Le nozze di Figaro, English National Opera, 7 February 2025

Coliseum

Count Almaviva – Cody Quattlebaum
Countess Almaviva – Nardus Williams
Figaro – David Ireland
Susanna – Mary Bevan
Cherubino – Hanna Hipp
Marcellina – Rebecca Evans
Dr Bartolo – Neal Davies
Don Basilio, Don Curzio – Hubert Francis
Antonio – Trevor Eliot Bowes
Barbarina – Ava Dodd
Bridesmaids – Claire Mitcher, Sophie Goldrick

Director – Joe Hill-Gibbons
Set designs – Johannes Schütz
Costumes – Astrid Klein
Lighting – Matthew Richardson

Associate director, movement – Jenny Ogilivie  

Chorus (chorus director: Matthew Quinn) and Orchestra of English National Opera

Ainārs Rubikis (conductor)

Images: copyright Zoe Martin

Joe Hill-Gibbons’s production of The Marriage of Figaro opened briefly at the Coliseum in 2020, only for Covid to put a stop to it. Five years have passed before it has had another opportunity. I wish I could say it had been worth the wait. Hill-Gibbons claims, in the programme, that his ‘primary job was to deliver Figaro in all its joy, power and complexity, rather than remake it for today’. Judged by his own criterion, I am afraid this can only be accounted a failure, though I am not sure he managed to ‘remake it for today’ either, whatever that may mean. 

Put simply, the production, as opposed to musicians’ performances, offered no sense of: who these people were; how they might relate to one another; why they might be doing what they were doing; and, quite often, even of what they were doing. In the latter case, the fourth act’s ‘complexity’ was entirely absent, yet still managed to confuse. The audience managed nonetheless to destroy any sense of, well, anything by laughing when the Count begged for forgiveness. Everything was flattened. There was no sense of social hierarchy, and certainly no sense of social or political, let alone religious, meaning. It was perhaps the most singularly boring Figaro I have seen: a singularly perverse achievement. My companion indeed described it as ‘almost unbearable’, like a sitcom, albeit without the dramatic depth or content. 

Plain to a fault, Johannes Schütz’s white set suggested a hotel room corridor slightly abstracted, with occasional views of something, though very little, downstairs. That was it, really, not only for the set design but for any sort of dramatic concept. To be fair, Astrid Klein’s costumes, well designed in themselves, seemed to represent an attempt to offer a sense of updated commedia dell’arte. All well and good, although Figaro, whether as play or opera, is not The Barber of Seville, and Hill-Gibbons is certainly not Ruth Berghaus. In both cases, there was something rather dated and somewhat ‘German provincial’ to the ‘look’, without that dated quality seeming to be the point. Memories of Michael Grandage’s Duty Free staging for Glyndebourne surfaced. Cherubino’s strange appearance made nonsense of his character. Any mezzo worth her salt would usually be able to portray him as an adolescent. Here, poor Hanna Hipp, who sang and, within the constraints imposed upon her, acted very well, was left looking no more like a page boy or an army officer than if she had worn a dress all along. 

Jeremy Sams’s English translation proved variable, presumably deliberately—and often deliberately wordy. Perhaps some, comatose since c.1955, found Dr Bartolo repeatedly singing ‘that bastard Figaro’ edgy. For me, it was simply out of place, whether with respect to the work or other parts of the translation. In some cases, it remained reasonably faithful, whilst in others, it went beyond paraphrase: all the while a little too keen to attract attention. At least, though, there was an intelligent mind behind it, which, if one must have translation at all, is something. 

Conductor Ainārs Rubikis was clearly going to have his work cut out to make anything much of the musical drama. Hamstrung as he was, that he did so intermittently was again something. I should be interested to hear what he might make of this or another Mozart opera in a different context. Rubikis and the ENO Orchestra were often at their best when bigger boned, conjuring a sense of coherent drama entirely lacking onstage. There were some fine intimate moments too. What lay in between was sometimes more of a problem, as was proportionality of tempo, the sections of, say, the second-act finale sitting oddly with another. Alas, the musicodramatic life and form of the recognition sextet, key to the entire third act (at least), also fell flat. But then so did everything else about it, some people in strange outfits simply standing nowhere in particular, singing to no one in particular about nothing in particular. There was little or nothing after all, to recognise. Secco recitatives were sometimes a little heavy, but that was more a matter of having to deal with the English translation than anything else. I think the fashionable ‘Moberly-Raeburn’ reordering of the third act may have been used; yet, truth be told, even on the morning after, I cannot quite remember, even on the morning after—which may indicate something about how inert the drama turned out to be. ‘Standard’ excisions were certainly made from the fourth act. They would doubtless have been well sung; for once, keen as I was for it all to end, I welcomed them. Music long since having been reduced to ‘incidental’ status, a finely crafted libretto likewise, there was little to stay awake for.

Fortunately, there was some good singing, though it was more difficult to tell than would usually be the case. In addition to Hipp, the female cast acquitted themselves especially well, Nardus Williams’s Countess somehow maintaining presence, dignity, and well-spun line throughout. Mary Bevan offered a lively Susanna, though the production militated against her becoming the truly animating presence she might have been. ‘Deh vieni’ gave a powerful sense of what we lost. Rebecca Evans’s Marcellina, like Neal Davies’s Bartolo, were keenly observed and equally finely sung. David Ireland’s Figaro deserved better. He made the best of a poor hand, his way with the libretto, even in translation, second to none, converting it with an art concealing art into an excellent performance. The ‘smaller’ roles were all well taken. Cody Quattlebaum’s Count, though, was a decidedly odd portrayal: doubtless in good part the production, which seemingly had no idea what to do with the character (!), but strange vowels and intermittent wooliness of tone were also a problem. Perhaps, not unreasonably, he would have been more comfortable singing it in Italian. 

Ultimately, then, this seemed designed to be a Marriage of Figaro for people who do not like or understand the opera. It is difficult to imagine such people exist, but there they were, chattering, guffawing, and, I kid you not, noisily guzzling popcorn (now on sale at the bar, so as also to provide a miserable olfactory auditorium ‘experience’). It was less Twelfth Night than Terry and June without the characterisation or the drama—although, to be fair, even the latter might have had its moments compared to this. I cannot have been unusual among opera lovers in having Figaro as one of the first operas I grew to know and love. Had this been my first encounter, I fear I might not have pursued work or genre further. 

