Don Giovanni – Nicholas Garrett
Commendatore – Simon Wilding
Donna Anna – Ana James
Donna Elvira – Laura Mitchell
Don Ottavio – Thomas Walker
Leporello – Matthew Hargreaves
Zerlina – Claire Wild
Masetto – Robert Winslade Anderson
Stephen Barlow (director)
Yannis Thavoris (designs)
Colin Grenfell (lighting)
Sam Spencer-Lane (choreography)
Opera Holland Park Chorus
City of London Sinfonia
Robert Dean (conductor)
Opera Holland Park’s new production of Don Giovanni marks a definite step up from its Fidelio, at least as presently conducted. (The production is excellent.) I do not think I had heard Robert Dean before, but he and the City of London Sinfonia presented an eminently creditable account of the score: not the last word in exploring its unfathomable depths, but mercifully free of the doctrinaire point-making that mars so many present-day performances. By and large, Mozart was allowed to speak for himself and benefited from doing so. Tempi were sensible; if the overture had sounded the odd alarm bell (for another reason, see below), then the music soon settled down. Woodwind solos were a particular joy, but the strings too appeared to be enjoying a new lease of life following their leaden direction the previous night. There were a few occasions when I missed greater heft, but surprisingly few, given the extraordinary nature of Mozart’s proto-Romanticism and the relatively small forces. Ornamentation can often irritate, but here, whether in the orchestra or from the soloists, it was tastefully, interestingly, yet not at all shyly accomplished. Eighteenth-century style is quite a different thing from what those who most loudly trumpet their supposed adherence would have you imagine. There was, however, a questionably prominent harpsichord: both loud and strangely ‘present’ in sound. Surely it was amplified? It seemed to me an interesting idea, though hardly necessary, to employ it during the Handel parody of Elvira’s ‘Ah, fuggi il traditor’, but its appearances became tiresomely frequent and increasingly inappropriate, culminating in unmerited – and out of sync – clattering during the Stone Guest scene. Choral singing impressed.
Stephen Barlow’s relocation to the High Victorian era worked well. As ever with such things, there are words that jar: the work is not in any real sense ‘about’ Seville, but why are it and Spain mentioned so much? That may not matter much, but it does more than in an abstracted, mythologised setting, in which specificity does not arise. If anything, the relocation might have benefited from greater concentration upon its new specificity: the weird, behind-closed-doors world of much Victorian sexuality might fruitfully have been explored. The costumes and sets were beautifully done, however, for which plaudits should be handed to Yannis Thavoris. And the focal, Dorian Gray-like narcissism – several wall portraits and all – of Don Giovanni was convincing to a degree. An especially effective idea was to have the Commendatore step forward from one of those portraits, an elderly version of the young libertine. Giovanni’s defiance acquires another layer of understanding when seen as rejecting the fate of growing old (relatively) gracefully. Some other touches convinced more than others. The comely bell boy – subsequently seen in the chorus of damnation – who thought it worth a play for the hero’s affections during his serenade amused, though surely not quite so much as the excessive guffawing from some well-oiled members of the audience might have suggested. However, the portrayal of Zerlina as a Plain Jane – who only at the end removes her spectacles and lets her hair down, to initiate sex with Masetto – is quite at odds both with libretto and, more importantly, Mozart’s music. A peasant girl who should exude natural fertility seemed more like a failed candidate for IVF. No wonder that Claire Wild seemed uncertain what tone to adopt for her music.
Her Masetto was the weakest link in the cast: strong on stage presence but sadly lacking in voice. Laura Mitchell was not dissimilar, though her lopsided portrayal, neurotic to the exclusion of the erotic, may possibly have been a product of directorial line. Simon Wilding was a powerful Commendatore, whilst Ana James sang beautifully as her almost-namesake. The production, however, seemed a little uncertain what to do with her. (I remain wedded to the post-ETA Hoffmann idea of Donna Anna as truly desiring Don Giovanni, but there are other possibilities.) Don Ottavio is, of course, the very definition of the thankless role, but Thomas Walker impressed with his style and musicality. Matthew Hargreaves was suffering from some ailment, but nevertheless caught attention as a fine Leporello, alert to the quicksilver shifts demanded and commendably attentive to the finer points of the libretto. Nicholas Garrett proved a splendid Giovanni, handsome of tone as well as aspect, suave, cruel, and yet credibly heroic at the last. This, then, was a Don Giovanni of which Opera Holland Park can justly be proud.
A few words, however, concerning the audience: whilst there was hilarity to be had during the overture from the sight of a former Conservative Cabinet minister, no Chelsea strip in sight, and his young companion engaging in a slanging match with the couple seated in front, there are perhaps better ways to appreciate Mozart’s shift of tempo – here a little abrupt, as it happened – than by having an ex-politician shout ‘Shut up!’ and his guest offer a one-finger salute at the row in front. For whatever reason, the happy couple rushed away the moment the final chord was heard. For connoisseurs of Conservative politics of a slightly earlier vintage – perhaps they exist – Lord Lawson of Blaby was also in attendance.
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
Tuesday, 6 July 2010
Fidelio, Opera Holland Park, 5 July 2010
Leonore – Yvonne Howard
Florestan – Tom Randle
Rocco – Stephen Richardson
Marzelline – Sarah Redgwick
Jacquino – Nicky Spence
Don Pizarro – Phillip Joll
Don Fernando – Njabulo Madlala
First Prisoner – Peter Kent
Second Prisoner – Henry Grant Kerswell
Olivia Fuchs (director)
Jamie Vartan (designs)
Colin Grenfell (lighting)
Clare Whistler (choreography)
Opera Holland Park Chorus
City of London Sinfonia
Peter Robinson (conductor)
Olivia Fuchs’s production of Fidelio earned plaudits upon its first outing in 2003; though I did not see it then, it remains just as relevant and disturbing today. Guantánamo Bay references, brought out both in the stage direction and in Jamie Vartan’s excellent designs, need to be hammered home just as much as they did then. The United States may have a new administration and this country may have a new government, but the camp of infamy remains open for business and the war criminals who led us into Afghanistan and Iraq have never been tried. Even if some resolution had been reached, one would not need to look far to find equally urgent cases: Burma, Gaza, Tibet, let alone the domestic prisons of our own countries, cynically packed with unfortunate souls who have no reason to be there, solely in order to keep the likes of the Daily Mail happy – though when are such organs of poujadisme ever satisfied? This production’s revelation of the prisoners in their orange jumpsuits is shocking enough, but the way in which they are cowed, in need of the light yet almost unable to cope with it, is something to shame not only those who will never see it but those who have voted for or at least tacitly assented to such barbarism, even those of us who abhor it and yet have been unsuccessful in bringing it to an end.
It is, of course, tiresome to have to confront those who reckon Fidelio a failure; they so spectacularly miss the point that this is a work about freedom, and not in any sense that our political overlords would understand. Yet a production such as this might actually accomplish that confrontation for us. Fuchs’s reappraisal of Jacquino transforms a bit part into something truly horrifying: doubtless not an evil person, but a stupid one, brutalised by the situation, who engages in relatively ‘low-level’ abuse, or so the politicians would see it, of the prisoners. In another setting, he would doubtless be chanting ‘harmless’ nationalist slogans at a soccer match. And why should we trust the minister, who arrives with sinister bodyguards in shades? Likewise, the ‘media’, desperate to be let in to snap the first photographs? This souring of the final victory may not have been what Beethoven intended, but it works, and there is no harm in undercutting the music just a little, when it is done so well. It need not be done so every time, but is a valid option when confronted with an age of barbarism beyond anything the composer could have imagined.
Unfortunately, this proved to be very much a tale of the production and, to a lesser extent, the singing. Peter Robinson was the archetypal Kapellmeister in his conducting. There was no sense of the music meaning anything at all to him, let alone the astounding instantiation of a once-radical notion of bourgeois freedom. All he did was beat time. One could not only hear every bar line; one could set an atomic clock by the metronomic beat. The reading, or rather rendition – ‘extraordinary’ in its way – was free of Harnoncourtisms or worse, save for the kettledrum sticks, but that is the best one could say. The City of London Sinfonia played well enough, horns emerging triumphant from their ordeal in ‘Komm, Hoffnung’. Yet, even in a small performance space such as this, the strings were too small in number. One needs to be drowned in, driven on by, a torrent of symphonic lava. As it was, one concentrated on the fire of the production, with the orchestral contribution reduced to something akin to a soundtrack. This was not the orchestra’s fault at all, but a string section of 7.5.4.3.2 can only do so much.
The soloists compensated considerably. Tom Randle has always seemed to me a highly intelligent musician and so he was again here. His Florestan could only really work in a small-scale performance, but after initial wavering intonation on his cruel opening ‘Gott!’, he threw his all into the role, emerging with true musico-dramatic credibility. Jonas Kaufmann in Paris is an experience I shall never forget, but until there is opportunity to see and to hear his astonishing assumption again, this will do fine. Yvonne Howard was a sincere Leonore. One may have heard greater vocal power and beauty, but she convinced on stage, and navigated Beethoven’s often cruel demands without faltering. The Pizarro and Fernando were unimpressive, but Sarah Redgwick was a feisty, characterful Marzelline. Stephen Richardson was unusually credible as the compromised Rocco, who manages yet to do the right thing: a truly Beethovenian inspiration. Richardson’s fine command of the vocal text was a significant contributing factor here. Nicky Spence was equally convincing in the characterisation of Fuchs’s reappraised Jacquino. As for the dialogue, it is rarely anything but a trial when delivered by non-native speakers; I have heard worse though.
There were drawbacks, then, significantly so in terms of the musical direction. This is not a Fidelio one would wish simply to hear. But such are the production's strength and conviction that it remains necessary to see it.
Florestan – Tom Randle
Rocco – Stephen Richardson
Marzelline – Sarah Redgwick
Jacquino – Nicky Spence
Don Pizarro – Phillip Joll
Don Fernando – Njabulo Madlala
First Prisoner – Peter Kent
Second Prisoner – Henry Grant Kerswell
Olivia Fuchs (director)
Jamie Vartan (designs)
Colin Grenfell (lighting)
Clare Whistler (choreography)
Opera Holland Park Chorus
City of London Sinfonia
Peter Robinson (conductor)
Olivia Fuchs’s production of Fidelio earned plaudits upon its first outing in 2003; though I did not see it then, it remains just as relevant and disturbing today. Guantánamo Bay references, brought out both in the stage direction and in Jamie Vartan’s excellent designs, need to be hammered home just as much as they did then. The United States may have a new administration and this country may have a new government, but the camp of infamy remains open for business and the war criminals who led us into Afghanistan and Iraq have never been tried. Even if some resolution had been reached, one would not need to look far to find equally urgent cases: Burma, Gaza, Tibet, let alone the domestic prisons of our own countries, cynically packed with unfortunate souls who have no reason to be there, solely in order to keep the likes of the Daily Mail happy – though when are such organs of poujadisme ever satisfied? This production’s revelation of the prisoners in their orange jumpsuits is shocking enough, but the way in which they are cowed, in need of the light yet almost unable to cope with it, is something to shame not only those who will never see it but those who have voted for or at least tacitly assented to such barbarism, even those of us who abhor it and yet have been unsuccessful in bringing it to an end.
It is, of course, tiresome to have to confront those who reckon Fidelio a failure; they so spectacularly miss the point that this is a work about freedom, and not in any sense that our political overlords would understand. Yet a production such as this might actually accomplish that confrontation for us. Fuchs’s reappraisal of Jacquino transforms a bit part into something truly horrifying: doubtless not an evil person, but a stupid one, brutalised by the situation, who engages in relatively ‘low-level’ abuse, or so the politicians would see it, of the prisoners. In another setting, he would doubtless be chanting ‘harmless’ nationalist slogans at a soccer match. And why should we trust the minister, who arrives with sinister bodyguards in shades? Likewise, the ‘media’, desperate to be let in to snap the first photographs? This souring of the final victory may not have been what Beethoven intended, but it works, and there is no harm in undercutting the music just a little, when it is done so well. It need not be done so every time, but is a valid option when confronted with an age of barbarism beyond anything the composer could have imagined.
Unfortunately, this proved to be very much a tale of the production and, to a lesser extent, the singing. Peter Robinson was the archetypal Kapellmeister in his conducting. There was no sense of the music meaning anything at all to him, let alone the astounding instantiation of a once-radical notion of bourgeois freedom. All he did was beat time. One could not only hear every bar line; one could set an atomic clock by the metronomic beat. The reading, or rather rendition – ‘extraordinary’ in its way – was free of Harnoncourtisms or worse, save for the kettledrum sticks, but that is the best one could say. The City of London Sinfonia played well enough, horns emerging triumphant from their ordeal in ‘Komm, Hoffnung’. Yet, even in a small performance space such as this, the strings were too small in number. One needs to be drowned in, driven on by, a torrent of symphonic lava. As it was, one concentrated on the fire of the production, with the orchestral contribution reduced to something akin to a soundtrack. This was not the orchestra’s fault at all, but a string section of 7.5.4.3.2 can only do so much.
The soloists compensated considerably. Tom Randle has always seemed to me a highly intelligent musician and so he was again here. His Florestan could only really work in a small-scale performance, but after initial wavering intonation on his cruel opening ‘Gott!’, he threw his all into the role, emerging with true musico-dramatic credibility. Jonas Kaufmann in Paris is an experience I shall never forget, but until there is opportunity to see and to hear his astonishing assumption again, this will do fine. Yvonne Howard was a sincere Leonore. One may have heard greater vocal power and beauty, but she convinced on stage, and navigated Beethoven’s often cruel demands without faltering. The Pizarro and Fernando were unimpressive, but Sarah Redgwick was a feisty, characterful Marzelline. Stephen Richardson was unusually credible as the compromised Rocco, who manages yet to do the right thing: a truly Beethovenian inspiration. Richardson’s fine command of the vocal text was a significant contributing factor here. Nicky Spence was equally convincing in the characterisation of Fuchs’s reappraised Jacquino. As for the dialogue, it is rarely anything but a trial when delivered by non-native speakers; I have heard worse though.
There were drawbacks, then, significantly so in terms of the musical direction. This is not a Fidelio one would wish simply to hear. But such are the production's strength and conviction that it remains necessary to see it.
Monday, 5 July 2010
Joanna MacGregor's Deloitte Ignite, September 2010
Herewith the text of a press release just received from the Royal Opera House:
MONDAY 5 JULY, 2010
PRESS RELEASE
JOANNA MacGREGOR’S DELOITTE IGNITE
3, 4, 5 September 2010
www.roh.org.uk/deloitteignite
The award winning Deloitte Ignite returns for its third year with Joanna MacGregor, internationally renowned pianist, composer and auteur as curator. This unique contemporary arts festival, sponsored by Deloitte, opens the Royal Opera House Season spanning the first weekend in September, colonising the building’s public and performance spaces with a range of spectacular and unexpected performances and installations.
For Deloitte Ignite 2010 Joanna MacGregor has taken her inspiration from forests: forests as a place of quiet, reflective beauty mystery and discovery; as places of fairytale narrative as well as metaphorical spaces. She has invited artists to create forests all over the Royal Opera House in different materials including recycled and reclaimed wood, organic materials, old costumes and mannequins, shimmering projections and reflecting pools. There are films, music and dance performances, soundscapes and installations. In amongst the forests are hints of the forthcoming Season as well as echoes of Covent Garden’s old flower market.
By day, there will be contemporary, forest-inspired installations to explore: an epic Floating Forest in the Paul Hamlyn Hall of organic materials and projections from a quartet of award-winning artists and filmmakers; opera designer Dick Bird’s mysteriously playful Reclaimed Forest in the Linbury Studio; and theatre powerhouse Richard Williams’s surreal, fantastical Faded Forest of discarded opera costumes and mannequins in the Crush Bar. Kathy Hinde’s poetic, inter-disciplinary installations Piano Migrations, One Thousand Birds and Dancing Cranes colonize a darkened Pit Lobby and other spaces, while the spooky Ghosts and Mirrors in the subterranean Supper Rooms enact echoes of operas. And, as a more permanent artwork, the brilliantly gifted Anglo-French artist Alice Anderson creates a special, fairytale installation of hair in the Link.
