Pelléas et Mélisande (arr. Annelies van Parys), English Touring Opera, 1 October 2015

Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music

Arkel – Michael Druiett

Geneviève – Helen Johnson
Golaud – Stephan Loges
Pelléas – Jonathan McGovern
Yniold – Lauren Zolezzi
Mélisande – Susanna Hurrell 

Oliver Townsend (designs)

Mark Howland (lighting)
Bernadette Iglich (movement)
Zakk Hein (video)
James Conway (director)

Orchestra of English Touring Opera

Jonathan Berman (conductor)

 

In a better world, or even the same world with better audiences, the proportion of performances given by our opera houses of Pelléas et Mélisande and La traviata would at the very least be reversed. As it is, we find ourselves forced to make a virtue out of the relative rarity of performances of a work all consider to be a towering masterpiece. We are grateful when they come, and perhaps treasure them all the more. We are, or at least should be, especially grateful when a touring company with financial resources far more limited than our great opera houses, stages Pelléas, all the more so when it does so with such success. Once again, then: hats off to English Touring Opera!

 

Debussy’s opera is given in an arrangement for chamber ensemble by Annelies van Parys. One could, if one wished, spend the time wishing that one had the Berlin Philharmonic and Karajan, but that would seem a pointless pursuit. What strikes, with respect to a sound that is decidedly un-Karajan-like, although no closer, say, to Abbado, Boulez, or, for that matter, Désormière, is how much it convinces on its own terms. Balances are different, and perhaps not always at their optimum, wind instruments inevitably coming more to the fore without the cushion of massed strings. By the same token, however, solo strings sometimes evoke the Debussy of his chamber music, not least the String Quartet. One hears lines differently and yet, at some level, the same. Malevolence still stretches its fungal tentacles; elegance that is never ‘just’ elegance remains (as so often, when speaking about this work, one is tempted to lapse into French, and say demeure instead).

Two scenes are omitted entirely: a pity, perhaps, although I missed them far less than I should have imagined. Director James Conway takes the radical step of reintroducing words in spoken form at the end of the first ‘act’ (part way through the third). Golaud’s warning to Pelléas in some ways chills all the more for being spoken. Perhaps that is founded on the knowledge of what we ‘should’ be hearing, perhaps not, but I found it an elegant and dramatic solution.

In such circumstances, it is very difficult, perhaps impossible, to distinguish too strongly between instrumentation and performance. However, the playing of the Orchestra of English Touring Opera seemed to me throughout as alert and as sensitive as anyone could reasonably have expected, perhaps more so. What was being asked of these solo musicians was no mean task, and they played with the excellence we have come to expect. Jonathan Berman’s conducting was another strength. If I say that, for the most part, I barely noticed it, I do not mean that negatively. The ebb and flow of Debussy’s score rather seemed – and ‘seemed’ is surely the operative word here – to take care of themselves, with only occasional awkward corners, which may well be smoothed as the run progresses. One would not expect such a performance to be a ‘conductor’s performance’ as from those great names of the past I mentioned earlier; this was more a matter of subtly enabling and, yes, leading a company effort. In that and much else, it proved a great success.

Conway’s production emphasises, especially in the designs of Oliver Townsend and lighting of Mark Howland, the suffocation of the fin-de-siècle environment from which Pelléas springs. Light use of video (Zakk Hein) enhances rather than distracts. Characteristic wallpaper and costumes remind us that the castle here is as important a ‘character’ as it would be some years later in Bluebeard’s Castle, an opera which owes much to Debussy’s example. Longing for escape in nature and, perhaps, Tristan-esque oblivion may be vain but it is no more real for that. It is striking how much can be done with a single set and clever, well-achieved shifts of lighting: what will clearly be a necessity for touring here takes on unifying, escape-denying, imaginative virtue of its own. There seems, moreover, a hint at least of the road to the Poe opera Debussy would never complete.

