The Midsummer Marriage, LPO/Gardner, 25 September 2021

Royal Festival Hall

Images: Mark Allan

Mark – Robert Murray
Jenifer – Rachel Nicholls
King Fisher – Ashley Riches
Bella – Jennifer France
Jack – Toby Spence
Sosostris – Claire Barnett-Jones
She-Ancient – Susan Bickley
He-Ancient – Joshua Bloom
Dancing Man – John Findon
Half-Tipsy Man – Trevor Bowes
A Man – Robert Winslade-Anderson
A Girl – Sophie Goldrick

London Philharmonic Choir (artistic director: Neville Creed)

ENO Chorus (chorus director: Mark Biggins)

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Edward Gardner (conductor)

It would have been a work with which to make one’s mark for the opening of any Principal Conductorship. Following the LPO’s Festival Hall silence for the past year-and-a-half, it became, as Edward Gardner acknowledged in a brief spoken welcome, all the more so. Ambition imperfectly realised is in many ways more impressive than passing a lesser challenge—of the estimable qualities one associates with Michael Tippett, perfection is rarely one—but such was not a concern here. Edward Gardner’s gamble in presenting a concert performance of The Midsummer Marriage paid off handsomely, and was gratefully received by a London audience largely starved of sustained Tippett advocacy since the death of Colin Davis.

 

The orchestral opening was vivid, precise, variegated, as if the orchestra had never been away, likewise when the joint choral forces of the London Philharmonic Choir and ENO Chorus joined. Diction from chorus and soloists alike was excellent, which really helps in an opera whose word-setting does not always privilege verbal understanding. This first act, ‘Morning’, the dawn on Midsummer Day, felt as though it were just that; figuratively, a musical body, it seemed, greater than the sum of its parts, had awoken and was stretching, limbering up. ‘Music? What’s that?’ That and many questions and allusions had acquired new connotations during our recent travails. Tippett’s allusions to Elizabethan music appeared to speak not only of that past but of a nearer past, a ‘new Elizabethan era’ in English music his opera had helped inaugurate, and in which the hall around us, once again open, played so crucial a role (if ever so slightly predating it). Gardner’s—and Tippett’s—presentation of the score in time delineated the work’s dramatic as well as musical form, characters stepping forward as if themes in a giant sonata exposition. In a sense, that is precisely what they are. Against or rather in tandem with that, there was a strong impression, led by Gardner and the orchestra yet certainly including the cast, of revealing a protean imagination, twists and turns never awkward but rather distinctive. They were communicated with conviction, meaning, and what appeared—which cannot always have been the case—of ready familiarity.

 

Of many highlights, the majestic and, yes, laughing conclusion to the first act, the effervescence of the primal, sometimes dark, yet often touchingly naïve Ritual Dances and their madrigalian choral writing, and a final daybreak as moving as it was atmospheric stand out in my memory. If Tippett would doubtless have pointed to Jung, one did not buy in to that psychology to experience wonder of another sort. Likewise, if King Fisher’s consultation—if that be what it is—with Madame Soristris does not speak to us all in precisely the way intended, there was plenty of alternative in so evocative an exchange as we heard between a dark and dangerous Ashley Riches and a rich-hued Claire Barnett-Jones. For the working through of events or analysis continued to captivate musically throughout the third act, which brought a radiant reunion between Rachel Nicholls’s Jenifer and Robert Murray’s Mark. The versatility of Nicholls’s voice in particular struck me, phrasing always excellent, different colourings and moods always on dramatic point, and the extraordinary coloratura with which Tippett blesses or saddles her despatched without fear. Jennifer France and Toby Spence made for an outstanding ‘second’ couple, in reality no more secondary than their Mozartian model, at least if one imagines a greater role for Papagena than she actually receives. All impressed, but I shall give final mention to the dignity of Susan Bickley’s mysterious yet ineffably human She-Ancient.

From dim recollection of the only other performance I have heard, the 2005 Royal Opera revival under Richard Hickox, I should say this was more incisive, colourful, and generally impressive, though it may simply have been that I was more receptive this time around. My preference for Tippett’s King Priam has not been dislodged, but I think I have come to appreciate the great merits of this ambitious and engaging work as well as its more peculiar singularities. Above all, I felt that something might truly be at stake, and that part of that something was the gift of music.

