Gloriana, Royal Opera, 20 June 2013

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Elizabeth I – Susan Bullock

Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex – Toby Spence
Frances Devereux, Countess of Essex – Patricia Bardon
Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy – Mark Stone
Penelope, Lady Rich – Kate Royal
Sir Robert Cecil – Jeremy Carpenter
Sir Walter Raleigh – Clive Bayley
Henry Cuffe – Benjamin Bevan
Lady-in-Waiting – Nadine Livingston
Blind Ballad Singer – Brindley Sherratt
Recorder of Norwich – Jeremy White
Housewife – Carol Rowlands
Spirit of the Masque – Andrew Tortise
Master of Ceremonies – David Butt Philip
City Crier – Michel de Souza
Concord – Giulia Pazzaglia
Time – Lake Laoutaris-Smith

Richard Jones (director)

Ultz (designs)
Mimi Jordan Sherin (lighting)
Lucy Burge (choreography)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Paul Daniel (conductor)

 

The Royal Opera offered a strong performance and production, for the most part as excellent as we have any right to expect, of what remains, alas, a very weak opera. Aldeburgh fundamentalists, a highly vocal sect that is yet diminishing with age, will maintain that Gloriana’s dreadful initial reception was to be attributed to a philistine audience of coronation dignitaries and the merely prejudiced. (Richard Jarman, General Director of the Britten-Pears Foundation, writes in the programme of a composer ‘whose musical conservatism was attacked by the avant garde in his lifetime but whose reputation has outlived his critics.’ Well, he would, wouldn’t he?) The way some speak of the debacle, one would think that a a masterpiece of the order of Birtwistle’s Mask of Orpheus had been slighted. It is certainly difficult to begrudge the opportunity to find out for ourselves, in what is the first time since the brief 1954 revival that the Royal Opera has staged the work, but the flip side of that opportunity proves to be realisation that many of the criticisms levelled at the work in 1953 were justified after all.    

 

Though not really a criticism of the work as such, it is extraordinary to think that anyone could have thought this an appropriate subject for dedication and tribute to a new queen: it would surely have been far better left to stand on its own feet, appearing a few years later, after the composer had had more time to work on it. La clemenza di Tito, far and away the greatest of all coronation operas, may have been written in breakneck time, even by Mozart’s standards, but, wonderful conductor of Mozart though Britten was, he certainly lacked Mozart’s combination of greatness and incredible facility. The opera is certainly not helped by William Plomer’s dreadful libretto, laden down by unconvincing archaisms and cringeworthy rhymes of which ‘duty’ and ‘beauty’ is far from the worst offender; nor is it assisted by all too formulaic scene-by-scene alternation between ‘public’ and ‘private’ realms, which encourages a dramaturgy that barely advances, if indeed it does at all, beyond Verdi. (Half-hearted applause greeted the end of each scene, whilst Richard Jones’s metatheatrical production, about which more below, did its heroic to make the scene-changes of interest.) Schiller or Boris Godunov this conflict decidedly is not. Apart from Elizabeth I herself, and perhaps the Earl of Essex, characters, such as they are, tend to be products of plot situations rather than vice versa.

 

Yet even the manifold dramatic weaknesses do not excuse the weakness of so much of the score itself. Even the mild syncopations of the opening chorus sound shop-soiled: as if drawn from a Britten manual of how to add a little ‘modernity’ without frightening away the horses. Large sections of the orchestral writing seem little more than padding. At their best, there is a kinship in vocal lines to Purcell; much of the time, however, they veer between the merely nondescript and the inappropriately Italianate (as in nineteenth-century Italianate, certainly nothing contemporary). And if Norwich might not always be accepted as a heaving metropolis, does it really deserve the tedium of the ‘masque’? (I could not help but think of those dreadful shows the present Queen and Duke of Edinburgh must sit through when on an official visit, doubtless longing to be taken as quickly as possible to Balmoral or Newmarket.) Dramaturgically, there are signs of hope there: at least Britten is doing something different. Rarely, however, does his formulaic music rise to the occasion; it is actually more interesting when it alludes most strongly to Tudor styles, though the ‘real thing’ would be more interesting still. Matters were not helped by having the first and second acts run together without an interval; it made for a very long time, scene changes included, sitting through pretty insubstantial stuff.

 

That said, there could be no gainsaying the commitment of the Royal Opera’s forces to presentation of the work. If there were times when Paul Daniel might have sped things up a bit, one did not need to know that he had conducted the score before, for Opera North, to hear that he was fully in command of it. Likewise, the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House and the Royal Opera Chorus, as ever excellently prepared by Renato Balsadonna, responded with enthusiasm and sensitivity that lay almost beyond the call of duty, regal or otherwise. Casting was of great strength, the only real problem being Susan Bullock’s vocal fallibility in the title role; without too much effort, though, one could accept that as reflecting the fallibility of an ageing monarch. Otherwise, Toby Spence proved as fine an advocate as the Earl of Essex could ever expect: ardent, sensitive, headstrong as required. Mark Stone offered a finely-sung, equally finely-acted, darker-hued foil as Lord Mountjoy. It was an especial joy to hear Patricia Bardon’s true contralto, plaintive and full of tone, as the Countess of Essex, with Kate Royal’s Penelope equally well sung, if less clear of diction. (The weird outburst in the final scene, quite unmotivated by what little character development has previously been offered, is certainly not her fault.) Smaller roles such as Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Bayley), Sir Robert Cecil (Jeremy Carpenter), and Carol Rowlands's splendidly shrewish London Housewife offered ample opportunity for care with words and music, however undeserving. Likewise, Brindley Sherratt made the most of the tediously repetitive part for the Blind Ballad-Singer; again, comparisons with a superficially similar role in Boris Godunov are unfortunate, to say the least.

