Le nozze di Figaro, Guildhall, 6 March 2013

Silk Street Theatre, Guildhall School of Music and Drama

Figaro – Hadleigh Adams, Joseph Padfield

Susanna – Raphaela Papadakis
Doctor Bartolo – James Platt
Marcellina – Roisin Walsh
Cherubino – Catherine Backhouse
Count Almaviva – Ben McAteer
Basilio – Adam Smith
Countess Almaviva – Magdalena Molendowska
Antonio – Piran Legg
Don Curzio – Joshua Owen Mills
Barbarina – Lauren Zolezzi
Bridesmaids – Alison Langer, Bethan Langford

Martin Lloyd-Evans (director)

Bridget Kimak (designs)
Declan Randall (lighting)
Victoria Newlyn (choreography)

James Adkins (video)

Chorus and Orchestra of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama
Dominic Wheeler (conductor)


What a wonderful surprise this turned out to be! Whilst your reviewer would be more likely to tire even of Tristan than of Figaro, he approached this evening in somewhat jaded fashion. Had the experience of once again teaching this term’s ‘Mozart’s Operas’ undergraduate course led him ever so slightly to take an opera whose perfection yields only to that of Così fan tutte? At any rate, this sparking performance, from an engaging cast of young singers, in – for once – an appropriately sized theatre came as a tonic. Not everything was perfect, of course, but it proved as a whole a superior experience to a number I have experienced in the most celebrated of houses.  

 

I was initially sceptical concerning Martin Lloyd-Evans’s staging, which relocates the action to a present-day American electoral campaign, Almaviva the candidate, in what, judging by the hint of ‘local colour’ from the chorus – a slightly questionably ‘Occidentalist’ touch, I thought – might perhaps have been New Mexico. The Overture depicts illegal immigration, the Count included, suggesting hypocrisy in the ‘two years later’ Republican hard line upon his successors. That all might sound rather remote from the concerns of Figaro – and it is really. But it is little more ultimately than a framing device, permitting the action proper to take place within a hotel campaign headquarters, making some sense of the subservient staff roles allotted to Figaro, Susanna, et al. Less jars than one might expect; the droit de seigneur does not take so very much transformation into workplace harassment. The richness of an eighteenth-century society of orders is lost, of course – how commonplace a late-capitalist hierarchy of money and politics seems by contrast – but we have the former in the back of our minds anyway.

 

There is some surprising re-ordering in the third act. For instance, ‘E Susanna non vien ... Dove sono’ after the Count’s aria came as quite a jolt. I assume the point to have been to place the Almavivas in closer dramatic counterpoint. In a fashion, it worked, but I am not sure that it was worth the upheaval; Mozart’s tonal planning is not lightly to be tossed aside. However, the production must be vigorously applauded for eschewing the wretched ‘traditional’ cuts in Act Four, permitting us to hear both Marcellina’s and Basilio’s arias. They are not simply ‘worth hearing’; they contribute immeasurably to Da Ponte’s construction of a battle between the sexes and place Figaro’s aria, which can otherwise seem to signal a somewhat bewildering change of focus, in context. Great Mozart conductors as well as poor ones have assented to the cuts; that does not make them any more palatable.

 

Dominic Wheeler’s direction of the score surprised me too. I do not mean that personally; so far as I can recall, I have not heard him before. However, I have become so wearily resigned to present-day conductors having not the slightest understanding of Mozart, that to find one whose name is not Davis or Barenboim conducting so warmly sympathetic an account comes as a genuine surprise. Very little, if anything, was hard-driven. (One of the greatest problems, perhaps the greatest, we experience today is conductors who think that denying music space to breathe – and that does not by any means equate to crotchets per minute – is somehow ‘exciting’ or ‘dramatic’; it is of course quite the opposite.) Tempi were generally apt, only the Countess’s arias proving problematical, the first dragging – again, not a matter of speed, but of insufficient harmonic motion – and the second proving a little too rushed. More to the point, Mozart’s harmonic-dramatic development was for the most part ably communicated: no mean feat. If there were occasions when the orchestra – strings 8.7.5.4.2, quite adequate for a small theatre – lost momentum, none ultimately proved so very grievous, and there was much fine playing to be balanced against such lapses.

 

There was, moreover, not really a weak link in the cast; every one of the Guildhall singers shone in one way or another. A slightly shaky start soon gave way to a vigorous performance from Ben McAteer as the Count. His Countess, Magdalena Molendowska, however unflattered by her costume in the third and fourth acts, showed considerable dignity in stage presence and in voice. Raphaela Papadakis proved a lively Susanna – without which any performance will fall flat. Catherine Backhouse was splendidly convincing as Cherubino in gawky female guise. Even if the coloratura of her aria sometimes proved a little much, Roisin Walsh offered a convincing Marcellina, at the very least matched by those taking the other ‘smaller’ roles, amongst whom I should single out Lauren Zolezzi’s beautifully sung Barbarina. The greatest praise should, however, be offered to I due Figaro. No need to worry: I have not taken on an unaccountable tendresse towards Mercadante. An ailing Hadleigh Adams, however, ceded his arias to Joseph Padfield. I wondered whether he need have done, so convincing were both his stage presence and his handling of Mozart’s quicksilver lines; indeed, there seemed to be no need whatsoever to make allowances. Padfield, however, offered an equally convincing, slightly darker, assumption of the arias from the side of the stage. Both singers richly deserved their enthusiastic applause, as did the production as a whole.

Tosca, Royal Opera, 4 March 2013

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Cesare Angelotti – Michel de Souza

Sacristan – Jeremy White
Mario Cavaradossi – Massimo Giordano
Floria Tosca – Amanda Echalaz
Baron Scarpia – Michael Volle
Spoletta – Hubert Francis
Sciarrone – Jihoon Kim
Shepherd Boy – Filippo Turkheimer
Gaoler – John Morrissey

Jonathan Kent (director)

Andrew Sinclair (revival director)
Paul Brown (designs)
Mark Henderson (lighting)

Royal Opera Chorus

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Maurizio Benini (conductor)

 

 

I shall doubtless be behind the curve when compared with many readers concerning Jonathan Kent’s Royal Opera staging of Tosca, first seen in 2006 and now revived by Andrew Sinclair, given that this was my first viewing. There is not much to say about it really. It is certainly not radical in any way, nor does it seem to have anything to say about the work. (To be fair, though, when Kent has seemed to have had something to say, for instance, in his dreadful Flying Dutchman for ENO, it has not always seemed coherent or worth saying.) I doubt that there is anything to which even the most hidebound ‘traditionalist’ – by which, I mean a fetishiser of set designs and costumes, who thinks that everything should conform to his or her poor-taste conception of what might be ‘beautiful’ – might object. There was certainly nothing so daring as a spot of updating, let alone any sense of dialogue between Puccini’s time, our own, and the time at which the opera is set. The greatest, arguably the only, dramatic jolt came from the third act gunshots. Relatively heavy set designs (Paul Brown) might have added a sense of dramatic claustrophobia, but that would have required something a little more than simply placing singers in front of them and leaving them to it. I can see why having the Te Deum take place a level above Scarpia might visually have seemed an attractive idea; the problem, however, was that it dulled the aural impact of the chorus to the level of background music, when a degree at least of sensory overload should be experienced.

