Bauci e Filemone (Gluck) and The Judgment of Paris (Arne), Bampton Classical Opera, 13 September 2016

St John’s, Smith Square

Pallas (Catherine Backhouse), Venus (Aoife O'Sullivan), Juno (Barbara Cole Walton)

(sung in English)

Bauci – Barbara Cole Walton

Filemone – Catherine Backhouse
Giove – Christopher Turner
Chorus – Aoife O’Sullivan, Robert Anthony Gardiner, Robert Gildon
Actors – Marieke Bernard-Berkel, Niamh Adams, Sophie Lyons


Mercury – Robert Anthony Gardiner
Paris – Christopher Turner
Juno – Barbara Cole Walton
Pallas – Catherine Backhouse
Venus – Aoife O’Sullivan
Mechanic – Robert Gildon
 

Jeremy Gray (director, set designs)

Vikki Medhurst (costumes)


CHROMA

Paul Wingfield (conductor)

We have a great deal for which to be grateful to Bampton Classical Opera, here making its annual staged visit to St John’s, Smith Square. Who else is interested in this country is interested in the broader hinterland of opera in, roughly, the second half of the eighteenth century? Gluck, by any standards, one of the most important composers in the history of opera, not just eighteenth-century opera, is all but ignored by our ‘major’, non-touring companies, although English Touring Opera offered a fine Iphigénie en Tauride earlier this year. (I also plan to report from the new staging in Paris in December.) If ‘reformist’ Gluck is so shamefully ignored, however, his earlier and concurrent ‘non-reformist’ self suffers a fate worse still.

 

Giove (Christopher Turner)

And yet, the dividing lines are not nearly so distinct as one might suspect. Filemone e Bauci, here sung in Gilly French’s English translation as Philemon and Baucis, was actually written as one act of a festa teatrale, La feste d’Apollo – not unlike a Ramellian opéra-ballet – whose final act was a revised (shortened) version of Orfeo ed Euridice. Intended for the 1769 wedding of Ferdinand, Duke of Parma, to Maria Theresa’s daughter, Maria Amalia, there was a rich, personal operatic past on which to draw, the Archduchess herself having sung in Viennese performances of two earlier Gluck operas, Il parnaso confuso (performed by Bampton forces in 2014) (as Apollo himself), and La corona. Gluck, moreover, for all the alleged purity of his operatic æsthetic, was far from averse to reusing music elsewhere, and there is some splendidly insane coloratura to be handled here too, no more banished to the dustbin of operatic history than a good number of other aspects of Metastasian opera seria. That La feste d’Apollo immediately followed Alceste – of the celebrated Preface – counsels us against parroting too readily all manner of supposed generalisations, turning points, and so forth, concerning operatic history. That said, whilst Bauci’s one aria offers us coloratura to make the Queen of the Night seem almost an amateur, the rest of Gluck’s style here is relatively simple. As so often, the truth is more interesting, more complicated, than received opinion would have us believe. We might know that in theory, of course, but we also need opportunities to experience that in performance, such as here.

 

It is not, perhaps, the most dramatic of works, certainly of libretti, but Giuseppe Maria Pagnini’s libretto, after Ovid, makes certain interesting modifications – I hesitate to say ‘metamorphoses’ – and Jeremy Gray’s production follows suit; both offer a setting for Gluck’s opera to shine forth, playing with the distance between antiquity, the eighteenth century and our time. Chez Pagnini, Philemon and Baucis – I shall now use the English forms – are not an elderly couple, but a pair of young lovers. They nevertheless show kindness beyond the call of duty towards the disguised Jupiter, and, following a storm of divine petulance, receive their priestly reward. Picking up on ideas of travel, disguise, and liminality, the action takes place – not didactically, but with an awareness of what a change of scene might do, to make us consider meaning – in the strange, modern world of the airport: not an uninteresting substitution for pastoral Phrygia. There can certainly be no doubting the helpfulness of these particular honest airline employees.

