Tuesday, 21 August 2007
Salzburg Festival: Armida, 18 August 2007
Joseph Haydn: Armida
Annette Dasch - Armida
Michael Schade - Rinaldo
Mocja Erdmann - Zelmira
Vito Priante - Idreno
Richard Croft - Ubaldo
Bernard Richter - Clotarco
Christof Loy (director)
Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra
Ivor Bolton (director)
Armida was perhaps the most important Salzburg production of 2007. This is not necessarily to say that it was the best; I am not qualified to say, only having seen four of the eight operas presented this year. But to stage with such justified confidence an opera by Haydn, arguably his finest, is a laudable thing indeed. Haydn's operas have been ignored for far too long, especially when one considers some of the highly dubious works from which the opera-goer can hardly escape. Haydn is not Mozart, of course, but then who is? His operas are full of musical interest and, whilst they lack Mozart's genius for characterisation, they are far from undramatic. Armida is certainly a superior work to any of Handel's bafflingly ubiquitous operas, which, whatever their intermittent musical finery, remain, with the possible exception of Giulio Cesare in Egitto, inherently undramatic. (Handel's great oratorios are another matter entirely.) But even Haydn's other music rarely draws in the crowds. It was something of a risk, then, for Jürgen Flimm to launch his tenure as Intendant with Armida, which had opened the Festival on 28 July. I am delighted to report from the final performance that the risk paid off handsomely. Flimm was clearly delighted too, since he ran onto the stage to present flowers not only to the singers but also to a good number of the Bewegungschor.
Ivor Bolton directed a strong musical performance. One might have wanted more tenderness at times, but Bolton knew where he was going, and took orchestra and singers with him. Structures were clearly and dramatically perceptible, and rhythms were securely pointed. I could not help but wonder, however, what magic a great Haydn conductor might have worked; still, we always have the old Dorati recording, with Jessye Norman et al. The woodwind of the Mozarteum Orchestra sounded as delectable as ever, and the strings for the most part avoided the harshness that has sometimes affected their tone in recent years. The one great mistake was to have the 'military' music played as if it were being heard on the radio, through loudspeakers. It simply sounded tame: more 'Listen with Mother' than a janissary threat. Perhaps it was Christof Loy's idea; from wherever the idea sprang, it should have been rejected.
Annette Dasch was most impressive in the title role. Not only was her line absolutely secure, she also proved herself a fine stage acrobat. Michael Schade was, if anything, even better as Rinaldo. (I must confess that I do not understand why the opera is not named after him; he seems the central character in every way.) Sweetness of tone was allied to the vacillating virility that is the character's dramatic hallmark. Not for a minute did he flag; the promise of his first, virtuosically militaristic aria, 'Vado a pugnar contento', was upheld and developed throughout the work.
Casting of the opera's three tenors had been conducted imaginatively. As revealed in the programme, three generations of singers had been chosen, so as to suggest Clotarco as the young Rinaldo, and Ubaldo as what he would become. This worked very well on stage, without hammering home the point. Richard Croft ably depicted the ambiguities of the commander Ubaldo, whilst the young Bernard Richter shone as Clotarco. He combined great beauty of tone with great strength, which he used sparingly to all the greater effect. I rather wished he had had more to sing, for his aria, 'Ah si plachi il fiero Nume' was a definite musical highlight. He looked every inch the brave yet sensitive soldier too. Mojca Erdmann employed a wealth of seductive wiles to tempt him from the Crusaders. Faced with a voice such as hers, one could well understand Clotarco's desertion, if indeed desertion it be: positive choice of love over war might be the apter description. And real love it did seem to be, from their heartfelt portrayal. In a very real sense, theirs was the more impressive tale. Vito Priante convincingly presented Idreno as the equally ambiguous counterpart to the 'Christian' Ubaldo.
Christof Loy's production was rather as one might have expected. Everything was very stylish, perhaps sometimes a little too much so. Trench coats were rather tiresomely in evidence; is it possible for a self-respecting piece of Regietheater to eschew them? And Ubaldo, as one might have predicted, sported Pinochet-like dark glasses and was confined to a wheelchair. Otherwise, abstraction was the general order of the day, with Armida's forest of enchantment represented by planks of wood rather than anything specifically magical. This did not really matter, since music can evoke far better than naturalistic scenery. The movement of the principals was well managed, as was Jochen Heckmann's choreography of the athletic Bewegungschor, who gave a very strong sense of the military world impinging upon the psychological. Good use was made of the wonderful space of the Felsenreitschule, which really drew the audience into the drama, whilst at the same time preserving a necessary distance.
This, as I said, was an extremely important production. It would be a splendid thing were it now to be seen elsewhere; it would be an even more splendid thing were it to lead to further productions. The world needs to know what a fine opera Armida is, and to allow itself to be further beguiled by more of Haydn's operatic riches.
Monday, 20 August 2007
Salzburg Festival: Le nozze di Figaro, 17 August 2007
Gerald Finley - Count Almaviva
Dorothea Röschmann - Countess Almaviva
Luca Pisaroni - Figaro
Jennifer O'Loughlin - Susanna
Martina Janková - Cherubino
Marie McLaughlin - Marcellina
Franz-Josef Selig - Bartolo
Patrick Henckens - Basilio
Oliver Ringelhahn - Don Curzio
Eva Liebau - Barbarina
Gabor Bretz - Antonio
Uli Kirsch - Cherubim
Claus Guth (director)
Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Daniel Harding (conductor)
This was a Marriage of Figaro without comedy, set in a claustrophobic Ibsen-like house. It was a Figaro which, owing to wrenching from its context, lost most of its class conflict. It was a Figaro in which humanity did not so much take a back seat as simply vanished. It was a Figaro whose sets and costumes remained resolutely monochrome. It was a Figaro in which the dry recitatives were prolonged to two or three times their usual length. It was a Figaro in which the conductor and orchestra occasionally departed company from the singers. It was a Figaro of nightmares; indeed, it seemed both to depict and to be a nightmare.
And yet ... it worked. Had anyone described it to me, I should have recoiled in horror. Somehow, this anti-Figaro provided a truly compelling dramatic experience. And so, though it pains me once again to be paying more attention to the production than the music, it truly is justified here. Claus Guth presented one of the best examples of Regietheater I have ever seen. What sounds perverse, to say the least, was thought through to the end. It did not grate against Mozart's music, nor even for the most part Lorenzo Da Ponte's libretto; instead, it turned their usual - and 'correct - understanding on its head, and created anew. 'Please do not try this at home,' might be useful advice; but the most fizzingly champagne-like of operas was transformed into a harrowing, even sadistic drama, which came closer to the devastating hyper-realism of Così fan tutte.
As Guth turned the dramatic screw ever harder, we understood not only his Countess, an hysteric on her way to becoming Elektra, but also, perversely, Mozart's incarnation of forgiveness. As Figaro lost his focal place to Cherubino and his alter ego, the silent yet ever-active anti-cupid-Cherubim, we understood Mozart's Figaro all the better and also understood the alternatives his and Da Ponte's tightly-constructed drama could nevertheless be interpreted as having left hanging. A truly nasty 'Non piú andrai' chilled one to the bone, as Figaro and his master (in more than one sense?) played sado-masochistically with Cherubino. Susanna, who had certainly been conducting an affair with the Count, became a truly manipulative minx - but then in a sense she always had been. To shed her winsomeness was not all loss.
This would not have worked without excellent dramatic performances. Luca Pisaroni played his initially enfeebled but increasingly strengthened role to a tee. Physically and vocally, there was real danger in this Figaro. Gerald Finley was the very incarnation of dark masculinity as Almaviva. I found Dorothea Röschmann less impressive as the Countess; she appears to have acquired a considerable wobble in her voice. Yet she entered with gusto into this perversion of the role as almost universally understood. And special mention should go to the late substitute for a substitute, Jennifer O'Loughlin as Susanna. After what seemed like a few initial nerves, one would never know have known that she had not been performing the role all along. There was not a weak performance on stage. The greatest surprise, and this is truly to the musicians' credit, was that the moment of the Countess's quasi-divine forgiveness none the less won through. It is not that we had forgotten the rest of the performance, but a chink of Figaro as we knew it shone through, as it had to. The director was wise enough to permit this, and thus clinched his dramatic triumph.
The Vienna Philharmonic played throughout like angels - and yet also took the dramatic renversement in their stride. Aided by Daniel Harding's direction, the orchestra could sound brusque and threatening, though never ugly, when required. Harding's direction of the recitatives was at one with Guth's dramatic conception; this was more the recounting of an Ibsen drama, less the fleeting passage of the supreme opera buffa, than one would ever have imagined possible. I suspect that this may have been at least in part an inheritance from Nikolaus Harnoncourt's direction last year. If the truth be told, Harding's reading would have sounded jejune out of context, for instance on an audio recording; yet there was an encouraging synergy between pit and director, which should not go unremarked. Not all of his mood-swing variations of tempo worked. When unduly exaggerated, they sounded like a bad parody of Mengelberg. However, when they did work, they added to the bizarre success of this quite remarkable production.
Dorothea Röschmann - Countess Almaviva
Luca Pisaroni - Figaro
Jennifer O'Loughlin - Susanna
Martina Janková - Cherubino
Marie McLaughlin - Marcellina
Franz-Josef Selig - Bartolo
Patrick Henckens - Basilio
Oliver Ringelhahn - Don Curzio
Eva Liebau - Barbarina
Gabor Bretz - Antonio
Uli Kirsch - Cherubim
Claus Guth (director)
Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Daniel Harding (conductor)
This was a Marriage of Figaro without comedy, set in a claustrophobic Ibsen-like house. It was a Figaro which, owing to wrenching from its context, lost most of its class conflict. It was a Figaro in which humanity did not so much take a back seat as simply vanished. It was a Figaro whose sets and costumes remained resolutely monochrome. It was a Figaro in which the dry recitatives were prolonged to two or three times their usual length. It was a Figaro in which the conductor and orchestra occasionally departed company from the singers. It was a Figaro of nightmares; indeed, it seemed both to depict and to be a nightmare.
And yet ... it worked. Had anyone described it to me, I should have recoiled in horror. Somehow, this anti-Figaro provided a truly compelling dramatic experience. And so, though it pains me once again to be paying more attention to the production than the music, it truly is justified here. Claus Guth presented one of the best examples of Regietheater I have ever seen. What sounds perverse, to say the least, was thought through to the end. It did not grate against Mozart's music, nor even for the most part Lorenzo Da Ponte's libretto; instead, it turned their usual - and 'correct - understanding on its head, and created anew. 'Please do not try this at home,' might be useful advice; but the most fizzingly champagne-like of operas was transformed into a harrowing, even sadistic drama, which came closer to the devastating hyper-realism of Così fan tutte.
As Guth turned the dramatic screw ever harder, we understood not only his Countess, an hysteric on her way to becoming Elektra, but also, perversely, Mozart's incarnation of forgiveness. As Figaro lost his focal place to Cherubino and his alter ego, the silent yet ever-active anti-cupid-Cherubim, we understood Mozart's Figaro all the better and also understood the alternatives his and Da Ponte's tightly-constructed drama could nevertheless be interpreted as having left hanging. A truly nasty 'Non piú andrai' chilled one to the bone, as Figaro and his master (in more than one sense?) played sado-masochistically with Cherubino. Susanna, who had certainly been conducting an affair with the Count, became a truly manipulative minx - but then in a sense she always had been. To shed her winsomeness was not all loss.
This would not have worked without excellent dramatic performances. Luca Pisaroni played his initially enfeebled but increasingly strengthened role to a tee. Physically and vocally, there was real danger in this Figaro. Gerald Finley was the very incarnation of dark masculinity as Almaviva. I found Dorothea Röschmann less impressive as the Countess; she appears to have acquired a considerable wobble in her voice. Yet she entered with gusto into this perversion of the role as almost universally understood. And special mention should go to the late substitute for a substitute, Jennifer O'Loughlin as Susanna. After what seemed like a few initial nerves, one would never know have known that she had not been performing the role all along. There was not a weak performance on stage. The greatest surprise, and this is truly to the musicians' credit, was that the moment of the Countess's quasi-divine forgiveness none the less won through. It is not that we had forgotten the rest of the performance, but a chink of Figaro as we knew it shone through, as it had to. The director was wise enough to permit this, and thus clinched his dramatic triumph.
The Vienna Philharmonic played throughout like angels - and yet also took the dramatic renversement in their stride. Aided by Daniel Harding's direction, the orchestra could sound brusque and threatening, though never ugly, when required. Harding's direction of the recitatives was at one with Guth's dramatic conception; this was more the recounting of an Ibsen drama, less the fleeting passage of the supreme opera buffa, than one would ever have imagined possible. I suspect that this may have been at least in part an inheritance from Nikolaus Harnoncourt's direction last year. If the truth be told, Harding's reading would have sounded jejune out of context, for instance on an audio recording; yet there was an encouraging synergy between pit and director, which should not go unremarked. Not all of his mood-swing variations of tempo worked. When unduly exaggerated, they sounded like a bad parody of Mengelberg. However, when they did work, they added to the bizarre success of this quite remarkable production.
