OSJ/Lubbock - Handel: Messiah, 10 December 2015

St John’s, Smith Square

Nardus Williams (soprano)

Eleanor Edmonds (mezzo-soprano)
Chris Turner (tenor)
Morgan Pearse (bass)

OSJ Voices (chorus master: Jeremy Jackman)

Orchestra of St John’s

John Lubbock (conductor)

 

I have heard a good deal of moaning about Messiah performances this year: more, I have to say, from performers than from audiences. Perhaps it does become a little tedious for some; there are certainly alternatives (or why not supplementary works?) well worth exploring. Yet, for whatever this is worth, there generally seems to be an audience for a performance, of whatever ilk. Moreover, whilst I should love the opportunity to hear other Handel oratorios in non-‘period’ performances, they are few and far between. For those of us who admire Handel and prefer his music to be treated as music rather than pseudo-archaeology, we are not exactly spoilt for choice during the rest of the year.

 

There was, for me at least, a little too much that betrayed ‘period’ influence here, more with respect to the orchestra than anything else. It was not so much that the instruments were compelled to play in evidence-free ‘period style’, or what passes for that, as that the strings of the tiny orchestra (3.2.2.2.1) rarely played out as it might have done, a familiar tale for those of us wearily accustomed to enduring so-called ‘historically-informed performances’ on modern instruments. The perversity of having modern instruments and yet being afraid to use them is something I shall never understand, save of course for fear of the fury Adorno so memorably outlined in his essay on Bach, warning, alas, largely unheeded of the ‘sectarian’ nature of Historismus. One could hardly avoid the suspicion, he argued, that the sole concern of Bach’s ‘devotees’ (Liebhaber) was to ensure that ‘no inauthentic dynamics, no modifications of tempo, no excessively large choirs and orchestra’ should be employed. Palpable was the potential fury, ‘lest any more humane impulse’ should become audible. As he pointed out earlier in his essay, the (presumed) ‘absolute’ sound of the eighteenth century – not at all, I might add, an eighteenth-century concept but rather a distorted product of nineteenth-century conceptions of ‘absolute music’ – was already in the early 1950s being falsely elevated to an exclusivist end in itself. Many do not even notice any more, if indeed they ever did.

 

And so, whilst there were moments in which the orchestra roused itself to play thrillingly, it often sounded subdued, in spite of generally sensible – and varied – tempi being adopted by John Lubbock. (One exception, was a bizarrely fast ‘Surely He hath borne our griefs’, quite at odds with the words – and music.) The trumpet playing (Nick Thompson and Simon Gabriel), however, was excellent, as was Howard Moody’s organ continuo: rather too hyperactive for my taste – ‘All they that see Him laugh Him to scorn’ a case in point – but in some respects, making up for the timidity of the string playing. A few more desks and a little more courage in the fight against ‘authenticity’ would have been welcome, even in so forgiving an acoustic as that of St John’s, Smith Square.

 

Four young singers all had something creditable to offer. There was a great deal of ornamentation to be heard, very much the fashion nowadays; I have nothing against it in principle, but wonder whether we might hear more of the ‘original’ prior to its ornamentation. Nardus Williams’s clear, bright soprano was not always so full-toned as one might have hoped for, but I suspect that it will develop further in that direction. Her singing was in any case disarmingly sincere, as indeed was that of all of the soloists. Eleanor Edmonds was at her best in ‘He was despised’; there, one might almost have taken her relative darkness of tone for that of a contralto. I liked also the real defiance, which I am tempted to call ‘operatic’, in the final ‘like a refiner’s fire’ of ‘But who may abide the day of his coming’. Chris Turner also adopted a dramatic mode of performance as tenor: mostly welcome, save for a too-frequent ‘sob’ in the voice, which veered towards sentimentality. To my ears, Morgan Pearse was the pick of the bunch. His had all the drama of any of the other performances, but with a more varied palette and a deeper understanding – and communication – of the words and their implications. I had no quibbles at all with his truly excellent performance. A decent sized chorus proved both agile and (relatively) weighty, equally adept in homophonic and contrapuntal music. If, on occasion, I thought Lubbock had OSJ Voices sing too fast and/or too blithely, that was not the fault of the chorus itself, clearly well-trained by Jeremy Jackman.

