Salzburg Festival (7) - The Greek Passion, 22 August 2023

Felsenreitschule

Grigoris - Gábor Bretz
Manolios - Sebastian Kohlhepp
Katerina - Sara Jakubiak
Yannakos - Charles Workman
Lenio - Christina Gansch
Andonis - Matteo Ivan Rašić
Michelis - Matthäus Schmidlechner
Kostandis - Alejandro Baliñas Vietes
Panais - Julian Hubbard
Nikolio - Aljoscha Lennert
Old Woman - Helena Resker
The Patriarcheas - Luke Stoker
Ladas - Robert Dölle
Fotis - Łukasz Goliński
Old Man - Scott Wilde
Despinio - Teona Todua

Director - Simon Stone
Set designs - Lizzie Clachan
Costumes - Mel Page
Lighting - Nick Schlieper
Dramaturgy - Christian Arseni

Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus director: Huw Rhys James)

Salzburg Festival and Theatre Children’s Choir (chorus director: Wolfgang Götz)

Angelika Prokopp Summer Academy of the Vienna Philharmonic

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Maxime Pascal (conductor)

Images: © SF/Monika Rittershaus

Salzburg’s new production of Bohuslav Martinů‘s opera The Greek Passion has much going for it, but alas one major thing against, at least for me. The latter I shall come to, but let us first consider the positives. The theme of the opera and Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel from which it is adopted could not be more timely. A tragedy in which refugees are rejected by a stern, unbending, mendaciously ‘Christian’ society, shown for what it is by the ostracism and death of one of its own for showing proper Christian charity, has a multiplicity of resonances today. It surely follows on well in the wake of Nono’s Intolleranza, which Covid had me miss.

Performances were generally very good, often excellent. Maxime Pascal, known primarily for more overtly modernist music, a complete cycle of Stockhausen’s LICHT underway with his ensemble Le Balcon, could hardly have offered more committed advocacy at the helm of the Vienna Philharmonic. A wild, often bewildering, variety of musical styles was vividly characterised. Playing was sharp, warm, weighty, delicate, and so much more, as required. Choruses were equally impressive, hymnal and more violent confrontation of two great masses of human beings brought to equally vivid aural life. 

Sebastian Kohlhepp gave a powerful, vulnerable portrayal of Manolios, the shepherd given the role of Christ in the village Passion play and ultimately murdered for taking Christ at His word. Gábor Bretz made for an implacable priestly foe as Grigoris, whose social rigidity and machinations set the tragedy in motion. Charles Workman as the compassionate pedlar Yannakos, Łukasz Goliński as Fotis, the priest at the head of the refugees, Christina Gansch as Lenio, who transfers her affections from Manolios, and Sara Jakubiak as the other object of his affections, preparing to play the role of Mary Magdalene, all impressed in detailed interpretations, well sung and acted. So did others in smaller roles, of which there are a good few.

Simon Stone’s production did its job well enough too, perhaps at its best in using the great space of the Felsenreitschule stage to show the two communities at odds. Painting a wall with the words ‘REFUGEES OUT’ is not subtle, but subtlety is hardly what is called for here. The appearance of live animals, a donkey and goat included, onstage brought back unwelcome thoughts of Francesca Zambello’s School of Zeffirelli Carmen. It seemed to entertain the audience, especially when the donkey refused to budge, but what it offered beyond that, I really do not know. I wondered whether more might have been done to help the innocent viewer understand who was who on a more detailed, personal level, but responsibility for that really lay elsewhere.

That brings me, alas, to the real culprit for me: the work itself. This is the second, 1961 version of the work, written after rejection by Covent Garden. According to Michael Beckerman’s programme note, the first ‘is considered more experimental, is perhaps more conventionally dramatic, and has much more spoken dialogue.’ For the first two of those criteria, I cannot help but wish we had heard the first, for what we saw and heard was anything but ground-breaking and, far more important, lacking in the basic dramatic tools to which it seemed to aspire. There is nothing discernible in the way of musical characterisation, making Beckerman’s hyperbolic claim ‘Martinů had much in common with Mozart’ especially unfortunate. (I could probably suggest points I have in common with Dame Joan Collins, but that would not make me a natural Alexis.) There is little in the way of musical continuity, and the libretto, Martinů‘s own, is at times shockingly bad. I had to check that it was not a hamfisted ENO translation. I sympathise: I could not write a libretto in, say, German; I doubt I could write one in English. But the composer’s word-setting is also un-idiomatic. And, to be fair, I do not try to write operas. I do not think it would be helpful to go into great detail and should note this was one of the most enthusiastic receptions I encountered at this year’s Festival. Mine was a minority view, though shared still more vehemently by my companion.