I shall conclude with words from an interview with assistant/movement director Jennie Ogilvie, supplier of the tediously silly dancing long mandatory for any such production: ‘I find it frustrating when people need everything to make sense in an opera. … we have all been watching music videos for 30, 40 years, which really do not make sense, and yet they are the best way of expressing that bit of music. I wish that we could come to other live forms of music like opera and extend the same permissions.’ Hmmm.

MCO/Uchida - Mozart and Janáček, 1 February 2025

Royal Festival Hall, London, 1.2.2025 (MB)

Mozart: Piano Concerto no.18 in B-flat major, KV 456
Janáček: Mládi for wind sextet
Mozart: Piano Concerto no.21 in C major, KV 467

Mitsuko Uchida (piano, director)
Mahler Chamber Orchestra

Mitsuko Uchida’s series of Mozart piano concertos with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra reaches nos 18 and 21, on this occasion sandwiching an outstanding performance from MCO soloists of Janáček’s Mládi. If KV 456 took a little time to settle – its first movement a little too ‘neutral’ in character – then its later movements and the whole of KV 467 witnessed pianist and orchestra alike on excellent form. 

B-flat major is a funny key. My ears ‘tuned’ by orchestral tuning, I could not help but notice its flatter character. Even beyond that, though, that first movement sounded somewhat subdued. The MCO strings offered more extroverted playing in some tutti passages; there were gains too in the intimacy and the need properly to listen. It was only later on, though, that I really felt the music’s inherent drama, though tempo and balance could not be faulted. A barrage of coughing notwithstanding, the opening of the slow movement suggested the subtle tragedy of a great seria aria, and that sense only increased with its passage. There have doubtless been more overtly Romantic readings, but the MCO’s relative understatement did not undersell; nor did Uchida’s dignified response, voice-leading and harmony already pointing toward Mozart’s later years. Orchestral Furies vied with Orphic pleas, leading to a mesmerising close in which time stood still and once again moved—for it could do no other. In the best sense, that drama hung over a finale that truly smiled – rarest of delights – though sterner moments were equally moving. A slip from Uchida went for little; if anything it enhanced the sense of deeply human music-making. 

It is difficult not to regret a relative lack of concert music from Janáček, though certainly not at the cost of his operas. In any case, Mládi showed us how intimately connected are both ‘sides’ to his output, the music breathing the air of the late operas, instruments assuming the roles of dramatic characters, as if in anticipation of the music theatre of composers such as Birtwistle. As characteristic as it was compelling, a kaleidoscope of emotions was unleashed in the first movement, only to be added to or deepened in its successors. The second emerged as if the composer’s counterpart to that in the preceding piano concerto, its multiplicity of inflections and incitements, moods both shifting and abruptly changing, highly dramatic throughout. As bubbly as they were mysterious, the third and fourth were not only dramatically consequent but blessed by tremendous, unfailingly eloquent wind playing. 

The C major Piano Concerto, KV 467, had the second half to itself. From the off, the orchestra – still on the small side – sounded more energised than at the start of the earlier concerto, as did Uchida’s direction. A larger wind section made its presence felt, as did the commitment of the MCO strings—and of course Mozart’s (natural) trumpets and drums. Phrasing, mood, detail: all came into grater focus. Mozart’s oscillation between major and minor structured an emotionally engaging tonal drama, replete, where called for, with imperious C major ‘public’ grandeur. I assume the cadenza, conceived on a grander scale and inflected with greater modernity than those for the B-flat concerto, was Uchida’s own; at any rate, I did not recognise it. 

In the slow movement, the strings again were at least equal partners, whether in their celebrated pizzicato passages or bowed music with meaningfully varied vibrato. A black and white pearl, one might say, of a movement. The tempo, if a little faster than once might have been the case, felt right. Mozart’s music sang and bewitched, in a performance that seemed to conceive his writing in a single breath. At times, I found the finale just a little hard-driven, at others, it scampered delightfully. Uchida’s collegial music-making – rarely did I think of her as a ‘soloist’ – nonetheless proved throughout a treat.

Lowe/Fisher/Mozartists/Page - Ordonez, Hasse, Mozart, Haydn, and Benda, 29 January 2025

Cadogan Hall

 

Karl von Ordonez: Symphony in G minor, Gm8
Hasse: La Danza: ‘Se tu non vedi’
Mozart: ‘Si mosra la sorte’, KV 209; ‘Con ossequio, con rispetto’, KV 210; ‘Voi avete un cor fedele’, KV 217
Haydn: Il ritorno di Tobia: ‘Quando mi dona un cenno’
Georg Anton Benda: Medea: extract
Haydn: Symphony no.67 in F major

Alexandra Lowe (soprano)

Alessandro Fisher (tenor)

The Mozartists

Ian Page (conductor)

Unable to attend this year's Salzburg Mozartwoche, I caught instead this fascinating concert of music from 1775 by The Mozartists (formerly Classical Opera Company) and their artist director Ian Page, joined by soprano Alexandra Lowe and tenor Alessandro Fisher at London’s Cadogan Hall. Chelsea is not Salzburg, although the site of the Mozarts’ home for a few weeks eleven years earlier on Ebury Street – then ‘Fivefields Row’, now Mozart Terrace – stands less than ten minutes’ walk away. 

It made for an enlightening alternative, though, nowhere more so than in a G minor symphony by the Viennese violinist and composer (both pursuits of his spare time) Karl von Ordonez. The first movement’s material was characterful and consequent; here, unquestionably, was someone who understood symphonic form rather than simply using it by default. Page’s chosen tempo sounded ideal. Work and performance alike showed counterpoint and harmony in excellent balance and interrelationship; one could well imagine the composer playing second violin, as remarked upon by Charles Burney, for Haydn quartets at the home of the British Ambassador a few years earlier. A warmly expressive Andante was not rushed, as is so often the case today. Indeed, it was difficult not to find many of these accomplished performances considerably more sympathetic than those of the ‘period style on modern instruments’ crowd, which have a tendency, not always but often, to offer the worst of both worlds. A duet for two solo violas made for an appealing surprise. The fast – but not too fast – and furious finale was closer to Haydn than Mozart, but certainly not to be reduced to or merely likened to him. The Mozartists’ unshowy rhetoric, properly rooted in Classical style, made a fine case for Ordonez, from whom I should be keen to hear more. Might we even hope one day for one of his two operas, or some sacred music?   