Salzburg Festival: Maurizio Pollini, 16 August 2007
Schumann - Allegro in B minor, Op.8
Schumann - Kreisleriana: Acht Fantasien, Op.16
Chopin: Prelude in C sharp minor, Op.45
Chopin: Ballade no.2 in F major, Op.38
Chopin: Two Nocturnes, Op.27
Chopin: Scherzo no.3 in C sharp minor, Op.39
Chopin: Grande Polonaise brilliante in A flat major, Op.53
Maurizio Pollini (piano)
Maurizio Pollini's recitals in the Grosses Festspielhaus appear to have become an annual fixture - and rightly so, for a Pollini recital is always an event. This is not simply a matter of pianism or indeed musicianship, straightforwardly understood. Pollini certainly has at least as good a claim as anyone else to be considered the greatest living pianist, and if pushed, I should probably opt for him in that futile pursuit of ranking. But his programming, rather like that of Boulez, has always been a joy and a revelation in itself. A case in point would be last year's Salzburg recital, in which he illuminated late Mozart solo works with the crystalline beauty of Webern's Variations, Op.27, and the Boulez Second Piano Sonata's violent confrontation with and Aufhebung of the great Classical tradition, including both Mozart and Webern. This recital of Schumann and Chopin might seem less dramatic in such terms, but the thoughtfulness of his choices became ever clearer, without needing to be spelled out.
At the core of the programme, and of Pollini's performance, lay Schumann's musical and psychological dialectic between Florestan and Eusebius. There are doubtless many ways in which this could be expressed, but given its more or less explicit presence in the Kreisleriana, it seems especially apt. Fiery passion and inward self-searching are not in fact opposites, but mutually reinforcing products of the relationship between passion and intellect, which shapes not only the music of Schumann and Chopin, but also Pollini's response to it.
Pollini is one of the very few musicians to champion the Allegro, Op.8. In its progression from B minor to B major, it might seem to ape the classical Beethoven progression from darkness to light. In a sense it does, but already the state of tonality seems more blurred than in many of Beethoven's masterpieces. There is also already that sense of fragility and even breakdown which would become more manifest in late Schumann. Pollini's touch, in succession and sometimes even at once both crystalline and achingly tender, never yielded to the urge to sentimentalise. One would hardly expect this from him, but it is worth remarking upon, given some of the exhibitionistic excesses visited upon Romantic piano music. Kreisleriana continued in similar vein, with the added quality of sharply focused characterisation. Here was fought out the battle between Florestan and Eusebius, between Schumann's inner creative and destructive demons, between Classical formalism and wild-eyed Romanticism. Pollini's astonishing technical accomplishment, not least in the tricky lower registers of the keyboard, might have been expected, but that is no reason to take it for granted.
Chopin is not Schumann, of course, although the relationship between the two composers is fascinating. So these Schumannesque battles had to be subtly transposed to a different, yet related plane. Pollini, whatever his gainsayers might claim, has always been at his very best in Chopin, and this was no exception. The inner mystery of the Nocturnes was revealed in spell-binding fashion. Such were the infinite variety and gentleness of his touch, that one could almost fancy oneself in a Debussian world of piano without hammers. Not that the sterner moments went for nothing, far from it, as we discovered even more in the F major Ballade and C sharp minor Scherzo. These were tours de force of virtuoso pianism, but they were also great dramas, and the swift mood changes of the Ballade in particular were made to tell, without exaggerated point-scoring. As with the Schumann pieces, one could perceive that the moods were in some sense different perceptions or conceptions of the same musical Idea, not least since the structures were so clearly delineated. Just because Chopin's structures are not those of the Classical masters does not mean that they are not to be observed; indeed, this makes it all the more imperative that they be perceived. This was a great recital indeed, one that excited, provoked, and moved. So did the three encores: the 'Raindrop' Prelude, the 'Revolutionary' Study, and the G minor Ballade. The Ballade was played last, and provided the most thrilling peroration imaginable.
Schumann - Kreisleriana: Acht Fantasien, Op.16
Chopin: Prelude in C sharp minor, Op.45
Chopin: Ballade no.2 in F major, Op.38
Chopin: Two Nocturnes, Op.27
Chopin: Scherzo no.3 in C sharp minor, Op.39
Chopin: Grande Polonaise brilliante in A flat major, Op.53
Maurizio Pollini (piano)
Maurizio Pollini's recitals in the Grosses Festspielhaus appear to have become an annual fixture - and rightly so, for a Pollini recital is always an event. This is not simply a matter of pianism or indeed musicianship, straightforwardly understood. Pollini certainly has at least as good a claim as anyone else to be considered the greatest living pianist, and if pushed, I should probably opt for him in that futile pursuit of ranking. But his programming, rather like that of Boulez, has always been a joy and a revelation in itself. A case in point would be last year's Salzburg recital, in which he illuminated late Mozart solo works with the crystalline beauty of Webern's Variations, Op.27, and the Boulez Second Piano Sonata's violent confrontation with and Aufhebung of the great Classical tradition, including both Mozart and Webern. This recital of Schumann and Chopin might seem less dramatic in such terms, but the thoughtfulness of his choices became ever clearer, without needing to be spelled out.
At the core of the programme, and of Pollini's performance, lay Schumann's musical and psychological dialectic between Florestan and Eusebius. There are doubtless many ways in which this could be expressed, but given its more or less explicit presence in the Kreisleriana, it seems especially apt. Fiery passion and inward self-searching are not in fact opposites, but mutually reinforcing products of the relationship between passion and intellect, which shapes not only the music of Schumann and Chopin, but also Pollini's response to it.
Pollini is one of the very few musicians to champion the Allegro, Op.8. In its progression from B minor to B major, it might seem to ape the classical Beethoven progression from darkness to light. In a sense it does, but already the state of tonality seems more blurred than in many of Beethoven's masterpieces. There is also already that sense of fragility and even breakdown which would become more manifest in late Schumann. Pollini's touch, in succession and sometimes even at once both crystalline and achingly tender, never yielded to the urge to sentimentalise. One would hardly expect this from him, but it is worth remarking upon, given some of the exhibitionistic excesses visited upon Romantic piano music. Kreisleriana continued in similar vein, with the added quality of sharply focused characterisation. Here was fought out the battle between Florestan and Eusebius, between Schumann's inner creative and destructive demons, between Classical formalism and wild-eyed Romanticism. Pollini's astonishing technical accomplishment, not least in the tricky lower registers of the keyboard, might have been expected, but that is no reason to take it for granted.
Chopin is not Schumann, of course, although the relationship between the two composers is fascinating. So these Schumannesque battles had to be subtly transposed to a different, yet related plane. Pollini, whatever his gainsayers might claim, has always been at his very best in Chopin, and this was no exception. The inner mystery of the Nocturnes was revealed in spell-binding fashion. Such were the infinite variety and gentleness of his touch, that one could almost fancy oneself in a Debussian world of piano without hammers. Not that the sterner moments went for nothing, far from it, as we discovered even more in the F major Ballade and C sharp minor Scherzo. These were tours de force of virtuoso pianism, but they were also great dramas, and the swift mood changes of the Ballade in particular were made to tell, without exaggerated point-scoring. As with the Schumann pieces, one could perceive that the moods were in some sense different perceptions or conceptions of the same musical Idea, not least since the structures were so clearly delineated. Just because Chopin's structures are not those of the Classical masters does not mean that they are not to be observed; indeed, this makes it all the more imperative that they be perceived. This was a great recital indeed, one that excited, provoked, and moved. So did the three encores: the 'Raindrop' Prelude, the 'Revolutionary' Study, and the G minor Ballade. The Ballade was played last, and provided the most thrilling peroration imaginable.
Thursday, 16 August 2007
Salzburg Festival: Benvenuto Cellini, 15 August 2007
Benvenuto Cellini - Burkhard Fritz
Fieramosca - Laurent Nouari
Giacomo Balducci - Brindley Sherratt
Pope Clemens VII - Mikhail Petrenko
Teresa - Mija Kovalvska
Ascanio - Kate Aldrich
Francesco - Xavier Mas
Bernardino - Roberto Tagliavini
Pompeo - Adam Plachetka
Innkeeper - Sung-Keun Park
Fieramosca - Laurent Nouari
Giacomo Balducci - Brindley Sherratt
Pope Clemens VII - Mikhail Petrenko
Teresa - Mija Kovalvska
Ascanio - Kate Aldrich
Francesco - Xavier Mas
Bernardino - Roberto Tagliavini
Pompeo - Adam Plachetka
Innkeeper - Sung-Keun Park
Phillip Stölzl (director)
Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Valery Gergiev (conductor)
We cannot say that we were not warned. The Festival's publicity trumpeted director Phillip Stölzl's background in pop music videos, advertising, and cinema. Stölzl trumpeted his belief in a programme interview that 'the cultural perception of my generation is very strongly related to film no matter what'. And this is what we got: a panoply of projection and special effects, introduced by a cinematic title screen. Some of this worked well enough; the carnival and forging scenes were undeniably thrilling.
Yet the whole 'show' - the word seems unusually appropriate in this case - sometimes degenerated into what Wagner accused Meyerbeer of creating: 'effect without cause'. (Nietzsche turned the accusation round onto Wagner, utterly unjustly, but therein lies a different tale.) Now it might be claimed that Benvenuto Cellini is not an inappropriate case for such treatment, that it was written for Paris after all, and may even qualify as grand opera. And is not grand opera a forerunner of the movies? Well, the latter may be the case - Adorno once said as much - but as for the rest: the most charitable answer must be 'not really'. Cellini is an extraordinary work, drawing inspiration from a range of sources one might have thought incompatible, but Les Huguenots it is not, still less Aida (thank God!) Even at this stage of his career, long before the neo-Gluckian Les Troyens, the Romanticism in Berlioz thrives on the dialectic with his Classicism.
Moreover, some aspects of the stage action were simply bizarre, detracting from whatever coherence the basic approach might have yielded. Why on earth was there a walking vacuum cleaner during Teresa's Act I romance? Why did Stölzl's 'post-futuristic Rome' - whatever that might mean - look more like New York? (We do have cinema in Europe, I think.) Perhaps most bafflingly of all, why was Ascanio a robot? As for the Pope, he resembled Willy Wonka, from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, regaled by some very odd male dancers. To say that the Pope's presentation jarred with the dignity of Berlioz's music, so very different from that written for other characters, would be the understatement of the year. It was very 'all-singing, all-dancing', and doubtless entertained many in the audience, but to what dramatic end? I have no idea. If this were a way of demonstrating the empty banality of modern popular culture, there were surely better and certainly cheaper ways of doing this. However, I think it may actually have been a celebration of such trash: in which case, might we not leave Berlioz out of it?
It is not usually my practice to concentrate so heavily upon the production, but this hardly gave one a choice. One was treated like an infant with an attention span of a few seconds, since so much had to be 'going on' all of the time. This may be how one produces a pop video, but in the theatre less is usually more. The music was almost relegated to the status of a soundtrack. It was brilliantly, if breathlessly, performed by the Vienna Philharmonic under Gergiev. He could do with learning some lessons from his predecessor at the LSO, Sir Colin Davis. But maybe he was swayed by the production: there was certainly a virtuosic fit. The chorus was outstanding throughout, albeit in a similar fashion. It was splendid to have a Heldentenor of Burkhard Fritz's stature in the obscenely demanding title role. He rarely sounded totally at ease with the French, but it remained a virile, almost overpowering portrayal. Mija Kovalvska made a few slips as Teresa early on, but grew into the role, another challenge of extreme proportions. I must mention Kate Aldrich's feat of singing with great beauty and dramatic credibility Ascanio's aria, 'Mais qu'ai-je donc?', whilst having her head ludicrously severed from her robotic 'body'. I can only assume that this referred to the apprentice's fear that his master would soon lose his head. But whilst undeniably 'spectacle' of considerable order, it really added nothing other than confusion to the drama.
This work is intimately concerned with the artist and his relationship towards uncomprehending society. Here the relationship was in danger of being inverted. The fine cast and orchestra were not well served by this reversal.
Salzburg Festival: Berlioz concert, VPO/Riccardo Muti, 14 August 2007
Hector Berlioz
Symphonie fantastique, Op.14
Lélio, ou Le retour à la vie, Op.14b
Gérard Depardieu (narrator)
Michael Schade (tenor)
Ludovic Tézier (baritone)
Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Riccardo Muti (conductor)
Performances of Lélio would appear to happen roughly once in a blue moon. Since Berlioz stipulated that his sequel should be performed only after a performance of the Symphonie fantastique, it does not seem unreasonable to honour his request, given the rarity value of hearing Lélio at all. There are musical and programmatic relationships between the works, and Lélio would most likely seem simply odd without its elder sibling.
Short of engaging Sir Colin Davis, who remains hors concours amongst today's conductors of Berlioz, the pairing of Riccardo Muti and the Vienna Philharmonic augured well, and so it turned out. Muti's is a relatively Classical Berlioz, although that may partly have been a product of the orchestra's identity. Yet whilst the musical line retained a Classical coherence throughout, this did not preclude Romantic fire, where necessary - as opposed to wherever possible. This was certainly the case at the climaxes of both works. Muti's Gluck - a composer of whose music he is indubitably the finest living conductor - sprang to mind, not inappropriately, given Berlioz's reverence for the eighteenth-century dramatic master.
