Bayreuth Festival (2) - Tristan und Isolde, 3 August 2024

Festspielhaus

Tristan – Andreas Schager
King Marke – Günther Groissböck
Isolde – Camilla Nylund
Kurwenal – Olafur Sigurdarson
Melot – Birger Radde
Brangäne – Christa Mayer
Shepherd – Daniel Jenz
Steersman – Lawson Anderson
Young Sailor – Matthew Newlin

Director – Thorliefur Örn Arnarsson
Set design – Vytautas Narbutas
Costumes – Sibylle Wallum
Dramaturgy – Andri Hardmeier
Lighting – Sascha Zauner

Bayreuth Festival Chorus (chorus director: Eberhard Friedrich)

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra

Semyon Bychkov (conductor)

 

Images: Bayreuther Festspiele / Enrico Nawrath

Almost uniquely amongst operas (dramas, if we prefer), Tristan und Isolde resists conceptualisation, even much in the way of framing. Perhaps not uniquely, but to a greater extent than any other. Any attempt to make Tristan ‘about’ anything other than what it is intrinsically about seems doomed to fail. I continue to live in dread of the director who decides it is somehow ‘about’ immigration, Covid, or anything pertaining to the phenomenal world. So many, distrusting or simply uninterested in music, seem incapable of sensing what it is concerned with. 

Put frankly, if you are uninterested in music, you should leave Tristan well alone. Its action is interior; the exterior is largely back story. For Wagner at his most Schopenhauerian, in aesthetics as much as ontology, the striving of the Will is the action, to which music – not opposed to, but as drama – as its representation comes closer than any other art form or means of expression. It is the music drama in which least would be lost if words and staging were discarded. In reality, of whatever kind, that how we listen to it, even when convinced otherwise. At a certain point in the Act II love-duet, it becomes difficult, even impossible, to have the words, fascinating, complex, and telling though they may be, register in one’s consciousness. Whether we call this the world of the noumenon, of night, of Dionysus, or of Tristan, we as well as the lovers are – or should be – there and not in its phenomenal, diurnal, Apollonian, operatic equivalent. 

All very well, you may say, but we do have words, we do have singers, we do have staging. Indeed we do, and they – singers and staging, in a sense words too – must work within these realities, these artistic truths. That need not be a problem; art thrives upon constraint of one sort or another. (Ask Wagner’s antipode, Stravinsky.) Too often, though, directors do not, perhaps cannot, since they seem to have little sense of what this work is actually concerned with, still less that it seemingly cannot be wrenched to be concerned with anything else. A signal feature of Bayreuth’s new Tristan, which I saw in its second performance, is that Thorliefur Örn Arnarsson seems to grasp this, in theory and in practice, and moreover to grasp that this does not negate but rather invites his work as director. There are cases, I think, in which he might go further in this direction in paring down the extraneous – is there a better model than Wieland Wagner here? – but this makes for a very good start and, following so many misfires, whether in Bayreuth or elsewhere, comes as a great relief. 

Nietzsche wrote a good deal of arrant nonsense about Wagner, often deliberately so, yet in calling Tristan the opus metaphysicum, he was on the mark. Only a couple of stagings I have seen, by Dmitri Tcherniakov and Peter Konwitschny, have offered serious challenge to that and Konwitschny in considerably more circumscribed fashion; they are destined, I suspect, to remain exceptions. Anarsson’s production treads on safer ground, neither without reason nor without advantage Moreover, there is to Anarsson’s work and to that of his collaborators, not least the outstanding Semyon Bychkov as conductor, a sense not only of the noumenal but of the aesthetic. 

Ship enthusiasts will find themselves well catered for. Not only the first act but the entire drama has a ship as its setting. Vytautas Narbutas’s set designs evoke this powerfully, suggestively, and without clutter—save, in the second act, where the clutter is the point. Ropes mostly do the trick in the first act, whose abiding visual motif is Isolde’s billowing wedding dress, also suggestive of sails. The words displayed – and just as much, concealed – on it from Wagner’s poem tell their own story, especially as she attempts, with varying success and perhaps intent, to free herself from it. Anarsson sees no reason actually to visualise the love potion, knowing that it is simply a symbol, not a cause. I have no especially strong feelings either way on that in principle; it is merely an external manifestation. It felt slightly odd, though – I realise this may seem somewhat at odds with what I say above – as did the onset of what seemed like a realistic fight between Tristan and Melot at the end of the second act, Melot wielding a sword, only for its outcome to happen seemingly spontaneously. Those objects and acts of the day perhaps benefit, if less strongly than their counterparts in the Ring, from some sort of visualisation.

The second act moves to the inside of the ship, seemingly its core: the core, one might say, of what action there may be. Its décor is fascinating, suggesting a lumber room strewn with objects that may in some sense have led us – which is to say Wagner, the work, those performing and otherwise experiencing it – there. Caspar David Friedrich’s presence is doubtless inevitable, and will at least evoke recognition, though part of me feels it is time to give his more celebrated images, like those of Monet and Klimt a while ago, a period of rest. The broader, unaggressive deconstruction of ‘civilisation’, western and perhaps eastern too, forms a captivating backdrop for the stage and ultimately the ‘real’ action. Cleared of that baggage, moved to a different part of (presumably) the same ship, the third act unfolds in a ‘later’, barer environment. It already feels too late, which in the most obvious if not necessarily the deepest sense, it is. Lighting, or rather its lack, throughout seems intended both to accentuate but also to develop the contrast between night and day. It reminds us that these are not operatic characters; the point is not necessarily to observe them minutely. There are greater forces – ultimately, one great, overwhelming force – at work.

Following the crude lack of direction, balance, and tuning brought to us two nights earlier by Oksana Lyniv in the covered pit, Bychkov’s work sounded like aural manna from heaven. He knew how to work with the theatre and its particular characteristics; beyond that, he knew the workings and expressive possibilities of Wagner’s score and communicated them in a reading that often took its time, especially in the second act, yet never dragged. The opening of the first-act Prelude – and its echo, towards the end of the act – sounded more beautifully hushed than I can recall, yet in no sense narcissistically; this was expectant, apparently imbued with knowledge, albeit knowledge that could not yet be imparted, of where the music would head, of what dramatically, in the fullest sense of the world, was at stake in melody, dissonance, and their consequences, always, if sometimes only just, within a tonal framework. That was the story, in which intensification of string vibrato could play as important a role as overwhelming orchestral climax. Bychkov did not hold back; his is not Wagner that defers to the voice, nor to anything other than its own musicodramatic requirements. He nonetheless helped liberate the voice’s expressive potential, even when vocal realities fell short of the ideal.