Further performances will be given on 19^th (Dorchester Abbey), 20^th (SJE Arts, Oxford), and 21^st December (Kings Place). Those on 20^th and 21^st are advertised as using Lubbock’s ‘new reorchestration for flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoon, cello, bass, trumpets, timpani, and organ’. That sounds intriguing: definitely worth a hearing, I suspect. Cuts were made – there is, in any case, no definitive ‘version’ – but nothing too grievous.

La Vie parisienne, Royal College of Music, 29 June 2013

Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music

Bobinet – Luke D Williams

Gardefeu – Peter Kirk
Métella – Hannah Sandison
Gontran – Peter Aisher
Antoine – Mark Nathan
Lady Ellington – Rosemary Braddy
Lord Ellington – Morgan Pearse
Brazilian – Vasili Karpiak
Urbain – David Hansford
Frick – Matt R J Ward
Gabrielle – Filipa van Eck
Leonie – Héloïse Derache
Louise – Sinead O’Kelly
Clara – Marie Jaermann

Jo Davies (director)

Bob Dailey (designs)
Mark Doubleday (lighting)
Kay Shepherd (choreography)

Royal College of Music Opera Chorus and Orchestra

Michael Rosewell (conductor) 

Our conservatories have offered very different end-of-year shows. I was quite keen to see the Guildhall’s Owen Wingrave, not least since I have never seen the opera, and wanted to know whether it was quite as bad, Gloriana-bad, as (almost) everyone says it is. Alas, the diary did not permit. The Royal Academy, however, offered a splendid double-bill of Dido and Aeneas and The Lighthouse. For something entirely different, the Royal College put on Offenbach’s La Vie parisienne, in an ‘English version by Alistair Beaton, by arrangement with D’Oyly Carte Opera Trust Ltd’. My heart sank a little at the mention of D’Oyly Carte, fearing that we might be in for something akin to the dread Gilbert and Sullivan. (I should almost rather hear Donizetti!) However, Beaton’s version proved relatively resistant to such temptation; more to the point, the performers ensured a duly sparkling performance. Offenbach might not be musical champagne, but an unpretentious prosecco – chilled, if admittedly devoid of much in the way of flavour, let alone complexity – will sometimes do better than an overpriced version of the ‘real thing’. (Not that my mind might yet again be wandering back towards the tedium of Gloriana...!)

 

The tradition of giving Offenbach’s opéras bouffes in English is venerable, extending back to the 1872 British premiere at the Holborn Theatre, again in an adaptation. There was even a film version made, in both French and English, in 1936. Without feeling especially strongly about the matter, I slightly missed the sound of the French language; however, I suspect that, given a cast of young, mostly Anglophone singers, the immediacy gained, not least in the spoken sections, was compensation enough. (The preponderance of dialogue reflects the work’s origins as a piece for the Palais-Royal, as opposed to Offenbach’s accustomed, so-aptly-named Théâtre de la Gaîté.) There is, after all, nothing to prevent one from travelling for a little of the vie parisienne oneself. Beaton made a virtue out of translation by having the original Swedish noble couple, the Baron and Baroness de Gondremarck, become Lord and Lady Ellington, thereby permitting jokes about the English abroad, their views of ‘foreigners’, and so forth.  Offenbach had already reduced the original five acts to four; here we saw a three-act version, which, if occasionally it lost something in terms of motivation, ensured that the piece did not outstay its warm welcome.

