Britten Sinfonia/Watkin - Handel, Messiah, 16 December 2021

Barbican Hall

Harriet Eyley (soprano)
Jess Dandy (contralto)
Stuart Jackson (tenor)
James Newby (baritone)

Choir of Jesus College, Cambridge (director, organ: Richard Pinel)

Britten Sinfonia

David Watkin (conductor)

Messiahs take many forms. They did during the eighteenth century; they did in the nineteenth; they did in the twentieth; despite the more or less complete victory of ‘authentic’—was ever the term less apt than for this work?—performance practices in the rest of Handel’s œuvre, they have continued to do so in the twenty-first. Sadly, even tragically, the video of that inimitable ‘Handel meets Pop with Messias’, starring the still-more-inimitable Robbin Casey, seems to have vanished not only from YouTube but the planet. (Please do let me know if you have a copy of the original broadcast!) But we still have options ranging from Mozart to McCreesh, from Beecham to Britten Sinfonia. The small forces employed here, including a tiny orchestra (strings 3.3.2.2.1) and a choir of only twenty-six (men and women but not boys of Jesus College), were at least in part a response to the dread virus. They were perhaps not what one might have imagined ideal for the Barbican and would probably have worked better at home in the warmer acoustic of that most magical of Cambridge chapels. One’s ears nonetheless adjusted to aesthetics as well as to pragmatics. Not only would it be churlish and pointless to object too strongly; it would also arguably ignore the fact that pragmatics have almost always been an important part of aesthetics. Handel, after all, never composed a Helicopter-Quartet. 

That a musician such as David Watkin, so well versed in what, for better or worse, we have come to know as ‘historical performance’, would take an anti-Romantic, or perhaps better a non-Romantic, line should have come as little surprise. The Britten Sinfonia’s versatility is such that these players could doubtless follow any lead with equal relish. Nicely detailed playing in, for instance, ‘But who may abide the day of his coming?’ permitted of considerable instrumental drama, whatever the numbers involved. So too, naturally, did that greatest of musical rarities: a true and fine contralto voice, in this case Jess Dandy’s. When it came to ‘He was despised…,’ the plainness of some of the orchestral playing was a little underwhelming, yet Dandy’s voice and interpretation continued to carry the performance.

In any case, Watkin’s direction was in general pragmatic, clearly aiming to build a performance founded not upon an ideal, but on the forces in front of him. If I suspect I shall never share ‘period’ predilection for ending numbers in what I hear as merely perfunctory fashion, I watched and listened eagerly to hear the way Watkin worked with his soloists, no diktat handed down from above, but rather making the most of Stuart Jackson’s dramatic, even operatic flair, Harriet Eyley’s appealingly bell-like soprano, or James Newby’s rich yet agile baritone. So too was this the case for the young choral musicians, for many of whom the past twenty-one months will have been particularly trying. If ‘All we like sheep’ bobbed along amiably, if little more, the winning, Saul-like responsorial singing of ‘Lift up your heads, O ye gates’, and agile passage work of ‘Let us break their bonds asunder’ duly impressed, as did the grandeur, finally achieved, of the ‘Hallelujah’ Chorus. Most stood, although one peculiar soul, who had disturbed ‘How beautiful are the feet’ and a couple of other numbers with incredibly noisy crisp-eating elected instead to film the performance on his telephone.  Music-making is itself a human good, a human necessity: something none of us should ever forget again, even in the unlikely event further ‘restrictions’ do not return. 

Coloratura was a distinct strength to all concerned: not only ‘in itself’, but as put to dramatic use; so too was stylish and varied ornamentation. This is an oratorio, one can readily forget, that is simply scored. In an unassuming performance such as this, one welcomes perhaps all the more the coming of bright trumpets in ‘Glory to God in the highest’, certainly as much as telling, if often subtle, shifts between numbers in tempo. One size has never fit all, and never will. And if this will never, should never, come across as a dramatic, narrative oratorio in the mode of many of Handel’s, there was much to enjoy in that mode too: Jackson fairly scourging with his voice (‘All they that see Him…’), at times coming across as Handel’s unconscious response to Bach’s Evengelists; Ryder’s tasteful intensification of vibrato for Christ’s resurrection in ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’; and Newby’s moving representation of words and theology, allied to equally fine trumpet-playing (Imogen Whitehead) in ‘The trumpet shall sound’. A euphonious final chorus served not only as fitting aesthetic culmination, but worked as a keenly felt moral metaphor for what we had seen, head, and God willing, participated in too. Amen.