Katya Kabanova, Royal Opera, 9 February 2019

Royal Opera House

  

Tichon (Andrew Staples) and Katya (Amanda Majewski)
Images: Clive Barda/ROH

Katěrina Kabanova – Amanda Majeski

Marfa Ignatěvna Kabanicha – Susan Bickley

Varvara – Emily Edmonds

Boris Grigorjevič – Pavel Černoch

Váňa Kudrjáš – Andrew Tortise

Tichon Ivanyč Kabanov – Andrew Staples

Savël Prokofjevič Dikoj – Clive Bayley

Kuligin – Dominic Sedgwick

Glaša – Sarah Pring

Fekluša – Dervla Ramsay

Woman – Amy Catt

Passer-by – Luke Price

Richard Jones (director)

Antony McDonald (designs)

Lucy Carter (lighting)

Sarah Fahie (movement)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: William Spaulding)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Edward Gardner (conductor)

Janáček is surely the perfect, or at least a perfect, composer with whom to introduce someone to opera. Starting with From the House of the Dead or The Adventures of Mr Brouček might be a little odd, if hardly disastrous. However, Jenůfa, The Makropulos Case, The Cunning Little Vixen, and Katya Kabanova all boast compelling, readily comprehensible stories, strong characters (especially female ones), and textbook demonstrations of what might be accomplished by musical drama, even in something that might superficially seem close to a sung play (in itself no bad thing for a beginner). Last but not least, they are not a second too long, showing unerring mastery concerning what need be depicted, even lingered over, and what may be assumed or suggested, without the slightest chance of having anyone wonder ‘when will this be over?’ Loving them, one might wish that they were longer, but one also knows that they should not be. For devotees of late-nineteenth-century literature, Jenůfa and Katya would seem the most obvious choices. (Not that Wozzeck would do any harm: it gripped this sometime schoolboy for life…!) Setting, narrative, and character stand in well-nigh perfect relation to one another: familiar, yet fresh.

Kabanicha (Susan Bickley) and Katya

Why, then, have London houses seemed so reluctant recently to stage these operas? Xenophobic audiences, bizarrely lacking in curiosity? Most likely, alas; we live, after all, in the age of ‘Brexit’. Whatever the reason, we have all the more reason to cheer the Royal Opera’s commitment, following years of silence, to staging a number of Janácek’s works. Last year’s From the House of the Dead, in a striking, duly provocative staging by Krzysztof Warlikowski, was unquestionably a highlight of the London musical year. (If, later in the year, Munich’s offering from Frank Castorf went further, all the better for us. How fortunate we were to have both.) Richard Jones’s new Katya is not at that level: a ‘safer’ choice, no doubt; nor is it so well conducted. Nevertheless, a cast as strong dramatically as vocally brought out the best in work and production alike.

Varvara (Emily Edmonds)

Without really getting in the way, Jones’s staging is mildly puzzling: a mix of good ideas, oddly undeveloped ideas, and all-purpose Richard Jones, almost as if it were an early sketch rather than a finished production. We begin and end with a portrait of a girl, Katya presumably, and there is something intriguingly doll-like to her appearance onstage, even to some of her gestures. Three men from the community – beyond that, it is barely a community – leer through the windows at her. It is sketchy, though: neither subtle nor thought through. The 1970s Eastern bloc setting is fine, if hardly original, but not much is done with it. Nor is it clear why abstraction is occasionally the order of the day: budget limitations seem more plausible as an explanation than dramatic motivation. Auditorium strobe lighting for the storm that opens the third act is an odd touch: neither in keeping with what has preceded and what will follow it, nor productively in contrast. A degree of stylisation on stage works much better, cinematic ‘still’ moments suggestive of contrasting chaos and a moment of fateful decision. That particular aspect of the setting, too, is excellent – a wonderfully ‘real’ bus shelter, which again has much to offer in metaphorical suggestion. More along such Brechtian lines might work well; all too soon, however, it is gone.

Boris (Pavel Černoch) and Katya

Sadly, Katya’s talk – song – of sin is left to fend for itself. It still moves, of course, but would have done so far more in a production that deigned to notice it. For, despite the ‘updating’ – the slightly retro term seems apt here – socio-cultural context is barely present, at least as anything more than backdrop. It is perfectly possible, I am sure, to present a Katya Kabanova with something to replace the theology, just as it would be with Don Giovanni. Whether it is a good idea remains an open question, for here, as so often with Mozart’s deeply Catholic opera, the issue is simply ignored – or, worse, is not even noticed. Likewise, Kabanicha’s terrible words of thanks at the close could hardly fail to register; they could – should – nonetheless readily register far more strongly, set in social and theological context; or, alternatively, in its provocatively avowed absence. As Schoenberg once noted, it is only the middle road that fails to lead to Rome.

