La fanciulla del West, Opera Holland Park, Tuesday 3 June 2014

Holland Park


Minnie – Susannah Glanville
Dick Johnson – Jeff Gwaltney
Jack Rance – Simon Thorpe
Nick – Neal Cooper
Sonora – Nicholas Garrett
Trin – Jung Soo Yun
Sid – Peter Braithwaite
Bello – James Harrison
Harry – Oliver Brignall
Joe – Edward Hughes
Happy – John Lofthouse
Jim Larkens – Aidan Smith
Ashby – Graeme Broadbent
Wowkle – Laura Woods
Billy Jackrabbit – Tom Stoddart
Jake Wallace – Simon Wilding
Jose Castro – Henry Grant Kerswell
Pony Express Rider – Michael Bradley

Stephen Barlow (director)
Yannis Thavoris (designs)
Richard Howell (lighting)

Opera Holland Park Chorus (chorus master: Timothy Burke)
City of London Sinfonia
Stuart Stratford (conductor)


‘I like the atmosphere of the West’, Puccini wrote after seeing three of David Belasco’s plays performed on Broadway in 1907, ‘but in all the “pièces” I have seen, I have found only a few scenes here and there. Never a simple thread, all muddle, and, at times, bad taste and old hat.’ It was nevertheless there and then that the first dramatic seeds were sown for La fanciulla del West were sown; it would be written to a libretto after Belasco, dedicated to Queen Alexandra (!), and premiered in New York in 1910. Even after considerable compression, modification, and so forth, I am not convinced the work is a resounding triumph, though many Puccini lovers esteem it highly indeed. It is certainly full of musical interest: the Wagnerisms of old are perhaps not so prominent, though the love scene in the second act surely takes partly after Tristan, but the influence of Debussy in particular is fruitful indeed. Whole tone scales pervade the score, and there is more than the occasional nod to Pelléas. The story itself, the characters included, remains more of a problem. They are not the easiest people to care about, and without that, Puccini’s trademark emotional manipulations cannot do their work. He may have wished the opera to be a ‘second Bohème, only stronger, bolder, and more spacious,’ but that ambition would only fitfully be fulfilled. The sentimentality of the ‘redemptive’ ending is, alas, only too readily resisted.


Or so it seemed here, despite an excellent orchestral performance from the City of London Sinfonia under Stuart Stratford. The number of occasions when one really felt the lack of a larger orchestra was surprisingly small, the strings proving more luscious than one would have had any right to expect, the woodwind piquant and alluring, and the brass offering dramatical fatalism aplenty. Stratford’s direction seemed to me splendidly judged, those Debussyan resonances both readily apparent and seamless incorporated into the score. There is little that can be done about a rather annoying theme – friends tell me that it has been ‘borrowed’ by a composer of musical theatre, though it stands out like a sore thumb even before one is aware of that – but the score was certainly given its due. Stratford’s – and his cast’s – crewing up of musical tension during the second-act wager was beyond reproach.


Susannah Glanville shone as Minnie; I had not encountered her before, but was mightly impressed by her vocal reserves and the dramatic use to which they were bit. This was a performance that would have graced many a ‘major’ stage, not that the ever-enterprising Opera Holland Park has any reason to fear such lazy comparisons. Jeff Gwaltney sometimes struggled to make himself heard – in particular, his words – but offered a sensitive portrayal of Dick Johnson. Simon Thorpe presented the conflicting emotions of Jack Rance with considerable skill, permitting one initially to sympathise, then to be repelled. A strong supporting cast included a highly impressive performance by Nicholas Garrett as Sonora. Choral singing was likewise greatly to be admired.


The problem, then, lay with Stephen Barlow’s production. This, at least it seems to me, is a vulnerable work, and the updating to a 1950s Nevada atomic testing ground makes little sense. A number of those who know the opera far better than I do say that it is a work that resists relocation in any sense. I am not so sure; I can imagine, for instance, a metatheatrical treatment in Hollywood, which played upon musical themes as well as the more obvious metaphor of gold-digging. The name ‘Camp Desert Rock’ seemed to promise something that remained un-delivered, but perhaps that should come as a relief. Barlow’s concept, however ably assisted y Yannis Thavoris’s designs, seems not to involve any real re-thinking; re-location jars and perplexes, rather than reinvigorates. Puccini’s ‘never a simple thread, all muddle, and, at times, bad taste and old hat’? That would be too harsh, but work and musical performance alike are done no favours by pointless, eye- but hardly ear-catching interpolations, of Minnie’s final act arrival upon a motorcycle and the lovers’ subsequent airline departure. It was difficult to resist the conclusion that the opera would have been better off left in Gold Rush California.

