Le nozze di Figaro, Royal Opera, 14 February 2012

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Images: Royal Opera House/Bill Cooper, 2012
Figaro (Ildebrando d'Arcangelo)

Figaro – Ildebrando d’Arcangelo
Susanna – Aleksandra Kurzak
Bartolo – Carlo Lepore
Marcellina – Ann Murray
Cherubino – Anna Bonitatibus
Count Almaviva – Lucas Meacham
Don Basilio – Bonaventura Bottone
Countess Almaviva – Rachel Willis-Sørensen
Antonio – Jeremy White
Don Curzio – Harry Nicoll
Barbarina – Susanna Gaspar
Bridesmaids – Melissa Alder, Louise Armit

David McVicar (director)
Leah Hausman (movement, revival director)
Tanya McCallin (designs)
Paule Constable (lighting)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Sir Antonio Pappano (conductor)


David McVicar’s production of The Marriage of Figaro, previously staged in 2006 (twice), 2008, and 2010, now returns as part of the Royal Opera House’s ‘Da Ponte cycle’. I cannot help wishing that funds had stretched to commissioning three new productions, preferably from the same director, with a sense of how the works might actually cohere as a ‘cycle’. Nevertheless, and despite a good number of reservations I continue to entertain, McVicar’s production remains preferable to Jonathan Miller’s vulgar Così fan tutte, and, assuming it not to have been overhauled beyond recognition, Francesca Zambello’s vacuous Don Giovanni. Moving the action to the Restoration period does no especial harm, but the motivation remains obscure. If the point be to highlight Talleyrand’s observation concerning the restored Bourbons, that they had learned nothing and forgotten nothing, then it needs to be made, not assumed. The Count’s droit de seigneur is a gross exaggeration in the eighteenth century; in the nineteenth, it merely seems incredible. ‘Absolutism’ was of course a nineteenth-century way of understanding the ancien régime, painting a complex society in the bold, often crude colours of monarchs such as Charles X. A good deal of sophistication would be needed to make the shift coherent, yet here the political seems notable for the most part by its absence. We have neither a society of orders nor an emergent class-based society, merely a house with hyperactive servants in attractive costumes. The result, whatever the intention, seems to be pandering to devotees of mindless ‘costume dramas’. It all nevertheless looks good, and certain moments are very well handled, especially the magical falling of dusk between the third and fourth acts. (Incidentally, when audience members are relentlessly intent upon disrupting the action with mid-act applause, why do they then fall silent at the end of an act? Mystifying!) The servants’ running about during the Overture remains an unnecessary irritant – can anyone really think that Mozart’s music deserves to be drowned out by footsteps? – and Leah Hausman’s revival direction, sadly, tends towards the Carry On school, only encouraging a vocal, puerile section of the audience, about which more anon.

Susanna (Aleksandra Kursak), Figaro, Marcellina (Ann Murray)

The greatest surprise of the evening was perhaps Sir Antonio Pappano’s conducting. There were problems: too often, he seems to view Mozart as aspiring towards Rossini, and the consequent motor rhythms have no place whatsoever in Mozart’s music. Certain aspects of phrasing also suffered in that respect, perhaps most glaringly in the Overture; articulation, where desperately needed, came there none. The use of natural horns was at best questionable; their rasping at the conclusion of Figaro’s fourth act aria was unpleasant in the extreme. That said, and with the notable exception of the end of the second act, Pappano did not harry the score; indeed, there were moments when he clearly communicated his delight in its subtleties. Woodwind might not have ravished in the way they did for Sir Colin Davis in 2010, but they seduced nevertheless. Tempi convinced for the most part, and there was little of the tendency towards mere ‘accompaniment’ that has often held back this conductor’s work previously. I seem to be the only person who regrets the 'traditional' cuts in the fouth act, but regret them I do.

Casting Figaro successfully seems trickier than one would expect. Even in 2010, a simply astounding male team of Erwin Schrott (Figaro) and Marius Kwiecien (the Count) had to endure sub-par contributions from their Susanna and Countess. Here the undoubted star was Aleksandra Kursak’s Susanna, ever musical, ever lively, and above all ever alert to the twists and turns Da Ponte and Mozart lovingly throw her way. One could not, for the duration of the performance, imagine it being done better any other way. Phrasing was telling but unobtrusive, likewise her sideways glances. Ildebrando d’Arcangelo has never lacked stage presence, and his voice at its dark-chocolate best remains as attractive as his handsome visage and figure. There were, however, a good few moments, especially earlier on, when his delivery lacked focus. Lucas Meachem’s Count suffered similarly, though he also lacked his valet’s presence – a serious drawback, alas. Rachel Willis-Sørensen’s Countess was a serious disappointment: I have never heard ‘Porgi, amor’ so ill-tuned, nor so squally. She improved as time went on, but throughout lacked grace and, straightforwardly, character. The Cherubino of Anna Bonatatibus also disappointed: ill-focused and short-breathed. Even the Marcellina of a stalwart such as Ann Murray, an artist I admire greatly, sometimes sounded out of sorts. And would directors please cease their fixation with turning Don Basilio into a camp monstrosity? It is entirely unwarranted in either libretto or score, and has simply become a tedious cliché.

Finally, alas, a character that was all too present on this occasion: the audience, or at least a considerable section thereof. I had been tempted to open with the words, ‘more in sorrow than in anger,’ but that would have misled, for both emotions ran to the surface dealing with so disruptive a crowd. All manner of disruption was present, unremittingly so. Barely a bar went by without a cough or two. Objects were dropped left, right, and centre – and I am not referring to the stage business. A watch alarm made a charming accompaniment to ‘Porgi, amor’, though we had to wait a little longer for telephones to make their first appearance. Worst of all was the incessant, moronic laughter, perhaps to a certain extent elicited by more dubious aspects of the production; but really, if one finds someone walking onstage with a dog intrinsically hilarious, then one may need to seek treatment. The slightest reference – via the surtitles, be it noted – to anything sexual was met with all the maturity of a convention for non-recovering Benny Hill Show addicts. I should say that those people needed to get out more, except I should much rather they stayed at home. Most unforgivable was the laughter that greeted those words: ‘Contessa, perdono’. McVicar’s production brings a true sense of revelation at that point, the show-stopping appearance of the Countess, ravishing and in more than one sense graceful, fully in tune with Mozart’s approaching benediction. What is even remotely hilarious about seeking a forgiveness that goes beyond even the humanity of the Countess to the Almighty Himself, that ‘peace … which passeth all understanding’? Even if somehow one were to find that hysterically amusing – presumably one would then guffaw through King Lear or the Missa Solemnis – one might have some regard for fellow members of the audience, those who might have come to hear Mozart’s score. As the gentleman seated next to me commented during the curtain calls, it made one long to be Ludwig II, alone with one’s art. None of this is, of course, in any sense the fault of the Royal Opera House, but perhaps an announcement requesting silence during performance and the occasional summary execution, pour encourager les autres, might be in order.

Richard Goode - Schumann and Chopin, 12 February 2012

Royal Festival Hall

Schumann – Kinderszenen, op.15
Kreisleriana, op.16
Chopin – Nocturne in E-flat major, op.55 no.2
Scherzo no.3 in C-sharp minor, op.39
Waltzes: op.64 no.3 in A-flat major, op.64 no.2 in C sharp minor, op.34 no.3 in F major
Ballade no.3 in A-flat major, op.47


Richard Goode’s contribution to the Southbank Centre’s International Piano Series offered almost unalloyed delight. Indeed, I should struggle – and see no reason why I ought to struggle – to find anything about which even to quibble from the first half, devoted to Schumann. The first piece of Kinderszenen welcomed us in, as if the welcome came directly – which, in a way, it did – from a wise and kindly storyteller. How was this accomplished, both here and later in the work? Through imagination, certainly, but also through well-nigh perfect weighting of every chord, and communication of the connections between every note. Memories of and sympathy towards childhood permeated performance and score alike. Pieces such as ‘Bittendes Kind’ and ‘Gluckes genug’ were delectable, thanks to Goode’s irreproachable tonal understanding. Voice-leading sounded impeccably natural, whilst judicious rubato made points without underlining. It is a cliché, doubtless, but ‘Träumerei’ proved the true, still centre to the work, not least to a marriage of pellucid, Murray Perahia-like tone with harmonic grounding that put me in mind of Wilhelm Kempff. Irresistible rhythmic impetus – and that includes harmonic rhythm – brought ‘Ritter von Steckenpferd’ to life. Goode’s placing of the opening chords in ‘Der Dichter spricht’ and his spinning of the line emerging therefrom brought a sense, despite horrendous bronchial contributions from sections of the audience, of magical reverie with direction. Sadly, some of the performance was blighted by noise from outside the hall: what sounded like drumming, at one point. But it is testimony to Goode’s performance that it rose above such distractions.