In the Clore Studio Upstairs, the distinguished writer and cultural historian Marina Warner will host Into the Woods, a series of films, animations and performances exploring the light and darkness of fairytales, with live music from WARP artist Mira Calix and the remarkable Eastern European duo Alexander Balanescu and Evelina Petrova. There are live and digital forest soundscapes from sound artists Matthew Fairclough and Scanner, and spectacular performances, in and amongst the forests, from Balinese Gamelan orchestra Lila Cita with Lila Bhawa dancers, percussion outfit ensemblebash, and operatic ambushes from Royal Opera House Jette Parker Young Artists.
There will be specially-staged contemporary dance from Phoenix Dance and new dance works from ROH Associate Artists. Across the three evenings in the Paul Hamlyn Hall there is rich mix of performances set in a magical night-time Floating Forest ranging from Thomas Tallis’s Spem in Alium and the London premiere of Alex Roth’s massive, life-affirming Earthrise sung by the fifty-strong Ex Cathedra choir, to Japanese music, both traditional and contemporary; from Finnish aerialist Illona Jäntti, grooves from pop genius Talvin Singh and Barcelona’s funky Radio Zumbido, to a dramatic closing ceremony by the Tashi Lhunpo Monks of Tibet.
Joanna MacGregor said, “Being able to work across so many extraordinary, exciting spaces in the Royal Opera House and draw on so many art forms and wonderful artists has been a real joy. I hope exploring the building – and coming across unique environments and performances - will inspire and entertain people of all ages.”
Deborah Bull, Royal Opera House Creative Director said, ‘I'm delighted to welcome Joanna MacGregor as the inspiration behind this third Deloitte Ignite. Her impeccable musical pedigree allied to her insatiable and wide ranging curiosity made her a natural choice and through the programme she has put together with ROH2, she has found new and surprising ways to explore opera and dance. Every year Deloitte Ignite puts the spotlight on contemporary culture at the Royal Opera House and challenges audiences to look at the art forms, themselves and this long-established organisation with new eyes. Joanna's programme, set amongst its floating, faded and secret forests, promises to do just that.’
Heather Hancock, managing partner for innovation and brand at Deloitte, commented, “Each year we want the festival to challenge conceptions about the way both Deloitte and the Royal Opera House think. This year Joanna’s forest theme brings an exciting and fresh perspective to the Deloitte Ignite festival.”
MONDAY 5 JULY, 2010
PRESS RELEASE
JOANNA MacGREGOR’S DELOITTE IGNITE
3, 4, 5 September 2010
www.roh.org.uk/deloitteignite
The award winning Deloitte Ignite returns for its third year with Joanna MacGregor, internationally renowned pianist, composer and auteur as curator. This unique contemporary arts festival, sponsored by Deloitte, opens the Royal Opera House Season spanning the first weekend in September, colonising the building’s public and performance spaces with a range of spectacular and unexpected performances and installations.
For Deloitte Ignite 2010 Joanna MacGregor has taken her inspiration from forests: forests as a place of quiet, reflective beauty mystery and discovery; as places of fairytale narrative as well as metaphorical spaces. She has invited artists to create forests all over the Royal Opera House in different materials including recycled and reclaimed wood, organic materials, old costumes and mannequins, shimmering projections and reflecting pools. There are films, music and dance performances, soundscapes and installations. In amongst the forests are hints of the forthcoming Season as well as echoes of Covent Garden’s old flower market.
By day, there will be contemporary, forest-inspired installations to explore: an epic Floating Forest in the Paul Hamlyn Hall of organic materials and projections from a quartet of award-winning artists and filmmakers; opera designer Dick Bird’s mysteriously playful Reclaimed Forest in the Linbury Studio; and theatre powerhouse Richard Williams’s surreal, fantastical Faded Forest of discarded opera costumes and mannequins in the Crush Bar. Kathy Hinde’s poetic, inter-disciplinary installations Piano Migrations, One Thousand Birds and Dancing Cranes colonize a darkened Pit Lobby and other spaces, while the spooky Ghosts and Mirrors in the subterranean Supper Rooms enact echoes of operas. And, as a more permanent artwork, the brilliantly gifted Anglo-French artist Alice Anderson creates a special, fairytale installation of hair in the Link.
In the Clore Studio Upstairs, the distinguished writer and cultural historian Marina Warner will host Into the Woods, a series of films, animations and performances exploring the light and darkness of fairytales, with live music from WARP artist Mira Calix and the remarkable Eastern European duo Alexander Balanescu and Evelina Petrova. There are live and digital forest soundscapes from sound artists Matthew Fairclough and Scanner, and spectacular performances, in and amongst the forests, from Balinese Gamelan orchestra Lila Cita with Lila Bhawa dancers, percussion outfit ensemblebash, and operatic ambushes from Royal Opera House Jette Parker Young Artists.
There will be specially-staged contemporary dance from Phoenix Dance and new dance works from ROH Associate Artists. Across the three evenings in the Paul Hamlyn Hall there is rich mix of performances set in a magical night-time Floating Forest ranging from Thomas Tallis’s Spem in Alium and the London premiere of Alex Roth’s massive, life-affirming Earthrise sung by the fifty-strong Ex Cathedra choir, to Japanese music, both traditional and contemporary; from Finnish aerialist Illona Jäntti, grooves from pop genius Talvin Singh and Barcelona’s funky Radio Zumbido, to a dramatic closing ceremony by the Tashi Lhunpo Monks of Tibet.
Joanna MacGregor said, “Being able to work across so many extraordinary, exciting spaces in the Royal Opera House and draw on so many art forms and wonderful artists has been a real joy. I hope exploring the building – and coming across unique environments and performances - will inspire and entertain people of all ages.”
Deborah Bull, Royal Opera House Creative Director said, ‘I'm delighted to welcome Joanna MacGregor as the inspiration behind this third Deloitte Ignite. Her impeccable musical pedigree allied to her insatiable and wide ranging curiosity made her a natural choice and through the programme she has put together with ROH2, she has found new and surprising ways to explore opera and dance. Every year Deloitte Ignite puts the spotlight on contemporary culture at the Royal Opera House and challenges audiences to look at the art forms, themselves and this long-established organisation with new eyes. Joanna's programme, set amongst its floating, faded and secret forests, promises to do just that.’
Heather Hancock, managing partner for innovation and brand at Deloitte, commented, “Each year we want the festival to challenge conceptions about the way both Deloitte and the Royal Opera House think. This year Joanna’s forest theme brings an exciting and fresh perspective to the Deloitte Ignite festival.”
Sunday, 4 July 2010
Salome, Royal Opera, 3 July 2010
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
Narraboth - Andrew Staples
Herodias’s Page- Sarah Castle
First Soldier - Nicolas Courjal
Second Soldier - Alan Ewing
Jokanaan - Johan Reuter
A Cappadocian - John Cunningham
Salome - Angela Denoke
A Slave - Andrea Hazell
Herod - Gerhard Siegel
Irina Mishura - Herodias
First Jew - Adrian Thompson
Second Jew - Robert Anthony Gardiner
Third Jew - Hubert Francis
Fourth Jew - Steven Ebel
Fifth Jew - Jeremy White
First Nazarene - Vuyani Mlinde
Second Nazarene - Dawid Kimberg
Naaman - Duncan Meadows
Guests of Herod
David McVicar (director)
Justin Way (revival director)
Es Devlin (designs)
Wolfgang Göbbel (lighting)
Andrew George (choreography and movement)
Emily Piercy (revival choreography)
Leo Warner and Mark Grimmer for Fifty-Nine Productions (video)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Hartmut Haenchen (conductor)
David McVicar’s production of Salome received its first revival at Covent Garden, though McVicar left its revival in the capable hands of Justin Way. The House of Horrors element that irritated considerably last time seemed softened, replaced by a lighter, more humorous form of camp. Perhaps this were so, or maybe it was just a case of knowing what was coming; at any rate, in this of all operas, a somewhat lower level of sensationalism was gratefully received.
There is something to be said, I suppose, for the transformation of Herod and Herodias into comic characters, though there was perhaps a little too much of the world of the sitcom to their behaviour. More fundamentally, I remain unsure why the work was updated to the inter-war years 1920s: not that I have any specific objection to it, but little was made of it, beyond perhaps the sense of a violent society – but what society is not? – and the still-problematical caricaturing of the Jews. Wilde, Hedwig Lachmann, and Strauss really do not need any help in that regard. McVicar’s Dance of the Seven Veils witnessed second time around was no surprise, but it remains perverse. Salome gains clothes rather than lose them, as she appears to relive her childhood with the suggestion of Herod as her abuser. Es Devlin’s set retains its striking appeal, the split-level ‘upstairs-downstairs’ arrangement providing glimpses of the Tetrarch’s dinner party proceeding above, until the guests repair below – somewhat oddly, given the distinctly unglamorous nature of the basement. The costumes are generally equally striking, not least in the case of the typical McVicar array of extras: the guests and various household functionaries, including an array of pretty footmen sporting tight-fitting livery. And then there is Naaman, the executioner, whom McVicar has transformed into a principal – though necessarily dumb – character, played once again by the muscular street entertainer from Covent Garden market, Duncan Meadows. I have yet to be enlightened as to why he would have stripped off whilst down in the cistern, but his bloodstained reappearance doubtless titillated some. There was quite a bit of casual nudity elsewhere but the only truly erotic moment was that of Salome’s fatal kiss, which certainly retained its horror, and rightly so.
Hartmut Haenchen’s account of the score took a while to get going; I seem to recall a similar trajectory when I heard him conduct Salome a few years ago in Paris. However, after the first half an hour or so, he captured a fine balance between demands of the dance and colouristic fantasy. The orchestra was on fine form after a slight initial thinness of tone, strings gleaming as if instantiating the jewels with which the Tetrarch vainly tries to pay off Herodias’s daughter.
Angela Denoke put up a valiant attempt in that role. She paid commendable attention to the words, give or take a few peculiar consonants, but lacked the sheer physicality of Nadja Michael in 2008. Denoke appears a little too much the elegant woman of a certain age. Moreover, the more extreme demands placed upon her by Strauss found this Salome almost as severely parted as her predecessor, albeit closer to the prescribed pitches. McVicar’s conception of Jokanaan – a ‘Beckettian tramp soaked in sewage’ – does not assist a singer’s assumption of the role, but Johan Reuter proved a worthy successor to Michael Volle, providing an aptly lumbering physical presence, expressed through his voice as much as his acts. Gerhard Siegel and Irina Mishura impressed in their way as the Herods, amusing if not necessarily regal. Andrew Staples presented a credibly sympathetic portrayal of Narraboth, who is after all the only sympathetic character in the drama, though memories of Joseph Kaiser last time around were undimmed. Smaller parts were generally well taken, the chattering Jews especially – whatever resultant discomfort one might feel.
If there was something of an end-of-term feeling to this revival, which comprises but five performances, everything was commendably professional. Ultimately, however, I do not feel that the production gets to the heart – if heart Salome has – of the work. I remain hopeful that Harry Kupfer’s stunning production for the Staatsoper Unter den Linden will see the light of day on DVD. In the meantime, there is amusement to be had here.
Narraboth - Andrew Staples
Herodias’s Page- Sarah Castle
First Soldier - Nicolas Courjal
Second Soldier - Alan Ewing
Jokanaan - Johan Reuter
A Cappadocian - John Cunningham
Salome - Angela Denoke
A Slave - Andrea Hazell
Herod - Gerhard Siegel
Irina Mishura - Herodias
First Jew - Adrian Thompson
Second Jew - Robert Anthony Gardiner
Third Jew - Hubert Francis
Fourth Jew - Steven Ebel
Fifth Jew - Jeremy White
First Nazarene - Vuyani Mlinde
Second Nazarene - Dawid Kimberg
Naaman - Duncan Meadows
Guests of Herod
David McVicar (director)
Justin Way (revival director)
Es Devlin (designs)
Wolfgang Göbbel (lighting)
Andrew George (choreography and movement)
Emily Piercy (revival choreography)
Leo Warner and Mark Grimmer for Fifty-Nine Productions (video)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Hartmut Haenchen (conductor)
David McVicar’s production of Salome received its first revival at Covent Garden, though McVicar left its revival in the capable hands of Justin Way. The House of Horrors element that irritated considerably last time seemed softened, replaced by a lighter, more humorous form of camp. Perhaps this were so, or maybe it was just a case of knowing what was coming; at any rate, in this of all operas, a somewhat lower level of sensationalism was gratefully received.
There is something to be said, I suppose, for the transformation of Herod and Herodias into comic characters, though there was perhaps a little too much of the world of the sitcom to their behaviour. More fundamentally, I remain unsure why the work was updated to the inter-war years 1920s: not that I have any specific objection to it, but little was made of it, beyond perhaps the sense of a violent society – but what society is not? – and the still-problematical caricaturing of the Jews. Wilde, Hedwig Lachmann, and Strauss really do not need any help in that regard. McVicar’s Dance of the Seven Veils witnessed second time around was no surprise, but it remains perverse. Salome gains clothes rather than lose them, as she appears to relive her childhood with the suggestion of Herod as her abuser. Es Devlin’s set retains its striking appeal, the split-level ‘upstairs-downstairs’ arrangement providing glimpses of the Tetrarch’s dinner party proceeding above, until the guests repair below – somewhat oddly, given the distinctly unglamorous nature of the basement. The costumes are generally equally striking, not least in the case of the typical McVicar array of extras: the guests and various household functionaries, including an array of pretty footmen sporting tight-fitting livery. And then there is Naaman, the executioner, whom McVicar has transformed into a principal – though necessarily dumb – character, played once again by the muscular street entertainer from Covent Garden market, Duncan Meadows. I have yet to be enlightened as to why he would have stripped off whilst down in the cistern, but his bloodstained reappearance doubtless titillated some. There was quite a bit of casual nudity elsewhere but the only truly erotic moment was that of Salome’s fatal kiss, which certainly retained its horror, and rightly so.
Hartmut Haenchen’s account of the score took a while to get going; I seem to recall a similar trajectory when I heard him conduct Salome a few years ago in Paris. However, after the first half an hour or so, he captured a fine balance between demands of the dance and colouristic fantasy. The orchestra was on fine form after a slight initial thinness of tone, strings gleaming as if instantiating the jewels with which the Tetrarch vainly tries to pay off Herodias’s daughter.
Angela Denoke put up a valiant attempt in that role. She paid commendable attention to the words, give or take a few peculiar consonants, but lacked the sheer physicality of Nadja Michael in 2008. Denoke appears a little too much the elegant woman of a certain age. Moreover, the more extreme demands placed upon her by Strauss found this Salome almost as severely parted as her predecessor, albeit closer to the prescribed pitches. McVicar’s conception of Jokanaan – a ‘Beckettian tramp soaked in sewage’ – does not assist a singer’s assumption of the role, but Johan Reuter proved a worthy successor to Michael Volle, providing an aptly lumbering physical presence, expressed through his voice as much as his acts. Gerhard Siegel and Irina Mishura impressed in their way as the Herods, amusing if not necessarily regal. Andrew Staples presented a credibly sympathetic portrayal of Narraboth, who is after all the only sympathetic character in the drama, though memories of Joseph Kaiser last time around were undimmed. Smaller parts were generally well taken, the chattering Jews especially – whatever resultant discomfort one might feel.
If there was something of an end-of-term feeling to this revival, which comprises but five performances, everything was commendably professional. Ultimately, however, I do not feel that the production gets to the heart – if heart Salome has – of the work. I remain hopeful that Harry Kupfer’s stunning production for the Staatsoper Unter den Linden will see the light of day on DVD. In the meantime, there is amusement to be had here.