I did not feel that so strongly as a couple of people I have spoken to since, and wonder how much of that might be ascribed to seating in the theatre (as well, perhaps, as to aesthetic priorities). Seated at the back of the stalls, I may have benefited from the healing balm of the Bayreuth acoustic. That said, Andreas Schager’s Tristan, for stretches of the performance possessed of many of this Heldentenor’s familiar qualities, also experienced difficulties. Balance in the second-act duet was sometimes awry with Camilla Nylund’s Isolde, who at times also seemed stretched, if more in control of her part. A degree of abandon is, of course, no bad thing; Schager’s performance, however, came into and went out of focus a little too often and became strangely disjunct in the third act, as if the effort to sing more softly, to offer a more variegated reading, made it more difficult to maintain his line at all. 

Christa Mayer’s Brangäne was, by contrast, everything it should have been: warm, sustained, intelligent, and as well as integrated as any orchestral line. Günther Groissböck’s snarling Marke seemed to be making a play to come across as more cruel, even vindictive, than one might expect; this emerged as something of a work-in-progress. If a little bluff, even gruff at times, Olafur Sigurdarson had what it took for Kurwenal. The smaller roles were all well taken, Birger Radde’s ambivalent Melot, Daniel Lenz’s sweetly sung Shepherd, and Matthew Newlin’s clear-toned Sailor all standing out, whilst taking their place in the greater ensemble. The latter was ultimately what mattered and which, shortcomings aside, made this a satisfying and often moving whole.

Rusalka, Royal Opera, 27 February 2023

Royal Opera House

Rusalka – Asmik Grigorian
Prince – David Butt Philip
Vodník – Rafał Siwek
Ježibaba – Sarah Connolly
Duchess – Emma Bell
Kuchtík – Hongni Wu
Hajný – Ross Ramgobin
Wood Spirits – Vuvu Mpofu, Gabrielė Kupšytė, Anne Marie Stanley
Lovec – Josef Jeongmeen Ahn

Ann Yee and Natalie Abrahami (directors)
Chloe Lamford (set designs)
Annemarie Woods (costumes)
Paule Constable (lighting)
Ann Yee (choreography)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus director: William Spaulding)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Semyon Bychkov (conductor)

Images: Camilla Greenwell

A strange evening: I very much enjoyed this new Rusalka, though found myself slightly haunted by the suspicion I did so more than I should have done. Musically magnificent yet theatrically inert: opera should intrinsically be more than that, yet I suppose we should be grateful that it can still partly satisfy, even when one crucial component misfires. 

The production is oddly listed as having been ‘created by Natalie Abrahami and Ann Yee’ but with ‘Ann Yee and Natalie Abrahami’ as directors. Equitable, perhaps, but does such re-listing really merit a line in the programme? (Does it really merit three lines in a review, one might also ask, I suppose.) I mention it only as a minor instance of something more irritating. Equity, sustainability, so much else: these are of course causes toward which we should all be working, a great deal faster and harder than we are now. They do not, however, in themselves make a production; they are certainly no substitute for one either. For here, whilst one could read an interesting programme note, promising much, by Jessica Duchen on ‘A Sustainable Rusalka for the Royal Opera House’, the results were actually neither sustainable – for that, ‘wed have to have started the control systems much earlier’ (Abrahami) – nor, contra what we read, saying anything much about sustainability or wider ecological issues. Instead, there was a strange boast, admittedly fulfilled, of having ‘worked with our creative team to create the illusion of water, using paint effects and lighting, and a set that can hold this without having to turn over actual water’. Fine, if hardly unprecedented. Is that not more often the case than not with water? How many productions will theatregoers already have seen that did just that?

Ultimately, the directors (or ‘creators’) feel the story is ‘not about nature’s conflict with humanity, but rather humanity’s need to connect and meld with nature’. It is a point of view: not one that makes a great deal of sense to me, either intrinsically or in the case of Rusalka, but worth a hearing or viewing. What, then, do we have? A sort of non-directed cartoon with words and music attached. Singers generally have to fend (creditably) for themselves. A mossy fairytale without irony or magic turns mildly trashy in the second act, presumably out of a desire to be ‘contemporary’. It looks as though a few items from Claire’s Accessories have been magnified on stage to frame the ‘party’. Inflatable toy animals are presumably intended to imply distance from Nature’s real animals, yet since no one seems to know what is going on, they just look silly. We return more or less to a slightly broken version of the setting for the first act. Alleged intentions go unrealised, as if our ‘creators’ have failed to appreciate that stating you will do, let alone explore, something is not the same as doing or exploring it. As a framework for the story, it works reasonably. Paule Constable’s lighting pretty much steals the visual show, saying so much more than Yee’s tedious, seemingly tone-deaf choreography.

And save, mercifully, for the musical performances: singers, orchestra, and conductor. My two other big house Rusalki over the past decade or so have been Paris in 2019, not so long before the end of the world, and Covent Garden’s first (!) staged performance in 2012. An excellent Komische Oper staging in Berlin was a slightly different animal, built as it was around a thriving company, as opposed to an ‘international’ cast; it offered by some way the most interesting, penetrating production (Barrie Kosky). Paris had Camilla Nylund, Klaus Florian Vogt, Karita Mattila, Thomas Johannes Mayer, and Michelle DeYoung, Covent Garden 2012 also had Camilla Nylund, working with Bryan Hymel, Petra Lang, Alan Held, and Agnes Zwierko. At this level, comparisons are often more a matter of taste than anything else, but I should unhesitatingly plump for David Butt Philip’s Prince from Covent Garden 2023 and consider its cast every inch the equal of its illustrious predecessors. 