 

Mercury (Robert Anthony Gardiner) and Paris (Christopher Turner)

That is also the world, with different, yet related, designs for Thomas Arne’s The Judgment of Paris, Arne Air (‘no frills, plenty of trills’) itself – perhaps – a disguised –version of something else. The work is a little earlier than many, though by no means all, of Bampton’s works. To begin with, I even thought that Arne’s 1742 setting of William Congreve’s competition-entry libretto (1701) might have the edge over Gluck’s. It was a splendid opportunity to hear such a rarity, of course, but, as time went on, and with no disrespect to Ian Spink’s excellent Musica Britannica reconstruction of the dry recitatives and chorus music, Arne’s music, superficially similar to Handel’s, became somewhat predictable and perhaps stood in need of the occasional cut to admit of dramatic flow: quite the opposite, then, to Gluck, whose virtues, as so often, quietly crept up upon us. The witty presentation of Paris making his judg(e)ment as a passenger upon divinely-conjured air hostesses again has the virtue of permitting reflection, without forcing it upon us. Jupiter may be absent in person, but his messenger, Mercury again offers another lightly worn connection between works.

 

Baucis (Barbara Cole Walton)

The playing of CHROMA, under Paul Wingfield, proved excellent throughout. We may have come to expect that, but it is certainly not to be taken for granted. From the typically contrasting material – and its dramatic implications – of Gluck’s Overture to the final Arne chorus we were not only in safe, but colourful, harmonically aware hands, well capable of permitting the operatic action to ‘Sing, and spread the joyful News around’. Barbara Cole Walton proved every inch the star with that fiendish coloratura writing from Gluck. As Arne’s Juno, she took her part in an excellent team of competitors, her Juno complementing and contrasting with Catherine Backhouse’s wise, yet far from un-sensual Pallas, also a rich-toned, good-natured Philemon, and Aoife O’Sullivan’s spirited, highly characterful Venus. Christopher Turner’s Paris (and Jupiter) revealed to us a sensitive, agile tenor: many challenges here, met with formidable success. Robert Anthony Gardiner’s Mercury also impressed, with similar vocal virtues, and a keen sense of the stage. Members of the ensemble all made their mark. This was unquestionably a company triumph; the next Bampton opera(s) is or are eagerly awaited.

 

La grotta di Trofonio, Bampton Classical Opera, 15 September 2015

(sung in English, as Trofonio’s Cave)

St John’s, Smith Square

Aristone – James Harrison

Dori – Aoife O’Sullivan
Ofelia – Catherine Backhouse (sung)/Marieke Bernard-Berkel
Artemidoro – Christopher Turner
Plistene – Nicholas Merryweather
Trofonio – Matthew Stiff
Ladies’ Maid – Triona Adams

Jeremy Gray (director, set designs)
Triona Adams (movement)
Vikki Medhurst (costumes)

CHROMA

Paul Wingfield (conductor)

The best and most important production and performance I have seen yet from Bampton Classical Opera, on its annual visit to St John’s Smith Square! I cannot have been the only member of the audience seeing a complete Salieri opera for the first time; to say that it exceeded my expectations would be an understatement. I had previously heard a few operatic excerpts, some of his sacred music (treated with all the respect it deserves by Riccardo Muti) and some instrumental music. La grotta di Trofonio emerged, with the usual caveats concerning a first hearing, not only as a work I should happily hear again, superior to many operas in the dread repertoire, but as a musical achievement not so far off the operas of Haydn. (Any regular readers will know that is no idle compliment from me.) The Gluckian side of Salieri, about which we hear more often, is considerably less in evidence, but this is a comedy, and Salieri marshals his resources accordingly.

 

Indeed, it is the symphonic Haydn who comes immediately to mind in the Overture, its slow, mysterious Introduction, swiftly put to side by high yet directed spirits, having, in a display of long-term musico-dramatic thinking, sown the seeds for the mysteries of Trofonio’s cave. Over the work’s two acts, a full Classical orchestra engages the mind and the senses to a degree I should never have imagined. Vocal writing is at the least accomplished throughout, and often rather more than that. Ensembles are perhaps a particular revelation, reminding or informing us that both the genesis of opera buffa and its musical modernity are a more complicated story than many would have us believe. What we lack, you may not be surprised to hear, is what we lack in Haydn: depth of characterisation and of emotion, a hint of those musico-dramatic epiphanies which change one’s life forever, etc. And, like many operas, it goes on longer than it need, especially in the second act. (You see how hard I am struggling not to mention someone else by name.)