 

Maurizio Benini, however, delivered a decent account, and sometimes rather more than that, of Puccini’s score. Again, it did not especially challenge, but it brought to life that which remained visually dormant. If my preference would undoubtedly be for something that brought more to the fore the symphonism of which many of Puccini’s contemporaries complained, likewise his modernist anticipations, then that has to remain a preference rather than stipulation. In a relatively straightforward way, Benini, a slightly hard-driven opening aside, supported and shaped the action, the melodramatic dénouement quite thrilling in its way. Turning of the musical screws of torture was accomplished to truly searing effect. A few slips aside, the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House played well for him, if without quite sounding on the very top of its form. I could not help but wonder, though, what more we might have learned from a great conductor such as Daniele Gatti, whose Salzburg Bohème last summer made a more powerful case for the score than any I have otherwise heard. Gatti of course had the signal advantage too of the Vienna Philharmonic playing for a conductor it loves.

 

And yet, if that all sounds a little easy-listening, one was must take into account the singular contribution of Massimo Giordano’s Cavaradossi. If a Konzept were entirely lacking in Kent’s staging, Giordano supplied his own element of deconstruction, offering a brave parody of popular conceptions of the ‘Italian operatic tenor’. There was no Kaufmann-esque mezza voce here. Instead we heard one of the most convincing assumptions of the ‘Just one Cornetto’ style I have experienced since – well, since that advertisement. What do you mean, it was not intended as a parody? Was that ‘authenticity’ too, in terms of ‘what Puccini might have expected,’ in the unfeasibly wide vibrato and portamento comprising a decent sized portion of the chromatic scale? In the immortal words of the Princess Royal, replying to Cherie Blair’s urging, ‘Call me Cherie,’ ‘Let’s not go there.’

 

Amanda Echalaz, however, offered a detailed, beautifully sung account of the title role. If she never thrilled in the way the Greek soprano who shall not be mentioned has unfortunately led us to expect, then such is a more than usually odious comparison. Michael Volle was perhaps better still, presenting an uncommonly intelligent assumption of Baron Scarpia. Hints of Dr Schön – and not just because so many of us associate him with the role – informed this villain’s sadism; if only a plot twist might have been added, in which Jack the Ripper appeared during the third act. Volle’s command of words and musical line was second to none, lifting the melodrama in many cases beyond itself. Many of the smaller roles were very well taken too. Jette Parker Young Artist, Michel de Souza, an attractive, compelling Angelotti, made one eager to hear more of him in the future; doubtless we shall. Hubert Francis’s contribution as Spoletta did likewise. Company stalwart, Jeremy White, presented as rounded a Sacristan as production and work permitted. And let us not forget Filippo Turkheimer, who certainly made one sit up and listen to the Shepherd Boy’s solo, more dramatically telling than I can previously recall.


I am unsure whether this were a matter of 'access', but the audience seemed to be largely made up of the hard of hearing. Not once was the orchestra permitted to complete an act prior to applause. Moreover, barely a bar of the third act passed by without bronchial accompaniment, chattering, throwing keys on the floor (??!!)...

R.I.P. Elisabeth Furtwängler (1910-2013)

Daniel Barenboim must now be one of our few remaining links with the greatest conductor of the twentieth century.

Tetzlaff Quartet - Haydn, Berg, and Beethoven, 2 March 2013

Wigmore Hall

Haydn – String Quartet in C major, op.20 no.2

Berg – Lyric Suite
Beethoven – String Quartet no.15 in A minor, op.132

Christian Tetzlaff, Elisabeth Kufferath (violins)

Hanna Weinmeister (viola)
Tania Tetzlaff (cello)

 

The second of Haydn’s Sun Quartets opened with a well-nigh perfect marriage of cultivation and bright tone, the Tetzlaff Quartet offering a reading that was properly detailed without the slightest hint of fussiness, the longer line always apparent, always a guiding thread. There was an equally fine sense of cumulative form, though without pressing too hard. This remained, as it must, a Haydn Moderato. The slow movement retained its predecessor’s communication of the extraordinary originality of Haydn’s formal genius. Echoes of the Baroque met with an experimentalism that almost puts Bartók to shame. Nor was the lyricism of that beautiful central melody overlooked. Haydn’s masterstroke of having the minuet steal in, foreshortening the Adagio, was beautifully handled, and the finale’s fugal ‘learning’, whilst worn lightly, was none the less vividly communicated for that. Its coda offered a wonderful sense of release – and again sheer originality.

 

The quartet’s performance of Berg’s Lyric Suite was, if anything, more committed still. Its first movement burst forth with just the right impression of (amorous) life, its sonata form clear, meaningful, without any sense of neo-Classical didacticism. There was admirable flexibility too; indeed, at times the reading – like the work – verged upon the operatic. For all I might wish that the programme had never been revealed, it was difficult not to gain a sense of something musico-dramatic here and later, kinship – melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic – with Wozzeck and Lulu perhaps especially strong in the second movement, whose opening, whilst nostalgically beautiful, I had found perhaps a little pastel in shade. (That is a mild criticism, and really the only one I can muster for this excellent performance.) Scurrying intensity and repressed passion – one almost but not quite forgets that the instruments remain muted – marked the third movement, as dramatically concentrated as one could hope for. The turbulent dynamism of post-Tristan eroticism yet still made space in the fourth movement for the quasi-religious stillness of the Zemlinsky quotation, ‘Du bist mein eigen’. It was wonderfully moving. After that, the pitch-black, savage musica negative of the fifth movement pulled quite a punch, rivalling anything in Lachenmann. The finale emerged as radiant, richly post-Romantic, a properly ambiguous attempt at reconciliation, the Tristan quotation an even more hopeless attempt than usual to turn back the clock, Stefan Georg’s ‘De profundis clamavi’ voiced in everything but its words. Music subsided into nothingness: in equal measure chilling and hopeful.

