Berlin Festtage (1): VPO/Barenboim - Mozart, 6 April 2022

Philharmonie

Symphony no.25 in G minor, KV 183/173dB
Piano Concerto no.27 in B-flat major, KV 595
Symphony no.38 in D major, KV 504, ‘Prague’

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Daniel Barenboim (piano/conductor)

 

The Staatsoper Unter den Linden’s annual Festtage have been cancelled two years running, but in 2022 it is third time lucky. Wagner, however, has another year off prior to the forthcoming new Ring, directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov. He is replaced with Mozart, in the guise of all three Da Ponte operas in new—or almost new—productions by Vincent Huguet, and three concerts. We began, as has recently become traditional, with a concert from Daniel Barenboim and the Vienna Philharmonic. 

Not to put too fine a point on it, this was the finest performance I have ever heard of the so-called ‘Little’ G minor Symphony, KV 183/173dB. The first movement exposition alone offered weight and lightness, space and urgency, string agitation and the finest woodwind balm, in a fiercely dialectical conception that bent time where necessary (the second group) yet pressed on regardless. Lest that sound unduly Beethovenian—Beethoven would surely have admired, but could never have emulated this—the inverted symmetries of the exposition close (heard twice, given Barenboim’s observance of the repeat) spoke of something else entirely. Here and elsewhere, that perfection of balance which many, Wagner included, have woefully misunderstood in the symphonic Mozart, might historically have been traced to Austrian or Salzburg antecedents, even Johann Christian Bach, but in reality belonged to no one other than Mozart himself. The extraordinary intensity of the development section, especially at its sparest, transformed all before it, preparing the way for, without intruding on, the ineffable, Catholic tragedy of the final return to G minor. Those who fail to understand Mozart theologically will always underestimate him. 

The second movement, warmly and richly lyrical, had its flow and emotional arc equally well judged, Barenboim’s great strength, as in Beethoven, Wagner, and much else, being his ability not only to balance different musical demands but to integrate them. Not for nothing is he an excellent conductor of Schoenberg. There was here enough of the Salzburg serenade to feel kinship, and enough distance from it equally to sense its difference. If the minuet burst forth with a defiance that again would surely have impressed Beethoven, it was in a voice very different not only from Beethoven’s but from the nature of his subjectivity. It might have been God Himself. A garden of delights, whether earthly or heavenly—why choose?—from Viennese woodwind in the trio reminded us of the fallacy of a secular/sacred dichotomy for the Enlightenment at large, and certainly for Mozart. The finale, aptly enough, proved both more defiant and more determined to leaven that defiance with a symmetrical imperative such as heard at the close of the first-movement exposition. Barenboim, conducting here as elsewhere from memory, knew the score in more senses than one. 

There was much to admire in Barenboim and the VPO’s account of Mozart’s final piano concerto too, although the finale tired a little in its second half. Its ‘lateness’ was not exactly exaggerated, but became, intentionally or otherwise, a little too pronounced (for me, though apparently not for the rest of an enthusiastic audience). The first movement, though, received a model performance, its opening tutti bright not maudlin, albeit with subtle harmonic hints at something darker beneath the surface. Transparent Vienna sound here and elsewhere astonished in sheer variegation. Barenboim’s playing was wisely collegial, drawing on what is now a lifetime’s experience. How easy—crucially—he made it sound, as indeed did the orchestra. He knew precisely when and how to draw a different colour from the instrument for a phrase echo or sequence. Perhaps there might have been a little more sparkle, but a hint of melancholy is far from inappropriate here. A dream-like cadenza spoke with the intimacy that was this performance’s hallmark. The Larghetto was warm, loving, though never too much; it expanded the emotional range, gloriously unhurried without ever being merely slow. And the finale began, at least, with all the lightness and energy of the young men Barenboim and Mozart remained. Barenboim showed us how he can still turn a phrase, meaningfully, preparing the next, seemingly effortless. This was still intimate music-making, with no grandstanding, capturing something close to the essence of an innocent rondo that yet knows. 

The Prague Symphony’s introduction was grand and spacious, always moving forward to an implicit goal. Its richness was felt, without needing to make of a point of it; it was that which led us imperceptibly into a first-movement exposition of equal richness and potentiality. It proved as ever-developmental as Beethoven, but again differently, that crucial Mozartian element of balance equally important. A rigorous development section showed Mozart having learned Bach’s contrapuntal lessons well. Beethoven again came to mind in the recapitulation: not because this was ‘like’ his music, but because one could hear where so much Beethoven came from. (It is not only Haydn; Barenboim and the VPO know that.) The exultancy of the final climax was both seen and heard. A similarly developmental Andante had more pronounced lightness and shade, heard—and played—as if in a single, infinitely divisible breath. The finale erupted and concluded: strong, detailed, and full of life, as if an orchestral reflection or elaboration of Don Giovanni, which of course—bear in mind the symphony’s nickname—is in part precisely what it is.

Hardenberger/Kopatchinskaja/LSO/Roth - Järventausta, Strauss, Grime, and Coll, 3 April 2022

Barbican Hall

Joel Järventausta: Sunfall (world premiere)
Strauss: Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, op.28
Helen Grime: Trumpet Concerto (world premiere)
Francisco Coll: Violin Concerto (UK premiere)
Strauss: Tod und Verklärung, op.24

Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin)

Håkan Hardenberger (trumpet)

London Symphony Orchestra

François-Xavier Roth (conductor)

Three premieres, two of them world premieres, and a couple of Strauss tone poems. Add concerto soloists of the calibre of Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Håkan Hardenberger to the formidable team of the London Symphony Orchestra and François-Xavier Roth, and what is not to like? Nothing here, I think. Joel Järventausta’s Sunfall, apparently rooted in the composer’s synaesthetic response to the colour orange, made for an impressive opening piece, subdued first chords swiftly, rudely interrupted by a cataclysmic orchestral clap. That and other such contrasts in material were worked out in an atmosphere of unease and natural-world majesty. A keen ear for matching timbre and harmony, and for lone, fragile melodic against that atmospheric backdrop imparted a sense of the ultimate amorality of the sun and its light: it can give life, but it can also take it away. Increasing animation, even frenzy, returned us to a transformed wilderness. Chatter at its close—musical, yet speech—enhanced the enigma, but also the unapproachability of that giant fireball now departed.

I do not think it would do Sunfall any disservice to call it a contemporary tone-poem. At any rate, it was followed by the first of two supreme masterpieces of the genre. Till Eulenspiegel emerged in Roth and the LSO’s capable hands flexible, colourful, and wry as ever. It shared with its predecessor a clear sense of narrative, full of incident and clear of structure, though it was certainly not to be reduced to its programme. There was an idiomatic swing where called for, not so very far from Strauss’s waltz-king namesake. Throughout, Roth showed that, like the best Strauss conductors, he could ‘play’ the orchestra with ease. 

Helen Grime’s new Trumpet Concerto opened darkly, yet with a host of orchestral colours, harmonic and timbral, not entirely un-Bergian. From that, the trumpet emerged magically, before sinking once more into an orchestral cauldron that was itself home both to echoes and pre-echoes of Hardenberger’s wondrously spun solo thread. Motivic threads were knit tightly together in a way I am tempted to call Classical, though I do not wish to imply something backward-looking. And in truth, the method probably had little to do with such distant forebears, though the movement of particular lines more than once recalled to me the late music of Boulez. Fantastic descending orchestral spirals, scurrying, and more would surely have interested, even delighted, him. Hardenberger’s lightly worn virtuosity became all the more apparent, incited by magnificently idiomatic writing for the instrument. There was, moreover an ebbing and flowing melancholy to the trumpet, not remotely sentimental, but which rather seemed to bear witness, perhaps even to the troubled time in which it was written (and first performed). 