Semele, Komische Oper, 18 December 2019

Jupiter – Stuart Jackson

Juno – Ezgi Kutlu

Cadmus – Philipp Meierhöfer

Semele – Sydney Mancasola

Ino – Karolina Gumos

Athamas – Terry Wey

Iris – Georgina Melville

Somnus, Priest – Evan Hughes

Barrie Kosky (director)

David Merz (Spielleitung)

Natacha Le Guen de Kerneizon (set designs)

Carla Teti (costumes)

Johanna Wall (dramaturgy)

Alessandro Carletti (lighting)

Chorus of the Komische Oper Berlin (chorus director: David Cavelius)

Orchestra of the Komische Oper Berlin

Konrad Junghänel (conductor)

Oh, terror and astonishment!
Nature to each allots his proper sphere,
But that forsaken we like meteors err:
Toss'd through the void, by some rude shock we're broke,
And all our boasted fire is lost in smoke.

William Congreve’s libretto—to my mind, perhaps the finest Handel set—makes clear what is at stake in Semele. So too, working along strikingly similar lines, does Barrie Kosky’s production. That one comes to appreciate the achievement of both, in collaboration, of course, with one of Handel’s finest dramatic scores and a highly talented cast, when all has drawn or is drawing to a close is surely just as it should be. The owl of Minerva only spreads its wings at dusk; here, though, it is a dusk and, possibly, a dawn formed by Semele’s ashes, more of a prequel than one might initially have expected—certainly than I expected—to Henze’s The Bassarids, also staged here at the Komische Oper Berlin in an excellent production by Kosky. Kosky had taken over the production when the originally scheduled director, Laura Scozzi, had fallen ill. Presumably many of the designs were already in place, but they are put to good use. Speculating over who did what is fruitless; either one knows or one does not, and ultimately, even if one knows, so what? What I saw certainly sense to me, minus the occasional irritant that is more concerned with style than anything substantial.

To return to the cited chorus text, however, also returns us to the beginning—and thus to the overall set design that frames the action as a whole. We are invited into an eighteenth-century building, some of the room’s detail clearly apparent, other aspects left for us and for the drama to fill in. An ash heap, reminiscent perhaps of a mound in Kosky’s Castor et Pollux signals, at least in retrospect, where the action is heading, yet also, more importantly, represents the traumatic intrusion of the gods into the world of men and women. That tragedy of a genuine love between Jupiter and Semele, as opposed to the comedy of Semele’s vanity and comeuppance, of a love that is essentially fated never to be, lies at the heart of the production. Adopting the time-honoured procedure—somewhat Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe—of entering, in this case, being dragged through a fireplace portal to an alternative world, Semele briefly attains happiness, as notably does Jupiter, albeit in something destined not to last. The cosmic Toryism—think of Pope’s Essay on Man—that decrees all shall now their place in a well-ordered universe will not permit such a transgression for long.

Nor, of course, will its guardian Juno, here less a wronged woman, though at some level remaining that, but a woman with agency, desires, and power, all of which she will use in self-defence and attack. So do she and Iris, in a highly erotic scene, bring Somnus into play. Sacerdotal purple for her dress nonetheless makes clear her status, as does the same colour for Jupiter’s socks, which betray his true nature even when he has otherwise taken human form. And so, when tricked into demanding Jupiter assume his true, thunderbolt nature, Semele seals her fate, becoming ash, as we see had all along been foretold. She sits above the fireplace, her status reassumed, a ghost—as too, ironically, are Jupiter and Juno—at the wedding of Ino and Athamas, with the proviso, signalled by Congreve and the priestly chorus, that Bacchus will ultimately ‘crown the joys of love’. Or will he? As we know, things never turn out quite as they should—and the tragedy of The Bassarids awaits.