Kreisleriana opened with a movement by turns tempestuous and dreamily poetic, Florestan and Eusebius setting the scene for the work as a whole. The two ensuing intermezzi evoked a similar, continued contrast and competition, which yet retained common poetic ground. Scales were transmuted into something so much more in the third movement, whilst the fifth imparted a fine sense of a snapshot, neither begun nor completed, but rather revealed to us for a while. The opening of the final movement flickered like Schubert’s Irrlicht, though was always underpinned by absolute rhythmic security. Its passionate central section was striking for its unforced sincerity: that both of pianist and composer.

The Chopin works performed in the second half were different from those previously advertised (the E major Nocturne, op.62 no.2, and the third sonata). There was little to regret, though. The opening Nocturne, op.55 no.2, presented not an old world Chopin, but one whose sparkle, not least in the trills, looked forward to Debussy and Ravel. Dramatic rhetoric in the opening of the third Scherzo made me eager to hear Goode in Liszt; there was certainly a touch of Mephistopheles here, and the final climax proved as diabolical as anything in Liszt’s own music. One should not forget, though, the delicacy with which Goode made Chopin’s decoration sing: not ‘mere’ decoration, but true, melodic inspiration. The two op.64 waltzes performed (nos 2 and 3) charmed without skating over the very real depths to be found here, especially the yearning of the C-sharp minor waltz. For me, the only disappointment was the A-flat Ballade. Its fluency impressed, but here, and only here, I sensed that there was more to the music than was being revealed on the present occasion. Perhaps I have been listening too often to the ever- rigorous Maurizio Pollini.

Pražák Quartet - Mozart and Brahms, 12 February 2012

Wigmore Hall

Mozart – String Quartet no.21 in D major, KV 575
Brahms – String Quartet no.3 in B-flat major, op.67

Pavel Hula, Vlastimil Holek (violins)
Josef Klusoň (viola)
Michal Kaňka (cello)

This was a puzzling concert from the Pražák Quartet, both works performed receiving distinctly mixed performances. Perhaps oddest was the opening movement of Mozart’s first ‘Prussian’ quartet. The exposition was strangely unstable, the players seemingly unable to settle upon a tempo, and when finally they did, it sounded far too fast for ‘Allegretto’, more like ‘Allegro [vivace]’. Despite some notably rich-toned viola playing from Josef Klusoň, the reading simply did not hang together, much of the movement sounding not only rushed but skated over. The ensuing ‘Andante’ was much more like it: the tempo worked, and was settled upon. There was, moreover, an apt mood of sweet elegance to the movement as a whole, and a far stronger sense of direction too. Vibrato would have horrified the puritans: good! The brisk minuet (one-to-a-bar, with a vengeance) needed to smile more; it emerged unduly fiercely, a little like a caricature of Beethoven. The high cello line in the trio sang clearly; perhaps it was emphasised a little too strongly, but at least we were reminded of its origins in the Prussian king’s cello-playing. Solos in the finale were better integrated. However, although eventful, it was rushed, even garbled at times. And that was before I recalled Mozart’s tempo marking: ‘Allegretto’. Grace, alas, stood at a premium.

Brahms’s B-flat major quartet suffered from a hard-driven first movement. The density of the composer’s argument came across, likewise to a certain extent Beethovenian antecedents (especially opp. 74 and 95) but Brahms never benefits from sounding frantic. Richer string tone would have been desirable too. That was forthcoming in the slow movement, which achieved a successful union of gravity and Classical poise. There was now a real sense of where the music was heading, though the journey remained as important as the destination. The third movement evinced nervous intensity and a delight in Brahms’s metrical intricacies and dislocations. Despite a barrage of coughing, this was highly, dramatically involving. A charming traversal of the finale’s variations was generally well characterised, though there were occasions when a little more (German?) intensity would have been welcome; Brahms sounded too much like Dvořák here.

Götterdämmerung, Met Opera Live, 11 February 2012

Metropolitan Opera, New York: HD Live, viewed at BFI IMAX

Brünnhilde – Deborah Voigt
Gutrune – Wendy Bryn Harmer
Waltraute – Waltraud Meier
Siegfried – Jay Hunter Morris
Gunther – Iain Paterson
Alberich – Eric Owens
Hagen – Hans-Peter König
First Norn – Maria Radner
Second Norn – Elizabeth Bishop
Third Norn – Heidi Melton
Woglinde – Erin Morley
Wellgunde – Jennifer Johnson Cano
Flosshilde – Tamara Mumford

Robert Lepage (director)
Neilson Vignola (associate director)
Carl Fillion (set designs)
François St-Aubin (costumes)
Etienne Boucher (lighting)
Lionel Arnould (video image artist)

Patricia Racette (‘Live in HD’ host)
Metropolitan Opera Chorus
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra
Fabio Luisi (conductor)


Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. With the caveat that this is the only instalment of Robert Lepage’s Met Ring that I have seen, it really is as bad as everyone has said it is. In the face of uniformly negative reviews – I am sure there will be exceptions, but they have not come to my notice – Götterdämmerung proved to be one of the most vacuous productions of anything I have ever seen. Even the Otto Schenk production that this replaced seems in retrospect a monument to Wagner’s ‘emotionalisation of the intellect’ (the desired mode for reception of his yet-to-be-composed tetralogy, according to Opera and Drama). Well, not quite, but here, I am afraid, there is simply nothing. There has been a peculiar recent trend of presenting ideas-free or at least ideas-lite Ring cycles: witness Stéphane Braunschweig in Aix and Guy Cassiers in Berlin (and Milan). However one could fail to entertain any thoughts, however misplaced, about the Ring is a conundrum too far for me, but Lepage seems to have hit rock bottom. So far as I can discern, his only concern is the ‘machine’, about which we have all heard far too much already. A preposterously expensive mechanism for scene changes and video projections – disturbingly similar to Ex Machina’s ‘Cirque du Soleil’ – is not a substitute, or rather it is but not should be, for dramatic direction. A production that took technology as its starting-point could have a great deal to say. How about, say, starting with Victorian phantasmagoria in Nibelheim and making our way forward? (Memories of Patrice Chéreau’s hydroelectric dam necessarily return.) But here we simply have duller costumes than in Schenk, and video projections of a few natural phenomena. What is the drama about? What is at stake? The nihilism of Götterdämmerung, or at least that dramatised therein - Chéreau rightly characterised the world of the Gibichung court as ageing, pointing to the increasing desperation of its rituals, which seek some sort of moral code in a post-religious society that knows no morality, indeed finds it impossible to ‘know’ – is quite a different matter from presenting nothing at all. The mock-up horse seems so designed to appease ‘traditionalists’ that it would surely have been more honest to go the whole hog, if you will forgive the mixing of equine and porcine, and present a real animal on stage. It all looks at best like an expensive version of a school Viking play. Poor Waltraud Meier really pulls the short straw with Waltraute’s silly helmet.

Enough! If even the lobotomised would require a further lobotomy to find anything in the production, was there anything at least worth hearing? The score, after all, is not without interest. Fabio Luisi’s conducting was better than we tend to hear at Covent Garden; there was little of the stopping and starting that must be endured here post-Haitink. But if corners were for the most part safely navigated, the reading nevertheless struggled to rise above the efficient. How depressing it is to write that! In a brief interval conversation with Patricia Racette – may I never hear her inane questioning again! – Luisi claimed that he wished to rid the work of heavy German tradition. He accomplished that after a fashion, I suppose, but it might have been worth him considering whence that disparaged tradition arose. This was not a chamber reading – there is, up to a point, a place for such – but a dull one, quite uninvolving throughout. Again, I should remind you that we are talking about Götterdämmerung here. Choral singing, I am delighted to report, was excellent. The Metropolitan Opera Chorus was clearly well-trained, and sang with admirable heft, as well as clarity.

