Béatrice et Bénédict, Royal Academy Opera, 23 November 2011

Sir Jack Lyons Theatre, Royal Academy of Music

Somarone – Nicholas Crawley
Léonato – James Wolstenholme
Messenger, Archbishop – Johnny Herford
Béatrice – Rachel Kelly
Héro – Jennifer France
Don Pedro – Frederick Long
Bénédict – Stuart Jackson
Claudio – Ross Ramgobin
Ursule – Fiona Mackay

John Copley (director)
Tim Reed (set designs)
Prue Handely (costumes)
Geraint Pughe (lighting)
John Castle (Shakespeare dialogue coach)

Royal Academy Sinfonia
Royal Academy Opera Chorus
Sir Colin Davis (conductor).

Héro (Jennifer France)
Images: Hana Zushi

A new production of a Berlioz opera conducted by Sir Colin Davis: who would not jump at the chance? I had begun to fear that I might never be vouchsafed the theatrical opportunity, though LSO concert performances of Les Troyens and Benvenuto Cellini remain highlights of my opera-going life. How wonderful, then, to be offered the opportunity to see Béatrice et Bénédict at the Royal Academy, an institution to which, in the words of Jane Glover, Director of Opera, ‘Sir Colin … has given so much … over the years.’ Long may one of ‘the greatest living legends in the world of opera’ continue to do so, for he inspired his young musicians, both singers and instrumentalists, to heights such as one could hardly have dared anticipate. The playing of the Royal Academy Sinfonia was characterful, beautifully articulated, and above all responsive to the tricky twists and turns of Berlioz’s inimitable, fantastical imagination. As it should, the Overture properly set the scene: nervous energy palpable at a level that would not have shamed the LSO, with melting contrast from a daringly slow, quite ravishing played, second group, prefiguring the delights of the Nocturne, ‘Nuit paisible et sereine!’ which ushers the first act to sleep. The thread might have snapped in less experienced hands, but Davis knew precisely what he was doing, and held us – and, it would seem, his musicians – spellbound throughout. Onstage instrumental playing impressed too, not least the evocative guitar-playing of Benjamin Bruant.

Somarone (Nicholas Crawley)

I wonder a little quite what one would make of the opera, did one not know Shakespeare’s play; in many respects, Béatrice et Bénédict comes across, like Roméo et Juliette and La Damnation de Faust, even Tristia, more as reflections upon an original than a fully-fledged drama in its own right. I cannot help, moreover, but think that some of the numbers are a little longer than they need be. At any rate, the work’s pleasures are quite different from the splendours of Benvenuto Cellini and Les Troyens. Nevertheless, John Copley’s direction makes a strong and enjoyable case. This was not, for better or worse, a Regietheater reimagining, but a warm-hearted, sympathetic staging that complemented Sir Colin’s contribution in the pit, delighting the audience with its warmly Mediterranean designs and its fine sense of comic timing. It seemed to me a perfectly reasonable compromise in a conservatoire context to have the dialogue in English, mostly that of Shakespeare; the singers certainly delivered it well, no doubt a measure of John Castle’s contribution as dialogue coach.


Léonato (James Wolstenholme), Bénédict (Stuart Jackson),
and Claudio (Ross Ramgobin)


Notwithstanding the estimable qualities of the conductor and director, Royal Academy Opera is a draw in itself. This is the third production I have seen there within a year, the others having been Così fan tutte and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s Kommilitonen! Though Béatrice et Bénédict proved the finest performance of all, both Così and Kommilitonen! had also proved highly impressive. Moreover, the contrast with Opera North’s unhappy Queen of Spades the preceding evening was stark. Not a single member of the cast disappointed; indeed, each in his or her own way enthralled. Nicholas Crawley offered a sharply-etched, genuinely amusing, characterisation of Somarone, the music master (Berlioz’s own creation), as beautifully sung as it was finely acted. Frederick Long impressed again, this time in the role of Don Pedro; he is fast emerging a versatile, highly-accomplished artist. Stuart Jackson and Rachel Kelly negotiated with aplomb the strenuous demands placed upon them in the title roles, whilst the stars of Jennifer France’s Héro and Ross Ramgobin’s Claudio shone brightly indeed, their lines both ardent yet elegantly shaped in fine Gallic fashion. The sixteen-strong chorus was outstanding: once again, this was a performance that would put to shame many of those one would encounter in the grandest of houses.




Final scene (some of the singers are from a different cast)


It is a sad reflection on France’s treatment of one of her greatest composers that the 1862 premiere of this very ‘French’ work took place in Baden-Baden, but then, even as late as 1990, an act of restitution to open the Opéra Bastille, an allegedly ‘complete’ performance of Les Troyens, would omit its ballet music. The land of Berlioz’s beloved Shakespeare, has often turned out, above all though not solely through the offices of Sir Colin Davis, to be friendlier territory. Let us hope that this new staging will have furnished many on stage and in the audience with newfound or confirmed enthusiasm for the cause. When one considers some of the works that bafflingly continue to hold our operatic stages, Berlioz deserves to be heard far more frequently.

Recommended recording:

The Queen of Spades, Opera North, 22 November 2011

(sung in English)

Barbican Theatre

Lisa – Orla Boylan
Countess – Dame Josephine Barstow
Hermann – Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts
Count Tomsky, Pluto – Jonathan Summers
Prince Yeletsky – William Dazeley
Pauline, Daphnis – Alexandra Sherman
Governess – Fiona Kimm
Chekalinsky – Daniel Norman
Sourin – Julian Tovey
Masha – Gillene Herbert
Chaplitsky – David Llewellyn
Narumov – Dean Robinson
Master of Ceremonies – Paul Rendall
Chloë – Miranda Bevin

Neil Bartlett (director)
Kandis Cook (designs)
Chris Davey (lighting)
Leah Hausman (choreography)

Chorus of Opera North (chorus master: Timothy Burke)
Orchestra of Opera North
Richard Farnes (conductor)

Opera North holds a special place in my affections: my first full opera in the theatre was the company’s Wozzeck, which I saw as a schoolboy at the Lyceum Theatre in Sheffield. The experience marked me for life. I have never doubted since that Wozzeck is one of the greatest operas ever written, nor have I doubted that opera, whatever the disappointments one may experience in practice, can at its best prove at least as potent a form of drama as any other. It is many years now since I heard a performance from the company, though I have received very good reports from those who have, often comparing its offerings favourably with those on offer from the two principal London houses. I was therefore delighted to have opportunity to see and to hear for myself in Opera North’s first visit to the Barbican Theatre. (More are planned.) The timing was interesting too, affording comparison with Eugene Onegin across town at the Coliseum.
First impressions of Neil Bartlett’s production were preferable to those of Deborah Warner’s Met-bound anodyne crowd-pleaser. There is, at least to begin with, no evident point of view expressed; straightforward storytelling seems the order of the day. By the same token, however, that does not come across as a deliberate policy to play safe, even to condescend. The setting is where it ‘should’ be; costumes are of the period; there is neither jarring nor particular elucidation. It would have been bizarre and not just unwelcome if the audience had followed the practice of a segment of that for Onegin and had drowned out the music by applauding Kandis Cook’s serviceable sets; they simply did their job without ostentation and without sentimental emphasis upon petit bourgeois conceptions of the ‘beautiful’. However, I said ‘first impressions’ above, because there is one aspect of Bartlett’s staging that might distress the literal-minded. It seemed interesting to me, yet arguably out of place in a production that offered nothing more of the same, rather as if the concept had wandered in from elsewhere. I speak of Bartlett’s treatment of the Countess, who emerges a sex-crazed vamp: she certainly would have captured attention in her scarlet gown even if she had not been played by Dame Josephine Barstow. Fitting or not, it was at least an idea, which was more than could be said for anything Warner mustered. The Personenregie, however, was considerably less skilled, or at least its execution was. And If Catherine the Great made her appearance, I am afraid I missed it.

The real problems, though, lay in the musical performances, and above all with Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts’s Hermann. It did not sound as though this were an off-day, more a matter of having taken on a task that lay far beyond what the voice was incapable of delivering. It would be a matter of taste rather than judgement whether the shouting or tuning proved more painful. This, I am sad to say, constituted some of the most troubling professional singing I have heard; indeed, most student or other amateur performances are executed at a much higher level. He improved slightly during the third act, though he continued to croon in a manner that might have been thought excessive for a West End musical. Some smaller roles were no less approximate and crude, though, by the same token, some proved much better. William Dazeley’s Yeletsky impressed, as did the Tomsky of Jonathan Summers. Perhaps best of all was Alexandra Sherman’s Pauline. Hers was that rare thing: a true contralto. Moreover, she could use it to properly dramatic ends, the song, ‘Podrugi milïye,’ musically shaped and genuinely moving. Orla Boylan’s Lisa had its moments, but sometimes found herself all over the place in terms both of (melo-)drama and of intonation.

The chorus had clearly been well trained by Timothy Burke, and generally acquitted itself well, most of all in the third act, when, despite the translation, choral sound came across as more plausibly Russian than elsewhere. (The translation itself veered between embarrassing couplets and the merely prosaic; in that respect, Martin Pickard’s work recalled what we heard from him for Onegin.) Barstow, as the reader may have guessed, stole the show. Though her tuning was a little awry upon her entrance, and some might have queried the preponderance of quasi-spoken, parlando style, she can still hold a stage. One longed for more, wishing that her palpable commitment had rubbed off on others.

