Opera Today

Vladimir Jurowski, LPO

It was, moreover, a rare pleasure to experience such bold and coherent programming. The problem, alas, was that performances of these works — or performance of this ‘work’ — were not always convincing; it was, perhaps predictably but no less sadly, Beethoven who suffered most. Two of the other ‘movements’, Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw and Nono’s Julius Fučik received excellent performances. A curate’s egg, then, which was hardly the intention.

The Fidelio Overture opened proceedings. It was hard driven, though to be fair, I have heard worse. Odder was the strange, almost balletic lightness of tone, strange until one realised that it arose from a fatal lack of harmonic grounding. I was put in mind of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s recent Philharmonia performance of the Fifth Symphony, which ended up sounding more like Delibes than Beethoven; it too had inspired programming, the symphony prefacing Dallapiccola’s Il prigioniero, yet was let down in Beethoven’s case by inferior performance. And so, Beethoven’s music merely floated along. It was all efficiently despatched by the London Philharmonic Orchestra; the problem lay in Jurowski’s conception. Once again, moreover, Jurowski indulged his odd penchant for mixing modern horns, which, give or take the odd split note, played splendidly, and natural trumpets, whose rasping certainly did not help matters.

Schoenberg was next up. First came his Ode to Napoleon, given in its version for narrator, piano, and string orchestra. I have never been especially convinced by the orchestral version; a string quartet works far better. Sadly, this performance did nothing to alter that judgement. Part of the problem is — and was — that the piano does not blend well with the strings and ends up sounding like a concertante instrument rather than a member of a chamber ensemble. Despite excellent playing from Catherine Edwards, the effect was unconvincing. Robert Hayward contributed an excellent rendition of Byron’s poem, relishing text and subtext alike to chilling effect. Jurowski did not help matters for at least the first half of the performance. Once again, harmonic depth was lacking and direction was disturbingly metronomic. There was little or no sense of the score’s roots in German tradition, not least that of Beethoven. Having said that, Jurowski’s reading improved considerably. By the time we reached the words, ‘If still she loves thee, hoard that gem, ‘Tis worth thy vanish’d diadem!’ the summoned ghosts of Romanticism duly haunted. The stanza, ‘Thou Timour…’ accomplished, perhaps for the first time with respect to this performance, speed without (the wrong sort of) brutality. Schoenberg’s furious inverse ode to Napoleon/Hitler ended with just the right sense of false triumph, the final E-flat cadence — an ironic echo of the Eroica — falling flat as it must. Sadly, a performance that really gathered pace and conviction was blighted by some appalling audience behaviour, not least a French-speaking — yes, literally ‘speaking’ — person in the row in front of me, who flashed around his Blackberry for most of the time.

A Survivor from Warsaw completed the first half. It suffered even worse from the Blackberry wielder, who proceeded not only to type messages throughout the performance, but to chatter to his companion and even to fondle her. Such a reaction to commemoration of the Holocaust would have been obscene enough, but he actually seemed turned on not so much by genocide as by his indifference to it. (I should lay odds that he was a ‘beneficiary’ of ‘corporate hospitality’.) A Survivor survived, just about, but such behaviour ought to lead to a life-time ban. This work is less garrulous than the Ode to Napoleon and seemed to inspire Jurowski less fitfully. It received a more properly modern and focused performance, with less of the agitprop to it. Richly expressive and rhythmically alert, this was at last a reading that justified the hopes of the programme. Ghosts of Mahler and of Schoenberg’s earlier self pervaded work and performance alike. Hayward’s narration was once again excellent, a case in point the combination of brutality and beauty — Nazi æstheticisation of politics brought to mind — in Schoenberg’s setting of the Feldwebel’s words. The horrific race, quickly a stampede, into the chamber was such even before the word ‘stampede’. Militancy, inspired and terrifying, of the male chorus and its hymn, ‘Sh’ma Yisroel’ brought echoes of Bach as well as Beethoven, a spirited rejoinder to the vile ‘Aryanisation’ of German culture official policy had brought. (Even the text of Mozart’s Requiem had had to be altered, ‘Te decet hymnus Deus, in Sion et tibi reddetur votum in Ierusalem,’ rejected in favour of ‘Te decet hymnus Deus, in coelis et tibi reddetur votum hic in terra,’ in Bruno Kittel’s celebrated or notorious 1941 recording.)

The British premiere of Nono’s 1951 Julius Fučik opened the second half, wisely instructed to be performed without a break. (Not that that stopped some applauding the end of the first movement of the Beethoven…) Incomplete, it was first performed — posthumously — at the 2006 Munich Biennale (not almost sixty years ago, as Jurowski claimed, perhaps thinking of composition) and offers another of Nono’s tributes to the memory of the Czech communist and literary critic, hanged following captivity in Berlin in 1943 and an official hero for socialist Czechoslovakia. Fučik’s words — and ‘Voice’ — are employed in Intolleranza 1960 (dedicated to Schoenberg), and Nono’s Composizione per Orchestra no.1, also from 1951, offered another as-yet-secret memorial — programme music hardly the thing for Darmstadt — to Fučik. It was a pity we could not hear the Composizione as well, but perhaps that is just being greedy or plain unreasonable. A strange mini-biography awaited us on the screen as we returned from the interval. I hope that the problematic sentence was a matter of translation — though surely that could have been attended to’ since ‘sadly,’ as in ‘Sadly, the Nazis executed him in 1943,’ really is not the mot juste. The house lights went down so as to focus attention upon the stage and the searchlit interrogation of Fučik. (Still worse now, Blackberry man resumed its activities, lighting up a good part of the stalls with his screen and flashing red light.)

Jurowski captured to a tee the pointillistic post-Webern violence of Nono’s opening, likewise its lyricism that marks the composer’s music even at this stage as quite different from that of Stockhausen. The score blossomed — both in work and performance — into something perhaps surprisingly Schoenbergian, but then Nono never shared Boulez’s resolve to parricide, despite posthumous elevation as Schoenberg’s son-in-law. (It is rather misleading, by the way, to speak of him at this stage in that light, since he had yet to meet Schoenberg’s daughter, Nuria, let alone to marry her. Their meeting had to wait until the 1953 premiere of Moses und Aron.) Obar Ebrahim and Malcolm Sinclair offered excellent performances. This excellent account, antiphonal drumming and all, exuded brutality, psychoticism, and yet inviting, spellbinding beauty — not unlike the interrogation in Intolleranza. It was somehow not unlike a Bach cantata, though Fučik’s last words — ‘Believe me, this has taken nothing, absolutely nothing, from the joy that is in me and that heralds itself each day with some Beethoven theme or other … — inevitably brought one’s focus, insofar as it was not distracted by Blackberry antics, towards another great predecessor. Nor was Schoenberg forgotten. I could not help but think of Helmut Lachenmann’s transcription of a 1960 lecture Nono gave on A Survivor from Warsaw at Darmstadt. It was, Nono, said (my translation):

… the musical-æsthetic manifesto of our era. What Jean-Paul Sartre says in his essay, What is Literature?, about the problem ‘why write?’, is witnessed in utterly authentic fashion in Schoenberg’s creative necessity:

‘And if I am presented with this world and its injustices, then I should not look at it coldly, but … with indignation, that I might expose it and create it in its nature as injustice and abuse. …’

* * *

And further, should someone refuse to recognise Schoenberg’s [here Nono makes reference to a previous quotation from Arnold Schmitz on Bach] docere and movere, above all in his A Survivor from Warsaw, he should know that the words which the nineteen-year-old student, Giacomo Levi, wrote in his last letter before execution by the Fascists in Modena in 1942, are also addressed to him: ‘Do not say that you no longer wish to know anything about it. Consider this, that all that has happened is because you no longer wished to know anything more about it.’

Finally, then, the Fifth Symphony. The odd-numbered movements fared better than the even ones, but this was not, alas, a performance to justify the hopes placed in it. (Most infuriating or even obscene of all was Blackberry man sitting back to ‘enjoy’ what he presumably thought of as the ‘real’ music. He managed to wait until the first movement coda before checking for messages again.) Jurowski took the first movement fast but not entirely unreasonably so. If hardly the last word in profundity, then at least there was a much stronger sense of line than there had been in the overture. One had to put up with those dreadful rasping trumpets though. Beethoven’s extraordinary concision came through, if not the necessary weight of tone and message. It was good to have the opening of the slow movement greeted by a mobile telephone, but in truth, there was little of consequence to be disrupted here. Predictably swift, this is doubtless what passes for a Beethoven slow movement, even one marked “Andante can moto”, in the fashionable circles of an age seemingly incapable, a few Barenboim-like exceptions aside, of responding to the symphonic Beethoven. It sounded more like an intermezzo with unpleasant and arbitrary brass interventions than the unfolding of an inevitable musical narrative. The LPO very much seemed to be going through the motions — and I could not entirely blame them. It was genuinely sad that, following the two previous performances, this music should go for so little, but at least Jurowski’s tempo ensured that it was over relatively quickly.

Rather to my surprise, the scherzo fared better. It was full of menace, not least since melody, harmony, and rhythm now once again seemed to be related to one another. The counterpoint of the trio was irrepressible as well as clear, the ghostliness of the scherzo’s reprise not merely colourful but also chilling. Alas, the opening of the finale was marred by the plodding parade-ground sound of natural trumpets. The horns, by contrast, sounded glorious. It was full of incidental ‘moments’ — not quite in the Stockhausen sense: that might have been interesting… — yet the great sweep of Beethoven’s imagination seemed quite to elude Jurowski. This performance remained stubbornly earthbound, for all its superficial highlighting in apparent attempts to generate ‘excitement’. The drama has to come within; it cannot be appliqué. A message for our time indeed. Whilst I was greatly moved by A Survivor and by Julius Fučik, Beethoven — and this is less sad than tragic — elicited no such reaction. Jurowski’s programming was estimable, but it needed a Gielen or a Barenboim — or, imagine! a Klemperer or a Furtwängler — to carry it off.

Mark Berry

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Performers and Production Information

Robert Hayward (narrator); Omar Ebrahim (Fučik); Malcom Sinclair (Voice in Julius Fučik). Annabel Arden (director); John B. Read (lighting); Pieter Hugo (protographer); Annalisa Terranova (video). Gentlemen of the London Philharmonic Choir (chorus master: Neville Creed); London Philharmonic Orchestra/Vladimir Jurowski (conductor). Royal Festival Hall, London, Wednesday 28 November 2012.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Fucik2.jpg image_description=Julius Fučik product=yes product_title=Ludwig van Beethoven, Overture: Fidelio, op.72c; Arnold Schoenberg, Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, op.41; Schoenberg, A Survivor from Warsaw, op.46; Luigi Nono, Julius Fučik (United Kingdom premiere); Beethoven, Symphony no.5 in C minor, op.67 product_by=A review by Mark Berry product_id=Above: Julius Fučik

Simon Boccanegra Opens Rome Opera 2012-13 Season

By Frank Cadenhead [Opera Today, 28 November 2012]

Yesterday, Conductor Riccardo Muti opened the Rome Opera, where he is “honorary conductor for life,” with a gala presentation of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra. The country’s president and the city’s mayor were only some of the leading figures in attendance.

Rome Opera Opens New Season

The country’s president and the city’s mayor were only some of the leading figures in attendance.

The production is by Adrain Noble with sets by Dante Ferretti, who has worked with cinema giants Frederico Fellini and Martin Scorsese. Baritones George Petean and Dario Solari alternate in the title role with Italian sopranos Maria Agresta and Eleonora Buratto sharing the role of Maria Boccanegra. Two other Verdi operas are on the bill for the bicentenary of his birth.

Wagner bicentenary will be celebrated by Rienzi and the centenary of Benjamin Britten will be honored with performances of his opera Curlew River. The season will end with a David Hockney production of Puccini’s Turandot. Rome has managed to balance the books by increased attendance, no doubt helped by Muti’s presence.

Frank Cadenhead

image=http://www.operatoday.com/boccanegra-roma2_grande.gif image_description=Opening of Rome Opera 2012-13 [Photo courtesy of Riccardo Muti Music] product=yes product_title=Rome Opera Opens New Season product_by=By Frank Cadenhead product_id=Above: Opening of Rome Opera 2012-13 [Photo courtesy of Riccardo Muti Music]

Madame Butterfly, LA Opera

And strangely, though the opening night of the Los Angeles Opera’s production of Puccini’s popular work, was just such a performance, I enjoyed almost every minute of it. Then I got home and wondered why.

The libretto of Madame Butterfly by Luigi Silica and Giuseppe Giacosa (the opera premiered in 1904) did not begin life as a sexy story. Its origin is said to lie in the true story of a Japanese woman, named Tsuru Yamamura, who in the previous century had a son by an Englishman, and who attempted suicide when he abandoned her.

