The Queen of Spades, Opera Holland Park, 2 August 2016

Holland Park Theatre

Herman – Peter Wedd

Lisa – Natalya Romaniw
Countess – Rosalind Plowright
Count Tomsky – Richard Burkhard
Prince Yeletsky – Grant Doyle
Polina – Laura Woods
Masha – Daisy Brown
Chekalinsky – Aled Hall
Surin – Simon Wilding
Governess – Laura Zigmantaite
Chaplitsky – Oliver Brignall
Narumov – Henry Grant Kerswell
Master of Ceremonies – Timothy Langston

Rodula Gaitanou (director)

Cordelia Chisholm (designs)
Simon Corder (lighting)
Jamie Neale (choreography)

Opera Holland Park Chorus (chorus master: Philip Voldman)

City of London Sinfonia
Peter Robinson (conductor)
 

The Queen of Spades has been doing rather well in and around London of late. I have only seen two stagings recently before this, but know of quite a few others. Of those: Opera North offered a rare lapse at the Barbican, about which the less said, the better; ENO, last year, offered strong vocal performances but a truly catastrophic production. All in all, then, Holland Park, as so often, came off best.

 

Rodula Gaitanou’s production tells the story well, and offers some probing beneath the surface – although not so much when contrasted with reports of Stefan Herheim’s recent staging in Amsterdam. (By the same token, however, OHP does a great deal with more limited resources; it would in any case be unreasonable or downright absurd to expect every opera production to be an event on the level of a Herheim production.) I did wonder whether the sight of two men beneath an arch in the penultimate scene was intended as an oblique reference to Tchaikovsky’s homosexuality, but, given the darkness, it was a bit difficult to tell. Perhaps that is the point. There is, in the late-nineteenth-century updating – time of composition, I presume – some sense of pitting a self-consciously beautiful society against more human desires, noble and base alike. Cordelia Chisholm’s designs will certainly delight those who wish to see ‘traditional’ productions, doubtless ignoring the fact that the opera is not set when it ‘should’ be.

The Countess seems to rule the roost in a fashion beyond what one might expect; this is, perhaps, an ageing society, unable to accept the need to change. If I felt that some of those points might have been pushed a little harder, there is something to be said for not doing so either. We all have particular tastes, and have no right to insist that everything should be as we should have done it; indeed, we should be willing to learn from things done differently – and done well. I found that, on reflection, the production had more to offer than I had initially thought; there is certainly much to be said for relative subtlety. (Just as there is much to be said, from time to time, for agitprop!)

 

It was, perhaps inevitably, Rosalind Plowright’s Countess who made the strongest dramatic impression. Although she does not have very much to sing during the first act – here, Tchaikovsky’s three acts were condensed into two – she held the stage just by entering, let alone by painfully, agonisingly, walking across it with her sticks. (I thought a little of my first encounter with Waltraud Meier in the theatre: as Ortrud as Covent Garden. The character has little to sing at all in the first act of Lohengrin, but I could not keep my eyes off her.) And the insight into her interior life, above all to her past, was moving, evoking an historical canvas far wider than we were explicitly or even implicitly told. Natalya Romaniw did not disappoint as Lisa, although I felt that her character came more into its own following the interval; a freer, more daring performance to be seen and heard. Again, perhaps that was the point. Peter Wedd’s Herman was, I am afraid, harder to like. The character seemed less impetuous than annoying, somewhat generalised, even wooden acting meaning that it was difficult to feel much chemistry between him and his beloved. As melodrama there was something to be said for such a performance, but there was much that it lacked; a fine vocal performance might have compensated, but that was not to be either. Grant Doyle’s Yeletsky, however, was very fine indeed: darkly conflicted, and beguiling of line.

