Parsifal, Royal Opera, 2 December 2013

Royal Opera House

Gurnemanz – René Pape

First Grail Knight – David Butt Philip
Second Grail Knight – Charbel Mattar
First Esquire – Dušica Bijelič
Second Esquire – Rachel Kelly
Third Esquire – Sipho Fubesi
Fourth Esquire – Luis Gomes
Kundry/Voice from Above – Angela Denoke
Amfortas – Gerald Finley
Parsifal – Simon O’Neill
Titurel – Robert Lloyd
Klingsor – Sir Willard White
Flowermaidens – Celine Byrne, Kiandra Howarth, Anna Patalong, Anna Devin, Ana James, Justina Gringyte

Stephen Langridge (director)

Alison Chitty (designs)
Paul Pyant (lighting)
Dan O’Neill (movement)
Thomas Bergmann, Willem Brasche (video designs)
Royal Opera Chorus and Extra Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Sir Antonio Pappano (conductor)

Yet again, I am afraid, the Royal Opera House seems to have come up with a Wagner production for those who are not very interested in Wagner. Thunderous applause issued forth for Sir Antonio Pappano, when the best that one could say about his conducting was that it was a bit better than the appalling mess he had latterly made of, say, Götterdämmerung and Die Meistersinger. I am told, though I have yet to look at them, that newspaper critics have praised him to the skies; I wish I could say that that surprised me. There will be some writers who have a genuine alternative view on this matter, though I admit that in this case I find it difficult to understand how, but many of our opera critics seem not to know their Knappertsbusch from their Kempe, still less their Karajan from their Boulez. Members of the audience are perfectly entitled, of course, to attend a performance with as little or as much knowledge as they please, but the whole business of criticism is on very dodgy ground indeed when one doubts whether some opera writers can even read a score – let alone bother to do so.

I can only assume that in some sense, unless the first night performance were entirely different from the second, audience members and critics had confused some fine orchestral playing with the conductor’s sense of line, or rather lack thereof. There were even early signs, I admit, when it seemed as though Pappano might at last have learned to conduct Wagner. (Surely such an apprenticeship should have been served long before deigning to try one’s hand at Covent Garden, but anyway…) The First Act Prelude sounded both beautiful, sometimes luminously so, and possessed of a decent sense of direction, even if it were far from unclear that Wagner’s transcendental meaning(s) had been grasped. Yet soon we were back in the bad old arena of stopping and starting, underlining a motif and failing to grasp how it might be part of the composer’s fabled ‘art of transition’, let alone fit into a complex, dynamic, quasi-symphonic web. Has Pappano ever so much as read, let alone understood, Wagner’s words in Über die Anwendung der Musik auf das Drama?

To be an artwork as music, the new form of dramatic music must possess the unity of the symphonic movement; this it attains by spreading itself over the whole drama, in the most intimate cohesion therewith … This unity centres upon a web of basic themes, which contrast, complete, re-shape, divorce, and intertwine with one another as in a symphonic movement; yet here, the requirements of the dramatic action dictate the laws of separation and combination.

Somehow I doubt it – and that is even before one considers the complex role played by Wagner’s poem in all of this. As I said, there were passages in which, on a basic level, continuity was maintained, and there was some very fine orchestral playing too considered in isolation, but nothing in Wagner should be considered in isolation. That is the problem – and of course the ultimate opportunity. This was Wagner conducting devoid of any understanding of what makes Wagner Wagner – and we can be pluralist in that, of course. Yet such pluralism does not, or certainly should not, extend to having Wagner reduced to a slightly Teutonic Verdi. One can only weep when thinking that the last time Parsifal was staged at Covent Garden, it was conducted with unassuming greatness by Bernard Haitink. Sadly it seems that Haitink is destined never to return; in which case, might we not have someone else, if only occasionally, to do Wagner’s works a modicum of justice? Barenboim? Thielemann? Gatti? What might pass muster in a provincial house ought not to have any place on a world stage, a house once presided over by Haitink, by Sir Colin Davis.