Così fan tutte, Opera Holland Park, 8 June 2012

Holland Park

Fiordiligi – Elizabeth Llewellyn

Dorabella – Julia Riley

Ferrando – Andrew Staples

Guglielmo – Dawid Kimberg

Despina – Joana Sears

Alfonso – Nicholas Garrett

Harry Fehr (director)
Alex Eales (designs)
Colin Grenfell (lighting)

Opera Holland Park Chorus
City of London Sinfonia

Thomas Kemp (conductor)

Are my expectations too high when it comes to Mozart’s operas in general, and to Così fan tutte in general? Probably. Should they be? Certainly. For the problem remains, as I have doubtless said far too many times before, Mozart’s music, and not just his operas, requires but one thing: perfection. It is the most unsparing music of all, with nowhere, but nowhere, to hide. Every note must be considered and sounded both in itself and in connection to every other. Place a wrong or even slightly excessive accent upon a single note and the fault will be glaringly magnified; misjudge a tempo, which is not to say that there is only one ‘correct’ tempo, and the entire apple-cart will be upset. However, conduct Così fan tutte like Sir Colin Davis – or rather, as Sir Colin Davis – and it is an experience that will remain with an audience for the rest of its life, opening doors one had never expected to be there in the first place.

Yes, the comparison is odious, but Thomas Kemp is no Colin Davis. I have heard worse, most obviously from the aggressively ‘authenticke’ brigade; Kemp did not seem actively to be trying to make Mozart’s music sound unpleasant. Nevertheless, on this evidence, he is not a conductor who could claim any particular or even general sympathy with Mozart. The opening bars of the Overture were taken far too fast; thereafter, far too many numbers never hit upon the just tempo. (It is worth repeating at this point that I do not for a moment think there is one ‘correct’ tempo; the trick is to make whatever is chosen sound right, to perform with conviction, sympathy, understanding, and of course, a sense of connection to a greater whole.) ‘Smanie implacibilie’ was breathless in quite the wrong way. Other sections of the score dragged, not so much because they were slow – I doubt that anything was as ravishingly, heart-stoppingly lingering as Davis would so often nowadays present it – but because the tempo seemed arbitrary, applied from without, with little connection to anything else, above all with little or no sense of harmonic motion.

The City of London Sinfonia played decently, though the strings could tend somewhat towards the anonymous. (At least they lacked the acerbic nature of a ‘period’ orchestra.) For the most part, as so often in Mozart, it was the woodwind section that most delighted; there was some fine work indeed here from a number of principals. The kettledrums, however, were often bizarrely prominent, not helped by the employment of hard sticks. Karl Böhm would have rolled in his grave.

Had they been supported by a more sympathetic conductor, the cast of young singers would doubtless have appeared in a stronger light. As it was, there was nothing really to which one could object, but there remained a sense that things might have been better. (Perhaps that will dissipate during the run; first nights are rarely the best time to catch singers in particular.)  Elizabeth Llewellyn, whom I admired greatly last year at Holland Park as the Countess, delivered what was probably the strongest performance overall, as Fiordiligi. The beauty of her tone-production could not be gainsaid, though her diction was sometimes, for instance in ‘Per pietà’, occluded. Julia Riley’s Dorabella sometimes lacked focus, though when that was achieved, showed considerable promise. Hers was a forthright portrayal, doubtless in part so as to achieve greater contrast with Fiordiligi, but was it sometimes excessively so? There second act duet between the two veered dangerously close to crudity on Dorabella’s part. Andrew Staples’s tone is very much of the ‘English tenor’ variety. I was not always convinced that this served Ferrando so well, but it is a very difficult role to get right; in other cases, often one ends up thinking the music sounds too close to Puccini. ‘Un’ aura amoroso’ was beautifully sung, though there were times elsewhere when greater presence might have been achieved. Dawid Kimberg’s Guglielmo was blustering, swaggering even, able to call upon considerable vocal reserves. Joana Seara offered a lively Despina, though her tuning sometimes went a little awry. Nicholas Garrett, 2010’s Don Giovanni, presented an intelligent portrayal of Don Alfonso.