The opening éclat of Francisco Coll’s Violin Concerto, more angular rhythmically, heralded a kinship that may only have been of chance, but which in context spoke of twin conceptions of instrumental and orchestral fantasy, replete in this case with punctuating percussion. At any rate, we heard the music of two composers by now fully mature, even contemporary masters. (For me, it has been quite a thing to acquaint myself with their musical journeys over the past decade or so.) Kopatchinskaja’s explosive, full-blown virtuosity led the way towards a lyrical blooming that was not so much ‘traditional’, whatever that may mean, as intriguingly and, yes, movingly haunted by some of tradition’s ghosts. The first movement (‘Atomised’) close, with high-lying, silvery orchestral violins heightened a kinship I had already felt with Prokofiev: not ‘influence’, nor a model, but perhaps simply a sense that the two composers, mediated by Kopatchinskaja, might have something to say to one another. 

There was certainly a sense of magic, drawing one in, to the second movement ‘Hyperhymnia’ and its lyricism, both uneasy and (almost) easy, harmonic development propelling its motion. Indeed, the expressive nature of Coll’s harmonic language, never to be reduced to that of anything or anyone else, proved at times quite breathtaking. A section of almost neo-Mahlerian climaxes, not in language, but in preparation and spacing, led to a true cadenza of true, musical virtuosity, which in turn led us into a finale (‘Phase’) of great invention (for instance, a passage setting violin against double basses) and intensity. Passages of (relative) stasis and movement, of shifting colours, transformational rhythms, and ghosts in the machine, seemed as inspired by Kopatchinskaja’s playing as she by Coll’s writing.

Both concertos, indeed all the works so far heard, had been journeys of transformation. So too, of course, was Tod und Verklärung. Its ominous opening heart-beats, vividly pictorial and crucial to subsequent, motivic development, heightened rather than dignified the magic of life (and beyond). There was high-operatic drama, presented with polish, precision, and grand sweep. There were light and shade, including colours I had never fancied were there. There was harmonic richness too, all revealed in a full-bodied orchestral performance, with none of the thinness one sometimes hears in this work. The glow of final transfiguration was echt-Straussian and intensely moving.

Jerusalem Quartet - Beethoven, 31 March 2022

Wigmore Hall

String Quartet no.3 in D major, op.18 no.3
String Quartet no.9 in C major, op.59 no.3, ‘Razumovsky’
String Quartet no.14 in C-sharp minor, op.131

Alexander Pavlovsky

Sergei Bressler (violins)

Ori Kam (viola)

Kyril Zlotnikov (cello)

Half-way through the Jerusalem Quartet’s survey of the (canonical) Beethoven string quartets, and there was no sign of flagging, whether from players or audience. The performances we heard at the Wigmore Hall were as full of energy as ever, even arguably on occasion (as in the finale to the third Razumovsky Quartet) to excess. One can, of course, argue about this or that interpretative choice. No single set of performances will please everyone all the time; no single performance will, for that matter. There is no gainsaying, though, the outstanding playing, nor the sense of discovery and achievement throughout. 

As with previous accounts of quartets from op.18, the Jerusalem Quartet captured very well the post-Mozartian qualities of D major Quartet, op.18 no.3: influence, even debt, yet also a knowledge that it is too late, even for Beethoven, to be Mozart. Their first-movement questions and responses were not only conversational, though that was a striking quality of the exposition in particular, but also teleologically directed through motivic process. An almost crazily intense development section led to the recapitulation having Beethoven’s material rise phoenix-like from the ashes left behind. All this was heard—played—as if in a single breath. Neither here nor elsewhere was there a hint of the condescension some visit on ‘early’ Beethoven. The Andante con moto was full of character, born of detail and that longer-term hearing. The harmonic role of Kyril Zlotnikov’s cello became all the more apparent here as enabler and propeller; then so too did that of the other instruments, for harmonic miracles were also effected above an unchanging bass. Once more, there was great intensity to the climax. A scherzo and trio with all the tension of a coiled spring still had space where required. Concision here was the watchword. The Presto finale proved full of incident, ever surprising. A keen sense was conveyed of the harmonic and other implications, of varying phrase length, especially prolongation. Helter-skelter, yet with ultimately disciplined freedom and once more clear sight of the goal, here was Beethoven as Haydn’s pupil. 

A grave introduction to the C major ‘Razumovsky’ Quartet, op.59 no.3, may initially have sounded a little understated, but not at all; when the exposition proper burst forth, all fell into place, a strong sense of necessity present and correct. Every note of this first movement seemed relished as if new. An almost Mendelssohn-like, elfin quality to development—not only the development section—was set in productive contrast with a dogged insistence that could only have been Beethoven’s, especially when returning us to the tonic. Likewise, no note was taken for granted in a second movement whose strangeness—cello arco almost as much as outsize pizzicato—fully registered. Flexible, yet ever coherent, this account knew where it was going; it took us there with rawness of emotion and no little charm, revealed to be two sides of that same coin of necessity. An ultimate sense of melancholy, both constructed and ‘natural’, stood not so far from Mendelssohn either. A graceful, euphonious minuet found energetic release in a still spacious yet directed trio. Was the finale, surely the fastest I have ever heard, too fast? Notes were fairly flung off all strings in a performance as hard driven as it was intense, but this, worlds away from the Beethoven of the Quartetto Italiano, was clearly how the players heard it. It worked, to evident audience delight, though nagging doubts remained on my part. 

The C-sharp minor Quartet, op.131, rightly sounded more remote in tonality, the players showing little interest in equalising their temperament for an opening that took us to another world. Neither sweetness nor harshness was smoothed over in a performance with roots—ironically?—in Bach, yet whose longing seemed to take us all the way to Wagner’s Schopenhauerian reflections. We do not usually speak nowadays of ‘pure’ or ‘absolute’ music, largely with good reason, but perhaps in such cases we should. Not that that implies a lack of emotional depth, quite the contrary, but rather the impossibility of considering, let alone expressing that other than musically. No wonder Wagner, so often the connoisseur of quartet writing, described this Adagio as ‘the saddest thing ever said in notes’. The second movement grew out of the first, rendering its transformation of mood, tonality included, all the more moving; we knew its fragility as well as its necessity. The strange recitative of the third movement was heard with a rapt sublimity and yet humanity suggestive of angels en famille rather than approaching the throne of the Almighty. 

A dizzying array of procedures was perfectly moulded into a greater whole for the variations that followed. Again, words seem to fail; mine certainly have. Is this ‘difficult’ music? One could hardly argue otherwise, and yet score and performance alike drew one in to listen, cajoled and even compelled one to make an effort that was richly rewarded. The scherzo offered a heavenly wildness—or should that be a wild heavenliness?—that also spoke, however unfashionable it might be to say so, of the sheer moral goodness that lies for so many of us at the heart of Beethoven’s voice. Suffused with sadness, the sixth movement initiated the journey back to C-sharp minor, for a finale whose tragedy was rooted in experience, but not resignation. Here, once more, Beethoven spoke with, to, and for humanity, in all its fractures, hopes, and ultimate greatness.