Sydney Mancasola shone in the title role, the whole performance building up to a bravura performance of her final air, ‘No, no, I’ll take no less/Than all in full excess!’ That full excess, alas, was to be truly hers, but was also seen and heard to characterise an exuberant performance from beginning to end. Stuart Jackson, whom I heard only seven years ago at the Royal Academy of Music in Haydn’s La vera constanza, is now rightly treading larger stages. Here he treated to us a finely, often poignantly sung and acted performance of Jupiter, who truly met his match in Ezgi Kutlu’s fiery Juno. What a joy it was to hear a mezzo here in the line of Marilyn Horne. Karolina Gumos and Terry Wey offered a well matched, nicely contrasted Ino and Athamas, while Evan Hughes’s darkly alluring Somnus justly threatened to steal the show in his scene with Juno and Georgina Melville’s spirited, stylish Iris. Choral singing—and acting—was first-rate throughout, Kosky and his singers fully rising to the task of Handel’s ‘objective’ commentary that yet involves itself, in the line of ancient predecessors. Though I could not help but wish that Konrad Junghänel had permitted greater warmth from the strings, his tempi and general direction proved well variegated, supportive of singers without being reduced to mere accompaniment; and, just as important, strongly suggestive of the panoply of character, emotion, and action on display here. It was clear that all had collaborated to render this, once again, a company achievement from the Komische Oper that was significantly greater than the sum of its considerable parts.

Salome, English National Opera, 3 October 2018

Coliseum

Salome (Allison Cooke) and dancers
Images: Catherine Ashmore

(sung in English translation)

Narraboth – Stuart Jackson

Page – Clare Presland

Soldiers – Simon Shibambu, Ronald Nairne

Jokanaan – David Soar

Cappadocian – Trevor Eliot Bowes

Salome – Allison Cook

Slave – Ceferina Penny

Herod Antipas – Michael Colvin

Herodias – Susan Bickley

Jews – Daniel Norman, Christopher Turner, Amar Muchhala, Alun Rhys-Jenkins, Jonathan Lemalu

Nazarenes – Robert Winslade Anderson, Adam Sullivan

Dancers – Corey Annand, Kazmin Borrer, Hannah Flynn, Iona Kirk, Nicle Neolove

Adena Jacobs (director)

Marg Horwell (designs)

Lucy Carter, Sean Gleason (lighting)

Melanie Lane (choreography)

Orchestra of the English National Opera

Martyn Brabbins (conductor)

Hmmm, oh dear. I think I might sometimes have been able to see what Adena Jacobs was trying to do in this new production of Salome. Who knows, though? I was clearly not its target audience, which would seem to have been an imaginary cohort of teenage girls viewed with extreme condescension and, doubtless, ‘concerned’ contempt. What I do know, however, is that its trashiness was exceeded only by its rank incompetence and incoherence. Quite how or why it was permitted to proceed anywhere near the Coliseum’s stage without, at the very least, radical revision is perhaps the greatest of its mysteries.

Jokanaan (David Soar)

It begins, if not promisingly, then at least within the realm of dreary cliché: dark, in what appears to be the queue to a nightclub. (Better not to ask too many questions: sadly, it will not be worth it.) That scene disappears, to be replaced by something else: unclear. Perhaps it was inside the club, although it did not really seem to be. People in all manner of peculiar outfits behave somewhat oddly, Jokanaan’s voice relayed quite unforgivably through strange electronic means so as to suggest that David Soar could not sing the role. (For the little while that he was on stage, it was perfectly clear that he could – and did.) For some reason, or none, his words are delivered via a huge video close up of his mouth. A dental surgery Salome: a concept of sorts, I suppose, but soon it is dead. Meanwhile, Salome runs around as if she were an extra hoping for more in a pop video. There is, I grant, the germs of a concept there; like everything else, it is not pursued. And so on, and so forth.