Meier’s Waltraute was, unsurprisingly, a highlight. Somehow she managed to wring some drama from the situation: she did so as only she can, with her extraordinary intensifying synthesis of word and gesture. Iain Paterson was an excellent Gunther, conflicted and insecure, and Wendy Bryn Harmer offered an excellent, complementary Gutrune, often quite beautiful of tone. Hans-Peter König’s Hagen was interesting. There were times when I thought him too benevolent, but his portrayal won me around: a nasty turn thereafter suggested that it might actually have been an act, Hagen’s act. We were left guessing. Sad to say, I missed Eric Owens’s Alberich: confusion – entirely my own fault – concerning the interval timings meant that I missed the very opening of the second act, surely one of the most extraordinary scenes in this extraordinary drama. Owens certainly received a rapturous curtain call. As for Deborah Voigt’s Brünnhilde, I have heard worse, but the view that her weight loss entailed a great deal of vocal loss seemed pretty close to confirmation here. There was a dignity to her portrayal that promised more than it delivered, but if hardly memorable, there was no disgrace here either. Jay Hunter Morris should probably be applauded for managing, more or less, to sing the well-nigh impossible role of Siegfried – we all have horror stories to recount in that respect – but there were times when he sounded strained, even in a recorded balance that offered undue emphasis to the singers. Moreover, this was a role for the most part presented as opposed to lived. The production of course did not help, but Meier and Paterson in particular showed what might nevertheless be done by intelligent singing-actors. Intelligence, alas, was not something with which Lepage and company credited their audience.

It was unfortunate that much of the final scene of the first act was vitiated by some problem with transmission. First an unpleasant noise replaced the music, then silence. Whether this were the fault of the broadcast or the cinema, I do not know. Strange computer announcements appeared on screen from time to time, too, and there were problems with the subtitles (quite apart from the often questionable translation). I shall not bore readers with too many of my thoughts concerning opera in the cinema – I have come rather late in the day to it, this being my first time – but this was, for whatever reasons, a far less involving experience than I had anticipated, and it would be good to hear a balance that sounded a little closer to what one might hear in the opera house. Wagner's great Chorus, the orchestra, suffered especially.

(See also the review by Classical Iconoclast, including links to reviews of previous instalments.)

Interview with Carmela Remigio

The second cast for the Royal Opera's production of Don Giovanni is about to take the stage. Headed by Erwin Schrott, there seems every reason to believe that the vocal performances and acting will be very strong. I shall be reporting back after the first night (16 February). Carmela Remigio will play Donna Anna; she was kind enough to answer some e-mailed questions. Her responses bode well for an interesting, intelligent performance...

MB: What are the greatest challenges and the greatest delights for you as an artist in singing the part of Donna Anna?

CR: My greatest challenge is to give Donna Anna a complex and faceted character. To let the audience feel how ambiguous and enigmatic she is. Passion and control at the same time. Musically, she is acrobatics every time she sings. A lot of high notes - maybe 35 natural A’s in just “Or sai chi l’onore”. A deep emotional strength is needed to play such a violent aria, so full of resentment, and a firm vocal control of all sounds as well. When I can reach this point, I am happy.

MB: Like Sena Jurinac, for instance, you have played both Donna Anna and Donna Elvira. Do you find that singing one role helps you understand the other? How would you characterise the differences between the roles, temperamentally and musically?

CR: Playing both roles has certainly helped me to better understand many aspects – how to interact with the other characters, what happens while I am off stage. Among the three women, Elvira is the most simple and clear. She is the one who had the wedding promise from Don Giovanni. They have had a three-day long passion, which is a lot for Don Giovanni … but he shirks,and she goes mad for being deserted, she runs after the fire but gets burnt and is devastated, until she decides she will not love any one any longer, and wants to enter a convent.

Anna is different. I like to imagine her meeting Giovanni at a masked ball. The two have an immediate feeling, maybe also an intellectual one. Mozart and Da Ponte do not describe Anna as a transparent woman. The words, the music are full of misunderstandings, agilities I see as emotional weeknesses, unexpressed uneasiness in the attitude she has to play, as a noble woman, towards a fiancé who does exist, and whom she probably loved a lot until she met Don Giovanni. But Giovanni is the passion, the woman’s mental perversion – which is what a fiancé will never represent.

MB: Donna Anna is the character who stands closest to the apparently ‘eighteenth-century’ world of opera seria, yet she also appealed strongly to the Romantics – ETA Hoffmann, for example. Do you see her as a character looking both backward and forward? Or do you think the balance lies more in one direction?

CR: I absolutely believe Anna is already the nineteenth century. Mozart is a genius. What he writes for Donna Anna is unique. “Non mi dir” reminds me of Casta Diva, and when singing it I must use the same legato and the same drama in the agilities.

MB: What desire, if any, do you think Donna Anna feels towards Don Giovanni? Is she just better at hiding her desire than Donna Elvira?

CR: Donna Anna lies. She does know her lover, and thus the one who killed her father, but… she has to lie. She has a fiancé, she cannot confess she betrayed him with her father’s killer. How many times in life you happen to lie to the man you love! I believe many women know this feeling of love and contempt for someone they long for and will never have. And they do not dare to tell their fiancé – who is actually loved as well – he is not the first in their hearts. This turmoil of thoughts is what places Anna higher than other Mozart women, and maybe the closest one to Don Giovanni for her emotional complexity.



MB: Donna Anna also has a very strong relationship with her father. Do you have any thoughts about the nature of that relationship and its implications for her actions?

CR: I have never thought Donna Anna’s problem being her father. Mourning suddenly comes and upsets her mind, but I do not see any particular relation with her father as crucial for her emotional balance.

MB: Do you feel pity for Don Ottavio? His role is so often described as ‘thankless’, and one might say that that characterisation has much to do with the way Donna Anna treats him.

CR: I feel tenderness and also love for Don Ottavio. What makes Anna suffer is her awareness to betray someone she loves. How can you detest a man who says “Dalla sua pace la mia dipende” (my peace depends on hers)?

MB: Do you think she has anything in common with other Mozart characters? Elettra and Vitellia, for instance, both of which seria parts you have sung?

CR: Mozart female characters can have something in common. They are all interesting women, but different one from the other. Mozart shows he knows women’s sensitivity, weaknesses and strengths very well. Feeling and reason must live together in the purity of their cantos.

MB: To take another of your Mozart roles, Susanna, does that require an entirely different approach, both in terms of acting and vocal characterisation?

CR: Difficult Susanna… always on stage, with everybody, always singing… and at the end of the opera you have sore feet! Joking aside, Susanna kicks her legs up along the whole opera. Then the universe becomes still… and she sings “Deh vieni non tardar”… The aria is charged with high sensuality, a unique example of musical mastery. It is a very beautiful role, but she is very transparent as a woman.

MB: Mozart is generally praised for his sympathy towards female characters; that sympathy is what helps make them so believable, so human. Is that your experience, in this and other Mozart operas?

CR: I am just in love with Mozart. I wish I was his wife to know which folly these masterpieces would come out!

MB: Are there any other Mozart roles you are keen to play, whether now or in the future? Perhaps something from one of his earlier works?

CR: I would love to continue playing all the Mozart roles I have interpreted up to know.

MB: The male singers with whom you are working on this particular production – Erwin Schrott, Alex Esposito, and Pavol Breslik – are all artists whom I have admired greatly in other productions I have seen of Don Giovanni. How much does it help your own performance to be working with such fine actor-singers, and to interact with them on stage?

CR: It may seem an obvious reply, and it is open-hearted instead. I am really happy to play with this team. We work hard during rehearsals, but always with the right mix of play, fun and laugh. This helps the artistic outcome in a very positive way. With them it is possible to explore the infinite nuances of interpretation – which rises from the common wish to well accomplish a work we love and try to make it interesting. With Breslik, my partner on stage, I have a special musical and theatrical feeling.

MB: You have played Donna Anna in a production conducted by Claudio Abbado and directed by Peter Brook. What did you learn from collaborating with such distinguished artists? And how did you find their approach to Mozart, and to Don Giovanni in particular?

CR: I learnt a lot from my collaboration with Brook and Abbado. I was young enough, 23 years old, and could absorb all that an artist has to learn after studying the vocal technique for years searching for perfection. From Abbado I learnt the interpretative musical rigour, the Mozart style that must be impeccable and cogent, but also rich in musical nuances and thousand of colours. And then the use of the word and the consonant in the recitative. From Brook I learnt a very important thing he would always repeat us during a whole year of Don Giovanni on tour performance: “Forget you are an opera singer”. I cried at this at the beginning, then I understood that by detaching from myself I would let the right space for the character to seize me, and the voice would come out more freely. Still now, when I am on stage, I am Donna Anna for three hours. I cry, I love, give way to despair as she would do. Finally… I come back to Carmela only in my dressing room. He taught me that Freedom is Truth on Stage. And this has to go through minimalism and simplicity.

Click here to view Carmela Remigio's website.