The Symphonie's waltz owed its ebb and flow to a keen ear for orchestral colour and balance, and to perfectly judged rubato. If the VPO cannot waltz, then nobody can. The Scène aux champs can easily drag in the wrong hands; here there was no question of that. Instead, Berlioz showed himself a worth heir to the Beethoven of the Pastoral Symphony, albeit with colours that were all his - and the orchestra's - own. The English horn shone in its solo, and the kettledrums at the end (and in the following movement) could hardly have been more commanding in the perfection of their crucial crescendi and diminuendi. I was slightly surprised by the sheer weirdness of the sound of the muted horns at the beginning of the fourth movement. Those fabled Vienna horns clearly do not have to do Gemütlichkeit. And the Witches' Sabbath was duly riotous, Tricky rhythms, as throughout, were expertly handled, as were their harmonic implications, without ever sacrificing the necessary sense of abandon. The bells for once sounded just right: we were in a churchyard after all. Muti knew where the whole work was going right from the very start. This is an orchestral showpiece, but that should be a given, not an end. It is a symphony, which is what we heard, most impressively.
Lélio is, however, anything but a symphony. On the page it must seem a motley, indeed bizarre, collection of pieces, strung together by an equally strange narration. It needs an excellent performance - and probably needs the Symphonie too - to come off. I do not know whether the various participants had ever performed the work before; one would never have guessed that they had not. Depardieu proved a commanding and sensitive narrator: master of ceremonies might be a more appropriate term. What could so easily seem a rambling piece of outdated self-regard proved actually to be a fascinating summit of the strange world of French Romanticism. It was amusing to hear him tell the VPO that its players, having performed his Tempest fantasy, would now be ready to tackle more demanding works, for they impressed just as much as they had during the first part of the concert. The Vienna State Opera Chorus was wonderfully precise, and yet possessed the necessary weight for its great moments too. The soloists impressed, especially the versatile Michael Schade. Horatio's fisherman's song (a setting of his text by the composer/narrator) was delectable. Staging and lighting were well conceived. I had wondered to start with whether it would have been preferable to have the musicians hidden from view until the Shakespeare fantasy, as was Berlioz's wish, rather than veiled, but the latter course worked well - and added to the phantasmagorical effect. This performance made a very strong case indeed for more frequent performance. Let us hope that this case will be heeded.
Salzburg Festival: West-Eastern Divan Orchestra/Daniel Barenboim, 13 August 2007
Beethoven - Overture: Leonore, no.III, Op.72
Schoenberg - Variations for Orchestra, Op.31
Tchaikovsky - Symphony no.6 in B minor, Op.74, 'Pathétique'
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)
The last time I heard this orchestra and conductor was in London, for a concert in memory of Edward Said, the orchestra's co-founder and Barenboim's comrade-in-arms. That was an extremely moving occasion, on which I had thought that, insofar as it is possible to put politics aside - a big 'insofar', given the circumstances - the performances had little to fear by comparison with those given by many professional orchestras, and in terms of commitment surpassed a good number thereof. This concert, however, was something quite different: something that I cannot imagine any sentient being would ever forget.
The third Leonore Overture received one of the best readings I have heard of it, certainly since Furtwängler. How rare is the opportunity to hear an orchestra of this size - no fewer than eighteen first violins, with other sections proportioned accordingly - perform Beethoven nowadays. Indeed, I do not think I ever have 'in the flesh'. The depth of tone, above all in the burnished strings but not only there, put me immediately in mind of Furtwängler's Berlin Philharmonic, as did the profundity of commitment from all concerned. The woodwind shone, the brass imposed, the kettledrums thrilled. And then, of course, there was the trumpet call. There was never to be any question that this meant something more than words, more than politics, more than any mortal, could ever express. The stunned silence of the hall, as its echoes resounded, spoke more truly than any politician could ever imagine. The quality of freedom is not strained, as Beethoven knew only too well. So did his performers.
All three works may have been said to boast a Furtwängler connection - although this may have been quite accidental: many works do, after all. It was the last century's greatest conductor, nevertheless, who conducted the first performance of this masterpiece by that century's greatest composer. Card-carrying Schoenbergian though I may be, ardent admirer of the Variations though I may be, this performance was nothing less than a total revelation of the work's riches and its great dramatic sweep. No recorded performance I had heard, whether by Karajan, Gielen, Boulez, Rattle, even Mitropolous, prepared me for the intensity of this reading. It is so easy to stereotype conductors' readings of works, often before one has even heard them, so that one could talk of Boulez's clarity and coolness, Karajan's glossiness, etc., etc. Much of this talk is utterly worthless. What I should say here is that it had everything: clarity of line and yet dramatic propulsion, a well-nigh perfect balance between horizontal and vertical elements, a conductor and orchestra who played it as though their lives depended upon it but also as if they had been playing it together for years - which, of course, they had not. Brahms, Wagner, and Mahler loomed large of course, as did Bach, but this was a performance which took Schoenberg upon his own terms. It did not sound 'like' anyone but him, and was all the better for it. If this partnership can work such wonders - and I use the term as much theologically as in any other manner - with the Schoenberg Variations, then it really ought to turn to Webern, and indeed to the notoriously hermetic Stravinsky Aldous Huxley Variations. We should probably soon wonder what all the fuss had been about. Never, I should wager, has the Finale's initial 'BACH' statement sounded so triumphant, and this was owed as much to its perfect placing within the whole as to the beguiling orchestral sonorities.
Furtwängler conducted a celebrated performance of the Tchaikovsky symphony, of course, but there was no especial kinship here, other than something we should not hesitate to call greatness. If anything, Barenboim and his orchestra sounded closer to Mravinsky and the old Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra. This may have had something to do with the Russian influence on string playing to which Barenboim referred in a programme interview, but that cannot have been the whole story, for the 'sound' was very different from that produced for the Beethoven and Schoenberg - and rightly so.
It seems almost otiose to have to say once again that structure and passion worked hand in hand, but this is far rarer than one might imagine. Each movement received telling characterisation, and wondrous colouring, allowing almost every instrument, let alone every section, to shine, an opportunity every instrument took. The way the downward scales of the 'cellos and basses evoked the pealing of bells was a very special experience indeed, but I could give similar examples for almost all of the orchestra. As in both of the previous works, there was no question of routine, even a routine at the highest technical level. Risks were taken, and paid off triumphantly, penetrating to the emotional and intellectual core - one should probably add biographical too - of the symphony. The March thrilled, as the giant orchestra hurtled towards the precipice. One could almost forgive the premature applause that followed. (In what may, I suspect, be a first, a similar thing had happened before the Finale of the Schoenberg. Barenboim had curtailed that immediately, for which we should all have been thankful.) The final movement's threnody was noble of sonority - such richness, and yet never for its own sake - and always heading towards that terrible final silence. There was nothing left to say and, despite the thunderous applause, there was to be no encore.
Schoenberg - Variations for Orchestra, Op.31
Tchaikovsky - Symphony no.6 in B minor, Op.74, 'Pathétique'
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)
The last time I heard this orchestra and conductor was in London, for a concert in memory of Edward Said, the orchestra's co-founder and Barenboim's comrade-in-arms. That was an extremely moving occasion, on which I had thought that, insofar as it is possible to put politics aside - a big 'insofar', given the circumstances - the performances had little to fear by comparison with those given by many professional orchestras, and in terms of commitment surpassed a good number thereof. This concert, however, was something quite different: something that I cannot imagine any sentient being would ever forget.
The third Leonore Overture received one of the best readings I have heard of it, certainly since Furtwängler. How rare is the opportunity to hear an orchestra of this size - no fewer than eighteen first violins, with other sections proportioned accordingly - perform Beethoven nowadays. Indeed, I do not think I ever have 'in the flesh'. The depth of tone, above all in the burnished strings but not only there, put me immediately in mind of Furtwängler's Berlin Philharmonic, as did the profundity of commitment from all concerned. The woodwind shone, the brass imposed, the kettledrums thrilled. And then, of course, there was the trumpet call. There was never to be any question that this meant something more than words, more than politics, more than any mortal, could ever express. The stunned silence of the hall, as its echoes resounded, spoke more truly than any politician could ever imagine. The quality of freedom is not strained, as Beethoven knew only too well. So did his performers.
All three works may have been said to boast a Furtwängler connection - although this may have been quite accidental: many works do, after all. It was the last century's greatest conductor, nevertheless, who conducted the first performance of this masterpiece by that century's greatest composer. Card-carrying Schoenbergian though I may be, ardent admirer of the Variations though I may be, this performance was nothing less than a total revelation of the work's riches and its great dramatic sweep. No recorded performance I had heard, whether by Karajan, Gielen, Boulez, Rattle, even Mitropolous, prepared me for the intensity of this reading. It is so easy to stereotype conductors' readings of works, often before one has even heard them, so that one could talk of Boulez's clarity and coolness, Karajan's glossiness, etc., etc. Much of this talk is utterly worthless. What I should say here is that it had everything: clarity of line and yet dramatic propulsion, a well-nigh perfect balance between horizontal and vertical elements, a conductor and orchestra who played it as though their lives depended upon it but also as if they had been playing it together for years - which, of course, they had not. Brahms, Wagner, and Mahler loomed large of course, as did Bach, but this was a performance which took Schoenberg upon his own terms. It did not sound 'like' anyone but him, and was all the better for it. If this partnership can work such wonders - and I use the term as much theologically as in any other manner - with the Schoenberg Variations, then it really ought to turn to Webern, and indeed to the notoriously hermetic Stravinsky Aldous Huxley Variations. We should probably soon wonder what all the fuss had been about. Never, I should wager, has the Finale's initial 'BACH' statement sounded so triumphant, and this was owed as much to its perfect placing within the whole as to the beguiling orchestral sonorities.
Furtwängler conducted a celebrated performance of the Tchaikovsky symphony, of course, but there was no especial kinship here, other than something we should not hesitate to call greatness. If anything, Barenboim and his orchestra sounded closer to Mravinsky and the old Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra. This may have had something to do with the Russian influence on string playing to which Barenboim referred in a programme interview, but that cannot have been the whole story, for the 'sound' was very different from that produced for the Beethoven and Schoenberg - and rightly so.
It seems almost otiose to have to say once again that structure and passion worked hand in hand, but this is far rarer than one might imagine. Each movement received telling characterisation, and wondrous colouring, allowing almost every instrument, let alone every section, to shine, an opportunity every instrument took. The way the downward scales of the 'cellos and basses evoked the pealing of bells was a very special experience indeed, but I could give similar examples for almost all of the orchestra. As in both of the previous works, there was no question of routine, even a routine at the highest technical level. Risks were taken, and paid off triumphantly, penetrating to the emotional and intellectual core - one should probably add biographical too - of the symphony. The March thrilled, as the giant orchestra hurtled towards the precipice. One could almost forgive the premature applause that followed. (In what may, I suspect, be a first, a similar thing had happened before the Finale of the Schoenberg. Barenboim had curtailed that immediately, for which we should all have been thankful.) The final movement's threnody was noble of sonority - such richness, and yet never for its own sake - and always heading towards that terrible final silence. There was nothing left to say and, despite the thunderous applause, there was to be no encore.
Tuesday, 14 August 2007
Salzburg Festival: Der Schauspieldirektor/Bastien und Bastienne, 12 August 2007
Mozart: Der Schauspieldirektor/Bastien und Bastienne
12 August 2007, Salzburger Marionettentheater
Alfred Kleinhenz - Frank, der Schauspieldirektor
Radu Cojocariu - Buff, sein Assistent/Colas
Christiane Karg - Mlle Silberklang/Bastienne 1
Ina Schlingensiepen - Mme Herz/Bastienne 2
Bernhard Berchtold - M. Vogelsang/Bastien
Junge Philharmonie Salzburg
Elisabeth Fuchs (conductor)
Thomas Reichert (director)
Puppenspieler des Salzburger Marionettentheaters
The conceit of this charming production was to have the play being produced in Der Schauspieldirektor as Bastien und Bastienne, the former framing the latter. This resulted in two Bastiennes, who each sang half of the opera, by way of their Schauspieldirektor auditions. By programming live music at the Marionette Theater, this was a reversion to the theatre's former customary practice, before recordings took over. There was a good number of children at the performance, some quieter than others. Doubtless many enjoyed it, but I wondered whether the proceedings - without interval - might have been a bit long for some.
The spoken dialogue was all well done: clearly enunciated and acted well. The young singing cast complemented Alfred Kleinhenz in the only all-speaking role. Radu Cojocariu is clearly both an accomplished actor and a fine singer, as he showed in his dual role as the assistant Buff and the ersatz-magician, Colas. (He played himself on stage, rather than being represented by a puppet, adding an amusing element of physical interaction between humans and marionettes.) All parts were well taken, making reasonable allowances for the very occasional slip in the ladies' coloratura. They worked well in ensemble too, which is far from always the case with soloists; here there was a real sense of give and take, of listening to each other and responding.