That such crucial moments did register was the cast’s achievement (as well as Janáček’s!) Amanda Majeski’s Katya was a towering performance: fearful, compassionate, human, with as impressive and moving an emotional as a dynamic range. Pavel Černoch fully lived up to the expectations I had from his Munich Makropulos Case (as Albert Gregor), his romantic ardour as genuine as his courage was but flickering, a properly compromised portrayal. Andrew Staples drew out the still more compromised, indeed downright cowardly nature of his not-even-rival, Tichon. Susan Bickley rescued her Kabanicha from mere caricature, hinting at a constraining force of social propriety that might – just might – explain or at least contextualise a little of her monstrous, constructively murderous behaviour. Clive Bayley’s Dikoj offered a quality cameo as Dikoj. If only the sado-masochism in his relationship with Bickley’s Kabanicha hinted at here had been taken further by Jones, there might have been illumination such as that gleaned from Christoph Marthaler’s production for Paris. Emily Edmonds and Andrew Tortise gave lively performances as Varvara and Váňa respectively, the latter’s second-act song winning in its diegetic naïveté.

Edward Gardner’s conducting had its moments. They tended, though, to be moments – at least until the third act, undeniably possessed of great narrative thrust. The intricate, complex relationship between continuity and discontinuity in Janáček’s score is not at all easy to bring off. Mark Wigglesworth did so magnificently at ENO nine years ago. Here, whatever its warmth, there was something soft-focused to too much of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House’s playing. Rhythmic bite was not quite what it might have been, nor were underlying harmonic motion and tension. If the achievement of that final act could have been read back into the first two, something more taut and stark in its tragedy could well have resulted. In a way, then, it complemented Jones’s staging. Vocally, however, this was the real thing.

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. 

Between Worlds, English National Opera, 11 April 2015 (world premiere)

Barbican Theatre

Shaman – Andrew Watts

Janitor – Eric Greene
Younger Woman – Rhian Lois
Realtor – Clare Presland
Younger Man – William Morgan
Older Man – Phillip Rhodes
Mother – Susan Bickley
Lover – Sarah Champion
Babysitter – Claire Egan
Wife – Susan Young
Security Guard – Ronald Samm
Firefighter 1 – Philip Sheffield
Firefighter 2 – Rodney Earl Clarke
Sister – Niamh Kelly
Child – Edward Green

Deborah Warner (director)

Michael Levine (set designs)
Brigitte Reiffenstuel (costumes)
Jean Kalman (lighting)
Tal Yarden (video)
Kim Brandstrup (choreography)

Orchestra of the English National Opera

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Stephen Higgins)
Gerry Cornelius (conductor)

An opera dealing with – or at least claiming to deal with – the events of 11 September 2001? I suppose it had to come, but that does not necessarily make it any more necessary. This co-commission from ENO and the Barbican seems, alas, founded upon a bad idea. One can make an opera out of almost anything, of course, but that does not mean that some subject matter is no more or no less suitable than any other. The problem with the highly fashionable – at least in some quarters – tendency to base operas upon recent(-ish) news stories is that, all too easily, their ‘documentary’ as opposed to artistic quality becomes the issue at stake. In the case of the bombing of the Twin Towers, there is also the question of attempting to put oneself beyond criticism, or at least of appearing to do so, by dealing with such portentous subject matter. Or, in the opposite case, of creating a controversy, when someone objects to the choice of subject matter.

But the problem lies more with the specific choices of Nick Drake’s libretto: which, frankly, is dire. What are we told? That some people, with differing personalities and differing personal and financial circumstances, went to work one day, not knowing what was to happen, and never came back. Not much more than that, really. As a friend said to me after the event, there is a reason why disaster films tend not to deal with actual disasters, but will have at least someone surviving. What is an undeniable tragedy in ‘real life’ does not necessarily transfer so well to tragedy on stage. Moreover, the banality of the words – which will doubtless be justified as ‘realistic’ – irritates and, worse than that, bores. There is a limit to how many times anyone wants to hear ‘What the fuck?’ repeated on stage. Snatches of ‘real-life’, if fictional, conversation, are heard from the chorus as well as the ‘characters’, presumably a nod to the celebrated telephone messages left by victims. What on earth the ‘Shaman’ character is doing is anyone’s guess. I assume he in some sense signifies Fate; to start with, I wondered whether we might have a guest appearance from Stockhausen; alas not. Anyway, he spouts gibberish, which at least offers verbal and indeed musical variety, which to some extent is taken up by other members of the cast, especially the Janitor. Then he disappears. That sits very oddly with the work’s ‘realism’, and not productively so. Might it not have been more interesting to deal with the creators of what Stockhausen so memorably called Lucifer’s greatest work of art? Or, better still, to create a more finely balanced, fictional story?