Les Contes d'Hoffmann, English National Opera, 10 February 2012

(sung in English, as The Tales of Hoffmann)

The Coliseum

Images: Chris Christodoulou
Hoffmann (Barry Banks), Olympia (Georgia Jarman), and Nicklausse (Christine Rice)

Hoffmann – Barry Banks
Stella, Olympia, Antonia, Giulietta – Georgia Jarman
Muse, Nicklausse – Christine Rice
Counsellor Lindorf, Coppélius, Dr Miracle, Captain Dapertutto – Clive Bayley
Spalanzani – Iain Paton
Crespel, Luther – Graeme Danby
Andrès, Cochenille, Frantz, Pitchinaccio – Simon Butteriss
Voice of Antonia’s mother – Catherine Young
Schlémil – Tom Fackrell
Students – Richard Gerard Jones, Luke Owens, Sebastian Sykes

Richard Jones (director)
Giles Cadle (set designs)
Buki Schiff (costumes)
Mimi Jordan Sherin (lighting)
Lucy Burge (movement)

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Francine Merry)
Orchestra of the English National Opera
Antony Walker (conductor)

Olympia and Hoffmann

In many respects, The Tales of Hoffmann and Richard Jones would seem a good fit. An opéra fantastique, with which Offenbach at the end of his career wished to show the world that he was not a mere purveyor of enjoyable froth, certainly offers plenty of opportunity for the surreally-inclined. (Jones’s controversial 1990s Ring for the Royal Opera House garnered plaudits and brickbats on that basis. Sadly, if not entirely unpredictably, it proved not to be Bernard Haitink’s idea of a Ring at all.) The pipe emblazoned upon the stage curtain and the pipes being smoked by Hoffmann and the students seem to hold the key to the director’s conception. Whatever it is that is being smoked would appear to lie behind the visions. Fair enough, but there is perhaps a little too much of the surface psychedelic, especially during the second (here, first) act, and not enough truly Romantic, Gothic darkness. We are dealing with Offenbach rather than Hoffmann himself, of course, but it would be beneficial to see, if not to hear, a little more of the hero, a still grossly underappreciated figure in the English-speaking world. (One really needs German.) Some of what we see resembles a little too closely Jones’s Covent Garden productions of Gianni Schicchi and The Gambler. Difficult though it may be to feel sympathy for the 1950s, a decade of closed-mindedness if every there were one, is it always necessary to send them up so garishly as in the Olympia act? (At least I assume that was what was being attempted.) Why a gorilla was wandering around the stage before and during the fourth (here, third) act, I simply have no idea. Its inclusion seemed to add nothing beyond reminding us of the ménagerie in that splendid production of The Gambler. The appearance of Dr Miracle as Antonia opens her music is very nicely handled, though, likewise the appearance of her mother’s voice through a gramophone trumpet. It is, then, an enjoyable production; costumes, movement, and lighting are all well handled in the production’s own terms. The same basic set is varied imaginatively between acts, providing a finer sense of overall framing than the production as a whole. I just could not help but think that Offenbach’s desire to be taken seriously might have been taken a little more seriously.

Cochenille (Simon Butteriss), Olympia, and Spalanzani (Iain Paton)

From the singers, there was much to enjoy. Barry Banks sang a decent enough English-language Hoffmann, though his style was more Italianate, occasionally jarringly so, than Gallic. If there was not an especially strong sense of Hoffmann as artist, especially at the end, then that was at least as much down to production as performance. Christine Rice, however, made a fine Nicklausse. (She also appeared as Hoffmann’s Muse, that doubling respecting Offenbach’s original intention.) Again, one could not help but wish that the words were in French, but Rice’s palpable sincerity won through time and time again, ‘Vois sous l'archet frémissant’ – I cannot recall what the English was – a particular, soaring highlight. Georgia Jarman, making her ENO debut, truly impressed by taking on all four of Hoffmann’s lovers: Stella, Olympia, Antonia, and Giulietta. Her characterisation varied, bringing something quite new to each of them. Antonia’s fate was rendered as moving as the production – and the music – would allow; Giulietta proved properly seductive; and save for a few slight intonational problems at the very beginning, Olympia’s mechanical coloratura was despatched with great aplomb. Catherine Young’s off-stage turn as the Mother’s Voice (a ghost, traditionally) was beautifully performed. Mention must also be made of Simon Butteriss, kept busy with four different roles: Andrès, Cochenille, Frantz, and Pitichinaccio. Clearly at home in drag as Cochenille, he also provided a wickedly camp turn as the servant Frantz.

Dr Miracle (Clive Bayley)

The ENO orchestra once again proved to be on fine form, though Antony Walker’s direction was less sure-footed. Here, at least, one might have hoped for a little more Gallic suavity; there were times when his approach veered a little close to thinned-down Tchaikovsky (less a point of view, it seemed, than a lack of idiomatic command). Given that the work was performed in English, spoken dialogue might have been a better bet than recitative. Amplification of the chorus at the end was surely both unnecessary and oddly sentimentalising, as if we had come to the end of a Hollywood ‘Romantic comedy’. Again, Offenbach’s desire to be taken seriously might have been taken more seriously. The production is worth seeing, and the cast certainly makes it worth hearing, but one would struggle to discern a message, let alone a Konzept.

Giulietta (Georgia Jarman) and Hoffmann

Finalists announced for 2012 Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award

The following is just in from the Salzburg Festival. (I am afraid it is simply copied and pasted from the press release, with occasional excisions, since I have no time properly to edit it just now and thought the information better disseminated not.)

Out of 91 applicants, including 19 women, the jury, chaired by Ingo Metzmacher has selected three conductors, two men and one woman: the 20-year-old Englishman Jamie Phillips, the 33-year-old Argentinean Christian Baldini and the 26-year-old Lithuanian Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla. The three finalists will present themselves to the public on April 28 and 29 during the Award Concert Weekend.


This year, the international competition for young conductors received applications from candidates from four continents. Artistic Director Alexander Pereira commented: “The goal of this initiative is to give young and highly talented artists a decisive impulse for their further careers. Therefore, we give the three candidates the chance to present themselves to the public together with international award-winning soloists, in order to increase the attractiveness of the award.” Pereira has had the idea of a concert weekend in April. "Now, all of Salzburg can participate in this great project without paying much,” Helga Rabl-Stadler, President of the Salzburg Festival, expressed her enthusiasm.

Award Concert Weekend – April 28 and 29, 2012

The three finalists will have the chance to conduct a concert with one of the three partner orchestras as part of the “Award Concert Weekend”. The following young soloists will perform at these concerts: Ingolf Wunder (piano), Alexej Gorlatch (piano) and Dan Zhu (violin). The programme will be chosen by the nominated conductors and announced at a later time.

In order to give as many people as possible the chance to participate in the development of this great idea, tickets will be especially affordable:

For students: 8,00 Euros per concert
For all others: 15,00 Euros per concert
General Pass: 30,00 Euros for all three concerts

Concert Dates

Saturday, April 28, 2012, 7:30 pm

Conductor: Jamie Phillips
Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg
Soloist: Ingolf Wunder, Piano (2nd Prize, International Chopin Competition 2010)

Sunday, April 29, 2012, 11:00 am

Conductor: Christian Baldini
Munich Radio Orchestra
Soloist: Alexej Gorlatch, Piano (1st Prize and Audience Prize of the ARD Music Competition 2011)

Sunday, April 29, 2012, 7:30 pm

Conductor: Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla
Camerata Salzburg
Soloist: Dan Zhu, Violin (Winner of major international competitions, including the Queen Elisabeth Competition)

After the three concerts, the jury chaired by Ingo Metzmacher will determine the winner, who will conduct the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra at the Felsenreitschule on August 12, 2012.

The Finalists
Christian Baldini (33)

Born in Argentina, Christian Baldini studied orchestral conducting at Pennsylvania State University, earning a Master’s Degree. He has worked with renowned orchestras such as the BBC Symphony Orchestra London and the Buenos Aires Philharmonic and has participated in numerous master classes, for example with Kurt Masur. As a composer, Baldini has won several prizes for his works and has made a name for himself internationally, especially in the USA. He has taught at the State University of New York and is currently assistant professor at the University of California.

http://www.salzburgerfestspiele.at/biography/artistid/13188

Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla (25)

The native of Lithuania holds a degree in conducting from the University of Graz and continued her studies at the Conservatory in Bologna, the Academy of Music and Theater in Leipzig and most recently at the Arts Academy in Zurich. Gražinytė’s broad range of experience includes many public performances and successful participation in competitions, including the 5th German Music Academy Competition in Orchestral Conducting. Her talent also convinced the Conductors’ Forum of the German Music Council, which has granted Gražinytė a scholarship since 2009.

http://www.salzburgerfestspiele.at/biography/artistid/13190

Jamie Phillips (20)

The young Englishman studies at the University of Manchester and at the Royal Northern College of Music. His level of musicality and expressivity are striking, and despite his youth, he already commands a comprehensive repertoire. He is founder and chief conductor of the Birmingham Festival Orchestra. This past year, he was the youngest finalist to reach the semi-finals at the Besançon International Competition for Young Conductors.

http://www.salzburgerfestspiele.at/biography/artistid/13186

There may be something more depressing in the modern musical world ...