Oksana Dyka as Cio-Cio-San and Milena Kitic as Suzuki

Interest in Japan, newly opened to the West, was international in those years. In 1887 French author, Pierre Loti, a retired Naval officer’s published a fictional memoir of a Geisha dedicated to “Madame la Duchesse de Richelieu.” Loti’s Geisha, Madame Chrysanthème, marries a Caucasian and is depicted, after his departure, counting the money she received from him, as she awaits a new husband. In 1898 American writer, John Luther Long, created a highly romanticized and tragic tale of a Geisha he called Cio-Cio San. “Chou” is the American transliteration of the word meaning Butterfly in Japanese. The young girl, urged on by her American Naval officer husband, gives up her family and religion to take on her role as an American wife. When her husband returns years later with a true American wife, Butterfly kills herself with her father’s sword. David Belasco’s play, based on Long’s piece and famously cited as the inspiration for Puccini’s opera, consists of only one act — at it’s premiere its companion piece was a farce. It does not contain a love scene, but opens just at the moment Pinkerton is about to return. Belasco enhanced the theatrical heartbreak of Long’s story by staging Cio-Cio San’s vigil for Pinkerton with not a word spoken on stage as lighting shifted from day to night and back to day. And he added Pinkerton’s dramatic appearance after Cio-Cio San’s death.

The story of the abandoned Geisha appeared in world literature at a time when verismo was fading from the Italian operatic scene (Puccini’s next heroine was gun-toting Minnie) but realism was still a factor in American writing. It was a time when playwrights and novelists writing about foreigners and regional Americans were turning out dialogue in ill transliterated dialects. We, in 2012, need to be grateful not only to Puccini for setting Butterfly’s story to his exotic score, but to his librettists, Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica for the poetic words they wrote for her. One cannot in this day and age read the pidgin English that both Long and Belasco put into Butterfly’s mouth without cringing.

Although this production of Madame Butterfly is new to Los Angeles, it originated in San Francisco. The sets consist primarily of sliding shoji screens moved about by what I assume were inconspicuously attired stage hands. As one would expect there are few furnishings — certainly no chairs, the whole, imparting a quiet, uncluttered look. Unfortunately, however, just before the love duet, the center screens part to show an American double bed with thick iron bars for its footboard and headboard. I don’t know what it was supposed to add to the scene. All it added for me was jarring ugliness.

Oksana Dyka as Cio-Cio-San, with Patrick Lucaric as her child

Soprano Oksana Dyka, who made her company debut last year year as Tatyana in Eugene Onegin, held back her large voice in the early moments of the first act as the shy Butterfly, but let it soar thereafter in Puccini’s long melodic lines. However, the subtleties of the young girl’s fears and desires eluded her in the love scene. And whether it was poor direction, or some momentary slip, her suicide was poorly staged. Brandon Jovanovich, just returned from singing Lohengrin in San Francisco, was as usual a lithe, handsome Pinkerton, and sang with bright clear sound. Bass baritone Eric Owens, luxury casting as the American consul, Sharpless, who warns Pinkerton of the heartbreak he was likely to cause with this temporary liaison, appeared at times to be emotionally distant from Butterfly. I wondered whether it was a deliberate approach to playing Sharpless, or perhaps the effect of singing so many exciting Alberichs. Milena Kitic, an unusually clear voiced mezzo, was Suzuki, Cio-Cio San’s maidservant. I have never seen as angry a Bonze — that is, Cio-Cio San’s uncle, who accuses her of abandoning her people and her religion in marrying Pinkerton — as was Stefan Szkafarowsky. One had the feeling this singer had been waiting in the wings all evening for his chance to explode on the audience. Rodell Rosel pranced about and sang well as Goro, who brokered both the marriage and the house for Pinkerton. Museop Kim, a singer I enjoyed in the company’s La Bohème last year, as Yamadori, and D’Ana Lombard as Kate, Pinkerton’s American wife, did well in their brief parts.

Madame Butterfly, for which Puccini spent months studying with Japanese musicians, and which incorporates Japanese harmonies and folk melodies, is nevertheless one of his most accessible scores. From first note to last, it is essentially love music — music that tells over and over about love and longing. In this performance the Los Angeles Opera orchestra under its resident conductor Grant Gershon, supplied passion, intriguing orchestral support and the sparkle that sometimes seemed lacking on stage.

Yes, there were distractions and flaws: that gross “American” bed in a serene Japanese setting, not much sexual tension as Pinkerton pleads with his new wife to join him in it, and an ill thought out ending in which Butterfly hears Pinkerton call her name before stabbing herself and nevertheless, proceeds to do it. Why? For the silly childish thought,“Some day you’ll find me dead and you’ll be sorry”?

Yet I had enjoyed the performance. And now I know why — because whatever flaws there may have been in this production, whatever it may have lacked in sparkle, it was a performance filled with lyricism in which orchestra and voices made us aware of Puccini’s poignant affection for each of his characters — and because Puccini’s opera is not about sparks or sex. It’s about the original, sad story of Tsuru Yamamura, a story as old as our world, in which nations and people still do not view each other as equals. Madame Butterfly is an opera about the exploitation by a man of a dependent woman’s freely and fully given love and its subsequent heartbreak. And this, the Los Angeles Opera conveyed fully.

Estelle Gilson

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Cast and Production

Cio-Cio San: Oksana Dyka; B.F. Pinkerton:Brandon Jovanich; Suzuki:Milena Kitic; Sharpless: Eric Owen; Goro:Rodell Rosel; The Bonze: Stefan Szkafrowsky; Prince Yamadori:Museop Kim; Kate Pinkerton: D’Ana Lombard. Conductor: Grant Gershon. Director: Ron Daniels. Scenery and Costume Designer: Michael Yeargan. Lighting Designer:Stephen Strawbridge.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/MdB2158.gif image_description=Brandon Jovanovich as Pinkerton and Oksana Dyka as Cio-Cio-San [Photo by Robert Millard courtesy of Los Angeles Opera] product=yes product_title=Madame Butterfly, LA product_by=A review by Estelle Gilson product_id=Above: Brandon Jovanovich as Pinkerton and Oksana Dyka as Cio-Cio-San

Photos by Robert Millard courtesy of Los Angeles Opera

Haydn and Strauss, LPO

For reasons that elude me, they are not, even this, the so-called Nelson Mass, arguably the most celebrated of all, if only on account of his nickname. Indeed classical sacred music in general, Mozart’s included, with a very few obvious exceptions, is unaccountably neglected by most concert programmers. (When did you last hear Beethoven’s Mass in C major, op.86, any of Gluck’s sacred music, anything that was not a Mass setting from the Salzburg Mozart, or indeed any of the shorter liturgical works by Schubert?) Perhaps performers, audiences, bureaucrats alike still have the Whiggish canard that the Enlightenment was somehow concerned with secularisation seared into their incurious minds; if so, send them away with a copy of Ernst Cassirer’s venerable Philosophy of the Enlightenment in one hand and a good few scores or recordings in the other. In any case, let us hope that the London Philharmonic will programme more of this wonderful repertoire, especially if performed with such success as it was here, under Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

The ‘Kyrie’ plunged us immediately into a world of high liturgical, symphonic, well-nigh operatic, drama, the D minor tonality of Don Giovanni ringing in our ears. It was driven, but not too much; Nézet-Séguin knew where to yield too. The London Philharmonic Choir, here as elsewhere, shone, fullness of tone and precision in no sense antithetical. Sarah-Jane Brandon imparted the necessary note of wartime terror to the return of the ‘Kyrie’ material, form sharply delineated by Nézet-Séguin. A propulsive opening to the ‘Gloria’ shared that marriage of choral weight and transparency. It struck me, perhaps for the first time, how much Haydn’s writing for soprano against choir prefigures the ‘Hymn’ in The Creation, which lay, after all, just around the corner. The setting of the words ‘miserere nobis’ seemed to evoke Mozart — which of course in many senses it does, Haydn always keen to learn at the hands of the younger genius.

A particularly Haydnesque combination of Baroque sturdy figured bass, such as one always finds in his setting of the Creed (‘Tu es Petrus’) and Beethovenian symphonism characterised the opening section of the ‘Credo’. It was nicely shaded too, without fussiness. The cult of alte Musik furthered by Gottfried van Swieten, Viennese patron to Mozart and Haydn, as well as librettist (of sorts) for Haydn’s oratorios, was heard here for the inspirational influence it was: none of today’s mere antiquarianism (at best), but a vital force, informing performance and composition alike. Just listen to the words ‘et homo factus est’, Handel channelled via Haydn’s loving yet vigorous offices. The final section, like much of the rest of the faster material, was taken at a challenging tempo, or at least a tempo that would have proved challenging, had it not been for the excellence of orchestral and choral execution.

The ‘Sanctus’ was properly imploring, taken at a magnificently slow tempo, without the slightest hint of dragging. ‘Pleni sunt cœli...’ came as a thunderbolt of joy. A flowing contrast to both parts of that preceding movement was offered by a flowing ‘Benedicturs’. Militarism made its point, chillingly, yet commendably without the exaggeration one would most likely have endured from latter-day ‘authenticke’ freak-shows. Textures were clear and weighty (where necessary). Nézet-Séguin handled the ‘Agnus Dei’ with loving tenderness. Sarah Connolly offered excellent solo work at the opening, soon joined by her equally fine colleagues, Brandon, Robin Tritschler, and Luca Pisaroni. ‘Dona nobis pacem’ brought a wonderful, elating feeling of choral and orchestral release. Was anyone a more joyful contrapuntist — or homophonist! — than Haydn? As he is alleged to have said to a (slightly dubious) biographer, Giuseppe Carpani, ‘At the thought of God my heart leaps for joy, and I cannot help my music doing the same.’

Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben followed the interval. It is difficult to think of anything meaningful to connect the two works, so it was better approached simply as a contrast — which indeed it was. Nézet-Séguin and the LPO revelled in the opening kaleidoscope of colour, which sometimes, quite rightly, tended a little towards the phantasmagorically nauseous. The LPO’s cellos shone particularly, horns (led by David Pyatt) here and elsewhere quite glorious. Strauss’s critics were properly carping; Pieter Schoeman’s violin solo offered a delectable ‘feminine’ contrast, clean but not clinical, sinuous but not cloying. It was an interesting reading taken as a whole: not overtly symphonic, yet by the same token certainly not without form. Rather, the latter seemed to emerge from the material, which is doubtless as it should be. (Not that there is just one way of that happening, of course.) Battle was instrumental in more than one sense, a battery of brass and percussion both impressing and amusing: Strauss the inveterate ironist. It was brutal, but in a toy soldiers’ sort of way. There were a few occasions when I thought Nézet-Séguin might have relaxed a little more, but that was certainly preferable to meandering, always a danger in this score. The difficulty of shooting’s one bolt too early — I am not even convinced that Karajan always showed himself innocent of that all-too-seductive mistake — was avoided completely: quite an achievement.

Mark Berry

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Sarah-Jane Brandon (soprano); Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano); Robin Tritschler (tenor)

Luca Pisaroni (bass-baritone); London Philharmonic Choir (chorus master: Neville Creed); London Philharmonic Orchestra/Yannick Nézet-Séguin (conductor). Royal Festival Hall, London, Saturday 24 November 2012.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/N%C3%A9zet-S%C3%A9guin.gif image_description=Yannick Nézet-Séguin [Photo by Marco Borggreve courtesy of Askonas Holt] product=yes product_title=Joseph Haydn, Missa in Angustiis, ‘Nelson Mass’, Hob. XXII:11, and Richard Strauss, Ein Heldenleben, op.40 product_by=A review by Mark Berry product_id=Above: Yannick Nézet-Séguin [Photo by Marco Borggreve courtesy of Askonas Holt]

Bizet’s Carmen at ENO

In a bare, sandy arena shrouded in dirt and dust, the battle of the sexes assumes a distinctly unpleasant tint as masculine bravura and matey-ness reveal their nastier side: all men are aggressive and sadistic, all women shallow and sexualised, collusive in their subjugation. In an indeterminate 1970s location - which, in an explanatory programme article, Maria M. Delgado terms a ‘border space’ - the only splashes of colour are a dirty Spanish flag (degradingly serving in Act 4 as a beach towel for a sun-seeking bather) and Micäela’s rather ugly hippy shirt: life here is perilous and desperate, and self-serving ruthlessness offers the only hope of survival.

It is a potentially intriguing and insightful concept: but, such deadening violence is by nature static rather than dynamic, and the problem with this at times startlingly discerning and imaginative production is that as it progresses it needs a shot of dramatic drive - rather like the battered Mercedes saloons of Act 3 that require a helpful shove from the band of itinerant migrants to get them rolling into position.

This lack of motion is, paradoxically, intrinsic to what is perhaps Bieito’s most powerful visual symbol - namely, the circular rings which serve as bull-ring, beach and bad-land, and which baldly announce the fatal confinement which Carmen can never evade. When, in Act 4, Lillas Pastia - an Arab marked as an outsider by his trashy bling and white suit - inscribes a white circle on the bare stage, we know unequivocally that the noose is pulling ever tighter around Carmen’s neck. The final image is the most shocking and most revealing: like a bloody carcass, the dead Carmen is dragged across the circle by a remorseless, deadened José - her animalistic intensity irrevocably and pitilessly quenched - as snatches of the toreador’s victory salute announce the latter’s destructive conquest in the bull-ring.

Elsewhere, the circle proves a less effective device, as in the first scene where a rifle-bearing soldier, clad only in boots and underpants, runs repetitively around the stage, his public punishment enforced until his is felled by fatigue. An obvious sign of repressive cruelty: but also a visual distraction, just when we are trying to get our bearings. Do we follow his futile rotations, and miss something of import in the opening moments? Or do we try to ignore him, in which case, why is he there?