 

Other, ‘smaller’ roles were all taken well, Richard Burkhard’s Tomsky, Daisy Brown’s Masha, and Laura Zigmantaite’s Governess particularly catching my ear – without that reflecting negatively upon any of the other singers. It was the Opera Holland Park Chorus, though, which so often stole the show. Expertly trained, not just musically but in its Russian too (insofar as I could tell!), by Philip Voldman, and responding well to detailed direction, choreography (Jamie Neale) included, the chorus members performed equally well as individuals (highly impressive waiters, for instance, in the first scene) and corporately. We shall doubtless see and hear more from many of them.

 

Ideally, we should have heard a larger orchestra than the Holland Park pit can accommodate. There were certainly times when the lack of a greater body of strings detracted from Tchaikovsky’s Romanticism. However, there is a good deal of (neo-)Classicism to the score too; that often thrived under Peter Robinson’s direction. The Mozart pastiche music – which, of course, never quite sounds like Mozart, but gives us a good idea of Tchaikovsky’s limited understanding of Mozart – came off particularly well, but so did the obsessive qualities of the score. The City of London Sinfonia woodwind were on particularly good form, and the strings performed creditably indeed, given their limitation in number. Opera Holland Park’s productions tend to evoke above all a splendid sense of company, of an evening that is considerably more than the sum of its parts; this was no exception.

 

 

Il trittico, Opera Holland Park, 5 June 2015

Michele – Stephen Gadd

Giorgetta – Anne Sophie Duprels
Luigi – Jeff Gwaltney
Frugola – Sarah Pring
Tinca – Aled Hall
Talpa – Simon Wilding
Soprano Amante – Johane Ansell
Tenor Amante – James Edwards

Sister Angelica – Anne Sophie Duprels

Princess Zia – Rosalind Plowright
Abbess – Fiona Mackay
Monitress – Laura Woods
Mistress of the Novices – Kathryn Walker
Sister Genovieffa – Johane Ansell
Sister Osmina – Kathryn Hannah
Sister Dolcina – Rosanne Havel
Nursing Sister – Chloë Treharne
Alms Sisters – Anna Patalong, Sarah Minns
Novices – Naomi Kilby, Ellie Edmonds
Lay Sisters – Rebecca Hardwick, Chloe Hinton
Child – Matteo Elezi

Gianni Schicchi – Richard Burkhard

Zita – Sarah Spring
Lauretta – Anna Patalong
Rinuccio – James Edwards
Gherardo – Aled Hall
Nella – Elin Pritchard
Betto – Simon Wilding
Simone – William Robert Allenby
Marco – Ian Beadle
La Ciesca – Chloe Hinton
Spinelloccio – Henry Grant Kerswell
Gherardino – Barnaby Stewart
Buoso – Peter Benton

Martin Lloyd-Evans, Oliver Platt (directors)

Neil Irish (designs)
Richard Howell (lighting)

City of London Sinfonia

Stuart Stratford (conductor)

Time was when many felt compelled to ‘make allowances’ for ‘smaller’ companies. Now, more often than not, the contrary seems to be the case, instead apologising for their elder and/or larger siblings: ‘But of course, it is far more difficult for House X, given the conservatism of its moneyed audience,’ as if House X might not actually attract a different, more intellectually curious audience by programming more interesting works. At any rate, there is now no more need, if ever indeed there were, to ‘make allowances’, and it is difficult really to consider a company with such extensive programming as Opera Holland Park to be in any meaningful sense ‘smaller’. This new production – reusing its 2012 Gianni Schicchi – of Puccini’s complete Trittico may well be the best thing I have yet seen and heard at Holland Park.

Yet again, any reservations I might pre-emptively have held in abstracto concerning a small-ish orchestra (the outstanding City of London Sinfonia, strings 6:5:4:3:2) vanished within a few bars; the acoustic may sound unpromising in an unpromising performance, but in one such as this, with truly excellent conducting throughout from Stuart Stratford, there was no problem whatsoever. Dynamic contrasts and continuities could hardly have been more powerfully – and sensitively – communicated. Climaxes were shaped with unfailing conviction, matched, one felt, with as true an understanding as Puccini’s own of the dramatic ebb and flow. Indeed, the importance of rhythm, and its inextricable alliance to increasingly adventurous harmony, was projected in Il tabarro as almost a symphonic poem of the Seine itself – were that not woefully to underplay the role played by Stratford’s splendid cast. The post-verismo (if in fact we are post-) darkness of the score, lit by shards one might relate to Stravinsky, Schoenberg, or Debussy, but which one would be quite wrong to consider in any sense derivative, told of a Paris both distinct from and yet related to La bohème, Puccini’s self-quotation playful acknowledgement rather than necessity, so deeply imbued with style and meaning was the musical account.