Richard Farnes proved intermittently impressive. There was certainly dramatic drive, sensitivity too, to his conducting. Yet, whilst there were moments in which the orchestra sounded to have just the right Tchaikovsky sound – the opening of the third act, for instance – there were other passages in which the score veered awkwardly between dark, would-be Wagnerism and soft-centred Puccini. A greater body of strings would have assisted: though what was mustered played well, the lack of heft was apparent throughout. Characterful woodwind was offset by variable brass, sometimes blaring, sometimes surprisingly tentative. (Placing outside the pit, at the edge of the stage, doubtless did not help.)

It was just about worth it for the Countess, then, but Opera North’s outing to London proved for the most part a damp squib. And it is surely a little too easy to say that the problem may have lain in staging so ambitious a work. After all, it was Wozzeck, no less, that made such an impression upon me in Sheffield. The stage director of that searing, life-changing Wozzeck? Ironically, one Deborah Warner…

More from Baker, Leppard, and the ECO...

This time, Ottavia's lament, 'Disprezzata regina,' from the greatest of all seventeenth-century operas, Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea. A fine paradox this: Monteverdi's music is so intimately tied to the words, yet, such are the integrity and intensity of the performance that one should most likely glean their meaning without even a smattering of Italian.

Janet Baker and Raymond Leppard in Gluck's 'Le perfide Renaud me fuit'

As a pendant to the recent review of Acis and Galatea, here are Dame Janet Baker and Raymond Leppard, again with the English Chamber Orchestra, in the supremely moving 'Le perfide Renaud me fuit', from Armide. Is any of our great musical dramatists, with the possible exception of Schoenberg, more scandalously neglected than Gluck?



For the excellent full collection of Gluck arias from these artists, click on the link below.



For a review of Armide in Berlin, directed by Calixto Bieito, and which might not quite have been Dame Janet's cup of tea, click here. (In relation to which, what tantalising news it is that Bieito will direct Carmen for ENO! Although almost anything would be preferable to another Met co-production...)

Acis and Galatea, ECO/Leppard, 15 November 2011

Cadogan Hall

Acis – Ed Lyon
Galatea – Ruby Hughes
Polyphemus – João Fernandes
Damon – Richard Edgar-Wilson

Dame Janet Baker (narrator)
Choir of the 21st Century
English Chamber Orchestra
Raymond Leppard (conductor).

There was something charmingly of another age – an apparently gentler age, which, like the pastoral idyll itself, may not ever have existed – to this performance of Acis and Galatea. It was not only a matter of hearing Handel once again from Raymond Leppard and the English Chamber Orchestra, welcome though it was to hear the composer’s music not only on modern instruments, but in a performance that did not treat those instruments as if they must discard all their advantages over predecessors – or, more likely, modern copies – and ape their whining tones, their lack of warmth and tuning, in short their gross technical and musical disadvantages. After all, an age in which Baroque music was not a matter of abrasiveness, of ‘effects without cause’, of hysterical promotion of hair-shirted exhibitionism, did once exist: we have a host of recordings from Leppard and the ECO to show it.

Dame Janet Baker was of course present on a good few of those. Her presence on this occasion as narrator, her delivery, and Leppard’s narration itself fitted into a form of presentation redolent of what some of us might imagine the wireless Home Service once to have been. I am not sure that the experiment is likely to be widely repeated, nor that it should be, consisting as it did in descriptions of the action to come, a little explication of situation, and some gentle humour that might have sounded strained when Abigail’s Party was but a twinkle in Mike Leigh’s eye. A wryer framing might better have suited our age’s world-weary cynicism, and we could have done with fewer recurrent mentions of the plains. (The temptation to include a ‘Rain in Spain’ reference certainly ought to have been resisted.) Nevertheless, it would take a heart considerably harder than mine not to be more than a little charmed – and grateful, if for the first and perhaps last, time, to hear Dame Janet back in the concert hall. Her well-spoken Yorkshire tones remained just as one recalled, similarly her graceful demeanour; I for one was delighted to savour them and should have been equally delighted by the opportunity to have heard a bedtime story in such vein.

I had no qualms whatsoever concerning the performance from Leppard and the ECO, a delight from beginning to end. The Sinfonia was lively and well articulated, breathing air that was as theatrical as it was pastoral; and so it continued. If Leppard’s interventionism in the music of composers such as Monteverdi and Cavalli grew more controversial as his career progressed, it might be thought still more so in Handel. (‘Authenticke’ conductors such as René Jacobs take almighty liberties, but that, apparently, is another matter.) Not unreasonably, Leppard took his cue from Handel’s later practice in post-Cannons performances, for instance at the Haymarket, and added a few parts here and there, not only violas and sometimes other, additional string lines, but even – and this, I admit, came as something of a jolt – a glockenspiel for the chorus, itself the beneficiary of a spot of (re-)composition, ‘Happy, happy! Happy we!’ If the truth be told, the effect was a little de trop, closer to Papageno than to the rejoicing Israelites of Saul; moreover, I could not help but think that the number would have been better left as a duet, which we heard, prior to the entry of the chorus. There are far more grievous sins, though, than the occasional gilding of a lily.

Other decisions were less interventionist, as stylish as the instrumental performances themselves. The poignant delicacy of Galatea’s ‘As when the dove laments her love,’ was as much a matter of dialogue, between oboe and marvellously fruity bassoon, conducted against a chamber organ backdrop, as it was of Ruby Hughes’s limpid and at times radiant vocal delivery. I very much liked the balance between ‘English’, Purcellian directness and the warbling of the sopranino recorder in ‘Hush, ye pretty warbling quire!’ A melting oboe solo in the penultimate aria and chorus, ‘Must I my Acis still bemoan’ proved another highlight. Continuo playing – organ and harpsichord were employed, though not, as once might have been the case, played by Leppard himself – was both reliable and imaginative throughout.

Hughes’s contribution I generally found winning, though there were times when her diction might have been stronger. Richard Edgar-Wilson’s brief appearance as Damon – a part that might without great loss be cut – also suffered a little in that respect, though his coloratura was excellent. There were no such problems, however, from the other male soloists, Ed Lyon as the lovestruck Acis and João Fernandes as the giant, Polyphemus. ‘Love in her eyes sits playing’ was an especially touching example of Lyon’s artistry, which showed that, even in ‘concert performance’ – there was throughout a degree of acting, tending somewhat towards the ‘semi-staged – he knew how to act as well as how to sing a Baroque da capo aria. So much was captured in a gesture, a glance, as well of course as in the shaping of words and phrase, that one needed no more: a Handelian tableau vivant, as Leppard outlined in the programme. The da capo return in beautifully hushed tone, love not only playing but already threatening ‘delicious death’, was truly a moment to savour. On a micro-level, the judgement shown in a revealing crescendo on the second syllable of ‘alarm’ in ‘Love sounds th’alarm’ betokened both musical and dramatic sensitivity. Fernandes’s facial expressions exhibited a degree of the gentle grotesque: amusing, touching even, without becoming merely silly. His theatrical experience showed equally, like Lyon’s, in his way with words; the lightly accented English seemed delightfully apt in context. This again is a singer of whom I should like to hear – and to see – more. In the trio, ‘The flocks shall leave the mountains,’ Hughes, Lyon, and Fernandes all helped to show that Handel is perfectly capable of expressing action as well as mood through music – making it all the sadder that opera seria would rarely offer him that opportunity. The Choir of the 21st Century contributed in lively fashion, though the solos in the opening chorus were a little weak. That was soon forgotten, however, and the sense of playful resolution in ‘Galatea, dry thy tears,’ was theirs as well as Leppard’s. More please!

Handel's 'Hallelujah' Chorus sung as Berlusconi exits stage right

The truly wonderful news is, of course, the resignation of the man who at times seemed close to buying Italy. However, it is more than a little wonderful to hear Handel's role in the celebrations:



Let us hope that the Messiah will soon come in useful on the streets of London too. Cameron, Osborne, Clegg, et al., beware...

(Click here for a reminder of Maurizio Pollini's words against Berlusconi's 'government'.)

Eugene Onegin, English National Opera, 12 November 2011

Coliseum

Madame Larina – Diana Montague
Tatiana – Amanda Echalaz
Olga – Claudia Huckle
Filipievna – Catherine Wyn-Rogers
Eugene Onegin – Audun Iversen
Lensky – Toby Spence
Monsieur Triquet – Adrian Thompson
Zaretsky – David Stout
Prince Gremin – Brindley Sherratt
Captain – Paul Napier-Burrows
Peasant Singer – David Newman

Deborah Warner (director)
Tom Pye (designs)
Chloe Obolensky (costumes)
Jean Kalman (lighting)
Kim Brandstrup (choreography)

Chorus and Additional Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Martin Merry)
Orchestra of the English National Opera
Edward Gardner (conductor)

Images: Neil Libbert

Was this ENO? Or had I nodded off and slipped into a living Met nightmare? Actually, ‘nightmare’ is too harsh, too interesting, for Deborah Warner’s production of Eugene Onegin, actually conceived, I discovered, as a co-production with the Metropolitan Opera, is just plain dull, a strange throwback to the 1970s or further back still, in which singers sing their lines against a pretty – to some – backdrop in ‘period’ dress that might well have come from a television serial. The ‘period’ in question seems to be slightly later than Pushkin, to no obvious end. Now there is nothing necessarily wrong with ‘traditional’ productions, but this one offered no discernible view upon the work, no discernible insight, save perhaps for a tired, slightly misandrist suggestion that the work might be better off entitled ‘Tatiana Larina’, into the characters and their development, and no discernible provocation or even invitation to think. It is, I think, the first time I have witnessed members of the audience even –  I assure you, I am not making this up – applaud a Coliseum set, in this case as the curtain rose for the third act, obscuring Tchaikovsky's Polonaise. (They indulged in plenty of disruption elsewhere too, a selfish couple seated behind me a particular menace, speaking throughout the performance, unresponsive to the iciest of glares.)