Saturday, 3 July 2010
Die Walküre, Opéra National de Paris, 29 June 2010
Image: Opéra national de Paris/ Charles Duprat
Siegmund – Robert Dean Smith
Sieglinde – Ricarda Merbeth
Hunding – Günther Groissböck
Wotan – Thomas Johannes Mayer
Brünnhilde – Katarina Dalayman
Fricka – Yvonne Naef
Gerhilde – Marjorie Owens
Ortlinde – Gertrud Wittinger
Waltraute – Silvia Hablowetz
Schwertleite – Wiebke Lehmkuhl
Helmwige – Barbara Morihien
Siegrune – Helene Ranada
Grimgerde – Nicole Piccolomini
Rossweisse – Atala Schöck
Günter Krämer (director)
Jürgen Bäckmann (designs)
Falk Bauer (costumes)
Diego Leetz (lighting)
Otto Pichler (choreography)
Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris
Philippe Jordan (conductor)
I surprised myself by concluding that the first instalment of the Paris Ring had been ‘all told, … the best Rheingold I have attended since Haitink’s tenure at the Royal Opera’. Die Walküre is arguably a tougher proposition still than the cycle’s Vorabend, but that earlier promise was essentially maintained. Günter Krämer’s production remained sure-footed and often imaginative; the contribution from Wagner’s Greek chorus, the Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris, was truly excellent; Philippe Jordan’s conducting grew in stature as the evening progressed; and, if the singing was rarely at a level to challenge the great interpretations we have all heard – or fancy we have – then it was at least creditable, Katarina Dalayman’s Brünnhilde proving much more than that.
The synthetic nature of Krämer’s Rheingold continues into his Walküre. Ideas might well be traced back to other productions, but that is not to say that either the particular mode of expression or the particular synthesis too closely resembles any other. No Wagner scholar would claim that he did not rely upon, that he was not inspired by, the work of his predecessors. Nor, I am sure, would any Wagner performer be so arrogant, though I have a nasty suspicion that Sir Roger Norrington, he of the Tristan-Prelude waltz, might draw close. Why should we expect stage direction to be entirely different? And should it be so, is that not more likely to be the product of default than design? What we have here are ideas that generally have a firm basis in the work, not in a quasi-archaeological obsession with Wagner’s intentions, narrowly construed, but nevertheless in meaningful dialogue with what he wrote. There is plenty of directorial leeway in deciding what to emphasise, what to develop, without necessity to transplant something entirely ‘new’ onto Wagner’s drama.
The first act is a case in point. Krämer elects to convey a greater sense than the composer prescribes of Hunding’s society. This highly militarised milieu reminds us that the brutal Hunding represents a remarkably contemporary – for Wagner and for us – bourgeois hierarchy of instrumentalisation. Hunding appears to be a middle-ranking figure in whatever civil war is raging; Siegmund hails of course from an insurrectionary wild race, fro whom nothing (at least nothing that Fricka, voice of custom would understand) is sacred. Thugs billeted upon Sieglinde, Hunding’s mere chattel, are Krämer’s invention; the violence they exude conveys Wagner’s dramatic purpose. Another social aspect emphasised, again in contradistinction to Volsung anarchistic outlawry, is that of the Valkyries. A choice is thereby set up for Brünnhilde to make. Wotan’s maidens serve a military role, in this case not only returning heroes to Valhalla but cleaning up their bodies and enrobing them. Theirs is probably the most convincingly integrated Ride I have seen: no danger here of something to be tacked on, endured, until we can return to the proper business of Wotan and Brünnhilde. Valkyries and soldiers form part of an uncomprehending society that watches the extraordinary turn of events at the end of the second act, when for Brünnhilde the first intimations of the power of love lead her to disobey Wotan’s command. Loge’s fire, when it comes, will burn brightly indeed. Yet, like the Young Hegelian Bruno Bauer’s ‘I demonstrate that religion is a hell composed of hatred for humanity and that God is the bailiff of this hell,’ the intention will be to unmask, leaving us with a view of the society left behind. Bauer, who at one point harboured plans with Karl Marx to found a Hegelian journal entitled The Archives of Atheism, knew Mikhail Bakunin well – and we know with whom Bakunin would fight upon the barricades of Dresden.
The sickness of the (painted) tree in the first act stands consonant with that of the ‘bad’ nineteenth century: a sort of sub-Pre-Raphaelite post-Romanticism. First we do not see it, then Sieglinde reveals it. Then we – or at least I – think: is that not just too poor a substitute for Wagner’s ash? But there is something more to come, revelation from behind the painting of the sword that mysterious visitor had deposited. The real forest, when viewed properly during the second act, evokes Caspar David Friedrich, but at a slight remove, as if that artist’s day has already passed, which in a way of course it has, whilst retaining a presence. Reality, and especially history become more layered than one might have thought, in a fashion akin to Wagner’s motivic method.
GERMANIA now stands tall, but Krämer and his team cleverly undercut, like Wagner, Valhalla’s grandiosity. They do it with mirrors – which both extend the scope of Jürgen Bäckmann’s set and highlight the trickery involved. Gothic letters, seen in the production picture, may be seen in black on stage and white in reflection: magically, as it were, the ‘right way around’. This, presumably, is what the gods see, or delude themselves they see. Likewise the upholders of self-righteous, hypocritical bourgeois morality: they represent a properly Feuerbachian inversion of religious practice. If Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity looms large, so does his earlier Thoughts on Death and Immortality. Where Feuerbach had praised antiquity for its lack of belief in and unawareness of the doctrine of immortality of the soul, it is now necessary to strike against that belief, as Siegmund does. Interestingly, Wotan himself takes Siegmund to his final resting place during the third act, honouring perhaps ‘das Ende’, for which the god has wished, and to which the Volsung might have pointed the way. Freia’s golden apples are littered around Valhalla, to remind us of the casual abandon with which the denizens of light have adopted their false immortal cause. Ubiquitous yet already insufficient, they equate very well to the terms of the drama so far. One might even claim that they not only support the words but compensate for a surprising absence from the music. Still, Wagner had so many balls in the air that dropping the odd apple is neither here nor there.
Erda returns at the end, reprising her slow walk across the stage. Brünnhilde elects to sleep beneath rather than upon the table Wotan has prepared for her and Siegmund. It is not yet clear what this might mean, since there is more to come, but the handling of Walküre makes me eager to find out.
Philippe Jordan’s first act opened impressively, not least on account of the tremendous bite from the opera orchestra’s strings. This was a true storm, also a musical one, a mini-exposition if you like. Tension was not always maintained, however, especially during the final scene, some of which meandered. Yet the structure of the second and third acts was far more clearly in place: a sterner task to effect, one might have thought, yet accomplished with great success. No one in the theatre seems likely to match my experience of Bernard Haitink’s direction of the potentially sectional second act, Wotan’s monologue and all, yet shape and momentum were skilfully imparted. Wagner’s endless melody was sung – and meaningfully so.
Robert Dean Smith is unlikely to win prizes for charisma, but he was for the most part a dependable enough Siegmund, even if ‘dependable’ is hardly sufficient in this role. His second cry of ‘Wälse’ seemed, surprisingly, to last for an eternity, far longer than I can otherwise recall. Jon Vickers might have brought it off, but here we ended up with an audibly strained hero for a good part of what ensued. Ricarda Merbeth portrayed a feistier, less pure Sieglinde than is often encountered. Her odd facial expressions took a bit of getting used to, but the confidence of her vocal assumption grew, culminating in a refulgent, genuinely moving ‘O hehrstes Wunder!...’ Günther Groissböck and Yvonne Naef, imperiously resplendent in Falk Bauer’s gown (pictured), made much of the words of Hunding and Fricka, and showed that they could act too. Thomas Johannes Mayer, substituting for the advertised Falk Struckmann, was a more than creditable replacement as Wotan, gaining in stature as the drama progressed. He too showed especial attentiveness towards the words, veritably hissing his contempt at Hunding, but proving equally capable of lyricism when required. Katarina Dalayman’s Brünnhilde was the star turn, however: tireless and yet a soul in transition – arguably in emergence. The demands of words, music, and stage action combined here to present a Valkyrie unlikely to be equalled by present-day exponents.
What a pity, then, that one was fortunate to hear a single bar of the second act without an onslaught of heavy coughing, the outer acts bearable only by comparison. Once again, I was reminded of Pierre Boulez’s strictures concerning opera houses; once again I doubted whether they really are the right place to stage Wagner’s music dramas. Not for nothing has the later composer-conductor voiced admiration for his predecessor’s loathing of a system in which ‘opera houses are … like cafés where … you can hear waiters calling out their orders: ‘One Carmen! And one Walküre! And one Rigoletto!’ A Jockey Club disruption might at least have proffered entertainment as well as enragement value. If the Opéra National de Paris and the Bastille amphitheatre are doing Wagner proud, they remain hamstrung by a pernicious section of their audience. It is not difficult to imagine how Wagner would once again have railed at the city of his misère.
Friday, 2 July 2010
The Cunning Little Vixen, Opéra National de Paris, 28 June 2010
Opéra Bastille
Forester – Jean-Philippe Lafont
Forester’s Wife, Owl – Michèle Lagrange
Schoolmaster – Luca Lombardo
Parson – Gregory Reinhart
Harašta – Paul Gay
Vixen – Adriana Kucerova
Fox – Hannah Esther Minutillo
Innkeeper’s Wife – Anne-Sophie Ducret
Dog – Letitia Singleton
Rooster, Jay – Elisa Cenni
Woodpecker – Ghislaine Roux
Mosquito – Paul Crémazy
Crested Hen – Natacha Finette Constantin
Badger – Slawomir Szychiowak
André Engel (director)
Nicky Rieti (designer)
Elizabeth Neumuller (costumes)
André Diot (lighting)
Françoise Grès (choreography)
Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris
Chorus of the Opéra national de Paris
Atelier Lyrique de l’Opéra national de Paris
Maîtrise des Hauts-de-Seine
Children’s chorus of the Opéra national de Paris
Alessandro di Stefano (chorus master)
Michael Schønwandt (conductor)
I enjoyed this production very much first time around at the Bastille, in 2008, an earlier version of the production having been mounted at the Opéra de Lyon in 2000. It was not the least of Gérard Mortier’s virtues to have mounted the Paris Opéra’s first ever Cunning Little Vixen – or, as it is known in France, La Petite Renarde rusée. The particular virtues of André Engel’s production would have made it well worth seeing, even if it had not been such an historical occasion. (Janáček’s greatness has not been self-evident to everyone, or almost everyone, until surprisingly recently.) And so, it was pleasing to be reminded of the fine balances Engel and his production team – not least designer, Nicky Rieti – uphold between Nature and man, whether in portrayal of the animal characters themselves or the relationship between those characters and the human world, and also between animate and inanimate. The railway line remains an apt summation of the fraught quality of that latter relationship, and also provides a specific yet not-too-specific sense of location, which can be slightly varied as required. Passing of the seasons remains simply yet tellingly observed. Cycles of various sorts are crucial to the success of this opera, as Bill Bryden’s recently revived production for Covent Garden testified. And yet, there felt something a little tired, end-of-season-ish to the proceedings. I do not wish to exaggerate, but the sharpness of direction was not always quite as it had been – and I do not think this is just because I was seeing the production for a second time. There was something of the feeling of a repertoire production: not the end of the world, but a pity nevertheless.
This was often the case with the musical performances too. Again, nothing was bad, but taken as a whole, this was not a performance on the same standard as that I saw in 2008, happily preserved on DVD. (I have not seen it on that medium, but should imagine it would transfer very well.) Adriana Kucerova, replacing Elena Tsallagova, proved for the most part a winning Vixen, and Hannah Esther Minutillo reprised her Fox with style and commitment. Yet the chemistry was not quite so apparent between them, and their duetting could at times tend towards the shrill (partly a matter of orchestral support too). Standing out, as so often, was the Forester, in this case portrayed by Jean-Philippe Lafont. Bluffer than one often encounters, one could yet find credibility in this character, and follow his own transformation through communion with Nature. Choral singing, not least that of the children’s choirs, was generally of a high standard. Singing in Czech caused them no problem at all, so far as one could discern.
The orchestra generally sounded marvellous on its own terms, strings gleaming, woodwind and brass equally impressive. Yet Michael Schønwandt’s conducting tended too much towards a generalised late-Romantic sound, missing the piquancy and bite of Janáček’s harmony and orchestration. At times, as if to compensate, he drove the score along too brusquely, before reverting to undue, slightly distorting emphasis upon kinship with Wagner and Strauss. Bringing out such a relationship is an interesting, perfectly valid strategy, but too often it proved to be at the expense of the composer’s individuality. For instance, the third act horns sounded straight out of Siegfried – or Der Freischütz. I should be the last to complain in principle, but this composer needs ultimately to speak in his own vernacular idiom, the Böhmischer Wald standing both close to and distant from Janáček’s Moravian countryside. Schønwandt also displayed a habit of pausing too long between sections: continuity is rightly prized here, heightening rather than lessening the characterful musical shifts, rhythmic and harmonic, within scenes. He sounded as though he would have been happier conducting Lohengrin.
Forester’s Wife, Owl – Michèle Lagrange
Schoolmaster – Luca Lombardo
Parson – Gregory Reinhart
Harašta – Paul Gay
Vixen – Adriana Kucerova
Fox – Hannah Esther Minutillo
Innkeeper’s Wife – Anne-Sophie Ducret
Dog – Letitia Singleton
Rooster, Jay – Elisa Cenni
Woodpecker – Ghislaine Roux
Mosquito – Paul Crémazy
Crested Hen – Natacha Finette Constantin
Badger – Slawomir Szychiowak
André Engel (director)
Nicky Rieti (designer)
Elizabeth Neumuller (costumes)
André Diot (lighting)
Françoise Grès (choreography)
Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris
Chorus of the Opéra national de Paris
Atelier Lyrique de l’Opéra national de Paris
Maîtrise des Hauts-de-Seine
Children’s chorus of the Opéra national de Paris
Alessandro di Stefano (chorus master)
Michael Schønwandt (conductor)
I enjoyed this production very much first time around at the Bastille, in 2008, an earlier version of the production having been mounted at the Opéra de Lyon in 2000. It was not the least of Gérard Mortier’s virtues to have mounted the Paris Opéra’s first ever Cunning Little Vixen – or, as it is known in France, La Petite Renarde rusée. The particular virtues of André Engel’s production would have made it well worth seeing, even if it had not been such an historical occasion. (Janáček’s greatness has not been self-evident to everyone, or almost everyone, until surprisingly recently.) And so, it was pleasing to be reminded of the fine balances Engel and his production team – not least designer, Nicky Rieti – uphold between Nature and man, whether in portrayal of the animal characters themselves or the relationship between those characters and the human world, and also between animate and inanimate. The railway line remains an apt summation of the fraught quality of that latter relationship, and also provides a specific yet not-too-specific sense of location, which can be slightly varied as required. Passing of the seasons remains simply yet tellingly observed. Cycles of various sorts are crucial to the success of this opera, as Bill Bryden’s recently revived production for Covent Garden testified. And yet, there felt something a little tired, end-of-season-ish to the proceedings. I do not wish to exaggerate, but the sharpness of direction was not always quite as it had been – and I do not think this is just because I was seeing the production for a second time. There was something of the feeling of a repertoire production: not the end of the world, but a pity nevertheless.
Adriana Kucerova (Vixen), Elisa Cenni (Rooster), and Natacha Finette Constantin (Crested Hen)
Images: Opéra national de Paris/ Christian Leiber
The orchestra generally sounded marvellous on its own terms, strings gleaming, woodwind and brass equally impressive. Yet Michael Schønwandt’s conducting tended too much towards a generalised late-Romantic sound, missing the piquancy and bite of Janáček’s harmony and orchestration. At times, as if to compensate, he drove the score along too brusquely, before reverting to undue, slightly distorting emphasis upon kinship with Wagner and Strauss. Bringing out such a relationship is an interesting, perfectly valid strategy, but too often it proved to be at the expense of the composer’s individuality. For instance, the third act horns sounded straight out of Siegfried – or Der Freischütz. I should be the last to complain in principle, but this composer needs ultimately to speak in his own vernacular idiom, the Böhmischer Wald standing both close to and distant from Janáček’s Moravian countryside. Schønwandt also displayed a habit of pausing too long between sections: continuity is rightly prized here, heightening rather than lessening the characterful musical shifts, rhythmic and harmonic, within scenes. He sounded as though he would have been happier conducting Lohengrin.