I really have nothing but praise for the singing. The cast worked very well together, more than the sum of its parts, which in itself was considerable. At chronological extremes, Michael Druiett and Lauren Zolezzi convinced as ancient Arkel and young Yniold. Arkel’s ambiguity – what really is the nature of his fondness for Mélisande? Is that even the right question to ask – came through very strongly; so too did the boyishness of Zolezzi’s portrayal. Geneviève’s letter-reading generally makes a fine impression; that is no reason not to praise it again when it does, as it did with Helen Johnson. Susanna Hurrell’s Mélisande seemed to hark back in its light, bright quality to early assumptions; she achieved, for me, just the right balance between what might be self-assertion and discomfiting willingness – inability to do anything else? – to act as a blank canvas for male projections. In her first scene, I thought of Kundry; later, I found myself thinking of Lulu. Jonathan McGovern’s Pelléas initially came across with striking, almost but not quite child-like naïveté, and developed into something that was perhaps no more grown-up, but equally striking in its self-absorption: more pathological than one often sees, and all the more intriguing for it. The wounded masculinity of Stephan Loges’s powerfully-sung Golaud, quite contrasting in timbre, was a singular dramatic achievement both in its vocal essence and its dramatic consequences.  ‘Perhaps no events that are pointless occur,’ Arkel says. If a production has succeeded, one’s reply will most likely be ‘perhaps’. And indeed it was.

Pelléas et Mélisande will be performed again in London on 3 October, and will travel to Buxton, Malvern, Durham, Harrogate, Cambridge, Bath, Snape, and Exeter. For more details from ETO, click here.
 

 

Der Freischütz, LSO/Davis, 21 April 2012

Barbican Hall

Ottokar, Zamiel – Stephan Loges
Kuno – Martin Snell
Agathe – Christine Brewer
Ännchen – Sally Matthews
Kaspar – Lars Woldt
Max – Simon O’Neill
Hermit – Gidon Saks
Killian – Marcus Farnsworth
Four Bridesmaids – Lucy Hall
Narrator – Malcom Sinclair

London Symphony Chorus
London Symphony Orchestra
Sir Colin Davis (conductor)


The unfashionableness of Der Freischütz in England is a little baffling. In its day, not only was the opera celebrated across Germany, it soon conquered other European stages and indeed theatres worldwide. Premiered at the Berlin Schauspielhaus in 1821, by the end of the decade it had already received productions in Danish, Swedish, Czech, Russian, English, French, Hungarian, Polish and Dutch, and by 1850, stagings had been mounted as far afield as Cape Town, Rio de Janeiro, and Sydney. Of course, it is in many ways the quintessential German Romantic opera, though one should always remember how much influence other ‘national’ traditions wield over it, but it is saddening that we, or at least the powers that be, should apparently evince so little interest in this tradition. Oberon was programmed to appear this season at Covent Garden, a mouthwatering prospect, only to be cancelled in favour of yet another run – within the same season! – for La traviata. The only staging of Der Freischütz I have seen in London, or indeed elsewhere, was that by ENO in 1999. Meanwhile, Calixto Bieito has just presented a new production in Berlin for the Komische Oper, a must-see staging by all accounts. Perhaps ENO, with its reinvigorated interest in co-productions will bring it across the Channel at some point; we can but hope. Many thanks, in any case, are due to the LSO for this concert performance.

It is not, of course, a work without its problems, first and foremost of which is surely Johann Friedrich Kind’s libretto (even if that seems a masterpiece when compared with the ludicrous effort from James Robinson Planché for Oberon). The dialogue, especially in a concert performance, can present difficulties for a non-German cast, so it is understandable that a decision was made to ditch it in favour of an English narration by Amanda Holden. Whether the latter in any sense marked an improvement remained unclear, to say the least. Malcolm Sinclair’s delivery, whilst clear, was definitely on the ac-tor-ly side, the narration itself prosaic and yet lodged precariously between sanitised fairy-tale – fairy-tales should be anything but sanitised! – and camp. Of the work’s darkness there was little or nothing to be heard. In 1841, sickened and impoverished by the superficiality of Parisian musical culture, the homesick Wagner wrote of a performance: ‘It seems to be the poem of those Bohemian woods themselves, whose dark and solemn aspect permits us at once to grasp how the isolated man would believe himself, if not prey to a dæmonic power of Nature, then at least in eternal submission thereto.’ For a sense of that crucial quality, one had to turn to the music – and indeed, perhaps one always did.