 

Richard Jones pursued his task as director with palpable relish. The production offers a metatheatrical view of staging a 1953 celebration, framed by a small procession of dignitaries. The idea might have been pushed further; as it stood, it did not really do a great deal other than remind us when the work was written. Perhaps that might have been more than the work could have taken, though Christopher Alden’s superb Midsummer Night’s Dream for ENO suggests bravery in staging may be the way forward for Britten’s slighter operas. Designs by Ultz – just ‘Ultz’, presumably like ‘Jesus’, or ‘Voltaire’, his ‘mystery’ enhanced by the lack of a programme photograph – were handsome, colourful, even witty. If we must have the 1950s on stage all the time, this was a model of how to accomplish the task. Lucy Burge’s choreography and the work of various actors and dancers were equally estimable. I could have done without the cumbersome business of each scene being introduced by a gang of children holding up letters to spell, ‘Nonesuch Palace’, ‘The City’, and so on, but apparently some members of the audience found that side-splittingly hilarious.  

 

It is meet and right that opera houses should grant the possibility to reassess works and indeed composers, lest unfair historical verdicts go uncontested. The production earlier this season of Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable is a case in point. Yet I suspect that the uninformed vitriol poured upon a flawed yet intriguing grand opéra will be matched this time around by calls of ‘disgracefully neglected masterpiece’. We should all like to find another operatic masterpiece, but wishing does not make it so; for that, we should do better to turn our attention to the future, not least to the new work Covent Garden has commissioned from George Benjamin and Martin Crimp. Works as different as The Minotaur and Written on Skin, masterpieces both, suggest ways forward; yet it does us no harm occasionally to reflect that creation of masterpieces may not only alleviate but also be facilitated by the possibility of failure elsewhere.

Wagner 200th Anniversary Concert - Bullock/Philharmonia/Davis, 22 May 2013

Royal Festival Hall

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: Prelude to Act One

Tristan und Isolde: Prelude to Act One and ‘Liebestod’
Die Walküre: Act Three

Isolde, Brünnhilde – Susan Bullock

Sieglinde – Giselle Allen
Wotan – James Rutherford
Helmwige – Katherine Broderick
Gerhilde – Mariya Krywaniuk
Siegrune – Magdalen Ashman
Grimgerde – Antonia Sotgiu
Ortlinde – Elaine McKrill
Waltraute – Jennifer Johnston
Rossweisse – Maria Jones
Schwertleite – Miriam Sharrad

David Edwards (director)

David Holmes (lighting)

Philharmonia Orchestra

Sir Andrew Davis (director)

 
London’s two principal opera companies have offered a baffling near-silence as their response to Wagner’s two-hundredth anniversary. With ENO, once home to Reginald Goodall, one may delete the ‘near’; the Royal Opera has opted for a single production, in November, of Parsifal, whose casting does not exactly lift the spirits. There is certainly nothing anywhere near the composer’s birthday itself. The BBC Proms have valiantly stepped into the gap, offering concert performances of the Ring (Barenboim), Tristan und Isolde (Bychkov), Parsifal (Elder) and Tannhäuser (Runnicles). Those concerts, however, will not take place until July and August. For 22 May, London’s offering was a Philharmonia concert conducted by Sir Andrew Davis. Doubtless there was stiff competition for Wagner conductors on the day, and Chirstian Thielemann was otherwise occupied in Bayreuth, but it was difficult not to feel that someone with greater Wagerian credentials might at least have been a possibility. Bernard Haitink, for instance? Most of us would readily have swapped the aforementioned Parsifal to hear the Royal Opera’s erstwhile music director once again in Wagner.

 

Was I being unfair? The proof of the aural pudding would, as always, be in the hearing. Sadly, the Prelude to the first act of Die Meistersinger – not its ‘Overture’, as the programme insert had it – received an account, which, if undoubtedly preferable to the straightforward incomprehension Antonio Pappano had shown conducting the entire opera at Covent Garden, proved no more than Kapellmeister-ish. Timings as such tell one nothing, but it felt rushed, often more martial than celebratory. There was certainly no sense of midsummer blaze or indeed embers. The Philharmonia strings, though many in number, sometimes tended towards wiriness. Detail was either skated or fussed over. Though there was more fire towards the close, it was really too late by then. It doubtless had not helped that, earlier in the day, I had listened to Furtwängler conducting the same music in 1931, but even taking that into account, it was an undistinguished performance.

 

Rather to my surprise, the Tristan excerpts worked better. I remain sceptical, to put it mildly, about the wisdom of pairing the first act Prelude and the so-called ‘Liebestod’  (Liszt’s wretched description of Isolde’s Transfiguration). Though I am well aware of the distinguished precedents – even Furtwängler and Boulez have followed the practice – to my ears it jars. That said, both conductor and orchestra were on better form. Not only was their a fuller string sound but Davis now seemed to understand, certainly to communicate, that something was at stake. He struck a good balance between forward impulse and a more analytical approach to the score. Though certainly not plumbing any Furtwänglerian metaphysical depths, it was a satisfying enough musical experience. Susan Bullock, joining for the ‘Liebestod’, held her line well enough. At some times, she shaded sensitively; at others, she proved rather squally. The Philharmonia, however, offered beautifully shimmering and pulsating support. Whoever interposed immediately with a boorish ‘Bravo!’ should be condemned to listen to Verdi for the rest of Wagner’s anniversary year.