 

Every element of Jo Davies’s production was a joy. It did not seek depth or impose it where there was none – though that can on occasion work – but concentrated on sharp direction of the performers against a backdrop of views, or suggested, views of Paris. Bo Bailey’s designs, from what seemed to be the Gare d’Orsay of the first act, to the Moulin Rouge and Eiffel Tower of the last. Kay Shepherd’s choreography contributed greatly to the tightness of overall effect, whilst the coordination between stage direction and choral singing – a crack team, this! – really had to be seen and heard to be believed. The chorus not only sang, as my companion remarked, as if with one voice; it moved and danced with one, too – except, of course, when everyone had to be doing his own thing, in which case that was equally well accomplished.

 

Michael Rosewell seemed in his element conducting the excellent RCM Opera Orchestra. The last thing one would want here is even a shred of sentimentality; there was none to be discerned. Rather, the tightness of ensemble on stage was mirrored, doubtless to a good extent engendered, by that in the pit. Peter Kirk made an affecting, but not too affecting, Gardefeu; one believed just enough that he might have something equating to love for Métella, but equally well in his dandyism. (The costumes certainly helped!) Hannah Sandison’s character was less well-formed as Métella, but she did not come well out of the rehashing of the work; Sandison certainly sang well enough though. Rosemary Braddy and Morgan Pearse both shone in their different ways as the English noble couple: the former dignified and lovely of voice, the latter not only impressive in his baritone but adept at the comic timing of sending himself up. Filipa van Eck increasingly stole the show as the glovemaker, Gabrielle, whether in her assumed guise as Austrian military widow – cue a good number of Alpine jokes – or as the naval wife of Bobinet’s assumed admiralty (another fine performance, by Luke D Williams). Van Eck’s vocal performance was equally impressive: definitely one to watch. Vasili Karpiak proved a scene-stealing Brazilian – outrageous in every sense. But there were no weak links, and the ensemble really was the thing. It will soon be time for me to return to Wagner, in London (at the Proms), Seattle, and Salzburg; Offenbach proved quite an amuse-gueule.

Le nozze di Figaro, Royal College of Music, 30 June 2012

Susanna (Filipa van Eck) and Figaro
(Bradley Travis)

Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music

Count Almaviva – Morgan Pearse
Countess – Abigail Mitchell
Susanna – Filipa van Eck
Figaro – Bradley Travis
Cherubino – Emilie Renard
Marcellina – Hanna Sandison
Bartolo – Pnini Grubner
Basilio – Vasili Karpiak
Don Curzio – Simon Gilkes
Barbarina – Anna Anandarajah
Antonio – Bragi Jonssón
Bridesmaids – Harriet Jones, Stephanie Jennings-Adams

Jean-Claude Auvray (director)
Ruari Murchison (designs)
Mark Doubleday (lighting)
Terry John Bates (choreography)

Royal College of Music Opera Orchestra and Chorus
Michael Rosewell (conductor)

Jean-Claude Auvray’s production of The Marriage of Figaro for the Royal College of Music would doubtless generally be described as ‘traditional’, indeed traditional with a vengeance. Costumes are eighteenth-century, wigs, breeches and all; modest sets evoke the settings one would expect. There is nothing especially wrong with that; indeed, there is a great deal to be said for an eighteenth-century Figaro, unless one is to go in for the dangerous yet extraordinarily successful wholesale reimagining of Claus Guth’s Salzburg production. Half-hearted ‘updatings’ tend to miss out the intricate drama of social order and its upheaval without putting anything in its place. (David McVicar’s irritating Covent Garden production tries to mask the pointless vacuity of its updating to the Restoration period – why? it never even begins to explain – by inventing a huge amount of unnecessary stage ‘business’, most unforgivably, almost deafeningly, during the Overture.) The droit de seigneur is of course an exaggeration, to put it mildly, even when dealing with Spain, but it rarely makes any sense translated, unless real work is put in to render a new context meaningful.

Count Almaviva (Morgan Pearse)  et al.