Even from a literalist perspective, there are problems beyond the slight ‘updating’. Once one engages upon such a path, fetishising costumes, scenery, and the like, any deviation tends to stand out like a sore thumb. Thus, whilst a more neutral or suggestive space would doubtless double up without too much trouble for the first three scenes of the first act, we are left wondering in literalist mode why Tatiana appears to sleep in a capacious barn. (It will doubtless be more capacious still in New York.) Child ‘extras’ running around for no particular reason are an irritant; they seem to be a favoured device of the director, her ENO Messiah a case in point. Are not the costumes for the celebration of Tatiana’s name day a little on the dour side for such an occasion? Why does the final scene not appear quite where it ‘should’?

Lensky (Toby Spence)

More serious is the problem alluded to above, whereby Warner’s sympathies seemed only to be elicited by the female characters. It used often to be a critical plaint that the opera should not have been entitled Eugene Onegin; this production, whether by design or by default, comes across as an attempt to revive that view. Everything is centred upon Tatiana. The subtext – at times, it is barely ‘sub-‘ – of Romantic friendship or more between Onegin and Lensky is ignored. Surely it does not take even a leap of the imagination to appreciate how Tchaikovsky would have understood Onegin’s rejection of Tatiana, herself of course in many respects a projection of male homosexuality. To take at face value without any further probing the description of Onegin as an ‘outsider’ seems in this context merely bizarre: would one not at least ask what is meant by ‘outsider’, just as one would in Peter Grimes? The following words surely speak for themselves:

If I had wished to pass my life
within the confines of the family circle,
and benevolent fate had decreed for me
the role of husband and father,
then I should most likely not choose
any bride other than you.

Krzysztof Warlikowski’s Munich production (reviewed here by Jens Laurson) made explicit what might though need not remain implicit. One can remain relatively reticent, though, and still address this central issue of the opera: take Steven Pimlott’s woefully underrated production for Covent Garden, ‘traditional’ in look, but so much more dramatically alert than Warner’s production. Had the action been centred upon Tatiana in especially dramatic, more revisionist, fashion, I am sure that would have been a valid approach, but Warner’s focus seemed more a default setting than anything else.

Onegin (Audun Iversen) and Lensky

There was considerable compensation, however, to be heard from Edward Gardner’s conducting: undoubtedly the best I have heard from him at the Coliseum. If I have been spoilt by my most recent two hearings of the work in the theatre, both conducted by Daniel Barenboim, Gardner nevertheless impressed, Shape and sweep almost unfailingly present. There was a fine swagger to the choral numbers and the dances (in which the dancers made a good impression), which the more intimate moments – insofar as the production permitted them to exist – were executed with tenderness and genuine sympathy. If Gardner’s reading did not quite scintillate in the way that some can, there is plenty of scope for intensification as the run of performances proceeds. He certainly has the ENO Orchestra on fine form, though a few more strings would have been welcome. The chorus, trained by Martin Merry, returned to form too, though all suffered from Martin Pickard’s clunky English translation: if we must do without the Russian text and its inimitable sonorities, then we need a superior substitute.

Toby Spence shone out from the cast. (Lenskys often do.) Though his ardent sincerity was somewhat robbed of context by the production, it nevertheless left its mark. Audun Iversen was likewise hamstrung in the title role, though earlier on, fine English diction notwithstanding, he rarely seemed truly to get inside the part even in musical terms. His performance in the third act heated up nicely, however, so maybe first night nerves were a factor. Amanda Echalaz merely seemed miscast as Tatiana. Her high soprano often seemed thin and disengaged; attempts to compensate skirted dangerously close to Puccini-caricature. Claudia Huckle’s often blowsy Olga struck a discordant note in more than one sense. Adrian Thompson, however, made a fine impression with a sensitive rendition of Monsieur Triquet’s couplets, even if one could have done without the assumed 'French' accent. One dry patch apart, Brindley Sherratt shaped Prince Gremin’s aria well. Catherine Wyn-Rogers and Diana Montague contributed a focus to the roles of Filipievna and Mme Larina that was not always present elsewhere. I could not help wishing that they might be offered a little more to do.

Tatiana (Amanda Echalaz) and Prince Gremin (Brindley Sherratt)

For those weary, then, of Konzept-heavy productions, this Onegin might offer some balm; it is certainly worth hearing for Gardner and Spence. Yet there remains ample room for a more ‘traditional’ production that does not forego interpretation, of whatever variety.

The performance on 23 November will be recorded by BBC Radio 3 for subsequent broadcast.

Recommended performances on CD and DVD:

Tan/Arensky Chamber Orchestra/Kunhardt - Stravinsky, Wagner, and Ravel, 10 November 2011

Cadogan Hall

Stravinsky – Pulcinella: Suite
Wagner – Siegfried-Idyll
Ravel – Piano Concerto in G major

Melvyn Tan (piano)
Arensky Chamber Orchestra
William Kunhardt (conductor)


This concert marked the final event of the Arensky Chamber Orchestra’s 2011 season, though it will return in 2012 with a spring series devoted to Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, ‘The Revolutionaries of Vienna’, a concert devoted to each composer. The concert also marked the expansion of this ensemble of fine young soloists into a full chamber orchestra, previous concerts having been focused upon strings. It was the first in which the ACO’s artistic director, William Kunhardt, conducted – and an impressive job he made of it too.

First off was Stravinsky’s suite from Pulcinella. (Or rather, first off was the ‘Polichinelle’, first of three mini-cocktails prepared especially for the evening: a typically distinctive touch, recipes provided on the back of the programme.) The opening Sinfonia was more graceful, sensuous even, certainly less driven, than one often hears, much to its advantage. One could say the same of a good part of the rest of the suite, though the Tarantella would be properly insistent, standing out all the more on that account. The bizarre individuality of Stravinsky’s scoring – Paul Griffiths once described the ballet as less a work than a way of hearing – was permitted to speak for itself. Solos were well taken, Kenny Sturgeon’s oboe an especial joy in the Serenata. The Scherzino was rhythmically alert and nicely shaded, its changing demands well negotiated by Kunhardt. A smart, stylish Toccata featured excellent wind and brass playing: proof, were it needed, that expansion of forces was working well. Only the Gavotta lacked a little incision, at some times sounding a little tentative. Stravinsky’s inimitable ear for colour was once again restored to our consciousness in the Finale. Special mention should go to leader, Sulki Yu, whose poised, assured manner set the tone for the ensemble as a whole. And if Sir Neville Marriner’s old Academy of St Martin in the Fields recording – a favourite of mine for the suite, as opposed to full ballet – were smoother, this playing arguably possessed greater character.



Following a sip of the ‘Tribschen’, a cream-based cocktail, we moved on to the Siegfried-Idyll, a formidably difficult work to bring off in one overarching span. The players responded to Kunhardt’s sensitive direction with aplomb, their versatility showing in an immediately mellower tone than that adopted for Stravinsky, the arch anti-Wagnerite (at least in theory). Much was beautifully ‘sung’, just as it should be, with real warmth at climaxes, the occasional more four-square moment quickly effaced by the skill and generosity of the music-making on offer.

A Paris Mojito led us into Ravel’s G major Piano Concerto, with Melvyn Tan as soloist. Tan has a rather peculiar podium manner, which takes a little getting used to; I felt, moreover, that he and the orchestra were not always of one mind, especially during the outer movements. Where differences occurred, I admit that the orchestra’s seemed to be the better mind. For instance, the splendidly jazzy orchestral colours of the first movement and Kunhardt’s eager relish to luxuriate in Ravel’s harmonies contrasted with Tan’s more aggressive approach. There was a spellbinding moment of near-but-not-quite-stasis led by the excellent harpist (Anneke Hodnett) too. Tan seemed much more at home in the slow movement, the opening cantilena beautifully handled: performed in more Romantic, almost Chopinesque, fashion than often, but it worked. The orchestra was on fine form throughout, temperature again higher than one tends to hear, but that is no bad thing. If the finale suffered somewhat from an initially plodding tempo – later corrected – there were some riotous orchestral solos to enjoy. If Tan does not seem always to have achieved unmitigated success in transferring full-time to the modern piano, then the increased orchestral forces employed surely compensated.

The ACO has reached the final six from a shortlist of nine hundred for a Sky Arts Ignition Award. Apparently members of the jury were present; they should have been duly impressed.

Salzburg Festival, 2012

New Intendant of the Festival, Alexander Pereira, the Festival President, Helga Rabl-Stadler, and Director of Drama, Sven-Erik Bechtolf, announced the programme for next year’s Festival, first in Salzburg, before flying to London to speak at the Residence of the Austrian Ambassador. The 2012 season will see seven new opera productions, plus two concert performances (Il re pastore and Tamerlano, both from period-instrument ensembles). Two will have been presented earlier in the year at the Salzburg Easter and Whitsun Festivals (Carmen under Sir Simon Rattle and Giulio Cesare in Egitto with Cecilia Bartoli, staged by Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier), but five will be seen for the first time in the summer, Pereira stating adamantly that revivals will be at the very least an exception during his tenure of office, requiring continued collaboration between the same stage director and conductor.