..., but if so, I have forgotten it, and feel no need to be reminded:

Some thoughts on Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte

(Originally published in the Royal Opera's programme booklet for Don Giovanni.)



Lorenzo Da Ponte

Stung by a review of Don Giovanni, which extolled Mozart’s music without so much as mentioning his librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte cautioned: ‘A poet deserves to be esteemed no less because he labours on a well-known theme’. Poets from antiquity onwards would doubtless nod assent: what often proves of interest is divergence from previous retellings, the Orpheus myth our archetype, rather than inventing an ‘original’ tale. Quality is the thing, Romantic infatuation with originality notwithstanding. Yet librettists do not furnish completed works; ideally, they proffer a springboard for music, even when composer and librettist are one and the same. (That Wagner composed some of Tristan’s music before completing his poem says nothing about æsthetic priority.) Mozart’s libretti were always provisional in nature, pending various musical decisions. He was not unusual in that: consider the richly documented collaboration between Strauss and Hofmannsthal, wherein we read Strauss on Der Rosenkavalier’s opening scene: ‘delightful: it will set itself to music like oil and melted butter … You are Da Ponte and [Eugène] Scribe rolled into one.’ Now we certainly do not perform operas we consider only to boast good libretti, such as those Da Ponte wrote for Salieri and others, yet we speak of ‘Mozart’s Da Ponte operas’ as a particular – and particularly successful – trilogy. For, even if occasional difficulties inevitably arose, Mozart’s working relationship with Da Ponte proved easier and its results more unambiguously triumphant than the composer’s collaborations with other librettists. We have only to glance at earlier treatments of the stories in question to appreciate both men’s contribution. Without elevating Da Ponte over Molière and Beaumarchais, we appreciate that Da Ponte knew or would heed a composer’s requirements, including what should be left open.

Sena Jurinac as Donna Elvira (left) and Donna Anna (right)

For instance, the Romantic claim that Donna Anna desires Don Giovanni has received puritanical criticism, apparently deaf to erotic truths voiced in Mozart’s score. Even from an ultra-literalist reading of the libretto, it is by no means certain that Anna has not been seduced by Giovanni, nor that she has not in some sense sought seduction – and him. Da Ponte’s openness or ambiguity has enabled Mozart’s, or at least the audience’s, further development. Anna can hardly be said to burn with desire for Don Ottavio, though she certainly burns with vengeance and thus with feelings towards her father and Giovanni. The most unambiguously seria and therefore superficially ‘eighteenth-century’ character thus also looks forward towards the tragic conflicts of nineteenth-century opera and drama, Schiller as much as Wagner, just as Idomeneo had harked back to French tragédie lyrique (Gluck, even Rameau) and forward to Don Giovanni. (It did not benefit from a librettist such as Da Ponte though, long remaining ‘problematical.) Nineteenth-century musical drama is not straightforwardly born in opera buffa; it is at least as much a product of dramma giocoso, in which the whole world, socially, politically, sexually, æsthetically, metaphysically, becomes a stage.


In the absence of documentary evidence, we may argue ad nauseam about Da Ponte’s precise intention in calling Don Giovanni a dramma giocoso. However, although Carlo Goldoni neither invented the term nor employed it consistently, it retains the connotation of his operatic reforms, combining parti serie, noble characters from the world of serious opera, with parti buffi from comic opera – servants, peasants, etc. – with music set accordingly. Goldoni also often creates characters lying somewhere in between: di mezzo carattere. Whether or no Da Ponte intended something qualitatively different from Le nozze di Figaro by employing the term ‘dramma giocoso’, and whether Mozart deliberately used another (unlikely), Don Giovanni develops Goldoni’s tradition, not least by introducing ensembles in which serious and comic roles combine – and compete, just as in emergent bourgeois society.

Cesare Siepi as Don Giovanni

The mezzo carattere Giovanni is a nobleman, of course; however, his essence is instability, transforming all around him. It is no coincidence that noblemen would soon stand at the forefront of revolution in France, sans culottes operatically brought onstage by social ‘superiors’. We may note here the wish of Giovanni’s creator, Luigi Bassi, for a full-length aria, the sort of request to which Mozart was generally happy to respond (as in the additional ‘Mi tradì’, for Vienna’s Elvira). With Giovanni, however, avoidance of social typecasting is maintained by denial, upon which neither composer nor librettist seems to have wavered, of such a definitive portrayal. There may have been revolutionary trouble ahead for Almaviva, but the societal dissolution threatened by his licentious successor – ‘Viva la libertà!’ – is quite different: he dances on an existential volcano. Note Mozart’s quite startling emphasis upon Da Ponte’s words: trumpets, kettledrums, martial rhythms, and manifold repetition. The words might have passed for nothing in another setting, yet they had to be there in the first place. Exchange of clothes in the second act may primarily be a comic device, but also dramatises social and sexual tension – and transgression. Giovanni, notably, relishes the role-play more than Leporello.

Moreover, and this is Da Ponte’s doing, Giovanni is the only character to connect the other members of a small principal cast. He is socially cohesive, connecting noble Anna and peasant Masetto, and socially corrosive, undermining those orders or estates upon which such different social and musical characters rest. Elvira comes closest otherwise, but her (gendered) concerns relate entirely to her own feelings: she has no connection with the Commendatore. (That said, Da Ponte, let alone Mozart, renders the female characters far more sympathetic than his librettist predecessor, Giovanni Bertati. Likewise, it is Da Ponte’s masterstroke, of which Mozart takes full advantage, to keep the Countess, Figaro’s trump card, up his dramatic sleeve to open the second act.) The celebrated metrical combination and dislocation of socially-defined dances in the first-act finale – aristocratic minuet, middling contredanse, and plebeian Teitsch – are Mozart’s own, whirling eighteenth-century society to the very edge of the abyss, yet they extend rather than contradict Da Ponte’s libretto.

Max Slevogt, The Champagne Aria (1902)

That near-Faustian heroism which is the opera’s most telling legacy to the nineteenth century is most overwhelmingly expressed in Mozart’s music – Nietzsche berated Wagner for allegedly believing that all music must follow the Stone Guest Scene – yet again, Da Ponte is supportive. Tirso de Molina’s ‘original’ Juan, always intends to be pardoned through confession, though his cynicism will not be rewarded, his catchphrase, ‘Tan largo me lo fiáis’ (‘You give me such long credit’), proving in no sense heroic. Molière’s Juan is an atheist whose hypocrisy becomes increasingly marked. The atheist heroism of Da Ponte’s Giovanni intensifies. All three dramas nevertheless possess a fundamental religious element, which other re-tellings, not least the commedia dell’arte, had relegated to supernatural colour. The content-less – in more sense than one – kinetic energy of Giovanni himself, carelessly fizzing away in the ‘Champagne Aria’, is founded upon the libretto’s presentation avant la lettre of Goethe’s negating Mephistopheles. It finds fulfilment in our hero’s definitive self-opposition to the Commendatore’s tragic voice of orthodoxy. A-theism is defined by absence, negation.

Luigi Bassi as the first Don Giovanni

By contrast, Leporello, superstitious though probably in everyday practical terms a cheerful agnostic, cannot achieve his master’s atheist heroism. Leporello’s buffo interjections remain just that: interjections into a drama transformed verbally and musically, the dotted, neo-Baroque rhythms of both strings and Giovanni’s vocal line conveying otherworldly gravity. Mozart, as he would in his Requiem, pours proto-Wagnerian chromatic wine into Handelian bottles, less creating a mismatch – for the languages are not so very far apart – than permitting slight disjuncture so as to suggest new metaphysical vistas. Archaic trombones reach back further in musical history to recall not only the equali of Habsburg state funerals, not only Handel’s Saul and Israel in Egypt, but above all their ancient association with death and the supernatural. Mozart had employed three trombones in his early Waisenhausmesse, KV 139, its ‘Crucifixus’ an extraordinary premonition of the Day of Judgement. Here, however, such intimations attain final consummation. Christ’s Passion is relived and transformed through a Fall prefiguring Tristan in atheistic defiance, the more telling granted the Roman Catholicism of Mozart and the Abbé Da Ponte.