I had assumed the spoken scenes were Stone’s, it seeming unlikely Martinů would have used, for instance, the word ‘donkeyfucker’, for instance. Whoever wrote them, they added nothing to what we knew already, coming across mostly as an attempt to sound ‘edgy’. Alas, everything seemed at best caught between largely incomparable stools. To do something for refugees is, of course, admirable and necessary. Despite the obvious objections, that can include artistic endeavour, indeed arguably must. Intolleranza is a case in point. It would need, though, to be more convincing than this. In the meantime, donation to a refugee centre would be a better way forward.

Dohr/MCO/Roth - Haydn, Martinů, and Ligeti, 15 December 2019

Kammermusiksaal, Berlin

Haydn: Symphony no.22 in E-flat major, ‘The Philosopher’

Martinů: Double Concerto for two string orchestras, piano, and timpani

Ligeti: Hamburg Concerto, for horn and chamber orchestra

Haydn: Symphony no.103 in E-flat major, ‘Drum-Roll’

Holger Groschopp (piano)

Stefan Dohr (horn)

Mahler Chamber Orchestra

François-Xavier Roth (conductor)

If anything can offer light in dark, dark times, it is music: not only music, but music such as this, performed such as this. Goodness knows if, let alone when, an Englishman such as I will be able to live in Berlin again once this stay comes to an end. As things stand, it feels that the lamps are going out all over the world, if less in this part of continental Europe than elsewhere. Shall we see them lit again in our lifetime? Who knows? Amidst such gloomy, frankly despairing thoughts, this concert from the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and François-Xavier Roth proved just the tonic, even if it rendered all the more glaring the gulf between the cosmopolitan civilisation of Haydn and the way so much of the world has turned.

What could be more singular than Haydn’s Symphony no.22? Has any other symphony in recorded history had the scoring of strings, two French horns, and two cor anglais (if one prefers, English horns)? That particular singularity one noticed—how could one not?—from the outset, perhaps enhanced, even amplified by having violins, violas, and wind standing. But the processional quality to the ‘Adagio’ first movement, here as well-judged and vivid as the pilgrims’ march in Harold en Italie, is ultimately the more unusual, the more fascinating; and so it was here. Horns, French and English, engaged in dialogue as if this were versicle and response. Suspensions told, ‘naturally’, quite without exaggeration. Above all, the music developed, meaningfully and movingly: so long as one listened. The second movement, marked ‘Presto’, burst forth in bright, vigorous necessity: hungry in the best way, nourishing too. Above all—and how sorely this was needed for this listener at this time—it made me smile: not in the condescending ‘Papa Haydn’ way most of us have now consigned to the rubbish bin, but inspired by the invention and humanity not only of Haydn but of these wonderful, international musicians. ‘Revelatory’ is a word overused, but I cannot resist it to describe the MCO and Roth in the minuet: taken one-to-a-bar and it felt just right. The balance between courtly and something more rustic, yet still cultivated, once again felt spot on. Slight relaxation for the trio seemed inherent rather than imposed. Then came the finale, ‘Presto’ as only Haydn can be. Roth took it fast, yes, yet never harried the music. Natural horns crackled; cor anglais echoed; strings provided the ultimate engine of development as rigorous as it was joyful. Truly this was music-making to lift the spirits.

Bohuslav Martinů’s Double Concerto for two string orchestras, piano, and timpani—not ‘strong orchestras’, as my original typo had it, though on reflection...—comes from similarly dark times to ours, composed in Switzerland in 1938, the final page of the manuscript completed on the day the Munich Agreement was signed. It is difficult not to read the turbulence and tragedy of world events into the music; yesterday, for me at least, it proved impossible, although by the same token, it reminded me that such human flourishing should never be reduced to external influence and ultimately can never and will never be crushed. The first movement sounded urgent, incisive, troubled, controlled, its counterpart in Stravinsky’s subsequent Symphony in Three Movements very much Martinů’s offspring. Procedures and sounds evoked Bartók too: another salutary reminder of opposition to fascism. Anger was retained and transmuted in the second movement, accompanied now by the deepest of grief, whether voiced by piano (Holger Groschopp), strings, or both. How that grief told in present circumstances! The finale renewed the virtues of the opening movement, taking the forward in a jagged, mordant dance of death, culminating in grim apotheosis. Tragedy, then, in every sense of the word.  