One of my first thoughts was that surely we must be due a Lohengrin from Butt Philip soon; lo and behold, on later reading the programme biographies, one (Deutsche Oper Berlin) is forthcoming. Beautifully, unerringly musically phrased, his Prince conveyed a vulnerability and complexity of character considerably beyond either of the aforementioned performances. This was a considered character development, conveyed through words and music. Asmik Grigorian’s Rusalka likewise had it all: effortlessly scaling the vocal peaks, drawing in through hushed intimacy, and offering almost everything in between. Her stage presence likewise was second to none. Sarah Connolly’s Ježibaba and Emma Bell’s Duchess – I am not sure why the usual ‘Foreign Princess’ was not used here, but no matter – represented luxury casting. The former’s expressive range, controlled in technique yet with dramatic spontaneity (or the impression of such), could hardly have been bettered. The latter’s star quality shone through: both in itself and as something akin to metacommentary on the role. Rafał Siwek’s dark-toned Vodník was just the thing too, in voice and presence. Lively and warmly sympathetic performances from Hongni Wu (Kuchtík) and Ross Ramgobin (Hajný) were also highly worthy of note.

 Excellent conducting from Susanna Mälkki (Paris) and Yannick Nézet-Seguin (Covent Garden, 2012) notwithstanding, Semyon Bychkov was for me in a different league. His was world-class conducting, the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House sounding the equal of its very starriest peers. One might expect operatic symphonism from Bychkov, but the extent to which the entire work sounded as if heard in a single, variegated breath nonetheless astonished. A symphony in three movements emerged, its first two acts strongly contrasted. The first was doubtless ‘objectively’ on the slow side, but emerged as an exquisitely conceived, quasi-Wagnerian tapestry in absolute commanded of our musical attention. The second entered more Italianate waters, enlivened by a welcome dash or two of Tchaikovsky, and the third effected due synthesis, culminating in a climax that can surely have never sounded closer to the pantheistic ecstasy of Janáček. Not, of course, that this was not first and foremost Dvořák, but it was a generous, cultivated and culturally broad performance that denied national, let alone nationalistic, clichés. 

Mention should also go to the language coaches, Lada Valesova and Lucie Spickova. I do not speak or understand Czech, save for odd words and phrases I have picked up. But I could have had a stab at transcribing some of it here, such were the clarity of diction and, insofar as I could tell, evident meaning with which words in their alchemic union with music were treated. All in all, then, a splendid evening—yet despite, rather than on account of, the inconsequential production.

Prom 65: BBC SO/Bychkov - Ravel, Berio, and Stravinsky, 31 August 2018

Royal Albert Hall

Ravel: La Valse

Berio: Sinfonia

Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring

London Voices (chorus master: Ben Parry)

Ian Dearden, Sound Intermedia (sound projection)

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Semyon Bychkov (conductor)

A richly allusive programme and performance, this. With any artwork – even, one might say, with anything at all – we all bring something different to it and take away something different too. With Berio in meta-mode, that becomes still more the case, in Sinfonia at least as much as in, say, La vera storia. (Will someone please, please stage that – or indeed any of the composer’s operas? The closest I have come was a wonderful performance of Laborintus II in Berlin from Simon Rattle et al.) Both La Valse and The Rite of Spring are quoted – allusively and/or elusively? – in Sinfonia, of course, but that is perhaps not really the point; or at least it was not for this particular listener on this particular occasion. I was led to think what ballet and opera might be or have been, what their relationships might be or have been, how they relate to the ‘symphony’ or sinfonia, and indeed to that thing, that practice, that whatever-and/or-however-we-want-to-think-of-and/or-experience-it we call ‘music’.

La Valse opened de profundis, as a companion to the yet-to-be-heard Rite: highly, ominously rhythmic, waltz fragments and later waltzes (?) themselves evolving. Much was seen, or rather heard – although somehow I fancied I saw things here too, in a ballet of the mind – as if through a kaleidoscope. The business of the senses, as of the mind, is messy, contradictory. Semyon Bychkov and the BBC Symphony Orchestra imparted unease as much through variegation of colour as rubato or harmony. There was often, not always, a mechanistic quality: paradoxical perhaps, given the apparent freedom of the waltz(ing), yet in keeping with the dialectics at work in the rest of the evening’s programme. Such, after all is this work, that conflict conveyed with disturbing magic in this performance.

The darkness of the opening chord of Sinfonia seemed, in context, to relate to the opening of La Valse. Voices entered, rendering – to use an appropriately Berian term – the music ‘lighter’ perhaps, or at least differently mysterious. Then they were off. Words from Claude L­évi-Strauss – I do not think we should say this is Lévi-Strauss him- or itself, or should we? – emerged, individual voices emerged: from the mass and vice versa. Words and sound, words’ relationship with sound, with instruments, and so on: all this and more was not just what we were led to think about; it was what we experienced. It was music. How ‘symphonic’ it was or should have been really depends entirely upon definitions: not an interesting game, really, save for the analytical philosopher – who, tellingly, will rarely have anything to tell us about music.

The name, the sound of Martin Luther King came together, like the musical forces as a whole, in the second movement. Points – however understood – of precision, of incision, not least from piano and brass seemed to gain meaning against the backdrop of a more mysterious ‘mass’, again however understood; and vice versa. Deconstruction was not only our lot, our necessity; it was our joy, our freedom, our music. Beguiling yet menacing, the wonderland of the third movement, like its Mahlerian bedding, asked us: what does this mean, where are we heading, perhaps even who cares? And of course, it told us: ‘keep going’. Interplay between voices and instruments, as well as their differentiation, seemed especially apparent in this performance. ‘Thank you, Mr Bychkov’: from which the fourth movement flowed, a tributary perhaps, or even a tribute, as if Mahler’s ‘O Röschen rot,’ yet not, emphatically not. This and the fifth movement sounded, as indeed the performance had increasingly, retrospectively as a whole, as if an instrumental, vocal, electronic madrigal reborn, both consciously and unconsciously. The opening to the latter, with its piano, flute, and soprano trio, seemed to incite a rejuvenation or better a reinvention of the work’s earlier musical worlds in both unity and dissolution.

Again in context, the multifarious woodwind lines of The Rite of Spring’s opening sounded as if a response to Berio. Wilder, I think, even now: testament to a performance that refused to treat this totemic work as a glossy ‘orchestral showpiece’. It was never, ever slick, constantly ratcheting the rhythmic and harmonic tension. Given Stravinsky’s method, ‘developed’ is probably the wrong word, yet Bychkov heard and projected it as a single, vivid narrative that yet gave space and voice to its individual scenes. Motivic insistence and transformation rightly did much of the work, grinding of ritualistic gears lacking nothing in force, willpower, and fatal inevitability, such affinities and conflicts readily evoking parallels in the previous two works on the programme. ‘The Sacrifice’ began as if a second act to a wordless opera; in a sense, it is: a new world or at least a new standpoint that only makes sense in reference to its predecessor. (Might one not say the same of movements of a symphony, or a sinfonia?) There was strangeness here that was anything but appliqué: no effort to be different, no effort to impress. Perhaps the challenge of playing the Rite today is actually to play it as music. Perhaps the same might also be said of the challenge of listening to it and indeed to any music.