Wednesday, 23 June 2010
Billy Budd, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, 22 June 2010
Glyndebourne Opera House
Captain Vere – John Mark Ainsley
Billy Budd – Jacques Imbrailo
Claggart – Paul Whelan
Mr Redburn – Iain Paterson
Mr Flint – Matthew Rose
Lieutenant Ratcliffe – Darren Jeffery
Red Whiskers – Alasdair Elliott
Donald – John Moore
Dansker – Jeremy White
The Novice – Ben Johnson
Squeak – Colin Judson
Bosun – Richard Mosley-Evans
Michael Grandage (director)
Christopher Oram (designs)
Paule Constable (lighting)
Tom Roden (movement)
Glyndebourne Chorus (chorus master: Jeremy Bines)
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Sir Mark Elder (conductor)
Glyndebourne’s first Billy Budd must be accounted a resounding success. (I have one principal reservation, which I shall leave to the end, but it is hardly the fault of Glyndebourne.) First and foremost are the extraordinary contributions of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Sir Mark Elder. I have heard the LPO on good form many times, but never more so than here. The Glyndebourne acoustic doubtless helped, but even so, richness and roundness of tone from the pit were first class. Woodwind solos, chattering or plangent, were superbly taken, whilst the deeply expressive cellos would have fitted right in to a top Continental string section. Elder’s command of the score never faltered, guiding light through the fog and chief dramatist at the climaxes. The broad sweep never eclipsed smaller detail, that ‘conflict of thirds’ (Arnold Whittall) from which the ‘Rights o’Man’ motif evolves properly at the centre of so much of the action, properly haunting, and properly generative. Echoes of Berg were stronger than I recall hearing previously too: not just Wozzeck but Lulu too. The Glyndebourne Chorus was on equally exceptional form; it is some time since I have heard such accomplished singing, full of body yet never fuzzy, in the opera house. The two principal London companies should look to their laurels.
Solo singing was of a high standard too. Paul Whelan, understudy to Phillip Ens, had nothing to fear from any comparisons he might have courted, for his Claggart was a more subtle interpretation than the part might have had right to expect. Musically and dramatically detailed, his interpretation truly made the words tell. There was no stronger portrayal on stage. Jacques Imbrailo’s Billy was less bright-eyed than that of Simon Keenlyside for ENO, and certainly less acrobatic. There was, though, at least some of the time, a strong sense that this might be a plausible character: not an easy thing to accomplish. He can act – and he did; he can also sing handsomely – and he did. John Mark Ainsley probed the ambivalence of Vere, properly Pilate-like, for better or worse. There were moments in the second act when his tuning wandered, but he regained focus. Standing out amongst the other men were Jeremy White’s loyal, generous-hearted Dansker and Ben Johnson’s credibly-led Novice, once spirited, now broken.
Michael Grandage’s production takes the work pretty much at face value. It takes place on a ship at the appointed time. One can tell what is happening and why, without the distraction of production ‘features’ that fail to cohere. Christopher Oram’s set is mightily impressive, again doing just what is supposed to do and perhaps a little more besides. Paule Constable’s lighting was evocative indeed. I cannot say that any especial insight struck me from the production, but nor did anything irritate. The lack of eroticism, however, was surprising, to say the least. One has only to follow the words, let alone the music, to discern it, but little was on visual display. Had this been subordinated to another angle, I could have understood; as it was, I was left wondering: why so coy? We are not in the 1950s now, thank God.
So most, if not quite all, was well and good. And yet… There remains the problem of the work itself. Even when granted so strong a performance as this, the dramatic cracks cannot quite be papered over. Motivation remains abrupt, even at times obscure, unless it is all really about something else. And if it is, can we not bring that out at least a little more strongly? We need to know more about Claggart if he is to become interesting, or at least plausible. Do men really hero-worship their captain as these men do? If so, why? What I really cannot stomach is the heavy-handedness of the Christian symbolism, quite incompatible in form and content with what otherwise seem to be the libretto’s concerns. Vere’s Pilate act is bad enough, but the Christ of Billy Budd? It borders uninterestingly upon the blasphemous. As for the reference to the peace that passes understanding, the reference perhaps surpasses anything in The Rape of Lucretia.The constant references to goodness and beauty are little more than creepy. Ultimately, Britten’s music is stronger than Forster’s libretto deserves, yet does not emerge untainted.
Captain Vere – John Mark Ainsley
Billy Budd – Jacques Imbrailo
Claggart – Paul Whelan
Mr Redburn – Iain Paterson
Mr Flint – Matthew Rose
Lieutenant Ratcliffe – Darren Jeffery
Red Whiskers – Alasdair Elliott
Donald – John Moore
Dansker – Jeremy White
The Novice – Ben Johnson
Squeak – Colin Judson
Bosun – Richard Mosley-Evans
Michael Grandage (director)
Christopher Oram (designs)
Paule Constable (lighting)
Tom Roden (movement)
Glyndebourne Chorus (chorus master: Jeremy Bines)
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Sir Mark Elder (conductor)
Glyndebourne’s first Billy Budd must be accounted a resounding success. (I have one principal reservation, which I shall leave to the end, but it is hardly the fault of Glyndebourne.) First and foremost are the extraordinary contributions of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Sir Mark Elder. I have heard the LPO on good form many times, but never more so than here. The Glyndebourne acoustic doubtless helped, but even so, richness and roundness of tone from the pit were first class. Woodwind solos, chattering or plangent, were superbly taken, whilst the deeply expressive cellos would have fitted right in to a top Continental string section. Elder’s command of the score never faltered, guiding light through the fog and chief dramatist at the climaxes. The broad sweep never eclipsed smaller detail, that ‘conflict of thirds’ (Arnold Whittall) from which the ‘Rights o’Man’ motif evolves properly at the centre of so much of the action, properly haunting, and properly generative. Echoes of Berg were stronger than I recall hearing previously too: not just Wozzeck but Lulu too. The Glyndebourne Chorus was on equally exceptional form; it is some time since I have heard such accomplished singing, full of body yet never fuzzy, in the opera house. The two principal London companies should look to their laurels.
Solo singing was of a high standard too. Paul Whelan, understudy to Phillip Ens, had nothing to fear from any comparisons he might have courted, for his Claggart was a more subtle interpretation than the part might have had right to expect. Musically and dramatically detailed, his interpretation truly made the words tell. There was no stronger portrayal on stage. Jacques Imbrailo’s Billy was less bright-eyed than that of Simon Keenlyside for ENO, and certainly less acrobatic. There was, though, at least some of the time, a strong sense that this might be a plausible character: not an easy thing to accomplish. He can act – and he did; he can also sing handsomely – and he did. John Mark Ainsley probed the ambivalence of Vere, properly Pilate-like, for better or worse. There were moments in the second act when his tuning wandered, but he regained focus. Standing out amongst the other men were Jeremy White’s loyal, generous-hearted Dansker and Ben Johnson’s credibly-led Novice, once spirited, now broken.
Michael Grandage’s production takes the work pretty much at face value. It takes place on a ship at the appointed time. One can tell what is happening and why, without the distraction of production ‘features’ that fail to cohere. Christopher Oram’s set is mightily impressive, again doing just what is supposed to do and perhaps a little more besides. Paule Constable’s lighting was evocative indeed. I cannot say that any especial insight struck me from the production, but nor did anything irritate. The lack of eroticism, however, was surprising, to say the least. One has only to follow the words, let alone the music, to discern it, but little was on visual display. Had this been subordinated to another angle, I could have understood; as it was, I was left wondering: why so coy? We are not in the 1950s now, thank God.
So most, if not quite all, was well and good. And yet… There remains the problem of the work itself. Even when granted so strong a performance as this, the dramatic cracks cannot quite be papered over. Motivation remains abrupt, even at times obscure, unless it is all really about something else. And if it is, can we not bring that out at least a little more strongly? We need to know more about Claggart if he is to become interesting, or at least plausible. Do men really hero-worship their captain as these men do? If so, why? What I really cannot stomach is the heavy-handedness of the Christian symbolism, quite incompatible in form and content with what otherwise seem to be the libretto’s concerns. Vere’s Pilate act is bad enough, but the Christ of Billy Budd? It borders uninterestingly upon the blasphemous. As for the reference to the peace that passes understanding, the reference perhaps surpasses anything in The Rape of Lucretia.The constant references to goodness and beauty are little more than creepy. Ultimately, Britten’s music is stronger than Forster’s libretto deserves, yet does not emerge untainted.
Pollini/LSO/Eötvös - Bach/Webern, Lachenmann, and Brahms, 20 June 2010
Barbican Hall
Bach-Webern – Fuga (Ricercata) a 6 voci, from Musical Offering, BWV 1079
Lachenmann – Double (Grido)
Brahms - Piano Concerto no.1 in D minor, op.15
Maurizio Pollini (piano)
London Symphony Orchestra
Peter Eötvös (conductor)
I have attended surprisingly few orchestral concerts recently, Moreover, it is more than five months since I had heard a London Symphony Orchestra concert – and that an opera, Elektra, in concert performance. A little break is as nothing, however, compared to the fortunes of Helmut Lachenmann on these shores. I was genuinely surprised to read in the programme that, save for performances from the BBC Symphony Orchestra, this was the first Lachenmann performance from a British symphony orchestra. We are not considering a minor figure, but someone comparable, say, to Hans Werner Henze or Wolfgang Rihm, and more consistent in focus than either. (That is not to make a claim of superiority or otherwise, but simply to make a distinction.) One may or may not like Lachenmann’s music, but, even if for curiosity’s sake, it deserves attention such as it regularly receives on the Continent. Many thanks then are due to the LSO, and to Maurizio Pollini, who commissioned this expansion of the original Grido, Lachenmann’s 2003 third string quartet, into its 2004 Double for forty-eight-strong string orchestra. Pollini’s was the guiding inspiration behind the programme; it is sobering to wonder how long we might have waited for a Lachenmann performance, had it not been for his advocacy, born in part from a shared friendship (and, in Lachenmann’s case, teacher-pupil relationship) with Luigi Nono.
From the very outset, this was an experience, both work and performance of great intensity: eruptions, swarming, whispering, the sounds in some initial respects not unlike Xenakis’s Pithoprakta or Nono’s Fragmente-Stille, an diotima, though with extended techniques and a formal strategy that are Lachenmann’s own. The extended techniques are just that: integrated extensions of a typical string sound, sometimes evocative of electronics, never superimposed, with the consequence that the work has more of a ‘traditional’ string orchestra sonority than one might have expected. Equally important – another sign of kinship with Nono, and beyond him Webern – is the defining quality of certain intervallic relationships. Such was the clarity with which the LSO under Peter Eötvös presented them that one would not have needed to define them in words – a major third, for instance – to perceive their import. Likewise the quarter-tone slides or indeed the progressive augmentation of pulse towards the end. There is a narrative, or one create a narrative, even if this is no sense programme music, and that greater sense of form, of progression, was readily perceptible to all. My immediate response was to wish to hear the work again.
Opening the concert we had heard Webern’s ravishing recomposition of the Ricercare from the Musical Offering: typically perceptive programming from Pollini, preparing us both for a mode of listening that pays due heed to intervallic relationships and for the contrapuntal complexities that so delight Bach, Webern, Lachenmann – and, as we should shortly hear, Brahms too. Eötvös ensured a wonderfully Romantic sound from the LSO, the strings expressively though never excessively laden with vibrato. Perhaps the falling away of phrases coincided a little too obviously with slowing of tempo, especially towards the end, but if a failing this were, it was a failing in the right direction, preferable to rigidity of tempo.
The second half saw Pollini join the orchestra for Brahms’s first piano concerto. His contribution was simply outstanding, likewise that of the LSO, the relative drawback being Eötvös’s side of the partnership, which rarely sounded quite on the same level. His contribution opened promisingly, the orchestral introduction sounding with great weight and commendable flexibility, but there were soon hints and more than that of a tendency to drive too hard. The first movement is marked Maestoso after all – and that summarises its character with Brahmsian succinctness. Flexibility would continue to intervene, creditable in itself, but sometimes with more convincing motivation than on other occasions. Pollini, meanwhile, revelled in the complexity of the piano writing, rendering every line expressively meaningful. On the technical side, his command of those fearsome double trills was awe inspiring, but musical meaning always remained paramount. Despite reservations concerning some of the conductor’s contribution, I was taken with the Hungarian lilt he imparted to some of the orchestral passages. The closing pages were most impressive from all, David Pyatt’s forlorn horn calls ushering in desolation from the piano, followed by defiance from all concerned.
Brahms’s presentiments of Ein deutsches Requiem were heard to full, moving effect in the slow movement, the relationship with Schoenbergian complexity and sonority in the piano writing properly dialectical, both inciting the other. The LSO woodwind gave a nice sense of Classical Harmoniemusik transformed: a world both vanished and yet present. The prescient instability of harmony and motivic development was powerfully voiced by the pianist, placing us somewhere between the St Matthew Passion and the Book of the Hanging Gardens. As Pollini was quoted in the programme notes:
The complexity in music makes the intensity. Think of the really complex pieces in the history of music – Bach’s Art of Fugue, the Prolation Mass by Ockeghem [which Webern knew so well], Beethoven’s Great Fugue, Boulez’s Second Sonata. There is enormous emotion in this music! The complexity does not go against the emotion, they go together in the most magical way…’
That, throughout this programme, was precisely what one heard. (May we hope for a Pollini Art of Fugue?)
Wisely, Pollini took the finale attacca, pre-empting all but a single cleverly-placed cough, though others and some shuffling followed. The piano outpouring was torrential, Bachian, playfully counterpoised with a Magyar sensibility that Eötvös once again winningly conveyed. Though the orchestral direction was not always at the same level as its execution, the string fugato was very well handled, casting a glance back (forward?) to Lachenmann, but also to Beethovenian purpose. Pollini’s voicing of the cadenza brought reminiscences of Mozart’s D minor concerto (and Beethoven’s cadenza thereto), and with enormous effort helped us finally to exorcise the driving daemon that possessed Brahms in this titanic work. As the horns led us into the playful conclusion, we knew that the battle had finally been won. Complexity had triumphed, rendered straightforward in its victory.
Bach-Webern – Fuga (Ricercata) a 6 voci, from Musical Offering, BWV 1079
Lachenmann – Double (Grido)
Brahms - Piano Concerto no.1 in D minor, op.15
Maurizio Pollini (piano)
London Symphony Orchestra
Peter Eötvös (conductor)
I have attended surprisingly few orchestral concerts recently, Moreover, it is more than five months since I had heard a London Symphony Orchestra concert – and that an opera, Elektra, in concert performance. A little break is as nothing, however, compared to the fortunes of Helmut Lachenmann on these shores. I was genuinely surprised to read in the programme that, save for performances from the BBC Symphony Orchestra, this was the first Lachenmann performance from a British symphony orchestra. We are not considering a minor figure, but someone comparable, say, to Hans Werner Henze or Wolfgang Rihm, and more consistent in focus than either. (That is not to make a claim of superiority or otherwise, but simply to make a distinction.) One may or may not like Lachenmann’s music, but, even if for curiosity’s sake, it deserves attention such as it regularly receives on the Continent. Many thanks then are due to the LSO, and to Maurizio Pollini, who commissioned this expansion of the original Grido, Lachenmann’s 2003 third string quartet, into its 2004 Double for forty-eight-strong string orchestra. Pollini’s was the guiding inspiration behind the programme; it is sobering to wonder how long we might have waited for a Lachenmann performance, had it not been for his advocacy, born in part from a shared friendship (and, in Lachenmann’s case, teacher-pupil relationship) with Luigi Nono.