 

The second half was devoted to the third act of Die Walküre. It is not the Wagner act I should have chosen in such circumstances; surely the first act of the same drama works better on its own. But we had what we had, and presumably part of the idea was to offer the popular, if generally misunderstood, ‘Ride of the Valkyries’. Davis for the most part proved a competent guide, though there were some arbitrary-sounding slowings, though he offered few if any revelations. Whilst the Philharmonia played well enough, it sounded during the ‘Magic Fire Music’ as if someone had suddenly turned on a light-switch, such was the vividness of colour hitherto lacking. (That is not simply a matter of Wagner’s wondrous scoring at the end.) There is not much to say about David Edwards’s ‘semi-staging’, save that very good use was made of a very limited space, the direction being largely a matter of having singers come on, go off, and engage with each other. That they all did well, with the exception of James Rutherford’s Wotan. An excellent touch at the end was to have Brünnhilde go up behind the stage, to the organ, to be put to sleep. Handing her a very old-fashioned helmet at that point seemed odd: neither an obvious post-modern touch nor in keeping with the neutral dress otherwise on offer. Bullock had her moments, less audibly strained than she had been recently at Covent Garden. She made a good deal of Wagner’s text, though there were moments of relative vocal weakness. One cannot really judge a Sieglinde on the basis of the third act, but Giselle Allen offered an account more hochdramtisch than lyrical; ‘O hehrstes Wunder!’ sounded rushed, but that may have been Davis’s account. At any rate, what should be ecstatic was more matter-of-fact. The Valkyries were a good bunch, a couple of them somewhat weak, but others excellent indeed; Jennifer Johnston’s Waltraute particularly stood out. Rutherford’s Wotan, however, was a disappointment. Apparently glued to the score, and none too certain with it, there was no sign whatsoever of him having internalised the role; his performance was more akin to a first rehearsal for a minor oratorio. Tone production was often rather woolly too.

 

Had one been coming anew to Wagner, doubtless much would have impressed, and there may well have been some in the audience who were. (There were, as one might have expected, some decidedly peculiar people in the audience. A man seated next to me insisted on filming the first half and hour or so of the Walküre act, my glares having no effect, the ushers either not noticing or not caring. When finally he put his camera away, he replaced it with a skull-capped walking-stick.) London’s anniversary contribution remained, however, surprisingly low-key. The rest of the Wagner 200 celebrations promise much more, as do the Proms.

Götterdämmerung, Royal Opera, 9 October 2012

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

First Norn – Maria Radner

Second Norn – Karen Cargill
Third Norn – Elisabeth Meister
Brünnnhilde – Susan Bullock
Siegfried – Stefan Vinke
Gunther – Peter Coleman-Wright
Gutrune – Rachel Willis-Sørensen
Hagen – Sir John Tomlinson
Waltraute – Mihoko Fujimura
Alberich – Wolfgang Koch
Wellgunde – Kai Rüütel
Woglinde – Nadine Livingston
Flosshilde – Harriet Williams

Keith Warner (director)

Walter Sutcliffe (associate director)
Amy Lane (first assistant director)
Stefanos Lazaridis, Matthew Deely (set designs)
Marie-Jeanne Lecca (costumes)
Wolfgang Göbbel (lighting)
Mic Pool, Dick Straker (video designs)
Claire Gaskin, Michael Barry (movement)                        

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Sir Antonio Pappano (conductor)

 

I am not at all sure what is meant by the claim on the Royal Opera House’s website that ‘Keith Warner presents a bravura production of the fourth opera in the Ring cycle’. Anyway, ‘bravura’ or otherwise, here came Götterdämmerung, or should it have been Wagner-Dämmerung? If this is the level of Wagner performance to which we can look forward in 2013, his bicentenary, then it would be better to shut up shop now. Siegfried had had a good few virtues, as well as failings; I had blithely assumed that Götterdämmerung would have been vaguely comparable. Pride, as Wotan discovers, comes before a fall.

 

Little had changed in terms of Keith Warner’s production, problematical in a number of ways in 2007, though the production was far from the weakest link in the performance as a whole. Warner’s staging lays claim to a number of positive features. The role allotted to the gods, whose twilight we are supposed to be enacting, is a particular strength. They appear, as they ought yet seldom do, during the second act, as statues, vain objects of sacrifice. This was recognisable as  the decaying Gibichung society Patrice Chéreau so rightly characterised as ageing, pointing to the increasing desperation of its rituals — rituals which would seek some sort of moral code in a post-religious society that knows no morality, indeed finds it impossible, as Chéreau put it, to ‘know’. (See  Pierre, Boulez and P. Chéreau, ‘Commentaires sur “Mythologie et Idéologie”,’ in Programmhefte der Bayreuther Festspiele, 1977, VI, p. 81.) Wotan, I think, reappears from afar to view Siegfried’s death ; Loge summons and is consumed by fire at the end ; the statues are burned. There is also a nice – well, provocative – suggestion of incest between Gunther and Gutrune.