Bizet’s Carmen seduces by song and dance. Movement underpins her dangerous power. So, it is unhelpful that here her Habenera is sung initially on the threshold of a telephone box (one of the set designer Alfons Flores’ few props) - is she phoning to taunt a former lover? - and subsequently standing stock still, centre-stage, facing the audience. Arrested and jailed, Carmen uses the slippery lilt of the Seguidilla to entrance and entrap José: the ambiguous modality of Bizet’s music and the physical impulses of the pseudo-gypsy dance prove hypnotically irresistible. But, this Carmen is tied, hands behind back, to a phallic flagpole, and the only gyrations she can venture are some tentative knee-bends - Peter Stringfellow would not be impressed. Similarly, in Act 2, when José arrives at Lillas Pastia’s ‘tavern’ - here a shabby Mercedes love-mobile - Carmen declares that she will dance for his honour and reward: the rhythmic impulse of her song is strongly physical, something which is hard to convey if you are hanging from an open car door.

This lack of motion is most problematic in Act 3: the stage is over-populated by sundry automobiles (admittedly the back seat of one provides a neat hiding place for Micäela) and a crowd of crooks and prostitutes, and there is simply no space for the principals to move. Restricted to the forestage and denied the freedom of corporeal expression, this Carmen is physically impotent, irrevocably diminished.

Bieito is keen to reverse our assumptions and stereotypes. Teasing us in the opening scene with an alluring brunette who, suggestively drawing on her cigarette, wanders nonchalantly through the salivating soldiers, he then presents us with a blonde Carmen dressed in a pencil skirt. In the title role, Ruxandra Donose sings with unfailing warmth; she is precise and technically assured. However, the part seems to lie a little too low for Donose and the necessary earthy, raunchy lustre is lacking. It does not help that her José, Adam Diegel, is a rigid stage partner. After a stiff start, the tightness and unyieldingness in Diegel’s voice did relax somewhat, and he injected genuine feeling and colour into the Act 2 Duet. Yet, there was a tendency for climactic phrases in the upper register to fade shapelessly. Despite his muscular, brawny physique, Diegel’s stilting stage presence severely diminished the emotional tension between the fated couple.

Elizabeth Llewellyn’s Micäela is certainly an outsider, her sparkling blouse and livid blue eye shadow a slightly disconcerting outburst of brightness in this otherwise drab milieu. This Micäela is no innocent; in Act 1, she professes to bring a greeting from José’s mother, but bourgeois sentiment is manifestly and unashamedly discarded when, rather than offering a demure peck on the cheek, she grabs her José in a passionate embrace. José’s subsequent words, “I see the face of my mother”, triggered an unfortunate snigger. Indeed, throughout the ‘prim and proper’ translation is strangely incompatible with the blatant nastiness of Bieito’s conception.

Llewellyn deservedly won the warmest ovation of the evening; her Act 3 aria was potent with passion and commitment. But, although there is not a phrase that is not perfectly shaped, a sound that is not infinitely agreeable, Llewellyn fails to convince dramatically, her feistiness at odds with the pure integrity of her music.

As Mercédès and Frasquita respectively, Madeleine Shaw and Rhian Lois were a formidable double act. But, giving Mercédès a pretty daughter who, luridly and inappropriately attired, is encouraged to join her elders in ‘entertaining the officers’ may further the theme of underage sexual abuse, but seems a questionable motif.
Graeme Danby is strong as a violent, thuggish Zuniga; and Duncan Rock made a fine Corporal Moralès. But, Leigh Melrose’s Escamillo was more self-satisfied local bigwig than adulated hero; he did not have the vocal or dramatic presence required.

The ENO chorus were committed and vibrant, but the lack of subtlety was a little wearing. From the men, there’s just too much groping and grunting: the women’s chorus in Act 1, as they unwind in nicotine-induced relaxation after a hard day in the factory, is disagreeably disrupted by the soldiers’ testosterone-fuelled antics, and it’s no surprise that Act 2 closes with a woman being brutally strung up on the flagstaff, her shrieking on the stake presumably a prelude to gang rape.

During the Entr’acte preceding Act 3 Bieito tries to suggest that underneath the foul vulgarity a compassionate sensitivity lingers: a naked male soldier sways gracefully, his modesty preserved by the enveloping mist, but his elegant intrusion in an otherwise graceless milieu seems merely an opportunity for some gratuitous nudity. Too often the chorus are physically static: the streetwise migrant children do not leap and play, but rather thrust their begging bowls accusingly at the audience; the restless crowd, eager for the pitting of man against bull, press impatiently against a rope which stretches the length of the stage.

Conductor Ryan Wigglesworth coaxed much refinement from his players, the woodwind and horns in particular conversing with the voices with beautiful clarity and a pleasing lack of bombast. Tempo-wise Wigglesworth doesn’t quite get it right though; after a breakneck first six bars, which left his players trailing in his wake, he put on the brakes resulting in a safe but somewhat unscintillating overture. Elsewhere the ensemble between pit and stage was less than satisfactory, although this may improve during the run. In general, the orchestral rhythms need a bit more bite and boldness.
There is much in this production to provoke reflection, and to encourage fresh evaluation of this well-known opera. Bruno Poet’s lighting creates startling, incisive effects.

There are many deft details, as when Carmen defiantly daubs a lipstick heart on a soldier’s breast, or when José slips on Carmen’s shoes as if she is a Barbie doll to be fashioned as he pleases. Likewise, the towering presentation and subsequent defilement and dismantling of the familiar Osborne bull emblem, which once littered the Spanish rural landscape, is a powerful visual gesture, suggesting the inevitable demise of this cruel masculine world, as symbolised by the posturing of the bullring. However, ultimately there is a frustrating lack of sexual frisson, or even emotional connection, between the three protagonists: this is no Ai no corrida.

Claire Seymour

image=
image_description=

product=yes
product_title=Georges Bizet : Carmen
product_by= Carmen - Ruxandra Donose; José - Adam Diegel; Escamillo - Leigh Melrose; Micäela - Elizabeth Llewellyn; Zuniga - Graeme Danby; Moralès - Duncan Rock; Frasquita - Rhian Lois; Mercédès - Madeleine Shaw; Dancairo - Geoffery Dolton; Remendado - Alan Rhys-Jenkins; Lillas Pastia - Dean Street; Conductor - Ryan Wigglesworth; Director - Calixto Bieito; Designer - Alfons Flores; Costume Designer - Mercè Paloma; Lighting Designer - Bruno Poet

English National Opera, The Coliseum, London Wigmore Hall, London 21st November 2012
product_id=

Roméo et Juliette by Arizona Opera

The opera had its world première at the Théâtre Lyrique Impérial du Châtelet in Paris on April 27, 1867. It was Gounod’s biggest hit after Faust, which was first seen in 1859, and it was sorely needed. Faust had been performed 300 times since its premiere, but his next operatic compositions: Philemon et Baucis, La Colombe and Mireille, were nowhere near as successful.

After its Paris opening, Roméo was seen in Italian at Covent Garden in London on July 11, 1867 and in French at the Academy of Music in New York on November 15 of that year. The opera was originally thought to be most notable for its exquisitely constructed duets and for Juliette’s first act waltz song, ‘Je veux vivre’. Since then, however, her dramatic Poison Aria ‘Amour ranime mon courage,’ which was sometimes omitted in earlier performances, has become one of the work’s centerpieces. 

On November 16, 2012, Arizona Opera presented Roméo et Juliette at Phoenix’s Symphony Hall in a mostly traditional production by Candace Evans. She told the story in an easily understandable manner that brought out the personalities of the work’s many characters. The one controversial aspect of Evans’ production was her use of narrators to present some of Shakespeare’s original lines. They spoke over the orchestral music during the overture and the interludes. Fight director Andrea Robertson had the young men dueling quite realistically. The fact that every move was carefully choreographed was never evident. The scenery, originally designed by R. Keith Brumley for Lyric Opera of Kansas City, was dark and colorless, but functional. Corinna Rose Bohren’s costumes, fashioned after the work of Peter J. Hall, added the necessary color to the stage picture. Douglas Provost’s lighting design, too, served to add some spice to the stage picture.

It was the inspired conducting of James Meena that held this production together. His tempi were taught but he always allowed the singers any leeway they needed. Zach Borichevsky and Corinne Winters, a couple in real life, sang Roméo and Juliette most convincingly. Tall and slim with an exciting sound to his tenor voice, Borichevsky was perfect for his part, while Winters, a petite Juliette, had both the lustrous vocal timbre for the Waltz Song and the bold dramatic colors for the Poison Aria.   Both these singers can act, too, and that added measurably to this performance. Borichevsky sang a small part in Richard Strauss’ Arabella last summer in Santa Fe but even that few minutes onstage were enough to alert the audience to his significant talent.

Jamie Offenbach was a stentorian and commanding pater familias as Capulet and David Adam Moore sang his technically difficult Queen Mab Aria with pizzazz. Contralto Meredith Arwady is a talented comedian and her scenes afforded considerable relief to the otherwise unrelenting tragedy of the story. Singing the dual roles of Frère Laurent and the Duke of Verona was the sumptuous-voiced Jordan Bisch who created believable characters in both cases.

In her portrayal of Stéphano, resident artist Laura Wilde sang her aria with robust tones that could have had a bit more dynamic variation. David Margulis and Thomas Cannon, also members of the company’s young artist program, were thoroughly committed to their roles of Benvolio and Grégorio. Henri Venanzi’s chorus is always a delight and this performance was no exception. They French was good and so was their musical performance. The staging had them sometimes standing as a block, but when they did move they were individual family members and townspeople. This was a well though out production that gave the Arizona audience a chance to appreciate some fine new singers. 

Maria Nockin

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Cast and Production

Roméo: Zach Borichevsky; Juliette: Corinne Winters; Capulet: Jamie Offenbach; Mercutio: David Adam Moore; Frère Laurent and The Duke of Verona: Jordan Bisch; Gertrude: Meredith Arwady; Stéphano: Laura Wilde; Benvolio David Margulis; Grégorio Thomas Cannon; Narrators: Sterling Beeaff, Peter Oldak, Natalie Sanchez; Conductor: James Meena; Director: Candace Evans; Chorus Master: Henri Venanzi; Fight Director: Andrea Robertson; Scenic Designer: R. Keith Brumley; Costume Designer: Corinna Rose Bohren; Lighting Designer: Douglas Provost. Arizona Opera at Phoenix Symphony Hall November 17, 2012.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/RJ_AZO_01.gif image_description=Zach Borichevsky as Roméo and Corinne Winters as Juliette [Photo courtesy of Arizona Opera] product=yes product_title=Roméo et Juliette by Arizona Opera product_by=A review by Maria Nockin product_id=Above: Zach Borichevsky as Roméo and Corinne Winters as Juliette [Photo courtesy of Arizona Opera]

Tosca (Postscript) in San Francisco

First and foremost Angela Gheorghiu is a diva. She holds the stage by the sheer force of her personality, like perhaps no other contemporary diva. The excitement she brought to the stage with her entrance was indeed palpable, and she played the first act softly, alternating coyness with temperament, interspersing a forceful high note from time to time, even a few entire phrases rang out. There was no doubt that this diva, Tosca, was high maintenance, that she was trouble. A diva who would in actual fact engage a powerful man — Scarpia. Her first act was a masterpiece, worth the price of admission.

Italian baritone Roberto Frontali however plays an insidious rather than a powerful Scarpia. In the first act his underhanded tactics to track Cavaradossi and entrap Tosca expose his truly perverse psyche. He begins the second act publicly proclaiming his consuming sadism. Downstage center, to all of us. No secrets.

But as the second act progressed there was a personality change in both Tosca and Scarpia. Tosca shed her temperament revealing a weak, vulnerable woman who had lived for her art, turning to and walking toward Scarpia, making her aria, softly, a pitiable confession, submitting to her tormentor. Scarpia however had become uncertain of his sadistic tools, his threats were absorbed into the retro scenery. He became palpably impotent. Mme. Gheorghiu, Tosca, the trapped victim, now became sly. Softly and perversely she was the insidious tormenter. You know what happened.

Conductor Nicola Luisotti played along, allowing an unusual orchestra continuum to percolate under this act that seemed nearly parlato (spoken) rather than sung. A highly unusual Tosca, Act II. Disquieting.

The third act is the Cavaradossi act, tenor Massimo Giordano brought out the turgid in Maestro Luisottii — huge, round orchestral tones that went nowhere. Giordano, who did made real tenorial noise upon rare occasion, nailed his high notes strangely, scooping up with a jump of a minor third. He evoked scattered applause for what is usually a show-stopper (e lucevan le stelle). La Gheorghiu, Tosca, entered, muttered her instructions softly, deftly acting non-stop (where was the singing?). You know what happened.

Tosca, la Gheorghiu, fled up the parapet, forgetting to shed her cloak and throw it at her pursuers who pretended she did and fell anyway. Then there was a very strange moment — you felt that Angela really did not want do that nasty jump. But she had to.

If you want a magnificent Tosca go to that of verismo diva Patricia Racette, if you want a gourmet, weird Tosca that of la Gheorghiu may fill the bill.