Later, however, the real extras appear, in the most embarrassing Dance of the Seven Veils anyone is, I trust, likely ever to see. Salome elects not to take part in that, instead engaging in what seems to be a concurrent one-woman game of rounders. Some smaller ‘twerking’ dancers do, however, gyrating with complete, tedious indifference to the music, to the drama, to everything. There are neither veils nor substitutes in sight. One can, I suppose, understand where such indifference was ‘coming from’. Before that, however, some gunge has been cast around the stage, as if in a half-hearted tribute to the late Keith Chegwin. Oh yes, lest one forget: an enormous headless horse – a reference to My Little Pony (?!) – has been hauled on stage, so that assorted people with nothing better to do may extract entrails from it and, well, sit on it for a while, looking bored. Herod on occasion slightly resembles the (mercifully) late Jimmy Savile: not, I think, by design. He too has a gameshow moment, when he writhes in that gunge: Narraboth’s blood, ‘supplied,’ I later read in the programme, ‘by Pigs Might Fly’. Quite. At the end, he commands her death, but nothing happens. He has long left the stage, and who can blame him? Instead, Salome, held by her mother, standing in front of a large black orifice – at least that symbolism is clear enough – shoots herself. The end.

Herod (Michael Colvin)

By all means present an abused Salome – it is surely difficult not to – but please: do it better than this or not at all. At least connect something to something else, and perhaps listen a little to Strauss’s score. There is certainly greater craft in the orchestration of any single note, let alone chord, than in anything seen in this hapless farrago. The musicians on the evening deserved far, far better too. Allison Cook’s voice is perhaps not quite what one expects in the title role, the higher range a little high for comfort, but there was ample compensation with a committed dramatic performance and a richer than usual tone for her insistence on Jokanaan’s head. (I cannot remember the actual English translation, which did well, however much one heard the original in one’s head.) Michael Colvin’s Herod was certainly done no favours by the production, but he responded with great professionalism and artistry, as did Susan Bickley as Herodias. Stuart Jackson and Clare Presland likewise impressed in sensitive – especially given the context – performances, attentive to word and line, of Narraboth and Herodias’s Page. If the ENO Orchestra’s strings were sometimes a little thin of tone when compared to what a German opera-goer will hear in this music, there was also much to be gleaned from the orchestra’s transparency and incisiveness, Martyn Brabbins steering a wise, knowledgeable course through Strauss’s directed phantasmagoria. Alas, such real virtues found themselves quite undone.

This will sound banal; indeed, it surely is banal. Nevertheless, if you neither understand nor care for an opera, nor apparently for opera in general, would you not be better off leaving its direction it to someone who does? Perhaps you are actually a greater artist than Richard Strauss or Oscar Wilde: probably not, however. Both other stagings of Salome I have seen this year, from Romeo Castellucci in Salzburg and, especially, from Hans Neuenfels in Berlin, had much to say, much to suggest, and yes, much to beguile. Moreover, they offered much, again especially in Neuenfels’s case, to provoke. I appreciate that this production tried to do likewise. Trying, however, was all it proved ultimately to be. 

Festival d’Aix-en-Provence (5) - L’Erismena, 15 July 2017

Images: Festival d’Aix-en-Provence 2017 © Pascal Victor / artcompress

Théâtre du Jeu de Paume

Erismena – Francesca Aspromonte

Idraspe – Carlo Vistoli

Aldimira – Susanna Hurrell

Orimeneo – Jakub Józef Orliński

Erimante – Alexander Miminoshvili

Flerida – Lea Desandre

Argippo – Andrea Bonsignore

Alcesta – Stuart Jackson

Clerio Moro – Tai Oney

Diarte – Jonathan Abernethy

Jean Bellorini (director, lighting, set designs)

Véronique Chazal (set designs)

Macha Makeïeff (costumes)

Cappella Mediterranea

Leonardo García Alarcón (conductor)