 

Alas, a great deal of incoherence remains. Why Grane is represented by a mere skull I cannot imagine. The ultimate indignity is suffered when Brünnhilde’s trusty steed is passed around as if the characters are worried that, when the music stops – one is tempted to add: ‘if only...’ – one of them will suffer a forfeit. It would be perfectly possible to have an off-stage horse, but a dead one seems pointless. Why does Waltraute appear in ‘civilian’ guise, dressed as Brünnhilde is now ? Is not the whole point of the scene the contrast between inhuman Valkyrie and Brünnhilde as human being ?

 

Perhaps the most glaring sequence of confusion is seen in the final scene to the first act. What I wrote in 2007 still holds word for word, so I shall save time by repeating myself: ‘Hagen’s continued presence on stage, following the move from the Hall of the Gibichungs to Brünnhilde’s rock, did not augur well. We all know that in a sense he is “still there”: his dramatic shadow hangs over the rest of the act, and the music could hardly make this clearer. Actually to have him on stage added little, except confusion as to where the action was taking place. But this was as nothing to the final scene (in which, needless to say, he remained on stage). Anyone who did not know what was supposed to be going on would have been utterly confused, since we had Siegfried as himself, wearing the Tarnhelm, and Siegfried transformed by the Tarnhelm into Gunther, on stage at the same time. All of the singing came from – audibly and visually – from the former Siegfried. This was logically incoherent, and the whole mess could easily have been avoided by following Wagner’s directions.’ The end is marred not only by having Hagen, Brünnhilde, and the vassals run around like children in the playground. Quite why the Rhinemaidens strip part way through, as opposed to being nude throughout, is anyone’s guess. Conflagration, such as it is, cannot come soon enough. What we are to make of the girl standing in a ring – a belated advertisement for the Olympic Games? – I do not know. The ‘watchers’ are an athletic bunch, though they are not called upon to put that athleticism to use; a rather more mixed sample of humanity might have been more to Wagner’s point. (Chéreau’s conclusion remains an object lesson here.)

 

There were some good solo performances. Mihoko Fujimura, arguably the world’s reigning Waltraute, injected as much passion as Antonio Pappano’s lethargic conducting would permit into her scene. Rachel Willis-Sørensen surprised me as an uncommonly womanly Gutrune, an eminently creditable object of Siegfried’s diverted affections. John Tomlinson’s Hagen had strength where it counted, even if he sounded a little genial to begin with. The scene with Wolfgang Koch’s once-again excellent Alberich was a rare highlight.  And Stefan Vinke’s Siegfried, if hardly perfect, and a little flat of tone to begin with, was far better than one generally hears. The young Siegfried seems more suited to his voice, for whatever reason, or perhaps he was simply on better form a couple of nights before. Nevertheless, there was much to admire in a performance of stamina and considerable strength. The Norns and Rhinemaidens impressed, as did Renato Balsadonna’s splendid chorus.

 

Susan Bullock’s Brünnhilde was by and large a disappointment. Indeed, I am sure that this is the first time I have heard a Brünnhilde who was not considerably superior to her Siegfried. Bullock’s voice, as in Siegfried, sounds strained by the role. The contrast between her struggling and Fujimura’s proud performance was unfortunate, to say the least. Peter Coleman-Wright’s Gunther was worse, however, quite the worst Gunther I have heard. Persistently out of tone, vocally insecure, he sounded at least 103 – and not in a good way.

 

Pappano’s conducting was the gravest problem, reflected in a frequent tiredness sounding from the orchestra. The opening of the Prologue actually began rather well, at least in retrospect. If Wagner’s metaphysical depths remained unplumbed, then at least there was fluency, which one cannot always say with respect to Pappano’s Wagner. From the departure of the Norns, it was, alas, to be mostly downhill. Listlessness, born of an apparent lack of understanding of harmonic motion, made much of the performance seem interminable. Whether the Waltraute scene was the longest I have ever heard I have no idea, but it certainly sounded like it. The Vassals Scene was conducted with rigidity, as if it were a march from Aida. By the end of the second act, so little seemed to be at stake, so little was the score’s richness penetrated, that we might have been listening to an episode of Crossroads, an impression heightened by the shaky platform – was this deliberate? – on which the characters were walking. Lethargy was accompanied by a sound-world somewhat akin to the opaque meaningless people who do not like Debussy ascribe to Debussy. And so it went on and on and on. By the time the final theme – the glorification of Brünnhilde, redemption through/of love, whatever one wishes to call it – sounded, initial near-occlusion of the strings by a bizarrely prominent kettledrum roll seemed neither here nor there.

 

There are several Wagner conductors with connections to the Royal Opera who could have made not just a better job of this, but most likely produced great or at least very good performances. It may well now be impossible, but heaven and earth should have been moved to persuade Bernard Haitink to return to conduct, if not the Ring, then at least some Wagner following his 2007 Parsifal. Whatever happened to Christian Thielemann? Whatever it was ought to have been put right. Daniele Gatti and Semyon Bychkov might have been called upon. Simon Rattle and Mark Elder have both impressed in Wagner, if at a slightly less exalted level. At the Berlin State Opera, it is quite understandable that Daniel Barenboim tends to conduct many of the Wagner performances from Das Rheingold onwards; there are few, after all, to match him in this repertoire. It is less understandable that a conductor whose strengths lie elsewhere should monopolise performances of the music dramas in London. Parsifal awaits in 2013.