Different colours, different sound-worlds presented  themselves in Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi, the tragic noose tightening inexorably in the former, all the more powerfully for its radiant feminity (from which Poulenc surely learned so much in Dialogues des Carmélites. I initially hardly felt like hearing the latter, immediately following the tragic denouement of Suor Angelica. Performance put me right, the revels now begun of a scherzo as full of zest and the comedic complexities of commedia dell’arte as the Petrushka score that more than once came to mind. Nothing was permitted to outstay its welcome, ‘O mio babbino caro’ for once a genuine moment of well-natured self-parody rather than a would-be reversion, in which members of the audience may sit back and ‘enjoy’. Indeed, Dante’s great comedy itself seemed to loom over the enterprise as a whole – just as, in very different circumstances, it had over Calixto Bieito’s brilliant Berlin double-bill of Schicchi and Bluebeard’s Castle earlier this year.

 

The casts were also as fine as I can recall from OHP, perhaps even finer still. Even given a certain amount of duplication, the number of singers involved is large, so as often put a strain upon one of those ‘larger’ houses. Here, no one disappointed, and the whole, as the well-worn cliché has it, was considerably greater than the sum of its parts; indeed, there was a real sense of company, such as one is more likely nowadays to find in relatively ‘smaller’ circumstances. Anne Sophie Duprels convinced equally in the conflicted roles of Giorgetta and Suor Angelica, her musical and dramatic focus and shaping every inch the equal of Stratford’s. Stephen Gadd and Jeff Gwaltney had one believe just as strongly in them and their plight in Il tabarro; it may not be a lengthy opera, but these felt like fully drawn characters, and the ‘smaller’ parts offered much of great interest too. So did those in the other two operas. Other singers to stand out – although it hardly seems fair to do anything but repeat the cast list – were a vehement, Rosalind Plowright as La Zia Principessa, nobler than the convent hierarchy, but possessed of similar, ruthless, yet perhaps ultimately more conflicted coldness. Family lines exert their own pressure, as we should shortly be reminded in Gianni Schicchi. Richard Burkhard’s protean Schicchi, Sarah Pring’s slightly but not too outlandish Zita, and Anna Patalong’s beautifully sung Lauretta headed a cast of true depth in that final instalment.

As night fell, the qualities of the three productions declared themselves in different ways; that change in light – and temperature – proved especially telling during the course of Suor Angelica. Neil Irish’s arched backdrop for Il tabarro, commenting yet expanding upon the ruins of Holland House, moved to the foreground for the laundry – inevitable thoughts concerning convent repression there – in Suor Angelica and the bedroom for Gianni Schicchi, laundered clothes serving dual purpose in the two latter operas. There was, however, no attempt to force the three operas closer together than that; they told their own stories, and we made connections as we would. Martin Lloyd Evans (Il tabarro and original director of Gianni Schicchi) and Oliver Platt (Suor Angelica and revival director of Schicchi) respected the works, which in turn seemed to respect them for it. Movement and designs were in keeping with the dictates of the action, scenic and musical alike, keenly observed without drawing undue attention. The tragedy and comedy of human existence were the focus, from pit and stage alike.