Michael Milenski

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Cast and Production

Floria Tosca Act I: Angela Gheorghiu: Floria Tosca; Mario Cavaradossi: Massimo Giordano; Baron Scarpia: Roberto Frontali; Angelotti: Christian Van Horn; Spoletta: Joel Sorensen; Sacristan: Dale Travis; Sciarrone: Ao Li; Jailer: Ryan Kuster; Shepherd Boy: Etienne Julius Valdez. San Francisco Opera Orchestra and Chorus. Conductor: Nicola Luisotti; Stage Director: Jose Maria Condemi; Production Designer: Thierry Bosquet; Lighting Designer: Christopher Maravich. San Francisco War Memorial Opera House. November 21, 2012.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/03--Tosca-G.gif
image_description=Angela Gheorghiu as Tosca and Massimo Giordano as Cavaradossi [Photo by Cory Weaver courtesy of San Francisco Opera]

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product_title=Tosca (Postscript) in San Francisco
product_by=A review by Michael Milenski
product_id=Above: Angela Gheorghiu as Tosca and Massimo Giordano as Cavaradossi [Photo by Cory Weaver courtesy of San Francisco Opera]

Joan of Arc as Atheist Heroine

Although the composer enjoyed widespread popularity in the mid-1920s with his opera Die Vögel and religious works such as his Te Deum which curried favour with the devout statesman Konrad Adenauer, Braunfels’ antagonism toward the Nazis and half-Jewish heritage led to a ban on his music starting in 1933. It was not until 2001 that Jeanne D’Arc, written at the height of the war between 1938-43, was unveiled to the public with a concert performance in Stockholm starring Juliane Banse and conducted by Manfred Honneck. Seven years later, the Deutsche Oper engaged the late directing provocateur Christoph Schlingensief to conceive what would be the opera’s staged premiere.

Often interpreted as a reaction to the brutality of the Holocaust, Jeanne D’Arc expresses a desperate belief in the powers of the divine to redeem the spiritually pure from the persecution of a society blinded by false values. The French martyr and Catholic saint Joan of Arc had of course already conjured operas by Giuseppe Verdi and Arthur Honegger, yet it was a performance of Hindemith’s subversive Mathis der Maler that moved Braunfels to pen his own libretto and carry forth with a religiously laden opera. Choruses lifted from Passion oratorios intermingle with blocks of extended tonality that evoke Wagner and Strauss without creating a hypnotic sense of inebriation. The most interesting passages emerge in the unpredictable harmonic development and sardonic trumpet fanfares at the start of the second act that give full expression to Braunfels’ unassuaged frustration.

It is a shame that Schlingensief’s production, revived for three performances this season and seen November 16, adopts an atheist critique of western Christianity that is subsequently drowned in silly, morbid gags and distracting video projections (executed with Anna-Sophie Mahler and Søren Schuhmacher). Footage ranging from shots of a Nepalese village, where a wreathed corpse is burned in a religious process, to the juxtaposition of church boys with references to Mafia activity only misconstrues Braunfels’ simple allegory. Images of Schlingensief himself among the Nepalese and the oversized anatomical set of lungs that descend downstage may make this staging a fascinating historical document (the director died of lung cancer in 2010), but he imposes more on this opera than he illuminates. Ultimately, it is hard to justify the expense that went into the rotating stage’s convolution of scenes (designs by Thomas George and Thekla von Müllheim).

A live cow emerges as an ostensible symbol for Johanna when the wife of the Knight Baudricourt insists that she should be set free to bring an end to pestilence in the village, accompanied by a nonsensical sign reading “Tote Kuh fällt vom Schnurrbart” (the dead cow falls from its whiskers). Gaggles of midgets in nun suits and projections of animal insides are enough to make one cringe, but the distaste reaches its peak in an extra with cerebral palsy who, dressed in a crown and gymnast’s suit (costumes by Aino Laberenz), writhes in spasms with the music until he is smothered in fake blood and chokes with suicidal gags for what felt like much too long. Although the character’s symbolic presence as an extension of the King’s suffering eventually makes itself clear, the exploitation of a disabled individual to this artistic end is questionable at best. Schlingensief surely intended to make a statement in favour of tolerance for all human beings, but his warped concept of social activism only undermines the historical value of Braunfels’ opera. The director also replaces some of the Inquisitor’s seminal lines with the spoken words of a midget, such as the final “We have burned a holy being!” The effect is perverse and detracts from the weight of the story. Just as ridiculous is the moment when Joan of Arc emerges as a black-faced death angel from an oversized birthday cake, only to light flickering candles as a symbol of her burning at the stake.

 

Despite the tremendous stamina and purity of tone American soprano Mary Mills brought to the title character, she was hampered by the stilted stage concept. Rarely has there been a better example of Regietheater’s power to undermine the presence of impeccable, if not so thespian-oriented, musicianship. The rich-voiced English baritone Simon Neal gave a standout performance as Joan’s ally, Gilles de Rais, and Kim-Lilian Strebel and Annie Rosen made for a prettily sung, homogeneous pair as her female patron saints Katharina and Margarete. In the role of St. Michael, the tenor Paul McNamara gave an earnest delivery but suffered from a somewhat swallowed timbre; the orchestra of the Deutsche Oper under Matthias Foremny also could have helped matters by producing more restrained pianissimi.

Clemens Bieber made for an affecting King, even if one had to avert one’s eyes from the cartoonish portrayal Schlingensief set out to achieve. Tobias Kehrer gave a warm portrayal of Johanna’s father, Jacob, entering the stage in bishop garb on a reindeer sled, and the nasal timbre of Paul Kaufmann made for an appropriately pathetic portrait of the shepherd Colin. Jörg Schörner gave a fine performance in the role of the sympathizing Duke of Alençon, while Lenus Carlson made for an imposing Duke de la Trémouille. Yosep Kang also stood out as Bertrand de Poulengy. The orchestra of the Deutsche Oper was stronger in soaring lyric lines than complex polyphony, with the brass especially smudged. The house chorus also did not sound as rehearsed as usual despite its reliably strong performance. Several seats were empty after intermission, a rare occurrence in Berlin. Perhaps it would have made more sense to focus on this musical specimen in concert performance, which is exactly what the Salzburg Festival has planned for 2013.

Rebecca Schmid

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Joan_305.gif image_description=Scene from Jeanne d'Arc - Szenen aus dem Leben der Heiligen Johanna [Photo by Thomas Aurin courtesy of Deutsche Oper Berlin] product=yes product_title=Joan of Arc as Atheist Heroine product_by=By Rebecca Schmid product_id=Above: Scene from Jeanne d’Arc — Szenen aus dem Leben der Heiligen Johanna

Photos by Thomas Aurin courtesy of Deutsche Oper Berlin

Wozzeck at Los Angeles

One took place in Berkeley, (see OT), one in Los Angeles (about which further) and one is scheduled for New York.

Why Wozzeck? It’s an opera largely unknown to the usual opera going public and therefore likely to be box office poison. It’s an opera, unknown as well, to many musicians. Two Philharmonia instrumentalists commented on never having played the work before, and not liking it when they began rehearsals. Yet Maestro Salonen deliberately chose to perform the work on this tour. “I wanted to do something that has been very central in my life and in my repertoire for all those years, yet something that I haven’t performed in the United States.” he said. “And Wozzeck was one of those pieces — the first opera I ever conducted in my life. I was still in my twenties…and it has been absolutely central to me since.”

To any opera goer, who has been resistant to Wozzeck and to “the so-called atonal style” (a term used by Berg in discussing the opera), a statement like the above by a musician of Salonen’s status, should be reason enough to search out and listen to the work. But Salonen offered an even more compelling reason. “Wozzeck” he observed, is “one of the most powerful things composed by anybody. It’s hugely emotional, hugely dramatic and hugely tragic — with moments of humor, great tenderness and deepest despair ….It’s one of the most powerful experiences you can have in a concert hall.”

Wozzeck — a quick overview — the libretto: The plot is not much. You’ve heard or read the story every day in whatever media you follow.“Lover/husband kills girlfriend/wife — defense pleads insanity.”And indeed it was the 1824 execution of a Leipzig ex-soldier named Woyzeck, for whom one of the first ever insanity pleas was offered, (and denied) that inspired a young writer named Georg Büchner to begin writing a play on the subject.Büchner composed 23 sketches - essentially character sketches and brief encounters, but never completed the work. Young and radical, Büchner, who died in 1837 at the age of 23, was struck by what he saw as oppression of the poor by the rich and powerful. His well-to-do, powerful, self centered and cruel authority figures, a Doctor, an army Captain, and Drum Major, exploit, manipulate and destroy the impoverished and powerless Woyzeck and his wife. In the play, as in the opera, Woyzeck kills his wife and then drowns. Büchner’s incomplete and disordered sketches were eventually put together by others to form a play first performed seventy-six years after his death, in 1913. Immediately upon seeing the play, Berg determined to turn it into an opera. He chose fifteen of Büchner’s sketches and reordered them into three acts. Wozzeck (Berg changed the name) premiered in 1925, nearly a century after the playwright’s death.

The music- quickly again, though it’s information you don’t need in order to enjoy the opera. To accomplish that, you need only to listen and listen again.

As you’d expect much has been written about Berg’s genius in making a coherent musical whole of this disjointed text. He was a member of the Viennese School, led by Arnold Schoenberg, which in Berg’s own words had theretofore been “restricted to the creation of small forms such as songs, piano pieces and orchestral pieces.” In his detailed 1929 discussion of Wozzeck he describes the harmonic and structural techniques he employed to produce a large, cohesive work “without using tonality and the formal possibilities which spring from it.”

But don’t let Berg scare you. His music offers points of rest and coherency. Berg drew his audience’s attention to the harmony at the end of each act. “The point in a tonal composition at which the return to and establishment of the main key is made clear, so that it is recognizable to the eyes and ears of even the layman, must also be the point at which the harmonic circle closes in an atonal work. This sense of closure was first of all ensured by having each act of the opera steer towards one and the same closing chord, a chord that acted in the manner of a cadence and that was dwelled on as if on a tonic.”Berg employed the tonal feature of repeated Bs heard in every range, every instrument, and every dynamic associated with love and death in Third Act. There is dance music played by an accordion, a guitar and an out of tune piano in the ensuing tavern scene.And there’s Marie’s tender lullaby, a melody I assure you, it’s possible to keep in your head.

Berg’s lengthy lecture about the construction of Wozzeck reads the way Sergio Pininfarina might have sounded explaining how he put his latest Ferrari together. Fascinating — but to us ordinary folk, the power, the emotion, the pleasure derives not from the blueprint, but from the product itself.

The performance: Maestro Salonen’s affection and affinity for Wozzeck was made patently clear in this staged version of the opera. It was performed straight through with only brief pauses at the end of each act for the conductor to sit quietly and have some water. A large screen with English titles was visible throughout the house. The male singers were dressed alike in black pants and shirts, the two women, Marie and her friend, Margret wore long, elegant garments. The singers seemed closely supervised by Salonen, who faced them quite often and quite specifically cued them.

This was a unique performance of Wozzeck that would enhance anyone’s appreciation of the work in greatest part because of Salonen’s extraordinary intensity and attention to musical detail. However, the particular visual aspects of the Walt Disney Concert Hall were a factor as well. In this venue, where a large part of the audience can look directly down onto a well lit orchestra, it was possible to see how some of the opera’s most emotional moments were created: the single violist accompanying a vocal line, or the two percussionists slamming at a single timpani at a cataclysmic moment.

Salonen’s animated conducting style generally evokes comments by reviewers. What struck me most was his stance for instant cut-offs. Turned toward his left and the singers, he would stop sideways on the podium — and slash his baton toward the orchestra like a swordsman holding off a threatening enemy.

Danish bass-baritone Johan Reuter was a powerful and moving Wozzeck. His large well focused voice served him as well for tender moments, as for fury. His lumbering unsteady gait entering and leaving the stage suited the character. As Marie, Wozzeck’s wife, German soprano Angela Denoke, who had vocal problems two years ago, sounded as if those were well in the past. Her large lyric voice rang effortlessly throughout its range and her acting captured both Marie’s affection for Wozzeck and their child, as well as her attraction to the Drum Major. British tenor Peter Hoare, who began his musical life as a percussionist, made a clear-voiced, suitably nasty Captain. Hubert Francis, dressed more smartly than the townspeople in white-tie and tails, was appropriately cocky, then fierce as the Drum Major. Kevin Burdette, a young American bass, who flew in the morning of the Los Angeles performance to replace Tijl Faveyts, sang the Doctor fluently — occasionally with the aid of score. Joshua Ellicott, as Andres, Anna Burford, as Margret, and Zachary Mamis, as Marie’s child, were excellent in smaller roles, as were Henry Waddington, Eddie Wade and Harry Nicoll. The UC Berkeley Chamber Chorus and the Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir were impressive. Instrumentalist of the UC Berkeley Symphony contributed to the performance as well.

It should be noted that Wozzeck was not the only work that Maestro Salonen and the Philharmonia are performing on their tour, and that the tour includes many more cities than the above three named. The orchestra’s performance in San Diego of Mahler’s 9th Symphony was another example of Salonen’s ability to elucidate the emotional elements of a profound musical work.