From the very outset, this was an experience, both work and performance of great intensity: eruptions, swarming, whispering, the sounds in some initial respects not unlike Xenakis’s Pithoprakta or Nono’s Fragmente-Stille, an diotima, though with extended techniques and a formal strategy that are Lachenmann’s own. The extended techniques are just that: integrated extensions of a typical string sound, sometimes evocative of electronics, never superimposed, with the consequence that the work has more of a ‘traditional’ string orchestra sonority than one might have expected. Equally important – another sign of kinship with Nono, and beyond him Webern – is the defining quality of certain intervallic relationships. Such was the clarity with which the LSO under Peter Eötvös presented them that one would not have needed to define them in words – a major third, for instance – to perceive their import. Likewise the quarter-tone slides or indeed the progressive augmentation of pulse towards the end. There is a narrative, or one create a narrative, even if this is no sense programme music, and that greater sense of form, of progression, was readily perceptible to all. My immediate response was to wish to hear the work again.
Opening the concert we had heard Webern’s ravishing recomposition of the Ricercare from the Musical Offering: typically perceptive programming from Pollini, preparing us both for a mode of listening that pays due heed to intervallic relationships and for the contrapuntal complexities that so delight Bach, Webern, Lachenmann – and, as we should shortly hear, Brahms too. Eötvös ensured a wonderfully Romantic sound from the LSO, the strings expressively though never excessively laden with vibrato. Perhaps the falling away of phrases coincided a little too obviously with slowing of tempo, especially towards the end, but if a failing this were, it was a failing in the right direction, preferable to rigidity of tempo.
The second half saw Pollini join the orchestra for Brahms’s first piano concerto. His contribution was simply outstanding, likewise that of the LSO, the relative drawback being Eötvös’s side of the partnership, which rarely sounded quite on the same level. His contribution opened promisingly, the orchestral introduction sounding with great weight and commendable flexibility, but there were soon hints and more than that of a tendency to drive too hard. The first movement is marked Maestoso after all – and that summarises its character with Brahmsian succinctness. Flexibility would continue to intervene, creditable in itself, but sometimes with more convincing motivation than on other occasions. Pollini, meanwhile, revelled in the complexity of the piano writing, rendering every line expressively meaningful. On the technical side, his command of those fearsome double trills was awe inspiring, but musical meaning always remained paramount. Despite reservations concerning some of the conductor’s contribution, I was taken with the Hungarian lilt he imparted to some of the orchestral passages. The closing pages were most impressive from all, David Pyatt’s forlorn horn calls ushering in desolation from the piano, followed by defiance from all concerned.
Brahms’s presentiments of Ein deutsches Requiem were heard to full, moving effect in the slow movement, the relationship with Schoenbergian complexity and sonority in the piano writing properly dialectical, both inciting the other. The LSO woodwind gave a nice sense of Classical Harmoniemusik transformed: a world both vanished and yet present. The prescient instability of harmony and motivic development was powerfully voiced by the pianist, placing us somewhere between the St Matthew Passion and the Book of the Hanging Gardens. As Pollini was quoted in the programme notes:
The complexity in music makes the intensity. Think of the really complex pieces in the history of music – Bach’s Art of Fugue, the Prolation Mass by Ockeghem [which Webern knew so well], Beethoven’s Great Fugue, Boulez’s Second Sonata. There is enormous emotion in this music! The complexity does not go against the emotion, they go together in the most magical way…’
That, throughout this programme, was precisely what one heard. (May we hope for a Pollini Art of Fugue?)
Wisely, Pollini took the finale attacca, pre-empting all but a single cleverly-placed cough, though others and some shuffling followed. The piano outpouring was torrential, Bachian, playfully counterpoised with a Magyar sensibility that Eötvös once again winningly conveyed. Though the orchestral direction was not always at the same level as its execution, the string fugato was very well handled, casting a glance back (forward?) to Lachenmann, but also to Beethovenian purpose. Pollini’s voicing of the cadenza brought reminiscences of Mozart’s D minor concerto (and Beethoven’s cadenza thereto), and with enormous effort helped us finally to exorcise the driving daemon that possessed Brahms in this titanic work. As the horns led us into the playful conclusion, we knew that the battle had finally been won. Complexity had triumphed, rendered straightforward in its victory.
Sunday, 20 June 2010
Quatuor Ebène - Mozart and Bartók, Wigmore Hall, 20 June 2010
Wigmore Hall
Mozart – Divertimento for string quartet in D major, KV 136/125a
Bartók – String Quartet no.2, op.17
Pierre Colombet, Gabriel Le Magadure (violins)
Mathieu Herzog (viola)
Raphaël Merlin (violoncello)
What a pleasure it was to welcome back the Quatuor Ebène to the Wigmore Hall. This Sunday morning ‘coffee concert’ proved every inch the equal in quality to a full-scale evening performance. First came Mozart: KV 136/125a. What’s in a name? Sometimes everything, sometimes not so much. I am not sure one should read too much into the programme leaflet’s description of a divertimento as opposed to a string quartet: this D major work can be called either and I hedged my bets above by following another possibility, ‘divertimento for string quartet’. At any rate, the Ebènes gave a performance utterly without condescension, fully worthy of the elevated title ‘string quartet’, whilst also paying homage – as, after all, does so much mature Mozart – to the divertimento tradition. The opening Allegro was full of life, nicely shaded, with some truly beautiful soft playing. There was mystery in the minor mode and pizzicati of the development section and throughout a properly vocal treatment of phrasing. The richly expansive Andante captured perfectly the balance between stillness and motion, achieving both and elevating both to a higher level. Again, the players’ dynamic shading was near miraculous, without the slightest hint of fussiness. And yes, there was that vital – in more than one – sense of the outdoor serenade. Finally came the Haydnesque Presto: helter-skelter yet with poise retained. Above all, it was fun.
From a wonderful early work to an acknowledged masterpiece: Bartók’s second quartet. I was struck immediately by a certain French – or at least Franco-Flemish – quality to the string playing. This later showed itself to be not merely a matter of house style, but also, perhaps more so, a particular characterisation of the first movement. Echoes or pre-echoes of Debussy, Ravel, perhaps even Prokofiev – and not necessarily in their string quartet writing – drew us into a harmonic world that suggested the exploratory cosmopolitanism of Bartók’s Four Orchestral Pieces, op.12. Also striking from the outset was the marriage, indeed mutual incitement, of unanimity and individual voice, both of which developed according to the music’s dictates. The intensity of climaxes and would-be climaxes in this opening Andante brought out kinship with the Second Viennese School, again reminding one of the op.12 pieces. Moreover, and I almost wish I could find something negative to say but cannot, there was a well nigh perfect relationship between motivic integrity and overall structure. Each contributed to the other. Raphaël Merlin’s cello tone more than once brought Pierre Fournier to mind: suave, understated even, but there was no denying the power of the bass line where necessary.
The second movement immediately announced a different ‘character’. Magyar urgency and irregularity dramatised within a framework of absolute, yet never clinical, rhythmic precision. Crucially, the music sang. Wildness within overall structure once again ensured that each contributed to the other: a quintessentially modernist dialectic. The frozen viol-like opening of the final Lento truly took one’s breath away, likewise the gradual thaw. An especially impressive passage heard sorrow from Pierre Colombet’s plangent first violin, intensified by Gabriel Le Magadure’s second violin response, still further by Colombet in his response, whereupon Mathieu Herzog’s viola and Merlin’s cello could also join the throng: the magical effect of a celestial choir swelling, but behind it a great deal of consideration as to how every phrase should sound and contribute to the whole. Quiet intensity was every bit as expressive as its more obviously passionate counterpart. This was a memorable performance indeed.
Mozart – Divertimento for string quartet in D major, KV 136/125a
Bartók – String Quartet no.2, op.17
Pierre Colombet, Gabriel Le Magadure (violins)
Mathieu Herzog (viola)
Raphaël Merlin (violoncello)
What a pleasure it was to welcome back the Quatuor Ebène to the Wigmore Hall. This Sunday morning ‘coffee concert’ proved every inch the equal in quality to a full-scale evening performance. First came Mozart: KV 136/125a. What’s in a name? Sometimes everything, sometimes not so much. I am not sure one should read too much into the programme leaflet’s description of a divertimento as opposed to a string quartet: this D major work can be called either and I hedged my bets above by following another possibility, ‘divertimento for string quartet’. At any rate, the Ebènes gave a performance utterly without condescension, fully worthy of the elevated title ‘string quartet’, whilst also paying homage – as, after all, does so much mature Mozart – to the divertimento tradition. The opening Allegro was full of life, nicely shaded, with some truly beautiful soft playing. There was mystery in the minor mode and pizzicati of the development section and throughout a properly vocal treatment of phrasing. The richly expansive Andante captured perfectly the balance between stillness and motion, achieving both and elevating both to a higher level. Again, the players’ dynamic shading was near miraculous, without the slightest hint of fussiness. And yes, there was that vital – in more than one – sense of the outdoor serenade. Finally came the Haydnesque Presto: helter-skelter yet with poise retained. Above all, it was fun.
From a wonderful early work to an acknowledged masterpiece: Bartók’s second quartet. I was struck immediately by a certain French – or at least Franco-Flemish – quality to the string playing. This later showed itself to be not merely a matter of house style, but also, perhaps more so, a particular characterisation of the first movement. Echoes or pre-echoes of Debussy, Ravel, perhaps even Prokofiev – and not necessarily in their string quartet writing – drew us into a harmonic world that suggested the exploratory cosmopolitanism of Bartók’s Four Orchestral Pieces, op.12. Also striking from the outset was the marriage, indeed mutual incitement, of unanimity and individual voice, both of which developed according to the music’s dictates. The intensity of climaxes and would-be climaxes in this opening Andante brought out kinship with the Second Viennese School, again reminding one of the op.12 pieces. Moreover, and I almost wish I could find something negative to say but cannot, there was a well nigh perfect relationship between motivic integrity and overall structure. Each contributed to the other. Raphaël Merlin’s cello tone more than once brought Pierre Fournier to mind: suave, understated even, but there was no denying the power of the bass line where necessary.
The second movement immediately announced a different ‘character’. Magyar urgency and irregularity dramatised within a framework of absolute, yet never clinical, rhythmic precision. Crucially, the music sang. Wildness within overall structure once again ensured that each contributed to the other: a quintessentially modernist dialectic. The frozen viol-like opening of the final Lento truly took one’s breath away, likewise the gradual thaw. An especially impressive passage heard sorrow from Pierre Colombet’s plangent first violin, intensified by Gabriel Le Magadure’s second violin response, still further by Colombet in his response, whereupon Mathieu Herzog’s viola and Merlin’s cello could also join the throng: the magical effect of a celestial choir swelling, but behind it a great deal of consideration as to how every phrase should sound and contribute to the whole. Quiet intensity was every bit as expressive as its more obviously passionate counterpart. This was a memorable performance indeed.
Saturday, 19 June 2010
Idomeneo, English National Opera, 18 June 2010
The Coliseum
(sung in English)
Idomeneo – Paul Nilon
Idamante – Robert Murray
Elettra – Emma Bell
Ilia – Sarah Tynan
Arbace – Adam Green
Voice of Neptune – Pauls Putninš
Choral soloists – Claire Mitcher, Lydia Marchione, Michelle Daly, David Newman, Michael Selby
Katie Mitchell (director)
Vicki Mortimer (set and costume designs)
Alex Eales (set designs)
Paule Constable (lighting)
Fifty Nine Productions (video)
Joseph Alford (movement)
Orchestra of the English National Opera
Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Martin Merry)
Edward Gardner (conductor)
This was only my second Idomeneo in the theatre, the first having been in Mozartjahr 2006, when I resolved that somehow, somewhere, I must hear this great work in the flesh. Frustrated by a substitution of conductor in the Salzburg Festival’s survey of the entire operatic œuvre that summer – there was no way that my first or indeed any Idomeneo was going to come from the baton of a certain, notorious vibrato-hating fanatic – I saw it in Vienna instead, the State Opera decamping to the Theater an der Wien. It was, of course, a joy simply to experience the work, but, despite the incalculable advantage of the Mozart orchestra in the pit, neither Willy Decker’s production nor Bertrand de Billy’s typically anonymous musical direction made the impression for which I had hoped. Moreover, the score was cut in a way that almost recalled the disadvantages of the old days without the musical compensation they might have offered. (Strauss’s reworking is an extraordinary thing, but one can hardly expect its revival to be an everyday occurrence, nor one would one necessarily wish it to be.) It was, therefore, with excitement that I noted a new production from the English National Opera: about time, and another repertoire object lesson to Covent Garden.
If only, then, production and performance had begun to live up to the hopes invested. The orchestra was undoubtedly the best, indeed pretty much the only good, aspect to the evening’s events. There were odd slips here and there, especially from suspiciously ‘natural’-sounding trumpets. (I cannot always tell whether they are just acting under perverse instructions to sound like that, or whether they actually are old instruments.) But the woodwind more than compensated, producing some delectable sounds, elegant in their phrasing. The strings were clearly acting under low- though thankfully not no-vibrato orders, but at least they rarely whined. Phrasing under Edward Gardner could be short-breathed, drawing attention to itself. He also seemed to act according to the widely-held delusion that dramatic urgency equates to fast tempi, but I have heard worse, and he was capable of flexibility. But having heard Sir Colin Davis conduct Figaro so recently, I could not but reflect upon the lack of natural ease and, grossly unfair though the comparison may be, the wisdom born of a lifetime’s experience with Mozart’s music, the most difficult music of all.
What of the singers? Paul Nilon was disappointing in the title role, utterly devoid of charisma – partly the production’s fault, no doubt, but even so – and often struggling with vocal projection and tuning. He struggled, to put it mildly, with the coloratura of the more difficult version of ‘Fuor del mar,’ or whatever it was called in English. This is a role that has been sung with great success by the likes of Pavarotti and Domingo, or, from a quite different tradition, Richard Lewis. (Pavarotti, singing Idamante, learned a great deal from Lewis at Glyndebourne.) A more modest contribution was perhaps more or less inevitable, but one needed more than this. A tenor was favoured as Idamante, in this case Robert Murray. He had some sweet-toned moments but again lacked stage presence. Much the same could be said of Sarah Tynan’s Ilia. Emma Bell certainly did possess stage presence as Elettra, but her intonation was too often awry. It is a treacherous role, of course, and one cannot expect always to hear the likes of Edita Gruberová, but it would be nice to hear more of the notes Mozart wrote. One can do without Arbace’s arias and the concluding ballet, but it is indicative of the standard of his performance that Adam Green, denied his arias, emerged on the basis of skilful handling of recitative as the strongest singer; it would have been good to have heard more from him.
The chorus improved as time went on, pretty rough during the first act but more settled thereafter. However, it never really assumed the Gluckian status that it ought. It did not help that the work was not only sung in English but in a truly dreadful translation, whose banality at times beggared belief. Even the best translation would doubtless sound wrong. However, to take a random example, ‘God of Love, send us your blessing,’ not only fails to translate ‘Scenda Amor, scenda Imeneo’; it ends up sounding like the text for an evangelical guitar-strumming session – many miles and years from Idomeneo’s Crete… It was strange to hear mention of Poseidon rather than Neptune, stranger still to hear in passing of other mythological figures, who could not have stood more distant – and not in a productive, alienating sense – from the airport lounge action on stage. Indeed, updated reference to Unite and volcanic ash might have jarred slightly less.