First of the new productions is Die Zauberflöte, in a staging by Jens-Daniel Herzog. Nikolaus Harnoncourt had stated that he would no longer conduct opera in Salzburg, but Pereira enticed him back with the suggestion that Harnoncourt lead his first ‘late’ Mozart opera on period instruments. (Doubtless reactions will vary on that score: Herbert von Karajan must be rolling in his well-upholstered grave.) Wherever one stands on that matter, there is an intriguing offering to commemorate the two-hundred anniversary of Emanuel Schikaneder’s death: a staging of his ‘zweyte Theil der Zauberflöte,’ Das Labyrinth, oder Der Kampf mit den Elementen, music by the Bavarian court composer, Peter von Winter. Alexandra Liedtke directs; Ivor Bolton conducts the Mozarteum Orchestra.

A rare opportunity is afforded to hear the first version of Ariadne auf Naxos, replete with a good portion of Molière’s Le bourgeois gentilhomme. Riccardo Chailly conducts the VPO, whilst Bechtholf himself directs: a good augury for closer collaboration between music and drama. (Pereira also spoke of wanting to introduce more ballet into the Festival.) Singers include Emily Magee, Elena Moşuc, and no less than Jonas Kaufmann, who will also sing Don José alongside Magdalena Kožená in the Rattle Carmen (staging, Aletta Collins). La bohème appears for the first time at the Festival – Pereira spoke of wanting to banish any prejudice against Puccini – in a production from Damiano Michieletto, conducted by Daniele Gatti; the cast includes Piotr Beczala and Anna Netrebko.

Finally, and this is at least as much a draw as Ariadne, comes Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten. Ingo Metzmacher conducts a work that cannot have been played that many times, if at all, by the VPO, in a production by Alvis Hermanis. The cast includes Alfred Muff, Laura Aikin, Tanja Ariane Baumgartner, Cornelia Kallisch, and Tomasz Konieczny. Though the production will later be seen in Milan, it is surely a high priority in these Felsenreitschule performances.

The Vienna Philharmonic, as usual, also gives five different concert programmes, under conductors Gergiev, Jansons, Muti, Holliger, and Haitink. Heinz Holliger’s programme launches an initiative outlined by Pereira for new commissions to be performed by the VPO: this concert features Berg’s Chamber Concerto and a Gran Partita apiece by Holliger and Mozart. Muti’s concert looks especially promising: two Liszt symphonic poems (Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe and Les Préludes) and Berlioz’s Messe solennelle. Haitink collaborates with Murray Perahia in Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto, before conducting Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony.

Visiting orchestras include the Israel Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta and the Orchestra Mozart under Claudio Abbado. They will both perform in a new, opening week of sacred music, ‘Ouverture spirituelle’,’ which aims to make especial use of the city’s wonderful array of churches, but also to initiate dialogue between Western Christianity and other faiths: Judaism in the first year (hence Ernst Bloch’s Avodath Hakodesh), followed by Buddhism/Shintoism, Islam, and Orthodox Christianity. Abbado’s coupling looks highly promising, comprising two works with which he has long been associated: Mozart’s Waisenhausmesse and Schubert’s E-flat Mass, D 950.

Other visiting orchestral highlights include the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra under Daniel Barenboim (Beethoven’s Sixth and Fifth Symphonies), the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra with Gatti (Wagner, Berg, Strauss, and Ravel, Frank-Peter Zimmermann the soloist in Berg’s concerto), two performances from the Cleveland Orchestra and Franz Welser-Möst, both including a work by Lutosławski, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Chailly in Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, and the Concertgebouw in Bartók and Mahler under Jansons. Gergiev will conduct the LSO in the complete Cinderella. (There are others too, so please do check the website!)

Sándor Végh’s hundredth birthday attracts two marathon concerts from ‘his’ Camerata Salzburg – Bach and Mozart; Schubert and Bartók – plus a series of masterclasses, involving musicians such as Steven Isserlis and András Schiff. The Mozarteum Orchestra’s series of Mozart Matinées continues in seven concerts, highlights including a performance of Die Schuldigkeit des Erstens Gebots, a concert of Dallapiccola, Mozart, and Holliger, under the baton of the last-named composer, and a concert of Mozart and Georg Friedrich Haas from Michael Gielen.

‘Salzburg contemporary,’ the re-named new music strand has no fewer than eleven concerts. Holliger, Zimmermann, and Lutosławski all feature this year. Especially notable offerings for me would include two concerts from the ever-excellent Klangforum Wien: Lutosławski, Dallapiccola, Berio, Boulez, and Castiglioni, from Pablo Heras-Casado and Elīna Garanča, and Zimmermann, Ligeti, Eisler, and Stravinsky, under Johannes Kalitzke. Matthias Goerne joins Christoph Eschenbach in Schubert orchestrations and Zimmermann’s Ich wandte mich und sah an alles unrecht, das geschah unter der Sonne (as well as Berg’s op.6 Orchestral Pieces). Thomas Zehetmair, Ruth Killius, and Thomas Demenga perform solo Bach, Zimmermann, and Scelsi.

A wealth of Lieder and solo performances is again offered. Christian Gerhaher in Die schöne Müllerin bodes well, likewise Garanča’s offering of Schumann and Strauss. Kožena intriguingly presents a recital with organ (Christian Schmitt): Messiaen, Peter Eben, Bach, Liszt, and Dvořák. José Carreras and Juan Diego Florez offer a more Latinate perspective; other singers are Goerne, Thomas Hampson, and Thomas Quasthoff.

Daniel Barenboim performs the final four Schubert sonatas in a series of three recitals, also taking in the two sets of four Impromptus, D 935, and D 899. Schiff performs the Goldberg and Diabelli Variations, Pollini the final three Beethoven sonatas, Krystian Zimerman works by Debussy, and Perahia works by Bach, Chopin, and Schumann. The Hagen Quartet offers two all-Beethoven concerts, and also appears in Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony, conducted by Daniel Harding, and Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet. Beethoven’s violin sonatas are performed over three evenings by Leonidas Kavakos and Enrico Pace.

Finally, a few words on spoken theatre, which seems revivified under Bechtholf’s leadership. Hofmannsthal’s Jedermann will, of course, be there, but there is so much else. Andrea Brecht directs Kleist’s Prinz Friedrich von Homburg – would that the Festival in a subsequent year would stage the Henze-Bachmann opera! – and Irina Brook, Peter’s daughter, stages both Peer Gynt (in English) and The Tempest (in French, from the Bouffes du Nord). Puppet theatre is offered, in the guise of Nuremeberg’s Thalias Kompagnons (Kafkas Schloss), and the Austrian classic, Ferdinand Raimund’s Der Bauer als Millionär, as is children’s theatre (Theatre-Rites: Mojo, also to be seen at the Barbican). South Africa’s Tick Tock Productions presents a new, English-language work Trapped, directed by Princess Zinzi Mhlong. Another premiere offering is Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz, from Theater Montagnes. Gisèle Vienne has two productions including music, whilst a Korean theatre group brings – in Korean – Hamlet Cantabile to the Salzburg stage.

Further details, including a good number of performances not mentioned, may be found by clicking here for the Salzburg Festival website.

New operas at Salzburg Festival from 2013

The programme for next year's Salzburg Festival has been announced. I shall post some details on that a little later, though everything can of course be found on the website (click here). In the meantime, there is interesting news from new Intendant, Alexander Pereira, whom I heard speak earlier this evening at the Austrian Ambassador's Residence, along with Festival President, Helga Rabl-Stadler, and Director of Drama, Sven-Erik Bechtolf (who has interesting plans of his own). From 2013 until 2016 - and, let us hope, beyond - there will be a newly commissioned opera each year. 2014 will be the turn of Marc-André Dalbavie, 2015 Thomas Adès (also to be seen at Covent Garden and in New York, though I think it will be the Philharmonic rather than the Met), and 2016 Jörg Widmann. 2013 is perhaps the most exciting of all: a new opera on Beckett's Endgame, by none other than György Kurtág. More soon on the programme for 2012...

Andreas Haefliger: Liszt and Schubert, 9 November 2011

Wigmore Hall

Liszt – Années de pèlerinage: Première année – Suisse, S 160
Schubert – Piano Sonata in G major, D 894

The Wigmore Hall has, I think, contributed more than any other London venue to this year’s Liszt bicentenary. Andreas Haefliger contributed the first book of the Années de pèlerinage – Louis Lortie will perform the second next month – alongside Schubert’s G major piano sonata, D 894. One could make connections, of course, but I was not entirely convinced by the juxtaposition; maybe it was better simply to consider this as a concert of two halves, or maybe I found myself too much under the spell cast by Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s visionary programming at the previous night’s Queen Elizabeth Hall concert.

With the memory of Aimard’s recital still fresh, comparison was inevitable. Haefliger did not come off badly at all. If the two pianists’ styles and approaches were often quite different, there was much to learn and much to enjoy from both. ‘Chapelle de Guillaume Tell’ announced not only big tone, Haefliger’s Steinway contrasting with Aimard’s Yamaha, but also resplendent, I am tempted to say ‘modernistic’, clarity alongside the pianist’s generally monumental approach. ‘Au lac de Wallenstadt’ provided a nicely rippling interlude, whilst the ‘Pastorale’ proceeded with properly generative rhythmic impetus, more than a merely thematic nod to Beethoven in general and to his op.28 sonata in particular. Colour and narrative remained of course very much Liszt’s own. ‘Au bord d’une source’ boasted glittering sonority, though Haefliger displayed a degree of untidiness and hardening of tone at climaxes. ‘Orage’, on the other hand, seemed tailor-made to the grand manner adopted, the Steinway truly coming into its own in a tumultuous rejoicing in its capabilities. Lisztian rhetoric and Romantic force of Nature sounded as one.