Estelle Gilson

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Cast and Production

Johan Reuter: Wozzeck; Angela Denoke:Marie; Hubert Francis: The Drum-Major; Joshua Ellicott:Andres; Peter Hoare:the Captain; Kevin Burdette:the Doctor; Henry Waddington:First Apprentice; Eddie Wade:Second Apprentice; Harry Nicoll:an Idiot;Anna Burford:Margret; Zachary Mamis, Marie’s Child

Philharmonia Orchestra. Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor

Members of the UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra. David Milnes, director. UC Berkeley Chamber Chorus. Marika Kuzma, director. Members of Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir. Robert Geary, director. Sue Bolin: conductor.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/johan_reuter4.gif image_description=Johan Reuter [Photo courtesy of Michael Storrs Music] product=yes product_title=Wozzeck at Los Angeles product_by=A review by Estelle Gilson product_id=Above: Johan Reuter [Photo courtesy of Michael Storrs Music]

Finzi Dies Natalis, Britten, Vaughan Williams, Wigmore Hall

Britten's Simple Symphony op 4 for strings (1933-34) shows the composer in exuberant high spirits. The "Boisterous Bourrée" romped cheerfully. The "stomping" melody mimics heavy feet dancing, but needs to sound humorous. In the "Playful Pizzicato", the Nash Ensemble strings plucked crazily but in complete technical control. Britten is having fun, sending up "serious" music while being perfectly serious. In the early 1930's Walt Disney was making Silly Symphonies, an extremely inventive series of cartoons. While nursery characters frolicked, the audience was listening to orchestral music in the classical tradition. Britten enjoyed movies. Quite possibly, he saw Disney's work. A Silly Symphony based on Britten's Simple Symphony would have been delightful. The themes in this symphony derive from the compositions Britten wrote as a child; he re-invents them (Read my article "Benjamin Britten Boy Wonder" HERE). "Simple" is a cheekly misnomer. While this short, sharp symphony bubbles with child-like glee, there's nothing childish in the technique. This is Britten, bursting into the public sphere, inspired by the wonder of creative growth.

The recital would end with Gerald Finzi's Dies Natalis which describes the miracle of creation through the eyes of a new born. Between these two pillars, the Nash Ensemble placed early works by Frank Bridge and Ralph Vaughan Williams, extending the theme of youth and artistic birth.

Bridge was later to become a formative influence on Britten, who opened horizons for Britten beyond the confines of British music at the time. Bridge's Three Songs for voice, viola and piano (1906) aren't specially innovative, and rely heavily on good performance. Roderick Williams animates the songs with committment. He's beautiful to listen to but the texts and text settings aren't up to his standards. "Blow...ye..winds" doesn't flow even if the poet is Matthew Arnold. "Where is that our soul doth go?" is a translation of a poem by Heine, so stodgy that it would defy most composers. Fortunately, Bridge's ear for viola was much more acute. The viola part dominates, voice and piano taking secondary place. Laurence Power's sensual playing made these pieces effective. Perhaps they are really songs for viola?

In 1908, Ralph Vaughan Williams went to France to study with Ravel. This was his artistic breakthrough. His Five Mystical Songs (1906-11) are well known in the orchestral version, so hearing them as piano song shows how they bridge religious music and art song. Herbert wrote hyms for the godly: Vaughan Williams wrote hymns though he wasn't devout. Easter is fervent. Roderick Williams emphasizes the key words and phrases, like "Thy Lord is Risen", but the sensuous beauty of his voice tempered their ferocity. The text suggest militant Christianity : Williams's warmth imbues it with humanity. The middle verse "Awake my lute" shines with characteristic RVW cadences, well defined by Ian Brown the pianist. Roderick Williams's voice is naturally beautiful and colours the words with sensitivity. In I got me flowers, the imagery is delicate, but the subdued chromatic middle section culminates in a forceful finale. "There is but one, and that one forever" sang Williams forcefully, supported by Brown's playing which resonated like a church organ.

Antiphon is known to Anglicans as the hymn My Lord is King!. "Let all the world in ev'ry corner sings" erupts with a flurry of bell sounds, as if bells were ringing all over the world. Ralph Vaughan Williams admirers connect immediately with the pealing bells of In Summertime on Bredon (from On Wenlock Edge) Text is foursquare. "The Church with palms must shout". But Vaughan Williams makes it clear that, for him, this is not anthem but art song.

William Alwyn's Pastoral fantasia for solo viola and strings (1939) may have been included as a vehicle for Laurence Power. His playing made the piece worthwhile and enjoyable even though the work itself isn't memorable. Alwyn's pastoralism is pretty, but we know from Vaughan Williams that landscape painting in music is much more than surface charm. It was good to hear Alwyn in the company of Britten, Finzi and Vaugham Williams so we appreciate their originality all the more.

Gerald Finzi's masterpiece Dies Natalis op 8 (1939) was premiered at the Wigmore Hall in January 1940, by Elsie Suddaby. The Finzis and their sons used precious petrol rations to drive up to London for the occasion. For many in this 2012 Wigmore Hall audience, with many Finzi specialists, it was the much anticipated highlight of the evening. Unfortunately, Susan Gritton was indisposed, which is a pity as she's very good. She didn't seem well the previous week at the Mendelssohn concert (reviewed here) but her replacement was left so late that the announcement had to be made on stage. Ailish Tynan was aparently cooking lamb for dinner when she was called to sing. Dies Natalis is difficult to sing but several sopranos and tenors have it in their repertoire. Since Tynan's best work has been in oratorio, her performance was interesting because it showed, like RVW's Five Mystical Songs, that oratorio and art song are fundamentally different genres.

Dies Natalis begins with an Intrada where themes to come emerge briefly. It suggests, to me, the swirling gases of the cosmos, before the Universe was formed. Dies Natalis deals with no less than the miracle of Life and Creation, so this interpretation is valid, since it suggests primordial growth and vast cosmic forces. I was a little surprised that the themes weren't as clearly defined as they could be, but that hardly matters, since the concept is so overwhelming. This sense of infinite space and time is important because the poet, Thomas Traherne, though Christian, was a mystic. Transcendentalism "transcends" traditional dogma. "Will you see the infancy of this sublime and celestial greatness?" the poet asks. Traherne's Rhapsody is prose, but with strange syntax, which Finzi respects by setting it with unsual rhythms "I was a stranger, which at my entrance into the world was saluted and surrounded with innumerable joys: my knowledge was Divine!", the word "divine" jumping forth from the score, as if illuminated by unearthly glow.

Although there are references to Adam and to God, Traherne's surreal imagery bears little resemblence to conventional religious text. "The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never shall be reap'd nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting". Finzi's dynamic extremes emphasize the psychic extreme of the poet's imagination. They aren't there to display vocal gymnastics. Tynan's notes were pitched to extremes, at the expense of diction. We should be hearing meaning, not voice as such, but meaning in Dies Natalis is not easy to grasp. Calm stillness underpins the ecstasy, for the cycle repeatedly refers to sublimation over ego and the sense of self. "I saw all in the peace of Eden. Everything was at rest, immortal and divine".

From Rhapsody to Rapture. This cycle often works best when sung by a tenor, emphasizing the strange, unconventional spirituality. "Sweet Infancy!" does not refer to babies, but to the idea of birth. Perhaps for Finzi with his beliefs in organic farming and living in harmony with nature, it's a statement of faith in something more primeval, the very force of life itself. Finzi was way ahead of his time.

"When silent I, so many thousand, thousand Years beneath the Dust did in a Chaos lie, How could I Smiles, or Tears, or Lips or Hands or Eyes perceive " (Traherne's upper case). Most definitely this isn't a human baby, nor even baby Jesus. Long before science developed theories about the Big Bang and primordial soup Traherne intuited the idea of the birth of the cosmos. Dies Natalis explores new territory, completely alien to the certainities of the established Church. Indeed, the very idea of faith is challenged. Fundamental to this cycle is the sense of wonder, of seeing the world anew through absolutely pure, unbiased eyes. Even Jesus had a mission when he became Man. Finzi creates a Being without any consciouness other than the sheer miracle of existence. "A Stranger here, strange things doth meet, strange Glory see......Strange all and new to me, but that they MINE should be ...who Nothing was, That strangest is, of all, yet brought to pass".

Recording recommendations - Wilfrid Brown, schoolteacher to Finzi's sons, (1955) and Ian Bostridge ( 1997)

Anne Ozorio

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Wigmore Hall, London 17th November 2012
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More Tosca in San Francisco

Patricia Racette is a powerful lyric soprano who like all great singers possesses a unique voice, its signature sound is the interplay of excited overtones. This excitement, these vocal nerve endings possess all of these Puccini victims, and transmit their vulnerability, their super human strength, their beauty, above all a melodramatic feminine humanity that has endured one full century now, and will still be real as long as there may be humankind.

Mme. Racette is a committed and skilled actress, but more so she is an honest artist. Her voice is in its prime, as it has been and will be for some time. To her voice she adds intelligent and straight forward musicianship that ties us securely to her character, thus we are held captive by her very presence even in the numerous pantomimes when Tosca does not sing, but silently observes the murdered Scarpia, and approaches the dead Cavaradossi. It is her rock solid artistry in service to real human drama that seduces us.

Mark Delavan as Scarpia

If in the first act la Racette does not find the persona of a jealous diva, one we suspect we would find in the more usual spinto voiced Tosca. Racette does persuade us that she is a woman in love, and a woman vulnerable to powerful men, fiery revolutionaries and corrupt functionaries. At the opera’s end, finally trapped by these forces she frees herself in her dramatic leap. And what a leap it was — in spread eagle form, the euphoria of liberation. Patricia Racette is a bona fide diva.

These days in the War Memorial when Nicola Luisotti is on the podium individual performances are tied to the pit, an aria is really a duet, and such was the case last night in a stunning delivery of Vissi d’arte, the maestro in his euphoria of pillaging every possible tremor of feeling from a very willing orchestra, the soprano but a part of his larger whole. Scarpia and his henchmen plotting to ensnare Angelotti, Cavaradossi and Tosca captured with a musical force nearly equal to Verdi’s Otello, culminating in a Te Deum that had much more to do with Luisotti and Puccini and the joy of sheer power than with Scarpia.

The maestro plumbs a depth of sound and searches color in the orchestral voice, and only then pushes forward the flow of musical action. This creates a stop and go rhythm of often extreme tempos, fast or slow. Last night in the second act in particular these fluctuating tempos musically riveted us to the interplay of Tosca and her tormentor, and in the third act bound us to her nervous fear.

Tosca’s tormentor, the Scarpia of bass baritone Mark Delavan, was not driven by the pure, unadulterated lust that usually drives this politically privileged baron. Instead Delavan toyed with his power, the seduction of Tosca was played as a game with himself, as proof of his privilege, not as release of his unbridled libido. Delavan found a humanity in Puccini’s villain that was supremely ugly, more offensive than exercising sexual prowess. Utilizing the inherent beauty of his now mature voice he thoroughly embodied the bloated, entitled political aristocracy. This was Mark Delavan as an estimable artist. We would have expressed our appreciation had he stayed around for the bows at the end of the opera.

Mark Delavan as Scarpia and Patricia Racette as Tosca

Against all this, a quirk of impresario privilege, San Francisco Opera general director David Gockley cast an Adler Fellow as the artist and revolutionary tenor Cavaradossi. Young tenor Brian Jagde held his own to some degree, while definitely out of his league. He possesses a young, vibrant voice and secure high notes. He lacks the squillo that would make his voice Italianate, nor is he yet schooled in the style. There was the occasional catch that sometimes might have been the tenorial sob and other times might have been a momentary catch in an overburdened voice. While Mr. Jagde was abundantly rewarded by the crowd for his performance the fact remains that the War Memorial is not an appropriate stage for a young singer to break in a role.

Supporting roles were superbly cast. Christian Van Horn made a detailed and very present Attavanti who set the stage for a revolutionary tone to Puccini’s opera. Tenor Joel Sorensen etched a sniveling Spoletta, brutalized by Scarpia and Adler Fellow Ao Li was right-on as Sciarrone. Not to overlook the low key, masterful, not too intrusive Sacristan of Dale Travis.

The production was the 1997 remake of the 1923 production, and it is time to send it to the dump — its nostalgia has been lost and it is boring. The staging of this umpteenth revival was however masterfully managed by Jose Maria Condemi. Hopefully Mr. Condemi will write a book to reveal the now secret (maybe best left untold stories) of staging these San Francisco Opera Tosca follies.

Michael Milenski

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Cast and Production

Floria Tosca: Patricia Racette; Mario Cavaradossi: Brian Jagde; Baron Scarpia: Mark Delavan; Angelotti: Christian Van Horn; Spoletta: Joel Sorensen; Sacristan: Dale Travis; Sciarrone: Ao Li; Jailer: Ryan Kuster; Shepherd Boy: Ryan Nelson-Flack. San Francisco Opera Orchestra and Chorus. Conductor: Nicola Luisotti; Stage Director: Jose Maria Condemi; Production Designer: Thierry Bosquet; Lighting Designer: Christopher Maravich. San Francisco War Memorial Opera House. November 16, 2012.