Ode to Napoleon and Il Prigioniero, Opéra National de Paris, 15 April 2008

Palais Garnier

Schoenberg: Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, Op.41

Dale Duesing (reciter)
Frédéric Laroque, Vanessa Jean (violins)
Laurent Verney (viola)
Martine Bailly (’cello)
Christine Lagniel (piano)

Dallapiccola: Il prigioniero

La Madre – Rosalind Plowright
Il Prigoniero – Evgeny Nikitin
Il Carciere, Il Grande Inquisitore – Chris Merritt
Due Sacerdoti – Johan Weigel and Bartlomiej Mlaluda

Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris
Alessandro di Stefano (chorus-master)
Lothar Zagrosek (conductor)

Llula Pasqual (director)
Paco Azorin (designs)
Isidre Prunés (costumes)
Albert Faura (lighting)

It was an excellent idea to preface Il prigioniero, Dallapiccola’s one-act opera – strictly, ‘un prologo e un atto’ – with Schoenberg’s Ode to Napoleon. The last time I had seen Il prigioniero it had represented almost the only adventurous selection for the English National Opera’s 2000 ‘Italian season’, combined with Berio’s Folk songs – which just about worked and absolved ENO from having to stage a Berio opera – and, bizarrely, Nino Rota’s film score, La strada. Paris made far more sense, offering two fiercely immediate responses to European fascism (assuming that we count National Socialism as such).

It has generally been considered, although I do not think the composer ever explicitly made the connection, that Schoenberg had Hitler in mind as he set Byron’s sardonic ‘ode’ from his American exile in 1942. Many on the English side of the Channel, whilst they would not go so far as to identity Napoleon and Hitler, would still consider the former to have been and certainly to have become a monstrous dictator. Yet such a reaction is far less common in France, where Bonapartism dies hard. This Anglo-Austrian onslaught therefore gained an extra frisson, to which an additional layer of historical meaning was lent by the location: not the Opéra Bastille, but the old house, the Palais Garnier, ‘in the style of Napoleon III’. The production, however, dwelled upon the era of Schoenberg rather than that of Byron. I have heard Schoenberg’s Ode taken to task for hectoring, which seems rather like criticising Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ for rejoicing. The combination of subject matter and Sprechgesang more or less guarantees such a characterisation, should one be so inclined. (Incidentally, it has much in common with Schoenberg’s psalm settings and, indeed, with his Moses.)

Llula Pasqual’s production created an illuminating context for such hectoring – ‘ranting’ has been the word more often employed – by introducing the element of cabaret. As the curtain rose, I could not imagine why reciter Dale Duesing was in drag, but the penny soon dropped, not least since the instrumentalists, male and female, of the onstage piano quintet were dressed in black tie à la Weimar. I wondered how far Duesing’s striptease would progress, until it became clear that not only would he perform his dressing-room ablutions, but he would also don pyjamas in preparation for the concentration camp. There was also the suggestion – if only from me – that Napoleon and Hitler were, as Nietzsche would have understood only too well, essentially ‘actors’ themselves. Intriguingly, Duesing appeared to have something of a German accent to begin with. It worked rather well, although was rather puzzling since he is American; perhaps it was more of a response to Schoenberg’s word-setting, or perhaps it was just ‘staged’. In any case, Duesing’s vocal contribution was impressive, although there were just a couple of instances where he seemed to fall very briefly out of sync with the players. Their musicianship was manifest from the opening bars, surely some of the most immediately memorable music Schoenberg ever wrote. (If it is too ‘busy’ quite to be hummable, one can certainly hear it in one’s head after a single audition.) Conducted by Lothar Zagrosek, they expressed not only the fury of Schoenberg’s admonitions, but also the neo-Brahmsian musical integrity of this astonishing score, leading inexorably and shatteringly to the unforgettable E-flat major reference to Beethoven’s Sinfonia eroica, composta per festeggiare il sovvenire d'un grand'uomo. In this performance, ‘hero dust’ was indeed as ‘vile as vulgar clay’.