 

Beethoven’s A minor Quartet followed after the interval. The first movement and much of the rest of the performance possessed an intimacy that drew one in. Here Christian Teztlaff’s solo skill was put to excellent use. The broadening of intimacy into exultancy, Beethoven’s doing of course, was subtly, rewardingly communicated, with a crucial sense of dialectical tension. Closing vehemence sounded like a vain attempt – not unlike that mentioned in the Berg – to turn the clock back, in this case to the world of the Kreutzer Sonata. On occasion, I wondered whether the intimacy of the scherzo shaded into a certain skating over, but the sheer obsessive strangeness, for all its historical rooting, of the trio was unerringly portrayed. The grave dignity of the Heiliger Dankgesang, fragile yet strong, was alas seriously undermined by determined intervention from a crack group of bronchial terrorists. Could they have chosen holier ground to profane? They should have been utterly ashamed of themselves. Nevertheless, there was a proper sense of ‘Neue Kraft füglend’, as if totality itself had been rejuvenated by modal excursion both archaic and modernist. D major sounded as radiant as it might in a world of thoroughgoing mediation. The march with which the finale opens elicited charm and forthrightness in equal measure, the ensuing A minor intervention dramatically to the point. Not of course that it is a mere ‘intervention’; dialectical conflict was played out with gripping intensity.

Oelze/Aimard - Schumann, Debussy, and Messiaen, 1 March 2013

Wigmore Hall

Schumann – Frauenliebe und –leben

Debussy – Chansons de Bilitis
Messiaen – Harawi

Christiane Oelze (soprano)

Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)

 

This is a difficult concert to review. Although no announcement was made, I can only assume that Christiane Oelze was suffering from a cold or some similar ailment. Her lower register was persistently gravelly and there were often signs of constriction above too; more than once it seemed as though she really wanted to let rip but could not. It would have been perfectly possible not to progress beyond those very real limitations; I can sympathise with anyone who could not. By the same token, if one could, there were, even if one were to leave aside the stellar contribution of Pierre-Laurent Aimard, performances of real intelligence and, when circumstances allowed, brilliant technique to savour.

 

This was a formidable programme, by any standards. Schumann’s Frauenliebe und –leben came first. Even at the best of times, it would be a challenging work, to put it mildly, with which to open a recital. I wondered to start with whether that was why Oelze sounded somewhat out of sorts: just taking a while to warm up. Certainly ‘Seit ich ihn gesehen’ relied on Aimard’s artistry to have its message put across. A considerably slower tempo than one often hears worked very well, Aimard’s deliberation suggesting that more was at stake than one might suspect. That the protagonist did not sound in the first flush of youth somehow made ‘Er, der Herrlichste von allen’ all the more moving; both artists offered great acuity of response, the harmonic understanding voiced in the piano part second to none, likewise the voice-leading. Balance between the exultant and the imploring was finely judged in ‘Helft mir, ihr Schwestern’. Once again, a broad tempo worked wonders in ‘Süßer Fruend, du blickest’. The piano’s quiet ecstasy sometimes contrasted a little too evidently with the strain on Oelze’s voice, but the performance as a whole remained touching. One could not help but share in the palpitations of ‘An meinem Herzen, an meiner Brust’. They were joyous and yet, quite rightly, disturbing, even deluded. One knew that and still wanted to join in the conspiracy of self-delusionThe final song, ‘Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan’ took on an almost Wagnerian gravity; I was put in mind of Brünnhilde’s Annunciation of Death. One could readily put aside – or at least I could – vocal imperfection for such dramatic truth, especially in Aimard’s postlude.

 

Oelze displayed excellent French in Debussy’s Chansons de Bilitis; Aimard’s excellence in this repertoire of course came as no surprise. The piano acted not only as driving force but as the primary conveyor of ‘atmosphere’, a loaded, all too vague word, yet somehow unavoidable when considering Debussy. Harmonies were relished and transformed into the stuff of near-drama. The third stanza of ‘La Chevelure’ sounded, as it ought, frankly sexual, and mostly through the progression of the piano part. There was a fine sense of story-telling from both performers in ‘Le Tombeau des Naïades’. Again, though, one had to close one’s ears to the difficulties in Oelze’s lower range.

 

Such, once we had passed beyond the opening ‘La ville qui dormait, toi,’ proved less of an impediment in Messiaen’s extraordinary song-cycle, Harawi, chant d’amour et de mort. Whatever the problems with some of Oelze’s performances, it was well worth having attended the recital simply to hear the work, and to hear it in such spirited performance. Again Aimard’s excellence might also have been taken for granted, though it ought not to have been. The piano was indeed given such a pounding that a string snapped at the end of ‘L’Escalier redit, gestes du soleil’. From the wonderfully hieratic approach of the opening song to the sense of time suspended in the great piano interlude of the final song, ‘Dans le noir’, Aimard’s performance was magnificently vivid, and needless to say unerringly precise. Faster-moving material seemed to work better for Oelze, ‘Bonjour toi, colombe verte,’ coming as quite a relief after her opening troubles. Here as elsewhere, one could not fail to be struck by Aimard’s understanding and communication of the music’s construction, metrically and harmonically. ‘Doundou Tchil’ – also, as many of you will be aware, the pseudonym of one of our most engaging musical bloggers – sounded skittish and threatening, before opening out into true Messieanesque ecstasy. This was very much a ‘danse des étoiles,’ as the text, Messiaen’s own, has it. I could not, however, for the life of me understand why some members of the audience laughed at the end. The complexity of the relationship between words and music in ‘Répétition planétaire’ was very well conveyed, likewise the generative capability and function of metre. Messiaen’s calls of ‘Ahi! Ahi!’ moreover seemed to take a step outside the entire æsthetic of Western music, not unlike those transcendental moments in The Magic Flute or The Cunning Little Vixen. Whereas Oelze had seemed constricted in the climaxes of Debussy, she managed properly to let rip in ‘Adieu’: quite something! Kinship with the earlier Poèmes pour Mi, always apparent, sounded stronger still in the bizarre ‘Syllabes’, commitment from both artists overriding enduring vocal difficulties. ‘Amour oiseau d’étoile’ seemed to capture the very essence of slow Messiaen, my mind drifting back to the final movement of L’Ascension. Not a flawless experience, then, but nevertheless an experience not readily to be forgotten.

 

Denoke/Philharmonia/Nelsons - Strauss and Beethoven, 28 February 2013

Royal Festival Hall

Strauss – Tod und Verklärung, op.24

Das Rosenband, op.36 no.1
Allerseelen, op.10 no.8
Ruhe, meine Seele, op.27 no.1
Waldseligkeit, op.49 no.1Cäcilie, op.27 no.2
Beethoven – Symphony no.5 in C minor, op.67

Angela Denoke (soprano)

Philharmonia Orchestra

Andris Nelsons (conductor)

 

 

I struggled to find much of an idea behind this Strauss and Beethoven programme. Both Tod und Verklärung and the Fifth Symphony open in C minor and close in C major, but their trajectories are very different: perhaps that was the point? Maybe it was just a matter of having Andris Nelsons and Angela Denoke available on the same evening. At any rate, if the combination did not especially enlighten, nor did it jar in the sense that the briefly-popular Eroica-plus-Ein Heldenleben did. (How could the latter work not pale by comparison, even if one did not tire of E-flat major?)