With ‘Vallée d’Obermann’, Haefliger came into direct ‘competition’ with Aimard. Both pianists displayed unerring command of line. Perhaps surprisingly, Haefliger’s tone was the more crystalline of the two, though lines could dissolve vertically where required, prophetic not only of Wagner’s technique in, say, Tristan und Isolde, but also of the Second Viennese School. Aimard, on the other hand, more strongly foreshadowed the dark expressionism of such ‘music of the future’. I preferred his darker way with Liszt’s climaxes, but there was much to learn from Haefliger’s more ‘objective’ approach, even if again, one had to deal with a degree of hardening at climaxes. Shaping of the more overtly ‘vocal’ lines, however, remained a joy. ‘Eglogue’ offered a charming pendant, whilst ‘Le mal du pays’ offered an intriguing combination of sonority that was still very much of its time and troubled mood that looked forward to the fruits of Liszt’s old age. ‘Les cloches de Genève’ offered quiet – at least to begin with – ecstasy, Liszt’s line spun as if superior Bellini. When the temperature increased, I felt the tempo might have benefited from broadening somewhat. This nevertheless remained an impressive performance.

Command of line was once again apparent in the first movement of the Schubert sonata, though I wondered whether Haefliger focused a little too much upon the bright, even glittering, side of life here, especially in the second group. There was, though, some beautifully hushed playing too. The development had Beethovenian purpose, though it could seem unduly stark, even monochrome, at times. Haefliger paced the movement well, throughout its well-nigh Brucknerian yet surely ‘heavenly’ length. The opening of the second movement sounded as a sincere lyrical outpouring, though the minor-key episodes perhaps intruded a little too violently. (One might well argue, though, for the necessity of contrast here.) Did gruffness shade into heavy-handedness in the minuet? Perhaps, but the lyrical response was delightful – and painful, in the best sense. The trio was likewise pastoral yet discomfiting. If the finale is always likely to prove somewhat enigmatic, was it a little too much so here? There were some charming and some striking moments, to be sure, but overall line seemed a little hesitant; Sometimes the best way to deal with a door is to walk straight through it. On the other hand, the lack of easy ‘solution’ had more than a little to commend it.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard: Liszt, Bartók, Stroppa, Ravel, and Messiaen, 8 November 2011

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Liszt – Années de pèlerinage, Book III, S 163: ‘Aux cyprès de la Villa d’Este: Thrénodie (I)’
Bartók – Four Dirges, op.9: no.4, ‘Nénie’
Liszt – Légende no.1, S 275/1: ‘St François d’Assise’
Stroppa – Miniature estrose: ‘Tangata manu’
Liszt – Années de pèlerinage, Book III, S 163: ‘Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este’
Ravel – Jeux d’eau
Messiaen – Catalogue d’oiseaux: ‘Le Traquet stapazin’
Liszt - Années de pèlerinage, Book I, S 160: ‘Vallée d’Obermann’


Just the sort of treatment Liszt needs: a thoughtful, fascinating programme, performed by a pianist who is first and foremost a musician, Pierre-Laurent Aimard. To see so many empty seats in the Queen Elizabeth Hall was saddening, whether for Liszt’s or Aimard’s sake; doubtless the Royal Festival Hall would have been full to the rafters for the likes of Lang Lang. Aimard’s recital was as far removed from such a travelling circus as one could imagine: works by Liszt combined with a fascinating range of related twentieth-century works. Crucially, Aimard performed the entire recital without an interval, and without applause. Would that other pianists might follow suit, where appropriate.

There was, thankfully, nothing remotely flashy about Aimard’s pianism. (Has there ever been?) Yet that does not imply a technique that is anything other than astounding. It is, however, harnessed to musical rather than to merely virtuosic results. As Liszt himself realised, to defeat mere virtuosi, one needs to have super-virtuosic means at one’s disposal. The control with which Aimard, for instance, shaped the climaxes of ‘Vallée d’Obermann’ provided a masterclass in both technical and musical senses. The B minor Sonata sounded, rightly, just around the corner. So, incidentally, in the introduction did Eugene Onegin: not the only time Tchaikovsky seems to have cribbed from Liszt. (Compare their respective first piano concertos, though not in form.)

The third book of the Années de pèlerinage had provided two items earlier on, the opening ‘Aux cyprès de la Villa d’Este: Thrénodie (I)’ and ‘Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este’. The former emerged as finely poised as I have heard between the grand and lyrical Romantic manner of Liszt’s maturity and the dark intimations of old age. The way in which the latter gradually won out, though never entirely, over the former was a tribute both to the pianist’s – as well as the composer’s – technical and intellectual means and to the vividness of his pianist imagination. The fourth of Bartók’s Four Dirges, ‘Nénie’, followed on, as if a supplement penned by Liszt himself. Harmony and voice sounded almost as one: a revelatory choice of programming. If only we could have heard all four.

‘Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este’ and Ravel’s Jeux d’eau may have been a more obvious coupling, but here, Aimard’s twist was as much to highlight distinction as much as undeniable debt. (When Ravel was asked how his work should be performed, he responded, ‘like Liszt, of course'.) Through the brilliant evocation of fountains and their games, we realised that for Ravel, they were just that: games, albeit of surpassing elegance. Liszt, however, invested a sense of the divine into a typically awestruck depiction of Nature. As the composer, acknowledged in his quotation from St John, ‘But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.’ If Messiaen’s ‘Le Traquet stapazin’ from Catalogue d’oiseaux owes something to the writing of Ravel and Debussy, in its spirituality it has much more in common with Liszt. As one might expect, Aimard’s account was nothing less than magnificent: fully idiomatic in tone, tempo, and overall conception, as commanding of silence as of intervallic relationships, and seemingly at one with the composer’s spirit.

It was only really in the Légende, ‘St François d’Assise’, that I harboured any doubts – and it would be astonishing in such a recital if some works did not come off better than others. The tempo seemed a little laboured, which is not to say that it necessarily was in objective terms, but rather that Lisztian fantasy did not quite take flight. Even here, there were compensations, in hearing a great deal more than one often does of the relationship between the notes, but the poetic ‘idea’ was not quite fully voiced. The piece made an excellent introduction, however, to Marco Stroppa’s 1995 ‘Tangata manu’, from his Miniature estrose, a work which not only in its piano writing but also in its subject matter, the divine hunt for the egg of a sea swallow, connected so many concerns of Liszt, Ravel, and Messiaen. The treble register of Aimard’s Yamaha proved as equal to the challenge as the pianist’s mind and fingers.

More is to come on 7 December. There is also a recording, which I have not yet heard, featuring repertoire from both recitals. I fully intend to investigate.

DVD Review: Der fliegende Holländer, Netherlands Opera

Daland - Robert Lloyd
Senta - Catherine Nagelstad
Erik - Marco Jentzsch
Mary - Marina Prudenskaja
Steersman - Oliver Ringelhahn
The Dutchman - Juha Uusitalo

Martin Kušej (director)
Martin Zehetgruber (set designs)
Heide Kastler (costumes)
Reinhard Traub (lighting)
Sebastian Huber (dramaturgy)
Joost Honselaar (television director)

Chorus of the Netherlands Opera (chorus master: Martin Wright)
Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra
Hartmut Haenchen (conductor)

Opus Arte OA 1049 D (166 minutes, recorded live at the Amsterdam Music Theatre, 16 and 25 February 2010).


The performance opens with a monochrome televisual storm, through which we see as well as hear strings, horns, kettledrums, other instruments, and eventually the conductor. Wagner’s opening bars prove furiously driven. Calmer seas greet the very slow, very soft English horn-led response, spots on the camera making clear the ‘framing’ of the filmic experience. The Overture, then, finds its roots in a backward-looking pot pourri conception, as opposed to forward-looking integrated symphonism, though it is perhaps not entirely without attempts to forge such a unity. Brass tend to Solti-like stridency, though the Netherlands Philharmonic woodwind evince winning perkiness and welcome lack of homogeneity. Urgency and stark contrast, then, are the watchwords, suggesting neither performance nor production will prove beholden to ‘tradition’, whatever that might be. When, towards the close of the Overture, we first view the stage, it is unclear whether the curtain has been up all along. A stark – again monochrome – set of steel and glass is immediately revealed, onto which runs a motley multi-coloured crew, one member sporting an unbecoming tropical shirt, equipped with lifejackets and lifebelts, as one registers the (relative) surprise of hearing in such a context Wagner’s 1860 ‘redemptive’ version of the coda. Were one wishing to distinguish oneself from Cosima’s Bayreuth ‘music-drama’ approach, the ‘original’ or at least an earlier version of the score might have provided greater consistency. However, one soon begins to realise that, by default or design, and I cannot believe that there is no design here, the conflict between ‘backward-’ and ‘forward-looking’ Wagner is being dramatised.