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image_description=Brian Jagde as Cavaradossi and Patricia Racette as Tosca [Photo by Cory Weaver courtesy of San Francisco Opera]

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Photos by Cory Weaver courtesy of San Francisco Opera

Tosca in San Francisco

Now that I’ve got your attention.

There were even advance whispers that something dramatic might happen. Well, no surprise given the cast of characters, character that is — Romanian soprano Angela Gheorghiu.

Huge anticipation was in the air for the American premiere of Mme. Gheorghiu’s Tosca, a role Opera Today’s London critic said she was born to play, the quote trumpeted all over San Francisco. Most of the world knows more about Mme. Gheorghiu marital dramas than it knows about her artistry. But luckily here in San Francisco we do know her charming Rondine and her touching Mimi as well. Adding all this up we were indeed prepped for a dynamite Tosca (after all maestro Luisotti was in the pit).

Angela Gheorghiu was born to play Tosca. The Floria Tosca that entered Sant’Andrea della valle exuded layers of histrionic complexity, her voice was soft, her presence lost, a fiery diva in a sanctuary where women are pure. Her duet with Cavaradossi was fraught with interior conflict that exploded from time to time in full voice, detailing movements of emotion that would prepare her spiritually for what we already knew she must do — in full voice — as the evening unfolded.

Nicola Luisotti drove his orchestra full throttle, the voice of operatic verismo, searching for a depth of histrionic orchestral tone, ignoring the forward dramatic thrust of the words themselves. Often an open conflict between the pit and the stage instigated by this maestro results in inspired music making, a duet of conductor and singer that is exponentially richer than voice alone. But famously la Gheorghiu avoids rehearsing, and perhaps this precipitated the musical error (an early entrance) that passed unnoticed by most (or was accepted as diva histrionics), but certainly unsettled this temperamental diva in performance.

Meanwhile stage director Jose Maria Condemi well exposed the machinations of Scarpia that would fulfill his lust for the actress Tosca. Italian baritone Roberto Frontali relished the role, making the predatory Baron less powerful and more insidious than we have usually seen in San Francisco and elsewhere, aided in no small part by the maestro who gave him huge volume and color to work with. Mr. Frontali has a sizable, not beautiful voice and the musical confidence to contend with the Luisotti pit.

Roberto Frontali as Scarpia and Angela Gheorghiu as Tosca

Well, this leaves Cavaradossi, Massimo Giordano. Mr. Giordano is a flawed singer who has loud high notes that he only seems to effect if he attacks them from above. This places an accent where usually there would be a smooth line. While this mannerism could be used for dramatic effect it became obvious that this was central to his vocal technique. While it was jarring in the first act at least we hoped it might be just an amusing tenorial affectation, if used without taste or discretion.

Mo. Luisotti, Mr. Frontali, the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and Chorus erupted in a Te Deum that completely enveloped the War Memorial Opera House. The curtain fell, the audience roared, and the evening ended.

Not that the performance did not in fact continue. Mme. Gheorghiu pulled out, physically distressed (intestinal flu we were told), though the suspicion lingers that it was vocal distress, and certainly a large dose of emotional distress must be included. We waited while the cover singer, Melody Moore, was costumed. Mlle. Moore is a promising young singer who does not have the spinto capabilities demanded by the role. She was painfully ill-suited to follow the diva footsteps made by Mme. Gheorghiu in the first act, nor did she seem coached or rehearsed to do so. It is indeed strange that San Francisco Opera had not anticipated such an occurrence, hardly unexpected from la Gheorghiu.

Thus impresario’s David Gockley coup de theatre (not just one, but two Tosca divas) gone up in smoke.

Michael Milenski

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Cast and Production

Floria Tosca Act I: Angela Gheorghiu; Floria Tosca Acts II and III: Melody Moore; Mario Cavaradossi: Massimo Giordano; Baron Scarpia: Roberto Frontali; Angelotti: Christian Van Horn; Spoletta: Joel Sorensen; Sacristan: Dale Travis; Sciarrone: Ao Li; Jailer: Ryan Kuster; Shepherd Boy: Etienne Julius Valdez. San Francisco Opera Orchestra and Chorus. Conductor: Nicola Luisotti; Stage Director: Jose Maria Condemi; Production Designer: Thierry Bosquet; Lighting Designer: Christopher Maravich. San Francisco War Memorial Opera House. November 15, 2012.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/03--Tosca-G.gif
image_description=Angela Gheorghiu as Tosca and Massimo Giordano as Cavaradossi [Photo by Cory Weaver courtesy of San Francisco Opera]

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Photos by Cory Weaver courtesy of San Francisco Opera

Songs by Zemlinsky

The present recording by Hermine Haselböck, mezzo-soprano, and Florian Henschel, piano, includes a selection of twenty-six songs, including pieces from the Nachlass, which were first published in 1995 and represent Zemlinsky’s efforts in this genre from roughly the decade between1889 and 1901. The choice of pieces is excellent both in providing a sense of Zemlinsky’s style at this point in his career, and also in giving a sense of the style Haselböck brings to this repertoire.

While the repertoire may be less familiar than some of the songs by Mahler, which Haselböck also recorded, it is musically engaging. Some of the pieces suggest affinities with composers of the previous generation, like Brahms, as found in his Heine setting Die schlanke Wasserlilie and Liebe und Frühling (text by Hoffmann von Fallerslebe). Yet other pieces are more expressionistic, as with the Sechs Gesänge nach Texten von Maurice Maeterlinck, Op. 13. The Maeterlinck settings are some of the more evocative pieces on this recording, and Haselböck’s interpretation of this set is particularly effective in bringing out the declamation of the text. Her partner in these pieces, Florian Henschel, is equally strong in his stylish performance of these pieces, which show the ways in which Zemlinsky used idiomatic piano figuration to support some of the dissonant sonorities in such songs as Die drei Schwestern and Lied der Jungfrau. The latter is haunting in its subtle presentation of poetry. Haseböck’s masterful interpretations of these pieces and the remainder on this recording show her command of Zemlinsky’s style. Standing between such contemporaries as Gustav Mahler and Alban Berg, Zemlinsky remains an individual voice, and in this regard deserves attention for the ways in which his works in this genre reflect the cultural forces at the turn of the last century, which are rooted in tonal structures, yet make use of modernist effects to allow dissonances that give underscore the texts. Perhaps it is the challenges in Maeterlinck’s texts which challenged the composer to create such memorable settings that bring out the fine qualities of Haselböck’s voice as accompanied by Henschel.

As modern as Zemlinsky can be, he also draws on some of conventions of the Viennese past in the Walzergesänge, op. 6. The bows to traditional dance rhythms and associated musical gestures reflect the composer’s sense of the past, while Zemlinsky’s structures bear attention for the ways in which he transcends some of predictable patterns to create original songs, not pastiches of music from the mid-nineteenth century. Klagen ist der Mond gekommen is an excellent song from this set, and gives a sense style Zemlinsky brought to this set. Likewise, Ich geh’ des Nachts seems at once rooted in Brahms’ Von ewiger Liebe, while looking toward some of the concision Berg brought to his settings of Altenberg’s texts.

Even so, Haselböck includes some of Zemlinsky’s more popular-sounding pieces in the two Brettl-Lieder, In der Sonnengassei and Herr Bombardil. These cabaret-influenced pieces reflect the period and transcend it, as some of the cliché gestures take on new meaning in the composer’s hands. Haselböck offers an effective and sensitive reading of both pieces, which round out this fine well-thought selection of Zemlinsky’s Lieder. Henschel partners well with her in giving authoritative readings of music that deserves the attention they have given it. This is a fine introduction to Zemlinsky’s songs for those unfamiliar with them, while individuals who know the repertoire should enjoy the performances on this welcome recording. The engineering of this recording supports the performances well, with good balances between the voice and piano. The keyboard is full and rich, but never covers the voice. At the same time, the recording gives a good sense of Haselböck’s mezzo-soprano voice, which is suited well to deliver these songs. It is a fine contribution to the music of the fin-de-siècle Vienna, and to the discography of Zemlinsky’s music.

James L. Zychowicz

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Gustav Mahler: Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Rückert-Lieder, Kindertotenlieder.

While the orchestral versions of all three cycles are performed often, it is good to have the keyboard versions of these works, which give appropriate emphasis to the vocal line in the intimate collaboration between the vocalist and her accompanist. All solid performances, the engineering of this recording does not always serve the balances well, with the piano sometimes sounding distant from the voice. This is not an impediment in the recording itself, but detracts from some of the more extroverted passages in the second and third songs of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen. Ging’ heut morgen über’s Feld should have a robust quality, which does not emerge in the recording, and the following song, Ich hab’ ein glühend Messer needs an explosive, almost percussive opening, which is recorded at a somewhat low volume in this release. Nevertheless, the intimacy between the voice and piano is effective in the final song of the cycle, Die zwei blauen Augen, which benefits from the elegiac approach Haselböck gives the song. Never maudlin or indulgent, this interpretation gives a sense of the text, with phrasing that offers a sense of the poetic line within the larger context of the vocal structure.

With the Rückert-Lieder, though, the tempos are an issue, with Liebst du um Schönheit and Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen sometimes falling short of the direction of the line that works admirably in Um Mitternacht. In the latter song, the intensity that some singers reserve for the final strophe is present throughout, as Haselböck shapes the work with solid phrasing and outstanding diction. The first song in this recording of the cycle, Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder seems somewhat detached, despite the intense and masterful accompaniment that never flags in this performance. Here, as elsewhere in the recording Ryan evinces a meticulous quality, with clean articulations and precise rhythms to bring out the line and define the textures.

The Kindertotenlieder are effective though, and marred only sometimes weak acoustics. In performing this cycle Haselböck has excellent focus in the first and last songs of the cycle, with a solid interpretation of Nun will die Sonn’ so hell aufgeh’n setting the tone appropriately. This familiar piece is appealing in this performance, as is the subsequent one, Nun seh’ ich wohl, warum so dunkle Flammen, in the somewhat introspective reading of the piece. Yet the final song of the cycle stands out for the convincing interpretation that the performers bring to In diesem Wetter, which has admirable intensity and narrative drive. This recording gives a sense of Haselböck’s fine mezzo, which stands well with some of the other recordings of this important song cycle from Mahler’s maturity. Haselböck has a range which fits this cycle particularly well, with resonant low notes, where needed, and a solid upper range that distinguishes her mezzo-soprano voice. Russell Ryan’s deft touch is a strong part of the recording, as he brings out lines, shapes the counterpoint, and supports the performance without competing with the singer in presenting the important Lieder from the turn of the last century.

James L. Zychowicz

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Alagna sings Nemorino - L'elisir d'amore at the Royal Opera House, London,

Laurent Pelly’s production had been revived by Daniel Dooner, the results in Chantal Thomas’s designs looked handsome and it was all charmingly entertaining without being heartless. Pelly and Thomas had chosen to set the opera in a small Italian farming town in the 1950’s. Wheat and straw bales were a big feature of the set, with a wheat-field as part of the backdrop and piles of straw bales used extensively in large stacks as the location for much of the action. The other significant visual effect was the use of transport. The chorus moved around on bicycles, vespas and mopeds, Dulcamara arrived in a huge truck and Nemorino appeared driving a tractor (whilst drunk) towards the end of act 2.

Neither the set nor the production really pushed the 1950’s setting too far, which meant that the piece worked very well. Donizetti’s opera is about a small town farming community and Pelly’s lovely detailed observation ensured that we were drawn into the doings of this particular one. The chorus were very much part of the action, and helped create the mis-en-scene for the soloists. The entire performance had the feeling of a group enterprise, an ensemble piece despite the presence of star names; it was all the better for it.

Alagna can no longer sing Nemorino with the grace and beauty of tone that he once could. But his determination to sing Nemorino whilst also singing Radames and Enee is rather admirable and has the feel of an earlier age when these roles were often taken by singers with larger voices. Of course, all this would be as naught if Alagna could not still sing the role. Granted, his voice was at times slightly louder than ideal, but he negotiated all the passagework deftly, if not ideally neatly. His voice did not always quite behave as he wanted, a couple of high notes were compromised, but he still produced some lovely tone and his account of Una furtiva lagrima was still a thing of beauty on its own terms. If you accepted that stylistically he was channelling Puccini, then there was a great deal to admire.

But it was Alagna as an actor, as a stage creature, who made the performance. From the outset he was completely charming, with a winning manner and an extreme physicality to the performance (to the extent of even losing his clothes) which could have turned into a stunt but in fact became part of his delightful characterisation of Nemorino. I have to admit that I went into the performance a little dubious, but came away entranced. Alagna’s performance was very much team work, he worked with his other performers and was clearly having a whale of a time.

It helped, of course, that he had such a strong team around him. Alexandra Kurzak has sung in the production before and remains a complete delight in this repertoire. Her capabilities in singing elaborate bel canto roles is astounding, but she is not just a technical delight she uses her technical abilities to create a real character. Her Adina was wonderfully pert and flirtatious, but even from the outset it was obvious that she felt something for Nemorino, and Kurzak allowed us to see this and developed it.

There were plenty of vocal delights on the way as well, but everything combined superbly in her account of her act 2 aria Prendi, per me sei libero where her feeling for Nemorino is displayed, combined with technical finesse.