Let us move on, without enthusiasm, to the production. ‘Stephen Langridge’s production emphasises the timeless and universal nature of the Parsifal story,’ claimed the cast list’s ‘quick guide to Parsifal’. I am not at all sure what that is supposed to mean, the drama of Parsifal lying in an epic theological struggle between time and eternity. But even if we could somehow accept that claim – very odd or unspeakably trite; most likely, both – it was not at all clear how Langridge’s production does anything of the sort. It certainly seems  to retreat from the mythological, from the questioning, to a weird unspecific specificity, which gave incoherent answers where answers were the last thing that was required. We appear to be in a world, not unlike that of Simon McBurney’s dreadful ENO Magic Flute, over which a quasi-Scientologist cult rules; yet that potential menace is undermined by a weird obsession with hospital care. I had thought a friend who attended the first night was being facetious when he asked whether the production had been intending a comment on British sanctification of the NHS; now I am not so sure. Much of the action takes place in something resembling the strange ‘Sex Box’ of Channel 4’s recent risible television programme. (I wonder indeed whether it were the worst television programme I have ever seen: four ‘couples’ have sex in a box in front of a studio audience, though unseen by that audience, after which they briskly emerge – they are not allotted much time – to answer, or rather not really to answer, questions put to them by Mariella Frostrup and some alleged experts. Parody seemed to be absent but who knows?) The box has a bed, on which scenes from Gurnemanz’s narration – Kundry’s decidedly unerotic ‘seduction’ of Amfortas, Klingsor’s self-castration – are depicted, since we are clearly unable to listen to Gurnemanz for ourselves and imagine, still less to play with past and present, with different modes of perception and understanding, as Wagner would have us try. Amfortas’s hospital ‘care’ also takes place there.

For some reason, the Grail is replaced by a little boy, whose side is pierced, echoing Amfortas’s own wounding, and presumably as some sort of Christ-like reference. Indeed, when we reencounter this ‘Grail’ in the third act, the boy has grown into a nubile young man, still in his underpants, still ready to be pierced, though that does not happen and instead he simply retreats inside his box. The way Titurel and some of the knights touch the boy’s wound suggests paedophilia, but that does not seem to be carried through, so maybe it is just another unfortunate misjudgement. Parsifal has arrived dressed like a vagrant, with more than a touch of the Jimmy Savile about him, so again: who knows? Frankly, who cares? There is, moreover, no castle to be destroyed, no sign of the Cross, etc. Instead, presumably as an Œdipal allusion, Parsifal is blinded, though just when an interesting idea might have manifested itself, its effect is blunted by the banal restitution of Parsifal’s sight at the end. Needless to say, the NHS works its wonders, Amfortas and Kundry walking off  together

Alas, Parsifal, as sung by Simon O’Neill, sometimes even sounded a little like Jimmy Savile too. There were better moments, especially during the third act, but too much was crude, undifferentiated, and most of all vocally unpleasant, redolent, as is this singer’s wont, of a misapplied pneumatic drill. His acting was little better, though seemingly by default, since there was little difference form the first two acts, he did a passable imitation of a blind man in the third. Why can the Royal Opera not at last engage Jonas Kaufmann in German repertoire, rather than waste him on largely trivial Italianate works? Or what about Christopher Ventris, or Stuart Skelton? The rest of the cast – and here were the only real candidates for redemption – were much better. Top of the class was René Pape’s Gurnemanz: authoritative, suave,  and so securely founded in Wagner’s alchemic combination of words and music that one could forgive a great deal – just so long as he was on stage. Likewise Gerald Finley’s wonderful Amfortas, for whom dramatic commitment was of course a greater task. This was the first time I had heard Finley in Wagner; I certainly hope that it will not be the last. Angela Denoke's Kundry was again a committed assumption; many of the notes she reached, but a good few she did not. Why she appeared in the third act as she had in the second, rather than as the creature seen in the first, I cannot imagine. Unfortunately, Willard White as Klingsor and Robert Lloyd as Titurel both suggested that they would be well advised to retire from vocal performance. The male chorus improved significantly in the third act, having lacked focus in the first. Whether it were a matter of the female chorus’s placing offstage or something else, its words were entirely inaudible. I hope that having Kundry sing the part of the Voice from Above was a matter of cost-cutting rather than a ‘dramatic’ decision; in the latter respect, it made no sense at all.