For we should understand Mozart’s operas better if we attended more closely to his sacred music, Stravinsky’s ‘Rococo sweets of sin’. Da Ponte certainly renders the peasant couple, Biagio/Masetto and Maturina/Zerlina more rounded characters than in the earlier Bertati-Giuseppe Gazzaniga opera. Crucially, however, Da Ponte introduces their loving reconciliation (‘Vedrai, carino’), fully exploited by a composer peerless in expressing the miracle of forgiveness. Its locus classicus lies in Figaro, the Countess’s radiant benediction vouchsafing not only human but divine grace, Da Ponte’s direction that the Count kneel before her when seeking forgiveness having set the theological scene. Man’s sinful nature is not denied, for we do not believe that the Count will remain faithful; nor, despite Da Ponte’s necessary excision of Beaumarchais’s most provocative political challenges, do we believe that the feudal society upon which Almaviva’s power rests will remain standing. Yet that ambivalently redemptive precedent renders all the more devastating Così’s non-redemptive non-resolution: further Mephistophelian negation in an unspeakably cruel ‘school for lovers’. Mozart’s most sweetly seductive sado-masochism, ravishing horns of cuckoldry (Fiordiligi’s ‘Per pieta, ben mio’) lingering long in the mind’s ear, lays bare the cruellest truths of the catastrophic delusion we name romantic love. It proceeds furthest beyond the ‘merely’ cynical libretto, which has nevertheless acted as springboard: added to, subverted, deepened. If Don Giovanni’s closing moral is not quite sung through its successor’s clenched teeth, it attains in its after-shock an almost Brechtian alienation, Giovanni’s challenge unforgotten. Further disruption and dislocation are deferred, but that is all. In all three operas, we travel pre-emptively beyond Wagner: further each time, redemption and transcendence first undercut and eventually unattainable. For Da Ponte and Mozart, there can be no Liebestod.

Von Otter/LSO/Tilson Thomas - Debussy and Weill, 2 February 2012

Barbican Hall

Debussy – Dance sacrée et danse profane
Weill – Die sieben Todsünden
Debussy, orch. Robin Holloway – En blanc et noir
Debussy – La mer

Anne Sofie von Otter (mezzo-soprano)
Bryn Lewis (harp)
Synergy Vocals (Paul Badley, Gerard O’Beirne (tenors), Michael Dore, Paul Charrier (basses))
London Symphony Orchestra
Michael Tilson Thomas (conductor)


I failed to discern any rationale behind programming the Brecht-Weill ballet chanté with various works by Debussy, one orchestrated by Robin Holloway. The performances certainly extended beyond typical concert length, not helped by a ten-minute delay in beginning, and more to the point, the programme rather felt as if there were one too many piece. How, then, fared what for many was presumably the main attraction, Anne Sofie von Otter in The Seven Deadly Sins? Patchily, I am afraid. There were several problems, but most of all von Otter herself, whose performance seemed quite misconceived. From the opening of the Prologue, her reading lacked edge, seeming far too well-mannered. There is not a single way to perform this repertoire, and not everyone is Lotte Lenya – indeed, of course, no one else is – but, despite the microphone, von Otter sounded either ill at ease or merely pleasant (as in the second of the sins, ‘Stolz’). The performance seemed more an example of that most dubious of enterprises, ‘classical crossover’, than social critique. Oddly, on the occasional instances when she ditched her microphone, vocal production sounded more idiomatic. As for the would-be cool foot-tapping in ‘Zorn’, let us not dwell upon it. The gentlemen of Synergy Vocals were on far better form, though I am not sure that the nature of the amplification helped them. Theirs at least added an edge quite lacking elsewhere, rendering the Family’s hypocritical bourgeois morality all the more repellent. Perhaps surprisingly, Michael Tilson Thomas’s conducting of the London Symphony Orchestra was also rather tame, at least for a good two-thirds of the work. ‘Faulheit’ at least brought something of a wind band sonority, but for much of the performance, the pleasantness of Anna – whether I or II – had apparently proved contagious. In ‘Habsucht’ and ‘Neid’ there was at last some splendid orchestral playing, the LSO properly given its head, the results redolent of Mahagonny, even if Weill is here perhaps a little too obviously imitating his former self. The encore, ‘Speak low’ was preferable in every respect: everyone seemed more relaxed, and there was a far surer grasp of idiom.

At the beginning of the concert, Danse sacrée et profane had mysteriously replaced the advertised Last Pieces, Debussy as orchestrated by Oliver Knussen. LSO principal, Bryn Lewis, gave a good account of the harp part, though Tilson Thomas alternated between the deliberate and the subdued, especially in the first dance. The second showed its kinship to Ravel, but was perhaps overly moulded by the conductor. Holloway’s 2002 orchestration of En blanc et noir, by contrast, proved a revelation. The opening movement brings a glittering edge, at first not especially Debussyan – though it does not seem that Holloway is trying to be so – but perhaps more school of scintillating Dukas. As time went on, flashes and more than flashes, of Debussyan orchestral sonority manifest themselves: informing, but not controlling. This is certainly no attempt at pastiche. The second movement is, unsurprisingly, darker in hue, though not without metallic, militaristic glitter. A poignant trumpet solo lingers in the memory. Likewise the vivid realisation of the confrontation between Ein’ feste Burg and the Marseillaise: almost Ivesian, but better orchestrated. In the final movement, I fancied that I heard, albeit briefly, creepy shades of Bartók, supplanted by Ravel – and that is praise indeed for any orchestration.

La mer, which concluded the programme, opened promisingly, with a fine sense of ‘emerging’, all sections of the LSO on excellent form. ‘De l’aube à midi sur la mer’ flowed well, apparently on the swift side, but not to its detriment. However, by the time we reached the brass fanfares – included, doubtless to the chagrin of some, though I have no problem with them – doubts had begun to set in. So much was a little, and sometimes more than a little, too brash, and I do not think it was just a matter of the Barbican acoustic. Similarly, the glitter of ‘Jeux de vagues’, at first stimulating, soon seemed a little de trop. La mer was veering dangerously close to mere orchestral showpiece, as would be confirmed by the final movement, in which the conductor had it approximate to a decent film score. Direction was present, throughout, to be sure: there was no meandering. And there were some ravishing woodwind solos. But Debussy is so much more interesting, so much less straightforward, than he sounded here. Let us hope that Tilson Thomas does not resolve to tackle Pelléas.

Jansen/LPO/Nézet-Séguin - Prokofiev, 1 February 2012

Royal Festival Hall

Symphony no.1 in D major, op.25, ‘Classical’
Violin Concerto no.2 in G minor, op.63
Symphony no.5 in B-flat major, op.100

I have not been able to attend as many of the London Philharmonic’s Prokofiev concerts as I should have liked; indeed, I have only been to the first and the last. Whilst the former offered somewhat mixed results, the festival finale proved an unalloyed success. Returning to mainstream repertoire did not engender routine, quite the contrary: it enabled us rather to discriminate between ‘interesting’ Prokofiev, fully worthy of performance, and the composer at his best, which we heard this evening.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin showed in his performance of the Classical Symphony that he is a conductor fully capable of shedding new light on a work that in some hands can sound unduly familiar. A slower tempo than one usually hears in the first movement imparted a true sense of the neo-Classical to proceedings, whilst the gracious charm of a clucking second subject suggested Haydn of Beecham vintage (not inappropriate at all either to work or indeed orchestra). What a refreshing change from the mere showpiece into which this music can all too often degenerate. Notably, Prokofiev’s motor rhythm persisted throughout: this, we knew, was neo-Classicism. The second movement captured splendidly a stylised grace, not frigid, but somewhat akin to the ‘as if’ of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, albeit in miniature and with the nagging, intriguing question, which certainly never arises in Mahler’s case, as to whether there is in fact a heart beating behind the music. Silvery violin lines suggested there might be, as if premonitions of Cinderella; or were they too dealing with masks? The minuet brought a winning sense of toy-soldier swagger, again at a slower tempo than is often heard, and all the more interesting for it. There was, though, nothing slow about the finale; it fizzed carelessly – in the best sense – like a young sparkling wine. It needs excellent playing and received it: the flutes especially, but also the LPO string section as a whole.