 

Nelsons has built quite a reputation already as a Straussian. However, on this occasion and to my ears, it was only intermittently fulfilled. The ‘heartbeat’ to the opening of Tod und Verklärung was as aural-pictorially convincing as Strauss could ever have hoped for: tribute of course to the Philharmonia’s excellence as much as that of Nelsons. Moreover, that figure was properly integrated in musical terms; it did not simply stand out as an ‘effect’. The soft, sometimes very soft, playing drew one in, despite a less-than-well-behaved audience. Unfortunately, what had sounded as though it would be a very fine performance lost its way somewhat, vehement assertions of the hero’s life coming across in all too hard-driven a fashion. The brass sounded uncharacteristically crude, clearly acting under instruction. It might have been Sir Georg Solti conducting, were it not for Nelsons’s hyperactive podium manner. (The problem with such things is that if the musical results are good enough, for instance in the case of Bernstein at his best, no one will care; the moment they are not, the manner will irritate. And in general, it is difficult to imagine the greatest conductors – Furtwängler, Klemperer, Kleiber père or fils, Boulez, et al., jumping around in demented fashion.) What was lacking was a stronger sense of overall line, indeed of (post-)symphonism. Still, the performance certainly did not deserve its blighting by a mobile telephone; leader, Zsolt-Tihámer Visontay, whose solos had been exquisitely taken, was not the only orchestral musician to glare into the audience at that point. At least the Philharmonia’s glorious echt-Straussian glow offered some ultimate compensation. Moreover, Nelsons’s shaping of the close, a little orchestral untidiness notwithstanding, showed significant return to form – in more than one sense.

 

Interestingly – and not necessarily unusually – Nelsons seemed more relaxed, certainly more fluent, as ‘accompanist’. Denoke is not possessed of the most ideally soaring of soprano voices for Strauss, yet from the opening of Das Rosenband she communicated the words most ably. Is that enough? Perhaps not in this case, ultimately, for as Julian Johnson remarked in his excellent programme note, in Strauss’s vocal music, it is often ‘the rich quality of the voice itself that seems to embody what the poem promises’. Nevertheless, there was much to enjoy, not least in the Philharmonia’s ability to offer almost ‘chamber’-like transparency without reduction in string forces. The orchestral stirring of the wood in Waldseligkeit sounded nicely Wagnerian, Siegfried in particular coming to mind; it was good to hear the harmonium too. However, it was in this song, that Denoke’s enunciation became less distinct. Matters were put right in Ruhe, meine Seele! If her soprano remained somewhat hard-edged, she marshalled her resources well, turning the song arrestingly – even if this should not be how one would always wish to hear it – into something approaching a musico-dramatic scena. Again, Wagnerian harmonic echoes in the orchestra were well conveyed. Orchestral warmth, including delectable solos on flute (Samuel Coles) and violin (Tihámer-Visontay) was a hallmark of Allerseelen, though arguably it dragged a little. Cäcilie, however, sounded reinvigorated, from the magnificent wash of orchestral sound with which it opened onwards. Denoke’s operatic experience was put to good use in communication of meaning, though her intonation was not always spot on. Zueignung was offered as an encore; if one could not help but long for a Jessye Norman or a Gundula Janowitz, one could still appreciate the musical and verbal acuity of Denoke’s account. What a pity, then, that a vulgar audience member saw fit to bawl ‘Bravo!’ before the orchestra had ceased to resound!

 

Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is an extraordinarily difficult piece to bring off, partly on account of the great performances from the past that retain their hold in our memories, individual and collective, partly on account of the stature the work has accrued in our general cultural consciousness, partly on account of its intrinsic performative difficulty: there are so many awkward ‘corners’ to navigate, even before one begins to consider vexed questions of meaning. (Of course, to separate score and meaning is already to fall short; the latter is not somehow something to be ‘applied’ once the notes are there. A still worse course is somehow to pretend that there is no meaning; that this is just a collection of notes, a superior sewing-machine pattern.) Nelsons’s first movement did not start off badly at all. There was nothing objectionable –today, alas, that itself is almost a mark of distinction – save for his strange reluctance to give full due to the first pause of the opening motif, both at the opening and upon its every recurrence. (One can still observe a distinction between the first paused note, a minim, and the second, a minim tied to a second minim, without sounding peremptory, as here.) Everything was well executed and there was highly creditable depth once again to the Philharmonia’s sound. Formal concision certainly came across. And yet, there never quite seemed to be enough at stake; there was little sense of struggle, and Beethoven without struggle really is not Beethoven at all. The coda was excitable rather than awe-inspiring, that initial wrench to the tonic minor barely registering. Once again, podium hyperactivity began to irritate; I could not help but wish for a little of the sobriety of Wolfgang Sawallisch, to whose memory this concert was dedicated.

 

Some unfortunate woodwind slips – much to my surprise – marred the slow movement early on. Nelsons’s overly-moulded direction of the opening cello-section solo made for somewhat uncomfortable listening too, despite commendably rich cello tone. Ultimately, this proved to be episodic, harking back to the Strauss performance; the longer line was not maintained as it might have been. It was not too grievous and indeed there was a sense of real dignity to some of the episodes, but with Furtwängler, Klemperer, Kleiber, Boulez, Barenboim, et al. in the back of one’s mind, it was difficult not to wish for more. A barrage of coughing ensued once the movement had concluded, offering odd preparation for the scherzo.  It was really rather fine first time around: implacable, defiant, mysterious. Above all, it was harmonically grounded. The hushed reprise suffered a little from imperfect balancing, though one could ‘fill in the gaps’ aurally without too much ado. The transition to the finale was not helped by a further outbreak of bronchial terrorism; it nevertheless promised much.

 

Unfortunately, that sublime moment of arrival was blunted by a lack of gravity, excellence of orchestral playing notwithstanding. Nelsons once again proved too excitable. His basic tempo, whatever the dreary empirical ‘truth’ of the metronome, simply sounded hasty. Rejoicing was more suggestive of an end-of-term party than musico-metaphysical victory or presumed victory. There were fine moments, but moments alas are not enough. Without the greater whole, the heavens will not be stormed and shivers will not be sent down the spine. Despite this relative disappointment, I shall not give up hope yet that we might one day hear a fine Beethoven Fifth from Nelsons; perhaps it is just too early. A little reading of Wagner’s wonderful essays, On Conducting and Beethoven, would do no harm in the meantime. Better still, he – and we – should listen to Furtwängler.