What of the production? It was, for the most part, difficult to say anything much about it at all. I do not doubt that it would have pleased self-proclaimed ‘traditionalists’, since the costumes were all impeccably, almost aggressively, ‘period’ – if hardly Neapolitan. Of course, Così  is in no sense whatsoever ‘about’ eighteenth-century Naples, but the logic of the literalist position is that it must be. It was difficult to detect in Harry Fehr's production any idea of what Così might be about, any attempt to probe beneath its painfully beautiful surfaces, or even to celebrate the pain upon the surface. We had a ‘period’ set, ‘period’ costumes, and that was really just about it. There was a nod to directorial cliché in placing an audience on stage, supposedly ‘reacting’ to the events witnessed, but have we not seen that sort of thing far too many times before? Such framing can be interesting, even refreshing: I think, for instance, of Nicholas Hytner’s production of Handel’s Serse for ENO. However, if the intention were to highlight the artificiality of the drama – the artificiality is absolutely necessary to permit Mozart’s agonising psychological explorations – then it failed to come across; it appeared instead rather more as an attempt to generate stage ‘business’ in the absence of any other ideas. That is, until, part way through the second act, Fehr suddenly decided to add a few more, which jarred hopelessly given the uninvolving nature of what we had seen hitherto. Ferrando was laughed at by members of the ‘audience’: it might have been movingly cruel, yet here simply came across as an intrusion upon the music. Fiordiligi took off her dress, put on a soldier’s uniform – a very odd, quasi-literalist interpretation of her attempt to persuade herself to find her (erstwhile) lover – and then had that taken off by Ferrando. (No need to worry: there was plenty beneath the dress and the uniform.) Such ‘action’ merely came across as a realisation, too late in the day, that nothing much had happened. This is, of course, an extremely difficult opera to direct, yet Fehr barely seemed to have tried.

Alexander Goehr: Promised End (world premiere), English Touring Opera, 9 October 2010

Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

King Lear – Roderick Earle
Gloucester – Nigel Robson
Edmund – Nicholas Garrett
Edgar – Adrian Dwyer
Goneril – Jacqueline Varsey
Regan – Julia Sporsén
Cordelia/Fool – Lina Markeby
Knight/Servant - Jeffrey Stewart
Servant/Captain - Adam Tunnicliffe

James Conway (director)
Adam Wiltshire (designs)
Guy Hoare (lighting)

Aurora Orchestra
Ryan Wigglesworth (conductor)


This latest opera from Alexander Goehr – probably last, he says, but then so did Henze about his L’Upupa – promises in subject matter as well as name the makings of a testament, but there are signs aplenty of new life too. Promised End draws its name from Kent’s ‘Is this the promised end?’ when Lear re-enters, the dead Cordelia in his arms. The late Frank Kermode assembled the text exclusively from Shakespeare. This, apparently, was insisted upon by composer and librettist, and who can blame them after the miserable doggerel to which Meredith Oakes reduced The Tempest for Thomas Adès? There are twenty-four sections, ‘preludes’, but the action, bar an interval, is continuous.

Beckett looms large, though not overwhelmingly so, and how could he not in a Lear for our times? Ours is an age often preoccupied with reception history; it is not an age for naïve art. Some cultured despisers sneer at that, but what is the alternative: ignorance? We have far too much of that already, aided and abetters by those whose interests it serves. If Beckett is a strong presence, so is Brecht, not least in the creation of a chorus, which comments, punctuates, structures. The tension between existential devastation and alienation is productive, enhancing and questioning both.

Constructivist tendencies are also manifested in the pairing of Goneril and Regan, who seemingly cannot work without each other, and yet ultimately gain nothing, or at least nothing of value, from having done so. The pairing put me in mind – though this may just have been coincidence – of Morgan Le Fay and Lady de Hautdesert from Birtwistle’s Gawain, though without the sense of framing: Shakespeare’s unruliness is too great for that. Cordelia and the Fool are brought together in a further tightening of the casting-parallel noose. At the heart of both libretto and music lies the parallelism between Lear and Gloucester. Too old men, rendered foolish – and not in the Fool’s way – by power, have much to undergo before they can come together in the scene of transformation: a recognition scene not so much in the Elektra sense but recognition of themselves, of something concerning the true bleakness, as opposed to self-pity, of the human condition. Whatever happens in Elektra, it is certainly not that. There is no sub-Wagnerian redemption in this recognition; it is all too late. That, however, does not render it any less necessary.