Only last year, I saw Stefan Herheim’s Bayreuth Parsifal for the last time. It did not receive its finest musical performance, Daniele Gatti having been replaced by Philippe Jordan, who was little better – if at all – than Pappano. Moreover, the cast had been better in previous years too. Yet the dramatic integrity, the intellectual commitment, above all the sheer musicality of Herheim’s staging once again won out. Here I struggled and failed to find a single case of the director engaging with Wagner’s score. Haitink managed, more or less single-handedly, to salvage something from the meaningless triviality of the previous, at least equally dreadful production. But it needs someone of that stature; we seem fated endlessly to be denied such redemption.

The Minotaur, Royal Opera, 17 January 2013

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Ariadne – Christine Rice

Theseus – Johan Reuter
The Minotaur – Sir John Tomlinson
Ker – Elisabeth Meister
Snake Priestess – Andrew Watts
Hiereus – Alan Oke
First Innocent/Young Woman – Susana Gaspar
Second Innocent – Nadine Livingston
Third Innocent – Justina Gringyte
Fourth Innocent – James Laing
Fifth Innocent – William Towers

Stephen Langridge (director)

Alison Chitty (designs)
Paul Pyant (lighting)
Philippe Giraudeau (choreography)
59 Productions (video)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master/second conductor: Renato Balsadonna)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Ryan Wigglesworth (conductor)

Hiereus (Alan Oke), Snake Priestess (Andrew
Watts), Ariadne (Christine Rice)
Image: Bill Cooper

If, first time around, in 2008, The Minotaur offered the obvious excitement of the premiere, it was now noteworthy how quickly it had settled into repertory status. Not that it has yet been performed elsewhere than Covent Garden, though it should be as a matter of urgency, but that its 2013 outing proceeded with the apparent ease one might expect of, say, The Magic Flute or Carmen. That is surely testament both to the excellence of the performances we heard as well as to the stature of Birtwistle’s opera itself.

 

Though it packs an undoubted musico-dramatic punch, The Minotaur is not perhaps the overwhelming experience, the assault upon one’s faculties, offered by The Mask of Orpheus. It arguably stands a ‘late’ or at least ‘later’ work, somewhat simpler – these things are relative, of course – and more direct (ditto). The unbroken thread of the score, a metaphor for Ariadne’s own thread, brings the work closer to conventionally understood operatic tradition. This is a more linear work than many, for though Birtwistle and his librettist, David Harsent, also play once again with ritual and repetition, re-telling is incorporated, expressed, almost Wagner-like, within an essentially linear narrative. The labyrinth, then, has order, clearly discernible, beyond the apparently senseless chaos of human-bestial existence, as symbolised in the person of the ‘half and half,’ Asterios the Minotaur. Whether to start here, with The Mask of Orpheus, with Gawain, with Punch and Judy, or elsewhere is not something about which to become unduly worked up; the choice would be akin to deciding or falling upon a Wagnerian baptism  of fire with Tristan or the Shakespeare-like entrée of Die Meistersinger, and so on. It is difficult to imagine, however, that anyone with ears to hear and with the slightest curiosity would not be hooked; my immediate response upon emerging from the theatre was to hope that I should be able to find a ticket for a subsequent performance.

 

Reworkings of myth proceed in typical Birtwistle fashion, though here of course the credit is at least as much Harsent’s. An especially interesting idea is the presentation of the bull who mounted Pasiphae as Poseideon; the Minotaur is therefore perhaps Theseus’s half-brother. (We still do not know, nor does he, whether Theseus be the son of Poseidon or the son of Aegeus.) It is, moreover, an excellent touch to tantalise us with Theseus’s future abandonment of Ariadne; it is stressed that they will board the ship together, but it is equally noteworthy that no one foresees her reaching Athens. The orchestra, meanwhile, acts very much in neo-Wagnerian style as Chorus, shadowing, intensifying, commenting upon the action. Perhaps there is something of Bach in the well-nigh obbligato quality of the alto saxophone identified with Ariadne – who in this retelling becomes perhaps a more compromised, even ambiguous character. She is not always ‘straight’ with Theseus; she even attempts to trick Fate, both by moving a pebble from one hand to hand. It takes a second try, moreover, before she acts truthfully towards the Snake Priestess. Things could readily have turned out otherwise, then, or maybe not, if one believes in Fate. At any rate, thinking about such matters, experiencing them through the drama, is unavoidable.