Parsifal, Vienna State Opera, 5 April 2018

Amfortas – Jochen Schmeckenbecker
Gurnemanz – Kwangchul Youn
Parsifal – Christopher Ventris
Klingsor – Boaz Daniel
Kundry – Anja Kampe
Titurel – Ryan Speedo Green
Squires – Rachel Frenkel, Miriam Albano, Wolfram Igor Dentl, Peter Jelosits
First Knight of the Grail – Benedikt Köbel
Second Knight of the Grail – Marcus Pelz
Flowermaidens – Maria Nazarova, Lydia Rathkolb, Rachel Frenkel, Hila Fahima, Mariam Battistelli, Stephanie Houtzeel
Voice from Above – Zoryana Kushpler

Alvis Hermanis (director, set designs)

Kristīne Jurjāne (costumes)
Gleb Filshtinsky (lighting)
Ineta Sipunova (video)
Silvia Platzek (assistant set designer)

Children of the Vienna State Opera Opera School

Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Martin Schebesta)

Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera

Semyon Bychkov (conductor)

 

Parsifal continues its strange career in the opera house, both its ‘home’, Bayreuth, and beyond – the ‘beyond’ Cosima Wagner haplessly, hilariously attempted to prevent with her Lex Parsifal. (Note to pious New York Wagnerians: next time you appeal to the Master’s alleged intentions, consider your house’s role in confounding them.) Wagner’s desire, as expressed to Ludwig II, to protect the work from ‘a common operatic career’ is understandable. Indeed, Pierre Boulez, a highly distinguished interpreter and critic of the work as well as compositional successor, understood this very well when he approvingly noted Wagner loathing a system in which ‘opera houses are … like cafés where … you can hear waiters calling out their orders: “One Carmen! And one Walküre! And one Rigoletto!”’ Bayreuth has veered from the very best, indeed the very greatest, in Stefan Herheim, to the very worst, with Uwe Eric Laufenberg’s festival of Islamophobia, bizarrely released on DVD whilst its predecessor languishes in the (virtual) vaults. I do not think I saw Vienna’s previous Parsifal, directed by Christine Mielitz; at any rate, I have no recollection of it. This first revival of Alvis Hermanis’s production had me wondering, however, whether it could have been any more vacuous.

 

Hermanis would not be my choice to direct anything, whether for his avowed Islamophobia – how he must have cursed Laufenberg for getting there first – or for the limitations of his craft, such as it may be. His Salzburg Liebe der Danae combined the two to an uncommon degree. I am astonished any theatre or opera house would still enlist his services, following his storming out of Hamburg’s Thalia Theatre on account of its having extended a welcome to refugees. What we have here, at seemingly great expense, is a series of impressive designs – with which, to be fair, he is credited too – and very little that could really be considered a production at all. There is just enough – again, to be fair – to permit one’s mind to work, to posit connections between what one sees, essentially tableaux from Vienna 1900. Yet, whilst I am certainly in favour of us all having to do some mental lifting, I cannot, hand on heart, say that my psychoanalytical thoughts had their roots in what I saw, whereas they unquestionably have done in Dmitri Tcherniakov’s outstanding Berlin staging.

 

The conceit, if we may call it that, is that two Wagners, Richard and Otto, shared the same, well, surname. Therefore the action takes place at the ‘Wagner Spital’ – alias Otto’s Steinhof psychiatric hospital. I wondered whether there might be a nod to Nietzsche and/or Thomas Mann on Parsifal, here, but suspect myself, perhaps unusually, of undue charity. A model of the human brain grows larger, amidst some books on shelves: ‘Durch Mitleid wissend…’? There is a half-hearted attempt, which nevertheless made me think, at pschyoanalysis, Kundry on Klingsor’s couch, in the second act, although it quickly becomes unclear, rather than fruitfully ambiguous, who, if anyone, amongst the characters, is analysing whom. Bits of Wagner’s (Richard’s) poem are flashed up above the stage from time to time; having hired someone for video, it must, presumably, have been necessary to find something for her to do. (Not her fault in the slightest, I hasten to add.) As for the final scene, in which a few Vienna 1900 celebrities join the chorus, bedecked in the most absurd winged helmets you will ever have seen, even as devotees of ‘Against Modern Opera Productions’, I simply gave up. The stage direction itself might as well have been a wet Wednesday’s revival of Otto Schenk.

 

Fortunately, musical matters were considerably better. The orchestra sounded better than I have heard it in Wagner for some time. It will always play well for conductors it likes: I can therefore only presume that, quite rightly, it likes Semyon Bychkov. The seamlessness of Bychkov’s account showed that, once again, as in, say, his Lohengrin, his Tannhäuser, and his Tristan, he both discerns and can communicate the Wagner melos. Some passages were thrillingly dramatic, not least an overwhelming close to the second act. Others seemed, perhaps, to tread water a little, but that may just have been my difficulty in dissociating what I heard from what I saw. No one, however, could justly have been disappointed with what (s)he heard here, those hallowed Vienna strings not far from the top of their golden game.

 

However, rather to my surprise, I found Christopher Ventris slightly disappointing in the title role – certainly no match for his 2008 self for Herheim and Daniele Gatti. Ventris can still sing the role, often beautifully, but his stage presence seemed almost tired, whether compared with ten years ago in the same role or indeed with his Bayreuth Siegmund last summer. Perhaps he just needed stronger direction; one can certainly sympathise. Anja Kampe’s Kundry proved thrilling, increasingly so as time went on, her laughter at Christ erotically chilling. Kwangchul Youn’s Gurnemanz has gathered wisdom over the years; this may have been the finest I have heard from him, utterly at ease in the role, without taking a single note or word for granted. At times, I found Jochen Schmeckenbecker’s Amfortas a little underpowered, even monochrome, but again there was much to be savoured from his way with the text, both verbal and musical. Boaz Daniel’s Klingsor had one wishing, as so often with this role, that it were at least a little longer. Choral singing, from boys, men, and women alike was excellent: clear, transparent, and yet weighty, having my mind flit back to Wagner’s work in Dresden, whether on his own, strange Liebesmahl der Apostel, or Palestrina’s Stabat Mater (which he edited, less interestingly than one might have hoped). There was, then, redemption to be had, but in a strictly musical sense.