 

The plot is easily dealt with. A father, Aristone, is – unusually! – happy with his two daughters’ choice of suitors. They enter Trofonio’s cave, emerge, following his incantations, with their personal qualities reversed: bookish to fun-loving and vice versa. The reversal is reversed, but then the daughters, tempted into the cave, suffer the same fate. After similar incomprehension, their reversal too is reversed. A wedding can be prepared. You might think there a similarity with a certain libretto of Lorenzo da Ponte (which Salieri actually began to set); I couldn’t possibly comment.

This revival, almost certainly the first British production, is the project of Gilly French (the English translation is also hers) and Jeremy Gray, who also directs and provides set designs. There is no attempt to offer the depths that the opera itself lacks. What might seem simply to be of the surface for a certain opera whose premiere came not so much as five years later, in 1790, also at Vienna’s Burgtheater, proves well suited to the different nature of Salieri’s collaboration with the far-from-unintellectual Giovanni Battista Casti (whom many of us will know both from Prima la musica e poi la parole and its role in the genesis of Strauss’s Capriccio). Action moves to 1910; I know, because I was the lucky recipient of a dated ‘Downton Abbey’ wedding invitation during the performance. That seems to be a favoured period of the company – attractive, doubtless, to the English country-house opera scene, and also easy to dress, but here, in its Importance of Being Earnest atmosphere, perhaps particularly appropriate. Trofonio’s cave is the TARDIS: make of the time-travelling what you will. It is decidedly unclear whether the Tom Baker-clad Trofonio himself should be a charlatan (a few years later, someone might have offered a Mesmerist slant) or someone who enables self-reflection. Does the one exclude the other? Such invitations and ambiguities are anything but heavy-handed interventions; indeed, they are present in the work, whether intentionally or otherwise. Most importantly, they offer one space to think beyond the bare bones of the plot. (You might be surprised how many people complain about misogyny and a lack of ‘realism’ in one Ferrarese entertainment, how many take it at its librettist’s apparent word.)

 

The playing of CHROMA under Paul Wingfield was nothing short of magnificent, aided by the excellent acoustic of St John’s, Smith Square. I cannot recall a single tempo choice that did not convince, and the array of musical colour, not least in the woodwind section, showed quite why a young composer from, say, Salzburg might have chosen to make his living in Vienna. The orchestral contribution was not the least, indeed was arguably the greatest, musical offering of all, given the scale and ambition of Salieri’s writing.

 

Moreover, the cast would have graced any house. As Aristone, James Harrison made much of the musical and verbal text, providing a crucial anchor of stability, but never dullness, as identities switched around him. Matthew Stiff proved an engaging, properly ambiguous agent of disruption as Trofonio; his invocation of the spirits, bolstered by an able chorus, had me thinking of Saul’s visit to the Witch of Endor.  Nicholas Merryweather and Christopher Turner proved equally successful in both of their personalities, offering as much character, generally born of subtlety in vocal colouring, as such an opera permits. Likewise Aoife O’Sullivan as Dori, in her transformation from fun-loving daughter to would-be Platonist, her brightness of tone never wearing. We should have heard Anna Starushkevych as Ofelia, but visa problems – is this not a country to be proud of? – prevented the Ukrainian mezzo from travelling, so instead we were treated to a collaboration from the side-of-stage singer Catherine Backhouse and the centre-stage acting of Marieke Bernard-Berkel. It was no distraction at all; indeed, there was arguably an intriguing dramatic alienation – think of the subject matter, assumption of different personas – to be had from the situation. More to the point, perhaps, Backhouse’s short-notice performance showed her to be an excellent artist, rich of tone and admirably clear of diction, and Bernard-Berkel’s stage presence proved equally impressive.   

 

No, of course it is not an opera by you-know-who. It is an opera by Salieri. The action remains largely on the surface, but does not prevent one from thinking further for oneself, and arguably invites one to do so. There is none of the agony, indeed none of the greatness in any respect, of Così fan tutte – all right; I shall finally name it and him by name – but if we are to restrict ourselves to the level of Mozart, then survivors will be well-nigh non-existent.  Bampton Classical Opera has done La grotta di trofonio and Salieri proud. May our opera houses take note. Alas, I shall not hold my breath; after all, is not another revival of La triviata a more pressing artistic requirement?