Janine Jansen joined the orchestra for the second violin concerto. Having had a few unhappy experiences with this work in concert of late (the worst of which were two truly dreadful performances from Viktoria Mullova and Chloe Hanslip), it was a true joy to welcome a violinist who not only brought flawless technique but musical understanding to the piece. It opened darker than often, a little more deliberate in pace, though tempi would prove to be flexible. The violin line was beautifully spun, yet never narcissistically so. (Much as I enjoy Itzhak Perlman in this concerto, Jansen was more interesting, suggesting that more was at stake.) The most challenging passages in technical terms were handled without difficulty, but more to the point, they sounded angry rather than merely virtuosic. It was a fine collaboration, too, the orchestra often sounding very much as the shadow of the soloist. At times, it sounded ‘Russian’ – for instance, properly soulful cellos – and at times more internationally ‘modernist’, penetrating to the heart of a conflict that pervaded not only Prokofiev’s music but his character too. There was pent-up aggression rather than balletic charm to the final pizzicato chords. The slow movement brought a piquant contrast between the soaring intensity of Jansen’s solo line and spiky LPO woodwind. That shadow was also present again from vibrato-laden violins. And later, there was splendid fairy-tale grotesquerie, not over-done, from the cellos. Some might have wanted more primary colours in this movement; I heartily approved of its subtlety of tone. The finale bit, but it also danced, if haltingly – a little like Prokofiev himself, if the tales be true. (Well, actually a great deal better than the notoriously poor ballroom dancer: interesting for a great ballet composer!) Jansen combined pinpoint precision with truth of expression. There remained, rightly, a relative, sometimes melancholy hollowness to the some of the orchestral writing. Nézet-Séguin left us wondering whether that was in itself a deeper, expressive truth, or whether we were dealing with Straussian masks.

The Fifth Symphony received an equally fine performance, if anything finer still. Nézet-Séguin again showed that he was not hidebound by tradition, taking the opening Andante at a more flowing speed – and character – than, say, Karajan’s classic, stentorian account from the 1970s with the Berlin Philharmonic. Not that that precluded orchestral weight, even if a little distance from that of the BPO; yet whereas Karajan presented Prokofiev as closer to Shostakovich – at least if Shostakovich had been a considerably better composer – then here perhaps we heard Prokofiev echoing Mussorgsky and indeed even Ravel, whilst nevertheless remaining recognisably the same composer. There were also, here and elsewhere, hints and often more than hints of Eisenstein cinema: both ‘dramatic’ and, in its way, ‘modernist’. Moreover, Nézet-Séguin’s reading proceeded with a definite spring in its step. If Karajan was utterly, chillingly, single-minded, Nézet-Séguin tended more towards variegation. It is not the only way, but it was a fully coherent way to open quite the best live performance of this symphony I have heard. There was no moderation to the second movement either: a biting scherzo that yet retained an apt sleekness, still pointing back – if only just – to the Prokofiev of the Twenties, albeit with considerably greater seriousness of purpose. What was perhaps most impressive of all, a highly catchy sense of swing notwithstanding, was Nézet-Séguin’s unbroken sense of line: this, we were never able to forget, is a symphony. The third movement brought a sense of germination, almost blooming, in a frozen (tundra?) landscape. It may be a far simpler – and, more importantly, entirely different – beast from The Rite of Spring, but in that respect, there proved perhaps a surprising degree of commonality. Nézet-Séguin retained, moreover, a quite contrasting sense of epic cinema, a difficult balancing act to bring off. The climax brought the Soviet machine to its most glorious – and chilling. We heard, in the opening of the final movement, Prokofiev’s ultimately unsuccessful striving towards Beethoven, and there was poignancy in that striving. A sardonic response was called for, and received, similarly a proper sense of melodic grace. And still, at times, the Prokofiev of Le Pas d’acier revealed himself, fleetingly. Let us not be seduced into simplistic Cold War narratives – from either/any side. Frankly, someone who does not hear any shred of ‘socialist realism’ undercut by the late turn to mechanistic solo instruments cannot be listening. We heard it and were chilled by it: not in a Mahlerian way, which would be absurd for Prokofiev – but in whatever elusive fashion it may be that forms the foundation for his essential voice.

Jonathan Harvey, Wagner Dream, BBC SO/Brabbins, 29 January 2012

Barbican Hall

Prakriti – Claire Booth
Vairochana – Simon Bailey
Mother – Hilary Summers
Ananda – Andrew Staples
Old Brahmin – Richard Angas
Buddha – Roderick Williams

Richard Wagner – Nicholas Le Prevost
Cosima Wagner – Ruth Lass
Carrie Pringle – Julia Innocenti
Dr Keppler – Richard Jackson
Betty/Vajrayogni – Sally Brooks

Orpha Phelan (director)
Charlie Cridlan (designs)

Gilbert Nouno (IRCAM computer music designer)
Franck Rossi (IRCAM sound engineer)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Martyn Brabbins (conductor)

The Barbican’s biennial Present Voices series performs an invaluable service in bringing new opera to London; Jonathan Harvey’s Wagner Dream is one of three works presented this season, the others being Gerald Barry’s The Importance of Being Earnest and Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach. Sadly, I had been unable to attend the previous day’s Total Immersion events, but here at least was the British premiere of Wagner Dream. This came as the climax of a peculiarly concentrated and indeed varied bout of opera-going, following, on consecutive nights: Il prigioniero, courtesy of the Philharmonia, Così fan tutte at Covent Garden, and Der Rosenkavalier from ENO. I was not entirely convinced that Harvey’s third opera, despite an interesting premise, stood up so very well in such daunting company.

Briefly, it presents Wagner and Cosima in Venice, on the day of the former’s death, joined by Carrie Pringle, the Flowermaiden whose advances, such as they were, Cosima in reality saw off. Here, by contrast, they actually receive a visit from the Scottish-Hungarian soprano (though, it must be said, it would not necessarily be very clear who she was, did one not know already). This part of the cast, played by actors, is completed by a housemaid, Betty, and a physician, Dr Keppler. Wagner in his study, meanwhile, reflects upon Die Sieger, the Buddhist opera he once planned to write, and whose more productive concerns were subsumed into Parsifal, though in Harvey’s opera, it is clearly more a matter of regret to Wagner that he has failed to write the work. He – and Harvey – therefore imagine Die Sieger, which is dreamed alongside the events in Venice. Prakriti – which means ‘Nature’ in Sanskrit – is an Untouchable, who falls in love with Ananda, a young monk, cousin and disciple of Prince Siddharta, the Buddha. The attraction is mutual, and deepens as Ananda eats with Prakriti and her mother; the Buddha therefore appears, unbeknown to Ananda, and creates a Tantric vision of the young monk’s beloved as the goddess Vajrayogini, thereby persuading him to leave. Prakriti goes to the Buddha and tells him she wishes to share her life with Ananda. Sympathetic, partly on account of a story from their past lives, the Buddha tells her that there is a way: she may join the order as its first woman member (echoes of The Magic Flute perhaps?)

Sad to say, the opera is severely, I should say fatally, compromised by the banality of Jean-Claude Carrière’s libretto. Even in its less embarrassing moments, it fails to progress beyond a beginner’s guide to Buddhism; moreover, it evinces little understanding of, or even sympathy for, the Wagners (whether historically or simply as potential ‘characters’). The actors’ part of the action seems like a bad soap opera, whilst the Buddhist dream has more in common, as presented, with a school assembly story than serious, let alone Wagnerian, drama. The only mildly arresting aspect is the vision of Vajrayogini, whose scarlet hue at least provides relief from the otherwise drab production. Indeed, it was difficult to detect any greater insight from director Orla Pherlan than from Carrière, though perhaps she was hamstrung by the ritualistic element to a work that is hardly Parsifal. At least the three levels of action were clear: the Wagners at the top, the Buddhist world next down, and the orchestra beneath. (Vairochana, Wagner’s Buddhist dream guide, capably sung by Simon Bailey, is the only one to move between the two staged levels.)

Harvey’s music is, unsurprisingly, more interesting, though ears more attuned to quasi-Eastern ritualism – at its best, perhaps evoking Stockhausen, though sometimes – than mine might have responded more readily. Much, though by no means all, of the language is surprisingly tonal, and the electronics offer spectralist as well, I think, as aleatory variation. (Amplification of the singers, however, becomes wearing, at least to me.) In many ways, the most intriguing, as well as dramatic, music was that of one of the interludes, in which we were mercifully free from Carrière’s contribution. As a whole, though, I found a concert work such as Speakings, performed at the 2008 Proms, more dramatically satisfying. Moreover, I remained unconvinced that the occasional hints of Wagner – I suppose there had to be a Tristan-chord; certain sonorities and timbres suggest Parsifal – add very much other than perhaps the slight joy of recognition. For better, or worse, the Buddha tends to be surrounded by pentatonic, or at least pentatonic-inspired, harmonies.