Dulcamara was played by Ambrogio Maestri with rotund good humour. He was more the loveable rogue than the edgy character in some versions of this opera and I understand that the satire was more pointed when Pelly’s production was new. Maestri is very adept at using his bulk to devastating comic effect, but his account of the role was also very finely sung. It was buffo, but with a very clear musical line and very good it was too. Maestri also had a number of delightful tricks, such as interpolating little whistling noises when singing the comic duet with Adina during the wedding scene in act 2. But you felt that Maestri was less interesting in comic business for its own sake, and more intent on using it to create character.

Fabio Capitanucci (last seen here as Chorebe in Les Troyens) was finely fatuous Belcore, but one with a creditable swagger who would clearly be of interest to the ladies. Much of the humour came from the fact that his troops consisted of just two recruits, two mismatched boys one tall one small, both in ill-fitting suits. The way that, at the end he smoothly transferred his affections to Giannetta (Susana Gaspar) made it clear that Belcore was a survivor.

Gaspar (currently one of the Royal Opera’s Jette Parker Young Artists), was announced as suffering from a cold, but there were thankfully no audible effects and she made a charming Gianetta.

Bruno Campanella conducted; he got off to a slow start, and there were one or two hiccups in ensemble between pit and stage in the more complex choruses. But as Campanella got into the swing of things, there was much to enjoy in his performance. I have to confess, that I do rather prefer this opera in a smaller opera house, but he managed to get a nicely sparkling performance from the orchestra.

This was a joyous evening in the theatre, just what L’elisir d’amore should be.

Robert Hugill

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Royal Opera House, London, 13th November 2012
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A Celebration of Mendelssohn Song

Susan Gritton, Sarah Connolly and Eugene Asti began the recital with duets, affirming the theme of companionship and symbiosis. Three contrasting settings of Heinrich Heine, including the famous Wasserfahrt op 50/4 which Felix Mendelssohn wrote shortly before the Schumanns married, inspiring Robert Schumann's Liederjahre. Heine's text suggests connections with Winterreise. The poet leaves his homeland. He passes his sweetheart's home but she shows no sign of interest, so he sails off into the unknown, blinded by tears. There's irony in the way the voices intertwine, though there's no hope for the relationship. The piano part describes waves: the ocean is impersonal, constantly changing, obliterating the past.

Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel wrote almost 400 works, a significant output for a woman in her social circle. Her Five Lieder op 10 reflect her intellectual rigour. Fanny endured a long engagement because Wilhelm Hensel worked in Italy, so her setting of Hensel's poem, Nach Süden (op 10/1), had deep personal meaning. The theme of separation may have resonated with her brother after her death, for he included it as the first song in this posthumous publication. Nonetheless it's very well written: Felix would not have included anything less in a tribute to his much missed sister. It bears comparison with Fanny's settings of Lenau, Geibel and Eichendorff. These were all contemporaries: Fanny was setting "new" poetry, choosing poets who were to inspire generations of composers to come.

In Vorwurf, (op 10/2), she confronts the bleakness of Lenau's verse without compromise. The suggestion of ponderous footsteps in the piano part suggests gloom, but the stern reproach in the second strophe indicates strong-minded resolution.: no escape into "romantic" passivity. The vine imagery in the Geibel setting Im Herbst (op 10/4) inspires luscious curling symmetries Most beautiful, perhaps, is the Eichendorff setting Bergeslust, (op10/5), the last piece she wrote before she died. The introduction is written with great freedom evoking the open vistas of a mountain top. Clouds drift down, and birds descend, but "Gedanken gehn und Lieder fort bis ins Himmelreich". Voice and piano join in unison.

Susan Gritton's recording of Fanny Mendelssohn Songs for Hyperion is a a classic, but on this occasion she may have been unwell, for she was not on her usual form. Nonetheless, she has worked so closely with Eugene Asti that he could compensate. He played with sensitivity, protecting Gritton so she wasn't exposed. Later in the evening, she regained her composure. In Lieder, as in life, partnership like this benefits performance. Very much in keeping with the theme of companionship that ran through this programme. It's not for nothing that Asti is one of the great champions of Mendelssohn song in recital.

Eugene Asti and Sarah Connolly have also worked closely together in Mendelssohn. Connolly sang Mendelssohn's Six Songs op 71 with great poise. Intelligent phrasing, clear diction, a nice burnished tone. I specially liked the Lenau setting Schilflied (1842) where the poet describes the stillness of a pond in the monlight, where deer and birds move among the reeds. ".....träumerisch im tiefen Rohr", sang Connolly, breathing into the vowels with great feeling. The Eichendorff setting Nachtlied (1847) is exquiste, at once elegaic and elegant. Night has descended, with intimations of death. But the poet isn't alone "Frisch auf dem, liebe Nachtigall ! du Wasserfall mit hellen Schall!" The song of the nightingale lights up the gloom with a cascade of bright, refershing song. Gentle diminuendo in the postlude, like embers glowing in the darkness.

If anything, Robert Schumann was even more sensitive to poetry than the Mendelssohns. Schumann's Spanisches Liederspiel (op 74, 1849) set Geibel's verses describing an exotic, imaginary Spain. The three songs chosen from the set depict flowers and sensual perfumes. In Botschaft, "Tausend Blumen, tauumflossen", piano and vocal lines entwine like garlands, intoxicating the listener, drawing him into a world of possibly illicit passion. In their own ways, Mendelssohn and Schumann contributed towards the Romantic challenge to the aesthetic of North German Protestant propriety. It's no coincidence that Hugo Wolf worshipped Schumann, wrote his own Spansiches Liederbuch (also to Geibel and Heyse) and operas based on Spanish themes.

Clara Schumann was a contemporary of Chopin and Liszt. Like them, she had an international celebrity career. She was an independent breadwinner in a way that Fanny Mendelssohn could not be, constrained as she was by her higher social status. By any standards, Clara Schumann was a pioneer, but Robert wanted her to be a composer, too. Songs like Lorelei and Volkslied (both Heine) charm because they're so descriptive. But her instrument was the piano, not voice. The bitter tragedy of Heine's Sie liebren sich beide (op 13/2 1842) didn't bite, though Asti's accompaniment was accomplished.

Susan Gritton sang Robert Schumann's Six Poems of Nikolaus Lenau (op 90) picking up nicely. Lyrical as these songs are, there are tricky moments, like the tongue twister "vom stillen Strahl des Schmerzens bist du gebeugt und blasser" in Meine Rose. Sarah Connolly returned for the op 90 Requiem "Ruh' von schmerzensreichen Mühen".

Anne Ozorio

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Wigmore Hall, London 10th November 2012
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Wozzeck at UC Berkeley

An appearance by London’s famed Philharmonia orchestra starring in one of opera’s most riveting theater pieces (an avowed intellectual masterpiece as well) might well have generated sufficient advance excitement to fill the hall. Sad to say, come to pass, not a lot of excitement was created in the hall either.

The Philharmonia’s claim to fame is its conductorial pedigree more so than its sound — Otto Klemperer, Herbert von Karijan, Ricardo Muti, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Christoph von Dohnányi. And now Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, well known locally as one of the L.A. Phil’s wunderkind (with Rattle and Dudamel).

The no-longer-young maestro did deliver splendidly on what we came for — the three stupendous B’s after Marie is murdered grew to unequaled quivering force, and the masterful, musically riveting Invention in D minor led to the superbly delivered, tonally pure “hop hop” repetitions that end the opera (how did excellent boy soprano Zachary Mamis so securely find those incredibly high pitches?). All these were wonderful, uniquely Salonen moments.

The maestro made a good case for Wozzeck as an orchestral showpiece, marking solid beats to expose the shape and rhythms of the abstract structures that construct acts I and II, reserving his serpentine hand movement to motivate elaborations of color in the too few moments of orchestral solo. As Berg’s score is cerebral Salonen’s delivery too was cerebral, may we say cold, even uninvolved in the opera’s dramatic exposition.

Berg’s score, an opera, is far more than pure music. It is the physical atmospheres in which the Wozzeck tragedy unfolds. Without Berg’s prescribed physical production (sets, lights, costumes) an orchestra acting alone takes on the enormous burden of creating complex atmospheres. This began to occur somewhat in the second act in the public scenes, and took hold in the third act when Berg’s more formal structures gave way to free musical invention. Here Salonen followed suit with a freer dramatic involvement.

The Philharmonia Orchestra is known for the warmth of its strings, an attribute that is not really present in the Wozzeck atonalities. Yet the strings of this orchestra made a startling showing in projecting the nervous attitudes that Berg created and the still youthful maestro elicited. The youth (relative) of the players was evident, dominated by the nearly electric presence of 30-year-old German concert master Zsolt-Tihamér Visontay.

Spreading the Philarmonia Orchestra on the stage rather than, let’s say, cramming Berg’s sizable orchestral requirements into a pit engendered a clarity of instrumental tone, and a transparency of sound that exacerbated Salonen’s coldness. At the same time however it redeemed the coldness into a musical and instrumental purity that made this very fine orchestra great, and made it the star of the show, as intended.

The assembled singers included several distinguished artists. All were quite capable of fulfilling their role, here primarily to fill the musical space Berg’s score demands. With no overview of the opera other than that imposed by the maestro it became however a mere reading of the text. Then there was the unfortunate idea that some staging was needed, when in fact a purely concert performance would have complemented the performance by the orchestra.

The singers apparently attempted to move and emote as they saw fit. This resulted in some strange solutions to entrances and exits, motivations and discoveries. Unfortunately this British bred Wozzeck did not attempt to compete with the semi-staged operas recently attempted by the L.A. and N.Y. Philharmonics, endeavors that sensibly enough involved opera directors. And by the way when are opera companies going to start staging symphonies?

This Wozzeck in Berkeley was the full musical nine-yards. The UC Berkeley Chamber Chorus acquitted itself handsomely (a few missed pitches), the Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choirs marched on and did its duty, and members of the UC Berkeley Symphony well managed the off-stage banda and most of the on-stage banda (the clarinet player was from the Philharmonia).

Michael Milenski

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Cast and Production

Wozzeck: Johan Reuter; Marie: Angela Denoke; Drum Major: Hubert Francis; Andres: Joshua Ellicott; Captain: Peter Hoare; Doctor: Tijl Faveyts; First Apprentice Henry Waddington; Second Apprentice: Eddie Wade; Idiot: Harry Nicoll; Margret: Anna Burford; Marie’s Child: Zachary Mamis. UC Berkeley Chamber Chorus. Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir. Members of the UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra. The Philharmonia Orchestra. Conductor: Esa-Pekka Salonen. Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley, California. November 10, 2012.

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image_description=Esa-Pekka Salonen [Photo by Clive Barda courtesy of Fidelio Arts]

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Simon Boccanegra at Lyric Opera, Chicago

Baritone Thomas Hampson and bass Ferrucio Furlanetto perform roles for which they are celebrated: Mr. Hampson as the seaman Boccanegra elected Doge and Mr. Furlanetto as Jacopo Fiesco, father of the woman whom Boccanegra has seduced prior to the opera’s action. Boccanegra’s daughter by this latter union, known variously as Maria and Amelia, is performed by Krassimira Stoyanova in her debut with the company. The man whom she loves and whose political ambitions oppose Boccanegra’s, Gabriele Adorno, is sung by tenor Frank Lopardo. The villainous Paolo Albiani, who at first supports Boccanegra and eventually plots to overthrow and assassinate him, is taken by baritone Quinn Kelsey. Sir Andrew Davis conducts the Lyric Opera Orchestra and Martin Wright is the Chorus Master. This production is also used by the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

The prologue of Simon Boccanegra, predating the action of the opera proper by twenty-five years, weaves neatly the political and emotional strands that will continue to determine the course of events for the following decades. At the start of the prologue Paolo and his associate Pietro, the latter sung by Evan Boyer, conspire to have Simone chosen as Doge. Mr. Kelsey impresses already from this early scene with his legato and well-projected, rich timbre. The promises for complicity made by Kelsey’s Paolo to Pietro, with a vivid emphasis forte on “honore” lead to the next scene where he must persuade Boccanegra to accept the duties of such an office. At his entrance Mr. Hampson’s Simone seems aloof to political involvement, until Paolo reminds him that he may use the Doge’s position to marry his beloved Maria Fiesco. Simone’s assent prompts the quick response of the populace in his favor. Paolo’s further warning about the Fiesco family, and its proud leader Jacopo who is father of Maria, elicits a chilling intonation by Kelsey on “anima infernale” [“infernal soul”] before his departure.

At the entrance of Fiesco Mr. Furlanetto establishes his character immediately by denouncing in a curse laden with vocal tremor Simone as the “vile seduttore” [“wretched seducer”] of his daughter Maria, who has now died. Fiesco’s noted aria, “Il lacerato spirito” [“The tormented spirit”] is sung by Furlanetto with palpable feeling and a fine sense of Verdi’s line. His repeated bass notes on “Prega, Maria, per me” [“Maria, pray for me”] at the close of the aria seems to come with Fiesco’s last breath of emotional control. In the subsequent duet with Simone, Furlanetto’s Fiesco retains the upper hand in demanding Maria’s child from Simone as the only grounds for reconciliation. When this condition cannot be met since the child is lost, Furlanetto’s unyielding and extended bass line on “Addio” underlines Fiesco’s resolution to remain an enemy. Still unaware of Maria’s death Simone determines to search for her in the Fiesco palace. Hampson’s expression of her “pura beltà” [“pure beauty”], sung with an impressive bel canto adornment, is interrupted when he discovers Maria’s corpse. The prologue ends with orchestral fanfare and the ringing of bells as the crowd proclaims a distraught Simone as their Doge.