Tansy Davies’s score is better than that. I suppose one would describe it as ‘eclectic’. There is nothing wrong with that; indeed, as Hans Werner Henze put it, writing about The Bassarids, ‘with Goethe under my pillow, I’m not going to lose any sleep about the possibility of being accused of eclecticism. Goethe’s definition ran: “An eclectic … is anyone who, from that which surrounds him, takes what corresponds to his nature.” If you wanted to do so, you could count Bach, Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, Mahler, and Stravinsky as eclectics.’ What I missed, though, was any real sense of musical characterisation, or indeed of sympathy for voices. The score is atmospheric, and has a nice enough line in impending doom, ‘darkening’ in almost traditional ‘operatic’ style, but it tends more towards background, like a good film score, rather than participating in and creating the drama. That, at any rate, was my impression from a first hearing. Rightly or wrongly, music seemed subordinated not so much to ‘drama’, as to subject matter.

Deborah Warner’s production plays things pretty straight. What to do with the actual moments of impact? Stylisation is not a bad solution, so we see pieces of paper fall from the ceiling. Having a Mother sit at the front of the stage, looking ‘soulfully’ into the distance, at the close, risks bathos; but perhaps that is in the libretto. It does no particular harm. Insofar as I could discern, the ENO Orchestra and Chorus were very well prepared, incisively conducted by Gerry Cornelius. The cast is called upon more obviously to act than to display great vocal prowess, but its members all did what was asked of them. Andrew Watts’s counter-tenor Shaman stood out, but then, as mentioned, the role puzzling fizzled out. Susan Bickley’s talents seemed wasted, but as usual, impressed.

So then, I was happy to have gone, but cannot imagine rushing back. Apologists for new (alleged) conceptions of opera would ask where the problem was with that. Must everything, or indeed anything today, be a masterpiece? Well, clearly not everything will be, but I am not sure that I am willing to ditch the work concept or even the ‘masterpiece concept’ so emphatically, quite yet. Besides, this is clearly intended as a ‘work’, not as a ‘happening’, or some such alternative. ENO deserves credit for supporting and performing the work. Perhaps next time around, it will be luckier with respect to the outcome; this was, after all, the company that commissioned The Mask of Orpheus.

L'Orfeo, Royal Opera, 13 January 2015

Roundhouse

Orfeo – Gyula Orendt

Euridice – Mary Bevan

Silvia (Messenger) – Susan Bickley

First Pastor – Anthony Gregory

Second Pastor (Apollo) – Alexander Sprague

Third Pastor – Christopher Lowrey

Charon – James Platt

Pluto – Callum Thorpe

Proserpina – Rachel Kelly

Nymph – Susanna Hurrell

Michael Boyd (director)

Tom Piper (designs)

Jean Kalman (lighting)

Sound Intermedia (sound design)

Liz Ranken (movement)

Lina Johansson (circus director)

 

Vocal Ensemble from Guildhall School of Music and Drama

Dancers from East London Dance

Orchestra of Early Opera Company

Christopher Moulds (conductor)

 

I am all in favour of our London opera companies moving outside of their West End homes – perhaps preferably a little further afield than Camden, but even that change of scenery can act as a liberating agent. For that, the Royal Opera is fully deserving of praise, and it certainly feels ‘different’ taking the Tube to Chalk Farm and arriving at the Round House, venue for a good number of Pierre Boulez’s BBC Symphony Orchestra concerts, given when he similarly wished to break free of some of the stultifying conventions of bourgeois concert life and to seek new, more receptive audiences. It is a lovely touch to have children from local schools compose and perform fanfares – audibly related to Monteverdi’s celebrated opening Toccata – in the bar beforehand. As with Boulez’s innovation, one cannot but praise the broadening of repertoire too, Monteverdi, one of the very greatest of all opera composers, being conspicuous only by his absence from Covent Garden’s endeavours.