Wind ‘noise’ heightens, for better or worse, the orchestral storm throughout this opening scene. Fine choral singing throughout offers both weight and clarity, a credit to the Netherlands Opera Chorus. The Steersman, spotlit, dons a gold-lamé coat to deliver his song, taken very slowly, distended even, vocal strain telling not least through intonational insecurity; contrast is attained by speeding up considerably for the ‘Hoyohe!’ quasi-refrain. Tempo fluctuations mark the Dutchman’s ensuing monologue too, well delivered by the dark Finnish voice of Juha Uusitalo. This Dutchman is clearly tormented, but powerful too, looking forward, as does the orchestra, to the Wotan of the Walküre monologue. For all the modern dress and setting, though, the shadowy arrival of him and his crew has been accomplished in ghostly fashion, his other-worldliness intensified during the exchange with Daland. And it is clear that ‘exchange’ is on the latter’s mind, suave if shallow venality the guiding principle of Daland’s conduct, in an intelligent reading from Robert Lloyd.

Hartmut Haenchen has become increasingly prominent as a Wagner conductor. I first encountered him on disc at the helm of some rather hard-driven CPE Bach performances, then in the theatre leading Salome in Paris, which he also conducted relatively recently at Covent Garden, both solid if hardly unforgettable performances. As conductor for the Netherlands Opera Ring, directed by Pierre Audi (here credited as ‘artistic director’), and for Parsifal both in Paris and at La Monnaie, he has made claims for himself as a quasi-‘authentic’ Wagnerian, dubiously boasting of having led a swifter Parsifal even than Boulez, as if speed equated to tempo – though I believe Clemens Krauss, if not Hermann Levi, came in a few minutes faster still. Whatever the ideological stance, however, Haenchen’s performance is for the most part impressive, poised, like Martin Kušej’s production, between Wagner’s reimagined past and future. ‘Numbers’ have their own character, yet never distractingly so, as tends to happen when conductors become insistent upon Wagner’s debts to predecessors; the seeds of Bayreuth are to be identified too in a greater continuity. Likewise, the ghostly figure of the Dutchman, whose realm appears to be of an almost Schopenhauerian metaphysical realm, contrasts with the fistfuls of fifty euro notes gathered keenly by Daland and the Steersman.

The second act proved at first somewhat puzzling to me. There is just the one girl spinning: Senta. The rest are pampering themselves at a spa, towelling robes and all, with a swimming pool outside the window. A contrast is certainly drawn between Senta’s seriousness and the magazine-reading habits of the others, Mary included, but it seems an odd way to go about presenting it. However, one comes to realise that Kušej is also drawing a contrast between Senta’s present self – Catherine Nagelstad is hardly a girl, but nor does she now need to be – and a past simplicity, imagined or otherwise, hence the determined nature of her spinning amidst a backdrop of tawdry modern entertainment. The Dutchman’s hooded, marauding crew may be seen outside, leaving a dead body by the swimming pool, which turns red with bloody pollution. After a brief visit outside – into the real world? – Senta re-emerges to Erik with blood on her hands. Would-be purity cannot be maintained in such a world, though Nagelstad’s excellent marriage of Lieder-like detail with fine command of vocal line underlines the effort. There is, moreover, more than a hint of Nilsson-like sarcasm – again, this is no mere girl – to her delivery of the words ‘Ich bin ein Kind, und weiß nicht, was ich singe!’ When the Dutchman arrives, the meeting between the two of them is invented by Haenchen with a musical weight, if not always style, such as one might expect of the later Wagner. The stage is relatively empty, thinned out, too, Kušej emphasising the existentialist challenge the lovers offer to Daland’s empty materialism.

Once one has out of the way the embarrassing disco-dancing, neither attentive nor revealingly contradictory to the score, the third act continues to heighten the contrast between the late bourgeois-phenomenal world and a noumenal alternative; we also continue to follow a stronger portrayal of Erik than is generally encountered. He emerges as more dignified, more of a credible character, despite his backward-looking music. Though Erik may be no revolutionary, here and in the preceding act – especially upon the words ‘Satan hat dich umgarnt!’ – he presents us not only with a plausible alternative morality to either of the production’s two principal worlds, but also with true, deeply-felt anger, through Marco Jentzsch’s finely judged, not-quite-heroic portrayal. He may be romantic rather than Romantic, but he is no cipher. However, it is the darkly Romantic image of Senta’s portrait that is revealed as the final backdrop for Martin Zehetgruber’s set designs. Victory for erotic metaphysics over Erik’s more plausible humanity? Perhaps, but not quite, for, in a move that genuinely shocked me, Erik shoots dead first the Dutchman, upon his self-revelation, and, following her final words, Senta too. Then comes the ‘redemptive’ ending, where one might have expected Dresden. Viewing the two lovers upon a now-empty stage, one continues to question, though not necessarily to discount, the claims Wagner makes for redemption. His music may point us to Tristan, but that only begs further questions.

Pavilions: New Music Show 2 - London Sinfonietta/Brabbins, 5 November 2011

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Charlie Piper – Insomniac (world premiere: London Sinfonietta commission)
Dai Fujikura – Double Bass Concerto (world premiere: London Sinfonietta commission)
Steven Daverson – Elusive Tangibility III: ‘Clandestine Haze’ (United Kingdom premiere)
Iris ter Schiphorst – Zerstören (United Kingdom premiere)
Francisco Coll – Piedras (United Kingdom premiere)


Across the River Thames from the Queen Elizabeth Hall lies the Palace of Westminster, whose rescue from Guy Fawkes’s incendiary project some care to celebrate on 5th November. (Many of the rest of us wish there were a similarly elegant solution to rid ourselves of our venal, careerist political class.) The London Sinfonietta offered fireworks of its own, in the second of its Pavilions concerts: five United Kingdom premieres, of which two were also world premieres. Alas, I missed the earlier concert, which had presented no fewer than five world premieres of short works by James Olsen, Shiva Feshareki, Edmund Finnis, Tim Hodgkinson, and Isambard Khroustaliov.

It seemed to me that perhaps the strongest and certainly the most winningly suggestive piece was the third in Steven Daverson’s six-part Elusive Tangibility series, ‘Clandestine Haze’. The cycle is intended to treat with things that can be seen yet not necessarily touched: in this case, an ephemeral clandestine haze, such as might be evoked by the flickering of a candle. Written for alto flute/bass flute, bass clarinet/contra-bass clarinet, trombone, percussion, viola, and cello, it emerged as a fascinating study in shifting timbres and subtleties of motion, with the occasional surprise, which therefore truly registered. There is some use of extended techniques, for instance the breathy bass flute. This is a highly accomplished, even beguiling work of contemporary Klangfarbenmelodie: I especially liked the resonance – if only within my own imagination – of the trombone’s later line, as if a modern refugee from the spiritual land of Webern.

Francisco Coll’s Piedras (‘Stones’) was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association. Written for flute, oboe, clarinet/bass clarinet, bassoon/contrabassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba, harp, piano, and two percussionists, it concerns itself, according to the composer, with a dualism that has long interested him between the stable and the unstable, partly derived, as is often his practice, from inspiration in the visual arts. The opening material, both in writing and performance (the London Sinfonietta under Martyn Brabbins), is lively and incisive, full of glittering sonorities, eventually transformed into more dream-like material: a Romantic horn call especially evocative here. Distinction between the two types of material is not, however, absolute: for me, some of the most striking music was to be found in the liminal zones of transition.

The first performance of Charlie Piper’s Insomniac opened the concert. A work in three movements, it concerns itself with three different states in another liminal zone, that between sleep and wakefulness, and is written for flute/piccolo, oboe, clarinet/bass clarinet, soprano saxophone, bassoon/contrabassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, percussion, piano, harp, string quartet, and double bass. Throughout one senses a heartbeat, but varying context enables, even compels, one to hear and to respond to it differently. Jagged rhythms remain a constant in the first movement, whatever the Stravinskian changes of metre and gradual shifts in instrumentation. Slowly shifting harmonies lull in the second movement, inspired by Piper’s period of almost continual sunlight in Gotland. Externally induced insomnia – a neighbour’s party, for instance – provides the idea for the final movement, almost a concertante piece for aggressive trumpet, with a prominent role for double bass too.

Iris ter Schiphorst’s 2005-6 Zerstören was the only piece to employ electronics, alongside an ensemble of flute, oboe, clarinet, contrabass clarinet, contrabassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba, piano, percussion, sampler, string quartet, and double bass. One sensed a sound-world for the modern city, the world of the motor car, yet it was not always clear, at least to me, what lies beneath that sonic surface. Perhaps further hearings would reveal more.

Dai Fujikura’s double bass concerto received its world premiere, Enno Senft the soloist, the Sinfonietta’s forces comprising flute/piccolo, oboe, clarinet/bass clarinet, two horns, two trumpets, two percussionists, three violins, and two violas. It certainly proffered ample scope for Senft’s virtuosity: most impressive indeed. I was less convinced by the musical substance, heightening the doubts I felt earlier this year at the premiere of his Flare, for string quartet. For most of the time, the soloist employs pizzicato, turning to his bow towards the end. The initial material, according to the programme note, draws upon kinship with the ‘Shamisen’, a Japanese guitar-like instrument. The technique is certainly guitar-like and there is very much an ‘Oriental’ tinge to the music, a little too obviously so for these ears. Some material echoes Messiaen, again a little too obviously. For all the claims concerning new solo techniques, however, the writing is not that unconventional, whether in the many – too many? – slides in the writing for ensemble strings or the inevitable soloist resort to harmonics at the end, the latter sounding born of a perceived need to tick a box. There is some rather soft-edged neo-Romanticism to be heard too. Still, if this piece emerged a little too eagerly fashionable, it was a pleasure to experience six new works in predictably committed performances.

For Guy Fawkes...