Siegfried, Royal Opera, 7 October 2012

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Mime – Gerhard Siegel

Siegfried – Stefan Vinke
The Wanderer – Bryn Terfel
Alberich – Wolfgang Koch
Fafner – Eric Halfvarson

The Woodbird – Sophie Bevan

Erda – Maria Radner
Brünnhilde – Susan Bullock 

Keith Warner (director)

Walter Sutcliffe (associate director, first assistant director)

Stefanos Lazaridis, Matthew Deely (set designs)

Marie-Jeanne Lecca (costumes)
Wolfgang Göbbel (lighting)
Mic Pool, Dick Straker (video designs)
Claire Gaskin, Michael Barry (movement) 

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Sir Antonio Pappano (conductor)

 

It has been something of a disappointment not to have been able to attend the Royal Opera’s present revival of Wagner’s Ring in its entirety. (Incidentally, would journalists, publicists, et al., kindly take note that this ` is not, repeat not, called The Ring Cycle. By all means refer to The Ring, the Ring, The Ring of the Nibelung, Der Ring, Der Ring des Nibelungen, the Ring cycle, etc., etc., but never The Ring Cycle. That admonition counts for more, should you belong to the organisation claiming to perform a non-existent work.) I have seen it before, most recently in 2007 (see here, here, here, and here.) Nevertheless, I am immensely grateful to the reader who, unable to attend, most generously offered me his ticket for Siegfried. Moreover, I have today managed both to secure a return for Götterdämmerung and to take a Rheingold standing ticket off the hands of someone who can no longer go, so who knows? Dropping in at this stage is a different experience from experiencing Siegfried in its proper place, so what I say should be read hedged with necessary qualifications.

 

Keith Warner’s production underwent a degree of de-cluttering before the first complete cycles in 2007. My memory is too hazy to be able to say with any degree of certainty how different, if at all, the staging is this time around. What I can say is that I liked it better. The ‘educating Siegfried’ action during the first Act Prelude is apposite to the story; if it is not what one hears from the orchestra at that time, then one could equally well argue that one does not have to have, say, Fafner scenically represented, since one can hear him anyway. Last time, I wondered about the aeroplane; this time, I ceased to do so and simply thought it an arresting image. Direction of the singers was a great strength for much of the evening, a particular highlight for me the Beckettian exchanges between Alberich and the Wanderer (even though the latter proved somewhat lacking vocally, of which more below.) The forest scenes have magic to them, the green grass a crucial hint of Nature apparently unsullied – though the animals on trolleys remain a bit of a problem, technically as well as visually. I recall the dragon being more outlandish, but that may be a trick of the memory; at any rate, the visual representation worked, its red eyes fixing themselves in the more recent memory. If I cannot help suspecting that the contrasting minimalism of the third act might suggest budget restrictions rather than an æsthetic decision, it is only really the final scene that seems a cop out: no fire, too much happening behind a screen, and, perhaps most surprisingly, less than convincing Personenregie or at least execution thereof.  Use of a little video seems pointless.

 

Sir Antonio Pappano has grown as a Wagner conductor. The first times these dramas were staged, individually, the results from the pit were well-nigh catastrophic. In 2007, we had progressed to competence, if hardly greatness; the same could be said of 2012. The dreadful stopping and starting that had so disfigured Pappano’s initial efforts  seems to have been properly sorted out. If the orchestra in this particular drama seemed less a dramatic participant – Wagner’s Greek Chorus – than it had in 2007, at least the first two acts flowed nicely enough. Pappano seemingly remains content, however, to assume the role of ‘accompanist’. Sadly the first scene of the third act – the peripeteia of the Ring as a whole – was underwhelming, with little sense of anything, let alone something truly world-shattering, at stake. Much of the rest of that act dragged too. Pappano’s performance was not bad, but one hopes for a little more than that.

 

There was much better news when it came to Siegfried himself. (How surprised I am ever to find myself writing that!) Stefan Vinke fully justified the high hopes I had from having heard him as Lohengrin and Parsifal in Leipzig, sounding quite rejuvenated after a couple of recent lacklustre London performances in concert. Just about anybody would be preferable to  John Treleaven in 2007, yet Vinke was better than merely preferable; his was probably the most impressive Siegfried I have heard in the flesh as opposed to on record. There was no sign of flagging, despite the cruel demands Wagner places upon his tenor. Words were clear and meaningful; phrases were well turned. And this was a credible dramatic portrayal too, Warner’s belief, however misguided, that acting should trump singing, at least paying dividends in the results achieved here on stage. This Siegfried was more human than one generally finds; too often, one ends up wishing that Mime would succeed in his plot. In the present instance, however, one felt sympathy for the boy’s plight, without doubting his ‘natural’, unconscious strength and the problems that might entail.

 

Gerhard Siegel proved an excellent foil to Vinke’s Siegfried. Siegel can certainly do the wheedling, but he never resorts to mere caricature. (Wagner was adamant that Mime should be nothing of the sort.) This Mime was possessed of a fine, often powerful, voice, and all the more credible for it. Wolfgang Koch’s Alberich was dark, disillusioned, equally attentive to words and music. Alas Bryn Terfel’s Wanderer was disappointing. His intonation was dubious, to say the least, upon his first act entrance, and though that problem cleared itself up after a while, Terfel signally failed to impart due gravitas to the role. Strange, attention-seeking mannerisms – for instance, a very peculiar ‘effect’ upon the singing of the word ‘Wurm’ during the second act – irritated, More serious was the apparent lack of dramatic, philosophical underpinning to the words enunciated with careful – too careful? – clarity. One does not have to have read Feuerbach and Schopenhauer to sing Wotan, but one needs to seem as though one might at least consider doing so. During the pivotal scene with Erda, this Wanderer seemed more a bit of a madman than someone preparing to renounce the Will. Sir John Tomlinson’s extraordinary, Lear-like portrayal of 2007 was preferable in every respect.