Whose first thought when Cavalli is mentioned is anything other than Raymond Leppard? Certainly not mine. Whilst many, indeed pretty much all, such associations will be simplifications of varying degrees of grossness, and some bizarrely, often chauvinistically, incorrect – Bernstein and Mahler, for instance – Leppard’s role in the rediscovery and revival of Cavalli’s operas can hardly be gainsaid. What I should have given to hear one of his imaginative, luscious realisations in the flesh. Much has changed in the meantime, of course: save for the very occasional actual ‘reorchestration’, it has long been a capital offence to perform seventeenth-century music on modern instruments. I suppose we should be grateful that the fatwas of ‘authenticity’ have extended less frequently towards staging, although the vaguely ‘stylish’ mishmash that often results tends at best to be a mixed blessing.

What we saw and heard here was much in that line, and proved enjoyable enough in its way, although I could not help but wish that something more daring had been attempted. The theatre itself, the Théâtre du Jeu de Paume, is a delight. However modernist one’s view of other matters may be, the growth of opera houses into outsize monsters should surely be deplored by all. Presumably someone will object that it is an eighteenth-century theatre; in which case, kindly get thee to seventeenth-century Venice and leave the rest of us in peace. Leonardo García Alarcón and his small, yet far from shy, Capella Mediterranea played in the accustomed ‘we’re Mediterranean and thus “sensual”’ style, or alternatively, ‘sex please, we’re not Christopher Hogwood’ – which is certainly preferable to, well, Christopher Hogwood and other puritans. It is, though, all a bit predictable after a while, not nearly so ‘interesting’ or indeed ‘sensual’ as it thinks it is – or, indeed, as audiences in thrall to ‘authenticity’ have been trained to believe it is. Have a ‘colourful’ continuo group, turn as much as you can into dance music, accompany that with a good deal of silly dancing on stage, hint at largely spurious parallels to other traditions, be they folk, jazz, anything other than the dread ‘symphonic’, and you are ‘counter-culturally’ away.

It is a business, of course, and it has succeeded greatly in those terms, not least by its ruthless suppression of the ‘competition’. And unlike those frankly unlistenable-to Northern European puritan forerunners – the Leonhardts, Goebels, Hogwoods, et al. – it is in many respects welcoming. Perhaps it is too much so, or at least too complacent in its remarkably non-reflective conception of history. (Nikolaus Harnoncourt was an exception in that latter respect; his greatest problem was a peculiar inability to phrase.) There is more, though, to ‘Mediterranean’ culture, and indeed there is more to Cavalli, than that. Moreover, violin intonation was sometimes little short of excruciating, although no one else seemed to mind.

Whatever one’s thoughts on the orchestra and conducting (how ‘inauthentic’!) though, the singing was excellent. A young cast, with acting abilities largely to match, held the drama, such as it is, in its hands and projected it with the vocal excellence that has long been the trump card of so much of the ‘early music’ movement. If I were compelled to single out one soloist, I should unhesitatingly opt for the bright, clear, and yes, sensual countertenor of Jakub Józef Orliński; it was a great pity he did not have more to sing. But this was a true company achievement. Orliński’s countertenor companions, Carlo Vistoli and Tai Oney also greatly impressed, each voice and character ‘naturally’ differentiated from the others. So too did Susanna Hurrell’s Aldimira and Stuart Jackson’s properly outrageous nurse-in-drag, Alcesto. There is a good deal of ensemble writing here, yet I cannot recall a single case of problematical balance.

Jean Bellorini’s staging falls into the aforementioned stylish-‘modern’ category. No particular point of view or framing seems apparent. Clothes are ‘modern’ and a good deal of attention is productively paid to movement and interaction. Again, though, I could not help but think that something a little more than having light bulbs  disintegrate at critical moments might have been done with the opera. For it is, frankly, difficult to care too much about the characters and their fate; this is neither Monteverdi nor top-drawer Cavalli. There is probably too much silliness; Leppard, anything but humourless, nevertheless remarked upon an all too easy tendency towards disguise and cross-dressing for the sake of it in a good number of Cavalli works. Indeed, Leppard was actually highly selective concerning those he selected for editing and performance. We, however live, for better or worse, in an age of completism. Not that that problem arose here; this is an opera eminently worth performing. Perhaps, though, at some stage, it might be done in a realisation and staging a little more interested in stretching our eyes, ears, and minds.