Il barbiere di Siviglia, English National Opera, 25 February 2013

(sung in English as The Barber of Seville)

The Coliseum

Fiorello – Alexander Robin Baker

Count Almaviva – Andrew Kennedy
Figaro – Benedict Nelson
Rosina – Lucy Crowe
Doctor Bartolo – Andrew Shore
Don Basilio – David Soar
Berta – Katherine Broderick
Ambrogio – Geraint Hylton
An Official – Roger Begley
A Notary – Allan Adams

Jonathan Miller (director)

Peter Relton (revival director)
Tanya McCallin (designs)

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Genevieve Ellis)

Orchestra of the English National Opera
Jaime Martin (conductor)

 

ENO’s advertising emphasises the ‘25^th anniversary year’ of Jonathan Miller’s staging of The Barber of Seville. It holds the stage well enough without offering any especial insight – at least by now. The programme book mentioned commedia dell’arte: Tanya McCallin’s designs are of that world, certainly, even if there does not seem to be a great deal in Miller’s production that goes beyond the general ‘look’ of that tradition. Unlike many endlessly revived productions, this, then, is not in itself particularly tired, and one can readily imagine it offering the opportunity for new casts to come in and assume their roles without a great deal of stage rehearsal. By the same token, when compared with, for instance, John Copley’s considerably more venerable Royal Opera La bohème, which I happened to see earlier in the month, the staging does not especially sparkle, enlighten, or indeed charm either. It would do no harm to have a little Regietheater cast Rossini’s way. Either that, or assemble a cast whose sparkle would lift the work above the merely quotidian.

 

I say ‘the work’, but this performance, unfortunately, put me in mind of Carl Dahlhaus’s ‘twin musical cultures’ of the nineteenth century: too clear a distinction, no doubt, but nevertheless heuristically useful. On the one hand, one has the culture of the musical work, as understood in an emphatic sense, that of Beethoven and his successors; on the other, one has ‘a Rossini score ... a mere recipe for performance, and it is the performance which forms the crucial aesthetic arbiter as the realisation of a draft rather than an exegesis of a text’. The problem was that this performance, taken as a whole, simply did not sparkle as Rossini must. One therefore became of the score as a decidedly inferior, indeed well-nigh interminable work. Repetitions grated and a good part of the audience was espied, furtively or less furtively, glancing at wristwatches. If Rossini’s ‘musical thought hinged on the performance as an event,’ then this was an unhinged performance – and not, alas, in the expressionistic sense.

 

Jaime Martin’s conducting started well enough. There was throughout a welcome clarity in the score; this was not, at least, Rossini attempting and failing to be Mozart or Beethoven. Give or take the odd orchestral slip, there might have been much to enjoy in the contribution of the ENO Orchestra, considered in itself.  However, impetus was soon lost, and any ‘purely musical’ tension soon sagged. Whether the first act were actually as long as it felt, I am not sure, but many during the interval opined that it seemed as though it was never going to end. If Rossini’s repetitions as opposed to development serve a dramatic purpose, one can readily forget them; here they were apparent in unfortunately lonely fashion. I could not help but mentally contrast the extraordinary use to which Beethoven, for instance in the Waldstein Sonata, puts simple tonic and dominant harmony, to the tedium induced on this occasion. For some reason, the fortepiano was employed as a continuo instrument: a strange fashion, which has enslaved musicians who would never think of using it in solo repertoire. Performance, then, failed to elevate the ‘work’. At least the English translation, by Amanda and Anthony Holden was a cut above the average.

 

The greater fault in any case lay elsewhere, above all in Andrew Kennedy’s Almaviva. His casting seemed simply inexplicable. Almost entirely lacking in coloratura, let alone Florez-like facility therewith, he resorted to mere crooning, a state of affairs worsened by the application at seemingly random intervals of unnervingly thick vibrato. His stage presence was of a part with his vocal performance. Benedict Nelson’s Figaro started off in reasonably convincing fashion, but by the end was somewhat hoarse and throughout lacked the pinpoint precision that might have lifted the performance. By contrast, Lucy Crowe was an excellent Rosina. Her coloratura was impeccable, her gracious stage presence no less so. Andrew Shore reminded us of his skills as a comic actor in the role of Doctor Bartolo, and Katherine Broderick also took the opportunity to shine as Berta. Sadly, the increasingly lacklustre conducting and the embarrassing performance of Kennedy conspired to negate those positive aspects of the performance, rendering one tired with the ‘work’, however it were considered.

R.I.P. Wolfgang Sawallisch (1923-2013)

ASMF/Sampson - Bach, 22 February 2013

Hall One, Kings Place

Cantata: Non sa che sia dolore, BWV 209

Concerto for flute, violin, and harpsichord in A minor, BWV 1044
Concerto for two violins in D minor, BWV 1043
Cantata: Ich habe genug, BWV 82a

Carolyn Sampson (soprano)

Stephanie Gonley, Martin Burgess (violins)

Michael Cox (flute)

Steven Devine (harpsichord)

Academy of St Martin in the Fields

Having ‘unwrapped’ Beethoven, Chopin, Mozart, and Brahms, Kings Place has turned in 2013 to the greatest composer of them all, Johann Sebastian Bach. Even for a year-long festival, much of Bach’s voluminous surviving output will remain unperformed, but there is certainly a good deal on offer throughout the year. Here we heard a pair of cantatas and a pair of concertos, those old Bach hands in the Academy of St Martin the Fields joined by soprano, Carolyn Sampson.

 

Three out of the four works featured a prominent role for flute, hence Michael Cox’s soloist billing. He and Sampson proved nicely matched in the opening Non sa che sia dolore, a rare instance of Bach in Italian, if indeed it is by Bach at all. (It sounds as though it is.) The ASMF’s Sinfonia convincingly plunged us into the musical thick of it, the orchestral contribution being perhaps the finest I have heard in this cantata. Despite the small numbers (strings 4.4.3.2.1), there was requisite harmonic depth to the aria, ‘Parti pur e non dolore’, possessed of a fine sense of inevitability. Rhythmic precision did not come at the cost, as so often it does nowadays, of a hard-driven performance; there was nothing unyielding to any of the movements. There was occasionally something a little woolly to Cox’s tone; I wondered whether this were a hat-tip to the Baroque transverse flute. Whatever the truth of it, it did not perturb. Sampson’s tone was bell-like in its clarity without that entailing a lack of femininity; it seemed thoroughly apt for a secular cantata. Vocal and instrumental exuberance were not bought at the cost of the weird exhibitionism that sadly characterises so much present-day Bach performance.  

 

The orchestra was pared down further for the ‘Triple’ Concerto for flute, violin, and harpsichord (strings 4.3.2.2.1). Again, despite the small numbers, i was immediately struck by the harmonic depth of the ASMF’s performance. And what a relief it was to encounter sensible tempi in an age that often lauds as ‘exciting’ breakneck performances that never so much as permit Bach’s music to breathe. Balance between the soloists was well-nigh ideal: not clinically so, just apparently ‘right’. The first movement even had me come close to leaving on one side my dislike of the harpsichord as a solo instrument, so convincing were Steven Devine’s shaping of phrases and projection. Devine, Cox, and Stephanie Gonley all displayed admirable flexibility within a stricter overall framework. In the slow movement, the harpsichord (inevitably?) tended towards the merely ‘tinkling’; I longed for the sustaining power of the piano, but that was hardly the soloist’s fault. Gonley’s violin sounded wonderfully viola-like in its richness of tone. Again, balance was exemplary. Bach’s ‘learned’ counterpoint made its point in the finale, but so did his equally fine melodic genius in a shapely, stylish performance. If the harpsichord solos were at times a little clattering, that again was the fault of the instrument, not the performer.