Which brings me more properly to Katie Mitchell’s production. Mitchell seems at her best when indulging her meta-theatrical bent, as recently in ENO’s own After Dido and the Salzburg Festival’s Al gran sole carico d’amore. In what, updating aside, is essentially a conventional presentation, she seems to have no ideas at all about the work, nor even the slightest sympathy with it. Much of the action takes place in what seemed to be a modern hotel, first off with irritating video projection of waves behind. (Video can sometimes add something; far too often it does not.) Clichés of operatic production a good twenty or thirty years out of date abound, not least the constant intervention of ‘extras’ pouring drinks. Supposedly in the corridors of power, this latter facet is taken to such an irritating extreme as to suggest that we are at a convention for non-recovering alcoholics. Perhaps I was being unfair, I thought, but then, lo and behold, the point appears to be made that Elettra’s madness was the product of having had too much to drink. Couples – who on earth were they? – danced and swapped partners whilst Idamante and Ilia sang their second-act duet: distracting and incomprehensible. Baffling from the point of view of the production, let alone the work, was the laugher provoked almost whenever Elettra came onto the stage – and not just when drunk. Carry on Crete: it is a point of view, though I fail to see its merits. Maybe its proponents find Das Lied von der Erde a laugh a minute too.
At least Calixto Bieito might have made something raunchy out of the arbitrary transformation of Elettra’s second act aria into a moment of ever-so-mild foot-fetishistic madness. Here it was merely embarrassing: in keeping with the Luton Airport theme, I suppose. There is, needless to say, no sense whatsoever that she might be a member of the House of Atreus until, clumsily, she is plonked into a first-class departures lounge at the airport, whilst her intended is for the most part banished to the ranks of the unwashed: odd, given that his father is king on the island. Even odder that Elettra too should have to leave her private quarters so that the cleaners can set to work. Utterly lacking is any other sense of hierarchy. The whole point of Idomeneo’s sacrificial dilemma – should he act as king or as father? – goes for naught. He is just some bloke in an ill-tailored suit. For some reason, or more likely none, at the beginning of the third act, Ilia turns biology lecturer, delivering her lines in front of a projector displaying floral photographs. Admittedly, her aria is supposed to take place in the royal gardens, and she sings, or at least should, of gently caressing zephyrs, but the only point here seems to be to give the video production team something more to do.
Idomeneo has never been a lucky work. Perhaps it is simply too rare, too magnificent, too dignified, too fragile for this world. It deserves and could surely receive better than this though. I shall have to hope that, for me, it will be a case of third time lucky.
Wednesday, 16 June 2010
Shad Thames by night
Since there will have been a little break between my most recent review and the next (Idomeneo at the English National Opera, performance on 18th), here is something to fill the gap, a picture of the Thames taken on my walk home tonight:
And here is a picture of the road Shad Thames itself:
Many of the buildings around here (converted warehouses) are named after the spices they used to contain:
Friday, 11 June 2010
Watts/Maltman/Vignoles - Strauss Lieder, 9 June 2010
Wigmore Hall
Das Rosenband, op.36 no.1
Rote Rosen, op.31 no.1
Blauer Sommer
Begegnung
Five Songs, op.15
Leises Lied, op.39 no.1
Am Ufer, op.41 no.3
Wiegenlied, op.41 no.1
Lied an meinen Sohn, op.39 no.5
Krämerspiegel, op.66: four songs
Des Dichters Abendgang, op.47 no.2
Einerlei, op.69 no.3
Gefunden, op.56 no.1
Das Lied des Steinklopfers, op.49 no.4
Schlechtes Wetter, op.69 no.5
Elizabeth Watts (soprano)
Christopher Maltman (baritone)
Roger Vignoles (piano)
A singular, though by no means the sole, virtue to this recital was the programming, for which I assume credit should be assigned to Roger Vignoles. The opportunity to hear such a fine selection of Strauss Lieder is far rarer than it should be. Quite why, I cannot understand, for every Straussian I know – and quite a few decided non- and even anti-Straussians – would aver that nowhere is the composer greater than in his songs. Indeed, a composer of rare discernment expressed the view to me a while ago that, whilst he would not especially mind never hearing a Strauss opera again, the songs were a different matter entirely, so perfect were many of them. (And no, I have not the slightest intention of divulging the composer’s identity.) Whilst I can appreciate and understand the sentiment, I cannot quite bring myself to share it, but then I have long been unhealthily drawn to the myriad of awkward questions thrown up by Strauss’s musical dramas. Nevertheless, a selection of Lieder such as this would be as powerful an incentive to jump ship as I can imagine. Not only thoughtfully selected, but intelligently apportioned between soprano and baritone, these songs ensured that one left the hall wishing for more, which is just as it should be. If only, though, we could have heard the entire cycle, rather than a mere four songs from Krämerspiegel…
Key to the recital’s success was the consistent quality of Vignoles’s contribution at the piano. An enduring disappointment for pianists is the lack of any mature contributions from Strauss to their repertoire. (A few early pieces are worth hearing now and then, but I could not honestly plead their case more strongly than that.) Yet if they turn their attention to the world of Lieder, things look very different, unsparing though Strauss can be in his demands upon the pianist. Sometimes those demands are positively orchestral, yet rarely, at least in a fine performance, are they impossible to fulfil. Vignoles resourcefully conveyed a sense of inebriation to the second song, Blauer Sommer, whose whole world full of roses prepared us nicely for the Rote Rosen of its successor. And he whipped up quite a storm in Winternacht and the last of the four Richard Dehmel settings, Lied an meinen Sohn, though here the almost absurd demands from the composer were not always surmounted. They were, however, preceded by Mendelssohnian deftness of touch in the ravishing Wiegenlied. It is interesting to note the difference in musical language announced by some of the Dehmel settings: now inevitably associated in many of our minds with Schoenberg, his verse elicited a surprisingly Schoenbergian, perhaps even Debusssyan, response in the harmony of Leises Lied.
Vignoles captured equally well the combination of Lisztian fantasy and evening glow in Des Dichters Abendgang. Moreover, the Viennese waltz charm heard in the Krämerspiegel songs was spot on, nowhere more so than in the Rosenkavalier reminiscences of Einst kam der Bock als Bote. (We also heard, before that, Es war einmal ein Bock, and after it, Es liebte einst ein Hase and O Schöpferschwarm, O Händlerkreis.) The opening lines, indeed are ‘Einst kam der Bock als Bote/Zum Rosenkavalier an’s Haus,’ and there is a subsequent sly reference to ‘Der Strauss sticht seine Dornen schnell.’ The thorns of this Strauss/bush prick both with elegance and eloquence – how typical of the composer – the skin of publishers now as then. And the presentiment of the Mondscheinmusik from Capriccio, with which O Schöpferschwarm closes, brought tears to my eyes: the supreme riposte to the bloodsucking shopkeepers of the title.
What of the voices? Elizabeth Watts was a late replacement for Dorothea Röschmann. She took a little while to settle, the words of the opening Der Rosenband differing more than once from those Klopstock wrote and Strauss set. Yet, by the end of her first group, the sense of excitement and skittishness in Begegnung was readily and winningly conveyed. Unevenness in the vocal line was cruelly exposed in Wiegenlied, likewise a few intonational difficulties in Es war einmal ein Bock. Nevertheless, the hint of cabaret in Watts’s delivery keenly pointed up the satire of the latter, and by the third Krämerspiegel setting, Es liebte ein Hase, there was a considerable soprano presence indeed. (And how can one resist the play on words: ‘Sein Breitkopf hart und härter war,’ Breitkopf und Härtel lampooned through a hare, a lover of unctuous phrases, whose fat head, Breitkopf, became more and more wooden?) The final Rosenkavalier hurrah of cake-baking in the Heine setting, Schlechtes Wetter, was skilfully, elegantly presented.
Christopher Maltman brought typically burnished tone to his contributions. Schubertian echoes were to be heard in the Michelangelo Madrigal from the op.15 songs, and again in the Dehmel Am Ufer, Wagner too. Richness and sincerity of tone were a hallmark of Maltman’s performance, combining to especially powerful effect in Lob des Leidens, another of the op.15 set, not least on account of both musicians’ expert shaping of Strauss’s climaxes. Life shone through anger in its successor, Aus den Liedern der Trauer, likewise in the bitterness of the penultimate Das Lied des Steinklopfers, surely as close to the Berg of Wozzeck as Strauss ever came – far more so than in the merely apparent similarities of Elektra. Here the insistence of genuine anger – the poor wretch who has yet to eat today, breaking stones for the Fatherland – truly chilled. Here as elsewhere, the supreme clarity of Maltman’s diction should be noted, and not only were his words clear, they always meant something. The mezza voce employed in Gefunden had a magic all of its own, however, transcending mere words in a fashion that would equally delight the listener and annoy the poet. So much the worse for Goethe, and so much the better for us.
Das Rosenband, op.36 no.1
Rote Rosen, op.31 no.1
Blauer Sommer
Begegnung
Five Songs, op.15
Leises Lied, op.39 no.1
Am Ufer, op.41 no.3
Wiegenlied, op.41 no.1
Lied an meinen Sohn, op.39 no.5
Krämerspiegel, op.66: four songs
Des Dichters Abendgang, op.47 no.2
Einerlei, op.69 no.3
Gefunden, op.56 no.1
Das Lied des Steinklopfers, op.49 no.4
Schlechtes Wetter, op.69 no.5
Elizabeth Watts (soprano)
Christopher Maltman (baritone)
Roger Vignoles (piano)
A singular, though by no means the sole, virtue to this recital was the programming, for which I assume credit should be assigned to Roger Vignoles. The opportunity to hear such a fine selection of Strauss Lieder is far rarer than it should be. Quite why, I cannot understand, for every Straussian I know – and quite a few decided non- and even anti-Straussians – would aver that nowhere is the composer greater than in his songs. Indeed, a composer of rare discernment expressed the view to me a while ago that, whilst he would not especially mind never hearing a Strauss opera again, the songs were a different matter entirely, so perfect were many of them. (And no, I have not the slightest intention of divulging the composer’s identity.) Whilst I can appreciate and understand the sentiment, I cannot quite bring myself to share it, but then I have long been unhealthily drawn to the myriad of awkward questions thrown up by Strauss’s musical dramas. Nevertheless, a selection of Lieder such as this would be as powerful an incentive to jump ship as I can imagine. Not only thoughtfully selected, but intelligently apportioned between soprano and baritone, these songs ensured that one left the hall wishing for more, which is just as it should be. If only, though, we could have heard the entire cycle, rather than a mere four songs from Krämerspiegel…
Key to the recital’s success was the consistent quality of Vignoles’s contribution at the piano. An enduring disappointment for pianists is the lack of any mature contributions from Strauss to their repertoire. (A few early pieces are worth hearing now and then, but I could not honestly plead their case more strongly than that.) Yet if they turn their attention to the world of Lieder, things look very different, unsparing though Strauss can be in his demands upon the pianist. Sometimes those demands are positively orchestral, yet rarely, at least in a fine performance, are they impossible to fulfil. Vignoles resourcefully conveyed a sense of inebriation to the second song, Blauer Sommer, whose whole world full of roses prepared us nicely for the Rote Rosen of its successor. And he whipped up quite a storm in Winternacht and the last of the four Richard Dehmel settings, Lied an meinen Sohn, though here the almost absurd demands from the composer were not always surmounted. They were, however, preceded by Mendelssohnian deftness of touch in the ravishing Wiegenlied. It is interesting to note the difference in musical language announced by some of the Dehmel settings: now inevitably associated in many of our minds with Schoenberg, his verse elicited a surprisingly Schoenbergian, perhaps even Debusssyan, response in the harmony of Leises Lied.
Vignoles captured equally well the combination of Lisztian fantasy and evening glow in Des Dichters Abendgang. Moreover, the Viennese waltz charm heard in the Krämerspiegel songs was spot on, nowhere more so than in the Rosenkavalier reminiscences of Einst kam der Bock als Bote. (We also heard, before that, Es war einmal ein Bock, and after it, Es liebte einst ein Hase and O Schöpferschwarm, O Händlerkreis.) The opening lines, indeed are ‘Einst kam der Bock als Bote/Zum Rosenkavalier an’s Haus,’ and there is a subsequent sly reference to ‘Der Strauss sticht seine Dornen schnell.’ The thorns of this Strauss/bush prick both with elegance and eloquence – how typical of the composer – the skin of publishers now as then. And the presentiment of the Mondscheinmusik from Capriccio, with which O Schöpferschwarm closes, brought tears to my eyes: the supreme riposte to the bloodsucking shopkeepers of the title.
What of the voices? Elizabeth Watts was a late replacement for Dorothea Röschmann. She took a little while to settle, the words of the opening Der Rosenband differing more than once from those Klopstock wrote and Strauss set. Yet, by the end of her first group, the sense of excitement and skittishness in Begegnung was readily and winningly conveyed. Unevenness in the vocal line was cruelly exposed in Wiegenlied, likewise a few intonational difficulties in Es war einmal ein Bock. Nevertheless, the hint of cabaret in Watts’s delivery keenly pointed up the satire of the latter, and by the third Krämerspiegel setting, Es liebte ein Hase, there was a considerable soprano presence indeed. (And how can one resist the play on words: ‘Sein Breitkopf hart und härter war,’ Breitkopf und Härtel lampooned through a hare, a lover of unctuous phrases, whose fat head, Breitkopf, became more and more wooden?) The final Rosenkavalier hurrah of cake-baking in the Heine setting, Schlechtes Wetter, was skilfully, elegantly presented.
Christopher Maltman brought typically burnished tone to his contributions. Schubertian echoes were to be heard in the Michelangelo Madrigal from the op.15 songs, and again in the Dehmel Am Ufer, Wagner too. Richness and sincerity of tone were a hallmark of Maltman’s performance, combining to especially powerful effect in Lob des Leidens, another of the op.15 set, not least on account of both musicians’ expert shaping of Strauss’s climaxes. Life shone through anger in its successor, Aus den Liedern der Trauer, likewise in the bitterness of the penultimate Das Lied des Steinklopfers, surely as close to the Berg of Wozzeck as Strauss ever came – far more so than in the merely apparent similarities of Elektra. Here the insistence of genuine anger – the poor wretch who has yet to eat today, breaking stones for the Fatherland – truly chilled. Here as elsewhere, the supreme clarity of Maltman’s diction should be noted, and not only were his words clear, they always meant something. The mezza voce employed in Gefunden had a magic all of its own, however, transcending mere words in a fashion that would equally delight the listener and annoy the poet. So much the worse for Goethe, and so much the better for us.
Sunday, 6 June 2010
Carmen, Royal Opera, 5 June 2010
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
Moralés – Dawid Kimberg
Micaëla – Maija Kovalevska
Don José – Bryan Hymel
Zuniga – Nicolas Courjal
Carmen – Christine Rice
Frasquita – Elena Xanthoudakis
Mercédés – Paula Murrihy
Lillas Pastia – Caroline Lena Olsson
Escamillo – Aris Argiris
Le Dancaïre – Adrian Clarke
Le Remendado – Harry Nicoll
Guide – Anthony de Baeck
Francesca Zambello (director)
Duncan Macfarland (revival director)
Tanya McCallin (designs)
Paule Constable (lighting)
Arthur Pita (choreography)
Mike Loades (fight director)
Natalie Dakin (revival fight director)
Actors, Dancers
Members of Trinity Boys’ Choir and Trinity School, Croydon (director: David Swinson)
Members of Tiffin Girls’ School Choir (choirmaster: Simon Ferris)
Royal Opera Chorus and extra chorus (chorus director: Renato Balsadonna)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
I wish I could dislike Francesca Zambello's production of Carmen as much in practice as I do in theory. Zambello’s West-End spectacular approach relies upon a naturalism that might even give the stage directors of Shaftesbury Avenue pause for thought. It in no way seems to have moved on from what I saw at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin last year – except that was a 1979 production, hurriedly revived when a new director fell ill. There are manifold irritations: the ‘picturesque’ urchins, the horse and donkey, and worst of all, the grotesque Madonna wheeled on for a priest to bless Escamillo and Carmen before the bull-fight. (Zambello seems to have a thing about Madonna figures, as witnessed by her Covent Garden Don Giovanni, in which the religious imagery had more of a rightful place, though it was a far worse production.) And yet, in a way, it all works. There are no revelations; there is no discernible concept at work. One is nevertheless grateful for the lack of perversity and for relative lack of impediments to the characters’ expressing themselves. Intimacy is lost – and that is a serious thing for Carmen, an opéra comique, not a grand opera. If Zambello were a composer, she would surely be Meyerbeer. But Meyerbeer had a certain sense of theatre and there are times when one might prefer to listen to the best of Les Huguenots to certain other, far-from-neglected swathes of the operatic repertoire. Duncan Macfarland certainly does his best as revival director to make it all work and to ensure as much interaction between the characters as the too-grand staging will permit. It will probably look impressive in a straightforward sort of way on the big screen.