 

Sophie Bevan presented a keenly-voiced Woodbird, but the other two women were less impressive. Susan Bullock gave the impression that her voice was simply not ample enough for Brünnhilde and that she was therefore having to try too hard. The result was too often a mixture of the timid and the tremulant, and the acting was not much better. Maria Radner’s Erda similarly lacked presence, whether vocally or in stage terms; she seemed miscast.

 

A gripe concerning practicalities: I am all for having decent length intervals, so that if one wishes to have a drink, one does not have to return to the theatre immediately after having fought one’s way to the front of the queue, but an hour and a quarter between the second and third acts, for a performance beginning at 3 p.m.? Had it been a ‘supper interval’, however irksome, it would have been understandable, but I cannot imagine many would have wished to dine at a quarter past six. All that was achieved was to spin out the running time to an entirely unnecessary six hours and ten minutes.

Elektra, Royal Opera, 15 November 2008

This should be read as an appendix to my principal review. I was fortunate enough to attend Elektra again and found that a very good performance had become a great one. Each of the singers was at least as good and most were even better, especially Johan Reuter, who sounded almost Wanderer-like upon his mysterious arrival. (We truly heard things through Elektra's ears here.) Susan Bullock was outstanding in the title role. Where, on the first night, her dance - and her accompanying words - did not quite come off, here they did, in a shocking yet inevitable ecstasy. Anne Schwanewilms's excellent performance - her diction was better this time around - reminds me that I did not mention Chrysothemis's weird, twisted, Frau-ohne-Schatten-ish obsession with marriage and children, played upon by Elektra in extremely nasty yet credible fashion. For this, Schwanewilms and director, Charles Edwards should be credited. Rarely can 'normality' have seemed so abnormal; Chrysothemis's transformation by the final scene thereby seems all the more credible.

Most transformed was Sir Mark Elder's conducting. Never having conducted Elektra before, it is now clear that he still had a little way to go on the first night. The Wagnerian inheritance was now clearer than ever. Everything now sounded 'right'; the Recognition Scene no longer dragged and balances appeared to have been reconsidered. (I wonder whether sitting in the amphitheatre rather than in the stalls made a difference too. The sound may be more distanced but the blend may be enhanced.) Indeed, there was a far stronger modernistic bent to the sounds and blends being produced - almost Boulezian at times. (What we lost when Wieland Wagner died prematurely, not least since he and Boulez had plans to perform Salome, Elektra, and Ariadne auf Naxos!) Yet there was also a lightness of touch that no longer seemed underplayed, but part of a long-term strategic, symphonic plan. The oft-quoted line from Strauss as to how one should hear Mendelssohnian fairy-music made as much sense as I can recall. This was a truly marvellous performance!

Elektra, Royal Opera, 8 November 2008

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Elektra – Susan Bullock
Chrysothemis – Anne Schwanewilms
Klytemnestra – Jane Henschel
Orest – Johan Reuter
First Maid – Frances McCafferty
Second Maid – Monika-Evelin Liiv
Third Maid – Kathleen Wilkinson
Fourth Maid – Elizabeth Woolett
Fifth Maid – Eri Nakamura
Overseer – Miriam Murphy
Young Servant – Alfie Boe
Confidante – Louise Armit
Trainbearer – Dervla Ramsy
Orest’s tutor – Vuyani Mlinde
Aegisth – Frank von Aken
Old servant – Jeremy White

Charles Edwards (director, set designer, and lighting)
Brigitte Reiffenstuel (costumes)
Leah Hausman (choreography)

The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renata Balsadonna)
Sir Mark Elder (conductor)

This is my third Elektra within a year, having also seen productions in Berlin and in Munich. To think that I once worried about the effect that too much Mahler might have upon me! As with Mahler, albeit unnervingly without the catharsis, deepening knowledge of the work has served only to heighten my fascination and admiration. The Royal Opera’s revisiting of Charles Edwards’s production – Edwards rightly dislikes the term ‘revival’, although in some cases, it can sadly be all too appropriate – has much to commend it, as did the two German performances.

Edwards’s sets give an excellent impression of the corruption and depravity of Mycenae. It is not excessive, which must be a temptation, and is therefore all the more powerful. Antiquity and the early twentieth century – a little after the time of composition – are both suggested without being fetishised. Whatever Elektra is ‘about’, it is certainly not about historical ‘accuracy’; indeed, given how closely Hofmannsthal follows Sophocles, it is remarkable how little of the latter’s politics remain. And although the activity of archaeology is perhaps suggested by the bust of Agamemnon – chillingly kissed by Elektra – and by signs of digging, there is no dry archaeological positivism to the scene, which stands dialectically related to the dancing on a volcano of the 1920s. Had they not learned from the War (whether Trojan or Great)? Of course not. Violence is endemic though not unduly exaggerated. (David McVicar could have learned a great deal from this before his sensationalist Salome, as he could have done from Edwards’s intelligent rather than arbitrary suggestions of the interwar years.) The treatment of the Fifth Maid – a fine portrayal from Eri Nakamura, a Jette Parker Young Artist – by the other maids and Miriam Murphy’s splendidly horrifying Overseer really sets the scene for what is to come. The degrading – fatal? – punishment that follows horrifies still more. What helps to make this so powerful is the partial restoration of the political that Edwards so successfully achieves. He reminds us throughout that this is not simply a madhouse but the palace of Mycenae. We see from time to time other members of the household and the effect that the degeneration of the ruling house has upon the ruled, most crucially of all in the final bloodbath, in which the palace wall is lifted to reveal the carnage that has been unleashed, the latest – and, we must hope, the last – instalment of Thyestes’s curse upon the house of Atreus. This is not of course the only way to present Elektra but it is an interesting and valid route to take.