Damrau/Kaufmann/Deutsch - Schumann and Brahms, 29 March 2022

Barbican Hall

Schumann: ‘Widmung’, op.25 no.1; ‘Jemand’, op.25 no.4; ‘Geständnis’, op.74 no.7; ‘Resignation’, op.83 no.1; ‘Liebeslied’, op.51 no.5; ‘Stille Tränen’, op.35 no.10
Brahms: ‘Verzagen’, op.72 no.4; ‘Waldeseinsamkeit’, op.85 no.6; ‘Nachtigall’, op.97 no.1; ‘Ach, wende diesen Blick’, op.57 no.4; ‘Es träumte mir’, op.57 no.3; ‘Meerfahrt’, op.96 no.4; ‘Anklänge’, op.7 no.3
Schumann: ‘In der Nacht’, op.74 no.4; ‘Tragödie’, op.64 no.3; ‘An den Abendstern’, op.103 no.4
Brahms: ‘Vergebliches Ständchen’, op.84 no.4; ‘Serenade’, op.70 no.3; ‘Therese’, op.86 no.1; ‘O komme, holde Sommernacht’, op.58 no.4; ‘Geheimnis’, op.71 no.3; ‘Wir wandelten’, op.86 no.2
Schumann: ‘Er und sie’, op.78 no.2; ‘Mein schooner Stern’, op.101 no.4; ‘Lied der Suleika’, op.25 no.9; ‘Ihre Stimme’, op.96 no.3; ‘Liebster, deine Worte’, op.101 no.2; ‘Lehn’ deine Wang an meine Wang’, op.142 no.2; ‘Verratene Liebe’, op.40 no.5
Brahms: ‘Weg der Liebe’, op.20 no.2; ‘An die Tauben’, op.63 no.4; ‘Die Liebende schreibt’, op.47 no.5; ‘Sehnsucht’, op.14 no.8; ‘Meine Liebe ist grün’, op.63 no.5; ‘Versunken’, op.86 no.5; ‘Von ewiger Liebe’, op.43 no.1; ‘Boten der Liebe’, op.61 no.4

Jonas Kaufmann (tenor)

Diana Damrau (soprano)

Helmut Deutsch (piano)

Images: Mark Allan/Barbican

Here was a rich—and richly varied—programme of songs and duets by Schumann and Brahms, which gained almost as much strength from intelligent programming, dividing the performances into two halves, and three single-composer groups within each half, as through the musical contributions of Diana Damrau, Jonas Kaufmann, and Helmut Deutsch. Broadly speaking, the second half was lighter than the first, though each traced its own dramatic path, drawing on the strengths of both singers as actors as well as singers. That is something frowned upon by the more severe of Lieder purists—do they really think opera and song should be separated by a chasm?—but which lent the evening its own particular, enchanting character.

The opening few Schumann songs set the scene for what was to come, Kaufmann immediately ardent and imploring in ‘Widmung’, Damrau’s ‘Jemund’ a finely judged response, characterful without tweeness, Kaufmann’s ‘Geständnis’ in turn following on, and so on. There was much, yet never too much, stage interaction, and Deutsch subtly had Schumann’s harmonies tell tales similar yet never identical to those told with words. I loved the unexaggerated, heartfelt dilemma Damrau outlined in ‘Liebeslied’, bringing us to Kaufmann’s conclusion to this group, a ‘Stille Tränen’, in which the world’s heart skipped a beat or two. Almost an aria, yet never leaving the realm of song, the performance benefited from Deutsch’s grand, almost Lisztian manner. Nothing was taken for granted, each song and its position within the whole thought out.

Turning to Brahms, the tumult of ‘Verzagen’, vividly portrayed by Damrau and Deutsch, set the scene for keen storytelling (a haunted Kaufmann ‘In Waldeseinsamkeit’), ardent nostalgia with a refreshing bite (Damrau’s ‘Nachtigall’) and much more. True, there was strain on Kaufmann’s voice at times, such as would not once have been the case. If that lessened the impact of his performances to some, it is a pity, but surely the way he built a song such as ‘Meerfahrt’ was ample compensation; likewise, the particular qualities of a voice that seems to have headed into falsetto, yet which is revealed to be simply part of a spectrum of many colours, leading down to that celebrated, baritonal base. There was a special magic when the two voices finally came together in Schumann’s ‘In der Nacht’, itself helping prepare for the exchanges of ‘Tragödie’: first Kaufmann’s vulnerable masculinity, then Damrau’s killing our hopes and expectations, and then both together in the final of its three songs, laced with a generous helping of Romantic irony. ‘An den Abendstern’ functioned as beautiful pendant and harbinger of new paths.

 

Our artists set a different initial tone for the second half: lighter, yet with fine distinctions of colour, in a humorous account of ‘Vergebliches Ständchen’. If the following Kaufmann ‘Serenade’ were darker, one nonetheless heard that in new light. There was altogether a post-Mozartian sensibility to many of these songs, doubtless drawing on long stage as well as hall experience and all the stronger for that. The romantic—and Romantic—intertwining of lines in Schumann’s ‘Er und sie’, followed by Kaufmann’s incorrigibly seductive ‘Mein schooner Stern’ and Damrau’s lightly worn longing in the Goethe setting ‘Lied der Suleika’—what verse!—led us to the end of that set and beyond, to the first of the next.

There, in Brahms’s ‘Weg der Liebe’, we heard the truest of duets, a fine sense of fulfilment as voices came together once more, with a hint or two, never overwhelming, of that operatic experience too. Damrau’s soaring, exultant ‘Meine Liebe ist grün’, set against typically Brahmsian shadows in the piano, set up expectations for the next-but-one ‘Von ewiger Liebe’. Kaufmann there took the audience in the palm of his hand, his singing as beautiful as anything from fifteen years ago, Damrau every inch his equal, both voices and piano contributing to a deeply cumulative experience. ‘Die Boten der Liebe’ made for a splendid foil, like a buffa duet in previously mentioned post-Mozart spirit. Schumann’s ‘Unterm Fenster’ came as well-chosen encore.

Lamento d'Arianna, Ariadne auf Naxos (Prologue), and Witch (world premiere), Royal Academy Opera, 23 March 2022

Susie Sainsbury Theatre, Royal Academy of Music

Arianna – Sophie Sparrow
Prima Donna – Josi Ann Ellem
Composer – Bernadette Johns
Zerbinetta – Kathleen Nic Dhiarmda
Dancing Master – Liam Bonthrone
Tenor – Ryan Vaughan Davies
Wigmaker – Jacob Phillips
Music Master – Will Pate
Officer – Samuel Kibble
Lackey – Wonsick Oh
Major Domo – Michael Ronan

Jane – Bernadette Johns
Agnes, Troll 3 – Julia Portela Piñón
Interrogator 1 – Wonsick Oh
Interrogator 2 – Ryan Vaughan Davies
Wandering Minstrel, Executioner – Will Pate
Sarah, Sun Witch – Sophie Sparrow
Little Miss Manifest, Troll Mum – Nina Korbe
Green Death Witch – Kathleen Nic Dhiarmada
Troll 1 – Marcus Dawson
Troll 2 – Samuel Kibble

Polly Graham (director)
April Dalton (designs)
Jake Wiltshire (lighting)
Hayley Egan (video)

Ensemble singers and actors
Royal Academy Sinfonia
Ryan Wigglesworth (conductor)

Sarah (Sophie Sparrow)
Image: Craig Fuller

Commissioning a new opera for its 200^th anniversary, and then staging and performing it with such excellence, are laudable things for the Royal Academy of Music to have done. If only, alas, the world premiere of WITCH, music by Freya Waley-Cohen and libretto by Ruth Mariner, had shown us a superior work than it did. The problem lay at least as much, probably more, with Mariner’s libretto, weirdly devoid of dramatic intent, let alone achievement, but it would be difficult to make claims for Waley-Cohen as a musical dramatist either. 

What is WITCH ‘about’? A bullied teenage girl alone in her bedroom, save for a giant rabbit (I don’t know either), finds solace and ultimately takes action through discovery of a coven of witches on the Internet. Despite attempted disruption by a group of online trolls, they manage to cast a ‘penis hex’ on the world—shouting ‘Hex in the City!—which (here, I quote the programme) ‘aims to cleans the world of toxic masculinity and goes viral’. Meanwhile, another story is sketched—barely sketched, let alone anything more—of a sixteenth century Scottish witch; it may have been discovered by the teenagers online, or may have been referred to entirely independently. That was not clear (at least to me). As the late Anna Russell might have said, ‘I’m not making this up, you know.