Goehr’s score is of course the crucial thing. Endlessly inventive, we hear a dark generative activity that seems genuinely inspired by the short ‘prelude’ structure: shades even of Wozzeck, perhaps, in the tension between smaller forms and the greater whole. Sonority from his chamber orchestra – the fine Aurora Orchestra playing under Ryan Wigglesworth’s taut yet expressive direction – offers intimations of twentieth-century Neue Sachlichkeit: Hindemith at his more interesting and Weill sprang to mind, as well as Schoenberg. They remain intimations, however, certainly not imitations. Stravinsky’s graveyard harpsichord (The Rake’s Progress) makes its presence felt, both as soloist and quasi-continuo player, the organ proving a complementary and opposing force, perhaps a reference to Goehr’s beloved Monteverdi and The Death of Moses? There is little purely orchestral music; the pace is fast, though not, I think, cinematic, notwithstanding Goehr’s admiration for Eisenstein. However, we hear something akin to a battle symphony – the ghost of Handel? – when Edgar goes away to war. A notable feature of Goehr’s ensemble is its brace of tubas, sparingly used, yet a lugubrious and still melodious evocation of the wheel turning full circle.

The Fool’s songs, accompanied by guitar, evoke – at least for this listener – Monteverdi at his most Shakespearian; the parasite Iro (Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria) meets Beckett. That strange existential world is assaulted by Brecht and Weill, but is never vanquished; indeed, it emerges all the stronger. Vocally, there is typical precision and concision: never expansive, but somehow seeming dramatically ‘right’ in its urgency. Foucault, whom Goehr cites as an influence in this respect, would have pointed to the constructed nature of madness: here it is compositionally apparent.

James Conway’s production, aided by Adam Wiltshire’s designs, contributes greatly to the Beckettian mood and its Brechtian challenge. Japanese Noh theatre – recalling both Goehr’s Kantan and Damask Drum and his dream of Lear in Japanese, which provided the opera’s initial inspiration – is a presence too, though a contributory reference rather than an agent of excessive stylisation. The production seems to take its cue from the work, rather than to force itself upon the latter. As the action unfolds, the chorus is not static but re-assembles, so that observation remains to feed subsequent commentary.

Performances were all of a high standard: a true and worthy feather in the cap of English Touring Opera. Roderick Earle’s Lear commanded the stage and moved without inappropriate emoting. Nigel Robson’s Gloucester ran in parallel but remained differentiated: this was not a king, or an ex-king, but a senior courtier. Adrian Dwyer portrayed with touching acuity the transformation of Edgar into Poor Tom, whilst Nicholas Garrett’s leather-clad Edmund proved as devilish as his recent Don Giovanni for Opera Holland Park – and more cunningly fiendish. Jacqueline Varsey and Julia Sporsén offered what seemed the just admixture of repellent, individual ambition and structural complementary duet as the unlovely sisters, a true contrast with Lina Markeby’s haunting Cordelia and Fool.

Three cheers, then, for English Touring Opera. Let us hope that other companies, both in England and further afield, are listening, for Goehr’s earlier dramatic works demand revival, and sooner rather than later. And surely another company could offer him a commission he would find too intriguing to refuse?

Don Giovanni, Opera Holland Park, 6 July 2010

Don Giovanni – Nicholas Garrett
Commendatore – Simon Wilding
Donna Anna – Ana James
Donna Elvira – Laura Mitchell
Don Ottavio – Thomas Walker
Leporello – Matthew Hargreaves
Zerlina – Claire Wild
Masetto – Robert Winslade Anderson

Stephen Barlow (director)
Yannis Thavoris (designs)
Colin Grenfell (lighting)
Sam Spencer-Lane (choreography)

Opera Holland Park Chorus
City of London Sinfonia
Robert Dean (conductor)