Sir Mark Elder’s reading stood distant from the blood-and-gore, priapism-a-minute approach of Sir Georg Solti. We heard a great deal of detail in the score, including some delectable woodwind lines, impeccably played by an orchestra on top form. The baleful Wagnerian brass sounded, rightly, as if it had originated in Fafner’s lair. Dance rhythms surfaced throughout, reminding us that Elektra is not only the high watermark of Strauss’s expressionism but also paves the way for Der Rosenkavalier (which is, in turn, a far nastier opera than nostalgics could ever understand.) There were times, however, when I thought that a little more menace, violence even, would not have gone amiss. One can tend towards the analytical without the occasional loss to the dramatic that we heard here. In Strauss, Christoph von Dohnányi is an example in this and so many respects, although Semyon Bychkov also impressed during the production’s initial run. In a generally well-paced account, the crucial Recognition Scene dragged somewhat, lessening the dramatic release upon the realisation of Orest and Elektra that they have finally been reunited. That said, it was a treat to hear the final scene develop rather than scream throughout. Even necrophiliac orgies of destruction need to gather pace. Moreover, the musical echoes here of the final scene of Tristan can rarely have registered so clearly.

The cast was impressive, not least in the smaller roles, all of which were well characterised, as well as well directed. Johan Reuter started somewhat anonymously as Orest – although, I suppose, he is anonymous to Elektra at this point – but his portrayal acquired greater strength. Frank von Aken was no Siegfried Jerusalem, to whose cameo we were treated last time; by the same token, he was no mere caricature in the role of Aegisth and he acted well, disturbingly well. Jane Henschel not only spitted malevolence and terrifying, jubilant hysteria, the latter upon the news of Orest’s death. She also imparted a sense of vulnerability, of the humanity that must at one time have existed in Klytämnestra. This made the sheer evil displayed at her last both shocking and credible. Anne Schwanewilms made a sympathetic Chrysothemis, as she had previously. One could forgive the occasional occlusion of the words – inevitable to some extent – given her beauty of tone and security of line. And Susan Bullock was a fine Elektra. She fully inhabited the role musically and dramatically, her fine diction and intonation permitting a more sophisticated portrayal than the screaming harpy of caricature. Desperation and damage, resilience and revenge: one understood how all of these feelings and more arose from the murder of her father, and beyond that from the terrible feud between the two sons of Pelops. In this, as in so much else, Bullock’s Elektra and Edwards’s Elektra were at one: at the service of Strauss and Hofmannsthal, yet nevertheless, and indeed consequently, engaged in imaginative recreation.

Die Walküre, Royal Opera, 19 October 2007

Royal Opera House

Siegmund – Plácido Domingo
Sieglinde – Eva-Maria Westbroek
Hunding – Stephen Milling
Wotan – John Tomlinson
Brünnhilde – Susan Bullock
Fricka – Rosalind Plowright
Gerhilde – Geraldine McGreevy
Ortlinde – Elaine McKrill
Waltraute – Claire Powell
Schwertleite – Rebecca de Pont Davies
Helmwige – Iréne Theorin
Siegrune – Sarah Castle
Grimgerde – Claire Shearer
Rossweisse – Elizabeth Sikora

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Antonio Pappano (conductor)

Keith Warner (director)
Stefano Lazaridis (designer)
Marie-Jeanne Lecca (costumes)
Wolfgang Göbbel (lighting)

This performance, like that of Das Rheingold, was almost unrecognisable from the first run, when the cycle was being mounted one drama at a time. I have just looked back at my notes from 2005, and see that I considered the first act to have been considerably worse than the second and third. On this occasion, I should say that it was less strong, but nevertheless it stood far removed from the catastrophe, which, despite reasonable singing, had previously ensued, the scene set all too well by a storm-Prelude that almost fell apart, followed by the most sluggish, formless reading I had ever heard of this wonderful act. On this occasion, the Prelude now really sounded like a storm, with the strings in particular shining, as they would throughout. The string chamber music, narrating the early stages of recognition for the Volsung twins, was beguiling indeed. There was a much greater sense of coherence, although there remained certain awkward corners. Antonio Pappano now seems far more willing to take the lead, as a Wagner conductor must, rather than to follow the singers as a mere accompanist. If the architecture is not all quite standing as it should yet, it is mostly there, which certainly could not have been said the first time around. It was a pity that the direction of the act’s tumultuous conclusion rather held fire, seeming a little unsure of where it was going. A few days previously, I had seen the same passage from the Boulez-Chéreau DVD; that torrid reading had known its direction all too well, the curtain coming down only just in time.