Philharmonia/Salonen - Bluebeard's Castle, 3 November 2011

Royal Festival Hall

Debussy – Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune
Bartók – Piano Concerto no.3
Bartók – Bluebeard’s Castle (semi-staged)

Yefim Bronfman (piano)
Judit – Michelle DeYoung
Bluebeard – Sir John Tomlinson
Juliet Stevenson (narrator)

Nick Hillel (director)
David Edwards (staging)
Adam Wiltshire (set designs)
David Holmes (lighting)

Philharmonia Orchestra
Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)


Bartók’s only opera, a masterpiece to rank with other sole works in the genre such as Fidelio and Pelléas et Mélisande, was chosen for the climax of the Philharmonia’s year-long series, ‘Infernal Dance: Inside the World of Béla Bartók’. It was the obvious and fitting choice, both as idea and reality. But first came a far from negligible opening to the concert: a visit from Debussy, albeit in still earlier guise than the composer of Pelléas, and the third of Bartók’s three piano concertos, the soloist again Yefim Bronfman.

Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune is pretty much universally considered to mark the dawn of twentieth-century music. (The programme note by Malcom Gillies presented Debussy’s work as a candidate, but oddly claimed ‘some date it as late as 1913, with Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps.’ No one would gainsay the importance of The Rite of Spring, yet, by the same token, surely no one would date the beginning of twentieth-century music after Schoenberg’s emancipation of the dissonance.) In the hands of Esa-Pekka Salonen – he only picked up a baton later, preferring to mould the music here more freely – Prélude à l’après-midi received a fine performance. Samuel Coles’s opening flute solo was not only not conducted by Salonen; he did not even herald it, leaving Coles to begin in his own time. He did not disappoint; nor did Chris Cowie’s equally fine oboe solo work. Salonen shaped an initially languid reading, soon bathed in the warm glow of the Philharmonia strings. There was certainly a sense of the novelty of form we can all too readily take for granted, but which would point the way not only to later Debussy and to a number of works by Bartók and other composers of his generation, but even to post-war composers such as Boulez, as conductor one of Debussy’s – and Bartók’s – foremost interpreters. Flexibility of tempo proved the key that unlocked malleability of form. Finally came that undefinable, ineffable magic that marks a distinguished performance of this great work.

Such lyricism also informed the opening of the piano concerto, Bronfman presenting it as if in a single breath, foretelling an over-arching melodic approach. The tempo adopted, however, sounded slower than usual; moreover, the general style adopted was more classical, post-Mozartian even, than one often hears. Sometimes I wanted a little more fire from both soloist and orchestra in the first movement: though an interesting reading, it was ultimately a little underwhelming. The cool but not cold dignity with which Bronfman announced his opening statements in the slow movement was striking. Thereafter, the extraordinary night-music – surely the most interesting part of a concerto that does not always show Bartók at his best – was piquant and lively under Salonen. He clearly relished the colours that point back to Ravel but also look forward to Messiaen. A relatively cool classicism paid dividends with the counterpoint of the finale, but elsewhere much sounded a little too relaxed, at times verging on the lethargic. At one point, the pace noticeably picked up, but it seemed more of a correction than an intensification. I have no idea why the lights were dimmed at one point and then turned back up; it was probably a mistake, but it would be nice to think that it was a warning shot to the serried ranks of coughers.

Bluebeard’s Castle was performed in a semi-staged version, directed by Nick Hillel. Bartók’s opera is a strange case, in that in many respects it seems almost made to be performed in concert: its interiority, as heralded by the prologue, may even work better if it compels the listener to direct the work in his head. I am not sure that the production, based upon projections onto a ‘motorised shape’ above the orchestra and a simple enough design around the borders of the stage, added very much, but if it liberated the imagination of some unimaginative souls then it will have done some good and little harm. So far as I could tell, the designs, projections, and lighting all worked as they should.

Woodland film rendered the opening music more than usually Pelléas-like; that seemed to suit Salonen’s strategy too, at this stage characterised by what one might paradoxically call a subdued teeming of orchestral life, rendering contrast of Judit’s viewing the torture chamber all the greater. What we saw here was rather literally representative: some instruments of torture, followed by red for blood – though oddly, the red seemed more redolent of socialist propaganda posters, which, Bartók’s politics notwithstanding, I cannot believe was the intention. Such a colour-based approach might actually have worked better with Schoenberg’s contemporary Die glückliche Hand. On the other hand, visual evocation of diamonds complemented the fantasy so finely painted by the Philharmonia’s harps and celesta. Even then, however, Michelle DeYoung’s facial expressions, let alone her vocalism, had much more to say than any film projection, and still more so in the subsequent case of the flowers. DeYoung offered more than ample compensation for the previously advertised Measha Brueggergosman; hers was a powerfully dramatic and beautifully sung performance, equally alert to the demands of text and melodic line. She was formidable, not in the slightest pathetic; one could readily understand how she had her fateful way. Bluebeard’s defiant pride in the splendours of his kingdom was far better expressed by Sir John Tomlinson’s performance, noble yet wounded, than by turning the lights on and showing a few clouds on the move.

I took a while to be convinced by Salonen’s reading, wondering if the tension was sagging a little in the middle; this was certainly not a razor-sharp Bluebard’s Castle in the manner of Boulez. And yet, matters would become clearer, the greater strategy paying off handsomely, when the cold menace of the increasingly modernist-sounding orchestral palette asserted itself as Judit learned of her predecessors, likewise in the cumulative terror leading up to the final revelation. (DeYoung was superb here too.) The post-Wagnerian orchestral glory of the final climax put me in mind of Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder, but it was the desolation of Tomlinson thereafter that moved most of all. As with so much of the production, the appearance of Judit as an apparition at the back of stage did no violence to the work, but might better have been discarded.

World premiere: Tarik O'Regan, Heart of Darkness, Opera East Productions/ROH2, 1 November 2011

Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House

Marlow – Alan Oke
The Thames Captain – Njabulo Madlala
The Company Secretary, The Manager – Sipho Fubesi
The Doctor, The Boilermaker – Donald Maxwell
The Accountant – Paul Hopwood
The Helmsman – Paul Hopwood
Kurtz – Morten Lassenius Kramp
The Harlequin – Jaewoo Kim
The River Woman, The Fiancée – Gweneth-Ann Jeffers

Edward Dick (director)
Robert Innes Fisher (designs)
Rick Fisher (lighting)

CHROMA
Oliver Gooch (conductor).

By my reckoning, this is the fourth new opera I shall have seen in 2011; so far as I am aware, it will also be the last. The balance sheet, to employ an unlovely metaphor, has not been unremittingly positive, yet it seems to me crucial that arts organisations should be permitted to make mistakes; the alternative is the stultifying conservatism of a dead museum culture. Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Anna Nicole claimed to be about trashiness but was merely trashy, whilst Nico Muhly’s equally-hyped Two Boys proved so grossly inept that it did not even afford the odd moment of unwitting amusement. Fine performances were wasted on both. Tarik O’Regan’s Heart of Darkness, however, joins Bruno Mantovani’s Akhmatova as a well-crafted, well-executed work, which, whatever the future may hold, permits of not only a satisfying but at times moving evening in the theatre. Neither work, moreover, outstays its welcome, suggesting in the present case that preliminary development work with American Opera Projects and ROH 2’s OperaGenesis, reaped dividends for the finished article as jointly presented by Opera East Productions and ROH2.

Unlike those other three works, Heart of Darkness is a chamber opera: for obvious reasons a more typical course for a new opera to take, though there was no sense of compromise in that respect, nor indeed of anything other than enthusiasm at the smaller scale involved. Not everything needs or even wants to be grand. O’Regan and librettist, Tom Phillips, have distilled Joseph Conrad’s novella, using Conrad’s own words, aiming to present, and to my mind succeeding in doing so, a psychodrama: the old sea captain, Marlow’s exorcism of the trauma of his visit to Africa as a young man. The action flits between the Thames and the Congo, yet cleverly, we are made to wonder how much of the latter is a creation of the former, not least on account of the visible doubling of roles: how reliable a narrator is Marlow? O’Regan’s use of resonances – rather than direct quotation or re-creation – from Hugh Tracey’s ethnological recordings of the 1950s present in their instrumentation of harp, celesta, guitar, and percussion, a necessarily European attempt both to adopt and to stave off the strangeness of the world penetrated, or not, by the young steamboat captain. The ‘compromise’ is anything but: in its employment not for the ‘African’ drama but for the London quasi-recitatives, we become increasingly aware of the layered nature of orientalist experience. Variation in musical style is associated with, but perhaps confounds our initial expectations of, time and location. Both librettist and composer focus at one point upon the word ‘rivets’. It has a sound and potential of its own, clearly relished by both; it also has association with the imperialist world of commerce in polite terms and murderous rape and exploitation in franker, more realistic language. And so, the motor rhythms generated from this verbally and musically generative cell take over the ensuing scene: not only a metaphor, but direct experience of the unspeakable barbarism of the Congo Free State. Yet the journey as a whole is not straightforwardly towards truth, far from it, for just before the end, Marlow flinches and tells Kurtz’s Belgian fiancée that Kurtz’s last words had been her name, whereas famously, they had been ‘The horror! The horror!’ The world and Marlow’s experience of it remain a ‘vast grave of unspeakable secrets’. Should we trust his divulgence of this particular example?