And yet, onward we must go, however bleak and dark our prospects may seem. What better way to make that attempt than with the twin inventions of Ligeti and Haydn? Stefan Dohr joined an ensemble of outstanding MCO players, four natural horns (José Cicente Castelló, Jonathan Wegloop, José Miguel Asensi Marti, and Lionel Pointet) among them, for Ligeti’s Hamburg Concerto, outstandingly led as ever by Roth. As Haydn laid before us an almost Newtonian tonal universe—not for nothing do many consider The Creation his supreme masterpiece of masterpieces—so Ligeti went beyond, to genuinely new discoveries, explaining: ‘In this piece I experimented with very unusual non-harmonic sound spectra. … By providing each horn or group of horns with different fundamentals I was able to construct novel sound spectra from the resulting overtones. These harmonies, which had never been used before, sound “weird” in relation to harmonic spectra. I developed both “weird” consonant and dissonant harmonies, with complex beats.’ The controlled mystery of the opening ‘Praeludium’—perhaps in its way a late-twentieth-century ‘Representation of Chaos’—seemed to tell us so much of what the work would be about. Moreover every note, ‘weird’ or not, told, as it might have done in Haydn, Webern, so many others from the great tradition with which Ligeti had far from entirely broken. The second of seven short movements, ‘Signale, Tanz, Choral,’ suggested an almost Benjaminian sense of play, first between horns, then between other instruments, not least the basset horns specifically chosen by the composer for enrichment and blend of sounds. A truly mesmerising solo duet from Dohr announced the three inner movements: ‘Aria, Askak, Hoketus’, ‘Solo, Intermezzo, Mixtur, Kanon’, and ‘Spectra’. An ensemble of untold yet controlled giddiness led us by the hand toward that fifth movement of near-Messiaensque sublimity. The closing ‘Capriccio’ and ‘Hymnus’ lived up fully to their names and yet equally expanded our understanding of them and their possibilities. For an encore, Dohr treated us to some of the finest playing and musicianship I have ever heard on any instrument, in a riveting Messiaen ‘Appel interstellaire’ from Des Canyons aux étoiles.

And so, we returned to Haydn and to E-flat major for the Drum-Roll Symphony, his penultimate, written more than thirty years later than the first symphony we had heard. Just as Ligeti’s work had, in context, picked up the importance of horns from Haydn, now Haydn picked up from Martinů aspecial role for timpani. Matthias Kelemen, beguilingly inventive without a hint of narcissism for his Intrada, was responded to in kind by cellos and others: a not dissimilar relationship of versicle and response from The Philosopher. Indeed, the first-movement introduction as a whole proved uncommonly dramatic, finding form in that drama as much as drama in that form. The exposition likewise presented Haydn both as single-minded and multi-voiced, an example for us all. Contrapuntal density and similar direction characterised a development section as full of surprises as the moment of return—whether one ‘knew’ or not. In the second movement—no sense whatsoever here of this being a slow movement—Roth’s swift tempo and lightness of texture did not in any sense preclude depth or exultancy. It was full of colour and delight, even—especially?—for someone such as me, who hears it so differently in his head. Matthew Truscott’s violin solo delighted equally; so too did a purpose that we only call Beethovenian because, quite frankly, it is, however much avant la lettre. I learned much from this and can say no better than that. The minuet witnessed a properly generative balance between the straightforward and sophisticated, echoed yet far from banally repeated in its trio. The controlled—that word again—helter-skelter of the finale offered kinship to Ligeti and a glint in the aural eye far from dissimilar, for both were surely the most European of composers. Haydn’s joy brought tears to my ears for a number of reasons. Catharsis, then, in humanism.

Ariane and Alexandre bis, Guildhall, 31 May 2016

Silk Street Theatre, Guildhall School of Music and Drama

Ariane

Le Veilleur (M. Yvon Villeneuve) – John Findon

L’Homme aux cheveux blancs (M. Giuseppe di Bergamo) – Milan Siljanov
1^er garçon (M. Gerard Fennial) – Robin Horgan
2^ème garçon (M. Gauthier Cardin) – Bertie Watson
3^ème garçon (M. Gregoire Lissard) – James Liu
4^ème garçon (M. Olivier Moreau) – Laurence Williams
5^ème garçon (M. Jean-Baptiste Daude) – Jack Lawrence-Jones
Thésée (M. Dmitri Romanov) – Josep-Ramon Olivé
Ariane (Mme Maria Callas) – Nicola Said
Bouroun (M. Pierre LeClerc) – Dominick Felix
Le Minotaure (M. Giuseppe di Bergamo) – Milan Siljanov 