Vocally, we had a mixed bag. Bryan Hymel struggled for much of the time as Don José. At his most cruelly exposed during the arias, he picked up somewhat for the final scene. When I saw this production before, the role was taken by Jonas Kaufmann: a more than usually odious comparison. Likewise for Ildebrando D’Arcangelo’s smouldering, chocolate-toned Escamillo and the present run’s Aris Argiris. Argiris can be forgiven, though, for lacking the sheer charisma of such an operatic star. All in all, he showed considerable promise, though he seemed to tire in the fourth act. Nicolas Courjal, however, made a more virile impression as the lieutenant, Zuniga, than either of the two principal men. Christine Rice is a versatile artist, with repertoire ranging – at least – from Monteverdi to Birtwistle. She is not, however, the first person I would have thought of as a Carmen. That said, she did a good job of confounding expectations through her innate musical intelligence and a stage presence of not inconsiderable sensuality. Her French compared favourably with that of most of her colleagues (a major bugbear throughout). Maija Kovalevska made Micaëla as interesting a character as I have experienced in the theatre, presenting a figure of greater allure than the typical pallid angel we and, to some extent, the score expect. This was an impressive house debut by any standards. There was, moreover, much to be impressed with in the smaller roles. Elena Xanthoudakis’s Frasquita and Paula Murrihy’s Mercédès sounded a true gypsy – or rather, Bizet’s fantasy-gypsy – presence, whilst a subtly modulated Moralès from Dawid Kimberg made one wish that the character might return. The choral singing was excellent: full marks not only to Renato Balsadonna and his Royal Opera chorus (augmented) but to the children’s choirs, from whom one could hear every word. Dancing and choreography were of an impeccably high standard too.
However, the true star of the evening was without a shadow of a doubt the conductor, Constantinos Carydis, marking another Royal Opera debut. He presented Bizet’s score with fire, colour, grace, precision, dramatic flow, and true structural coherence. The darkness that lies beneath the surface was powerfully conveyed, not least the ‘real story’, belying Carmen’s words, of which he spoke to me in an interview a week previously. Here we could feel, quite frighteningly, the nature of her real feelings for Don José – at least those of who bothered to listen and to turn off our mobile telephones. There was not an ounce of sentimentality, just as it should be in this work of realism. The omnipotence and omnipresence of Fate could be heard from the pit, without any descent into melodrama. In this, the contribution of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House was, of course, crucial. Every section was excellent: one was reminded once again that this is an orchestra, which, on top form as here, can rival any. I hope that we shall hear more of Carydis in London and at Covent Garden. Many good things have been said about his Gluck and his Mozart: an opportunity to judge for ourselves would be most welcome.
Moralés – Dawid Kimberg
Micaëla – Maija Kovalevska
Don José – Bryan Hymel
Zuniga – Nicolas Courjal
Carmen – Christine Rice
Frasquita – Elena Xanthoudakis
Mercédés – Paula Murrihy
Lillas Pastia – Caroline Lena Olsson
Escamillo – Aris Argiris
Le Dancaïre – Adrian Clarke
Le Remendado – Harry Nicoll
Guide – Anthony de Baeck
Francesca Zambello (director)
Duncan Macfarland (revival director)
Tanya McCallin (designs)
Paule Constable (lighting)
Arthur Pita (choreography)
Mike Loades (fight director)
Natalie Dakin (revival fight director)
Actors, Dancers
Members of Trinity Boys’ Choir and Trinity School, Croydon (director: David Swinson)
Members of Tiffin Girls’ School Choir (choirmaster: Simon Ferris)
Royal Opera Chorus and extra chorus (chorus director: Renato Balsadonna)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
I wish I could dislike Francesca Zambello's production of Carmen as much in practice as I do in theory. Zambello’s West-End spectacular approach relies upon a naturalism that might even give the stage directors of Shaftesbury Avenue pause for thought. It in no way seems to have moved on from what I saw at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin last year – except that was a 1979 production, hurriedly revived when a new director fell ill. There are manifold irritations: the ‘picturesque’ urchins, the horse and donkey, and worst of all, the grotesque Madonna wheeled on for a priest to bless Escamillo and Carmen before the bull-fight. (Zambello seems to have a thing about Madonna figures, as witnessed by her Covent Garden Don Giovanni, in which the religious imagery had more of a rightful place, though it was a far worse production.) And yet, in a way, it all works. There are no revelations; there is no discernible concept at work. One is nevertheless grateful for the lack of perversity and for relative lack of impediments to the characters’ expressing themselves. Intimacy is lost – and that is a serious thing for Carmen, an opéra comique, not a grand opera. If Zambello were a composer, she would surely be Meyerbeer. But Meyerbeer had a certain sense of theatre and there are times when one might prefer to listen to the best of Les Huguenots to certain other, far-from-neglected swathes of the operatic repertoire. Duncan Macfarland certainly does his best as revival director to make it all work and to ensure as much interaction between the characters as the too-grand staging will permit. It will probably look impressive in a straightforward sort of way on the big screen.
Vocally, we had a mixed bag. Bryan Hymel struggled for much of the time as Don José. At his most cruelly exposed during the arias, he picked up somewhat for the final scene. When I saw this production before, the role was taken by Jonas Kaufmann: a more than usually odious comparison. Likewise for Ildebrando D’Arcangelo’s smouldering, chocolate-toned Escamillo and the present run’s Aris Argiris. Argiris can be forgiven, though, for lacking the sheer charisma of such an operatic star. All in all, he showed considerable promise, though he seemed to tire in the fourth act. Nicolas Courjal, however, made a more virile impression as the lieutenant, Zuniga, than either of the two principal men. Christine Rice is a versatile artist, with repertoire ranging – at least – from Monteverdi to Birtwistle. She is not, however, the first person I would have thought of as a Carmen. That said, she did a good job of confounding expectations through her innate musical intelligence and a stage presence of not inconsiderable sensuality. Her French compared favourably with that of most of her colleagues (a major bugbear throughout). Maija Kovalevska made Micaëla as interesting a character as I have experienced in the theatre, presenting a figure of greater allure than the typical pallid angel we and, to some extent, the score expect. This was an impressive house debut by any standards. There was, moreover, much to be impressed with in the smaller roles. Elena Xanthoudakis’s Frasquita and Paula Murrihy’s Mercédès sounded a true gypsy – or rather, Bizet’s fantasy-gypsy – presence, whilst a subtly modulated Moralès from Dawid Kimberg made one wish that the character might return. The choral singing was excellent: full marks not only to Renato Balsadonna and his Royal Opera chorus (augmented) but to the children’s choirs, from whom one could hear every word. Dancing and choreography were of an impeccably high standard too.
However, the true star of the evening was without a shadow of a doubt the conductor, Constantinos Carydis, marking another Royal Opera debut. He presented Bizet’s score with fire, colour, grace, precision, dramatic flow, and true structural coherence. The darkness that lies beneath the surface was powerfully conveyed, not least the ‘real story’, belying Carmen’s words, of which he spoke to me in an interview a week previously. Here we could feel, quite frighteningly, the nature of her real feelings for Don José – at least those of who bothered to listen and to turn off our mobile telephones. There was not an ounce of sentimentality, just as it should be in this work of realism. The omnipotence and omnipresence of Fate could be heard from the pit, without any descent into melodrama. In this, the contribution of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House was, of course, crucial. Every section was excellent: one was reminded once again that this is an orchestra, which, on top form as here, can rival any. I hope that we shall hear more of Carydis in London and at Covent Garden. Many good things have been said about his Gluck and his Mozart: an opportunity to judge for ourselves would be most welcome.
Wednesday, 2 June 2010
David Greilsammer - piano recital, 'Viennese Schools', 1 June 2010
Wigmore Hall
Webern – Variations for piano, op.27
Haydn – Variations in F minor, Hob.XVII/6
Berg – Piano Sonata, op.1
Mozart – Piano Sonata in A major, KV 331/300i
Schoenberg – Six Little Piano Pieces, op.19
Schubert – Six Moments Musicaux, D 780
David Greilsammer is fast making a name for himself both as pianist and conductor, recently having been appointed Music Director of the Geneva Chamber Orchestra. He certainly showed enterprise in programming, presenting pairs of works performed without a break: one from the Second Viennese School, followed by one from the ‘first’, attempting to make formal connections between them.
This worked very well with the opening Webern and Haydn pairing. The Webern op.27 Variations benefited from a beautifully soft opening, with no cost to subsequent dynamic contrast. Webern’s intervallic thinking and construction shone through, such that anyone would be able to perceive them, even were he not able to put a serial name to the processes at work. For instance, the minor seconds of the second variation had real bite, uniting expressive and formal function. If anything, the approach became at times a little too pointillistic, though there is of course no single way to perform Webern. There was little of Maurizio Pollini’s crystalline perfection here, but an intriguing, exploratory way that led directly into the Haydn F minor variations, themselves benefiting from a similarly beautiful, quiet opening, utterly pianistic in conception, thumbing a nose at bogus notions of ‘authenticity’. There was no absurd puritanism – is there a non-absurd form? – with respect to use of the sustaining pedal. Greilsammer clearly strove to bring out parallels between the works, relishing the chromaticism of the minor-key variations, which consequently sounded more Mozartian, Romantic even, than would often be the case. I did wonder, however, whether the conclusion of the second minor variation was simply too nineteenth-century in its conception. The coda was also unabashedly Romantic, exhibiting Beethovenian pride, insistence, even heroism.
The second pairing started equally well, with Berg’s one-movement piano sonata. Its opening couple of bars sounded relatively cool, but the atmosphere soon became more heated, with something of the Zemlinskian hothouse too it. Proximity to Schoenberg’s piano style, perhaps to Liszt even in the climaxes, was readily apparent. There was the odd wrong note, but this was clearly a slip of the fingers, nothing more. Then, however, came an account of Mozart’s Alla Turca piano sonata such as I have never heard, and such as I never wish to hear again. It is not at all clear to me that this was the best Mozart work to select to accompany the Berg – I can think of many pieces that would have made more sense in context – but what truly disturbed was the utterly un-Mozartian, even anti-Mozartian execution. Though there was a welcome flexibility to the first movement theme and variations, even the theme was rendered unnecessarily complicated. Points were made, perhaps valid in theory, but the Mozartian simplicity that conceals complexity was quite abandoned. The first variation sounded like a parody of Glenn Gould, whilst its successor was pulled around far too much. Phrases here and elsewhere became disjunct, unconnected with each other – surely the antithesis of a Bergian interpretation. The music lacked charm and indeed any sense of vocal inspiration; it was merely ‘interesting’, though the minore variation was something of an exception, showing that Greilsammer was perfectly capable of playing stylishly when he put his mind to it. Even there though, ornamentation for its own sake drew attention to itself and added a sense of disjuncture. There was also a great deal of straightforward heavy-handedness. The minuet proved equally charmless, though the trio was a little more relaxed, if still over-interpreted. (Harnoncourt and Rattle sprang to mind.) As for the celebrated finale, it opened in effortful fashion and continued still more so. The harshness of the major-mode passages was at best unpleasant.
Schoenberg and Schubert followed after the interval. The Six Little Piano Pieces, op.19, are a string of jewels even by Schoenberg’s standards, and received their due in Greilsammer’s performance. The pianist played with real insight into the connections between the notes and the phrasing that had been so lacking in his Mozart. A fine touch exhibited itself in the first piece and thereafter. The second was euphonious to an unusual degree, though the fourth was less successful in that respect; it needs to sound loud, but not heavy-handed. The sixth was simply beautiful, Klangfarbenmelodie somehow suggested by the allegedly monochrome piano, through its finely etched suggestion of Mahlerian funeral bells. It was played faster than is usual, but the tempo worked. I have my doubts about performing Schubert Moments Musicaux as a set like this, but in the context of the present recital it made sense, responding to the Schoenberg set of six pieces. Greilsammer’s Schubert, however, proved as controversial as his Mozart. The first piece marked a definite return to a style of disjuncture, with weird impressionistic interludes. It lacked rhythmic impetus – which includes harmonic rhythm. In its distended nature, I was put in mind of Ivo Pogorelich at his most perverse: there is clearly a mind at work, but sometimes less can be so much more. There were some beautiful ‘moments’ in the second piece, but as a whole it sounded too much as if it wished to be Chopin. (The parallels between Schubert and Chopin are fascinating, but I am not sure that the latter should sound as if he merely aspires to the character of the latter.) The F minor Allegretto moderato, however, beguiled with relative simplicity, though its successor witnessed a highlighting of voices that was revealing and exasperating in almost equal measure. I nevertheless warmed to the interesting – and not in a pejorative sense – premonitions of Chopin’s mazurkas. The fifth piece was hard-driven and harsh of tone, but the final piece brought unexpected harmonic consonance with the world of Schoenberg. If only it had not been pulled around so much, quite beyond what the music could reasonably be expected to bear.
Webern – Variations for piano, op.27
Haydn – Variations in F minor, Hob.XVII/6
Berg – Piano Sonata, op.1
Mozart – Piano Sonata in A major, KV 331/300i
Schoenberg – Six Little Piano Pieces, op.19
Schubert – Six Moments Musicaux, D 780
David Greilsammer is fast making a name for himself both as pianist and conductor, recently having been appointed Music Director of the Geneva Chamber Orchestra. He certainly showed enterprise in programming, presenting pairs of works performed without a break: one from the Second Viennese School, followed by one from the ‘first’, attempting to make formal connections between them.
This worked very well with the opening Webern and Haydn pairing. The Webern op.27 Variations benefited from a beautifully soft opening, with no cost to subsequent dynamic contrast. Webern’s intervallic thinking and construction shone through, such that anyone would be able to perceive them, even were he not able to put a serial name to the processes at work. For instance, the minor seconds of the second variation had real bite, uniting expressive and formal function. If anything, the approach became at times a little too pointillistic, though there is of course no single way to perform Webern. There was little of Maurizio Pollini’s crystalline perfection here, but an intriguing, exploratory way that led directly into the Haydn F minor variations, themselves benefiting from a similarly beautiful, quiet opening, utterly pianistic in conception, thumbing a nose at bogus notions of ‘authenticity’. There was no absurd puritanism – is there a non-absurd form? – with respect to use of the sustaining pedal. Greilsammer clearly strove to bring out parallels between the works, relishing the chromaticism of the minor-key variations, which consequently sounded more Mozartian, Romantic even, than would often be the case. I did wonder, however, whether the conclusion of the second minor variation was simply too nineteenth-century in its conception. The coda was also unabashedly Romantic, exhibiting Beethovenian pride, insistence, even heroism.