Eugene Onegin, Royal Academy Opera, 11 March 2013

Sir Jack Lyons Theatre, Royal Academy of Music, London, 11.3.2013

Madame Larina – Anna Harvey

Tatiana – Tereza Gevorgyan
Olga – Fiona Mackay
Filipievna – Rozanna Madylus
Eugene Onegin – Ross Ramgobin
Lensky – Stephen Aviss
Monsieur Triquet – Stuart Jackson
Zaretsky – Samuel Pantcheff
Prince Gremin – Nicholas Crawley
Captain – Samuel Queen

Royal Academy Opera Chorus
Royal Academy Sinfonia
Jane Glover (conductor)

John Ramster (director)

Adrian Linford (designs)
Jake Wiltshire (lighting)
Victoria Newlyn (choreography)

Annd Harvey (Mme Larina) and the chorus
Images: © Royal Academy of Music

 

And still they come, not that I am complaining in the slightest! London has certainly not done badly for stagings of Eugene Onegin recently, and it did not do badly here either; indeed, it, or rather the performers, did very well indeed. Most of the operas I have seen at the Royal Academy of Music have been smaller scale; so far as I can recall, the only other nineteenth-century work was Béatriceet Bénédict, which of course is, by Berlioz’s standards, rather an intimate work. One might say the same of Eugene Onegin; after all, these ‘scenes’ from Pushkin were first performed at the Moscow Conservatory. But there is nevertheless a grander, for want of a better word ‘Romantic’, face to the work too – and there is ballet, or at least dance. However, any fears that a nineteenth-century opera might be biting off more than the RAM could chew were firmly banished.

 

Not everything was perfect, of course, but then I could say the same about any other performance I have heard. The orchestra took a while to get into its stride, noticeably more confident after the first interval. There were a good few brass fluffs early on; moreover, there were times when, with the best will in the world and even in a small theatre, the strings (6.6.4.4.2) were simply too thin in tone.  That said, what was perhaps rather more surprising was how, especially as time went on, a glowing Romantic tone was more fully achieved. Jane Glover ably shaped the musical action throughout, displaying flexibility and not inconsiderable passion, without neglecting the needs of her young singers. (In ‘normal’ circumstances, I have little patience with the idea of a conductor ‘supporting’ singers, which normally seems to mean holding back, but in a music school environment, matters are somewhat different.) I do not mean this to be faint praise, but Glover’s account of the score was infinitely preferable to the recent dismal showing by RobinTicciati at the Royal Opera House.
 

John Ramster’s production did not provoke a great deal of thought, as Kasper Holten’s excellent ROH staging certainly had. (It clearly, unsurprisingly, passed over a great number of people’s heads, though seemed perfectly clear to me.) For a ‘traditional’ staging, however, it does its job well enough, granting the cast the opportunity not only to don nineteenth-century apparel but also successfully to follow commendably detailed stage direction. I was somewhat puzzled by what looked rather like a crown of thorns above the stage prior to St Petersburg; however, I realised, upon its disappearance, that it had been nothing so conceptually provocative, merely an indication of the countryside. There is nevertheless one particular directorial intervention at the end of the second act: following the death of Lensky, we see a calculating Olga already having moved on to the Captain from Mme Larina’s party. Victoria Newlyn’s choreography is apt and well executed, a credit both to her and to the cast.