The problem is not the worthy intent; doubtless these are issues that could, indeed should, be treated dramatically, though whether an opera is the best place to do so may remain an open question. Perhaps a documentary or, indeed, one of the TikTok-style videos screened in Polly Graham’s inventive, often brilliant staging would be a better place to start. (I remain unsure whether casting a ‘penis hex’ is the most obviously efficacious remedy, but what do I know?) There is little or no attempt to create character, still less character development. There is no dramatic grit, let alone ambiguity. It is essentially a school assembly talk writ large, feeling as though it goes on for ever, though it actually extends for ten minutes or so more than an hour. Waley-Cohen’s contribution has some of what one might consider to be the essentials: different sound worlds for the two centuries, which begin to collide (far more so than in the preachy libretto); a keen ear for musical process, albeit one that struggles, perhaps understandably, to align itself dramatically; and a definite move towards culmination as the ‘hex’ is cast. Set against that, there is likewise little in the way of musical characterisation; vocal writing is often ungrateful to no evident end; and the dramatic function of the orchestra, though vividly present, remains uncertain throughout. I suspect something less inert could have been made out of this, but a series of workshops combined with a few periods of reflection and revision would have been necessary. 

Ryan Wigglesworth led the excellent Royal Academy Sinfonia in an incisive account, as well paced as the work would permit. Pulsating with colour, it had me wonder whether an orchestral piece, perhaps with film, might have been a better option. The orchestra was certainly put through its paces, having earlier given a bright-eyed account of the Prologue to Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, albeit one in which Wigglesworth sometimes seemed a little too inclined to follow the singers, lessening dramatic tension. Given with a wonderful, preceding performance of Monteverdi’s Lamento d’Arianna, directed from one of three theorbos by Elizabeth Kenny with great understanding and infinite flexibility, it was unclear what either was doing alongside WITCH. Connection in general mistreatment of women seemed implied, but surely the Opera rather than the Prologue would have made that point better. (There were doubtless musical reasons for not attempting that.) 

It was also surprising that no real attempt seemed to be made to connect Monteverdi and Strauss. Graham’s direction of each taken in separation had much to commend it, save the strange, distracting cries (‘witch’-like?) emitted at one point by Ariadne’s companions in the Monteverdi. The Lament was otherwise focused and powerful, due in no part to Sophie Sparrow’s stylish and richly expressive performance. Strauss proved full of incident, a cue to plenty of character creation (retrospectively showing up its successor all the more), though there was considerably less in the way of Hofmannsthal. In that connection, some dialogue was delivered so deliberately that translation into English would probably have been the better option. The flashing screens and general stage incident of Witch went a long way to contribute interest otherwise lacking, signs of what might have been—and, who knows, may still be. 

As a showcase for young singing talent, this triple-bill achieved more. Sparrow did much to engage our sympathy not only as Arianna but also as Sarah who became a Sun Witch. Her counterpoart Kathleen Nic Dhiarmada (Green Death Witch) presented an unusually sympathetic Zerbinetta, having us engage with her as a human being rather than metadramatic cipher. (This was, after all, only the Prologue.) Bernadette Johns’s Composer, if sometimes lacking in verbal accuracy, likewise engaged us keenly in her character’s emotional trials, the production’s feminist idea here seeming to be that this was actually a woman in trousers, rather than a ‘trouser role’. It was impossible to know how the rest would have turned out, but Will Pate’s Music Master, Liam Bonthrone’s Dance Master, and Ryan Vaughan Davies’s Tenor all suggested great promise for the Opera that never came. Pate and Johns, moreover, suggested greater emotional depth as the sixteenth-century pair of Wandering Minstrel and Jane than otherwise emerged from Witch. In truth, almost every sung performance impressed. If only half the dramatic material had been stronger…

Alexander Goehr 90th Birthday Concert – Goehr, Richards, and Anderson, Nash Ensemble et al., 22 March 2022

Wigmore Hall

Goehr-Stravinsky: ….around Stravinsky, op.72, for violin, oboe, cor anglais, clarinet, and bassoon
Emma-Ruth Richards: de Stâmparare, for solo oboe
Goehr: Largo siciliano, op.91, for piano, horn, and violin
Goehr: The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba, op.102, for voice, clarinet, and piano (world premiere)
Julian Anderson: Ring Dance, for two violins
Goehr: Combat of Joseph della Reina and the Devil, for two sopranos, mezzo-soprano, tenor, piano, and viola (world premiere)

Héloïse Werner, Emilia Bertolini (sopranos)

Clare Presland (mezzo-soprano)

Joshua Ellicott (tenor)

Nash Ensemble

Alasdair Beatson (piano/director)

Alexander Goehr will be 90 in August; here the Nash Ensemble, longstanding Goehr champions, got in a little early with a celebratory concert including no fewer than two Goehr premieres and three other of his works. Compared to his two ‘Manchester School’ colleagues, Harrison Birtwistle and Peter Maxwell Davies—John Ogdon and Elgar Howarth being very different cases—Goehr has latterly, perhaps always, had a raw deal in terms of public and institutional approbation. It is never too late to start setting things right, though; and if it is long past time for our opera houses and orchestras to rise once again to the challenge, this Nash Inventions concert will surely have confirmed the faithful in their habit and made a number of new converts. 

The Nash Ensemble premiered ….around Stravinsky twenty years ago in 2002. It is difficult to imagine a more sparkling, witty, and involving performance than that given here. With Stravinsky’s Pastorale at its heart, Goehr ‘remembers and refers to the piece “around” which it is performed’. And so, first we heard rich-toned solo violin (Benjamin Nabarro), in the movement ‘Dushkin’, which had at least a little, I fancied, of Stravinsky’s singular way with the instrument, albeit more rooted in German tradition (Schoenberg and Bach). Stravinsky himself, as automated music box, roaring towards (first version) and out of (second, as heard here) the Twenties, yielded to solo violin once more, this time an ‘Introduzione’, as eloquent as its predecessor, in character both related and different. Its proportions, not simply temporal, but also vertical and horizontal, sounded just right to me, beautifully handled both as work and performance. For a concluding Rondo, oboe, cor anglais, clarinet, and bassoon returned. One might initially have thought this Stravinsky, or at least Stravinsky-adjacent, but distance increased as it went on its merry way: not only a neat but an expressive and enjoyable conceit. 

Emma-Ruth Richards’s de Stâmparare received a fine performance from oboist Gareth Hulse. Based on a Romanian folk song, Hora Spoitorilor, it sang, cried, and in the tradition of the doina, seemed to invoke help or solace from beyond. Microtones woven around its (broadly) tonal core, it remained both direct and ambiguous, phrasing lightly deconstructive or developmental. 

Written in 2012, Goehr’s Largo siciliano stands precisely midway, temporally, between ….around Stravinsky and today. It refers, strikingly and surprisingly, to Messiaen’s Mode de valeurs et d’intensités, with what I think of ultimately as a respectful lack of respect. Throughout its sequence of variations for piano, horn, and violin, fascinating shadows and echoes of very different music emerge: melodic lines, rhythms, and harmonies all transformed. There is some splendidly gestural music, not entirely foreign to Messiaen, but darker, Brahmsian tendencies and related variegation are more typical. Indeed, the greater connection that struck me to Messiaen was less harmonic, than pertaining to a way of listening to harmony. (Or perhaps that was just me. At any rate, the analysis lectures I heard Goehr give at Cambridge, in which he argued the importance of mixture chords, as opposed to endless ‘growth’ of harmony in the guise of ‘new’ chords, seemed much to the point.) With counterpoint and harmony in fine balance, developing variation propelled us along a path whose transformational treatment of variations put me in mind of Liszt or the Beethoven of the Diabelli Variations. These were but reference points, though; I do not think there was anything so straightforward as ‘influence’. This may not have been serial music, which had long since become too predictable for the composer, but there seemed to me an idea, maybe even an Idea, at work not entirely dissimilar. Through the voices of three highly independent instruments, a whole world of potentialities opened up—and closed. 