Opera Holland Park’s new production of Don Giovanni marks a definite step up from its Fidelio, at least as presently conducted. (The production is excellent.) I do not think I had heard Robert Dean before, but he and the City of London Sinfonia presented an eminently creditable account of the score: not the last word in exploring its unfathomable depths, but mercifully free of the doctrinaire point-making that mars so many present-day performances. By and large, Mozart was allowed to speak for himself and benefited from doing so. Tempi were sensible; if the overture had sounded the odd alarm bell (for another reason, see below), then the music soon settled down. Woodwind solos were a particular joy, but the strings too appeared to be enjoying a new lease of life following their leaden direction the previous night. There were a few occasions when I missed greater heft, but surprisingly few, given the extraordinary nature of Mozart’s proto-Romanticism and the relatively small forces. Ornamentation can often irritate, but here, whether in the orchestra or from the soloists, it was tastefully, interestingly, yet not at all shyly accomplished. Eighteenth-century style is quite a different thing from what those who most loudly trumpet their supposed adherence would have you imagine. There was, however, a questionably prominent harpsichord: both loud and strangely ‘present’ in sound. Surely it was amplified? It seemed to me an interesting idea, though hardly necessary, to employ it during the Handel parody of Elvira’s ‘Ah, fuggi il traditor’, but its appearances became tiresomely frequent and increasingly inappropriate, culminating in unmerited – and out of sync – clattering during the Stone Guest scene. Choral singing impressed.

Stephen Barlow’s relocation to the High Victorian era worked well. As ever with such things, there are words that jar: the work is not in any real sense ‘about’ Seville, but why are it and Spain mentioned so much? That may not matter much, but it does more than in an abstracted, mythologised setting, in which specificity does not arise. If anything, the relocation might have benefited from greater concentration upon its new specificity: the weird, behind-closed-doors world of much Victorian sexuality might fruitfully have been explored. The costumes and sets were beautifully done, however, for which plaudits should be handed to Yannis Thavoris. And the focal, Dorian Gray-like narcissism – several wall portraits and all – of Don Giovanni was convincing to a degree. An especially effective idea was to have the Commendatore step forward from one of those portraits, an elderly version of the young libertine. Giovanni’s defiance acquires another layer of understanding when seen as rejecting the fate of growing old (relatively) gracefully. Some other touches convinced more than others. The comely bell boy – subsequently seen in the chorus of damnation – who thought it worth a play for the hero’s affections during his serenade amused, though surely not quite so much as the excessive guffawing from some well-oiled members of the audience might have suggested. However, the portrayal of Zerlina as a Plain Jane – who only at the end removes her spectacles and lets her hair down, to initiate sex with Masetto – is quite at odds both with libretto and, more importantly, Mozart’s music. A peasant girl who should exude natural fertility seemed more like a failed candidate for IVF. No wonder that Claire Wild seemed uncertain what tone to adopt for her music.

Her Masetto was the weakest link in the cast: strong on stage presence but sadly lacking in voice. Laura Mitchell was not dissimilar, though her lopsided portrayal, neurotic to the exclusion of the erotic, may possibly have been a product of directorial line. Simon Wilding was a powerful Commendatore, whilst Ana James sang beautifully as her almost-namesake. The production, however, seemed a little uncertain what to do with her. (I remain wedded to the post-ETA Hoffmann idea of Donna Anna as truly desiring Don Giovanni, but there are other possibilities.) Don Ottavio is, of course, the very definition of the thankless role, but Thomas Walker impressed with his style and musicality. Matthew Hargreaves was suffering from some ailment, but nevertheless caught attention as a fine Leporello, alert to the quicksilver shifts demanded and commendably attentive to the finer points of the libretto. Nicholas Garrett proved a splendid Giovanni, handsome of tone as well as aspect, suave, cruel, and yet credibly heroic at the last. This, then, was a Don Giovanni of which Opera Holland Park can justly be proud.

A few words, however, concerning the audience: whilst there was hilarity to be had during the overture from the sight of a former Conservative Cabinet minister, no Chelsea strip in sight, and his young companion engaging in a slanging match with the couple seated in front, there are perhaps better ways to appreciate Mozart’s shift of tempo – here a little abrupt, as it happened – than by having an ex-politician shout ‘Shut up!’ and his guest offer a one-finger salute at the row in front. For whatever reason, the happy couple rushed away the moment the final chord was heard. For connoisseurs of Conservative politics of a slightly earlier vintage – perhaps they exist – Lord Lawson of Blaby was also in attendance.