 

Tereza Gevorgyan (Tatiana) and
Ross Ramgobin (Onegin)

 

Not least of the difficulties for the singers would have been the task of singing in Russian. (Thank goodness it was not translated!) They must all have been very well coached – Glover credited Ludmilla Andrew both for coaching and transliteration – since the results ranged from good to excellent. Perhaps Tereza Gevorgyan, the Armenian Tatiana, had an inbuilt advantage, but that did not explain her well-nigh superlative assumption of the role more generally, especially later on. Hesitance was well conveyed in stage terms during the opening scene, but the greatest triumph was in her final scene with Onegin, when a rare degree of agency was forged, making it clear that an empowered woman had turned the tables on the man who had once rejected a girl from the country. The slight – and I mean slight – metallic edge to Gevorgyan’s voice worked splendidly in cutting through and soaring above the orchestra; I hope and expect to hear more from her. Rozanna Madylus’s Filipievna, though of course a far smaller role, was at least as impressive, a full assumption, visually as well as vocally convincing, such as would have graced a major house. There was also much to admire in Anna Harvey's eminently professional Mme Larina. Fiona Mackay’s Olga occasionally lacked depth of tone, but was well acted, indeed exuberantly so, and for the most part equally well sung.

 

I wondered during the first act whether the relative stiffness of Ross Ramgobin’s Onegin was deliberate or a matter of nerves. By the end of the opera, I was reasonably certain that it had been the former, for he charted an excellent dramatic course, clearly transformed by the fatal duel with Lensky. (Not for the first time, I could not help but wish that more had been made by the director of the men’s ‘romantic friendship’, a subtext so glaring that it verges upon a supertext; however, Ramster’s production was unlikely to be the place where that would happen, and so it proved.) Vocal confidence grew as the performance continued: a highly creditable performance in a difficult role. Stephen Aviss’s Lensky suffered a little by comparison. I had the impression that it was a directorial decision to stress the airs of a poet, to render them slightly ridiculous, rather than the character’s brooding Romanticism, but there might nevertheless have been greater inwardness in performance too. Stuart Jackson verily stole the show, or rather the second act, as a bumptious M Triquet. Even Zaretsky made his mark, in the excellent hands of Samuel Pantcheff, making one wish the part were more extended. Prince Gremin is a gift of a role to an established bass, but whilst sung well by Nicholas Crawley, presents a greater challenge to a younger voice, a challenge whose deepest notes were not fully surmounted. Choral singing was excellent throughout; heft, clarity, and linguistic skill were equally impressive, no mean feat in this opera.

La vera costanza, Royal Academy of Music, 19 November 2012

Helen Bailey (Rosina)
Images: Hana Zushi, Royal Academy of Music

 

 Sir Jack Lyons Theatre

 

La Baronessa Irene – Rosalind Coad

Il Marchese Ernesto – Thomas Elwin
Lisetta – Sónia Grané
Villotto – Nicholas Crawley
Rosina – Helen Bailey
Masino _ Samuel Pantcheff
Il Conte Errico – Stuart Jackson
Rosina’s son – Jude Chandler

Jamie Hayes (director)

Tim Reed (designs)
Jake Wiltshire (lighting)

Royal Academy Sinfonia

Trevor Pinnock (conductor)
 

Nicholas Crawley (Villotto), Il Conte Erico (Stuart Jackson)

Il Marchese Ernesto (Thomas Elwin),
La Baronessa Irene (Rosalind Coad), and
Lisetta (Sónia Grané)

I often fear that I am the only enthusiast for Haydn’s operas. Quite apart from the questions that raises concerning one’s sanity, it is heartening to be reminded that I am not quite in a minority of one. According to Jane Glover’s programme welcome note, Trevor Pinnock, having conducted La fedeltà premiata – how I wish I had caught that – in 2009, suggested following that up with La vera costanza, a proposal Royal Academy Opera ‘embraced ... with great enthusiasm’. And so it should have done. This, like many of Haydn’s works, only more so, is an opera whose neglect does shame to all concerned, superior in almost every way to a good number of pieces that inexplicably hold the stage. No, it is not written by we-all-know-who, but apart from that lack of profound characterisation in which some of the Salzburg composer’s greatest genius lies, Haydn is not entirely embarrassed by the comparison here, which is more than can be said of many. La vera costanza is at least to be ranked alongside La finta giardiniera and in some respects – not least the surprisingly sophisticated ensemble writing – even looks towards the likes of Figaro. The likes of the Baroness Irene, Rosina – an unfortunate name in retrospect, I admit – and Count Errico will not linger in our imaginations; there is no one remotely akin to Susanna, let alone the Countess, here, but the advanced level of musical thought is undeniable. Take for instance the canonical writing in the second act finale, or the opening storm music. The latter cannot boast the almost psychoanalytical quality to the opening of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride, but it would make an excellent, thrilling, concert overture, and thrilled even more here in the theatre, in so fine a performance.