Goehr’s The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba visits the Queen’s own visit to St Anthony in a Flaubert parody from Ulysses. Immediately, its combination of fantasy and the sardonic captivates, indeed even from its purely instrumental introduction. Full of incident and with a keen sense of musical narrative, it is overflowing with Schoenbergian lyricism that satisfies as much as it beguiles. A typically animated and detailed performance from Héloïse Werner, stepping in at very short notice for an indisposed Claire Booth, extended our understanding not only of Goehr but of Molly Bloom, leading us to the calculated disruption of the wake-up call: ‘You are a poor old stick in the mud. Go and see life. See the wide world.’ 

Julian Anderson’s early Ring Dance (1987) for two violins followed. Its grating—in a positive sense—Hardanger fiddling truly dug into the instruments of Nabarro and Michael Gurevich; or rather, they did, in its service. Work and performance served up an arc clearly felt, experienced, as well as observed, its notes worked for and achieved. Whilst it could hardly be considered spectral music, perhaps some of its processes fulfilled a similar function, not unlike Goehr’s transformations for serialism. It is, at any rate, a work newly released by the composer for public performance, and which he considers ‘to some extent … a prototype for everything I’ve composed since’. 

The second of two premieres was of Goehr’s setting, somewhat in the manner of Janáček’s Diary of One who Disappeared, of a Kabbalistic ‘Jewish Faust’ story, presented some time ago to the composer by Gerschom Scholem and latterly translated by Goehr from German intro English. The ‘combat’—a nod to Goehr’s beloved Monteverdi, in the guise of Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda—of a rabbi with the Devil, the rabbi and his disciples setting out to climb the mountain where the Devil and his consort Lilith live, summoning Elijah, angels, and archangels along the way to help, only to be told that help his impossible, and having succeeded, failing through trickery and temptation at the last is told with dry wit yet expressive generosity (so long as one actually listens). A sweet-toned Joshua Ellicott, as the Teacher, was echoed and elaborated at the first by solo viola (Lars Anders Tomter), and latterly the full ensemble in varied, differentiated fashion, modes of not un-Brechtian Verfremdung lightly worn yet richly and amusingly expressive. The Schoenberg of Moses und Aron and smaller choral works stands in the background of the writing for the three disciples when heard together, yet each (Werner, Emilia Bertolini, and Clare Presland) was given plenty of scope for individual, shiftingly cast portrayal. 

These passages of narration, in which roles merged and separated, fascinated as much as the dialectical, rabbinical wisdom at the musical as well as philosophical heart of the work; indeed, the former seemed to emerge from the latter. Each of ten episodes had its own integrity, yet contributed to ascent as a whole. Viola harmonics, as the Angel Sandalphon vanished, echoing collaboration between the two high angels Metatron (loud) and Katrie (pianissimo), and a sense of time occasionally suspended, yet often pressing on furiously contributed to a work of well-judged proportions, leading ironically in the light of where the evening had begun in violin terms, with victory for the Devil, depravity for the rabbi, and intriguing survival for one of the disciple-narrators. ‘Only I remain to tell the tale.’ Make of that what you will—and that seemed to be the invitation. 

Now, please, for a revival of Goehr’s Brechtian masterpiece, Arden Must Die. ENO, are you listening? In time for the fiftieth anniversary of its 1974 British premiere at Sadlers Wells?

Terfel/LPO/Gardner - Mendelssohn, Brahms, and Schoenberg, 19 March 2022

 

Royal Festival Hall

Mendelssohn: Overture: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, op.21
Brahms, orch. Karl Michael Komma: Vier ernste Gesänge, op.121
Schoenberg: Pelleas und Melisande, op.5

 
Bryn Terfel (bass-baritone)

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Edward Gardner (conductor)

Chaste, yet ravishing, LPO woodwind announced Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture as they meant to go on, combining precision and spirit like the orchestra as a whole. Edward Gardner’s account, sometimes hard-driven in the manner of Toscanini, yet not without flexibility, indeed increasingly so, had a strong sense both of harmonic rhythm and dramatic incident. The (apparently) effortless tension of the development, subsiding into touching exhaustion at its close, attested to fine understanding of Mendelssohn’s structure and form. Then magic was reignited. Above all, it made me smile.

 Bryn Terfel joined the orchestra for Brahms’s Four Serious Songs, singing from memory. The programme note oddly had nothing to say of the orchestral arrangement by Karl Michael Komma. Nor did it so much as mention Komma himself, a Sudeten German composer whose record during the NS-Zeit, writing a cantata to celebrate the Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia and a pamphlet ‘against’ Mahler, might have warranted a mention. I say that not to argue for proscription, nor for or against anything else, but silence seemed a questionable tactic. What we heard was a perfectly decent orchestration that lacked the intrinsic interest of true recreation—think, say, of Berio’s Brahms—but permitted the work more readily to enter a large hall. It was not unimaginative, variegated lower strings setting the scene well for the first song, a wandering clarinet solo at the close of the fourth both fitting in itself and testament to wider knowledge of late Brahmsian idiom. If ultimately, it shed no particular light and had me missing the piano, nor did it truly get in the way, though perhaps it encouraged a more hectoring side to some of Terfel’s delivery than might otherwise have been the case.

There was, in any case, no gainsaying the vividly communicative aspect of Terfel’s art, still very much that of a prophetic Elijah, as for instance in the agitated central stanza of the opening ‘Denn es gehet dem Menschen’. Terfel’s attention to detail, with short, sharp crescendo, followed by finely controlled, longer decrescendo, on the preceding ‘denn es ist alles eitel’ was never pedantic, always at the expressive service of his performance. There were other such instances aplenty. A finely shaded ‘Ich wandte mich’ and stentorian ‘O Tod, wie bitter bist du’ were likewise well judged, as was the change of tone for the final song, still serious yet less dark. Strength in knowledge and in world-weariness too was the order of the day.

Schoenberg would not, I think, have been impressed by the evasiveness of that programme note. Whether he would have been impressed by this performance of Pelleas und Melisande, I honestly do not know. I suspect his response would have depended on the fluctuating condition of his relationship with Richard Strauss. For Gardner’s imperative here, aided by scene-setting, including quotation, in titles above the stage (oddly not used for the Brahms), was very much that of event and incident. A duly questing opening, lines curled as if from a Jugendstil sketch, tending already towards the counterpoint of the First Chamber Symphony, ensured that motivic density registered, For the most part, though, Brahmsian inheritance was not where emphasis lay. Propelled both by the performance’s insistence and by visual cues above, I found myself imagining a silent film, replete with exaggerated, expressionist gestures. The LPO strings ‘spoke’ in almost operatic, or rather Wagnerian, fashion, attesting to their deep experience in that repertoire.

A resplendent phantasmagoria—again, Strauss would surely have been impressed—announced the ‘scene’ at the tower, looking forward also to Schoenberg’s later orchestration of the third part of Gurrelieder. The pool in the castle vaults was stagnant indeed, drawing its aural stench from the world of Götterdämmerung. And there was true pain, in (non-emancipated) dissonance as the lovers bade each other farewell. Tumultuous, terrifying chaos prior to Melisande’s final rest emerged as a dark, even sick transformation of Wotan’s putting Brünnhilde to sleep. The story, for that emphatically is what it was, oozed with malevolence, though not exclusively. It was all very much a youthful reading, far less forbidding than often one hears. That is not to say that it was jejune, only different—and, after all, Schoenberg was young when he wrote the piece. Such may not be the whole (meta-)story of this extraordinary work, but perhaps no single performance can be. It certainly seemed to gain converts to Schoenberg’s cause, which can only be a good thing.