The young Salzburg orchestra acquitted itself well too, under Elisabeth Fuchs. I rather feared the worst when, following a punchy Schauspieldirektor overture, its Bastien and Bastienne counterpart sounded somewhat emaciated. It need not actually sound 'like' the first movement of the Eroica, whatever the identity of their themes, but it should have sweetness and a certain dramatic drive at least. Thankfully, this was a rare exception, and particular highpoints came with Colas's nonsense aria, 'Diggi, daggi...' - singer and orchestra having fun and furthering the action in tandem - and with the later Schaupsieldirektor numbers.
The ultimate emphasis of the latter work is of course upon collaboration, not competition. Not forgetting the intricate, flawless manipulation of the puppets, this relatively modest production proved a fine example of how art, or indeed anything else, is thus best served. It is not always the most magnificent spectacles that proffer the finer result.
Monday, 6 August 2007
Prom 31: Brahms, Elgar, Strauss
5 August 2007
Brahms: Variations on a theme by Haydn, Op.56a
Elgar: Variations on an original theme ('Enigma')
Strauss: Oboe Concerto in D major
Strauss: Suite from Der Rosenkavalier
Alexei Ogrintchouk (oboe)
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Gennadi Rozhdestvensky (conductor)
This concert should have been conducted by Daniele Gatti, but illness had caused him to withdraw, leaving Gennadi Rozhdestvensky to deputise. I could not help thinking that it might have been a different occasion without this intervention from Fate; nor could I help thinking that Rozhdestvensky would have been happier conducting Prokofiev, or some other music with which he was more closely associated. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is not London's finest, but I have heard it perform more than creditably under Gatti, in Mahler and Berg. Here, for much of the time, it did not.
The concert opened with a weak performance of the Brahms Variations on a theme by Haydn. (Brahms used this title, so I do not think we need modishly change it, now that we believe that Haydn composed neither the theme, nor the divertimento in which Brahms discovered it.) It was not perverse, as was the performance Sir Simon Rattle gave with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra at the Proms a few years ago, when far too much was fussily underlined, or italicised, or both. However, the orchestra sounded lacklustre, and whilst certain variations received a degree of characterisation, others went for little, and there was almost no sense of forming part of a greater whole. It is not an easy thing to characterise and yet to integrate into a great symphonic sweep, yet the piece demands it. Furtwängler was able to do this, as have quite a few subsequent conductors, but it was not to be. Throughout, the strings, although hardly few in number, sounded faint and watery; that echt-Brahmsian dark-mahogany richness of tone was never to be heard. The final peroration sounded brighter, but when the most impressive things were a suitably rustic contrabasson and the sonorous ringing of the triangle, more than a little was amiss. Here, as elsewhere throughout the evening, members of the orchestra were sometimes alarmingly out of kilter with their colleagues.
The Enigma Variations were less lacklustre, though hardly memorable. This was not a typically 'English' reading. There is nothing wrong with that, for different perspectives can shed interesting light on well-known works, but it did not seem a fully considered alternative. Flashes of orchestral colour, often surprisingly brash, alternated with a great deal of run-of-the-mill playing. 'Nimrod' was deeply felt, an almost Beethovenian oasis of noble calm, but little of the rest lived up to its promise. The brass section acquitted itself very well, as it would whenever called upon throughout the night. Unfortunately, this served above all to highlight the shortcomings of the wishy-washy strings.
The second half was better. Perhaps Strauss was more Rozhdestvensky's thing, or perhaps he simply knew the pieces better. I am not quite sure that the latter was true, at least in the case of the Oboe Concerto. For whilst the ensemble was much improved, he seemed content to adopt an 'accompanying' role that seasoned Straussians such as Kempe or Karajan would never have considered. The orchestral woodwind provided its own piquant detail from time to time, but this was really the soloist's show. Suffice it to say that Alexei Ogrintchouk proved a very fine oboist - and a very fine musician. Ever attentive to the twists and turns of Strauss's often treacherously lengthy lines, his varied singing tone, aided by crafty yet concealed tonguing, lifted the evening's music-making to another level. This neo-Mozartian product of Strauss's fabled 'Indian summer' sounded like the lyrical successor to Daphne that it is, rather than a soloist's showcase. A pupil of Maurice Bourgue and already Principal Oboist of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Ogrintchouk deserves to go far indeed.
A suite from Der Rosenkavalier ended the concert. Here, at last, the whole orchestra sounded more committed. If the strings hardly compared to those of Vienna, at least they sounded less grey. The leader, Clio Gould's solo was quite delectable; she had been poorly served by her colleagues for most of the concert. The brass once again and the percussion shone. The horns' coital whooping during the Overture truly sounded like the 'real thing'. Yet the selection was strangely made, and did not tally with the 1945 Suite Michael Kennedy delineated in the programme. It may have been that selection (possibly by Artur Rodzinski) minus the Presentation of the Rose and the excerpt from the Trio; at any rate, those moments of sweet repose were absent, lending the rather arbitrary progression of what remained an undue brashness. All in all, this was not an evening of triumph, save for that undoubtedly pertaining to Ogrintchouk.
Wednesday, 25 July 2007
Così fan tutte, 22 July 2007
Così fan tutte, Royal Opera, Sunday 22 July 2007
Matthew Polenzani - Ferrando
Lorenzo Regazzo - Guglielmo
Sir Thomas Allen - Don Alfonso
Dorothea Röschmann - Fiordiligi
Elīna Garanča - Dorabella
Rebecca Evans - Despina
Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House
Sir Colin Davis (conductor)
Jonathan Miller (director)
Così fan tutte may well be the most ruthlessly, painfully true of all dramas. How could anyone ever have thought it superficial? Shocking, yes, but trivial? Even Tristan, devastating indictment of romantic love though it may be, succumbs to an extent to the glorification of that most destructive manifestation of the will to power: what Wagner, in correspondence, called Alberich's liebesgelüste. (Wagner was avoiding capitalisation of nouns during this 'revolutionary' period.) Così, by virtue of its highly contrived plot and development – Lorenzo Da Ponte knew precisely what he was doing – barely pretends at a false reconciliation, even, perhaps especially, at the very end. Mozart's ravishing music presents not a romantic utopia but rather how things really are. Its realism is truly shocking, all the more so given the aching beauty with which it is expressed. Where even most tragedies will flinch, this most sophisticated of comedies does not. Maybe Die Meistersinger, a far darker work than many realise, comes closest, yet it also does not depict the human condition quite so unsparingly as Così.
Matthew Polenzani - Ferrando
Lorenzo Regazzo - Guglielmo
Sir Thomas Allen - Don Alfonso
Dorothea Röschmann - Fiordiligi
Elīna Garanča - Dorabella
Rebecca Evans - Despina
Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House
Sir Colin Davis (conductor)
Jonathan Miller (director)
Così fan tutte may well be the most ruthlessly, painfully true of all dramas. How could anyone ever have thought it superficial? Shocking, yes, but trivial? Even Tristan, devastating indictment of romantic love though it may be, succumbs to an extent to the glorification of that most destructive manifestation of the will to power: what Wagner, in correspondence, called Alberich's liebesgelüste. (Wagner was avoiding capitalisation of nouns during this 'revolutionary' period.) Così, by virtue of its highly contrived plot and development – Lorenzo Da Ponte knew precisely what he was doing – barely pretends at a false reconciliation, even, perhaps especially, at the very end. Mozart's ravishing music presents not a romantic utopia but rather how things really are. Its realism is truly shocking, all the more so given the aching beauty with which it is expressed. Where even most tragedies will flinch, this most sophisticated of comedies does not. Maybe Die Meistersinger, a far darker work than many realise, comes closest, yet it also does not depict the human condition quite so unsparingly as Così.
All of the singers impressed. Polenzani and Regazzo were both new to me, but acquitted themselves very well, both vocally and dramatically, with a sure command of line and style. As Ferrando, Polenzani matched a honeyed tone with just the right amount of virility, without ever descending into coarseness, as many tenors have been known to do in this role. Regazzo's vocal swagger was never overdone, but underlined the difference between him and his more reflective partner-in-deception. The Ferranese sisters were both well matched and well contrasted. Garança, with her appealingly creamy yet always secure tone, fully deserves the plaudits she has won. Röschmann, if a little less colourful, exhibited her expected fine command of Mozartian style. Rebecca Evans proved a refreshingly youthful, vigorous Despina, with nothing of the usual old maid about her: acting included, rather than precluded, singing. But the presiding genius on stage was Thomas Allen, whose portrayal, in whichever production I have seen him, now comes close to definitive. Watching, directing, manipulating, here is the supremely judged watchmaker – or at least he would be were there no conductor to consider.
For Sir Colin Davis's reading came as close to perfection as we may ever expect to hear. It might be foolish to say without reservation that this was his greatest performance of any work, but I should not hesitate to say that he has done nothing greater. I have never doubted that Mozart is the most difficult composer to perform well, not least since the perfection in his music requires that ever elusive perfection from the performer. The balance between every aspect of Mozart's requirements – melody, harmony, counterpoint, instrumentation, phrasing, articulation ... – is something in which Davis came as close to perfection as anyone since Karl Böhm. In his more recent Mozart performances, I have noticed a greater flexibility. This was certainly in evidence here, perhaps more so than in any performance of his I have yet heard. Some passages (e.g., during the Overture and Fiordiligi's Act II Aria, 'Per pieta') were taken daringly slowly, creating a magical stillness in which every heartbeat might be heard, and yet so perfectly that they never tipped into langour. Fleetness elsewhere was never purchased at the expense of that ruinous hard-driven quality that afflicts almost all 'period' or 'period-influenced' Mozart. Nor, I hardly need say, was there any of the alternate greyness and sourness exhibited by orchestras of that ilk. Instead, the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House came as close to usurping the Vienna Philharmonic's Mozart crown as any orchestra ever will. (And it should, of course, be remembered that on a bad day, and specifically with an inferior conductor, Viennese Mozart will fall far short of this.) Bubbling woodwind, the tenderly caressing horns of cuckoldry during 'Per pieta', strings silky almost beyond belief, kettledrum-playing that judged - again! - to perfection the weight required to underpin harmonic and rhythmic momentum: all this and more was there.
The problem, sadly, lay with the production. At least it does for me, for I seem to be almost the only person who dislikes it. Part of the difficulty I have with it is that it is not nearly so clever as it thinks it is, or rather as Jonathan Miller thinks it is. He is right to point to the work's artificiality. It is that, of course, which permits its utterly ruthless realism; such are dialectics. Yet the artificiality is not there for its own sake, but in order to further the realism. I have no especial problem with the panoply of gadgetry, not least those incessantly employed mobile telephones, although less would be so much more here. There is far too much playing 'for laughs': this comedy is not, any more than Le Misanthrope, low farce. Most of the audience seemed to love this, taking up any opportunity to laugh at the most innoportune moments. However, the great stumbling block for me, as it was the previous time I saw this production, is the presentation of Ferrando and Guglielmo in their 'Albanian' disguises. One can understand the impulse to portray them very differently from their initial, Gieves and Hawkes-clad state, although even the necessity for that is debatable. (In so artifical a work, might it not be all the more powerful to render them very close, or even identical, to how they have always been?) But to present them in the most unattractive way possible, to compel fine artists to act with utterly unconvincing loutish behaviour, to make anyone who cares to consider the matter wonder how on earth anyone, let alone our ladies from Ferrara, would give men of such bizarre and unbecoming appearance even a second glance: not only does this more than strain credulity, it cheapens this most sophisticated of works. Whatever was Miller thinking of? This could not detract too much from the sublimity of the musical performance. But what a shame...
Tuesday, 17 July 2007
Prom 4, Berio Sinfonia and Rossini Stabat Mater, 16 July 2007
Prom no.4, Monday 16 July 2007
Luciano Berio, Sinfonia
Gioachino Rossini, Stabat Mater
Janice Watson (soprano)
Joyce DiDonato (mezzo-soprano)
Colin Lee (tenor)
Ildar Abdrazakov (bass)
Swingle Singers
Chorus and Orchestra of the Academy of Santa Cecilia, Rome
Antonio Pappano (conductor)
The obvious connection one might make between these two works, or perhaps better between their composers, is their Italian nationality. This might well have been a ploy on the part of the Proms, or indeed Antonio Pappano, to lure a greater audience for the Berio Sinfonia by presenting Rossini's Stabat mater. If so, all power to whomever one should credit. It is sad that one of the defining works, indeed classics, of post-war music should require such sugaring of the pill, but such is the harsh reality. (Is it not also sad that we should still find ourselves employing the catch-all title 'post-war' more than sixty years after the fabled 'year zero' of the avant-garde, as though nothing has changed then since then? So much has; yet has Berio, let alone Stockhausen, become any more 'popular' than he was in the 1950s and '60s?) However, there exists perhaps a more interesting, even if unconscious, kinship between these two pieces. Both subvert expectations of what should be entailed by their respective or apparent genres.