Sir Colin Davis has a lengthy history with the work; he recorded it with the Staatskapelle Dresden – Weber’s own orchestra, of course, and Wagner’s too – twenty years ago, and these two performances have been recorded for release on LSO Live. This was not a reading of incendiary drama such as one hears on Carlos Kleiber’s legendary recording, also with the Dresden orchestra, but won over as one can hardly fail to be by that performance, it is easy to forget how unorthodox it is. Take, for instance, the waltz in the first act, preceding Max’s recitative and aria. Kleiber’s tempo is, on the face of it, bizarrely fast, though somehow it works. Furtwängler takes it far more slowly, as did Davis, though his reading sounded closer to the sound and at times implacability one might have expected from a Klemperer Freischütz. (Now there is a thought; he certainly conducted it in his youth; indeed he made his debut at the Prague Deutsches Landestheater with it, in 1907.) These were sturdier peasants; I can imagine some finding the results staid by comparison, but there was actually a subtler vigour at work.

The Overture was another case in point, its opening gravely Beethovenian. Despite the difference in tempo and almost everything else, I was somehow put in mind of Coriolan. An unfortunate split horn note was heard upon the horns entry, but thereafter, throughout the work, the LSO’s horns were on excellent form, just as required in this of all operas. There was a sense of fairy-tale: I thought of Davis’s Hänsel und Gretel for the Royal Opera. But there was also, and increasingly so, Wagnerian gravity to be heard, reminding us that, so many times in this work, Siegfried is but a stone’s throw away. Fafner’s lair takes form in the Wolf’s Glen Scene. And there was no shortage of dramatic drive to the conclusion of the Overture, but Davis and his wonderful orchestra saw no reason to resort to anything hinting at superficial display. Orchestral malevolence was to be heard in spades at the opening of Kaspar’s aria, ‘Schweig! damit dich niemand warnt,’ and a proper storm was cooked up in that celebrated finale to the second act. (Electronic sound effects proved slightly alienating, but what does one do in a concert performance?) If not exactly folksy – and does one really want that? – there was certainly a nice orchestral jauntiness to Ännchen’s ‘Kommt ein schlanker Bursch gegangen’. Whilst a list of notable orchestral solos would doubtless extend to almost every section principal, I feel I cannot fail to mention the superlative contributions of leader, Carmine Lauri, Rebecca Gilliver (cello), Gareth Davies (flute), and of course, the viola obbligato in ‘Einst träumte meiner sel’gen Base’ (it looked like Paul Silverthorne to me, although the programme said otherwise, so I should probably credit Edward Vanderspare too, just in case).