A sequence of arias followed: first, one of two from Hasse’s late cantata La Danza, to a text by Metastasio previously set by Giuseppe Bonno (1744) and, in extended form, Gluck as a one-act opera in 1755. Hasse’s final opera, Il Ruggiero, had a few years earlier (1771) been eclipsed by Mozart’s Ascanio in Alba at the Archduke Ferdinand’s wedding to Maria Beatrice d’Este. It was difficult not to hear some of the younger composer’s influence – yes, even at so tender an age – in this aural glimpse of Hasse’s Venetian retirement. Pastoral, though not generically so, the performance was again stylistically well situated, enabling Lowe’s character, Nice, to step forward from the text even in excerpted form. Her vibrato focused attention on the line rather than obscuring it, the Mozartists proved lively and supportive throughout. Should the aria be a little over-extended for some modern tastes, so much the worse for them; it held my attention throughout and, again, made me keen to hear more. 

The three Mozart arias are naturally better known, if hardly everyday encounters. The first two are tenor insertion arias from May 1775, the destination of ‘Si mostra la sorte’ still unknown. If the Hasse aria had come surprisingly close to Mozart, here was the real thing—and it sounded like it in music whose drama and lyricism were far from confined to Italianate performance of the vocal line, wooden flutes offering balm of their own. ‘Con ossequio, con rispetto,’ for Niccolò Piccinni ‘s L’astratto, fizzed in energetic contrast, again highly operatic in its creation of character. Lowe returned for ‘Voi avete un cor fedele’, written for Baldassare Galuppi’s Le nozze di Dorina, revealing writing that gave a remarkable impression of a greater drama and characterisation at least as striking as anything in the preceding Il re pastore. With splendidly expressive coloratura, this was rightly a performance on the grand scale. Haydn’s ‘Quando mi dona un cenno’ offered a rare, edifying opportunity to hear music from his ‘other’ oratorio, Il ritorno di Tobia and Fisher the chance, beautifully taken, to turn inward to expressivity of a different nature in a sweetly sung performance of striking emotional sincerity and estimable stylistic command.

Georg Anton Benda’s three melodramas are frequently cited in music histories, yet seldom heard in the concert hall. The English-language excerpt from Medea, Benda’s second, opened the second half. Lowe again showed herself a fine actress – I recalled a Pierrot lunaire from 2022 – from the offset: ‘I am still Medea…’. Stillness and horror prior to ‘It is done’ said it all, against a somewhat Gluck-like (for instance, the Don Juan music) musical cauldron. Here was another work I should love to encounter in full in the concert hall. 

Haydn’s received a performance of admirable clarity and purpose, only sometimes lacking a little in warmth. Its minuet was a little on the rushed and acetic sides and perhaps lacking in the harmonic grounding one finds in, say, Antal Doráti, although the lovely surprise (even when one ‘knows’) of the trio’s viola duet, in delightful echo of Ordonez, will surely have warmed many a heart. Similarly delightful was the element of surprise in the first movement’s development section, the exposition having done precisely what the term implies: delineating material and character in duly consequent fashion. ‘Hunting’ elements delighted in a dramatic, energetic account that exuded grace. If I am often sceptical of the value of employing natural horns, here their use brooked no argument. The second movement was likewise familiar—until one listened. Rhetorical flourishes were given their due without exaggeration. Certain characteristics seemed close to late Mozart, though of course it is the other way around. If I have heard performances of stronger ‘line’ in the finale, it brimmed with character, twists and turns generally well traced. Strings, led by Matthew Truscott, used and varied vibrato expressively. Whatever my odd cavil, here was a performance of numerous delights to conclude a concert of many more.

Overall concert and opera tally for 2024

... and the overall tally is as follows. A very Munich top trio:

14 Wagner

12 Mozart

8 Strauss

7 Schoenberg

6 Beethoven

5 Bach, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Schubert

4 Debussy, Ives

3 Handel, Haydn, Mahler, Rimsky-Korsakov, Salieri, Stravinsky

2 Birtwistle, Britten, Bruckner, Dvořák, Fauré, Peter Eötvos, Gluck, Lisa Illean, Ligeti, Liszt, Prokofiev, Puccini, Tchaikovsky, Jörg Widmann, Zemlinsky

1 Julian Anderson, Anon., Grażyna Bacewicz, Sally Beamish, Benjamin, Nicolas Bernier, Judith Bingham, Boismortier, Busoni, Byrd, Bob Chilcott, Clemens non Papa, Chopin, Peter Cornelius, Louis Couperin, François Couperin, Dallapiccola, Peter Maxwell Davies, Théodore Dubois, Dvořák, Johannes Eccard, Elgar, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Beat Furrer, Benjamin Godard, Grisey, GF Haas, Jacobus Händl, Jonathan Harvey, Michael Haydn, Fanny Hensel, Hindemith, Honegger, Toshio Hosokawa, Humperdinck, Janáček, Eberhard Kloke, Lachenmann, Rued Langaard, Lassus, Ligeti, Elisabeth Lutyens, Kurtág, Missy Mazzoli, Cathy Milliken, Mussorgsky, Jacques-Christophe Naudot, Nono, Offenbach, Palestrina, Owain Park, Pärt, Plainchant, Poulenc, Praetorius, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Rameau, Anton Reicha, RaveI, Rossini, Saint-Saens, Smetana. Szymanowski, Vivaldi, Webern, Vito Žuraj

Opera tally for 2024

As for several previous years, I have tallied my opera and concert performances by composer. There are always slightly difficult cases, but in general, I have included as opera something performed as such, i.e. staged, even when the work is not. Hence the Deutsche Oper's St Matthew Passion on Good Friday counts, but the St John Passion the day before in the Thomaskirche does not. One point per composer per  performance; so Il trittico would count as one, as would a lone performance of Gianni Schicchi, though Puccini and Ravel would both receive a point if there were a double-bill of Schicchi with L'Heure espagnole (which there wasn't). The Ring, however, counts as four, as did performances of two Gluck operas in the same evening. Concert performances of opera I have counted as opera, but obviously not as both. When a few opera excerpts by Salieri were used in a prologue to a performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's Mozart and Salieri, I counted them under 'concert', since it seemed too much of a stretch to describe them as an opera and they had to go somewhere; they arguably might have gone here, though.