In Sinfonia, Berio employed an Italian title to alert us, as if we needed such assistance, to the distancing from the great German symphonic tradition. In the infomative programme note, Paul Griffiths pointed to the way in which the work's five movements 'differ not so much in their speed through time as in the kind of time they uncover.' Moreover, 'Sinfonia speaks not with the persuasive individuality of a symphony by Beethoven but as a crowd, clamorous and multifarious.' At the same time, both Beethoven and Berio drew inspiration from and confronted the world in which they lived, and emphatically not just the world of music. One of the most obvious ways in which Berio does this is through the words presented by the amplified voices (here the excellent Swingle Singers, who, in an earlier incarnation, gave both the work's first performance and its British premiere, the latter at the Proms).
Claude Lévi-Strauss's analyses of Amazonian myths (from Le Cru et le Cuit) define the realm of pre-history, identified by Griffiths as the first of his 'kinds of time'. The performers worked well together to impart a real sense of beginnings, of distant rumblings and imaginings, whilst ensuring that we were never quite sure what was what: part of Berio's conception, as he himself put it, of 'the experience of "not quite hearing" ... as essential to the nature of the work'. Another quality I should identify would be the element of meta-commentary: Sinfonia is, amongst many other things, music about music, and music about musical history (or pre-history). There is a definite kinship not only between this movement and the openings of Das Rheingold and Berg's Op.6 Orchestral Pieces, but also with what we might imagine to be the mythical first musical calls from within the rain-forest. (The very different forest of Siegfried and its primæaval murmurs also sprang to mind.) My hearing initially desired greater orchestral definition, but it soon settled down, and I am now inclined to think that the partial inchoateness was deliberate. Intentional or otherwise, it worked.
There was an appropriately luminous quality to the second movement, O King. The pianist and other percussion shone here especially. Griffiths's reference to 'a remembered moment' seemed particularly apt, given the associations with Stockhausen's 'moment form' and beyond him, Webern, evoked by a more pointillistic approach. I have always thought of the third movement, in which Berio famously overlays the scherzo from Mahler's second symphony, as like the flow of a river. Here, Griffiths described 'the swirl of impressions and memories as events pass by'. The river, like the first movement's forest, provides an appropriatly primæval foundation for a super-structure of musical allusions (Bach, Ravel, and Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier amongst them) and Beckett (The Unnamable). Delivery of the text from the Swingle Singers was once again unimpeachable, and a welcome element of humour was injected by references to 'Rossini's Stabat Mater' and 'Mr Antonio Pappano'. The waltzing interjections were particularly well-handled, as was the wonderful transition into the fourth movement, which one could well believe was about to become Mahler's 'O Röschen rot'. Berio assists the process, by replacing Mahler's words with 'rose de sang', but Pappano and his players somehow conveyed the 'alternative' path that might have been taken. This intermezzo-like movement ('the process of reawkening' (Griffiths)) and the synthetic, open-ended final movement ('all these times together') brought this most Joycean of works to a satisfyingly open-ended conclusion. The latter two movements sounded at times a little less engaged, but this was but a matter of degree. If the Swingle Singers can fairly be said to 'own' Sinfonia, the Santa Cecilia Orchestra and Pappano are not artists one might immediately associate with Berio, his own association with the orchestra notwithstanding. In bringing it once again to the Proms audience – including a trio of Chelsea Pensioners – they provided an estimable service.
Rossini would have seemed more obviously home territory to them, not least given the avowedly 'operatic' nature of his Stabat Mater; that this was not altogether borne out was somewhat surprising. I had the impression for a little more than half of the work, Pappano was trying to play down operatic associations. For me, however, the glory, dubious or otherwise, of the work is its at times almost surreal approach to setting the 13th-century Franciscan text. The opening, the finale, and a little of what comes in between are tailored, at least to some extent, towards the prayer to Mary at the foot of the Cross. On the other hand, and this is but one example, the sprightly and disturbingly catchy quartet setting of 'Sancta mater, istud agas/Crucifixi fige plagas/Cordi meo valide' (Holy Mother, do this for me,/stamp the wounds of thy crucified Son/firmly in my heart) is irremediably bizarre. The writer of the programme notes, whose very defensiveness draws undue attention to the 'problem' without ever quite calling it by its name, issued the following apologia: 'Composers, whether Mozart, Berlioz, or Schoenberg, do not alter their musical language when moving between one musical language and another. It is hardly surprising, then, that Rossini's Stabat Mater sounds like Rossini.' It is not, but it would be profoundly surprising were the Dies irae to sound, when set by Mozart and Berlioz, like 'Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen' or 'Le spectre de la rose'.
I mention this at some length because I wonder whether the first part of the performance was an attempt, even if unconscious, to issue a similar musical apologia. If so, the attempt was misguided. Even the dramatic (melodramatic?) 'Introduzione' sounded underpowered. It is true that much, though by no means all, of the orchestral writing is 'accompaniment', yet it has interest of its own, and deserves to be heard fully. On the occasions when the strings played with greater richness, one longed for more; the exception lay with the 'cellos, who exhibited a beautiful, rich tone throughout. Then, at a point which, accidentally or not, coincided with the cavatina from the finest of the soloists, there was a sea-change, with the orchestra finally given its head: not simply, or even primarily, a matter of volume, but more of expressivity. The subsequent direction may sometimes have been a little too hard-driven, especially in the finale, where the problem was compounded by seemingly unmotivated tempo changes. Nevertheless, the improvement was manifest. It was more akin to what I imagined Toscanini would have done, with little of the profound wisdom of a Giulini, but I was unquestionably grateful for the introduction of greater colour into proceedings.
The chorus sang well, without making an indelible impression. The soloists were a mixed bunch. Colin Lee failed to project his opening line adequately, and never quite seemed to recover. Ildar Abdrazakov exhibited a pleasing tone, though was not especially memorable. Janice Watson, replacing Emma Bell, evinced a greater range of tone, and became more 'operatic' as time went on. Unsurprisingly, however, Joyce DiDonato outshone them all; not for nothing was she given the Beverly Sills award. With an absolute command of style, she showed attentiveness to the shaping of the words (and to their meaning when the music allowed...). Moreover, her tuning remained utterly secure in a performance in which this was far from a given. A low point in that respect was the unaccompanied quartet, 'Quando corpus moriertur'. This is sometimes given to the chorus, and would certainly have been better thus performed on this occasion: some of the tuning was painfully approximate, if that. After that, the frenetic finale was bound to sound better than it might otherwise have done. However, should one, not entirely without justification, consider this to have been a performance centred upon DiDonato rather than, in the case of Sinfonia, upon the work itself, then a greater parity might emerge between these performances.
Saturday, 14 July 2007
Mostly Mozart Festival, opening concert, Friday 13 July 2007
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Piano Concerto no.17 in G major, KV 453
Mass in C minor, KV 427/417a
Stefan Vladar (piano)
Susan Gritton (soprano)
Lucy Crowe (soprano)
Thomas Walker (tenor)
Iain Paterson (bass)
Mostly Mozart Festival Chorus
Academy of St Martin in the Fields
Louis Langrée (conductor)
The Barbican's Mostly Mozart Festival began, bravely and/or confidently competing with the First Night of the Proms, with one of the most ravishingly beautiful of all Mozart's piano concertos and one of his two great unfinished choral masterpieces, the Mass in C minor. Louis Langrée, whom I had last encountered collapsing during a Glyndebourne performance of Don Giovanni, conducted those dependable old Mozart hands, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, the orchestral mainstay of the festival. With the exception of an occasional slight dullness in the string tone – which one cannot imagine ever having occurred under Sir Neville Marriner – the Academy sounded much as it always has done: a small orchestra (strings were proportioned 8:6:4:4:2) of soloists, led by Kenneth Sillito, evincing a mostly exquisite polish and great clarity of tone. Signs of influence from the 'authentic' brigade were few and far between.
Stefan Vladar was a fine soloist in the concerto. His pearly tone stood closer, thinking of renowned Mozart pianists, to Murray Perahia's than to that of Daniel Barenboim, which was fitting for a Classical rather than a Romantic reading. An especially delightful facet of his performance was the ease with which he made those frequent horn-like figures in the left hand truly sound like a pair of horns; the orchestral pair of horns also shone in their antiphonal responses to the piano. At the end of the magical second movement's cadenza, beautifully played if a little distended, Vladar's lingering provided for an extra beat in the bar in which the orchestra returned: not a disaster, but a little odd to hear. Elsewhere, I occasionally felt that Vladar and Langrée underlined the Classical proportions a little too emphatically, with audible pauses between sections that might profitably have been dovetailed, but no one would have been able to claim a lack of structural understanding. Vladar adopted the fashionable practice of playing, continuo-style, during some of the orchestral tuttis. I find that, particularly in the first instance, this detracts from the contrast when the soloist makes his entry, but if 'performance practice' says that it ought to be done, many will automatically follow suit. The woodwind sounded divine, imparting a truly Mozartian wind-band sound to the many passages in Mozart desires just that, and a melting command of line – what a happy combination! – whenever required to do so for their solos. The strings soon recovered from the slight dullness I mentioned at the very beginning. Vibrato was varied intelligently rather than dogmatically, for instance to heighten the darkness of the slow movement's daring chromaticism. There is more than one way to do this, of course, but this was a method which, for the most part, proved effectively. The exhilirating antics of the finale's variations met with a keen response from soloist and orchestra, to bring a welcome foretaste of Papageno to the proceedings.
The last occasion I had heard the Mass in C minor in concert was in the Abbey Church of St Peter in Salzburg. With the best will in the world, the Barbican Hall could hardly substitute for the extraordinary Baroque interior decoration, nor for the historical connection. This then, not unreasonably, was a performance in which Langrée stressed athleticism and vigour over 'rococo-operatic sweets-of-sin' (Stravinsky on Mozart's masses). On its own terms, it worked very well, even if I should have been far from unhappy to have a little more of the quality from which Stravinsky, in his neo-Classical puritanism, recoiled – and a little more mystery too.
Langrée used his own edition of the work. It was difficult for me to tell how strongly it differed from others, save that it was a torso rather than a Robert Levin-style completion. There were some passages in which the brass sounded more prominent, and the strings less so; I even fancied that some of the brass notes may have been different from other editions. However, this may simply have been a matter of the conductor's orchestral balancing, bringing out certain parts more strongly than has often been the case.
Speeds were brisk, though never eccentrically so. There was little in the way of tempo variation, save for the very end, where Langrée's rallentando was somewhat laboured. (Perhaps this was partly a product of having to draw to an end that was never intended to be the end.) The ASMF's strings really dug into their double-dotted figures with a vigour complementing that of the conductor and the chorus. Woodwind was once again of the highest quality: Jaime Martin's magic flute sounded truly beguiling, and fiendishly fast bass lines were shaped by the bassoons as if this were the easiest thing in the world. The solemn intonations of the trombones sounded both archaic and Mozartian: just as it should be, and inevitably pointing forward to the Requiem. The timpanist certainly made his presence felt, although his hard sticks – which may well, of course, have been the conductor's choice – jarred with the rest of the orchestral blend. This was the only real concession to the 'period' lobby, and one we could well have done without.
The vocal soloists all acquitted themselves well. Susan Gritton's performance was surprisingly operatic, in an almost nineteenth-century sense during the Christe eleison. Indeed, Verdi did not sound so very far away, yet Gritton remained just on the side of what would have worked stylistically. Her willingness to forgo anything redolent of Meissen china provided a most welcome instruction in full-blooded Mozart singing. Lucy Crowe was a splendid late replacement for the indisposed Cora Burggraaf. Her coloratura was spellbinding, not to mention note-perfect and unblemished in its articulation. Thomas Walker's rather English tenor was never too much so, and Iain Paterson shone in his restricted role. The nicely contrasted voices stood out from each other during ensembles, yet provided a well-judged harmonic blend too, for which I am sure part of the praise must be attributed to the conductor. Paterson's resonant bass made Walker's tone sound a little bleached during the Benedictus, but this is a minor point.
The chorus was also very fine. If it lacked the great corporate personality of established choirs, it complemented the orchestra well as a parallel collection of soloists. Forty-strong, it was a little on the small side, but made up for this in musical expertise. Lines were distinct in fugal passages, without sounding mannered. In the homophonic doxological sections, this really did sound like a throng of angels praising the Almighty, never more so than in the Gloria, with its resounding Handel quotations on 'in excelsis'. There would have been little point in trying to imitate the sound of an Austro-German choir, and these singers did not.
Indeed, whilst my preference, speaking more generally, undoubtedly leans towards a performance such as that of the Wiener Singverein and the Berlin Philharmonic under Karajan, or the Berlin Radio Choir and the same orchestra under Abbado, this was a very good – and in some cases, excellent – performance of its kind: on a relatively small scale, using modern instruments. It augured well for the rest of the Barbican's festival and for the future success of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields.