Peter Grimes, Royal Opera, 17 March 2022

Royal Opera House

Images: ROH 2022 (c) Yasuko Kageyama
The Boy (Cruz Fitz), Peter Grimes (Allan Clayton)

Hobson – Stephen Richardson
Swallow – John Tomlinson
Peter Grimes – Allan Clayton
Ned Keene – Jacque Imbrailo
Rev. Horace Adams – James Gilchrist
Bob Boles – John Graham-Hall
Auntie – Catherine Wyn-Rogers
First Niece – Jennifer France
Second Niece – Alexandra Lowe
Mrs Sedley – Rosie Aldridge
Ellen Orford – Maria Bengtsson
Bryn Terfel – Captain Balstrode
The Boy – Cruz Fitz
Aerialist – Jamie Higgins

Deborah Warner (director)
Michael Levine (set designs)
Luis F. Carvalho (costumes)
Peter Mumford (lighting)
Kim Brandstrup (choreography)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: William Spaulding)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Mark Elder (conductor)

London has proved fortunate with recent productions of Peter Grimes (and doubtless with older ones too). David Alden’s 2014 production for ENO and Willy Decker’s for the Royal Opera (in its 2011 revival) both had considerable virtues and received performances. This new staging from Deborah Warner and the performances that brought it to life were nevertheless in a class of their own, showing the Royal Opera at the top of its game.

All three productions will have displeased the Campaign for Real Barnacles, and thank goodness for that. Warner takes us into the dark underbelly of a contemporary, down-at-heel seaside town, with neither room nor appetite for prettified nostalgia for an early nineteenth century that never was (and certainly never was in George Crabbe). I thought of a poorer version of Margate, somewhere perhaps in Essex—and lo and behold, had that confirmed in Warner’s programme reference to ‘some of the extremely poor and socially deprived towns of the Essex coast, namely Jaywick Sands’, testament not to any great acuity on my part but to Michael Levine’s sets, Luis F. Carvalho’s costumes, and to the entire ensemble of Warner’s production, sharply, meaningfully choreographed by Kim Brandstrup. There is poverty here, also reckless abandon; there are drugs, alcohol, and sleaze; there is a ‘community’ that rounds on an outsider and in the violence of that rounding discovers a nativist identity and ‘morality’ that chills and kills. It takes back control, polices its borders, and deals with outsiders in a terrifying march of intimidation, fire, and nihilism. This Borough is UKIP, even BNP, country, in which shirtless neo-Nazis mix with dealers such as Ned Keene, one of the more sympathetic townsmen if ultimately untrustworthy on account of his habit; and bigoted, ‘respectable’ rentiers such as Mrs Sedley. It is not, however, an amorphous mass: not everyone is like that, and everyone has his or her own story. Warner takes immense care, as do all of those participating, every member of the chorus clearly directed individually and coming to life both in that individuality and as part of a deadly, group identity. Not only do Grimes and his apprentices—one hauntingly portrayed as a just out-of-touch aerialist vision—have no chance; nor does Ellen Orford, herself a victim of Grimes’s physical violence. ‘The more vicious the society, the more vicious the individual.’

 

There is no sign that Grimes is homosexual, or Muslim, or Polish for that matter; but this is undoubtedly the rough justice that would be meted out to him if he were. It is a similar social tragedy to that one sees in parts of Brandenburg or Saxony, doubtless across the world. But it has a particularly English flavour. They do like to be beside the seaside, and they do not like others, with no place to be there, to attempt to join them. Britten’s fraught relationship to England and Englishness, his (partly) thwarted internationalism, and the parochialism of some of his devotees are set in implied counterpoint, but with the work rather than its critics ultimately setting the terms of examination. It is slightly odd—maybe more than that—that, in the contemporary setting, Grimes’s apprentice should be so young a boy, but even that serves to remind us of another aspect of the ‘Britten problem’, which this contemporary Borough would doubtless address with savage, summary justice. 

There could not, I think, have been a better choice to conduct this production than Mark Elder, who led the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, on as fine form as I can recall, as if a man possessed. He clearly believes in every note of the score and, more to the point, revealed all manner of potentialities I had barely imagined were there. Musical processes are clear and generative, indicative of a serious attempt to address the problems of form that so often bedevil Britten’s music in work and performance. An account of titanic clashes and contrasts spanned, on the one hand, screaming echoes of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth and, beyond it, the Mahler of the Fifth Symphony; and, on the other, passages of translucent beauty that seemed to have all the time in the world, yet are fated to be cut short. Elder’s conducting was urgent, even when spacious, whipping up a sequence of storms of fatal consequence that not only framed, but incited, the action on stage. We were reminded that, here, the sea was a thing of danger as well as livelihood, a theatre of cruelty and redress far more than a picturesque landscape.

Another man possessed was Allan Clayton’s Peter. If I say it was the most beautifully sung account of the role I have heard that would unduly delimit its range, though in many respects it certainly was beautiful—and more youthfully vulnerable than the typical craggy old man. This, crucially, was a performance that dug deep psychologically, that suggested profound consideration of dilemmas and traumas faced by the character, and frankly admitted that not all could or should be answered. I could not help but think of Boris Godunov in Clayton’s final scene; the voice is different, as are music, drama, and almost everything else, yet psychological descent and devastation presented tragic parallels across the divide.

Ellen Orford (Maria Bengtsson), The Boy

Maria Bengtsson gave us a profoundly human, refreshingly unhackneyed Ellen Orford, a force for good whose goodness went so cruelly punished. Her ‘Embroidery Aria’ could not have been more touchingly sung, its difficult intervals navigated with ease and in perfect harmony with the orchestra. Jacques Imbrailo’s Ned Keene offered a fascinating study in ambiguity, perhaps beyond mere good and evil. Powerfully and, again, beautifully sung, so much more lay in the acting: a drug-addled hedonist who exerted a mysterious yet undeniable attraction, not an outside as such, yet never quite to be assimilated. Bryn Terfel’s Balstrode may well be the finest opera performance I have seen from him, fully in command of the role and its possibilities, throughout exuding deep humanity and a wisdom that again set him apart without excluding him. Catherine Wyn-Rogers gave us a world-weary yet lively Auntie of experience, Rosie Aldridge a properly vicious Mrs Sedley, more insidious than John Graham-Hall's nicely buffoonish Bob Boles. There were no disappointments in a strong supporting cast, which seemed to grow out of that minutely observed direction of the chorus: a community of individual and mass imperatives. Choral singing was likewise outstanding, the Royal Opera Chorus on better form than I have heard for a long time, fully engaged in portrayal of Britten, Warner, and Elder’s visions (as well, doubtless, as their own).

 

This enthusiasm comes from a place of ambivalence toward the work itself. I am not yet persuaded that swathes of the second act in particular are not a little dull, nor that the influence of Wozzeck at the beginning of the third is not a little too close for comfort, ‘Arias’ still seem to stand out awkwardly from the rest, and so on. If you are going to be influenced, though, you will struggle to find a better source of influence than Wozzeck, and not every opera can attain the perfection of Figaro or Tristan. This was an outstanding night of theatre, strongly to be recommended to everyone: to the Britten devotees who will not give two hoots about my reservations; to fellow Britten-agnostics, who may also find previous reactions challenged; and even to those more hostile, whose road to conversion may have its point of departure. Not to be missed.