Alexandre bis

Philomène – Bianca Andrew

Le portrait – Milan Siljanov
Alexandre – Josep-Ramon Olivé
Armande – Elizabeth Karani
Oscar – John Findon
Dancing Devils – Robin Horgan, Jack Lawrence-Jones, Bernie Watson, Laurence Williams

Rodula Gaitanou (director)

Simon Carder (set designs, lighting)
Cordelia Chisholm (costumes)
Victoria Newlyn (choreography)

Orchestra of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama
Timothy Redmond (conductor)
 

I keep trying with Martinů, but I am yet to ‘get’ his music. Perhaps there is too much of it; that seems to be a common claim amongst his apologists. I have maybe not heard the right pieces. As it stands, though, I have yet to detect an original voice; more concerningly, I have yet to hear anything that has had me want to listen to it again. This enterprising operatic double-bill at the Guildhall did not, alas, buck that trend, splendid stagings and performances notwithstanding.

 

First came the composer’s penultimate opera, Ariane, a vaguely neo-Baroque re-telling of the legend of Theseus, Ariadne, and the Minotaur. Not everything can be Birtwistle, I suppose, but this seems a more or less arbitrary collection of passages in differing styles, culminating in an all-too-extended lament that had one longing for the real thing, be it Monteverdi, Cavalli, Purcell, anyone. Given the anonymity of the work, director Rodula Gaitanou’s solution seemed to me inventive, indeed more interesting than the original material. Drawing upon the composer’s attested love for the artistry of Maria Callas during his work on the score, she offers a metatheatrical treatment, the excellent designs (Simon Carder and Cordelia Chisholm) drawing upon photographs, particularly by Robert Doisneau and Sabine Weiss, of Callas recording Carmen at the Salle Wagrame in 1964, six years after Martinů completed composition. It looks wonderful and the young, spirited cast responded eagerly to Ariane as Callas, the additional action – amatory and other rivalry, the business of recording and rehearsal, etc. – doubtless drawing upon their own experience as well as setting them up well for future careers, in which metatheatrical concerns are likely to loom large. Nicola Said’s performance in the title role took a little while to warm up, but she soon made it her own; if only, alas, I could have responded better to Martinů’s writing, which, whilst not so bad as Donizetti, did not seem especially concerned to free itself from such association. Josep-Ramon Olivé was a dashing Thésée, both on stage and vocally. The five boys (named above) enjoyed their intrigues. Milan Siljanov brought a touch of welcome gravity to the role of the Minotaur, whilst Jon Findon busied himself nicely as the Watchman.

Alexandre bis, I am afraid to say, proved tedious. Again, that was no fault of the performers. Here, as in Ariane, the orchestra proved remarkably adept, under Timothy Redmond’s baton, at tracing and communicating the changing moods of the score, such as they were. Attempts at musical surrealism were rarely successful; this proves no exception. Essentially, it is a tale of would-be infidelity, which never happens, although we learn from a dream what might have happened. Von heute auf morgen it certainly is not, let alone Così fan tutte (for those very few, that is, who understand what that work is actually about). If you like the world of Feydeau farce, you might find something in this, I suppose, but it is slight even by those undemanding standards, and fails to attain the lightness of, say, Offenbach. The Magritte-like designs are once again splendid, and there could be no faulting the enthusiastic response of the cast (even if French dialogue was despatched rather too slowly). Siljanov offered a nice turn as a talking portrait. Olivé proved lively and as winning as the work would allow in his new role. If there were any true echo at all of Così, and this is stretching it, it would be in the servant’s role of Philomène; Bianca Andrew had one wonder what she might have made of Despina, in another excellent performance. Elizabeth Karani’s bored lady of leisure proved equally convincing, insofar as it could. Martinů eluded me once again.

 

Hannigan/LPO/Jurowski: Webern, Berg, Bartók, and Martinů, 27 April 2013

Royal Festival Hall

Webern – Variations for Orchestra, op.30

Berg – Lulu-Suite
Bartók – Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta
Martinů – Double Concerto for Two String Orchestras, Piano, and Timpani

Barbara Hannigan

London Philharmonic Orchestra,

Vladimir Jurowski (conductor)

 

It was good of Vladimir Jurowski and the LPO to dedicate this concert to the memory of Sir Colin Davis, although in reality it was not a very Davis-like programme. No matter: the focus was on ‘Music from Dark Times’, Berg’s Lulu-Suite having been written in 1934 and Webern’s Variations for Orchestra in 1940-1. There seems to have been some confusion concerning ordering: Jurowski at the opening claimed that the programme had been reordered, so that the pieces would be heard chronologically backwards. If so, Martinů’s Double Concerto should have swapped places with the Berg work, the earliest on the programme. As it was, it certainly made some sense for Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta, and the Martinů to be heard together, though Martinů’s work, despite what was undoubtedly the best performance of the night, could not help but pale into relative insignificance following Bartók’s masterpiece.