 

However, in this case, it is not entirely clear what remains of the Royal Opera, beyond its name as an umbrella organisation and presumably some degree of financial support. To bring in a ‘period’ orchestra at the same time as relocating gave the impression of Monteverdi being compartmentalised, surrendered to those whom Boulez so aptly summed up as ‘specialists in nullity’; moreover, what does it say about the worth the company attributes to its own, very fine orchestra, perfectly capable of performing repertoire from Monteverdi to Birtwistle? The world is full of ‘period’ performances of ‘early music’; is it really too much to ask that someone, somewhere might actually show the courage to stand up to ‘authenticke’ fatwas and use rich, modern forces? Or perhaps, even, to use one of the several ‘reimagined’ versions of Monteverdi’s score for our own or other times? Berio’s would perhaps have been the most obvious in this case, but there are many others; indeed, the task would have made a wonderful commission for an imaginative young (or old) composer.

 

The situation seems odder still in the light of a staging that is certainly not attempting some form of historical recreation. Nothing wrong with that, at all, of course; indeed, the idea is as silly onstage as in the pit – or here, onstage again, given that there was no pit. The post-modernism, in the worst sense, of mainstream ‘authenticity’, however is shown up for what it was, given the incoherence of approach. As Boulez once again put it with respect to the kindred movement of twentieth-century neo-Classicism, ‘People gather up all manner of bits and pieces and say, “O.K., I’ll put a Corinthian column on a metal base and it will look post-modern.” Obviously, this is all quite superficial.’

 

Alas, a greater problem with Michael Boyd’s staging lies in its incoherence even on its own terms. Rarely have I been so unclear as to what an opera staging was seeking to achieve. A host of theatrical clichés listlessly compete to amount to considerably less than the sum of their parts. We have a play within a play, vaguely nodding both to the work’s courtly origins (a royal couple, later revealed to be Pluto and Proserpina, seated above, under a crest) and some sort of modern-ish fascism-lite (hints of a prison, which soon vanish, security forces (?) all in black, and so on). The ‘look’ comes across as a mixture of student production and 1990s RSC, whilst the addition – I hesitate to say ‘incorporation’ – of dancers, a laudable community initiative in itself, is less than fully integrated, giving the impression of a school talent show. The choreography itself is embarrassing enough to make one think of David McVicar’s West End-musical assault on The Trojans. Piling more art forms upon each other – a ‘circus director’ is credited, though I am not quite sure for what – seems a grave misunderstanding of the Gesamtkunstwerk, itself a concept unduly emphasised by those who have most likely never read Wagner in the first place. Above all, given the overall incoherence, there is little sense of who these people actually are, let alone, most crucially, of how they relate to one another. Had I not known the opera, I suspect I should have found myself utterly at a loss, instead of only partly so.

 

Related to that is the most baffling aspect of all: what seems to be a Christianising concept, signalled not only by the transformation of shepherds into robed priests with crucifixes (‘pastors’, a play on words or at least upon origins only likely to register, let alone to be appreciated, for those with a cast list and who have checked it) and the English translation furnished by Don Paterson. Orfeo – why not ‘Orpheus’, if we are in English? – is presented in Christ-like imagery to start with, prefiguring his death; but it is far from clear that death is in itself a Christian concept, and little is done to explain why or even how we should plausibly consider the action in this sense. The final act in particular now takes upon itself an oddly Christian, or perhaps better, anti-Christian tinge, with words such as 'grace' in context accorded unsettlingly prominent emphasis. Quite apart from the question of why the work is being performed in translation – there are surtitles, which should surely be enough – the appearance of concepts such as ‘grace’ sit as awkwardly as the Christian elements in Britten’s Rape of Lucretia. Orfeo is not Parsifal, nor did it become so on this occasion. Given the choice, I should unhesitatingly stick with Alessandro Striggio – not, I hasten to add, on account of a nasty bout of Werktreue, but because transformations, should they be attempted, need to be considerably more coherent than these. I am not sure what the cuts are supposed to achieve, either; Orfeo is certainly not a lengthy work.

 

There was, however, much to admire in the singing; indeed, it was as a showcase for (mostly) younger voices that this performance really found its raison d’être. The undoubted star of the show – something would have gone wrong, had this been otherwise! – was Gyula Orendt, as Orfeo. A member of the Berlin State Opera, the Hungarian-Romanian baritone offered as powerfully-acted a performance on stage as I have seen for a long time. His facial expressions: tearful, hopeful, joyous, and, towards the close, benumbed, drew one in to his character as happens all too rarely on the operatic stage. (That may, of course, be partly a matter of the relative intimacy of the venue, at least for those of us fortunate enough to have been in the Stalls.) Although his vocal performance was not entirely flawless – he was not the only cast member to experience occasional difficulty with the hemiolas – to say more would be to nit-pick in the face of so committedly dramatic a performance. Mary Bevan offered a lovely Euridice, words and music as one – insofar as they could be in translation. Susan Bickley made the most of the Messenger’s pivotal appearances: one saw as well as heard the import of her news. Callum Thorpe and Rachel Kelly were equally impressive as the ‘royal’ (?) couple, Pluto and Proserpina. My only regret was that they did not have more to sing, but their acting was to be enjoyed more or less throughout. All members of the cast, though, impressed. Their ensemble, together with the splendid postgraduate singers from the Guildhall, offered a true instance of what opera should be: more, rather than less, than the sum of its part. (Mostly) subtle amplification dealt pretty well with the problematical acoustics, although certain oddities were unavoidable in a non-static staging.