The three on-stage characters of the first act were sharply portrayed. The baritonal heft of Plácido Domingo’s tenor is just right for Siegmund. If anything, it seems to have become more pronounced since I last heard him assume the role, at Bayreuth in 2000. He took a little time truly to hit his stride, but this is all relative. He can sing and act both musically and heroically, and he always does; there is never anything approaching a weak moment. Moreover, for all the complaints one sometimes hears about his German, his diction was superb: I could hear every word he sang, which was not always the case elsewhere. Eva-Maria Westbroek did not fall into the trap of depicting Sieglinde as too passive a vessel. Hers was also a thoroughly musical portrayal throughout, and her eagerness to learn more about her mysterious guest was palpable. Stephen Milling’s Hunding was duly brutal, a representative of the bourgeois society Wagner wished revolution, in the guise of Siegmund, to sweep away forever. I thought his stage whisper – perhaps suggested by the director? – a mistake, however, both musically and dramatically. Whilst there was not much sense of the broader environment in which this act took place, the production worked well enough, and was certainly not intrusive.

Act II of Die Walküre is one of the sternest Wagnerian tests. Bernard Haitink, Pappano’s predecessor at Covent Garden, was well-nigh peerless here, but if Haitink’s profound symphonic understanding was an impossible act to follow, there was for the most part a good sense of direction. The orchestra, moreover, sounded generally in very good health, generally providing a true Wagner sound, despite the slightly disconcerting number of errors from woodwind and brass. John Tomlinson rose magnificently to the occasion. Projection of every word and every note had clearly been deeply considered, and the whole was very much more than the sum of its considerable parts. Here was a searing portrayal of Wotan’s predicament: ‘In my own fetters am I caught: – I, most unfree of all men!’ The protector of the laws has attempted to circumvent, or to pervert, those laws in the name of freedom, whilst continuing to wish to retain his legal authority. Yet Tomlinson brought home to us that this is very much a human as well as a political tragedy, which will result in Wotan being forced to sacrifice his cherished offspring. Rosalind Plowright was less impressive as Fricka than she had been in Das Rheingold. Her voice was sometimes rather thin and colourless, though she looked every inch the part of custom’s upholder, clad in duly Victorian costume. Susan Bullock, the (very) last-minute replacement for Lisa Gasteen, sounded a little impersonal at first, though never dramatically at sea, which, given the circumstances, would have been quite understandable. There was a certain Nilsson-like steel earlier on, which for me works better with Isolde than Brünnhilde. However, in retrospect, Bullock appeared to have been intimating the profound transformation in Brünnhilde’s condition, as she takes the upward path from divinity to humanity. In Feuerbach’s words, ‘If you recognise that there are sins in God, you will be free of them.’ This certainly seems to have been a guiding principle of Keith Warner’s production, an idea emerging far more clearly during this cycle than previously.

The Todesverkundigung (‘Annunciation of Death’) scene was quite moving indeed. Bullock and Domingo rose magnificently to the occasion, and Pappano handled the musico-dramatic progression very well. Here there could be no doubt as to Siegmund’s heroism, a heroism all the more impressive than that of Siegfried, for it is founded upon bravery rather than fearlessness. It is this that makes Siegmund’s rejection of Valhalla exceptional, since he does so in full knowledge that the best he can hope for is nothingness. Warner had the upward ladder (leading, I assume, towards the hereafter) snap at this point, rendering scenically explicit the anti-theological point. In the words of Feuerbach’s Thoughts on Death and Immortality:

And if the whole world wished to be divine, and to go to heaven –
which I cannot believe,
for there still are some brave men –
I would stay outside,
I would not go in.

There could then equally be no doubt as to the beginning of Brünnhilde’s conversion. So moved was she by Siegmund’s love for his sister-bride that there truly seemed that she could do no other than defy Wotan – or at least defy his stated decision. Tomlinson was almost overwhelmingly powerful in the consequent expression of anger and guilt, as he smashed Siegmund’s sword and then slew Hunding, Fricka’s slave. Having Fricka observe this denouement, chillingly satisfied in her victory over adulterous spontaneity, heightened the drama.

The third act was also excellent, although there were once again a few too many orchestral blemishes for comfort. They jarred all the more, especially during the Magic Fire Music, given the generally high level of orchestral performance; once again, the slips were be the province not of the strings, but of the woodwind and to a lesser extent the brass. The Magic Fire Music was also hindered a little by uncertain shaping from the conductor, which resulted in occasional disruption to the music’s flow and a few very odd balances. Nevertheless, Pappano despatched the rest of the act with considerable aplomb. After a peculiar directorial opening to the Ride of the Valkyries – strobe lighting mixed with ineffectively ritualistic moves – the scenic realisation settled down, albeit without any particular insights. (The fire at the end was, admittedly, rather impressive.) The Valkyries all sounded in fine voice, both individually and in combination. Sieglinde’s farewell was nothing less than magnificent, Westbroek once again emphasising her love-inspired heroism, which can often fall by the male-dominated wayside. And the confrontation and reconciliation between Wotan and Brünnhilde was quite something. Tomlinson searingly expressed Wotan’s anguish, born of the clash between the treacherous bonds of Wotan’s world of contracts and domination, and the power of love that Das Rheingold had so forcefully denied. Bullock came increasingly to personify that love, which Die Walküre had seen blossom and yet which had also been so viciously defeated. This was a heartfelt farewell indeed.