No huge surprises for opera in the higher ranks. Two Rings, one at Berlin's Deutsche Oper, one at its Staatsoper, plus a visit to Bayreuth, ensured the winner. It was a pleasant surprise, though, to see Rimsky come so high with three different works, which must be the most I have ever seen in a single year. And there is a good array of single-performance composers.

12 Wagner

7 Mozart

5 Strauss

3 Rimsky-Korsakov

2 Debussy, Gluck, Handel, Puccini, Tchaikovsky

1 Bach, Benjamin, Britten, Dallapiccola, Peter Maxwell Davies, Dvořák, Beat Furrer, GF Haas, Humperdinck, Janáček, Kurtág, Ligeti, Rued Langgaard, Mussorgsky, Offenbach, Prokofiev, Rameau, Rossini, Schoenberg, Stravinsky

Concerts and overall to follow.

Munich Opera Festival (2) - Idomeneo, 5 July 2024

Nationaltheater

Images © Wilfried Hösl

  

Idomeneo – Pavol Breslik
Idamante – Emily D’Angelo
Ilia – Olga Kulchynska
Elettra – Hanna-Elisabeth Müller
Arbace – Jonas Hacker
High Priest of Neptune – Liam Bonthrone
The Voice (Oracle) – Alexander Köpeczi

Antú Romero Nunes (director)
Dustin Klein (choreography)
Phyllida Barlow, Nina Schöttl (set designs)
Victoria Behr (costumes)
Michael Bauer (lighting)
Rainer Karlitschek (dramaturgy)
Catharina von Bülow (revival director)

Bavarian State Opera Chorus (director: Christoph Heil)
Bavarian State Orchestra
Ivor Bolton (conductor)

Take a stroll around central Munich and you may come upon a plaque on Altenhofstrasse indicating the spot where Mozart lived in the winter of 1780-81 whilst at work on Idomeneo. The opera was written for the Residenztheater, now generally known as the Cuvilliés-Theater, although now we saw it at the Nationaltheater, home since its 1818 opening to most of the Bavarian Court – latterly the State – Opera’s activities. Both theatres were eventually rebuilt after Allied bombing, although Mozart’s apartment building was destroyed for good in 1944.  A different staging of Idomeneo would have been required to go ‘home’, for Antú Romero Nunes’s 2021 production certainly makes use of the larger stage and space, but that did not entirely negate a sense of homecoming, not least given memories of a fine concert encircling and presaging the work at last year’s Munich Opera Festival, in the ‘original’ venue. 

Why inverted commas? Perhaps they represent a fussiness too far, given how much any old building will have been rebuilt over the years, although the old theatre did have to be rebuilt from scratch, finally reopening in 1958, not with Idomeneo but with Le nozze di Figaro. Idomeneo was still then a great rarity and remains, to many of us bafflingly so, less popular than any other of Mozart’s seven ‘mature’, full-scale operas. (Many of us may be inclined to soften the distinction drawn there, but it continues to hold for opera companies and their general public.) Given the total break in its performance history – unlike that of, say, Figaro – we might say that any performance becomes more of a reconstruction too, irrespective of intention. The work is often cut and if, at least in a good performance, one feels the loss, it can also work in truncated form within reason. This version – and I think one can go so far as to use that word – had, however, some highly unusual, even unprecedented textual features, some to my mind more justifiable than others. Old and new, fidelity and reimagination, text and performance, music and drama: these do not necessarily stand opposed, but their relationships have also never been without friction. If part of the interest lies in that friction, difficulties may also lie therein. On this occasion, it would be fair to say that we experienced both. 

Action prior to the overture is now a commonly accepted, albeit perhaps now all too common, theatrical strategy. It is more unusual to open with stage music interpolated from elsewhere, a feature throughout the production. What we saw and heard, though, intrigued, largely due, I think, to Phyllida Barlow’s arresting set designs, verging on an installation in themselves. Here, at the beginning, in a dark and dangerous port, musicians and dancers set the scene in several ways, solo- and ensemble-human fragility contrasting with the elemental sea implied scenically and musically, as the Overture proper came upon us. Quite why Nunes felt the need to project ‘titles’ as it unfolded, I am not sure. I suppose it let people know who the characters were and who was singing their parts, but beyond that it achieved little. In retrospect, the lack of dramatic motivation, in spite of a lot ‘going on’, proved too prophetic. Beyond the striking, meaningful ‘look’ – one could read much into Barlow’s structures, above all the sheer mysteriousness of the realm of the gods – Nunes seemed to have little to say. The performance progressed, but that was about it, save for a strange marriage of interpolations and cuts, recitative predictably suffering most. Of politics there was little sign, but nor did the lack of drama and sense of installation seem to be an overt aesthetic, as in the case of Romeo Castellucci. 

Idomeneo (Pavol Breslik) and Arbace (Jonas Hacker)

Perhaps most indefensible – not the first time it has reared its head in a Mozart opera – was a fortepiano rendition of the D minor Fantasia, KV 397/385g, shorn of its turn to the major mode (by whomever), which provided the opportunity for further ballet music, probably suggestive of the relationship between Idamante and Ilia, though I was not always clear whether dance were intended as pantomime or in the older, ‘Italian’ tradition. ‘Perhaps’, because it was run close by the surprise arrival of the aria, ‘Ch’io mi scordi di te … Non temer, amato bene’, KV 505, for Idamante and, you guessed it, obbligato fortepiano. Emily D’Angelo sang it very well, but neither its tenuous connection with the opera nor dramatic momentum was well served. 

The worst decision, though, was to fade out ‘Torna la pace’, musicians onstage imitating Haydn’s Farewell Symphony. What could the director have been thinking of? And what could any conductor – presumably not Ivor Bolton, who did not conduct the premiere – have been thinking of, permitting such a radical step without any discernible motivation? Pity poor Pavol Breslik as Idomeneo, who then had to set though the concluding ballet music eating a sandwich, as dancers, more furries than Furies, did their thing. Martin Kušej’s 2014 production for Covent Garden, much misunderstood at the time and sadly unrevived, showed quite how this extraordinary music can grip as drama (and despite an indifferent musical performance). This, alas, simply became tedious. 