 

Christopher Moulds might, however, have presented a more bracing account. Rhythms too often were on the soggy side; Ivor Bolton, in Munich last summer, had offered much more in the way of dance and, indeed, more general dramatic contrast. (He also had the benefit of an excellent production, one which it would be well worth the Royal Opera, ENO, or someone else considering bringing to London.) The continuo group proved far more impressive than the rest of the orchestra, its brass and, less but still too frequently, its strings sometimes excruciatingly out of tune. I can scarcely imagine the reaction, were such flawed playing to be served up by the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House; quite why audiences and critics are willing to put up with this in the name of ‘period performance’ remains an utter mystery to me. But then, so does the ideology as a whole; whatever it might be, it is certainly not ‘historically informed’.

 

Julian Anderson: Thebans (world premiere), English National Opera, 3 May 2014

Coliseum

Oedipus – Roland Wood

Creon – Peter Hoare

Tiresias – Matthew Best

Jocasta – Susan Bickley

Stranger from Corinth, Haemon – Anthony Gregory

Shepherd – Paul Sheehan

Messenger, Theseus – Christopher Ainslie

Antigone – Julia Sporsén

Polynices – Jonathan McGovern

Eteocles – Matt Casey

Pierre Audi (director)

Tom Pye (set designs)

Christof Hetzer (costumes)

Jean Kalman (lighting)

Lysander Ashton (video designs)

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Dominic Peckham)

Orchestra of the English National Opera

Edward Gardner (conductor)

There can be no doubting the ambition to this, Julian Anderson’s first opera, with a libretto ‘by Frank McGuinness after Sophocles’. Its three acts adapt not just one play from Sophocles’s Theban trilogy, but all three. Starting in the past – as the opening curtain informs us – the first act entitled ‘The Fall of Oedipus’, we move to the future, ‘Antigone’, before concluding with the present, ‘The Death of Oedipus’. Initially, I found myself sceptical about the reordering, wondering what lay behind it other than a desire to be different; however, when the third act came, I felt the sense – prior to reading these words from Anderson, in an eloquent programme note – that the act was ‘all about endings … the mysterious, timeless atmosphere of this sacred wood’ at Colonus lending ‘a special and quite different mood … which would be impossible to place anywhere but at the end’. There did indeed seem to be a finality arising from subject matter and treatment, perhaps even from Sophocles having written it last.

McGuinness’s libretto is in many respects highly skilful; it packs a great deal in, without necessarily seeming to do so, not least in sometimes lengthy passages of narrative. There is what we might consider to be real poetry in it, though sometimes there are clichéd phrases – ‘done and dusted’, for instance – which seem in context slightly to jar rather than carrying knowing weight. Perhaps, though, I simply misunderstood, and the task of writing words intended to be sung, whilst at the same time not knowing what the music will be, is not an easy one.  I was not entirely convinced by the suddenness of the ending, whether in terms of words or music. Antigone was seemingly cut off in mid flow, shortly after the strangely anti-climactic death of her father: that anti-climax more a product, I think, of the music’s tailing off than the libretto. It was, however, clearly intended as such, Anderson claiming that there ‘are no clear answers’ in Sophocles, McGuinness, or his own contribution. Perhaps, again, more would become apparent upon a second hearing. At any rate, the Lear-like quality to this scene came across with considerable power, not only in terms of Antigone’s faithful love, but also the haunting by death. I can imagine it being objected that this is as much drama 'about' drama as the thing itself, but in practice, the telescoping, the selection of particular points in time, and the enabling of those points to encompass more of the action, works well. In any case, the Theban plays are so much part of our collective consciousness, that we do not always have to start from the very beginning.