Wozzeck, Paris Opéra, 13 March 2022

Opéra Bastille

Images: Agathe Poupeney / OnP

Wozzeck – Johan Reuter
Drum Major – John Daszak
Andres – Tansel Akzeybek
Captain – Gerhard Siegel
Doctor – Falk Struckmann
First Apprentice – Mikhail Timoshenko
Second Apprentice – Tobias Westman
Fool – Heinz Göhrig
Marie – Eva-Maria Westbroek
Margret – Marie-Andrée Bouchard-Lesieur
Soldier – Vincent Morell
Actors – Nathalie Baunaure, Fitzgerald Berthon, Andrea Fabi, Manon Lheureux

William Kentridge (director)
Luc De Wit (co-director)
Sabine Theunissen (set designs)
Greta Goiris (costumes)
Catherine Meyburgh (video)
Urs Schönebaum (lighting)
Kim Gunning (video operator)  

Maîtrise des-Hauts-de Seins/Children’s Chorus of the Opéra national de Paris (chorus master: Gaël Darchen),
Chorus of the Opéra national de Paris (chorus master: Ching-Lien Wu)
Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris
Susanna Mälkki (conductor)

 

Four-and-a-halfyears ago, I saw William Kentridge’s then new Wozzeck at the Salzburg Festival. I found myself somewhat nonplussed by its more distanced, alienating aspects, thinking them better suited to Kentridge’s Lulu (seen the year before, at ENO). For whatever reason, I found them less of a problem and, in many respects, less apparent in this move to Paris than I had in Salzburg. Why might that have been? Such a question is necessarily speculative, since one never knows how much one is comparing like with like, but I do not think that invalidates the question. Part of the difference may simply have lain with my reception; having spent more time not only experiencing but thinking about contemporary theatre, musical and otherwise, I am probably now more receptive to more distanced approaches. I was also nearer the stage, which, given a staging that was dark in hue and involved quite intricate video projections, was a definite advantage, probably not to be ignored. But I think this was also a more intense musical and dramatic performance, offering greater emotional and psychological depth, enabling a more productive balance between distance and immediacy, to the benefit of both. 

Connected to that, more strongly than I experienced it before, was the overwhelming presence of war, in this case the Great War, though events elsewhere in Europe were doubtless on many minds too. Social brutalisation—remember Britten’s ‘the more vicious the society, the more vicious the individual’ for Peter Grimes—came strongly to the fore, not as a substitute for individual acts, but as a context and in many respects an intensification for them. This felt more strongly as if it were a drama founded in a military context, rather than having that context uneasily tacked on: tribute, I think, to some very fine dramatic performances. But the first in particular of the tavern scenes also felt more central, its madness and its malice seeping out in all directions, even retrospectively. Here, the haunted weirdness of masks (new resonances for a pandemic world) and puppets seemed to fuse more strongly with a post-Mahlerian musical sensibility: those marionettes from the ‘Rondo-Burleske’ of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony come once again to life; or perhaps better (or at least closer to the truth), to death. Here was an expressionism in which Kentridge’s artificiality participated, danced, and sang. 

Not that this was an especially Mahlerian performance. Mahler’s ghosts were present, of course. How could they not be in this opera? But listening again to that same scene from Claudio Abbado’s Vienna recording, I realise that Susanna Mälkki’s concerns were in many respects quite different. Musical processes came more strongly to the fore through Berg’s closed forms, but with a hint at least of the Neue Sachlichkeit of the Twenties (when, of course, composition was completed, and the work’s premiere given). That psychological depth was present in, to borrow once more from Britten, the turning of the musical screw. Individual lines went their different ways, brought together in harmony and in contrapuntal and/or suspended counterpoint, yet also recognising that, more often than not, there remained a distance (that word again) from Mahler’s world, that this was a world of atonality, which had already suffered the war whose catastrophic progress we saw tracked onstage. Mälkki showed a keen sense of the whole, but also of detail: absolutely crucial in this work. She was warmer, I think, than Vladimir Jurowski in Salzburg, or at least less unremittingly formalist, without taking Abbado’s (or, say, Daniel Barenboim’s) late Romanticism as her model. This seemed not only her Wozzeck, but a Wozzeck designed for this production and these singers. 

Much the same could be said of Johan Reuter’s assumption of the title role: tormented, yes, but very much within a particular context, spatial and historical as well as more conventionally expressionist. Reuter made much of the words, without making too much of them, gauging the level of speech and song unerringly, with apt fluidity and undeniable direction of purpose. Eva-Maria Westbroek’s Marie was formidable, flawed, and feisty, never a victim, in a performance that grew out of yet was never confined to the text. John Daszak’s hideously cocky Drum Major, Gerhard Siegel’s mysteriously commonplace (in a good way!) Captain, and Falk Struckmann’s similarly etched Doctor all shone in their different ways. So too did Tansel Akzeybek’s Andres, in what can sometimes seem a lesser role than it is, yet here offered an excellent counterpoint to Wozzeck: what might have been, yet tragically never really would (and would it even have been much better?) One might say the same of Marie-Andrée Bouchard-Lesieur’s Margret, vis-à-vis Marie. The whole sorry society was finely portrayed, with a fine eye and ear both to ensemble and individuality, all underpinned by typically excellent playing of heft, transparency, and a myriad of darkened colours from the Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris.

Whether I have answered my original question, ‘why might that have been?’ I am unsure. Attempting to do so, though, has helped structure my response. In a sense, delineating and structuring responses out of chaos is what Berg and his interpreters are all involved with. 

Don Giovanni, Paris Opéra, 11 March 2022

Opéra Bastille

Don Giovanni – Christian van Horn
Commendatore – Alexander Tsymbalyuk
Donna Anna – Adela Zaharia
Don Ottavio – Pavel Petrov
Donna Elvira – Nicole Car
Leporello – Krzysztof Bączyk
Masetto- Mikhail Timoskenko
Zerlina – Anna El-Khashem

Ivo van Hove (director)
Jan Versweyveld (set designs, lighting)
An D’Huys (costumes)
Isabelle Horovitz (choreography)
Christopher Ash (video)
Jan Vandenhouwe (dramaturgy)

Chorus of the Opéra national de Paris, (chorus master: Ching-Lien Wiu)
Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris
Bertrand de Billy (conductor)

The problem with Don Giovanni, or rather with all too many contemporary approaches to it, whether by directors or audiences (perhaps less musicians), is secular liberals’ inability or refusal to acknowledge its nature as a deeply religious, indeed theological work. It does not tie one down to a single possibility, far from it, but simply to ignore that aspect, likewise its delicate, related balance on the cusp of mythology, serves at best to impoverish and delimit its horizons, and more often to render it and them downright incomprehensible. It is all there in the score, of course, at least as much as in the libretto, still more in the transcendent potentiality of bringing the work to our consciousness, into our bloodstream, in performance; yet liberals, as is their wont, think they know better, all too often lapsing into a skin-deep psychological realism with little to say beyond ‘we neither like nor understand this work, yet consider that to be its fault, not ours’.    

There were signs, I think, that Ivo van Hove and his production team had considered this problem, or at least some issues related to it, although at least during this first revival, they were intermittent and somewhat tentative. (It is always difficult to know what might have been there to start with, not only in staging, but in performance too, though by the same taken, I have seen revivals that have marked a distinct improvement on their first incarnations.) There is little sign of sympathy or admiration with Mozart and Da Ponte’s hero/antihero, which is fine; the work, in many respects disarmingly open, is far from demanding it. Likewise, for very obvious reasons, it is more difficult than once it may have been to accept a more Faustian, some might say nineteenth-century, reading. Was there nonetheless a sense of sin, even mortal sin, remaining? I think there was, perhaps most evidently in Christopher Ash’s arresting video projections onto Jan Versweyveld’s set (stylishly taking in a Classical inheritance with modern response). A vision of souls writhing in something akin to Hell did not seem out of place, but grew out of what had been there all along, neither necessitating nor ruling out divine intervention. Distance between Don Giovanni’s actions and the divine, even if it were only what he himself saw as an ideal version of himself, was clear throughout. He could not live up to his promise, instead tending towards sociopathy (although this could have been made clearer). 