 

Così fan tutte, Royal Opera, 22 September 2016

Royal Opera House

Dorabella (Angela Brower) and Fiordiligi (Corinne Winters)
Images: ROH/Stephen Cummiskey

Ferrando – Daniel Behle

Guglielmo – Alessio Arduini
Don Alfonso – Johannes Martin Kränzle
Fiordiligi – Corinne Winters
Dorabella – Angela Brower
Despina – Sabina Puértolas
 

Jan Philipp Gloger (director)

Ben Baur (set designs)
Karin Jud (costumes)
Bernd Purkrabek (lighting)
Katharina John (dramaturgy)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: William Spaulding)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Semyon Bychkov (conductor)

Dorabella, Ferrando (Daniel Behle), Guglielmo (Alessio Arduini), and Fiordiligi

At last: something at the Royal Opera to replace Jonathan Miller’s slapstick onslaught on Così fan tutte, not only the most sophisticated, most profound of Mozart’s operas, but the most sophisticated, most profound opera of all. (At least, that is how I feel at the moment.) It broke my heart to hear Colin Davis, conducting the greatest musical performances of the work (2007 and 2012) I have ever heard and am ever likely to hear, undermined at every juncture by Miller’s antics. Alas, the good news is not unmixed. It rarely is, of course; however, once again, we see and hear a split between music and production: not, I think, a productive mutual questioning, but just a dissociation. The fault, I am sorry to say, lay squarely with the production, although it was compounded by different – both valid, but undeniably different – conceptions of the work from conductor and singers. I suspect that some issues will be resolved as the run proceeds, but it is difficult to imagine that they all will be, especially when it comes to Jan Philipp Gloger’s production – although, paradoxically, I suspect that the lively young cast might even salvage something from that once the director is out of the way.

 

My sole previous encounter with Gloger’s work had been at Bayreuth. A weak irrelevant Flying Dutchman did not augur well, but everyone deserves a second chance. Even in the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, I found ‘too many instances where the action, especially for a relatively small theatre, was on too small a scale properly to understand, or was simply, at least to me, obscure. I had the sense that there was a better production waiting to break out.’ Much the same might be said about this Così fan tutte, save that, in a larger theatre, especially from the Amphitheatre, some of the problems of scale are amplified. In both productions, one has a sense of a good idea or two, anything but original, indeed seen in many other stagings of the work in question, obscured by both a director who thinks his production is far cleverer than it actually is, and by a certain lack of basic theatrical craft, the designs, impressive though they may be, being made in the absence of anything else, to do, or to try to do, far too much of the work for themselves.

 

The production begins, reasonably enough, if in wearisomely clichéd fashion, with an attempt to set up its metatheatrical stance. During the Overture, a cast in ‘period’ dress – presumably a ‘traditional’ production in our here and now – takes its bows in affected style. There is an element of welcome surprise when our real cast, apparently members of the audience, rushes into the Stalls in fashionable, contemporary – to us – dress, and replaces that on stage. From the audience reaction, anyone would have thought such an idea had never been attempted before, whether in Così or anything else. Members of the audience – one of the worst-behaved, alas, I can recall – seemed to find that all utterly hilarious, in well-nigh uncontrollable laughter because some people walked through the stalls of a theatre whilst others were bowing on stage. They need, I think, to get out a little more; perhaps, dare I suggest it, they might acquaint themselves with some less derivative ‘modern’ theatre, in and out of the opera house, if they think there is anything daring in what they saw here.

Guglielmo

 

Anyway, in another ‘borrowing’ from other recent-ish productions, Don Alfonso, who has been on stage all along, and who, for reasons unclear to me, remains in ‘period’ dress, is revealed as director of both ‘old’ and ‘new’ productions. The play’s the thing. It is one way, not a new way, as many seemed to think, to address the perceived ‘problem’ with the work. Our Ferrarese ladies and their nobles play roles in the theatre, in a number of different settings – the public area of an (our) opera house, a Brief Encounter railway station, a somewhat dated cocktail bar, the Garden of Eden, the costume department of the house, etc. – and thus suspend the alleged need for ‘suspension of disbelief’, perhaps the most tiresome operatic cliché of all.

 

I am far from convinced that the intricacy and overt artificiality of Da Ponte’s and still more Mozart’s work, that very artificiality permitting the most profoundly human predicament to come, unflinchingly to the theatrical fore, need such ‘help’, but that need not have mattered. The problem, to reiterate, is that, especially during the first act, the designs are more or less made to do a good deal of the work that stage direction should be doing. When we come to a potentially fruitful inversion of roles, as in the Garden of Eden, it comes across as hapless, not as transgressive or alienating. It is one thing, often a good thing, to have the audience do some thinking for itself – not much chance here, given the loud applause from far too many in the middle of Despina’s ‘Una donna a quindici anni’: can they not hear the music has not returned to the tonic? – but not at the expense of doing one’s job as director. Otherwise, we should all simply sit at home with a score and/or recording, and imagine the work for ourselves. (We often do, of course, but that is not really what a visit to the opera house is for.) The final emendation, spelled out in glitzy letters above the stage, to Così fan tutti does no harm, is perhaps welcome, but again would gain in strength with something more than a scenic flourish.

 

Semyon Bychkov’s reading of this most wondrous of Mozart’s scores grew in stature as the evening progressed. No, it was not Colin Davis, but we have to accept, alas, that he is no longer with us. Bychkov’s conducting offered, at its best, an intriguing alternative, although, in the first half hour or so, some of the tempo variations sounded a little arbitrary and the sensuous quality of the music was occasionally undersold. There were no ‘period’ affectations, though, and as Bychkov hit his stride, the laudable flexibility he had always shown felt more ‘natural’ – however artificial a construct that, like the onstage drama, might be. I heard some people complain of ‘slowness’ and can only presume them to have been ignorant of the varied performance history of the work. Very little was ‘slow’, in any meaningful sense, but it was varied, and deeply considered. The lamentable alternative is to make Mozart sound like Rossini; that is a straitjacket we can all do without.  
 