Bolton’s musical direction did not help in that respect. It certainly had its moments over the evening as a whole, but the problem was that they were mostly moments. It cannot have been helped by the ‘version’ with which he was presumably presented, but a greater sense of dramatic pulse could readily have been achieved, as could more generous vibrato for the strings and less ‘period’ rasping from the brass. Trombones, though, sounded splendidly otherworldly for the Oracle. Occasional discrepancies between stage and pit, especially during choruses, were swiftly and tidily resolved. The array of continuo instruments was odd, as well as choices made as when to use them; however well played, the presence of a theorbo made little sense. A wind machine, though, offered a nod both to older stagecraft and to onstage atmosphere. 

The greatest satisfaction for me was to be had from the singing. For me, a highlight was the beginning of the third act, Olga Kulchynska’s ‘Zeffiretti lusinghieri’ and the quartet the other side of KV 505 vocally breathtaking and dramatically very much on point. The four singers’ coming together could not have spelled  fear and fate more clearly. Breslik’s assumption of the title role was beyond reproach, ringing in musical security yet permitting of doubt and nuance in character. Hanna-Elisabeth Müller’s Elettra was very good too, though there was a strange moment in her final aria in which she seemed to pause; it was unclear to me whether this were a demand of the production, an interpretative strategy, or something else. Indeed, throughout, her character seemed strangely minimised by the production. Jonas Hacker’s Arbace made the most of both his arias, as did Liam Bonthrone and Alexander Köpeczi in their smaller roles. The chorus likewise made a fine impression, hinting at a greater meaning that seemingly eluded the director.

Lucio Silla, Salzburger Landestheater, 4 June 2024

Images: SLT/Christian Krautzberger

Lucio Silla – Luke Sinclair
Cecilio – Katie Coventry
Giunia – Nina Solodovnikova
Lucio Cinna – Nicolò Balducci
Celia – Anita Rosati
Aufidio – Joseph Doody

Director – Amélie Niermeyer
Set designs – Stefanie Seitz
Video – Janosch Abel
Costumes – Kathrin Brandstätter
Dramaturgy – Frank Max Müller and Vinda Miguna
Lighting – Tobias Löffler

Chorus of the Salzburg Landestheater (chorus director: Tobias Meichsner)

Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra

Carlo Benedetto Cimento (conductor)  

The Salzburg Landestheater’s new production of Lucio Silla, generally accorded the finest of Mozart’s three opere serie for Milan, was first seen in January of this year. Though I was actually in Salzburg for the second performance, I was unable to see it then, so I was delighted to have opportunity to catch up with a thoughtful staging and fine performances, worthy of anyone’s attention—and which it would be highly desirable, if at all possible, to have preserved on film. The sixteen-year-old composer’s relish for the forces, chorus included, at his disposal in Milan was vividly brought to life. If he had not yet learned the dramatic virtues, at least from time to time, of concision such as one experiences in later dramas, it is difficult to imagine anyone having minded. Such was the expertise with which this young cast made Mozart’s recitative and da capo arias, coloratura in particular, vividly meaningful as well as vocally thrilling, that more modern prejudices against the genre were thoroughly dispelled. The quality of staging and performances also offered a welcome opportunity to (re-)assess Giovanni De Gamerra’s admittedly very early libretto. 

De Gamerra has come in for a bad press, then and now: to my mind, at least a little unjustly. Lorenzo Da Ponte, who perhaps, having been compelled to leave Vienna, had his own reasons for dissatisfaction with those who had remained, reported in a footnote to his memoirs:

 

Leopold [II, Holy Roman Emperor] took [Giovanni] Bertati to his opera. A year later came [Giovanni Battista] Casti: and that wretched dramatic cobbler was dismissed. But Casti was not fond of hard work. He asked for an assistant and obtained one in person of Signor Gamerra, a poet famous for his Corneide, a poem in seven or eight fat tomes wherein he mentioned all the horns that had appeared in Heaven or on earth from the birth of Vulcan down to those of his own grandfather. This ungrateful cornifex had not been a year in Vienna before he began butting with his benefactor, accusing him of Jacobinism; and poor Casti … was enjoined to depart from Vienna at once.

 

This is both odd and intriguing, given that Leopold himself spoke harshly of the poet, advising his brother Ferdinand, governor of the Duchy of Milan, in a letter John A. Rice discovered in the Vienna archives, that De Gamerra was ‘fanatic to excess, hot-headed, imprudent concerning … liberty, very dangerous,’ a startling extreme judgement coming from one who was far from reactionary, and which certainly attests to strong political sentiments on De Gamerra’s part. We might also note, though, that Leopold was none too complimentary about Ferdinand, dismissing him in a secret memorandum on members of his family (!) as ‘a very weak man, of little intellect and paltry talent, but who has a very high opinion of himself’. Make of that what you will. (I shall resist the temptation to go into greater detail about the House of Austria and Mozart’s operas here, but more will follow both in articles and, when finished, a book on the complete operatic œuvre.)

Celia (Anita Rosati), Aufidio (Joseph Doody), Lucio Silla (Luke Sinclair)

Perhaps more significant has been the view that the libretto, in particular its ending, is not very good. Mozart found himself having to make revisions in light of criticism (of the libretto) by Metastasio. In his New Grove article, Julian Rushton calls the denouement ‘unconvincing’ and the libretto as a whole ‘turgid’, whilst allowing Lucio Silla nonetheless to be ‘musically the finest work Mozart wrote in Italy, … [ranking] with opera seria by the greatest masters of the time’. I certainly should not dissent from the latter, either in principle or in light of this performance, but I find the judgement of the libretto unduly harsh, both in general and with respect to the ending, demanded by the conventions of the genre but also foreshadowed more than many allow both in libretto and score. A virtue of Amélie Niermeyer’s production is its taking the ‘problem’ of the ending, on which more shortly, on board. Greater faith in the work, one might well argue, might make such a strategy unnecessary; but in light of the decisions made, reasonable and justified for a contemporary production, its subversion (or, if you prefer, extension) makes good sense.