 

The ‘Double’ Violin Concerto was the only disappointment of the evening. All three movements, but especially the outer two, were driven far too hard. Bach had no opportunity to breathe. The opening movement sounded as if a modern Vivaldi performance had been transferred to Bach’s music. ‘Calm down!’ one wanted to tell the players. Even the slow movement was harried – and Bach should be no more harried than Mozart. Ultimately, it proved prosaic, charmless even. O for the Oistrakhs...

 

Ich habe genug was given in its later version for soprano and flute (and should therefore have been marked in the programme as BWV 82a, not 82). The replacement of the original oboe with the flute makes the music less plangent, and a soprano can never hope to project the gravity of a Hotter or a Fischer-Dieskau. Nevertheless, this was a fine performance on its own terms, which certainly brought with it different Passion resonances. Again the depth of orchestral sound, doubtless assisted by the excellent Hall One acoustic, was crucial to the performance’s success. Recitative was supple, and if ‘Schlummert ein’ has been taken more slowly, it certainly did not fall prey to the inappropriate turbo-drive of the Double Concerto. Might not an organ, though, have been a better choice of continuo instrument than the harpsichord? Sampson’s low notes could not have the resonance of, say, John Shirley-Quirk in his great recording with Sir Neville Marriner and the ASMF, but this remained a moving account. The fast tempo of the final aria, ‘Ich freue mich auf meinen Tod,’ worked very well, both on its own terms and as a response to the strange Pietist words, a Christian never being at home in this world. Ornamentation was flawless, without loss to Bach’s humanity.

Takács Quartet/Power - Brahms and Haydn, 20 February 2013

Wigmore Hall

Brahms – String Quartet no.2 in A minor, op.51 no.2

Haydn – String Quartet in B-flat major, op.76 no.4, ‘Sunrise’
Brahms – String Quintet in G major, op.111

Edward Dusinberre, Károly Schranz (violins)

Geraldine Walther (viola)

András Fejér (cello)

Lawrence Power (viola)

 

 

The Takács Quartet, Wigmore Hall Associate Artists, is this week offering two concerts in which a Brahms quartet and a Haydn quartet are presented with a Brahms quintet. Friday’s concert will bring Brahms’s op.51 no.1, Haydn’s op.76 no.5, and Brahms’s Piano Quintet (with Charles Owen). This concert had the second of Brahms’s quartets, Haydn’s ‘Sunrise’ Quartet, op.76 no.4, and the G major Quintet, for which the Takács players were joined by violist Lawrence Power.

 

Brahms’s A minor Quartet opened in cultivated fashion, the players offering a flexibility that would pervade the performance as a whole. This was not the most richly Romantic Brahms, and there was perhaps a degree of loss in that, but there were gains too. Certainly that unexaggerated flexibility of tempo in the first movement and beyond seemed consonant in the best, that is un-slavish, sense with what we know of Brahms’s own performing practice in his music. A fine balance was upheld and explored between themes, motifs, and fragments – at times, almost Webern-like – and the longer line, the overall cumulative effect very much that of the ‘developing variation’ Schoenberg discerned in Brahms’s music and his own. Form was properly dynamic in conception and execution. The second movement was again very well-judged, part-way between Schumannesque intermezzo and something ‘later’ – always a concern in Brahms. ‘Dramatic’ outbursts made their point, yet were seamlessly integrated into a greater whole. There was melancholy, to be sure, but not, as in Nietzsche’s cruel jibe, ‘melancholy of impotence’, likewise in the third movement, its opening dramatically pregnant, its later counterpoint handled lightly yet without being underestimated. Counterpoint was afforded greater weight in the finale, in a reading of increasing cumulative power, which, tensions beneath the surface notwithstanding, yet retained a certain Viennese elegance.

 

Haydn’s ‘Sunrise’ Quartet sounded from its opening bars, as it should, as though Haydn were very much part of the same tradition as Brahms and yet in a sense more ‘timely’, less ‘late’, in his exploratory Classicism. The first movement showed admirable display for Haydn’s concision and spirit; if I have heard more extrovert performances, this nevertheless could not help but make me smile. Every note counted, as it must. Interplay between slow opening material – the apparent ‘introduction’ that is actually the beginning of the exposition proper – and what follows proved almost operatic, Mozart not so distant. The slow movement was heard as if in one, immensely variegated, breath, a model of intelligent and inviting Haydn playing. Infectious Schwung characterised the minuet, though its reprise suffered somewhat from imperfect intonation; the trio offered a delightful sense of partially deconstructed rusticity. There was again a Mozartian – well, almost Mozartian – poise to the final movement, but the rigour to the working out was unmistakeably Haydn’s own, as were the surprises.

 

Tuning was, rather to my surprise, a little wayward from the cellist in the opening of Brahms’s G major String Quintet; that had been rectified the second time around. The performance as a whole did not quite seem to hit its stride until the second subject, the opening material sounding slightly forced in its projection. It was a joy throughout, though, to hear that extra richness afforded by the addition of Power’s viola; if ever a composer were likely to benefit from such an opportunity, it was surely Brahms. The flexibility of the opening quartet was once again very much in evidence, especially dring the development and recapitulation. What one might call ‘detailed intensity’ came to the fore in the second movement, which nevertheless retained a sense of overall simplicity, however deceptive, almost akin to a superior ‘song without words’. The febrile quality to the third movement seemed just right: unstable and yet ultimately fulfilling, redolent once again of the worlds of Schoenberg and Webern. However much he might try, Brahms at his ‘late’ juncture cannot recapture Haydn’s unbounded joy. High, if mediated, spirits registered all the same in the finale.

Jerusalem Quartet - Wolf, Mozart, and Smetana, 16 February 2013

Wigmore Hall

 

Wolf – Italian Serenade
Mozart – String Quartet no.22 in B-flat major, KV 589
Smetana – String Quartet no.1 in E minor, ‘From my life’        

Alexander Pavlovsky, Sergei Bressler (violins)

Ori Kam (viola)

Kyril Zlotnikov (cello)

 

 

The Jerusalem Quartet’s latest visit to the Wigmore Hall opened with a sunny performance of Wolf’s Italian Serenade. Full of life, there was, as ever with this quartet, never the slightest hint of routine. Mediterranean sun was to be felt – especially welcome in February – but quite rightly, this was sunlight as remembered from northern Europe. Solo playing, first from Kyril Zlotnikov’s cello, then picked up by his colleagues, was as fine as the ensemble work.