 

Anyone who programmes Webern’s Variations deserves a vote of thanks. It seems extraordinary that we find ourselves just as starved of Webern performances as audiences were decades earlier. A while ago, Pierre Boulez was asked whether Webern was back in purgatory, and responded by asking his questioner whether Webern had in fact ever left. That one of the most important, most intensely expressive composers of the twentieth century or indeed any other still languishes unperformed reflects poorly on all concerned. Whatever the shortcomings of this performance, Jurowski’s enthusiasm could not be doubted, both when he held the score up for applause at the end and when his spoken introduction helped prepare the audience beforehand. There was much to admire: this was highly dramatic Webern, almost as if communicating via a serial version of Baroque Affekt. Pieter Schoeman’s violin solos were especially well judged, sweetly Romantic, even hyper-Romantic, just as Webern’s music demands. However, the LPO’s performance suffered from a few loose ends, including one especially noticeable false entry. Moreover, this was a perhaps surprisingly pointillistic, or indeed intervallic, performance, at least earlier on; sometimes one longed for Jurowski and his players to join up the dots more audibly. It was closer, say, to the Boulez of his first, Sony Webern than to the later recordings on Deutsche Grammophon, though without the pinpoint accuracy. That said, one nevertheless emerged, especially from the later variations, with a proper sense of ‘late Webern’, that is, of straining towards larger, more extended forms. And Jurowski’s commitment was something to treasure in itself.

 

Berg’s Lulu-Suite immediately sounded more fluid in conception, as if heard in the opera house. The first movement was a little on the fast side, with the effect of somewhat skating over the admittedly beautiful surfaces; at least, if fast, it was not harried. Moreover, if weight had been lacking earlier on, there was an emotional payoff at the opening of the ‘Hymn’ that marks that movement’s conclusion. Dance rhythms were etched sharply, though not didactically. A tighter hand on the formal reins might, however, have put paid to nagging suspicions of sprawl, however wonderful it may be to luxuriate in Berg’s sonic tapestry. (One certainly never harbours such doubts with Boulez or Abbado.) There was excellent saxophone playing to be relished from Martin Robertson. The second movement was altogether tauter, more focused; it really packed quite a punch. Tempi, including transitions between them, were very well judged, simply sounding ‘right’. Barbara Hannigan arrived on stage for the ‘Lied der Lulu’, very much dressed for the role. Indeed, she offered a more ‘acted’ performance than I have hitherto encountered in the Suite, her use of the text very much bound to her visual expression. There was just the right degree of lilt to her performance, as there was to that of the LPO. High notes hit the spot in every sense, and coloratura told dramatically as well as musically. One longed to see her in the entire role. Jurowski balanced his forces and shaped the musical argument well. Berg’s extraordinary cityscape was relished at the opening of the fourth movement, almost as if this were Petrushka, albeit ‘Petrushka im Bauhaus’, with liberally applied sleaze. It was not all dramatic action without a stage though; variation form was audibly communicated throughout. The ending was somewhat abrupt, though. Grim foreboding characterised the closing ‘Adagio’; this was undoubtedly a different world, that of Whitechapel. The darkness of tragedy unfolded, though so eventually did the warmth of that reconciliation the young Boulez found so suspicious in Berg’s later work. Jurowski undoubtedly dug deeper here than in the first movement, and with excellent results; there was more than enough to make one keen to hear him conduct Berg’s operas in the theatre. Hannigan’s reappearance proved harrowing and yet consoling, like the opera itself.

 

Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta had its moments. The first movement was very good indeed: the build-up potent, emotionally satisfying, with true depth to the LPO strings, expertly guided by Jurowski, their subsiding equally impressive. There was precision, though not always quite enough, in the ensuing ‘Allegro’. Perhaps, though, it was taken a little too fast; at any rate, the performance seemed unable, for whatever reason, to dig deeper, to take the music by the scruff of its neck. Catherine Edwards’s contribution on the piano was, however, excellent. The third movement was nicely alert to the apparent paradox, properly generative, of the clockwork nature to Bartók’s ‘night music’, having one think also of a not entirely dissimilar paradox, or dialectic, with respect to Webern’s ideas of Nature. The finale again seemed too fast to permit the full strength of the strings to shine through, though that may well have been a deliberate ‘lightness’ on Jurowski’s part. There was nothing especially wrong with it, but again, the music seemed skated over at times, almost balletic. A strangely excessive holding back of tempo just before the end caused confusion, seemingly catching the orchestra unawares.