The second pairing started equally well, with Berg’s one-movement piano sonata. Its opening couple of bars sounded relatively cool, but the atmosphere soon became more heated, with something of the Zemlinskian hothouse too it. Proximity to Schoenberg’s piano style, perhaps to Liszt even in the climaxes, was readily apparent. There was the odd wrong note, but this was clearly a slip of the fingers, nothing more. Then, however, came an account of Mozart’s Alla Turca piano sonata such as I have never heard, and such as I never wish to hear again. It is not at all clear to me that this was the best Mozart work to select to accompany the Berg – I can think of many pieces that would have made more sense in context – but what truly disturbed was the utterly un-Mozartian, even anti-Mozartian execution. Though there was a welcome flexibility to the first movement theme and variations, even the theme was rendered unnecessarily complicated. Points were made, perhaps valid in theory, but the Mozartian simplicity that conceals complexity was quite abandoned. The first variation sounded like a parody of Glenn Gould, whilst its successor was pulled around far too much. Phrases here and elsewhere became disjunct, unconnected with each other – surely the antithesis of a Bergian interpretation. The music lacked charm and indeed any sense of vocal inspiration; it was merely ‘interesting’, though the minore variation was something of an exception, showing that Greilsammer was perfectly capable of playing stylishly when he put his mind to it. Even there though, ornamentation for its own sake drew attention to itself and added a sense of disjuncture. There was also a great deal of straightforward heavy-handedness. The minuet proved equally charmless, though the trio was a little more relaxed, if still over-interpreted. (Harnoncourt and Rattle sprang to mind.) As for the celebrated finale, it opened in effortful fashion and continued still more so. The harshness of the major-mode passages was at best unpleasant.
Schoenberg and Schubert followed after the interval. The Six Little Piano Pieces, op.19, are a string of jewels even by Schoenberg’s standards, and received their due in Greilsammer’s performance. The pianist played with real insight into the connections between the notes and the phrasing that had been so lacking in his Mozart. A fine touch exhibited itself in the first piece and thereafter. The second was euphonious to an unusual degree, though the fourth was less successful in that respect; it needs to sound loud, but not heavy-handed. The sixth was simply beautiful, Klangfarbenmelodie somehow suggested by the allegedly monochrome piano, through its finely etched suggestion of Mahlerian funeral bells. It was played faster than is usual, but the tempo worked. I have my doubts about performing Schubert Moments Musicaux as a set like this, but in the context of the present recital it made sense, responding to the Schoenberg set of six pieces. Greilsammer’s Schubert, however, proved as controversial as his Mozart. The first piece marked a definite return to a style of disjuncture, with weird impressionistic interludes. It lacked rhythmic impetus – which includes harmonic rhythm. In its distended nature, I was put in mind of Ivo Pogorelich at his most perverse: there is clearly a mind at work, but sometimes less can be so much more. There were some beautiful ‘moments’ in the second piece, but as a whole it sounded too much as if it wished to be Chopin. (The parallels between Schubert and Chopin are fascinating, but I am not sure that the latter should sound as if he merely aspires to the character of the latter.) The F minor Allegretto moderato, however, beguiled with relative simplicity, though its successor witnessed a highlighting of voices that was revealing and exasperating in almost equal measure. I nevertheless warmed to the interesting – and not in a pejorative sense – premonitions of Chopin’s mazurkas. The fifth piece was hard-driven and harsh of tone, but the final piece brought unexpected harmonic consonance with the world of Schoenberg. If only it had not been pulled around so much, quite beyond what the music could reasonably be expected to bear.
Tuesday, 1 June 2010
Le nozze di Figaro, Royal Opera, 31 May 2010
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
Figaro – Erwin Schrott
Susanna – Eri Nakamura
Count Almaviva – Mariusz Kwiecien
Countess Almaviva – Annette Dasch
Cherubino – Jurgita Adamonytė
Bartolo – Robert Lloyd
Basilio – Peter Hoare
Don Curzio – Christopher Gillett
Marcellina – Marie McLaughlin
Barbarina – Amanda Forsythe
Antonio – Nicholas Folwell
Bridesmaids – Glenys Groves, Kate McCarney
David McVicar (director)
Tanya McCallin (designs)
Paule Constable (lighting)
Leah Hausman (movement)
Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Sir Colin Davis (conductor)
Covent Garden’s present run of The Marriage of Figaro opened with an evening of true wonders, let down by some other aspects. Let me get the latter out of the way: first, a good or rather a bad part of the audience. How I weary of having to ask this, but is it impossible for people simply to behave in a fashion that does not detract from others’ experience? One almost grows inured to low- or even intermediate-level coughing, but the hayfever season was well marked by an epidemic of sneezing. Chatter, mobile telephones, banging, bracelet jangling, unwrapping of sweets: all and more were there. And if to applaud within acts infuriates, to do so before a number has even concluded is unforgivable. Lesser composers do not deserve this; Mozart certainly does not.
David McVicar’s production has its moments, but already looks a bit tired. The hyperactive army of servants continues to irritate, nowhere more so than during the overture, where Mozart should surely be left to speak for himself. I no more understand the updating to c.1830 than I did on previous encounters. One might make a case – though I suspect that it would be easier to do so in writing than on stage – for a production that looked back fifty years, engaged in a dialogue with the ancien regime, and considered the world of the Restoration in which the Bourbons remembered everything but had learned nothing. This, however, does not seem to do so; it merely moves everything on half a century and continues in relatively light vein. The feudalism of the Almaviva estate, especially the droit de seigneur, was exaggerated at the time of writing, quite deliberately so. If, as here, it seems to be central to the production, then it is difficult to make sense of a temporal relocation. This work is historical in a way that Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte are not; updating needs a point that is lacking here. The arrival of a dog on stage when the Count rushes back from hunting is a cheap trick, guaranteed to make the sentimental coo, but with as little dramatic point as the transformation of Don Basilio into a Danny La Rue de ses jours. (Camping it up does not go so far as that in Barrie Kosky’s dreadful Berlin production, but it remains unwarranted by words or music.) And the concentration on a mute serving girl at the end irritatingly reprises a McVicar trick of taking a minor or even invented character and, for reasons uncertain, thrusting him or her into the limelight. Naaman in Salome and Mohammed in Der Rosenkavalier are two further examples.
Sad to say, the female singers were mostly disappointing. Annette Dasch made for a bland Countess – which is surely not what this most wonderfully sophisticated of Mozart’s women should be. There was nothing especially wrong, other than excessive tremulousness in ‘Dove sono’, nor was there anything with which truly to empathise, let alone to adore. My thoughts wandered to the image and sound of Kiri Te Kanawa in the beautiful filmed production from Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, conducted exquisitely by Karl Böhm. Eri Nakamura seemed simply to have bitten off more than she could chew as Susanna. There was a transformation of sorts from a thin-toned soubrette in the first two acts to inexpressive excess of volume during the latter two, but personality, whether vocal or stage, was notable only through its absence. Her Italian was as unidiomatic as I have heard. Jurgita Adamonytė’s Cherubino was perfectly adequate, but little more: one longed for Christine Schäfer, originally slated for the role. Marie McLaughlin, however, made a fine Marcellina. It was a pity to lose her aria, the ‘traditional’, regrettable cuts being made. It was a matter of great sadness, though, to witness Robert Lloyd’s Bartolo fail to keep up with the orchestra, both in his vendetta aria and in ensembles. Let us hope that this was just an off-day.
And yet… there were two stellar performances from Erwin Schrott as Figaro and Marius Kwiecien as the Count. Both are artists – and actors – of extraordinary charisma. Testosterone levels registered during their confrontations might well have exceeded all previous records. Never have I felt so keenly the fury of Figaro’s ‘Perché no?’ immediately prior to the third act finale. The Count’s frustrations of his valet had finally pushed him too far; I thought he might kill his master. For the chemistry between the two baritones was something special indeed, their relationship far more credible than any other. Kwiecien possessed the stage as to the manor born, the dark arrogance of his vocal portrayal enhanced by his physical presence. And the slipping away of his authority, supplanted by the upstart Figaro, was if anything all the more impressive in its astonishing subtlety. But victor, of course, there could only be one: Schrott left one in no doubt that this was ultimately Figaro’s show. Try as I might, I could not summon up a single reservation – and, to be frank, I have no inclination to do so. Whether it be his ease with the Italian language, the diction of extraordinary and meaningful clarity, not least in his daring sashays into parlando delivery, the beauty of his legato tone, the smouldering sexuality, or the equally extraordinary vulnerability displayed in his fourth-act aria, this Figaro had it all. Schrott’s is an assumption every bit the equal of his astounding Don Giovanni.
Greatness was present on stage, then, and also in the pit. Sir Colin Davis’s previous conducting of this production in 2006 marks one of the highlights of my operatic experience, unsurpassed and unsurpassable. My enthusiasm on this occasion was slightly tempered by a slightly staid quality to the opening of the first act, but I suspect that I should never even have noticed this from another conductor. I was unconvinced, moreover, by the need for harpsichord continuo during the orchestral recitatives, but nor was it a matter of great import. For warmth and dramatic flow proved second to none thereafter, likewise the sheer sensuous delight of Mozart’s orchestral genius. Nothing was rushed, and yet the score pulsated with life. (Nikolaus Harnoncourt is quite right to bemoan the current fad for performing Mozart as fast as possible, quite right to suggest that the music ends up sounding like Rossini. The only problem is that Harnoncourt’s own musical response to the ‘problem’ is generally so perverse.) Silken strings, beguiling woodwind, cruelly ravishing horns of cuckoldry: one could not have wished for more, and no praise would be high enough for the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, which put not a finger wrong. This is what Mozart performance, the most difficult and yet rewarding task in the world, should sound like. Davis’s structural command was likewise as impressive as any I have heard, enough to silence once and for all the doubters who claim that sonata forms cannot be aurally perceived in theatrical performance. Try telling that to anyone who listened to – as opposed to merely heard – this rendition of the Act Two finale. And to hear the world stop for the moment of forgiveness at the end, with no disruption to the structure of the act, was an object lesson in operatic direction. Truly one has to go back to Böhm or Erich Kleiber to hear Mozart conducting of such distinction. One could forgive a great deal, if not quite the selfish audience contingent, for such an opportunity.
Figaro – Erwin Schrott
Susanna – Eri Nakamura
Count Almaviva – Mariusz Kwiecien
Countess Almaviva – Annette Dasch
Cherubino – Jurgita Adamonytė
Bartolo – Robert Lloyd
Basilio – Peter Hoare
Don Curzio – Christopher Gillett
Marcellina – Marie McLaughlin
Barbarina – Amanda Forsythe
Antonio – Nicholas Folwell
Bridesmaids – Glenys Groves, Kate McCarney
David McVicar (director)
Tanya McCallin (designs)
Paule Constable (lighting)
Leah Hausman (movement)
Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Sir Colin Davis (conductor)
Covent Garden’s present run of The Marriage of Figaro opened with an evening of true wonders, let down by some other aspects. Let me get the latter out of the way: first, a good or rather a bad part of the audience. How I weary of having to ask this, but is it impossible for people simply to behave in a fashion that does not detract from others’ experience? One almost grows inured to low- or even intermediate-level coughing, but the hayfever season was well marked by an epidemic of sneezing. Chatter, mobile telephones, banging, bracelet jangling, unwrapping of sweets: all and more were there. And if to applaud within acts infuriates, to do so before a number has even concluded is unforgivable. Lesser composers do not deserve this; Mozart certainly does not.
David McVicar’s production has its moments, but already looks a bit tired. The hyperactive army of servants continues to irritate, nowhere more so than during the overture, where Mozart should surely be left to speak for himself. I no more understand the updating to c.1830 than I did on previous encounters. One might make a case – though I suspect that it would be easier to do so in writing than on stage – for a production that looked back fifty years, engaged in a dialogue with the ancien regime, and considered the world of the Restoration in which the Bourbons remembered everything but had learned nothing. This, however, does not seem to do so; it merely moves everything on half a century and continues in relatively light vein. The feudalism of the Almaviva estate, especially the droit de seigneur, was exaggerated at the time of writing, quite deliberately so. If, as here, it seems to be central to the production, then it is difficult to make sense of a temporal relocation. This work is historical in a way that Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte are not; updating needs a point that is lacking here. The arrival of a dog on stage when the Count rushes back from hunting is a cheap trick, guaranteed to make the sentimental coo, but with as little dramatic point as the transformation of Don Basilio into a Danny La Rue de ses jours. (Camping it up does not go so far as that in Barrie Kosky’s dreadful Berlin production, but it remains unwarranted by words or music.) And the concentration on a mute serving girl at the end irritatingly reprises a McVicar trick of taking a minor or even invented character and, for reasons uncertain, thrusting him or her into the limelight. Naaman in Salome and Mohammed in Der Rosenkavalier are two further examples.
Sad to say, the female singers were mostly disappointing. Annette Dasch made for a bland Countess – which is surely not what this most wonderfully sophisticated of Mozart’s women should be. There was nothing especially wrong, other than excessive tremulousness in ‘Dove sono’, nor was there anything with which truly to empathise, let alone to adore. My thoughts wandered to the image and sound of Kiri Te Kanawa in the beautiful filmed production from Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, conducted exquisitely by Karl Böhm. Eri Nakamura seemed simply to have bitten off more than she could chew as Susanna. There was a transformation of sorts from a thin-toned soubrette in the first two acts to inexpressive excess of volume during the latter two, but personality, whether vocal or stage, was notable only through its absence. Her Italian was as unidiomatic as I have heard. Jurgita Adamonytė’s Cherubino was perfectly adequate, but little more: one longed for Christine Schäfer, originally slated for the role. Marie McLaughlin, however, made a fine Marcellina. It was a pity to lose her aria, the ‘traditional’, regrettable cuts being made. It was a matter of great sadness, though, to witness Robert Lloyd’s Bartolo fail to keep up with the orchestra, both in his vendetta aria and in ensembles. Let us hope that this was just an off-day.
And yet… there were two stellar performances from Erwin Schrott as Figaro and Marius Kwiecien as the Count. Both are artists – and actors – of extraordinary charisma. Testosterone levels registered during their confrontations might well have exceeded all previous records. Never have I felt so keenly the fury of Figaro’s ‘Perché no?’ immediately prior to the third act finale. The Count’s frustrations of his valet had finally pushed him too far; I thought he might kill his master. For the chemistry between the two baritones was something special indeed, their relationship far more credible than any other. Kwiecien possessed the stage as to the manor born, the dark arrogance of his vocal portrayal enhanced by his physical presence. And the slipping away of his authority, supplanted by the upstart Figaro, was if anything all the more impressive in its astonishing subtlety. But victor, of course, there could only be one: Schrott left one in no doubt that this was ultimately Figaro’s show. Try as I might, I could not summon up a single reservation – and, to be frank, I have no inclination to do so. Whether it be his ease with the Italian language, the diction of extraordinary and meaningful clarity, not least in his daring sashays into parlando delivery, the beauty of his legato tone, the smouldering sexuality, or the equally extraordinary vulnerability displayed in his fourth-act aria, this Figaro had it all. Schrott’s is an assumption every bit the equal of his astounding Don Giovanni.
Greatness was present on stage, then, and also in the pit. Sir Colin Davis’s previous conducting of this production in 2006 marks one of the highlights of my operatic experience, unsurpassed and unsurpassable. My enthusiasm on this occasion was slightly tempered by a slightly staid quality to the opening of the first act, but I suspect that I should never even have noticed this from another conductor. I was unconvinced, moreover, by the need for harpsichord continuo during the orchestral recitatives, but nor was it a matter of great import. For warmth and dramatic flow proved second to none thereafter, likewise the sheer sensuous delight of Mozart’s orchestral genius. Nothing was rushed, and yet the score pulsated with life. (Nikolaus Harnoncourt is quite right to bemoan the current fad for performing Mozart as fast as possible, quite right to suggest that the music ends up sounding like Rossini. The only problem is that Harnoncourt’s own musical response to the ‘problem’ is generally so perverse.) Silken strings, beguiling woodwind, cruelly ravishing horns of cuckoldry: one could not have wished for more, and no praise would be high enough for the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, which put not a finger wrong. This is what Mozart performance, the most difficult and yet rewarding task in the world, should sound like. Davis’s structural command was likewise as impressive as any I have heard, enough to silence once and for all the doubters who claim that sonata forms cannot be aurally perceived in theatrical performance. Try telling that to anyone who listened to – as opposed to merely heard – this rendition of the Act Two finale. And to hear the world stop for the moment of forgiveness at the end, with no disruption to the structure of the act, was an object lesson in operatic direction. Truly one has to go back to Böhm or Erich Kleiber to hear Mozart conducting of such distinction. One could forgive a great deal, if not quite the selfish audience contingent, for such an opportunity.
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