 

One of Mozart’s Prussian quartets, that in B-flat major, KV 589, followed. Cultivated yet vital, warm yet clear, this was an excellent account, both of the first movement and the quartet as a whole. Cello solos – the king of Prussia favoured in Mozart’s scoring – were beautifully despatched without standing out unduly: far more a foundation for contrapuntal exploration. An excellent Mozartian balance was struck between ‘late’ simplicity and ‘late’ (Bachian) complexity, both contrapuntal and harmonic. Lyrical elegance was the hallmark of the relatively relaxed slow movement, though how much art conceals art here, both in terms of work and performance. The cello was necessarily first amongst equals, but ensemble was the real thing. A gracious yet far from sedate tempo – just right for ‘Moderato’ – permitted the minuet’s detail to emerge meaningfully, and what detail there is here! With a proto-Beethovenian sense of purpose, this amounted to a well-nigh ideal performance. The finale has one of those very tricky Mozartian openings, in which the players must begin in medias res; almost needless to say, it was effortlessly navigated, drawing us into a wonderfully ‘late’ marriage of ebullience and vulnerability, contrapuntal severity and sinuous melody. Every note and every connection between notes was played with evident belief. Schoenberg would have understood – and approved.

 

Smetana’s first quartet offered quite a change of mood for the second half. Immediately one heard a more Romantic tone, Ori Kam’s opening viola solo richly expressive, likewise the other parts’ responses thereto. Performed on an almost symphonic scale, the development section in particular, the first movement exhibited a proper, indeed thrilling, sense of what was at stake. The ‘Allegro moderato alla polka’ captured perfectly the balance between rusticity and art. Depth of tone in the various solos sometimes had to be heard to be believed. Emotional intensity characterised the slow movement from the outset, that intensity crucially allied to an unerring instinct for harmonic rhythm. Together, those qualities meant that however high the temperature – and sometimes it was high indeed – the music never became over-heated. The finale opened with polished brilliance. If it lacked the weight of previous movements, that is a reflection upon the score rather than the performance: Smetana’s apparent attempt to adopt a Haydnesque strategy, whatever the autobiographical explanation, works less than perfectly, as is confirmed by the more overtly Romantic ending.

 

As an encore, we heard Shostakovich’s quartet transcription of the Polka from his ballet, The Age of Gold. Coming as it does from the composer’s more experimental youth, it proved far more interesting than most of his subsequent essays for these forces. Certainly the Jerusalem Quartet proved more than equal to its abrupt changes of mood, without imbuing them with inappropriate weight and ‘meaning’.

La bohème, Royal Opera, 16 February 2013

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Rodolfo – Teodor Ilincai

Mimì – Anita Hartig
Musetta – Sonya Yoncheva
Marcello – Gabriele Viviani
Schaunard – Alessio Arduini
Colline – Marco Vinco
Benoît – Jeremy White
Alcindoro – William Robert Allenby
Parpignol – Luke Price
Customs Officer – Christopher Lackner
Sergeant – Bryan Seacombe

John Copley (director)

Bruno Ravella (revival director)
Julia Trevelyan Oman (designs)
John Charlton (lighting)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Alexander Joel (conductor)

 

Mimì (Anita Hartig) and Rodolfo (Teodor Ilincai)
Image: Bill Cooper

 

What a pleasure to attend a performance in which everything comes together, there is nothing to which to object, in short to attend a performance that is a credit to all concerned: director, conductor, orchestra, singers, the Royal Opera House itself! John Copley’s production, here revived by Bruno Ravella, may be nearing forty years old, and in the abstract I should definitely be highly suspicious of a staging that had lasted nearly so long, but it is revived with such belief, such attention to detail, such joy in the work, that it exhibits more life than many a first night, let alone a first revival. The locations might be as we expect, or rather as we imagine, somehow clicking perfectly with how we always imagined Puccini’s Latin Quarter or the Barrière d’Enfer, but there is nothing wrong with that; no one needs La bohème, or indeed anything else, to be set in a supermarket just for the sake of it. The singers are well directed, credible and often rather more than that as actors. Crowd scenes are equally well handled. Little additional details, for instance Musetta taking up her billiard cue at the Café Momus and successfully potting her ball, add the occasional delight or amusement, without in any sense detracting from the drama. No Konzept? Well, there are always other directors for something more provocative – and Stefan Herheim’s production, now available on DVD, of course demands to be seen.

 

Alexander Joel, making his Royal Opera debut, was a new name to me. On the basis of his lively, vital conducting, I hope that I shall hear him again soon. No particular ‘points’ were being made about the score; it was simply treated with respect, allowing the many fascinating aspects of Puccini’s scoring and his musico-dramatic intelligence to shine through. Wagnerisms and modernisms were not underlined; they manifested themselves anyway. If only he had not paused for applause during acts, but then I have never heard a conductor who did not; more’s the pity... Orchestra and chorus were on excellent form throughout, with nary a hint of the Saturday matinée routine.

 

Anita Hartig proved a touching Mimì. Again, there was no especial ‘point’ being made; one took her character and lived with it, Beautifully sung, well acted: one could hardly have asked for more. Teodor Ilincai (Rodolfo) certainly has the instrument for this repertoire; his acting impressed too. He sometimes, however, had a tendency to sing at full throttle with the lack of tonal and dynamic differentiation that gives tenors a dubious name. I can see no reason, however, why that should not be successfully worked upon. Gabriele Viviani made a thoroughly musical impression as Marcello. Sonya Yoncheva’s was a vocal and stage delight, from beginning to end, the character fully inhabited and represented. There is nothing secondary about this ‘second cast’; its coherence puts a great number of starrier casts to shame. And there is nothing secondary about Copley’s production either. Quite a tonic for a cold February afternoon, enough to melt the coldest, most cynical of hearts!

Médée, English National Opera, 15 February 2013

The Coliseum

(sung in English, as Medea)

Médée – Sarah Connolly

Jason – Jeffrey Francis
Créon – Brindley Sherratt
Créuse – Katherine Manley
Oronte – Roderick Williams
Nérine – Rhian Lois
Cléone – Aolfe O’Sullivan
Arcas – Oliver Dunn
Corinthian/Jealousy – John McMunn
Italian Woman/Phantom II – Sophie Junker
Corinthian/Argive – Jeremy Budd
Cupid’s captives – Aolfe O’Sullivan, Sophie Junker, John McMunn
Sons of Médée and Jason – Ewan Guthrie, Harry Collins

Sir David McVicar (director)

Bunny Christie (designs)
Paule Constable (lighting)
Lynne Page (choreography)

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Jörn Andresen)

Orchestra of the English National Opera
Christian Curnyn (conductor)

 

Médée was Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s sole work written for the Académie Royale de Musique, the legacy of Lully’s operatic monopoly having died hard. Though not a popular hit, unlike, say, Alcide and Didon, the theme of Thomas Corneille’s libretto and Charpentier’s response thereto almost certainly proving too much, too ‘immoral’ for many Parisian sensibilities, the opera certainly proved a critical success upon its first performances in December 1693. Sébastien de Brossard, priest, music theorist, and composer, went so far as to describe it as ‘the one opera without exception in which one can learn those things most essential to good composition.’ Louis XIV, erstwhile avid Lulliste, was impressed, complimenting Charpentier personally upon the opera, whilst the king’s brother, Philippe, Duke of Orléans, ‘Monsieur’, and eldest son, Louis, the Grand Dauphin, both attended several performances. Though hailed by the critics on its first outing, Médée seems to have received no further performances at the Paris Opéra after 1694.