 

Martinů continues to have his cheerleaders, and this Double Concerto certainly did not find him at his worst; by the same token, it hardly benefited from being performed in the same concert as Webern, Berg, and Bartók. Jurowski and the LPO nevertheless gave the concerto as convincing an account as conceivable; for one thing, it sounded more thoroughly rehearsed than the Bartók and Webern works. Rhythms in the first movement were ominously generative. Stravinskian motor-rhythms were relished, making one long to hear these musicians in the ‘real thing’, for instance the Symphony in Three Movements. Neo-classical – or better, neo-Baroque – form was sharply delineated, the implicit violence of such playing with time rendered explicit. Edwards again proved excellent in the slow movement. Jurowski could not dispel my doubts regarding the apparent emptiness at the heart of the composer’s note-spinning, though he did a good job in trying. It seems that Martinů’s music is attempting to depict turbulence from without rather than actually being turbulent; that, however, is not the performers’ fault. Again, rhythmic command was excellent in the finale. I wish I could have felt more enthusiastic about the music itself, which, despite its apparent ‘excitement’, is little more than derivative. Some Hindemith (the Nobilissima visione Suite?) or perhaps Honegger’s Second Symphony might ultimately have worked better, despite the outstanding performance and the second-half Paul Sacher connection.

Julietta, English National Opera, 17 September 2012

(sung in English)

Coliseum

Julietta – Julia Sporsén
Michel – Peter Hoare
Clerk in the Bureau of Dreams – Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts
Man in a Helmet/Seller of Memories/Convict – Andrew Shore
Man at Window/Waiter/Beggar – Henry Waddington
Little Arab/First Gentleman/Bell Boy – Emilie Renard
Old Arab/Grandfather/Old Sailor – Gwynne Howell
Birdseller/Fortune Teller/Old Woman – Susan Bickley
Fishmonger/ Grandmother – Valerie Reid
Young Sailor – Anthony Gregory
Second Gentleman – Clare Presland
Third Gentleman – Samantha Price

Richard Jones (director)

Antony McDonald (designs)
Ricardo Pardo (associate set designs)
Matthew Richardson (lighting)
Philippe Giraudeau (choreography)

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Martin Fitzpatrick)

Orchestra of the English National Opera
Edward Gardner (conductor)
 

Images: Richard Hubert Smith
The Chorus

Julietta (or Snář, ‘The Dream-Book’) was based by Bohuslav Martinů on Georges Neveux’s play Juliette, ou La clé des songes. An initial French setting was discarded in favour of Czech, though this being ENO, the opera was of course performed in English, David Pountney providing a translation, which on several occasions quite mystifyingly confused singular and plural pronouns. (Julietta has been performed before at the Coliseum, the first English production having been given by the New Opera Company in association with ENO, conducted by Charles Mackerras.)  Michel, a Parisian bookseller, is searching for Julietta, her voice having attracted him since his previous visit three years before to the coastal town in which the action takes place. It quickly becomes clear to him and us that none of the townsfolk has a memory extending beyond a few minutes; Michel’s ability to remember sets him above them. A contrast is constructed between Julietta’s world of fantasy – she wants to hear of a past that never happened, in which she and Michel were lovers – and Michel’s world of reality. Having shot her upon her flight from a forest meeting, Michel is advised at the ‘Central Office of Dreams’ (!) that he has been dreaming and resolves to escape. However, hearing Julietta’s voice, he follows what seems to have been the route of other dreamers he has met at the office and return to her.  The opening setting returns, in contrast to the end of Neveux’s play – and the original French version – in which Michel remained uncertain as to whether to return to the world of dreams.