 

Anderson’s own contribution proved, for me at least, more variable. His writing is, it hardly need be said, highly accomplished, the composer’s virtuosic command of the orchestra never in doubt. The first act in particular meanders. Perhaps one might claim that to be the point; but whilst timings in the programme put it at the length of the second and third acts combined, it seemed, if anything, longer still. Although those latter acts are tauter, even there I found it difficult to discern an individual voice. It is certainly not a ‘difficult’ work; a great deal of the musical language is tonal in quality, not necessarily a problem, but is it perhaps a problem that much of it sounds as if it might have been written by a Stravinsky imitator not so very much less than a century ago? At any rate, the contrast, however unfair, with the blazing originality of Œdipus Rex, is not a little glaring. Maybe composers feel that the time for problematisation of opera is over; if so, on this evidence, it is not entirely clear that they are right to do so.

 

That said, there are interesting touches and, indeed, rather more than that. Microtonal sliding, for instance, disrupts or at least questions the otherwise stultifying metrical regularity – clearly a deliberate choice – in Creon’s Act II police state, as well as responding to the narrative we hear introduced from outside. Tiresias’s otherworldly strangeness registers not only in his gender-bending scenic portrayal, but also in the alterity of his tuning. Indeed, in some respects, his prophetic truth and its musical portrayal seem to haunt the third act all the more, when he is not even present on stage; I have no reason to think that such a comparison were intended, but I was put in mind of the overpowering presence of Wotan in Götterdämmerung. At any rate, Anderson’s portrayal of ‘everything – including Oedipus himself – gradually becoming part of nature and leaving civilisation altogether’ is impressively achieved. I had the sense that if the findings of the second and third acts had been read back into a revised version of the first, a tauter, more integrated, structure might well have emerged.

 

Edward Gardner seemed, insofar as it is possible to tell with a work one does not know, to conduct a splendidly authoritative performance, rhythms razor-sharp, layerings of colour ever-discernible. The ENO Orchestra deserves the strongest of plaudits in that respect too. Similarly the chorus, which plays an important role throughout, whether seen, as in the first two acts, or unseen, as in the third, its ambiguous offstage identity – does, for instance, Oedipus imagine the gods, or are they all-too-divine? – a clear dramatic advantage. Dominic Peckham’s choral training clearly paid off as well as Pierre Audi’s onstage blocking; there was a true sense of identity and credibility, both corporate and, especially in the first act, individual.

 

Audi’s staging does its job very well. There is a proper sense of place to each of the three acts, even if the jackbooted totalitarianism of Creon’s state arguably errs on the side of predictability. (Perhaps, though, that is the fault of the work as much as the staging.) Lighting from Jean Kalman sets off the relatively simple yet powerful work of the design team (Tom Pye’s sets and Christof Hetzer’s costumes) to excellent effect. Composer and librettist could hardly have asked for more for a premiere.

 

The cast acquitted itself with honour too. Despite having fallen victim to a throat infection, Roland Wood offered a tirelessly committed performance as Oedipus, his acquisition of wisdom genuinely affecting. Peter Hoare’s Creon was properly nasty, an excellent foil for the humanity of Julia Sporsén’s Antigone. (Here I could not help but think of Wagner’s analysis of the myth in Oper und Drama, Creon’s state falling victim to the anarchistic love-curse of this progenitor of Brünnhilde.) Susan Bickley’s Jocasta was as well sung and acted as expected, leaving one wishing that she had more to do. Christopher Ainslie, having previously appeared as the Messenger, truly came into his own as the third act Theseus, the purity of his counter-tenor voice as startling in its liminality as his bronzed appearance, the latter a clever stroke indeed from the production team. Matthew Best startled in quite very different way as a deep-voiced transsexual Tiresias: insistent, impatient, and defiantly ‘different’.

 

ENO, then, should be congratulated upon its efforts. With the best will in the world, it would be difficult to speak of this opera in the same breath as works by Benjamin or Birtwistle. By the same token, when one recalls in horror the latest offerings from Judith Weir and Mark-Anthony Turnage – whatever happened to the composer of the visceral Greek? – the contrast is equally apparent. A new work requires excellence in staging and performance; that it certainly received.  
 