Despina (Sabina Puértolas)

More of a problem was that the singers did not always, again especially in the first act, sound attuned to Bychkov’s understanding. They sounded as though they would have been happier in the swifter, less contemplative performance, impressive on its own, very different terms, which I had heard last month in Salzburg, conducted by Ottavio Dantone. Indeed, the Guglielmo, Alessio Arduini, offered the common link between the casts. I wrote then of an assumption that was ‘proud, assertive, flawed: just as he should be, whether vocally or in stage manner,’ and much the same might be said here; Arduini is a fine performer, not just a fine singer. Daniel Behle proved an estimable successor to Salzburg’s Mauro Peter, similarly honeyed of tone, ‘Un‘aura amorosa’ as so often a highlight. Corinne Winters mostly impressed as Fioridilgi, the coloratura well despatched, although her lower register was occasionally found wanting. The clarity of Angela Brower’s Dorabella was often married to a subtle richness of tone that was most welcome. Johannes Martin Kränzle took to his role as master of ceremonies with commendable enthusiasm and equally commendable musico-theatrical results. The fussiness of the half-baked concept was not his fault. Sabina Puértolas proved a spirited Despina, attentive to vocal as well as theatrical concerns (which is not always the case). Alas, there remains some way to go before different strands of production and performance come together.

Prom 57 - Kulman/BBC SO/Bychkov - Larcher, Wagner, Strauss, 28 August 2016

Royal Albert Hall

Thomas Larcher – Symphony no.2, ‘Cenotaph’ (UK premiere)

Wagner (orch. Felix Mottl) – Wesendonck-Lieder
Strauss – Eine Alpensinfonie, op.64

Elisabeth Kulman (mezzo-soprano)

BBC Symphony Orchestra
Semyon Bychkov (conductor)

Thomas Larcher’s Second Symphony (written 2015-16) here received its United Kingdom premiere, its first performance having been given by the Vienna Philharmonic and Semyon Bychkov in June this year. A commission from the Austrian National Bank for its bicentenary, it is nevertheless not a celebratory work, instead commemorating those refugees who have met their deaths in the Mediterranean Sea, ‘expressing grief over those who have died and outrage at the misanthropy at home in Austria and elsewhere’. Larcher does not consider it a piece of programme music, though, and there seems no reason to doubt him. Or, to put it another way, if we can consider Strauss’s Alpine Symphony, the third work on the night’s programme, as a symphony, there is no reason why we should not this.

 

It certainly felt like a symphony, not just on account of its four movements, but also their character and their relationship to one another. The first movement opened with a sense of pent-up energy being released, in very fast, highly rhythmic music, that material alternating with slower passages, in which tension is maintained, perhaps even increased, by various means including bass pedals. Without being ‘process music’, musical processes were very much to the fore, both, it seemed in the work, and in the excellent performance from the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Bychkov. Distorted – and sometimes not distorted – tonalities mapped out its space; they were not, perhaps, without nostalgia, but a nostalgia that did not shade into pastiche. A huge orchestral cry of agony – it was difficult not to think of the opening Adagio to Mahler’s Tenth Symphony, both with respect to similarity and difference – made its point, whether ‘programmatic’ or not. Henze, coincidentally or otherwise, sometimes came to mind too. A final descent left us wondering into what we were descending. The chorale-like opening to the succeeding Adagio inevitably brought Austro-German tradition once again to mind; for this really did feel like something akin to a ‘traditional’ slow movement, with a ‘traditional’ symphonic dialectic. Accordion and wind were often prominent, there seeming something to be fundamental about their timbres to the work. Vibraphone and piano duetting also caught the ear’s attention, likewise percussion more generally (as indeed in the first movement). Scalic movement in both directions was a particular concern too.

 

The third movement sounded not entirely unlike a post-Brahmsian scherzo, with a touch of Stravinskian rhythmic insistence (although not always). The strange repetition of a chord – heard 140 times, apparently! – paradoxically seemed to increase tension, as much as any increase in volume and/or tempo. Then, at the end, a strange little Austrian dance fragment (a Ländler?) suggested neo-Mahlerian affinity to and alienation from Nature. The slow introduction to the finale seemed both connected to and yet something that had moved on from the world of the slow movement. Chorale music again soon flowered. The fast ‘main’ section showed an analogous (perhaps) affinity with the first movement. Again, it proved highly rhythmical and especially concerned with musical process; perhaps even the material itself was similar. In essence, this was a ‘traditional’ moto perpetuo, which then dissolved into a slow coda, which clearly spoke of sadness, shading into desolation. Apparent resolution (disconcertingly close, to my ears, to the world of Arvo Pärt, bells and all) was, mercifully, questioned at the last.

 

Having spent the previous week or so in Bayreuth, I had the opportunity with the Wesendonck-Lieder, here in Felix Mottl’s familiar orchestration, to begin to ween myself off Wagner for a little while. There is nothing wrong with Mottl’s version, but I could not help wishing that Henze’s had instead been chosen; on the other hand, Mottl’s intimations of Strauss had their own logic in this particular context. Making her Proms debut, Elisabeth Kulman, always an admirable artist, proved a fine choice as soloist: the ‘instrumental’ quality to her voice adding, in a typically Wagnerian dialectic, to the blend of words and music.

 

‘Der Engel’, opening, sounded very much as a Lied, as it should, even if one with undeniable ‘operatic’ connections. Tristan und Isolde was inescapably close at times, but not repressively so. Kulman’s word-led approach here and elsewhere reminded us of Wagner’s priorities here (not so in Tristan, of course). The angelic, almost Straussian quality to the orchestra was judged to perfection by Bychkov and his players. ‘Stehe still!’ had a different character: more dramatic, with vocal delivery taking us closer to the world of Die Walküre, never more so than in the first half of the final stanza, eye drinking blissfully from eye, and so forth. (Think of Wotan and Brünnhilde, if you will.) Bychkov took his time, quite rightly, and the conclusion proved properly radiant. ‘Im Treibhaus’ took us to Tristan-land proper, yet still with an element of distance; this is a song with its own concerns, not an excerpt. Kulman’s vocal colouring proved just the thing, very much with its own instrumental quality, as mentioned above. There was some especially wonderful viola playing – both solo and as a section – to enjoy too, likewise woodwind playing of Tristan-esque malevolence. ‘Schmerzen’ had a not un-Straussian autumnal glow to it, albeit on a smaller scale. Finally, ‘Träume’ returned us from autumn to a summer evening, its opening pregnant with Tristan-esque possibility, disciplined by the words and their implied structuring capability. Balm and eroticism proved two sides of the same Wagnerian coin.