 

Michel (Peter Hoare)

 

That, I am afraid, makes the opera sound considerably more interesting than it is. Surrealism dates, of course, and tends to lend itself best to something snappier: a song, perhaps, or even a song-cycle, something more filmic, or a visual artwork (if ‘snappy’ may be stretched that far). This three-act opera dragged, the composer’s attempts at soaring lyricism remaining stubbornly earthbound. That is doubtless partly a matter of the subject matter: it is difficult to care about such ‘characters’ and their wearying silliness. However, whatever Martinů’s devotees may protest, I think it is also a matter of  the composer’s music itself. There is a great deal of his music I have not heard, an important proviso, yet everything I have has seemed similarly anonymous, its manifold derivations failing to cohere into a greater whole. What sounds most interesting, or rather least uninteresting, here are the passages that sound a little like (very) watered-down Janáček. Attempts to signal (relative) modernity by parading hand-me-downs from Stravinsky and Prokofiev fall flat. There is certainly compositional craft in the orchestration, and interest in the considerable use to which the piano is put, but so what, if there is nothing to say? To complain about an artwork being derivative is doubtless indicative of a post-Romantic world-view; well, so much the better for (post-)Romanticism.

 

Michel and Julietta (Julia Sporsén)

The music seemed well performed. If there were times when I could imagine Edward Gardner having exerted a tighter grip on proceedings, his direction was alert enough, though the orchestra sounded a little tired during the third act. Julia Sporsén proved as radiant as one could have any right to expect as Julietta, even if it were difficult not to wish that she were singing Janáček or something else more worthwhile. Peter Hoare did his best with what must be the tiring role of Michel, imparting as much credibility as the work would permit. The rest of the cast all performed creditably, often more than that. Susan Bickley offering luxury casting in the small roles of birdseller, fortune teller, and old woman, Andrew Shore likewise in three small roles, perhaps most notably the seller of memories who tries to convince Julietta and Michel that they holidayed together in Spain. I was especially impressed by Anthony Gregory’s lyrical tenor as the Young Sailor, who asks Michel for Julietta’s shawl – here, it seemed, more of a scarf: whether staging or translation erred, I cannot say – so as to compete with his elder colleague. Again, I hope I shall hear him more gainfully employed elsewhere.

 

The work in its general surrealist plotline might have been written to play to Richard Jones’s strengths. The designs (Antony McDonald and Ricardo Pardo) were arresting, deriving from imaginative use of a giant accordion, whose music we hear at the opening. Yet in the absence of anything to care about, we were left, hardly surprisingly, with a series of stylish images. First seen in Paris ten years ago, Jones’s production has now made it to London. Let us hope that he and a talented cast will next be offered something more substantial to which to apply themselves. There is a host of works that languish unperformed or under-performed; Martinů has had his chance.

 

Martinů - Mirandolina, Garsington Opera, 28 June 2009

Garsington Hall, Oxfordshire

Mirandolina – Juanita Lascarro
Ortensia – Mary Hegarty
Deianira – Jean Rigby
Fabrizio – Daniel Norman
The Count of Albafiorita – Mark Wilde
The Cavaliere of Ripafratta – Geoffrey Dolton
The Marquess of Forlimpopoli – Andrew Slater
Servant of the Cavaliere – Stuart Haycock

Martin Duncan (director)
Francis O’Connor (designs)
Steve Elias (choreography)
Bruno Poet (lighting)

Garsington Opera Orchestra
Martin André (conductor)

This was an enjoyable evening. Well performed and gloriously produced, Bohuslav’s Martinů’s final opera, Mirandolina, is receiving its first British production, at Garsington. The story, derived from Carlo Goldoni’s La locandiera, has the innkeeper Mirandolina run rings around her suitors, a count and marquess and convert the absurd misogynist, the Cavaliere of Ripafratta, into a lovesick madman, before rejecting all three for her servant, Fabrizio. One might perhaps have expected a company with so impressive a record in staging Haydn’s operas – seven to date, though sadly nothing since the revival of Il mondo della luna in 2000 – to have marked the bicentenary of that composer’s death; one might not have been surprised to see Handel, perhaps even Purcell or Mendelssohn, have a look in. But Garsington has shown enterprise in honouring a less-celebrated anniversary, Martinů having died fifty years ago this year. In many respects, this must be applauded, although I must register two fundamental reservations. However, let us try to stick with applause for the moment.

Martin Duncan’s production seeks no hidden depths in the work, for there clearly are none, but is very good fun. The individual and ensemble direction of the cast is an object lesson in such matters. Insofar as would seem humanly possible, the characters are given their own life. Their actions, reactions, and interactions are keenly observed –though the libretto, derived by the composer himself, is almost certainly of more help here than the score. Steve Elias’s choreography is a great boon in this respect, providing moments of slapstick ensemble movement, not least with the two actress ‘ladies’, Ortensia and Deianira, which could only work if executed as well as here. Greater joy still is provided by Francis O’Connor’s designs. Mirandolina’s inn is presented in a riot of (neo?-)Fauvist colour, which wittingly or unwittingly reminds one that Martinů has much more in common with a vein of twentieth-century neo-classical music considerably earlier than anything one might consider characteristic of the 1950s, when the operas was written; more of that anon. And O’Connor’s costumes, beautifully designed, amuse and wryly evoke a post-Great War perspective upon the eighteenth century and commedia dell’arte: the celebrated first production of Pulcinella on steroids.