 

Neirmeyer takes her leave from the historical Lucius Sulla’s dictatorship. That did not necessarily hold quite the same implications as now, but such qualification is largely beside the point if it makes for good drama, which, on the whole, it does. In this world of modern dictatorship, rebels, resisting a new, brutal régime, in which opponents, pictured in placards held up by those resisting, have been ‘disappeared’. Lucio Silla exists and is amplified by propaganda, photographed snaps retouched and enhanced by his friend, the tribune Aufidio to portray the essence of strong, masculine leadership. Cecilio, Lucio Cinna and others are in hiding, clothing suggestive of a guerilla movement, and crucially are being watched (at least part of the time) through electronic surveillance rom the dictator’s palace.

Lucio Silla

 

Silla vacillates and is persuadable, picking up on the mediating role of his sister Celia as well as his love for Giunia, she of the old regime, so that his sudden decision for clemency (a recurring theme, we might note, through Mozart’s entire œuvre, as well as much other eighteenth-century opera) seems less unmotivated than has been alleged. But there is a twist. Since we have moved to a world of modern psychological realism, heir to the ‘Romantic critical tradition’ Rice highlighted as having done such damage to understanding of the composer’s final instantiation of operatic clemency, La clemenza di Tito, the change of heart is a ruse. The dictator who, it has seemed, might prefer a lengthy retirement in which he can indulge himself with whisky and women, has had a plan all along. Acclaimed by the people for forgiveness of those who have plotted against him, he has in fact seized the moment to add them to the ranks of the disappeared, chillingly undercutting the final vocal and orchestral rejoicing,whilst, in a sense, remaining true to the claims to total knowledge on which clemency insists. (Think of Sarastro as well as Tito.) If, sometimes, the relentless activity during arias threatened to detract from moments of musical reflection, it was a finely balanced thing. Mozart survived—and rather more than that. If anything, the classic AMOR/ROMA conflict gained by its rethinking.

 

Luke Sinclair’s performance in the title role was fundamental to this dramatic success. Vocally strong and agile, his stage portrayal helped fill in many of the gaps. Ably assisted by Joseph Doody as Aufidio, no mean singer and actor himself, Sinclair’s Silla offered psychological depth in instability, whilst maintaining something quite other to the external world. Those in whom he almost met his match were equally impressive, complementing and contrasting like a fine wind ensemble. Katie Coventry as Cecilio offered an extensive range of dramatic colour, not entirely unlike an early piano. Nicolò Balducci’s coloratura and the dramatic use he put to it in the soprano castrato role of Cinna would have more than convinced even the most countertenor-sceptical of listeners. Nina Solodovnikova’s warmly sympathetic, yet unswervingly committed Giunia brought her music and role thrillingly to dramatic life, poignantly in tandem with the spirit world (and others) conjured up by Carlo Benedetto Cimento and the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra, as well as the Chorus of the Salzburg Landestheater. Anita Rosati’s Celia proved a musical as well as dramatic lynchpin, stylistic command second to none. But then, I could almost have exchanged the descriptions given for each singer at will. All had cruel vocal demands placed upon them, all succeeded not only in fulfilling them, but in creating an ensemble drama that was far more than the sum of its parts.

Cecilio (Katie Coventry)

Cimento’s alert musical leadership from the pit, allied to the long Mozartian experience of the orchestra, was just as impressive—and crucial. Tempo decisions were wise. Dramatic momentum was created and maintained. Artists on stage were given freedom to act as singing actors, nonetheless bound together by careful ensemble preparation and finely judged orchestral incitement. Affective use of keys, E-flat major in particular, was meaningfully conveyed. That is Mozart’s doing in the first instance, of course, yet it still needs – and received – sensitive, dramatically alert conducting and orchestral performance. Likewise, the composer’s extraordinary orchestration, veiled, muted strings, tender woodwind, sepulchral trombones and all, disconcerted, beguiled, and thrilled. 

A welcome and apt surprise came at the beginning of the second part (the third act) when an entr’acte not a million miles away from Mozart, but which I did not recognise and which I was 99.5% sure was not Mozart, was heard. I later discovered that it was the first part of the second movement and all of the third from Johann Christian Bach’s Symphony in G minor, op.6 no.6. Not only did it accompany the pantomime action very well; it served to remind us both of Mozart’s close connection to the ‘London Bach’ and the latter’s own Mannheim Lucio Silla, to a revised (I admit, improved) version by Mattio Verazi of De Gamerra’s libretto. Perhaps Salzburg might tackle this next? It would be a fine thing indeed to be able to see and hear the two together one day. In the meantime, this did nicely indeed.

R.I.P. Maurizio Pollini (1942-2024)

(Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)

Maurizio Pollini was a guiding light of my musical life: which is to say, he and his music-making were with me from the moment in my teens when I became seriously interested in music. More, composers and performers alike, are gone now than remain with us; I shall not tempt fate by naming those who are left. One of my very first cassette purchases – it may even have been the first – was his recording of Mozart’s Piano Concertos nos 19 and 23 with Karl Böhm and the Vienna Philharmonic. I love it more than I can say. Mozart’s music requires but one thing: perfection. Perfection it receives in what, I suspect, will always be one of my Desert Island Discs. 

In my first London concert, a Prom for which I took the bus up to London and back to Sheffield for a birthday treat with a friend, Pollini was the soloist, again in Mozart, this time in the C minor Concerto, no.24. It was also my first live Schoenberg and Stravinsky (the First Chamber Symphony and Pulcinella, with the CBSO conducted by Simon Rattle). And then, when, as a student, I bought my first ticket for a London piano recital, now taking a return rail journey from Cambridge, it was Pollini: in his beloved Chopin, which by now I knew well enough from recordings, above all those ever-astounding Études and Préludes. What it was, though, to hear him live, as I sat on the Royal Festival Hall stage, incredibly close to the master and his instrument. The technique was of course dazzling, Pollini’s pristine perfection taken by duller souls for a lack of depth or some other such nonsense. I read review after review in which the musical equivalent of the nouveaux riches would lament his technical ability, failing to realise that, like that of any great musician, it was in the service of a musical performance that would have been nothing without it. By now, of course, I knew among other recorded performances that simply astounding DG Originals CD, bringing together two original recordings, of Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Webern, and Boulez.