The London Symphony Chorus was on predictably fine form too. Its choral weight and attack registering unfailingly from the opening Huntsman’s Chorus onwards. Both the chorus and Davis were keenly aware of the echoes of Haydn’s Die Jahreszeiten – they recorded it relatively recently – a little later on during the first act. Would that one could hear more choral singing of such distinction in the opera house! Simon O’Neill performed a decent, professional task. He can sing the notes – and did. He can sing the words too, but there remains, as I have generally found with this artist, a lurking suspicion that he is not always entirely clear what the words mean. Moreover, the pinched quality of his voice is, despite its heft, becoming increasingly pronounced. It is perhaps easier to take here than in a work on the scale of Die Meistersinger, but one could hardly call it ingratiating. Christine Brewer again certainly has the required vocal heft for the work. Her wobble became unduly pronounced in her second act aria, but sincerity of spirit won through here, and in a lovely third-act cavatina. To start with, I found Sally Matthews’s timbre a little pallid, but was soon won over. There was certainly much to esteem in her clarity of line (not least vis-à-vis certain of her colleagues), and she handled the coloratura not only with ease but with a sure understanding of its dramatic purpose. A distinguished performance indeed! Lars Woldt was a late replacement for Falk Struckmann as Kaspar. He shone in the role, not least on account of his natural ease with his native tongue. I can imagine some might have found his vibrato a little heavy – I did not – but there was, vibrato aside, something impressively resounding to his tonal quality and delivery. The appearance of Stephan Loges as Ottokar – it is pretty much impossible to judge his electronic appearance as Zamiel – made one wish, from its elegance of delivery, that the character had more to sing. Gidon Saks wobbled a bit as the Hermit, but I am not sure that matters too much with respect to that particular role. I should also definitely mention a winning, stylish Killian from Marcus Farnsworth; again, it was difficult not to wish that the role might be expanded. Martin Snell and Lucy Hall rounded off with aplomb a cast of many virtues.

If it is difficult, then, quite to see those Bohemian Woods in the concrete jungle of the Barbican Centre, and the nature of the concert performance made for a less Romantic rendering than one would hope for in the theatre, this performance exhibited many singular qualities. It will certainly be worth hearing on CD.

Thomanerchor/Gewandhaus/Schwarz - St John Passion (1749 version), 21 April 2011

St Thomas's Church, Leipzig

Sibylla Rubens (soprano)
Marie-Claude Chappuis (contralto)
Johannes Chum (Evangelist and tenor arias)
Stephan Loges (Christ)
Hans-Christoph Begemann (bass arias)

Choir of St Thomas’s, Leipzig
Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra
Gotthold Schwarz (conductor)


The Thomanerchor’s Maundy Thursday and Good Friday Passion performances alternate annually between the St John and the St Matthew. This year, for a little variety, Bach’s 1749 (fourth) version of the former was presented. I do not recall hearing it before; there is little, however, about which to become excited, the most noteworthy changes being a matter of alterations to three aria texts. ‘Ich folge dir gleichfalls’ has some changes, arguably reflecting a less Baroque or Pietistic pictorial sensibility, likewise ‘Betrachte, meine Seel’. The text for ‘Erwäge, wie sein blutgefärbter Rücken’ is entirely replaced, the following words providing the new text:

Mein Jesu, ach! Dein schmerzhaft bitter Leiden
bringt tausend Freuden,
es tilgt der Sünden Not.
Ich sehe zwar mit vielen Schrecken
den heiligen Leib mit Blute decken;
doch muss mir dies auch Lust erwecken,
es macht mich frei von Höll und Tod.

Georg Christoph Biller, the Thomaskantor, had been due to conduct; illness led to his replacement by Gotthold Schwarz. Schwarz’s approach was clearly ‘period’-informed, but not oppressively so, and was capable of variation. For instance, the great opening chorus was taking at a fast-ish though not absurd tempo; more importantly, the choir’s cries of ‘Herr’ pierced to the core against a properly turbulent backdrop as furnished by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. I feared the worst when the ‘B’ section was terminated quite abruptly – always, to be fair, a difficult return to bring off convincingly – but other phrase- and section-endings were rounded off more naturally, for instance Christ’s recitative at the end of no.2. Likewise, chorales sounded unhurried – at least by today’s preposterous standards – and pauses were usually employed at ends of phrases. I was certainly impressed at the way Bach’s myriad of harmonic subtleties shone through – though one might well ask, how could it not? – in a chorale such as ‘Wer hat dich so geschlagen…?’ I did wonder, however, at the precedence of words over line in the penultimate line of ‘Christus, der uns selig macht’. Certainly the meaning of ‘verlacht, verhöhnt, und verspielt’ came across vividly, but the effect was arguably disruptive. The climactic chorus, ‘Ruht wohl,’ maintained its noble dignity, even if Schwarz’s imagination was somewhat less all-encompassing than that of a conductor such as Eugen Jochum (still my first choice for a recording).