Julietta, English National Opera, 17 September 2012

(sung in English)

Coliseum

Julietta – Julia Sporsén
Michel – Peter Hoare
Clerk in the Bureau of Dreams – Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts
Man in a Helmet/Seller of Memories/Convict – Andrew Shore
Man at Window/Waiter/Beggar – Henry Waddington
Little Arab/First Gentleman/Bell Boy – Emilie Renard
Old Arab/Grandfather/Old Sailor – Gwynne Howell
Birdseller/Fortune Teller/Old Woman – Susan Bickley
Fishmonger/ Grandmother – Valerie Reid
Young Sailor – Anthony Gregory
Second Gentleman – Clare Presland
Third Gentleman – Samantha Price

Richard Jones (director)

Antony McDonald (designs)
Ricardo Pardo (associate set designs)
Matthew Richardson (lighting)
Philippe Giraudeau (choreography)

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Martin Fitzpatrick)

Orchestra of the English National Opera
Edward Gardner (conductor)
 

Images: Richard Hubert Smith
The Chorus

Julietta (or Snář, ‘The Dream-Book’) was based by Bohuslav Martinů on Georges Neveux’s play Juliette, ou La clé des songes. An initial French setting was discarded in favour of Czech, though this being ENO, the opera was of course performed in English, David Pountney providing a translation, which on several occasions quite mystifyingly confused singular and plural pronouns. (Julietta has been performed before at the Coliseum, the first English production having been given by the New Opera Company in association with ENO, conducted by Charles Mackerras.)  Michel, a Parisian bookseller, is searching for Julietta, her voice having attracted him since his previous visit three years before to the coastal town in which the action takes place. It quickly becomes clear to him and us that none of the townsfolk has a memory extending beyond a few minutes; Michel’s ability to remember sets him above them. A contrast is constructed between Julietta’s world of fantasy – she wants to hear of a past that never happened, in which she and Michel were lovers – and Michel’s world of reality. Having shot her upon her flight from a forest meeting, Michel is advised at the ‘Central Office of Dreams’ (!) that he has been dreaming and resolves to escape. However, hearing Julietta’s voice, he follows what seems to have been the route of other dreamers he has met at the office and return to her.  The opening setting returns, in contrast to the end of Neveux’s play – and the original French version – in which Michel remained uncertain as to whether to return to the world of dreams.

 

Michel (Peter Hoare)

 

That, I am afraid, makes the opera sound considerably more interesting than it is. Surrealism dates, of course, and tends to lend itself best to something snappier: a song, perhaps, or even a song-cycle, something more filmic, or a visual artwork (if ‘snappy’ may be stretched that far). This three-act opera dragged, the composer’s attempts at soaring lyricism remaining stubbornly earthbound. That is doubtless partly a matter of the subject matter: it is difficult to care about such ‘characters’ and their wearying silliness. However, whatever Martinů’s devotees may protest, I think it is also a matter of  the composer’s music itself. There is a great deal of his music I have not heard, an important proviso, yet everything I have has seemed similarly anonymous, its manifold derivations failing to cohere into a greater whole. What sounds most interesting, or rather least uninteresting, here are the passages that sound a little like (very) watered-down Janáček. Attempts to signal (relative) modernity by parading hand-me-downs from Stravinsky and Prokofiev fall flat. There is certainly compositional craft in the orchestration, and interest in the considerable use to which the piano is put, but so what, if there is nothing to say? To complain about an artwork being derivative is doubtless indicative of a post-Romantic world-view; well, so much the better for (post-)Romanticism.

 

Michel and Julietta (Julia Sporsén)

The music seemed well performed. If there were times when I could imagine Edward Gardner having exerted a tighter grip on proceedings, his direction was alert enough, though the orchestra sounded a little tired during the third act. Julia Sporsén proved as radiant as one could have any right to expect as Julietta, even if it were difficult not to wish that she were singing Janáček or something else more worthwhile. Peter Hoare did his best with what must be the tiring role of Michel, imparting as much credibility as the work would permit. The rest of the cast all performed creditably, often more than that. Susan Bickley offering luxury casting in the small roles of birdseller, fortune teller, and old woman, Andrew Shore likewise in three small roles, perhaps most notably the seller of memories who tries to convince Julietta and Michel that they holidayed together in Spain. I was especially impressed by Anthony Gregory’s lyrical tenor as the Young Sailor, who asks Michel for Julietta’s shawl – here, it seemed, more of a scarf: whether staging or translation erred, I cannot say – so as to compete with his elder colleague. Again, I hope I shall hear him more gainfully employed elsewhere.

 

The work in its general surrealist plotline might have been written to play to Richard Jones’s strengths. The designs (Antony McDonald and Ricardo Pardo) were arresting, deriving from imaginative use of a giant accordion, whose music we hear at the opening. Yet in the absence of anything to care about, we were left, hardly surprisingly, with a series of stylish images. First seen in Paris ten years ago, Jones’s production has now made it to London. Let us hope that he and a talented cast will next be offered something more substantial to which to apply themselves. There is a host of works that languish unperformed or under-performed; Martinů has had his chance.