 

Prokofiev and Stravinsky were no longer in his repertory by the time I heard him, but both the Webern (Variations, op.27) and Boulez (Piano Sonata no.2) I would hear live more than once. One of those occasions combined the two, in a 2006 recital at the Salzburg Festival. It had been advertised, somewhat surprisingly, as an all-Mozart recital, but then it was the composer’s 250^th anniversary year. I had longed to hear him in solo Mozart – none of which, so far as I am aware, he recorded – and so I did, in the first half. The second half of the programme, though, he changed to Webern and Boulez, initiating an exodus not only at the interval, not only after the Webern, but unforgivably, during the ice, fire, and elements unknown to this universe of the Boulez. I might have thought I could not admire him any more than I did already; now, however, I did. 

There was so much else, of course, not least the music of Luigi Nono, some of which, quite simply, would not have existed had it not been for his friendship with Pollini (and Claudio Abbado). …sofferte onde serene… I knew it a little from his recording, but to hear it live in London at the Southbank Centre’s courageous ‘Fragments of Venice’ festival in 2007, was truly to hear it for the first time. The last time I did so, at Salzburg in 2019, it was like welcoming an old friend, albeit one who could shock and surprise, as well as seduce, as brilliantly as you could imagine—and then some.

It was an important concert for me in another way too: the first time I had written a programme essay for a Pollini concert. I have no idea whether he would have read it; I am sure he had 1001 better things to do with his time, but a little part of me hopes that he might have done and not found it hopelessly inadequate. (It is perhaps best that I shall never know.) I should like, if I may, to quote the Nono part of that note, not for any intrinsic worth, but simply because in some way, that felt for me to be a moment at which I came closer to Pollini.

 

Such serenity provides both starting point and goal for the poetic idea of Luigi Nono’s 1976 …sofferte onde serene…. The waves are Venetian, so too is the tolling of bells, almost as if transposed from the Vienna of Schoenberg’s op.19 no.6 [heard immediately before]. Heard, felt and answered from Nono’s home on the Giudecca, those sounds seem, as with Schoenberg’s, not only to say farewell to earlier, angrier compositional and aesthetic tendencies – tendencies that had culminated for Nono in the high-watermark of his politically committed art, the opera Al gran sole carico d’amore – but also to sustain them in distillation, in further development. ‘I could say’, Nono remarked, ‘as Schoenberg did, that, at the conclusion of each work, I wish more than ever to breathe the air of new planets’. It also continued Nono’s artistic collaboration with Pollini, initiated by Como un ola de fuerza y luz (1971–2), although the two leftist musicians had known each other since the mid-1960s. …sofferte onde serene… displayed, as Nono averred, a reduction in the multiplicity of musical material: a new path taken following a period of compositional silence.

 

That apparent simplification in itself inspired further ‘waves’ – lagoonal and sonic – in collaboration enshrined at the work’s heart, Nono’s purpose amplification rather than counterpoint. Dedicated to Maurizio and Marilisa Pollini, it operates on two acoustic planes: Pollini live and on tape. They merge, realized in the air through artistry of sound direction – first Nono himself; tonight, André Richard. Vibrations, shadows and resonances sustain and transform memories of loss suffered by composer and pianist. Ghosts of other sounds and works in Pollini’s repertoire are honoured and transformed. (Late, Venetian-themed works by Liszt, La lugubre gondola and R.W. Venezia, were performed at the 1977 premiere.) The moment of Schoenbergian hyper-expressivity – sometimes stark, sometimes on the edge of audibility, sometimes even falling into silence –compels active listening. Nono’s politics have not drowned; they are revealed anew in the waters. So as not to confuse the political ‘provocations’ for earlier works with their substance, we must listen, suffering to break musical silence as the composer did, inspired by his pianist and friend as much as by the instrument. Counterpoint and conflict seem conspicuous by their absence, certainly by comparison to Nono’s preceding works. Whether we feel that absence as an integral aspect of the work is an impossible yet necessary question.

Fondazione Archivio Luigi Nono

 

I could list fond memories aplenty: from the time when Pollini played those Schoenberg op.19 Six Little Piano Pieces as a single encore, one of four, to the five-concert ‘Pollini Project’ series at the Festival Hall, which took us literally from Bach to Boulez. A good number of them will be found on my blog in any case, under the Maurizio Pollini tag. There was the Bauhaus, crystalline surface-perfection of his recording of the op.25 Schoenberg Suite for piano, teeming with energy below, and the Orphic taming of the Furies in the Beethoven Fourth Concerto with Böhm. There were Stockhausen and Sciarrino, Schubert, and Schumann. I should at least mention the transition, or so it seemed, to a ‘late Pollini’, in which the technique was not quite so unwaveringly infallible as once it had been, though it certainly remained (until very late) present. Many felt a greater depth, almost as compensation. I know what they meant, but I think it was an illusion: the same old illusion that meant, dazzled and in some curious cases repelled by technique, they had never heard that depth in the first place now led them to hear it more strongly. There was, though, an instructive and touching element of humanity to the ageing process that came to us listeners as much as to the performer. 

Amidst such reminiscences, the communist Pollini’s unwavering political commitment should not be forgotten. It informed his performance as much as it did the compositional work of Nono—or Beethoven. Advocacy of Nono’s music took him and as Abbado beyond the concert hall and the opera house to the car factories of northern Italy. It would have been easier to glory in the world of ‘star performers’, but that was clearly never somewhere Pollini, however fêted, was ever at home. In many ways, his music-making was always a product of the ‘Years of Lead’ in which fascism, openly backed by much of ‘the West’, threatened to occupy much of Europe once again. Speaking in Bettina Erhardt’s wonderful film on Nono, A Trail on the Water, made after Nono’s death, Pollini recalled one incident in particular:

 

There was a lot of tension in the air. We have to remember the situation in Italy back then. People were even talking about a possible Fascist coup. There was the example of the colonels in Greece. The fear of a turn towards authoritarianism was serious. After the massacre on the Piazza Fontana in Milan and the bombs, we took it all the more seriously. I think it was the reaction of the whole country that kept it from happening. Back then, I once read, or rather tried to read, a declaration against a hideous atrocity in the Vietnam War when the United States bombed Hanoi and Hai Phong. Several Italian musicians had signed the declaration: Claudio Abbado, Luigi Nono, [Giacomo] Manzoni and the Quartetto Italiano, as well as Goffredo Petrassi, Luigi Dallapiccola. Contrary to all my expectations, at the mere sound of the word ‘Vietnam’, the audience exploded in a kind of collective delirium, which made it impossible to continue my recital. I made several attempts to read this short statement. This was interrupted by the arrival of the police. Eventually the piano was closed and that was that.