Thursday, 5 July 2007
Don Giovanni, Royal Opera, 4 July 2007
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Don Giovanni
Royal Opera House, Wednesday 4 July 2007
Don Giovanni - Erwin Schrott
Commendatore - Robert Lloyd
Donna Anna - Anna Netrebko and Marina Poplavskaya
Don Ottavio - Michael Schade
Donna Elvira - Ana María Martínez
Leporello - Kyle Ketelsen
Masetto - Matthew Rose
Zerlina - Sarah Fox
Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House
David Syrus (conductor)
Francesca Zambello (director)
Duncan Macfarland (revival director)
The Overture, and especially the first section of the Overture, did not augur well. Strings sounded wiry and anaemic; the natural brass (why, oh why...?!) sounded as it perforce would: alternating between feeble and rasping; there was little space (not just a matter of tempo) to breathe. Part of this, I suspect, was a product of David Syrus taking over simply for the final two performances, and therefore dealing with an orchestra versed in a reading that in large part would have been Ivor Bolton's. Bolton has been a curious case when I have heard him conduct Mozart: a haplessly frenetic Mass in C minor in which the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra was split between glorious woodwind and the rest as signalled above, a surprisingly fine Entführung (aided by a superb production), and a Symphony no.34, which, despite a few irritating 'period' touches and a recklessly fast 'slow' movement, displayed elsewhere a festive weight that would not have sounded out of place chez Klemperer or Colin Davis. After the Overture, however, things settled down. Whilst this in no sense ranked as a great interpretation - prepare to forget Furtwängler, Giulini, Klemperer, Böhm, Davis, Haitink, Muti, et al. - it supported the singers well and rarely drew narcissistic attention to itself. How much of this was Syrus and how much Bolton is impossible, at least for me, to say. I should add that parts of the Stone Guest scene, sadly, reverted to the hard-driven, underpowered tendencies of the Overture. And the natural brass remained, well, like natural brass: nothing could be done about that...
The cast was generally fine. Anna Netrebko, her cold notwithstanding, managed to convey dignity and glamour (and fine musicality) as Donna Anna. Unfortunately, her illness rendered her incapable of singing for the second act. Her last-minute replacement did well enough under the circumstances, though her tuning was often alarmingly awry, and there was little attempt at modulation of her rather strident voice. Michael Schade acquitted himself with honour in the thankless role of Don Ottavio. Ana María Martínez presented a wholly credible Elvira - and one who was far more than a wronged harridan. In 'Mi tradi', she lent a suitably erotic, proto-Wagnerian or -Straussian element to her interpretation, without ever overdoing such premonitions. Bringing off Leporello is often difficult, but Kyle Ketelsen had clearly thought through the balance of comedy, charisma, and class struggle, and was unfailingly musical in his shaping of lines.
This, however, was Erwin Schrott's show. I can say without hesitation that, of the various Giovannis have seen on stage, his was the most complete. He exuded charisma through stage presence and through his dangerous, honeyed tones, hued with a quicksilver, predatory dialectic between darkness and light. One felt that he could have had anyone in the theatre. His libertine defiance was duly heroic, although the orchestra and its direction unhelpfully threatened to run away with themselves during his final moments. Nevertheless, Schrott's confrontation with Robert Lloyd's predictably fine Commendatore was gripping enough for Mozart's truly extraordinary re-dramatisation (one almost dare call it intensification) of the Fall. It would take a sterner, more puritanical constitution than mine not to consider - and perhaps rather more than consider - siding with the Devil on the strength of this magnificent performance.
This brings me to the production. Francesca Zambello was clearly thinking along the right lines, in presenting a world suffused with Catholicism. Everything about Mozart's opera - and in this, he goes far beyond da Ponte's libretto - shows awareness of the theological stakes, which could hardly be higher. Unfortunately, Zambello, as is her wont, seemed too easily seduced by concessions to theatrical spectacle, not least the fires of the climactic scene. More worryingly, the 'religion' remained stubbornly at the level of religious tat. Whilst there may be good reasons for displaying highly visible manifestations of such Mediterranean piety, it should never be an end in itself. This was a pity, because the approach promised a great deal. It could have strengthened Schrott's astonishing portrayal, rather than provided a merely picturesque backdrop thereto. This was undoubtedly, however, a Don Giovanni to remember, if largely for its hero.
Royal Opera House, Wednesday 4 July 2007
Don Giovanni - Erwin Schrott
Commendatore - Robert Lloyd
Donna Anna - Anna Netrebko and Marina Poplavskaya
Don Ottavio - Michael Schade
Donna Elvira - Ana María Martínez
Leporello - Kyle Ketelsen
Masetto - Matthew Rose
Zerlina - Sarah Fox
Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House
David Syrus (conductor)
Francesca Zambello (director)
Duncan Macfarland (revival director)
The Overture, and especially the first section of the Overture, did not augur well. Strings sounded wiry and anaemic; the natural brass (why, oh why...?!) sounded as it perforce would: alternating between feeble and rasping; there was little space (not just a matter of tempo) to breathe. Part of this, I suspect, was a product of David Syrus taking over simply for the final two performances, and therefore dealing with an orchestra versed in a reading that in large part would have been Ivor Bolton's. Bolton has been a curious case when I have heard him conduct Mozart: a haplessly frenetic Mass in C minor in which the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra was split between glorious woodwind and the rest as signalled above, a surprisingly fine Entführung (aided by a superb production), and a Symphony no.34, which, despite a few irritating 'period' touches and a recklessly fast 'slow' movement, displayed elsewhere a festive weight that would not have sounded out of place chez Klemperer or Colin Davis. After the Overture, however, things settled down. Whilst this in no sense ranked as a great interpretation - prepare to forget Furtwängler, Giulini, Klemperer, Böhm, Davis, Haitink, Muti, et al. - it supported the singers well and rarely drew narcissistic attention to itself. How much of this was Syrus and how much Bolton is impossible, at least for me, to say. I should add that parts of the Stone Guest scene, sadly, reverted to the hard-driven, underpowered tendencies of the Overture. And the natural brass remained, well, like natural brass: nothing could be done about that...
The cast was generally fine. Anna Netrebko, her cold notwithstanding, managed to convey dignity and glamour (and fine musicality) as Donna Anna. Unfortunately, her illness rendered her incapable of singing for the second act. Her last-minute replacement did well enough under the circumstances, though her tuning was often alarmingly awry, and there was little attempt at modulation of her rather strident voice. Michael Schade acquitted himself with honour in the thankless role of Don Ottavio. Ana María Martínez presented a wholly credible Elvira - and one who was far more than a wronged harridan. In 'Mi tradi', she lent a suitably erotic, proto-Wagnerian or -Straussian element to her interpretation, without ever overdoing such premonitions. Bringing off Leporello is often difficult, but Kyle Ketelsen had clearly thought through the balance of comedy, charisma, and class struggle, and was unfailingly musical in his shaping of lines.
This, however, was Erwin Schrott's show. I can say without hesitation that, of the various Giovannis have seen on stage, his was the most complete. He exuded charisma through stage presence and through his dangerous, honeyed tones, hued with a quicksilver, predatory dialectic between darkness and light. One felt that he could have had anyone in the theatre. His libertine defiance was duly heroic, although the orchestra and its direction unhelpfully threatened to run away with themselves during his final moments. Nevertheless, Schrott's confrontation with Robert Lloyd's predictably fine Commendatore was gripping enough for Mozart's truly extraordinary re-dramatisation (one almost dare call it intensification) of the Fall. It would take a sterner, more puritanical constitution than mine not to consider - and perhaps rather more than consider - siding with the Devil on the strength of this magnificent performance.
This brings me to the production. Francesca Zambello was clearly thinking along the right lines, in presenting a world suffused with Catholicism. Everything about Mozart's opera - and in this, he goes far beyond da Ponte's libretto - shows awareness of the theological stakes, which could hardly be higher. Unfortunately, Zambello, as is her wont, seemed too easily seduced by concessions to theatrical spectacle, not least the fires of the climactic scene. More worryingly, the 'religion' remained stubbornly at the level of religious tat. Whilst there may be good reasons for displaying highly visible manifestations of such Mediterranean piety, it should never be an end in itself. This was a pity, because the approach promised a great deal. It could have strengthened Schrott's astonishing portrayal, rather than provided a merely picturesque backdrop thereto. This was undoubtedly, however, a Don Giovanni to remember, if largely for its hero.
Monday, 2 July 2007
Janáček: Katya Kabanova, Royal Opera, 2 July 2007
Leoš Janáček: Katya Kabanova
Royal Opera House, Monday 2 July 2007
Marfa Ignatěvna Kabanová (Kabanicha) - Felicity Palmer
Tichon Ivanyc Kabanov - Chris Merritt
Katěrina (Kát'a) - Janice Watson
Varvara - Liora Grodnikaite
Savël Prokofjevič Dikoj - Oleg Bryjak
Boris Grigorjevič - Kurt Streit
Vána Kudrjáš - Toby Spence
Glaša - Miranda Westcott
Fekluša - Anne Mason
Kuligin - Jeremy White
Royal Opera House Orchestra and Chorus
Sir Charles Mackerras (conductor)
Sir Trevor Nunn (director)
Andrew Sinclair (revival director)
Sir Charles Mackerras was the first to conduct a Janáček opera in this country, this very work in 1951, at Sadler's Wells. Surprisingly, and notwithstanding his celebrated 1976 recording with the Vienna Philharmonic, this series of performances has been the first time he has conducted Katya Kabanova for the Royal Opera. It has certainly been worth the wait. If Sir Colin Davis is authoritative, perhaps even definitive, in the music of Berlioz (see last week's Benvenuto Cellini), then so is Mackerras in that of Janáček. The experience of more than half a century made itself shown, yet there was a vitality as youthful as one could imagine. To present such a combination of authority and fresh (re-)discovery is a rare thing indeed, once again akin to Davis's Berlioz. Rhythms were taut; harmonies were justly placed, neither under- nor over-played. The orchestra was on excellent form, both corporately and solistically (a welcome change from the recent Fidelio). And all aspects of the performance sounded - and looked - fully co-ordinated with Sir Trevor Nunn's production.
This might lazily be described as 'traditional'. What a relief, though, for those of us for whom this is not automatically a pejorative term, to have a staging responsive to the work, including the musical text. The storm scene – Alexander Ostrovsky's play was entitled The Thunderstorm – was especially well handled, stage events mirroring musical events, and vice versa. The flashes of lightning were well considered: terrible, but without anything of the unnecessarily 'spectacular'. And the collapse of the Cross at the centre – visually and conceptually – of the scene, provided a powerful metaphor for the collapse of Katya's world in this confessional drama. Doubtless Katya could successfully be staged in various periods, but there is no reason to disdain a production that respects both Ostrovsky's original nineteenth-century Russian setting and Janáček's adaptation.
Janice Watson was superb in the title role. The tenderness of her portrayal would have led anyone to sympathise, even if her cause had been rather less just. Kurt Streit sang well, though one felt little magnetism in his portrayal of Katya's lover, Boris. Felicity Palmer, however, threatened to steal the show as the shrewish mother-in-law, Kabanicha. Her unflinching moralism coruscated. Whilst it could hardly make the role sympathetic, Palmer's portrayal rendered utterly credible her vicious bourgeois persecution of Katya. Her final line, unmoved by Katya's fate, respectably thanking the good people of her community for their assistance, was delivered as chillingly as one dare imagine. Toby Spence and Liora Grodnikaite were both wonderful in their roles as the opera's other pair of lovers: full of youth, life, and tenderness. The fine shaping of vocal lines was doubtless a product of Mackerras's careful preparation, not to mention inspiration. This was a memorable evening indeed.
Royal Opera House, Monday 2 July 2007
Marfa Ignatěvna Kabanová (Kabanicha) - Felicity Palmer
Tichon Ivanyc Kabanov - Chris Merritt
Katěrina (Kát'a) - Janice Watson
Varvara - Liora Grodnikaite
Savël Prokofjevič Dikoj - Oleg Bryjak
Boris Grigorjevič - Kurt Streit
Vána Kudrjáš - Toby Spence
Glaša - Miranda Westcott
Fekluša - Anne Mason
Kuligin - Jeremy White
Royal Opera House Orchestra and Chorus
Sir Charles Mackerras (conductor)
Sir Trevor Nunn (director)
Andrew Sinclair (revival director)
Sir Charles Mackerras was the first to conduct a Janáček opera in this country, this very work in 1951, at Sadler's Wells. Surprisingly, and notwithstanding his celebrated 1976 recording with the Vienna Philharmonic, this series of performances has been the first time he has conducted Katya Kabanova for the Royal Opera. It has certainly been worth the wait. If Sir Colin Davis is authoritative, perhaps even definitive, in the music of Berlioz (see last week's Benvenuto Cellini), then so is Mackerras in that of Janáček. The experience of more than half a century made itself shown, yet there was a vitality as youthful as one could imagine. To present such a combination of authority and fresh (re-)discovery is a rare thing indeed, once again akin to Davis's Berlioz. Rhythms were taut; harmonies were justly placed, neither under- nor over-played. The orchestra was on excellent form, both corporately and solistically (a welcome change from the recent Fidelio). And all aspects of the performance sounded - and looked - fully co-ordinated with Sir Trevor Nunn's production.