Musically, there was much to impress too. Martin André led a tight, rhythmically alert reading, full of bright, primary colours, brought into being by fine playing from all sections of the Garsington Opera Orchestra. One only really noticed a slight untidiness of ensemble at the opening of the third act because it was so uncharacteristic. (I wish I could say that the audience noticed the opening of the act, let alone the untidiness, but the appallingly ill-mannered conversation continued for only a little less long than it had into the overture.) Martinů’s almost bewildering cornucopia of styles, which yet remain severely limited – I am tempted to say stunted – in expressive scope, was unerringly captured by these splendid musicians. In the title role, Juanita Lascarro struck me as ideal: alluring in every respect. She handled her tricky coloratura with ease and could certainly act – partly, of course, a tribute to her direction. Her noble suitors made the most of their comic opportunities, and then some. (It did cross my mind that, given their camp demeanour, the Count and Marquess might have been better off with each other.) Perhaps their performances, considered in purely musical terms, were less impressive, yet, given the limited rewards offered by the score, they were probably wise to concentrate upon other matters. Daniel Norman made a properly likeable Fabrizio, who deserved to emerge victorious. Mary Hegarty and Jean Rigby’s characters seemed to me dramatically redundant but they once again relished the opportunity for humour, acting quite brilliantly.

And yet... As the reader will have observed, the ‘fundamental reservation’ to which I referred has stubbornly persisted in seeping through, so I ought now to state it explicitly. The music and indeed the work as a whole are barely worth the effort. Acting for the defence, Jan Smaczny writes, in his programme note, ‘From the late 1920s, his musical style was always recognisable ... by the 1950s his musical language, while by no means eschewing harsher dissonance, is possessed of a warm tonal palette which nevertheless manages to avoid banality.’ I hate to seem curmudgeonly, but I cannot recall a single instance in which the tonal palette, which seemed to me bright rather than warm, rose above banality. Nor could I recognise a single instance of ‘recognisable’ style; rather, we heard a melange of the most banal music of Les Six, Stravinsky minus the crucial acerbity, and, in the third act, the mildest hint that the composer was Czech. It is difficult to discern whether there was any attempt at musical characterisation; at any rate, none really shone through. Nor, for the most part, did the music even sound related to the action. With a few exceptions, one could probably have rearranged the music of different passages to different words and no one would have been any the wiser. This was not a point-making dissociation of words and text but mere note-spinning that would have made a Telemann blush. For the music is certainly of no more interest than that of those run-of-the-mill eighteenth-century composers, most considerably less interesting even than Telemann, who set Goldoni in the first instance. Few of us are interested in them, though the odd enthusiast exists; Martinů’s fate, again despite a contemporary resurgence of interest from certain quarters, should probably be about the same. It is difficult to begrudge a work a British premiere. Now, however, as I recall thinking about Korngold’s Das Wunder der Heliane, whose bloated pretention is at least quite lacking in the relentlessly slight Mirandolina, it would be kinder to let it rest in peace.

None of this is helped by Jeremy Sams’s translation. Such was the skill of the cast that one could hear every word, rendering the surtitles superfluous; surely, however, the titles themselves should have rendered translation superfluous. Nevertheless, translation we had to endure. Its relentless colloquialism and playing for laughs – always the least likely way to amuse – grate almost beyond endurance. I could discern no attempt at rendering or re-creating Goldoni’s style. Here is an example: ‘I’m getting soup, and a sandwich that someone’s sat on, a smelly sandwich that someone’s sat on.’ Despite the delights of the production, I began to wonder at this point what on earth I was doing listening to such words and such a non-entity of a score. Shouts of ‘Bastard!’ jar not because they are somehow transgressive – your average three-year-old will have heard ‘worse’ – and not only because they simply sound silly, attention-seeking in what is supposedly an eighteenth-century context; they are also unmusical, failing to heed the composer’s notes.

The wonder, then, is that the evening remained as enjoyable as it did. For that impressive achievement, great thanks should go to the performers, the production team, and to Garsington Opera itself. But the company is wisely returning to Figaro (alongside Rossini’s Armida and Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream) next year. As the Leipzig Gewandhaus has it, quoting Seneca: Res severa est verum gaudium (‘True joy is a serious thing’).