He spoke at the protests against Berlusconi almost half a century later too. Maurizio Pollini was a great pianist, a great musician, but above all a great man, a great human being. However unfashionable it may be to say so, for me that shows in his music-making. In recorded form, as in our memories, that will live forever. And we shall be able to tell those younger than ourselves: ‘I heard Pollini.’

Salzburg Mozartwoche (6) - Peretyatko/Danish CO/Fischer: Mozart and Salieri, 30 January 2024

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Mozart: Lucio Silla, KV 135: Overture; Don Giovanni, KV 527: ‘Crudele! Ah no, mio bene!’ – ‘Non mi dir, bell’idol mio’
Salieri: Sinfonia, ‘La Veneziana’
Mozart: Concert aria, ‘Ch’io mi scordi di te?’ – ‘Non temer, amato bene’, KV 505; Idomeneo, KV 366: ‘Oh smanie! Oh furie!’ – ‘D’Oreste, d’Alace’; Symphony no.36 in C major, KV 425, ‘Linz’

Olga Peretyatko (soprano)
Danish Chamber Orchestra,
Ádám Fischer (conductor)

Images: Wolfang Lienbacher

Ádám Fischer is a fine if sometimes eccentric Mozartian. His concert performance of Il re pastore with the Mozarteum Orchestra at last year’s Salzburg Festival was for me a highlight, and his work with the Danish Chamber Orchestra has gained many plaudits. Understandably, if this concert, my final engagement at this year’s Mozartwoche, is anything to go by. Moreover, it confirmed the sensational qualities of soprano Olga Peretyatko, whom I had admired in Idomeneo at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden last year. 

The concert opened with the Overture to Lucio Silla, a new production of which has just opened next door at the Landestheater, for which I hope to return to Salzburg later this season and report. In the meantime, this proved quite a taster, as bright, theatrical, and vigorous as one might expect of the young Mozart in D major, here palpably excited to get his hands on the Milanese orchestra. (Paris was not the only fruit.) Woodwind in the first section foreshadowed those of the warm, central Andante in A, with just a hint of the shadows to come. In the final section, Fischer employed a favoured device of his, also to be heard in the Linz Symphony, of restricting certain passages to solo instruments only. 

Peretyatko joined Fischer and the orchestra for three numbers. First was ‘Crudele! Ah no, mio bene!’ – ‘Non mi dir, bell’idol mio’ from Don Giovanni. Opening very much in medias res, giving the accompagnato permitted the performers to prepare us for Donna Anna’s aria, rather than experience it as a pretty, even generically ‘dramatic’ thing-in-itself. It certainly emerged as consequent, treated not only to pinpoint, expressive coloratura and a luxuriant voice, but equal excellence from the orchestra as a whole, gorgeous horns included. ‘Ch’io mi scordi di te?’ – ‘Non temer, amato bene’ was written by Mozart for Nancy Storace, creator of roles for both Mozart (Susanna) and Salieri. Here again, we experience the most vivid of communication through words and music. Fischer’s decision to play Mozart’s piano part too was unfortunate. I have little doubt that he could play or conduct the piece perfectly well; doing both proved, alas, a mistake, and renewed one’s admiration for those pianist-conductors able to do so. Strongly connected to Idomeneo, the aria’s words (though not its recitative’s) coming from Giambattista Varesco’s libretto, it paved the way for the appearance of Elettra after the interval, in which Peretyatko’s star shone, if anything, still brighter. Immediately in character, she had us feel the vipers in Elettra’s bosom, as did the Danish strings, bows fairly bouncing off the strings. Voice and oboe entwined in a veritable dance of death. A whole opera with Fischer, perhaps indeed Idomeneo, would be just the ticket.

 

In between Donna Anna and Mme Storace’s aria, we had heard Salieri’s Sinfonia, latterly called La Veneziana by its 1961 editor Renzo Sabatini. It is not an ‘original’ work, but rather the encounter of two opera overtures, its first movement from La scuola de’ gelosi (indeed written for Venice) and the second and third from La partenza inaspettata. Fischer and the Danish players were again in their theatrical element; anyone could and surely would have guessed this to be the world of opera buffa. Conviction and skill in performance placed this on a different level from any of the Salieri performances I had heard earlier in the week. Counterpoint, gesture, and harmony in the first movement had the composer seem fully worthy of standing in this musical company. The charms of the second could likewise well have been thought the equal of an ‘early’ Mozart symphony or overture. Fischer made it sound easy: as important here as in Mozart. A rollocking hunting finale echoed Haydn, if without his single-mindedness, which might in any case have been less the thing for an opera overture. 

The Linz Symphony, in its usual key of C major rather than the D intriguingly if alarmingly promised by the programme, showed in its first-movement introduction that certain ‘period’ characteristics can readily be employed, should one wish, in this music without loss to a sense of mystery. The exposition proper responded in kind, offering as did the performance as a whole a judicious balance between, well, balance and symmetry on one hand and symphonic development on the other. (Those who complain Mozart unduly emphasises the former could not be more wrong.) The second movement was both more intimate and starker, Fischer excelling once more in reconciling apparent opposites and also displaying a keen ear for colour, to which the orchestra eagerly responded. Just occasionally, his handling could be a little fussy, but there was nothing too grievous. The night-air of Mozart’s Salzburg serenades was to be felt, albeit framed a little more darkly. A minuet hewn from fine marble framed a trio (her for soloists) with effortlessly idiomatic lilt and especially delightful bassoon. The finale went as it ‘should’, apparently competing demands again reframed in collaborative fashion. A noisy audience proved an increasing trial for listening, so observation of the final repeat was a definite advantage in this case. The music sounded all the more urgent until a final blaze in which Fischer gave modern brass its glorious head. It was a little showy, but why not? Clarinets returned to the stage for a remarkably keen encore performance of the Figaro Overture, bringing my Salzburg visit almost full circle.