 

Samuel Pantcheff (Masino) and Lisetta

Part of the problem with Haydn’s operas seems to be an extension of the general problem Haydn’s music faces: beloved of all true musicians, it rarely seems to appeal to non-musicians. Wagner adored Haydn’s music, and increasingly so, often comparing his symphonic writing favourably to Mozart’s. (A parallel or opposing error one often comes up against is gross underestimation of Mozart as a symphonist, on account of his writing being so very different from that of Haydn and Beethoven, but that is a cause for another day.) I can only assume that it is a lack of formal understanding that means many listeners simply do not follow as attentively as they must what Haydn is doing and how he rings his changes. The strange inability truly to characterise in musical terms remains a considerably shortcoming, of course, and a shortcoming that cannot be ascribed simply to formal convention, yet the music is so glorious – that of the opening scene alone – that one can forgive a lot. Indeed, in order fairly to dismiss Haydn as an opera composer it would have to be on that basis alone and one would most likely therefore have to confine oneself exclusively to Monteverdi, Purcell, Mozart, Wagner, Strauss, Berg, and Janáček. I for one have never encountered someone who fell into that category.

 

Trevor Pinnock led a gripping account of the score by the Royal Academy Sinfonia. I wondered during the opening storm whether he might be tempted to drive a little harder, a little too hard, but was delighted to have my fears assuaged. This was a performance full of life, which yielded where necessary, and which never once failed to delineate Haydn’s musico-dramatic structures, whether at a micro- or a macro-level. Only occasionally did I feel the lack of a greater body of strings (6.6.4.4.2). Those few moments of relative thinness aside, I have nothing but praise for a stylish, warm, alert performance from all concerned. Chad Kelley’s harpsichord continuo was also a model of its kind, mercifully free of the ludicrous exhibitionism in favour in certain quarters.

 

Jude Chandler (Rosina's son)

Moreover, every member of this young cast contributed to the overall success, every one of them contributing something positive. (If only one could say that of most performances on starrier stages, the contrast with a recent Götterdämmerung being especially glaring, from the out-of-his-depth conductor down...) Italian pronunciation and diction were excellent throughout; ability to shape a phrase was equally apparent. All performances exuded dramatic and musical honesty and understanding. If I was especially taken with Helen Bailey’s portrayal of the sentimental – in the eighteenth-century sense – heroine Rosina, abandoned by the Count as a consequence of the Baroness’s machinations, that was perhaps a matter of the role as much as anything else, though Crawley has a distinctive voice which, allied with stage presence, ought to mark her out in the future. Rosalind Coad and Sónia Grané both entered into their roles with spirit and style. Thomas Elwin and Nicholas Crawley fashioned finely-honed marriages of words, music, and gesture, very much with eyes – and ears – for what Haydn’s prodigal inventiveness requested. Samuel Pantcheff’s Masino showed keen awareness for the social differentiation of characters in Haydn’s dramma giocoso, whilst Stuart Jackson’s portrayal of the Count, after a slightly bluff start, blossomed into something rather affecting, partly on account of his command of the text. Even Jude Chandler delivered his spoken line as Rosina's son in convincing Italian.

 

The production by Jamie Hayes was richly rewarding too. It had no especial ‘point’ to make, but keen direction of the singers, within a somewhat stylised – no pandering to false naïveté – evocation of eighteenth-century manners proved a perfect setting for Haydn’s music to work its wonders. This was without a shadow of a doubt the best live performance I have yet heard of a Haydn opera – and that includes Armida at the Salzburg Festival.


Performances will continue on 22, 23, and 26 November, a second cast alternating with this one.