 

Strauss’s giant symphonic poem had the second half to itself. Bychkov’s reading flowed beautifully, sometimes quickly indeed; at the same time, he was not remotely afraid to hold back where necessary. If the opening sections were perhaps a little too closely defined in themselves, that should not be exaggerated. The Night in which the work opens was clear, directed: no lazy murkiness here. The BBC SO’s strings sounded voluptuous indeed as our journey gathered pace. Off-stage, Tannhäuser-plus horns thrilled: not just ‘materially’, but with a Nietzschean sense that that materiality might also too be spiritual. This is a symphony, after all, for the Anti-Christ. The forest proved darkly inviting, Bychkov alert to the detail of its beauties, without ever lapsing into pedantry. A post-Mozartian grace to the meadows was especially welcome, offering both contrast to and context for the Zarathustra-like grandeur and ambiguity to the greatest climax of all. As darkness began to fall, before the storm itself, tension could be felt, just as, or almost as, in ‘real life’. So too could the force of the storm, albeit with the detachment of an audience member rather than an actual participant. It was, inevitably, though the Epilogue (Karajan once claimed to conduct the work for this alone) that brought tears to the eyes, exquisite woodwind playing an especial joy. It lingered, as it must: never quite enough, for Strauss is just as sure a dramatist here as in his operas. After which, the darkness into which his world was falling, as is ours.

Watkins/BBC SO/Bychkov - Glanert, Haydn, and Brahms, 12 January 2016

Barbican Hall

Detlev Glanert – Brahms-Fantasie – ‘heliogravure’ for orchestra

Haydn – Cello Concerto no.1 in C major
Brahms – Symphony no.1 in C minor, op.68

Paul Watkins (cello)

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Semyon Bychkov (conductor)

 

The BBC Symphony Orchestra is fortunate indeed to have Semyon Bychkov as a regular collaborator; he holds the orchestra’s Günter Wand Conducting Chair. In this concert, we heard what a difference a great conductor makes to these players. The depth of string tone almost had one believe this was one of the great German orchestras, and that was not simply a matter of numbers.

 

One certainly heard that to good advantage in Detlev Glanert’s Brahms-Fantasie. The opening disintegration of Brahms augured well, perhaps echoing Henze’s Tristan. However, the rest meandered in drearily neo-Romantic fashion (the work rather than the performance), hovering somewhere between Shostakovich and Khatchaturian. A spot of sub- – very sub-! – Heldenleben battle-music sounded merely incongruous. This was not merely eclectic, but eclecticism with a vengeance – and, more to the point, without any apparent point. The performance seemed excellent, but I cannot imagine anyone wanting to hear the work again.

 

Haydn, then, was just the tonic we needed. Cultivated playing announced itself from the opening bars of his First Cello Concerto. A sensible tempo – God be thanked! – was adopted, Paul Watkins responding very much in kind. His playing as soloist was lively, characterful, full of joy in a melodious gift that almost approaches that of Mozart (although the music never really sounds ‘like’ his in what is, in every respect, a pre-Mozartian concerto). Thematic construction and development were, quite rightly, the thing. It was again an immense relief to have the aria-like slow movement not taken too fast. It flowed as it would have done from a great singer in a performance of surpassing elegance. The finale possessed many of the virtues of the first movement, including a well-chosen (of course, faster) tempo, which permitted the music to breathe. Excitement was musical rather than externally, artificially applied to it as in so many contemporary Haydn performances. Watkins’s virtuosity was not of the high-octane variety; it was full of musical life. As was that of the orchestra.

 

Brahms’s First Symphony opened in medias res; there was no doubting its tragic import, at least here. There was freshness too, similarly an allied Romantic intimacy, not least from the cellos (a nice link there, consciously or otherwise, with the Haydn). The exposition proper likewise exhibited a Schumannesque Romanticism one rarely hears here. This was, on the whole, quite a brisk account, but not unduly so, for Bychkov ensured impressive responsiveness to the composer’s twists and turns – which are many! It is surely as ‘difficult’ a work as the First String Quartet, although perhaps rather more ingratiating. I loved the archaisms from reedy woodwind, supported and/or modified by brass: very nineteenth-century Bach! Developmental struggle itself, though, was quite rightly more Beethovenian in character, if not necessarily sounding ‘like’ Beethoven. Consciously or otherwise, intervallic relationships signalled close kinship with Webern.  Melancholic lyricism, often cruelly foreshortened, was, however, entirely Brahms’s own.

 

The second movement was, again, quite swift, though not unreasonably so. There was no lack of involvement in any sense: emotional, motivic, rhythmic (those cross-rhythms!) Harmonic shifts told their own story: both in the moment and in the longer term. A beautifully-played violin solo from Giovanni Guzzo was not the least pleasure here. The third movement was warmer, more spring-like than autumnal, at least to begin with. Darker undercurrents were not ignored, but I wondered whether they might have been made more of; that, however, might not have been so consistent with Bychkov’s conception of the work. Again, the music was taken quickly, but flowing rather than being harried.

 

Darkness proper returned at the opening of the finale, thematic reminiscences darkening the mood further. That most difficult of transitions was well handled, trombones sounding splendid, as did the horns. And yet, it was difficult not to feel that something was missing: there was less at stake, so it sounded, than with a great account such as Furtwängler’s or, latterly, Barenboim’s. Moreover, a few gear changes were a little less subtle than they might have been. Here, and only here, the music did not sound more than the sum of its considerable parts. There was no doubting, however, the excellence of the playing Bychkov drew from the orchestra.