So far as I could tell, the musical performances were excellent (despite that caveat relating to amplification). Martyn Brabbins’s leadership of the BBC Symphony Orchestra convinced, combining ritualism and a more involving labyrinthine quality to what I presume to have been the composer’s intended effect. Hilary Summers seemed a little wasted as the Mother, but Claire Booth, allotted the more obviously dramatic music, shone as brightly as one might have expected. Andrew Staples proved a sincere Ananda, his bearing and vocal delivery as involving as Carrière’s banalities would permit, and Roderick Williams a properly dignified, musically attentive Buddha. There was a nice turn from Richard Angas as the Old Brahmin, horrified at the prospect of a woman joining the order, even if ‘caricature’ would seem too generous a description for the words he was offered. Such were the ‘drama’ and direction that it is perhaps unfair to say very much of the actors, other than that they failed to draw one in. For all its faults, Tony Palmer’s Wagner film presents a Richard and Cosima of considerably greater credibility. Carrie Pringle, anything but a siren, is merely annoying. Perhaps others will have gained more than I did from the experience, but I cannot imagine hurrying to a subsequent performance. The Welsh National Opera has scheduled a staging.

Der Rosenkavalier, English National Opera, 28 January 2012



Sarah Connolly as Octavian
Images: Clive Barda/Arena PAL

(sung in English)

The Coliseum

The Marschallin – Amanda Roocroft
Octavian – Sarah Connolly
Mohammed – Ericson Mitchell
Footmen – David Dyer, Anton Rich, Christopher Speight, Michael Burke
Baron Ochs auf Lerchenau – Sir John Tomlinson
Major-domo to the Marschallin – Geraint Hylton
Widow – Susan Rann
Orphans – Claire Mitcher, Lydia Marchione, Deborah Davison
Milliner – Fiona Canfield
Animal Seller – Graeme Lauren
Hairdresser – Allan Adams
Notary – Paul Napier-Burrows
Valzacchi – Adrian Thompson
Annina – Madeleine Shaw
Singer – Gwyn Hughes Jones
Flautist – Brian Dean
Leopold – Harry Ward
Faninal – Andrew Shore
Sophie – Sophie Bevan
Marianne – Jennifer Rhys-Davies
Major-domo to Faninal – Philip Daggett
Doctor – Christopher Speight
Landlord – David Newman
Waiters – Allan Adames, Graeme Lauren, Christopher Speight, Roger Begley
Police Commissar – Mark Richardson

David McVicar (director, set designs)
Michael Vale (associate set designer)
Tanya McCallin (costumes)
Paule Constable (lighting)
Andrew George (movement)

Orchestra and Chorus of the English National Opera
Edward Gardner (conductor)



Sophie (Sophie Bevan) and Octavian



This was a delightful evening at the Coliseum. I can understand why, in certain moods or even phases of one’s life, one might not like Der Rosenkavalier – it is, for one thing, a far nastier opera than many suppose – but I cannot understand how one could fail to love it. There was no such chance of failure here, for a fine company performance proved to be considerably more than the sum of its parts, themselves far from negligible. David McVicar’s production, originally for Scottish Opera, ought not to scare off even the most hidebound self-proclaimed ‘traditionalists’. Designs are pretty much what one would expect from a reading of the libretto, though there is less extravagant opulence for its own sake than, say, in Munich: no bad thing, in my book. Yet, quite rightly, McVicar does not rely merely upon the ‘beautiful’ designs. (That tends to be what ‘traditionalists’ are really concerned with when they bleat about ‘modern’ productions.) Every character, including the trademark highlighted ‘minor’ roles, has clearly been considered, and is directed – and portrayed – with conviction. I am not quite so sure about the wig allotted to the Marschallin, though; perhaps her Hairdresser (Allan Adams) should have had a word. Nor do I understand why Mohammed is no longer a boy: a point of ‘minor’ detail perhaps, yet, in this work, detail stands out. Nevertheless, a well-conceived, well-executed staging, including movement and lighting, makes a necessary and generous contribution to the musico-dramatic whole.



Edward Gardner’s conducting impressed, as did the often tremendous playing of the ENO Orchestra. If there were times when Gardner perhaps pressed forward a little too hard, for instance the whooping horns of the opening, he nevertheless maintained for the most part a real semblance of line, and at times drew a fuller sound from the orchestra than I have heard for a very long time. The opening of the third act had a few problems: there was one false start during the Pantomime, and coordination between orchestra and off-stage band was sometimes lost. Even those shortcomings, however, did little to detract from the performance as a whole, for which three cheers should certainly be offered to the players in the pit.

The Marschallin (Amanda Roocroft)

Amanda Roocroft’s Marschallin suffered from the vocal flaws that have often beset this artist. There were a good few times when she failed to maintain her vocal line, and tuning was less than perfect. Nevertheless, I found, especially during the latter half of the first act, that there was something quite moving to her portrayal. In a sense, it was ‘wrong’: there was very much a sense of an older woman than the Marschallin is supposed to be. Yet, I do not think that mattered. What we gained was an interesting sense – for which McVicar’s direction should most likely also be credited – of how wronged a woman she is, and indeed how wronged womankind is or at least has been. Ochs will continue on his merry way, but a woman of her age, whatever that may be, could not. More vocally refulgent performances perhaps cause us so much to fall in love with the character that we overlook that important, quasi-feminist aspect. Another, presumably unintended, consequence was that one was led to listen more acutely to the other voices in the tale, to try to understand what was entailed for Ochs, for Octavian, for Sophie, rather than simply to swoon whenever the Marschallin opened her mouth or batted her eyelids.

Ochs (Sir John Tomlinson) and
Mariandel

Sarah Connolly’s Octavian for the most part impressed. She is a seasoned pro when it comes to trouser roles, and her voice sounded just right for the role, though there was necessitated a perhaps surprising suspension of belief in terms of the young count’s age, Connolly looking more a Giulio Cesare than a seventeen-year-old ‘boy’. As Rosenkavalier, that seemed less of an issue; as with several members of the cast, though, diction was sometimes a problem. (I realise that is an especially problematical issue with respect to female Strauss roles, but in that case, might we not at least hear them in German? There were certainly a few oddities in Alfred Kalisch’s translation: why ‘Her Majesty the Queen’, especially when we heard later of the ‘Imperial Court’? And really, nothing other than ‘Ja, ja,’ will do at the end – especially for anyone who has heard Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.) As Mariandel, though, Connolly was a delight from beginning to end, her comic timing and delivery genuinely amusing – and touching. The all-purpose ‘Northern’ accent that now seems de rigueur for comic roles in English is a dubious concept, but Connolly carried it off with aplomb.

Annina (Madeleine Shaw)

Indeed, it was impossible not to smile, at the very least, when her Coronation Street-style pronunciation of ‘weepy’ was repeated with bemusement by Sir John Tomlinson. His Ochs was a joy: less boorish, I think, than I have seen on occasion before. The voice is sometimes in relative disrepair, but the stage presence more than compensates. It is undoubtedly a role that suits him to a tee. Sophie Bevan’s Sophie was a triumph: in a role which usually does not fail to irritate – how could Octavian, or anyone else, prefer her to the Marschallin? – we had a real, flesh-and-blood character, a young woman making her way in the world, and successfully too. Not that she was insensitive to the Marschallin’s position, far from it, but a beautifully-sung, as well as finely-acted, portrayal plausibly handed her the equivocal victory. (Again, we were reminded that men were the real victors.) Andrew Shore’s Faninal was convincingly acted, though often a little woolly in vocal terms. Most of the lesser roles were, however, taken well: the Italians (Adrian Thompson and Madeleine Shaw) convinced as their usual stock commedia dell'arte selves – which is how it should be – and even the Police Commissar, Mark Richardson, was noteworthy for his attention to textual detail.

There are some who complain about the work’s length: hardly excessive, indeed considerably shorter than that of many operas. But then, there are some who complain to others’ bewilderment also about the length of Elektra, accusing Strauss of longueurs in a music drama of extraordinary, single-minded concision. It seems to me that such ‘well-meaning’ critics would be better off not listening to Strauss at all, or perhaps contenting themselves with discs of ‘highlights’. I, for one, should have been happy to hear it all again – and may well try to do so.

Valzacchi (Adrian Thompson), Ochs, and Annina