminating in his resurrection as King of the Forest. The autobiographical consonance seems almost too good to be true: Henze fell seriously ill, having completed most of the first act, falling into a coma, or something very close thereto, before rising from his bed one day to start work upon the second act. But such would seem to have been the case – and, one way or another, much of Henze’s output has always been autobiographical in its concerns. We may stand far away from Der langwierige Weg in die Wohnung der Natascha Ungeheuer, a warning of the perils of bourgeois leftism and perhaps the high water-mark of the composer’s revolutionary activism, but in this sense, at least, the works have more in common than one might expect.

Christian Lehnert’s libretto seems at times a little too full of its symbolism and general cleverness, though I wonder whether that might be different with a scenic element to the performance . Henze’s score is full of beguiling sounds, using his chamber ensemble in a way that betokens both imagination and experience. Yet I am not sure that it totally evaded the charge of note-spinning, rather akin to certain middle-period Strauss. (I have often thought there to be parallels between the two composers, though Henze would doubtless angrily disavow such a comparison, having once disparaged his predecessor as resembling something akin to a court composer to the last Kaiser.) There was magic, though, in the final scene, in which Hippolytus rises as King of the Forest: not so very far from the transformation of Daphne. And earlier on, I thought I heard a Gurrelieder tribute, when mention was made of a dove, or was it simply my ears tricking me? Some of the rest of the time, however, I wondered whether I was in the world of an updated French Baroque cantata, even though, to be fair, hints and sometimes more than hints of Ulisse-like paganism ensured that it was not all prettiness. The bruitage of the second act (that for both acts was provided by Francesco Antonioni) was in some senses a contrasting relief – and rather an impressive one, by turns realistic and abstract, and with clear dramatic purpose.

Michael Boder clearly knows the score inside out and performed it with persuasive confidence – and delicacy. Likewise the excellent Ensemble Modern, whom we really should hear more of in this country. Phaedra the title may be, but the central character is really Hippolytus (in which case, why the title?). John Mark Ainsley employed his light tenor to advantage, affording a sensitive portrayal, though without much suggestion as to why Phaedra might ever have felt so strongly attracted towards him. Maria Riccarda Wesseling likewise presented an intelligent depiction of Phaedra – I assume one is not supposed to warm to her – though her facial expressions could be distracting. Marlis Petersen offered no such drawbacks in a beautiful, if icy portrayal of Aphrodite. Those more drawn than I to the countertenor voice might still have had problems with Axel Köhler’s squally Artemis. Is that also not partly the composer’s fault, for is this really an appropriate vocal type for such a role today? It can work as something other-worldly, as, for instance, in Goehr’s The Death of Moses, but here it seemed an all-too-easy ‘Baroque’ reference. In any case, it was a relief when for a minute or so, Köhler fell into a perfectly decent ‘character’ tenor. At least as impressive as anyone else was Lauri Vasar, pleasing of tone and intelligent of expression; I certainly wished that his part, that of the Minotaur, had been introduced earlier.