Opera East Productions were both wise and fortunate to engage the services of the new music ensemble, CHROMA, as well as a fine cast, incisively conducted by OEP’s artistic director, Oliver Gooch. Scoring is for flute/alto flute/piccolo, two clarinets/bass clarinets, horn, percussion, keyboards, guitar/bass guitar, two violins, viola, two cellos, double bass, and harp. The musicians seemed unfailingly alert to the twists and turns of the score, Stravinsky-like in the inhuman rhythms of modern imperialism, more flexible, indeed close to Britten, in the freer, recitative passages. The vocal lines often stand very much in a post-Britten line too, certainly as interpreted here. Alan Oke makes a predictably excellent impression as Marlow, young and old: one could imagine that he had been singing the role all his life rather than creating it here and now. Another splendid voice of experience was provided by Donald Maxwell. Gweneth-Ann Jeffers provided both an air of mystery and of emotional honesty in the doubling up of Kurtz’s African love and European fiancée. The dark, questing spirit of Kurtz himself was powerfully evoked by Morten Lassenius Kramp: his deep, virile bass a true discovery of the evening. (We can gloss over the contradiction between the synopsis description of ‘gaunt, thin, and ill’ and the impressively gym-honed body on display, since there was an undoubted fever to appearance and portrayal.) Jaewoo Kim’s Harlequin left something to be desired in terms of diction and the character somewhat irritated: but the latter at least is doubtless part of the intention.

Edward Dick’s staging and Robert Innes Hopkins’s designs proved more resourcefully ingenious than many a production viewed on the main stage at Covent Garden Rick Fisher’s lighting a crucial agent in the transformations of time and location. The framing device of a ship’s ropes and the dual purpose function of items such as desk and crates a real virtue in terms of imagination and the work’s interrogation of Marlow’s narrative. All the while, the water lapped around: threateningly evocative of both Thames and (imagined?) Congo. How refreshing it was, then, to experience a work and production that spoke of true collaboration.

Tannhäuser, Opéra national de Paris, 29 October 2011

Opéra Bastille

Hermann, Landgrave of Thuringia – Christof Fischesser
Tannhäuser – Christopher Ventris
Wolfram von Eschenbach – Stéphane Degout
Walther von der Vogelweide – Stanislas de Barbeyrac
Biterolf – Tomasz Konieczny
Heinrich der Schreiber – Eric Huchet
Reimar von Zweter – Wojtek Smilek
Elisabeth – Nina Stemme
Venus – Sophie Koch

Robert Carsen (director, lighting)
Paul Steinberg (set designs)
Constance Hoffman (costumes)
Peter van Praet (lighting)
Philippe Giraudeau (choreography)

Maîtrise des Hauts-de-Seine
Chorus and Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris
Sir Mark Elder (conductor)


My visit to Paris took in two German operas with special association for the city and indeed for the Opéra. Lulu, the previous night, received its first full performance at the Palais Garnier. The case of Tannhäuser is, to put it mildly, less unambiguously positive, though one should recall that, whatever the disgraceful scenes at the Salle Le Peletier, it is to Paris that we owe Wagner’s revisions, which render the work a still more fascinating proposition than in its ‘Dresden version’. As is usual for performances of the ‘Paris version’, Wagner’s further modifications for Vienna were followed here, but the crucial work on the opening two scenes had already been accomplished.

Whichever version or conflation is selected, there will remain a problematical element to the work: that is part of its enduring attraction, though it has troubled some, the composer included. Cosima famously recounted on 23 January 1883, just twenty days before Wagner’s death, ‘He says he still owes the world a Tannhäuser.’ Sir Mark Elder seemed most at ease with the new music for the Venusberg, the first act certainly the strongest so far as the conducting was concerned. Perhaps it was his recent experience of conducting Götterdämmerung with the Hallé that led him perceptively to highlight the intimations of that work, Gutrune’s music in particular: both looking forward, then, but also in its harmony recalling – arguably quoting – the opéra comique of Auber, still honoured across town from the Bastille, on the façade of the Palais Garnier. An estimable performance was to be heard throughout from the Paris Opéra Orchestra, the strings golden in almost Viennese style and the woodwind quite delightful, especially during the often lugubrious third act.

If the first act, however, could be heard more or less in a single span, with a nod to its necessary disjunctures, the second and third acts offered more of a bumpy ride in terms of overall direction. There may be a case for bringing to the fore Wagner’s debt to grand opéra, not least in Paris, but the Arrival of the Guests sounded less akin to Rienzi or even to Meyerbeer than to excessively-driven early Verdi. (Is it not in any case more interesting to look to the potential of Wagner’s musical drama than to reduce it to certain murkier aspects of its origins?) There were, moreover, glaring discrepancies between pit, stage, and off-stage brass. Wherever the fault lay, the responsibility is the conductor’s – especially by the final performance of a run. The (marked) tempo change near the end of the act, shortly before we hear the pilgrims, was excessive, coming as a jolt rather than an intensification, the hurtling onward that ensued chaotic in its fraying ensemble. Line frayed too in the third act, though Elder was commendably alert to its wandering hints of Parsifal. There will always remain tensions between the various musico-dramatic components of the work, but they register more meaningfully if a greater, or at least more successful, attempt is made to engender unity – or ‘totality’, as Adorno would doubtless have accused. Such was certainly the case in the Venusberg, the ‘new’ Tristan-esque music sounding involuntarily – that, at any rate was the impression – as a restless critique of Wagner’s earlier thoughts, musical and ‘dramatic’, however false the distinction. Last year at Covent Garden, however, Semyon Bychkov proved more successful in permitting the material to enact its own self-critique, rather than harrying it in the unduly interventionist, sometimes reductionist, fashion Elder favoured here.

There was much to admire vocally. Christopher Ventris, already an accomplished Parsifal in Bayreuth, Paris, London, and elsewhere, showed no evident strain as Tannhäuser. The role is difficult for a number of reasons, not least its lack of a personal voice, Tannhäuser tending more to adapt to the situations in which he finds himself. Ventris proved successful in that respect and many others, shaping Wagner’s lines with sensitivity and projecting them with strength. Sophie Koch was quite magnificent as Venus: probably the best I have ever heard: tonally (and physically) alluring, sweetly seductive and increasingly unhinged, dramatically truthful at no cost to the vocal line, taking full advantage of the greater scope the Paris version offered her. Kundry, rightly, did not seem far away. Nina Stemme, making her Paris Opéra debut, presented a sterling, untiring Elisabeth. Hers was for the most part an ‘old-school’ reading, eschewing the possibility, explored more recently by artists such as Eva-Maria Westbroek (for Bychkov), of a more evidently tempted – and tempting – character. If Elisabeth can probably be more interesting than this, the role is unlikely to be sung with more detailed attention to the text. After a somewhat uncertain start, Stéphane Degout grew into Wolfram’s part: it is doubtless unreasonable to expect anyone to match or even to approach the astounding Lieder-reading of Christian Gerhaher (for Bychkov), though I felt the lack of something that might elevate the character into something more than a stock character and plot device. There were, though, no real weaknesses in the cast, save for an apparently uncredited Shepherd, whose music soon passed into strange bitonal realms. Mention should be accorded to the sweet-toned, intelligently-voiced Walther of Stanislas de Barbeyrac: on this evidence, we are likely to hear much more from him.

What, then, of Robert Carsen’s production, first seen in 2007, now receiving its first revival? (A quarter of a century, incidentally, had passed between the previous production and this, a haunting similarity with this perplexingly unfashionable work’s absence from the London stage.) At its heart lies the substitution, predating that of Katharina Wagner’s Meistersinger, of portraiture for song. Tannhäuser is a painter; the work that bears his name progresses from a host of attempts to paint Venus to the final hanging of his picture in a gallery of celebrated female nudes. (You name it, from Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, predictably, to Manet and Picasso, it is most likely present in reproduction.) It is strongly implied, through a final joint pose, that the final image draws upon both Venus and Elisabeth, though we never actually see Tannhäuser’s Meisterwerk, so that must remain supposition. Substitution of painting for music does no grave harm; perhaps it is intended to appeal to a city especially noted for its sympathy towards the visual arts. Nor, however, does it seem especially warranted: after all, the multitudinous references to song make more sense when actually dealing with Minnesänger. The Konzept is nevertheless carried through coherently and Personenregie is intelligently accomplished: two welcome contrasts with the Meistersinger bei Katharina.

There are moments, though, when Carsen appears to resort to ‘effect without cause’, Wagner’s celebrated accusation against Meyerbeer, which Nietzsche would then unconvincingly turn upon his antagonist. The appearance of Elisabeth in the amphitheatre at the beginning of the second act certainly startles: at a distance of five or six feet from me, I initially thought Stemme was a disruptive member of the audience. (There were certainly many of those too: in a nod to the Jockey Club’s revenge, barely a bar of the third act went uninterrupted by the bronchially assertive, the Song to the Evening Star almost obliterated.) Other characters followed suit, a practice for which there seemed no obvious justification. Occasional subsequent forays in and out of the stalls retained that sense of the arbitrary, heightening irritation. I wonder, too, whether it will some day be possible to see the guests arrive without an invasion of champagne flutes. Elisabeth’s trench coat is another slightly wearisome cliché. Carsen’s is a lively enough production, then, if not entirely innocent of veering towards the merely fashionable; yet it falls considerably short of this director at his dazzling best, for instance, the more convincing theatrical extravaganzas of his Salzburg Rosenkavalier and Munich Ariadne auf Naxos. Perhaps that was the point, a nod to the problematic nature of the drama, but, as with the score, critique proves more convincing if it emerges from within, rather than being imposed from without.