This might lazily be described as 'traditional'. What a relief, though, for those of us for whom this is not automatically a pejorative term, to have a staging responsive to the work, including the musical text. The storm scene – Alexander Ostrovsky's play was entitled The Thunderstorm – was especially well handled, stage events mirroring musical events, and vice versa. The flashes of lightning were well considered: terrible, but without anything of the unnecessarily 'spectacular'. And the collapse of the Cross at the centre – visually and conceptually – of the scene, provided a powerful metaphor for the collapse of Katya's world in this confessional drama. Doubtless Katya could successfully be staged in various periods, but there is no reason to disdain a production that respects both Ostrovsky's original nineteenth-century Russian setting and Janáček's adaptation.
Janice Watson was superb in the title role. The tenderness of her portrayal would have led anyone to sympathise, even if her cause had been rather less just. Kurt Streit sang well, though one felt little magnetism in his portrayal of Katya's lover, Boris. Felicity Palmer, however, threatened to steal the show as the shrewish mother-in-law, Kabanicha. Her unflinching moralism coruscated. Whilst it could hardly make the role sympathetic, Palmer's portrayal rendered utterly credible her vicious bourgeois persecution of Katya. Her final line, unmoved by Katya's fate, respectably thanking the good people of her community for their assistance, was delivered as chillingly as one dare imagine. Toby Spence and Liora Grodnikaite were both wonderful in their roles as the opera's other pair of lovers: full of youth, life, and tenderness. The fine shaping of vocal lines was doubtless a product of Mackerras's careful preparation, not to mention inspiration. This was a memorable evening indeed.
Wednesday, 27 June 2007
Benvenuto Cellini, 26 June 2007
Hector Berlioz: Benvenuto Cellini
Barbican, London, 26 June 2007
Gregory Kunde (Benvenuto Cellini)
Laura Claycomb (Teresa)
Darren Jeffery (Balducci)
Peter Coleman-Wright (Fieramosca)
Andrew Kennedy (Francesco)
Isabelle Cals (Ascanio)
Jacques Imbrailo (Pompeo)
John Relyea (Pope Clement VII)
Andrew Foster-Williams (Bernadino)
Alasdair Elliot (Cabaratier)
London Symphony Chorus
London Symphony Orchestra
Sir Colin Davis
It was about time Sir Colin Davis and the LSO returned to Benvenuto Cellini. Their last performances were too early to be included on the LSO-Live label. One assumes that a 'live' recording will now follow, to join the astounding Troyens, the hardly less remarkable Béatrice et Bénédict, and a host of other Berlioz semi- and non-operatic works. With the exception of Les francs-juges – now largely destroyed – Cellini is Berlioz's first opera, and as such a wider public will doubtless want to hear how have Sir Colin's thoughts have developed since his groundbreaking first recording (1972) and indeed since the recent appearance of John Nelson's worthy competitor, which, in the light of Hugh Macdonald's Bärenreiter edition of the score, added about half an hour's additional music to that previously available. Nelson's recording is a fine achievement indeed, but what works for a studio recording is not necessarily best for a performance, and Davis acknowledged this, if only implicitly. Moreover, choices must always be made between competing versions (both for Paris and for Weimar). Whilst I do not propose to conduct this review as a comparison with these earlier recorded performances, they are important to bear in mind as an important context for how subsequent performances of the work will now be received.
Davis's Berlioz has always been of a somewhat Classical bent – hardly surprisingly, given his stature as a condutor of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert. The colouristic wildness of a Bernstein or a Munch has never been his way; yet for a composer who has often been criticised for alleged formal deficiencies, it is no bad thing to entrust the score to a conductor for whom structure and its delineation are so crucial. The authority with which he approached the score was evident from the first to the last bar, and the Overture set the scene for both work and performance. Orchestral weight and lightness of touch stood in perfect equilibrium. There was never any question, given the conductor's long experience with this work and with Berlioz's œuvre as a whole, that he knew precisely where he was going and that every episode would fall precisely into its allotted place. Delicate woodwing colouring brought to mind the Wagner of Die Meistersinger. (If only Davis and the LSO would perform a Wagner opera or two in concert...) The recollection, or more properly presentiment, of Wagner and of Meistersinger in particular was not at all inappropriate, I reflected: both works are comedies, both involve elopements and communal celebrations (Carnival or Midsummer's Day), and most crucially, both are concerned with the figure of the artist and the nature and purpose of art itself. Wagner was far from an uncritical admirer of Berlioz, but he acknowledged the Frenchman's mastery of the orchestra (his 'mechanical means', as Wagner wrote in Opera and Drama). One could very well understand why, as the trombones displayed an awesome combination of absolute precision and luxurious richness of sonority. Davis and his orchestra showed beyond doubt that command of structure and detail does not in any sense imply a slight dullness of interpretation.
Indeed, the orchestra was faultless throughout its navigation of the vast score. It would be impossible to mention every instance of brilliance, but that should not prevent citation of a few instances. The virtuosic tuba solo was played not only with great technical aplomb, but also with true tenderness of feeling. Another world was sounded, as the trombones solemnly intoned the arrival of the Pope. Rarely, if ever, have I heard such a beautiful yet portentous sound from these instruments. Even in apparently small accompanying figures, David Pyatt's horn sang more sweetly than one had any right to expect. Guitars and percussion made the street scenes credible without scenery. The crucial rhythmic and harmonic pointing of the strings, the nervous energy they imparted, underpinned the whole as if Berlioz's idiosyncratic writing were the most natural thing in the world (which it is emphatically not). They provided a rhythmic beat and a heartbeat to the progression of the score.
The chorus was every bit as good. Indeed, one of the most remarkable aspects of its performance was the unanimity of attack in conjunction with the orchestra. Orchestra, chorus, and conductor must have performed more Berlioz together than any other such combination; yet whilst this quality of performance should not necessarily surprise, it nevertheless does. The great perorations were as thrilling as anything in Les Troyens. Moreover, choral diction was beyond reproach.
Whilst in many ways, orchestra and chorus stand at the very heart of the opera, there are also of course singers to consider. Let it first be said that no one was any less than good, but the picture was somewhat more mixed here, at least considered by the stratospheric standards invoked above. I felt the absence, with but one exception, of any Francophone singers. Other singers are perfectly capable of singing the roles, of course, and many have done with great success. Yet it does seem, perhaps especially with Romance languages, that inclusion of at least one or two native speakers, lifts the general level of communication. Such has often been my experience, for instance, with Italians in Don Giovanni. Much of the French sounded a bit too much like hard work, as was unfortunately highlighted in the painfully slow delivery of the spoken dialogue. Rather oddly, Isabelle Cals, the only French singer, produced some very odd vowel sounds during her second act aria, 'Mais, qu'ai-je donc?' So maybe nationality was not the problem after all...
Gregory Kunde, also the Cellini on Nelson's recording, brought authority to his role. He could sometimes sound a little strained, though, and in some instances just a little too old for so youthful and virile a role. His approach perhaps erred on the Italianate side, but this is something very difficult to get right in so international an age of vocalism. Laura Claycomb certainly had the technique for Teresa, as she displayed in the excessive cadenza to her first-act cavatina. (Any excess is Berlioz's fault, not hers, I should add.) I felt that her voice lacked a certain warmth and colour, but one can rarely have everything. Darren Jeffery's Balducci was a bit too much of a generalised buffo figure, although it should in fairness be mentioned that he was a late replacement (as indeed was Kunde). For a buffo villain par excellence – at least until his conversion in the final scene to the cause of art – we should turn to Peter Coleman-Wright's Fieramosca. There was nothing generalised and everything particular to this characterisation, which brought a real sense of the theatre to proceedings. We were not so far yet still far enough from the world of Rossini (albeit with far superior orchestration!) Coleman-Wright's aria, 'Ah! Qui pourrait me résister,' was very fine indeed. Alasdair Elliott made the most of Berlioz's delicious little cameo portrait of the innkeeper who refuses to serve Cellini and his friends more wine until they pay their bill. And Jacques Imbrailo made a striking impression in the small yet dramatically crucial role of Pompeo. There was no finer singing than that of John Relyea, as the Pope. His deep, sonorous tones perfectly complemented those of the trombones I mentioned above. Such were his vocal and dramatic authority, one wondered whether he might be a future Boris.
In many ways, a concert performance is a sterner test than a staged performance for singers. All of their acting must be done vocally, rather as in a studio recording, and yet they must also be seen. Taken as a whole, the ensemble worked well, and there were, in the cases of Coleman-Wright and Relyea, two outstanding performances. If the general level of the soloists did not quite reach that of conductor, orchestra, and chorus, that is as much testament to the greatness of the latter as to any great shortcomings from the former. For the rapturous reception accorded to the performance was richly deserved; Berlioz was fortunate indeed at the Barbican.
Barbican, London, 26 June 2007
Gregory Kunde (Benvenuto Cellini)
Laura Claycomb (Teresa)
Darren Jeffery (Balducci)
Peter Coleman-Wright (Fieramosca)
Andrew Kennedy (Francesco)
Isabelle Cals (Ascanio)
Jacques Imbrailo (Pompeo)
John Relyea (Pope Clement VII)
Andrew Foster-Williams (Bernadino)
Alasdair Elliot (Cabaratier)
London Symphony Chorus
London Symphony Orchestra
Sir Colin Davis
It was about time Sir Colin Davis and the LSO returned to Benvenuto Cellini. Their last performances were too early to be included on the LSO-Live label. One assumes that a 'live' recording will now follow, to join the astounding Troyens, the hardly less remarkable Béatrice et Bénédict, and a host of other Berlioz semi- and non-operatic works. With the exception of Les francs-juges – now largely destroyed – Cellini is Berlioz's first opera, and as such a wider public will doubtless want to hear how have Sir Colin's thoughts have developed since his groundbreaking first recording (1972) and indeed since the recent appearance of John Nelson's worthy competitor, which, in the light of Hugh Macdonald's Bärenreiter edition of the score, added about half an hour's additional music to that previously available. Nelson's recording is a fine achievement indeed, but what works for a studio recording is not necessarily best for a performance, and Davis acknowledged this, if only implicitly. Moreover, choices must always be made between competing versions (both for Paris and for Weimar). Whilst I do not propose to conduct this review as a comparison with these earlier recorded performances, they are important to bear in mind as an important context for how subsequent performances of the work will now be received.
Davis's Berlioz has always been of a somewhat Classical bent – hardly surprisingly, given his stature as a condutor of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert. The colouristic wildness of a Bernstein or a Munch has never been his way; yet for a composer who has often been criticised for alleged formal deficiencies, it is no bad thing to entrust the score to a conductor for whom structure and its delineation are so crucial. The authority with which he approached the score was evident from the first to the last bar, and the Overture set the scene for both work and performance. Orchestral weight and lightness of touch stood in perfect equilibrium. There was never any question, given the conductor's long experience with this work and with Berlioz's œuvre as a whole, that he knew precisely where he was going and that every episode would fall precisely into its allotted place. Delicate woodwing colouring brought to mind the Wagner of Die Meistersinger. (If only Davis and the LSO would perform a Wagner opera or two in concert...) The recollection, or more properly presentiment, of Wagner and of Meistersinger in particular was not at all inappropriate, I reflected: both works are comedies, both involve elopements and communal celebrations (Carnival or Midsummer's Day), and most crucially, both are concerned with the figure of the artist and the nature and purpose of art itself. Wagner was far from an uncritical admirer of Berlioz, but he acknowledged the Frenchman's mastery of the orchestra (his 'mechanical means', as Wagner wrote in Opera and Drama). One could very well understand why, as the trombones displayed an awesome combination of absolute precision and luxurious richness of sonority. Davis and his orchestra showed beyond doubt that command of structure and detail does not in any sense imply a slight dullness of interpretation.
Indeed, the orchestra was faultless throughout its navigation of the vast score. It would be impossible to mention every instance of brilliance, but that should not prevent citation of a few instances. The virtuosic tuba solo was played not only with great technical aplomb, but also with true tenderness of feeling. Another world was sounded, as the trombones solemnly intoned the arrival of the Pope. Rarely, if ever, have I heard such a beautiful yet portentous sound from these instruments. Even in apparently small accompanying figures, David Pyatt's horn sang more sweetly than one had any right to expect. Guitars and percussion made the street scenes credible without scenery. The crucial rhythmic and harmonic pointing of the strings, the nervous energy they imparted, underpinned the whole as if Berlioz's idiosyncratic writing were the most natural thing in the world (which it is emphatically not). They provided a rhythmic beat and a heartbeat to the progression of the score.
The chorus was every bit as good. Indeed, one of the most remarkable aspects of its performance was the unanimity of attack in conjunction with the orchestra. Orchestra, chorus, and conductor must have performed more Berlioz together than any other such combination; yet whilst this quality of performance should not necessarily surprise, it nevertheless does. The great perorations were as thrilling as anything in Les Troyens. Moreover, choral diction was beyond reproach.