Il prigioniero was composed at much the same time, although it was not completed until 1948, after the full horrors of wartime experience were known to all. Equally dodecaphonic, and rejoicing in its homage to each member of the Second Viennese School, the score is also undeniably Italian. The opening motif, redolent of a distorted fanfare, is equally suggestive of twelve-note Puccini, and its recurrences are every bit as memorable as one of his melodies. So was the almost unbearable false hope of the three-note ‘fratello’ motif, as we follow the Prisoner in the hope engendered by his gaoler having called him ‘brother’, only to have it dashed by the startling revelation of his would-be-friend as the Inquisitor himself. I was in two minds about the production identifying the two, if indeed this were the intention. It was certainly the effect and in practice the two roles are often sung by the same tenor. It sealed the hopelessness in hope of the Prisoner’s fate and identified, as does the score, the Inquisitor’s ‘fratello’ with the terrible ‘sogno’ (dream) of the Prisoner’s mother, but it made it more difficult for us to hope, through prayer, of freedom (each of these three concepts being symbolically associated with one of the opera’s three note-rows). Either way, this is the ultimate anti-Fidelio. Where Beethoven could still dream of bourgeois freedom in noble fashion, this is now impossible; hope is itself the worst form of torture.

The production certainly scored in its depiction of the prison in which a variety of torture takes place. Paco Azarin’s designs, with their Piranesi staircases, created a suitably labyrinthine setting. Likewise the treadmill effect as the Prisoner edged towards ‘freedom’. Moreover, whilst it might seem wearisome in the abstract retelling, this was an instance of Guantanamo on stage that worked. The parallels between sixteenth-century Europe, torn apart through ‘religious’ strife and our own time are clear, as are those of the responses. Truly shocking was the choral intermezzo between the Prologue and Scene One, in which the chorus was directed on stage to sing the words, ‘Fiat misericordia tua, Domine, super nos,’ as a hanging and other behaviour of ‘our’ troops proceeded. Having witnessed similar scenes very recently in the Komische Oper Berlin’s Iphigénie en Tauride, I noted how immediately relevant they were to two such very different dramas. This was not the shock of épater les bourgeois; this was confronting our world with crimes indistinguishable from those of sixty or more than four hundred years earlier. It is worth adding that the choral singing was superb, both here and later, when its Latin was heard from behind and above, adding a powerful spatial dimension to the drama. The songs of praise when freedom is apparently attained were overwhelmingly chilling.

So too was Evgeny Nikitin as the Inquisitor – and, owing to their identity, as the Gaoler. He exhibited majesty as the former and an horrific ‘compassion’ as the latter. I thought his final deed, administering a lethal injection to the Prisoner, a melodramatic miscalculation, but that was not Nikitin’s fault. Otherwise, he succeeded in projecting the absolute evil so unsparingly depicted in the drama (a rarer accomplishment in terms of artist and work than one might imagine). Hagen came to mind during the final scene. Chris Merritt sang well for the most part as the Prisoner, and certainly gave a powerful stage performance. He appeared to tire somewhat at one point, although in fact this actually worked in terms of the drama. Rosalind Plowright was close to perfect as the Mother. The twin emotion and clarity of her performance precisely mirrored the role and the text. It is a wonderful role, and she was wonderful in it. It would be excessively faint praise to say that the singers were well supported by the orchestra, although they were. For much of the drama lies within the orchestra, not least in the Bergian ricercares, in which that powerful dialectic between expression and precision, both aspects gaining power from the interplay, was searingly brought to the fore. Lothar Zagrosek, who in my experience has always been at his best in twentieth-century music, should be credited for steering a clear line through the score. Lyricism was not overlooked, far from it. Equally crucially, the power of the musical work’s structure and construction was permitted to stand as a sign of resistance. There may not be hope in an administered world, yet, as Adorno signalled, twelve-note music, for all the complexity of its relationship with that world, somehow continues to resist. Now will someone stage Dallapiccola’s Ulisse?

It was, then, certainly worth making a special trip to Paris for an extremely powerful and provocative theatrical experience. Afterwards, having found a restaurant in Montparnasse, I was heartened that the waiter, spying my programme, declared, ‘Le prisonnier – c’est magnifique!’ and proceeded enthusiastically to discuss his experience of the first night with me. I suppose something similar could have happened in London, but suspect that any such hope would be without foundation.