 

Ryan Wigglesworth’s conducting proved almost Classical, again contributing very much to the suspicion that this opera has already attained ‘classic’ status.  With an orchestra and chorus on top form, the musical drama, incisive, ominous, gripping, beautifully melancholic, spoke, as the cliché would have it, for itself. There was no need for any extraneous ‘excitement’ to be applied from without; this was a far more fulfilling, musically-involving approach. The battery of percussion spoke, of course, but so did the steely yet malleable tones of orchestral woodwind, and not just the saxophone. Choral baiting of the Minotaur truly chilled our blood, just as others’ blood will be spilled on stage.

 

Christine Rice offered a heartfelt, conflicted Ariadne, Johan Reuter a stolid – but deliberately so – Theseus, his heroism thoughtfully questioned. John Tomlinson, celebrating an extraordinary thirty-five years on the Covent Garden stage, seems to have made the role of the Minotaur just as much as his own as he did the Green Knight in Gawain. (Salzburg’s new production this summer will almost inevitably feature him.) It is a part well suited to his advancing years. Vocal perfection is not required; it might even be out of place. But dramatic presence and integrity most definitely are; the tragic plight of a creature created and rejected so cruelly by ‘humanity’ was searingly portrayed. Andrew Watts again caused consternation with the mysterious archaic babble of the Snake Priestess, tellingly translated by another old Birtwistle hand, Alan Oke. Elisabeth Meister made an equally fantastic impression as the chilling Ker, feasting on the innocents’ blood; it is a screaming harpy-like role, but a musically screaming one, especially in this assumption. There was, in short, no weak link in the cast, and it is a very strong cast indeed.

 

Stephen Langridge’s staging tells the story with clarity, aided by Alison Chitty’s straightforward yet imaginative designs. I cannot help but retain a niggling doubt that a more adventurous production might have brought out a good number more dramatic strands than we see here. Something more Mask of Orpheus-like or indeed Soldaten-like might have alerted the audience to dramatic layers that went unseen, if certainly not unheard. By the same token, however, there is nothing wrong with expecting and/or permitting the audience to do some ‘aural thinking’ for itself. Let us hope, in any case, that before long there will be alternatives, which will expand our imaginative understanding of the work.

 

Programme essays were for the most part particularly informative, pieces by Rhian Samuel and David Beard especially so, though it is slightly odd to read Samuel referring to The Mask of Orpheus as ‘Birtwistle’s early opera’; ‘earlier’ perhaps? Moreover, Ruth Padel’s piece is simply incorrect to claim that ‘Monteverdi’s first opera was Arianna’; it was of course Orfeo. Nevertheless, I learned a great deal from the contributions taken as a whole. How splendid, then, to experience the Royal Opera House very much back on form – and on form in so many ways.

The Minotaur, Royal Opera, 25 April 2008

Royal Opera House

Ariadne - Christine Rice
First Innocent - Rebecca Bottone
Second Innocent - Pumeza Matshikiza
Third Innocent - Wendy Dawn Thompson
Fourth Innocent - Christopher Ainslie
Fifth Innocent - Tim Mead
Theseus - Johan Reuter
The Minotaur - Sir John Tomlinson
Ker - Amanda Echalaz
Snake Priestess - Andrew Watts
Hiereus - Philip Langridge

Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House
Renata Balsadonna (chorus-master and second conductor)
Antonio Pappano (conductor)

Stephen Langridge (director)
Alison Chitty (designs)
Paul Pyant (lighting)
Philippe Giraudeau (choreographer)
Leo Warner and Mark Grimmer (video designs)

This was the fourth performance of The Minotaur. Only two performances remain , comprising a rather short run. Let us hope that this presages a swift revival, for the work and production certainly deserve it.

One should be very careful about voicing reservations after a single hearing; perhaps one should know better than even to make the attempt. However, I shall venture my single, tentative reservation at the outset, to get it over with. I wondered whether the opening, essentially the music up until the second toccata, was a little longer than it might have been. It may, of course, be that Sir Harrison Birtwistle will revise the work; such was his practice with Gawain. I felt that the drama was a touch slow-burning to begin with, although once it hit its stride, there really was no turning back. This seemed reflected in the performances, although again this was a matter of degree.