Incipient deconstruction of libertinage—is it more of the ancien régime than of any revolutionary challenge to it?—was somewhat obscured, however, by a disinclination to use social (and political) distinction to bring it out. One need not return to an eighteenth-century society of orders, though one might, to do so, but to level most or all distinctions tends, if one is not careful, to present further difficulties of incomprehension, even incomprehensibility. If Giovanni is neither the ultimate product of a diseased system of privileged liberties, nor a Sadeian-Nietzschean herald of liberty who might lead revaluation of our values, then what is he? How does he manage to get away with it? With Leporello appearing more or less indistinguishable from his master—it can work, as for instance with Peter Sellars’s pair of Harlem twins—the assumption seems to be that the not-very-servant like accomplice stays because ultimately he wants to be like him. Fair enough, but why, given that he is little more than a dislikeable and, more to the point, unsuccessful operator? Moreover, Leporello seemed too close to Giovanni in the first place, not only in often identical costume, but also in his behaviour. I had the impression that the Stone Guest scene was intended to address this, but Leporello’s unwillingness to serve, instead throwing food around and acting more like his master might than his master did, failed ultimately (at least for me) to make much sense. It clashed with words and music, without offering anything in the way of meaningful dramatic counterpoint. Perhaps the arbitrariness was the point; if so, it seemed neither a strong nor coherent enough point to have been worth making. 

This is, of course, a musical drama, and it is perfectly reasonable to say that some at least of such matters might be dealt with by musical means. Alas, Bertrand de Billy is not a conductor likely to make any such, or even other, dramatic points. There were times when, to his credit, he acted as a facilitator for outstanding playing from the Paris Opéra orchestra. Its sweetness of tone in every section was greatly appreciated; likewise sterner passages with considerable backbone. The conductor’s direction, however, proved somewhat listless, individual numbers and even phrases often floating in the moment, then stopping rather than closing, leading nowhere in particular. 

The version of the score—whose decision this was, I do not know—was regrettable too. For once, we did not have an unholy mixture of Prague and Vienna (understandable from the standpoint of singers, yet from no one else’s) but rather what was more or less Vienna. Elvira thus had ‘Mi tradì’; ‘Il mio tesoro’ was replaced with the markedly inferior Leporello-Zerlina duet (its staging, which might have been the making of it, sadly half-hearted); worst, we had cuts in the finale, papered over by that jarring new setting of ‘Resti dunque quel birbon fra Proserpina e Pluton!’ You cannot have it both ways, it might be responded; if you dislike composite versions so much, then you cannot disallow Vienna. Perhaps, but my dislike of ‘traditional’ composite versions rests on their dramatic failure (the finest performance can suspend one’s disbelief, but it must be the finest) and not on their lack of ‘authenticity’. The solution is easy: Prague. Yet no one seems willing to take it. 

Christian van Horn gave an attractive performance of the title role, fully at home in its slippery shifts of style and character, though perhaps ultimately a little lacking in its darkness of soul. Was it a little too genial, especially given the production? There was nonetheless much musically to admire, as there was with Krzysztof Bączyk’s Leporello, though having a darker-toned Leporello compared with his master also posed dramatic problems that seemed to fuse with those of the production. Adela Zaharia and Pavel Petrov made for an outstanding seria pair, clean yet purposeful of line, with coloratura that unquestionably meant something, musically and dramatically. (I actually found myself regretting the loss of Don Ottavio’s second aria.) Much the same might be said of Nicole Car, her interpretation of the mezzo carettere role of Donna Elvira affording considerable erotic as well as more dignified pleasures. Mikhail Timoskenko and Anna El-Khashem were fully at home in the less ambiguously earthy pleasures of Masetto and Zerlina (also a strength of the production, if not fully mirrored in the higher social orders). They exuded immediate attraction—and attractiveness—and were all the better for it, as were we. The Ukrainian bass Alexander Tsymbalyuk received great cheers and applause when taking his curtain call with ‘NO WAR’ emblazoned on his shirt. Rightly so, but it was equally right for his excellent performance as the Commendatore, which offered a rich, dark nobility whose political and religious implications might fruitfully have been engaged with elsewhere.

The Golden Cockerel, English Touring Opera, 5 March 2022

Hackney Empire Theatre

King Dodon – Grant Doyle
Prince Guidon – Thomas Elwin
Prince Aphron – Jerome Knox
General Polkan – Edward Hawkins
Amelfa – Amy J Payne
Golden Cockerel – Alys Mererid Roberts
Queen of Shemakha – Paula Sides
Astrologer – Robert Lewis

James Conway (director)
Neil Irish (set designs and costumes)
Rory Beaton (lighting)

Chorus and Orchestra of English Touring Opera
Gerry Cornelius (conductor)

No one could have known at the time of planning—a couple of years ago, I think—but in current circumstances it was eerie, even uncanny, to sit down to a performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s final opera, The Golden Cockerel. Composed in the aftermath of the disastrous Russo-Japanese war and only premiered, following extended disputes with the censor, in 1909 after Rimsky’s death, it portrays a lazy king persuaded once again to defeat in war following claims, once again, of enemy incursions at the borders of his realm. King Dodon and his two sons are, to be blunt, idiots; their advisors, official and otherwise (the Golden Cockerel, brought as an Astrologer’s gift) are not necessarily any better. A foreign queen who conquers the realm through conquering the king’s heart stands a little close to home too. Situations differ, of course, but it would have been strange indeed not to draw contemporary parallels, if only in hope that a cockerel might come to peck Russia’s latest autocrat to death. ‘What will the new dawn bring? What shall we do without a tsar?’ 

I found it fascinating, if not entirely convincing. In Iain Farrington’s extremely skilful chamber reorchestration, one would often not have known—at least up in the gods—that one was not hearing a larger orchestra. Rimsky’s meeting-point between the folkloric and more modernist, Stravinskian tendencies, mediated as so often by darker, Wagnerian roots, both delighted in itself and posed intriguing dramatic questions of its own, not least in combination with Pushkin. Gerry Cornelius’s command of detail and sweep in the score impressed greatly, as did the playing of the English Touring Opera orchestra. If the referential motivic elements of the composer’s writing sometimes seemed a little obvious, that was hardly a fault of the performance. The English translation by Antál Dorati and James Gibson sounded very dated, making the opera sound unfortunately close to Gilbert and Sullivan. Thank goodness we have now gone beyond attention-seeking rhyming couplets. 

Alas, the second act seemed considerably over-extended for its material. Whenever Rimsky comes closer to Verdi—as, for instance, in The Tsar’s Bride—his musical drama becomes less appealing to me, often bordering on the tedious. Overall proportions to a relatively brief work are a little odd, or felt so. That said, James Conway’s colourful yet darkening, subtly militarising staging offered a sense that knowing orientalism must by now offer its own self-critique—which may just offer us hope. The Astrologer, oddly uncredited in the cast list yet ultimately revealed in the biographies to be Robert Lewis, underwent a final revelation on stage as holy man Rasputin to the Queen’s Tsarina Alexandra. They were the only ones who had actually existed, the rest an illusion (as we had been warned, yet had probably forgotten). Make of that what you will. 

Lewis certainly made the most of his ritualistic appearances dramatically and vocally: a memorable assumption. Grant Doyle offered a fine comedic performance, with rich hints of something darker, to King Dodon, as verbally acute as it was centred of tone. Thomas Elwin and Jerome Knox shone, insofar as the work permitted, as the king’s useless, sailor-suited sons, contrasted and complementary. So too did Paula Sides’s Queen of Shemakha with bewitching coloratura and beguiling lyricism. All roles were cast from strength, detailed portrayals from the company at large contributing to a pervasive sense of barbed merriment. Closer interpretation was largely and, I think, fruitfully left to us.