Whilst in many ways, orchestra and chorus stand at the very heart of the opera, there are also of course singers to consider. Let it first be said that no one was any less than good, but the picture was somewhat more mixed here, at least considered by the stratospheric standards invoked above. I felt the absence, with but one exception, of any Francophone singers. Other singers are perfectly capable of singing the roles, of course, and many have done with great success. Yet it does seem, perhaps especially with Romance languages, that inclusion of at least one or two native speakers, lifts the general level of communication. Such has often been my experience, for instance, with Italians in Don Giovanni. Much of the French sounded a bit too much like hard work, as was unfortunately highlighted in the painfully slow delivery of the spoken dialogue. Rather oddly, Isabelle Cals, the only French singer, produced some very odd vowel sounds during her second act aria, 'Mais, qu'ai-je donc?' So maybe nationality was not the problem after all...
Gregory Kunde, also the Cellini on Nelson's recording, brought authority to his role. He could sometimes sound a little strained, though, and in some instances just a little too old for so youthful and virile a role. His approach perhaps erred on the Italianate side, but this is something very difficult to get right in so international an age of vocalism. Laura Claycomb certainly had the technique for Teresa, as she displayed in the excessive cadenza to her first-act cavatina. (Any excess is Berlioz's fault, not hers, I should add.) I felt that her voice lacked a certain warmth and colour, but one can rarely have everything. Darren Jeffery's Balducci was a bit too much of a generalised buffo figure, although it should in fairness be mentioned that he was a late replacement (as indeed was Kunde). For a buffo villain par excellence – at least until his conversion in the final scene to the cause of art – we should turn to Peter Coleman-Wright's Fieramosca. There was nothing generalised and everything particular to this characterisation, which brought a real sense of the theatre to proceedings. We were not so far yet still far enough from the world of Rossini (albeit with far superior orchestration!) Coleman-Wright's aria, 'Ah! Qui pourrait me résister,' was very fine indeed. Alasdair Elliott made the most of Berlioz's delicious little cameo portrait of the innkeeper who refuses to serve Cellini and his friends more wine until they pay their bill. And Jacques Imbrailo made a striking impression in the small yet dramatically crucial role of Pompeo. There was no finer singing than that of John Relyea, as the Pope. His deep, sonorous tones perfectly complemented those of the trombones I mentioned above. Such were his vocal and dramatic authority, one wondered whether he might be a future Boris.
In many ways, a concert performance is a sterner test than a staged performance for singers. All of their acting must be done vocally, rather as in a studio recording, and yet they must also be seen. Taken as a whole, the ensemble worked well, and there were, in the cases of Coleman-Wright and Relyea, two outstanding performances. If the general level of the soloists did not quite reach that of conductor, orchestra, and chorus, that is as much testament to the greatness of the latter as to any great shortcomings from the former. For the rapturous reception accorded to the performance was richly deserved; Berlioz was fortunate indeed at the Barbican.
Monday, 28 May 2007
Fidelio, Royal Opera House, 27 May 2007
The Royal Opera took a faltering step towards rectifying its recent neglect of the greatest opera written between The Magic Flute and Die Walküre. Maybe it should not have bothered. Beethoven's only opera (unless we count Leonore as a separate work) has a number of special characteristics. Amongst those we should include its symphonic stature, its concern with the (bourgeois?) idea of freedom, political and metaphysical, and the taxing demands it places upon the singers. Any production that does not rise to a certain level in these terms - and perhaps others too - will fail.
Let us take the singers first. There was relative success here, or at least not abject failure. The production had been trailed as something of a vehicle for Karita Mattila. This did not augur well, for though one needs a great artist in this part, and not only in this part, Fidelio is not - thank God - in any sense a 'singer's opera'. Mattila was excellent, in particular highly successful in conveying the transformation from 'boy' to woman, which many singers appear simply to ignore. Endrik Wottrich was likewise impressive as Florestan; Bayreuth's faith in him as the latest Heldentenor-hope did not seem misplaced. The cruel vocal demands were negotiated, not with ease, for that would negate the crucial element of struggle, but in a fashion that brought dramatic truth to his progression from prison cell to freedom. Eric Halfvarson was adequate, if hardly startling, as Rocco: he could sing the notes, but the voice wanted a certain bloom. The smaller roles were not an embarrassment, although only Robert Lloyd (as Don Fernando) proved memorable. Ailish Tynan was unnecessarily 'girlish' as Marzelline, though this may have been the fault of the production, about which more below. Delivery of the spoken dialogue varied in quality, but at its worst sounded retarded in every sense of the word. A German language coach was credited; did she not attend to this?
However, Fidelio, as I said, is not a 'singer's opera'. The guiding hand must be that of the conductor. Antonio Pappano proved woefully inadequate. The overture, a great test in itself, was shambolic. What should have set the parameters for the ensuing drama sounded alternately hard-driven - very hard-driven - and sluggish. The opening bars brought the first of the work's many fluffs in one of the horn parts. I gained the impression here that Pappano was attempting to incorporate elements of so-called 'period' practice, not least in terms of the rigid metronomic nature of much, though not all, of this opening. The strings sounded anaemic, and the trumpets - so crucial in this of all works - either were natural, or were perversely made to sound as if they were. They stood out like proverbial sore thumbs, joined by unfortunate 'period-style' kettledrums. Sir Charles Mackerras would doubtless have presented such an allegedly 'historically-informed' version, yet it would have been informed by a sense of drama and it would have possessed some degree of conceptual integrity. However, Pappano seemed tugged in another, incompatible direction, pulling certain passages around for no apparent reason. This ended up sounding like a caricature of Sir Simon Rattle's Beethoven. Sadly, the overture did set the parameters for much of the rest of the work, but not as it should have done. There was no sense of any structural understanding. Beethoven's great paragraphs went for nothing, replaced by a disjointed series of scenes, as if - and I suspect this may be the nub of the matter - this were a nineteenth-century Italian opera. (I am not sure that it would even pass muster in Verdi, but it certainly does not in Beethoven.)
The second act was better on the whole. Indeed after the first scene, the strings sounded in somewhat better form, though never as they would have done for Bernard Haitink or Davis (nor, indeed, as they had done for Rattle in his superb account of Pelléas at the beginning of the month). I wondered whether Pappano had borrowed Leonard Bernstein's idea of orchestral expansion to convey the contrast between early domesticity and subsequent profundity. If so, it did not really come off. The orchestra, as I said, sounded better, but hardly heroic; nor was there any sense of a great and necessary straining towards the final goal, simply a further collection of various 'numbers'. There were moments of excitement - more for the conductor than for me, I should add - but these simply became frenetic. Where Toscanini might well have been guilty of driving the orchestra too hard, he at least would have exerted his fabled iron control. Here orchestra and singers simply drifted apart, catastrophically so in the final chorus. Most disturbing of all was that it was not entirely clear whether Pappano had even noticed.
So the idea of freedom which underpins this noble work was barely realised at all. Beethoven stands as the archetypal goal-oriented composer. If one were to wish to 'subvert' this - as, for instance, Birtwistle has done explicitly, in much of his œuvre - it ought to be done purposively, not out of incompetence. A series of errors and misconceptions does not make a work paratactic. It was not a shortcoming of the first order that there had been superior interpreters of the staged roles in the past, but it did matter that this idea was lacking. When the trumpet is heard in Florestan's cell, it should stand for far more than the arrival of the Minister; it should have resonances historical and conceptual which elevate Fidelio to the ranks of the greatest expressions of the human spirit. Jürgen Flimm's production did not help in this respect at all. A characteristic of his production 'style' appears to be theatrical hyper-activity. Characters must always be preoccupied with unnecessary 'business'. (A previous example that immediately springs to mind is irritating and trivialising business with a shredding machine during Wotan's Act II Walküre monologue from Flimm's often bizarre Bayreuth Ring.) Sometimes this could be worse than merely distracting, especially when it involved already hard-pressed singers having to shout, to run about, to throw objects at one another... What neither director nor conductor seemed to have realised is that this is not a work 'about' the characters, at least not primarily. They had fallen into precisely the same trap as so many of the still-surprising number of Fidelio's detractors, who would complain that the characters are not dramatically credible. They are, as it happens, albeit not on a tediously realistic level, but that is not the point here. What is the point is that the work is about an idea, certainly the most glorious idea, in its pristine form, the early European bourgeoisie was able to formulate. Fidelio is the musical moment of its Schillerian instantiation. This production, sadly, was not.
Let us take the singers first. There was relative success here, or at least not abject failure. The production had been trailed as something of a vehicle for Karita Mattila. This did not augur well, for though one needs a great artist in this part, and not only in this part, Fidelio is not - thank God - in any sense a 'singer's opera'. Mattila was excellent, in particular highly successful in conveying the transformation from 'boy' to woman, which many singers appear simply to ignore. Endrik Wottrich was likewise impressive as Florestan; Bayreuth's faith in him as the latest Heldentenor-hope did not seem misplaced. The cruel vocal demands were negotiated, not with ease, for that would negate the crucial element of struggle, but in a fashion that brought dramatic truth to his progression from prison cell to freedom. Eric Halfvarson was adequate, if hardly startling, as Rocco: he could sing the notes, but the voice wanted a certain bloom. The smaller roles were not an embarrassment, although only Robert Lloyd (as Don Fernando) proved memorable. Ailish Tynan was unnecessarily 'girlish' as Marzelline, though this may have been the fault of the production, about which more below. Delivery of the spoken dialogue varied in quality, but at its worst sounded retarded in every sense of the word. A German language coach was credited; did she not attend to this?
However, Fidelio, as I said, is not a 'singer's opera'. The guiding hand must be that of the conductor. Antonio Pappano proved woefully inadequate. The overture, a great test in itself, was shambolic. What should have set the parameters for the ensuing drama sounded alternately hard-driven - very hard-driven - and sluggish. The opening bars brought the first of the work's many fluffs in one of the horn parts. I gained the impression here that Pappano was attempting to incorporate elements of so-called 'period' practice, not least in terms of the rigid metronomic nature of much, though not all, of this opening. The strings sounded anaemic, and the trumpets - so crucial in this of all works - either were natural, or were perversely made to sound as if they were. They stood out like proverbial sore thumbs, joined by unfortunate 'period-style' kettledrums. Sir Charles Mackerras would doubtless have presented such an allegedly 'historically-informed' version, yet it would have been informed by a sense of drama and it would have possessed some degree of conceptual integrity. However, Pappano seemed tugged in another, incompatible direction, pulling certain passages around for no apparent reason. This ended up sounding like a caricature of Sir Simon Rattle's Beethoven. Sadly, the overture did set the parameters for much of the rest of the work, but not as it should have done. There was no sense of any structural understanding. Beethoven's great paragraphs went for nothing, replaced by a disjointed series of scenes, as if - and I suspect this may be the nub of the matter - this were a nineteenth-century Italian opera. (I am not sure that it would even pass muster in Verdi, but it certainly does not in Beethoven.)
The second act was better on the whole. Indeed after the first scene, the strings sounded in somewhat better form, though never as they would have done for Bernard Haitink or Davis (nor, indeed, as they had done for Rattle in his superb account of Pelléas at the beginning of the month). I wondered whether Pappano had borrowed Leonard Bernstein's idea of orchestral expansion to convey the contrast between early domesticity and subsequent profundity. If so, it did not really come off. The orchestra, as I said, sounded better, but hardly heroic; nor was there any sense of a great and necessary straining towards the final goal, simply a further collection of various 'numbers'. There were moments of excitement - more for the conductor than for me, I should add - but these simply became frenetic. Where Toscanini might well have been guilty of driving the orchestra too hard, he at least would have exerted his fabled iron control. Here orchestra and singers simply drifted apart, catastrophically so in the final chorus. Most disturbing of all was that it was not entirely clear whether Pappano had even noticed.
So the idea of freedom which underpins this noble work was barely realised at all. Beethoven stands as the archetypal goal-oriented composer. If one were to wish to 'subvert' this - as, for instance, Birtwistle has done explicitly, in much of his œuvre - it ought to be done purposively, not out of incompetence. A series of errors and misconceptions does not make a work paratactic. It was not a shortcoming of the first order that there had been superior interpreters of the staged roles in the past, but it did matter that this idea was lacking. When the trumpet is heard in Florestan's cell, it should stand for far more than the arrival of the Minister; it should have resonances historical and conceptual which elevate Fidelio to the ranks of the greatest expressions of the human spirit. Jürgen Flimm's production did not help in this respect at all. A characteristic of his production 'style' appears to be theatrical hyper-activity. Characters must always be preoccupied with unnecessary 'business'. (A previous example that immediately springs to mind is irritating and trivialising business with a shredding machine during Wotan's Act II Walküre monologue from Flimm's often bizarre Bayreuth Ring.) Sometimes this could be worse than merely distracting, especially when it involved already hard-pressed singers having to shout, to run about, to throw objects at one another... What neither director nor conductor seemed to have realised is that this is not a work 'about' the characters, at least not primarily. They had fallen into precisely the same trap as so many of the still-surprising number of Fidelio's detractors, who would complain that the characters are not dramatically credible. They are, as it happens, albeit not on a tediously realistic level, but that is not the point here. What is the point is that the work is about an idea, certainly the most glorious idea, in its pristine form, the early European bourgeoisie was able to formulate. Fidelio is the musical moment of its Schillerian instantiation. This production, sadly, was not.
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