An undeniable ‘rightness’ to the sound of boys’ voices was illustrated throughout. I do not mean to imply that mixed voices should not sing the work; I am happy to leave such fundamentalism to the ‘authenticke’ brigade, though commercial self-interest tends to render its practitioners oddly reluctant to employ what should surely be the ‘historically informed’ voices. Nevertheless, it is something very special to hear Bach’s own choir and – more or less – orchestra in his own church on Maundy Thursday, not least whilst beholding, as I did, Bach’s own countenance immediately opposite in one of St Thomas’s beautiful stained-glass windows – and that of Mendelssohn a little closer to the organ loft, in which the performances take place. It would, moreover, be ludicrous to claim that women’s voices sound the same as boys’, or indeed that a more mature chorus sounds as fresh as a youthful choir. Different choirs are possessed of different qualities. There was, moreover, no wanting of vigour in the turba choruses, Bach’s searing chromaticism proving as terrifying as anything in Tristan or Parsifal, the bloodlust if anything all the more chilling when expressed by young voices. ‘Sei gegrüßet, lieber Jüdenkönig!’ was, I am happy to report, taken at a relatively sedate tempo, allowing the words their full force. Bach’s writing, the Gospel itself, and the choral singing combined to impart an almost overwhelming sense of predestination as the performance progressed.

The question of soloists might be thought vexed, though only really if one adopts a fundamentalist approach: better to have professional soloists drawn from outside the choir than to have boys struggle, though it would be interesting on occasion to hear the soprano and alto arias taken by trebles. (Members of the choir did take smaller parts, such as the Maid and Peter.) Johannes Chum was an excellent Evangelist. Neither words nor music were unduly privileged; instead, one not only noted but experienced the miracle of Bach’s alchemic combination. Occasional strain with respect to the higher notes in his range was put to expressive use rather than jarring. Rainer Trost was listed in the programme booklet as the soloist for the tenor arias, but they were also sung by Chum. Though I should have been interested to hear the former, Chum proved an able replacement. It was not his fault, for instance, that a warmer, more Romantic string sound was not forthcoming in ‘Ach, mein Sinn’; nor, I am sure, was it the fault of the Gewandhaus Orchestra. The same could be said of the somewhat underpowered violin sound in ‘Mein Jesu, ach!’ Some ‘period’ practices die hard, alas. The entire continuo group proved distinguished throughout, however, not least David Petersen’s fruity bassoon.

Stephan Loges was a richly toned, expressive yet dignified Christ. Bach’s writing here lacks the celebrated string halo of Christ’s words in the St Matthew Passion, yet Loges ensured that one never felt the loss. Sibylla Rubens did not have a great deal to do as the soprano soloist. (What a contrast with the St Matthew!) Nevertheless, she proved radiantly beautiful in the pain of ‘Zerfließe, mein Herze’. Marie-Claude Chappuis was warmly expressive as contralto soloist. ‘Von deinen Stricken’ was more urgent than reflective, but that was doubtless Schwarz’s decision. Chappuis employed considerable ornamentation upon her da capo. Excellent cello and woodwind playing should also be noted. She navigated well the terrible contrasts of ‘Es ist vollbracht!’, aided by splendid solo gamba playing from Thomas Fritzsch. It seemed heartbreakingly apt that, by this hour, darkness had fallen in Leipzig too, Bach’s window image no longer visible. Hans-Christoph Begemann generally sounded more comfortable as Pilate than in the bass arias, where his tone tended towards the cloudy, in unfortunate contrast with Loges.

This was, however, not only an impressive but a moving performance. I can conceive of no better Holy Week observance.