Eugene Onegin, Royal Opera, 19 December 2015

Olga (Oksana Volkova), Eugene Onegin (Dmitri Hvorostovsky), and Tatyana (Nicole Car)
Images: Bill Cooper/ROH

 

Royal Opera House

Tatyana – Nicole Car

Eugene Onegin – Dmitri Hvorostovsky
Young Tatyana – Emily Ranford
Mme Larina – Diana Montague
Filipyevna – Catherine Wyn Rogers
Olga – Oksana Volkova
Peasant Singer – Elliot Goldie
Young Onegin – Tom Shale-Coates
Lensky – Michael Fabiano
Monsieur Triquet – Jean-Paul Fouchécourt
Captain – David Shipley
Zaletsky – James Platt
Guillot – Luke Price
Prince Gremin – Ferruccio Furlanetto

Kasper Holten (director)

Mia Stensgaard (set designs)
Katrina Lindsay (costumes)
Wolfgang Göbbel (lighting)
59 Productions (video)
Signe Fabricius (choreography)

Royal Opera Chorus and Extra Chorus (chorus master: Renata Balsadonna)

Dancers

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Semyon Bychkov (conductor)

 

 

 

The first revival of Kasper Holten’s Royal Opera production of Eugene Onegin (reviewed here the first time around) brought one major advantage, undoubtedly worth the visit to Covent Garden alone, namely the conducting of Semyon Bychkov – and, of course, alongside that the playing of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. Vocally, it was for me far more of a mixed bag, although the audience seemed wildly enthusiastic. As for the staging itself, I was less convinced than last time. There remains a good deal to have one think – presumably that was the reason for the sadly predictable display from the house’s first-night animal-noises department – but the changes made, combined with lesser acting strength, above all in the title role, sometimes makes for a confusing evening dramatically.

 

Young Tatyana (Emily Ranford) with her
elder self

 

 

 

The central idea of memory is a good one; it is, after all, the work’s own. The bookish Tatyana receives her inspiration through recollection and the haunting of the present – or, at times, perhaps the future – by the central pair’s younger selves has considerable effect. It would have more, however, were there more dramatic commitment on Dmitri Hvorostovksy’s part; especially before the interval, he seemed content merely to stand and sing. Moreover, his ‘double’ lacks the charisma of Tatyana’s. The production offers confusion of its own; it is, for example, unclear – and not, I think, in a productive fashion – why the elder Tatyana sings the Letter Scene to her younger self. Would it not make more sense if singers and ‘doubles’ swapped roles as appropriate (not the actual artists, of course, but they could surely don younger and older ‘appearance’ and costumes). Memory can play tricks, but I am not sure that is the point being made here; perhaps it is, and I missed it.

More fundamentally, though, I felt more strongly than last time the loss of what is surely the underlying theme, even if involuntarily so on the composer’s part, of the opera. This is a staging whose heterosexuality would warm the heart of Vladimir Putin. Perhaps that allows greater agency on Tatyana’s part; I was especially intrigued by thinking of her writing her drama as a counterpart to the ‘masculine’ – and, rightly so, whatever the uncomprehending complaints one heard, often from people who know not their Prague from their Vienna – writing of Holten’s Don Giovanni. That is not strongly pursued, though, partly, I think, as a consequence of less dancing than first time around; the doubles are there enough to irritate, but not long enough now really to make their point fully coherent. That Tatyana is a creation of a gay man – and surely this screams from the score – there is no visual sign at all. More damagingly, though, the principal relationship in the opera, that between Onegin and Lensky, is merely that of the frightened surface. Of the homoeroticism that is less a subtext than the text of a non-ideological understanding of the work we again see nothing. So Lensky is merely jealous of Onegin’s ‘flirtation’ with Olga. That the truest and most deadly love is between the two men is entirely ignored: a retrograde step indeed. I do not think for one moment that this is intended in Russian Minister of Culture fashion, but the likes of Vladimir Medinsky would have little to argue with – which should give pause for thought.

 

Mme Larina (Diana Montague) and Lensky (Michael Fabiano)

It is, then, perhaps a little unreasonable to complain that the singers play their roles in such a way, although I am sure that there was greater psychological depth in the relationship between Simon Keenlyside’s Onegin and Pavol Breslik’s Lensky. Hvorostovsky proved a little more engaged dramatically after the interval, but wooden indeed before, although, given his recent travails, it was impossible not to feel sympathy for him. His singing was often deeply impressive vocally, but that is not necessarily enough; memories of Keenlyside were too strong for me. Mine certainly seemed to be a minority view concerning Michael Fabiano’s Lensky; he received a roar of applause both at the end and – deplorably – during the fifth scene. I could not question Fabiano’s commitment, which put that of almost everyone else to shame. However, for me, the timbre and, more important, the emoting style of his performance did not quite sound ‘right’ for the work and the character, more suited perhaps to the world of Italian verismo. It was, I have to admit, a performance very much in keeping, though, with the heteronormativity of the production; this was, as I said, a committed performance – of a lovelorn young man distraught at the loss of his girl. Nicole Car offered an attractive soprano voice as Tatyana, and acted well too; I did not, though, find a great deal of insight beyond that. Memories of Krassimira Stoyanova, as with those of her Onegin, were not effaced. Oksana Volkova was a decent enough Olga, but again without any particular individuality. The stand-out performance was for me Jean-Paul Fouchécourt’s deliciously stylish Monsieur Triquet, sung with such perfect attention to words and line that I longed to hear it again. Ferruccio Furlanetto’s Prince Gremin was a little rough around the vocal edges at times, but still interesting to hear. Diana Montague as Mme Larina and Catherine Wyn Rogers as Filipyevna shone as last time. The choral singing was excellent too, save – and here some of the soloists were at fault too – for a few too many discrepancies between stage and pit.

 

Tatyana and Prince Gremin (Ferruccio Furlanetto)

It was, however, as I started by saying, in the pit that the greatest honours lay. Bychkov had the orchestra sound – as it always does under him – as one of the greatest in the world, utterly responsive to his touch. The strings were febrile and warmly Romantic, the utter antithesis of any absurd ‘period’ affectations; the woodwind were as full of character as I have ever heard in this work. Implacable brass at full throttle might almost have been from St Petersburg. Rubato, especially the lingering at the end of phrases, was greater than one often hears, always with its own justification, always having one sit up and listen, both to savour the moment and to breathe out when the story resumed. Broader tempo variations were again well calculated, dramatically convincing. There was some breathtakingly soft playing – for instance, the ravishing sonic cushion for M. Triquet’s final lines – which could not have stood in greater, more tellingly intimate contrast with the Fatal climaxes. Bychkov understands what is and what is not ‘symphonic’ in Tchaikovsky’s score – and communicated it in what, Daniel Barenboim notwithstanding, is probably the best-conducted, certainly the most orchestrally variegated, performance of Eugene Onegin I have heard.