Susanna and Don Basilio (Vasili Karpiak)

And yet, Auvray’s production seems uninterested in anything but costume and a little gentle ‘humour’,
unaccountably deemed sidesplitting by sections of the audience, but then the threshold for such things in opera houses seems to grow lower almost daily. Of social tension there is not a glimmer. It is all just an opportunity to look pretty, a grievous underselling of Mozart and Da Ponte, as if they were purveyors of crowd-pleasing ‘costume drama’. In such a context, the lengthy period of silence at the beginning of the fourth act, whilst Barbarina finds her bearings, seems quite out of place. Bizarrely – lest we forget? – a major component of the set is a screen that opened and closed displaying, in Mozart’s writing, the words Le nozze di Figaro. It is difficult to imagine anyone would have thought these were designs for Lulu or Donnerstag aus Licht. I can certainly appreciate the use in a music college opera school of an opportunity for young singers to deal with the paraphernalia of a ‘traditional’ production – actually, I think it is nothing of the sort: Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s Figaro exhibited plenty of tension between social orders – but it is a pity that the ‘period’ setting could not on this occasion permit of something approaching an idea or two. Perhaps, nevertheless, the lessons learned will at some point be put to good use in Novosibirsk or Kettering, or wherever else it is that other people still direct Figaro in such a manner.

Act III Finale

Cherubino (Emilie Renard)

The principal object, however, of such performances is to permit young singers to perform – and in major as well as ‘minor’ roles. I think I am best passing over as quickly as possible the evening’s Countess, save to say that I can only assume her to have been ill. Other than her and a rather dull-voiced Bartolo, there was a great deal to enjoy vocally, especially when led to think how these voices might develop within but a few years. I was particularly taken, as was my companion, with Emilie Renard’s Cherubino, in many respects offering as complete an assumption of the role as one would expect on a ‘major’ stage. The tricky business of convincingly behaving – not just dressing – for a trouser role, still more so when it involves the character dressing as a girl, was navigated with aplomb, the requisite slight but winning awkwardness surely indicative of future success as an Octavian. Otherwise, Bradley Travis and Filipa van Eck were perhaps the pick of the bunch, with bright, fresh, and especially in Travis’s case, often moving portrayals of Figaro and Susanna. Both can act; both can sing; both can combine the two. Figaro’s often overlooked fourth-act aria was an especial joy. Morgan Pearse’s Count offered impressive competition to his valet, always well sung, with a depth and focus of tone unusual amongst singers of his age. Vasili Karpiak’s Basilio was an intelligent, often finely-drawn, portrayal, considerably more subtle than the caricatures one often encounters. Bragi Jonssón's Antonio made a fine impression in terms of voice and stagecraft. Hannah Sandison’s brightly-sung Marcellina also merits special mention. As ever, it was a pity that she lost her fourth-act aria. (Just what is it that conductors and/or directors have against it?) Even the two bridesmaids, Harriet Jones and Stephanie Jennings-Adams, brought a little vocal sparkle to their tiny roles. The Italian language was generally handled well, though not all of the cast have yet acquired the ability to make the language work dramatically in secco recitatives. (To be fair, one might say the same of a good few rather more celebrated singers too.)

Act II Finale

Marcellina (Hannah Sandison)

Bar the odd mishap – most unfortunately in ‘Non so più’ – the Royal College of Music Opera Orchestra played very well indeed, full of live, vigour, and magic. Hearing a reasonably-sized band – eight first violins downwards – for the size of the theatre was a rare treat; far too often one ends up with an orchestra of similar size in the likes of the Royal Opera House, where it simply sounds distant and underpowered. Here, in the RCM’s wonderful Britten Theatre, we benefited from true immediacy and, at times, weight of sound. Michael Rosewell for the most part kept the action moving well enough, not without doses of the the unduly hard-driven yet more often than not without excessive haste. However, his reading suffered notably from apparent inability, or at least unwillingness, to shape the acts as convincing wholes; numbers, including recitatives, tended simply to come to an end, their successors following on after unnecessary pauses. (That only encouraged an often poorly-behaved, chattering audience to applaud – not least during an unfortunate pause within the second-act finale.) There were, moreover, a few too many instances of disconnection between stage and pit, which might have been better covered from the latter.