That said, this is, unsurprisingly, a fine score indeed, another instance of Birtwistle's genius in evoking the ancient world in all its complexity, in all its danger, in all its strangeness. It also sounded, again unsurprisingly for those who have followed his career, very English, at least in places. I do not of course mean this in the debased sense of the 'pastoral', which has been taken by some reactionaries to define Englishness. This is something more viscerally melancholic - if the combination makes sense - and more willing to treat English tradition, old and new, as part of Europe rather than cling to sentimental island-based canards. There was violence, not least in the terrific music of the Keres - wonderfully portrayed by a host of actresses - but there was tenderness too, and the presence of both intensified rather than detracted from the opposing tendencies. There was also a very strong sense of linear narrative, suggestive of Ariadne's thread, which might surprise those more cognisant of Birtwistle's earlier work. It was more marked, I thought, even than in Gawain, which presented something of a watershed in that respect. Perhaps the resistance to Beethovenian goal-orientation that has characterised so much of Birtwistle's oeuvre is lessening, in response to new challenges, perhaps partly born of his increasing fascination for Wagner. Some of the trademark Birtwistle sounds were there - the cimbalom reminiscent of his beloved Stravinsky and of Gawain, and the soaring alto saxophone, shadowing and perhaps inciting Ariadne - but there was nothing reheated about the orchestration. Instead, there was an abiding, oppressive force of Fate, utterly suited to the subject matter, and quite different from the relative optimism of The Io Passion. A characteristic attentiveness to the sounds and meanings of words, and carefully chosen - and thus extremely effective and affective - melismata were as noteworthy as in other Birtwistle vocal works.

The production seemed to me to serve the work very well indeed. I was perhaps slightly surprised by the straightforwardness of the tale's retelling, but then this was not The Mask of Orpheus. Stephen Langridge had clearly taken great care with his Personenregie, and this paid off handsomely. There was not one aspect of this with which I could find fault, even if so inclined. Alison Chitty's designs seemed perfect for the task: never intent on drawing attention to themselves, but clearly worked out in a commendably collaborative process with composer, librettist, and director - which is as it should be. The clutter that has characterised certain productions was banished from one's grateful imagination, leaving it to deal with the suggestive but never unduly spare staging Langridge, Chitty, and their other collaborators presented.

Birtwistle and Langridge were fortunate in their performers. The orchestra revelled in his taxing yet alluring score, as did Antonio Pappano, in what seemed to me perhaps the most impressive performance I have heard from his baton at Covent Garden. There were perhaps moments when I felt he held back the orchestra a little much in favour of the singers, but it is not difficult to appreciate why. The chorus handled Birtwistle's music and David Harsent's splendid words with aplomb, making of itself an essential part of the action, a duly nasty witness of bloodthirsty Minoan society. Of the Innocents who sang, I found the male voices - countertenors both of them - more impressive than the female.

Amanda Echalaz was quite spectacular leading her band of Keres: what a role, and what she made of it! All that hysterical swooping never forsook sound musical - indeed quite mathematical - fundamentals. Christine Rice garnered very warm applause as Ariadne. Yet, although she undoubtedly impressed in a difficult role, I found her to be unduly remote on occasion, and her diction was not always quite what it might have been. Johan Reuter was for me, if I had to choose, the more worthy recipient of praise. He had a fine stage presence with a voice to match, employed judiciously and with remarkable sensitivity to vocal shading. One does not have to shout to be heard in Birtwistle; one simply has to sing well. Philip Langridge and Andrew Watts were both outstanding in the extraordinary tenth scene ('The Oracle at Psychro'). Every aspect of their performances - whether musical or acted, or both - seemed both accurate and idiomatic. And then, of course, there was John Tomlinson in the title role. It may not surprise, but it should still register, that his was a triumphant portrayal of the 'half-and-half'. One could tell every word that he sang - and indeed notice on the odd occasion when it differed from the titles! - and every pitch at which he sang it. Not that there was anything pointillistic about his performance: it was strenuously lyrical and extremely moving. It is quite an achievement on the part of performer, composer, librettist, and production team to have made one empathise with the predicament of this character, mocked and turned violent by a vicious society, which, by failing to recognise his humanity, threatens to deprive him of it forever. Yet a signal and noble achievement this was. It culminated in a heart-rendingly intense death scene that could not but remind one of another towering assumption on Tomlinson's part: Boris Godunov.