 

Does it deserve better this time? Yes, I have no doubt that, even if Rameau were unaware of it – the evidence seems tantalisingly unclear – that it is nevertheless not only a fine tragedy in its own right but, in retrospect, a crucial stepping stone on the teleological path that takes us not only to Rameau but to Gluck, and thence of course to Mozart, Berlioz, and Wagner. Alas, the cast was left to shoulder the burden on its own on this occasions, receiving scant support from either the pit or the staging. So whilst some excellent singing will doubtless have won a few welcome converts to the cause of tragédie lyrique, much of what was seen and a typically perverse conception of so-called ‘period style’ from the conductor – do conductor and director ever stop to consider how irreconcilable their stances are with each other? – will also have had many wonder what the fuss was about. My enthusiasm for the work was certainly not shared by a couple of friends to whom I later spoke; given the circumstances, I cannot say that I blame them.

 

The lion’s share of the responsibility should be lain at the door of Sir David McVicar. Taking up the recent tendencies in his stagings and extending them, at times to the point of absurdity, what we witnessed was a camp monstrosity, relocated to the 1940s for no apparent reason, save to permit an endless display of military uniforms, secretarial staff, and the dancing boys and girls within them. A point might well have been made about war and wartime exigency, but it was not; the updating seemed merely a matter of arbitrary ‘colour’. The nadir was perhaps reached with the arrival on stage of a large pink aeroplane at the end of the second act, whilst Cupid darted around as a nightclub singer, an unfortunate reminiscence, even if unintentional, of the recent ENO Giulio Cesare.

 

Spectacle could perfectly well have been harnessed to dramatic effect, just as it might have been in late seventeenth-century France; however, it was not. I was put in mind of Wagner’s furious accusation in Opera and Drama against Meyerbeer; opera had degenerated into an ‘outrageously coloured, historico-romantic, devilish-religious, sanctimonious-lascivious, risqué-sacred, saucy-mysterious, sentimental-swindling, dramatic farrago’. The only moments of real drama emerged as if by default, the endless comings and goings on stage thinning out for a while, and Charpentier’s music just about emerging on its own terms. When that happened, however, it did not last for long, the brief moment of concentration upon Médée in the third act giving way to the bizarre appearance of hellish creatures who, in a non-mythological context, seemed more like writhing refugees from a second-rate episode of Dr Who than tragic figures of dread. The dance routines, however well executed, seemed tone-deaf to Charpentier’s music and quite unaware of the dramatic role that dance should play in this repertoire. Some time immersed in a seventeenth-century manual, if only to reject its prescriptions, might have been well spent.

 

If opera is held to be mere ‘entertainment’ – and not very entertaining entertainment at that – then there seems little case for public subsidy at all; if treated more seriously, more daringly, more provocatively, more shockingly, then it justifies itself handsomely as public discourse. German houses tend to understand that. Our London houses show some understanding of that from time to time; if only McVicar, undoubtedly a master of his craft in terms of having singers and actors do what he would, might shed the disturbing anti-intellectualism that has pervaded so much of his recent work and go beyond mere crowd-pleasing spectacle. Rightly or wrongly, the Prologue was omitted entirely.

 

Christian Curnyn’s conducting will doubtless be lauded in certain quarters. There was a far from unimpressive ebb and flow to it, the boundaries between air, chorus, and recitative properly brought into question, even dissolved. That undoubted achievement could readily have formed the basis of a fine performance. The great pity, however, just as in Giulio Cesare last autumn, was ‘period’ obsession: puritanical elimination of vibrato, refusal to allow the strings to sing, indeed to sound like orchestral sings as opposed to members of a village folk band, and what sounded very much to me – I could not see the pit – like employment of different, so-called ‘Baroque’ bows. There were moments, especially solo moments, when the ENO strings seemed to regain control, but they really should not have to play with both hands metaphorically tied behind their backs. If we are to have the rare, priceless advantage of modern strings, then for goodness sake let them be used. The blend with recorders was often problematic, as it always tends to be; modern flutes would have been a far better choice. Trumpets and a variety of drums alleviated the worst of the vibrato-less tyranny.

 

What of the singers? The Mercure galant enthused of Marie Le Rochois, a veteran of Lully’s 1686 Armide, to which score and libretto make reference and allusion on numerous occasions:
 

The passions are so vivid, particularly in Médée, that when this role was but declaimed it did not fail to make a great impression on the listeners. Mlle Rochois, one of the best singers in the world and who performs with warmth, finesse and intelligence, shone in this role and made the most of its beauties. All of Paris is enchanted...

How would Sarah Connolly match up? Very well indeed. There were moments earlier on when I wondered whether the role was quite suited to her voice, some of its richness lost on account of the range. However, from the point of her summoning the spirits onwards, such doubts were triumphantly banished. The part became Connolly’s, in dramatic and musical terms equally; there was no doubt about where one’s sympathies lay, however horrific her crime. Katherine Manley’s Créuse offered an excellent foil, necessarily a poor second to Médée, yet beautifully sung and acted, and capable of eliciting a degree or two of sympathy herself. Likewise Roderick Williams’s typically subtle, intelligent portrayal of Oronte, though as in every case, one could not help but wonder what he might have sounded like in French, Christopher Cowell’s English translation making a good stab at an impossible task. Brindley Sherratt’s Créon offered a well-judged blend of hubris and haplessness. Many of the singers in smaller roles shone too, for instance Rhian Lois and Aoife O’Sullivan as the confidantes of Médee and Créuse. Choral singing was excellent too. The sole fly in the ointment was Jeffrey Francis’s quite unheroic Jason. There may be a good case for deconstruction of heroism in this case, but there needs to be a degree of construction in the first place. The role sat unhelpfully for his voice, but stage presence was lacking too.

 

Three cheers are certainly due to ENO for this foray into pre-Ramellian tragédie lyrique. Would it not be a wonderful thing to hear some Lully next? Or indeed, to move forward to Gluck? Let such further explorations, however, be the province of a director who would take form and drama with but a modicum of greater seriousness.