At the start of the opera proper the two remaining personalities are introduced. Amelia Grimaldi, the adopted identity of the lost daughter of Boccanegra and his beloved Maria, appears alone as the Act I commences. She muses on the star, the sea, and her lover whose absence is unpredictable. Ms. Stoyanova sings this opening aria, “Come in quest’ ora bruna” [“How in this dark hour”] with a shade of melancholy, as her voice opens from a strong middle register to touching floods of emotion on higher pitches. Once her lover Gabriele Adorno appears their duet reinforces an emotional devotion as well as apprehensions concerning others who may signal a threat to their happiness. Mr. Lopardo as Gabriele is a well-matched partner to Stoyanova’s Amelia. In the first duet their voices weave together while they echo bonds of spontaneous feeling. Transitions from piano to dramatic excitedness are taken convincingly by both singers in erratic expressions of shifting emotion.

Two additional duets in this act deserve mention. Amelia’s guardian Andrea, the subsequent identity of Fiesco from the prologue, must be approached for his blessing of the potential marriage with Gabriele. Furlanetto’s Andrea accedes to the plea with admirable legato on “Nella pace di quest’ ora” [“in the peace of this hour”] as Lopardo’s Gabriele alternates tasteful high pitches with a softer line in “Eco pia del tempo antico” [“Holy echo of ancient times”]. In the following scene Simone recognizes his daughter Maria in Amelia by virtue of a portrait in the locket she wears. The well-known duet between father and daughter [“Figlia! A tal nome io palpito” (“Daughter! At such a name I tremble”)] is fittingly moving while also suggesting through song the new world that has opened.

Hampson’s vocal skill is here especially effective as his line rises in decorative embellishment on “Un paradiso il tenero padre ti schiuderà [“Your loving father will create a paradise for you”]. Both he and Stoyanova return to piano declamation as they conclude this tender exchange. In a concluding scene Paolo reappears to press his own cause in being granted the hand of Amelia, yet Simone remains unwilling. Paolo’s reaction and the questionable loyalties of Gabriele lead to a major confrontation in the public chamber of the Doge. As Hampson’s Simone pleads feelingly for “Pace,” Stoyanova injects an exquisite rising melisma into Amelia’s line and the act draws to a close.

In the second and third acts of the opera the character and fortunes of Paolo grow bleaker just as Gabriele redeems himself in Simone’s eyes. Paolo’s initiation of the plot to kill Simone elicits no support from Andrea yet the position of Gabriele remains ambiguous until the promise by the Doge to Amelia that her lover will be pardoned. The trio sung by Simone, Amelia, and Gabriele, “Perdon, Amelia,” shows the singers well integrated with appropriate decoration and top notes performed by Lopardo. In the final act the sadness of death is inevitable despite the joyous wedding to be celebrated between Amelia and Gabriele. With Simone dying from the poisoned water that Paolo had left on his table, the duet of reconciliation, “Piango, perché mi parla,” [“I weep because the voice speaks to me”] between the Doge and Fiesco remains a final highlight of this dramatically satisfying and well conceived production.

Salvatore Calomino

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Kathleen Ferrier: A Film by Diane Perelsztejn

As Richard Boldrey puts it, in Guide to Operatic Roles and Arias (1994), they are the “witches, bitches, or britches”. But, even those — Nancy Evans, Edith Coates — who have reached a position of considerable prominence and approbation, have seldom equalled Kathleen Ferrier’s iconic status, or inspired the enduring devotion aroused in her admirers — feats made more astonishing in the light of the brevity of her life, just 41 years, and singing career, a mere 10.

Born and brought up in a terrace house in Blackburn, Lancashire, Ferrier was intelligent, witty and noted for her sharp humour and sense of fun. She left school at 14 and began working as a telephone operator, while continuing to develop her musical talents through piano and singing lessons. Marriage in 1935 allowed her to focus more seriously on her music and, following early successes — in the 1937 Carlisle Festival (at both piano and voice) — she reached the heights of her profession at astonishing speed. A relentless touring and performance schedule took her to the world’s finest stages; her performances of Bach, Brahms and particularly Mahler, became legendary, and a list of the maestri with whom she worked reads like a roll call of twentieth-century conducting honour: Sir John Barbirolli, Sir Adrian Boult, Walter Goehr, Reginald Goodall, Charles Groves, Herbert von Karajan, Erich Kleiber, Otto Klemperer, Clemens Krauss, Rafael Kubelik, Sir Malcolm Sargent, Walter Susskind and George Szell, to name but a few.

This DVD, narrated by Charlotte Rampling, moves swiftly through the early years and first London successes, conveying the depth and breadth of impact that Ferrier achieved as she established herself as a striking contralto, with a warm, vibrant tone and extensive range. She attracted the attention of Sir Malcolm Sargeant and John Tillet — the latter immediately put her on his agencies books — but not of Lennox Berkley, then head of BBC music programming, who professed himself unimpressed by 30-year-old singer’s first London performance!

Anxious and disappointed, Ferrier began studying with baritone Roy Henderson, one of many commentators on this film, who notes that despite her remarkable musicianship — she could learn even the most difficult music with ease — Ferrier was surprisingly timid about expressing emotions. However, by the time of her 1947 Edinburgh Festival appearance with Bruno Walter, performing Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, her performances were characterised by expressive freedom and openness. Much time is devoted to this landmark performance, and Perelsztejn fully communicates the unrivalled significance of Ferrier’s relationship with Walter to her professional, musical and personal development. Ferrier remarked that performing with Walter was “truly memorable, always exciting and sometimes almost unbearably moving”.

We follow the highpoints of Ferrier’s career — The Rape of Lucretia at Glyndebourne in 1946, her 1948 Carnegie Hall debut, experienced by millions of American radio listeners, Das Lied in Salzburg in 1949 broadcast throughout Europe, recitals accompanied by Walter in New York and London, a performance of Bach’s B Minor Mass in 1950, with Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, which is said to have moved conductor Herbert von Karajan to tears. Historic recordings of studio and live performances are illustrated by photographs of Ferrier rehearsing, in performance, relaxing with her fellow musicians; perhaps the ever-changing shots and film footage of places and objects — wartime London, trains and boats, an array of 1940s radio sets and the Cumbrian countryside — are a little wearying after a time, but they do give a sense of time and place, as well as the rollercoaster intensity of Ferrier’s career. My only real misgiving concerned the need to intercut stills of Ferrier performing Das Lied with film of the contemporary ensemble, Ictus, rehearsing the work before a projected image of the singer.

As well as extracts from her own diaries, and recorded comments made by Ferrier, there are contributions from a host of writers who have made Ferrier their subject: Ian Jack, author of Klever Kaff, Boris Terk (A Voice is a Person), biographer Maurice Leonard (The Life of Kathleen Ferrier), and the editor of her letters and diaries, Christopher Fifield. In addition, voices from the past explain Ferrier’s unrivalled magnetism: her sister Winifred (who recalls Ferrier’s belief that to convey the true meaning of a song one had to “paint the words”), assistant Bernie Hammond, and musicians and writers such as Michael Kennedy (biographer of Sir John Barbirolli, who conducted of Ferrier’s last stage performance), and the current director of the Edinburgh Festival, Jonathan Mills, all add to a lively narrative which conveys the warmth and vivaciousness of Ferrier’s character. Indeed, Jack notes that her beer drinking, cigarette smoking and penchant for dirty jokes would have been considered very outré and mannish!

In interview, Benjamin Britten, who was in the audience for Ferrier’s performance of the Messiah at Westminster Cathedral in 1943, and who went on to create many roles for Ferrier, observes simply that, “Here was a voice that could sing this extremely awkward music without any effort”.

The final stages of the film deal with Ferrier’s personal relationships, and we learn about her relationship with Rick Davies — the significance of which has not been previously well known due to the media’s respect for the singer’s privacy and Winifred restricting access to the diaries — and with her father. Her fatal illness is sensitively depicted, revealing the humour and courage (she continued to perform despite the pain caused by her breast cancer) with which she bore discomfort and adversity.

Contralto Natalie Stutzmann insightfully analyses the strengths and appeal of Ferrier’s voice, remarking its ambiguous combination of “the colour of the chest voice usually found in the male voice with the clarity of the female voice”, and the beauty and length of her breath. But, whatever her technical strengths, it was the way her relaxed, earthy contralto communication so naturally that struck her devotees, for whom she was the ‘girl-next-door’, bringing classical music to an entirely new audience.

Charlotte Rampling’s narration is sometimes given to hyperbole: “when she died in 1953 she was the most beloved woman in Britain.” Considering the effect of Ferrier’s performances of Handel, she asks, “Had audiences heard in her voice a kind of messiah?” But, perhaps such eulogies are deserved, given that Bruno Walter reputedly declared that the two greatest musical experience of his life were meeting Kathleen Ferrier and Gustav Mahler, “in that order”.

Accompanying the DVD is a companion CD featuring 40 minutes of unreleased live recordings. During a third tour of North American which commenced in December 1949, Ferrier performed at the Town Hall, New York, on Sunday 8 January 1950: her contributions to the recital were three pieces attributed to Bach and Brahms’ Four Serious Songs, and these works are included here.

Of the Bach songs, which have previously been recorded by Decca, the most well-known is ‘Bist du bei mir’, which together with the rarer ‘Vergiß mein nicht’ and ‘Ach, daß nicht die letzte Stunde’ reveals the absolute purity of Ferrier’s tone and the consummate breath control which enables her to adopt daringly slow tempi, allowing the spiritual core of the music to be deeply felt.

Given that the Brahms songs were recorded live at that 1950 New York concert, the quality of the sound is excellent: clear and full. ‘One thing that befalleth the beasts and the sons of men’ is tailor-made for Ferrier’s earthy, burnished lower register, but it is the contrast between this and the lighter, brighter top which brings vividness to the song. The broad-breathed phrases of ‘So I returned and did consider’ have a lyrical fluency, and one senses the drama of Ferrier’s live performance, with individual words given a surge of energy and brightness. ‘O death, how bitter art thou’ possesses a rhetorical splendour. In both Bach and Brahms, Ferrier is accompanied by pianist John Newmark.

The final items are from Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, a poignant inclusion for it was during a performance of this opera in 1953, with Sir John Barbirolli, that Ferrier suffered a fractured femur, a sign that the breast cancer for which she had been treated had attacked her bones; she was not to perform again. This is also a live recording from the 1950 tour, which has since languished in the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound in the New York Public Library. Perhaps one is misguided to detect an underlying pathos and melancholy in Ferrier’s voice, but the temptation is strong. Ferrier is joined by Ann Ayars as Euridice, The Westminster Choir (conducted by John Finley Williams) and a rather dry-sounding Little Orchestra Society (conductor, Thomas K. Scherman).

This Decca pair contain old and new, familiar and rare. The much-feted career highlights and the newly released recordings, images and films will be equally enjoyed by Ferrier aficionados and new disciples alike.

Claire Seymour

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Wexford Festival Opera 2012

The reputation of Francesco Cilèa (1866-1950) rests largely on a single operatic number — the plangent lament, ‘È la solita storia del pastore’, favoured by Pavarotti et al. But, this performance of the composer’s L’Arlesiana, which houses the tenor’s showpiece, confirmed that Cilèa has more to offer than nostalgic melodising — although director Rosetta Cucchi’s highly stylised staging does not present a dramatic range to match the musical depths of the score.

Composed in 1897 L’Arlesiana combines the melancholy pathos of La Bohème with the inflated melodrama of Tosca. An over-anxious and over-wrought mother, Rosa Mamai, anguishes about her son, Federico, who neglects the virginal Vivetta for the alluring enticements of L’Arlesiana. Increasingly obsessed with the temptress from Arles, Federico is distraught when Metifio arrives bearing a letter which ‘proves’ that L’Arlesiana loved him until urged by her parents to make a more advantageous marriage with Federico. Continuing to disregard her younger, retarded son, L’innocente, Rosa encourages Vivetta to use her erotic charms to divert Federico’s attention from the reputed harlot; although her efforts at seduction are unsuccessful, Federico vows to marry Vivetta in an attempt to forget the unworthy L’Arlesiana. However, learning of Metifio’s plan to kidnap L’Arlesiana, Federico becomes increasingly despairing; the two men fight until, delirious and deranged, Federico imagines he can hear L’Arlesiana’s cries and, evading Rosa’s attempts to save him, throws himself from the hayloft.

Designer Sarah Bacon’s sets were towering and impressive, although the forward placement of the ivy-clad wall of Act 1 reduced the stage space available and further exaggerated Cucchi’s deliberately limited gestural palette. Cucchi confined the singers to stock poses and postures: perfect illustrations perhaps of captions from a silent movie — ‘the distressed mother’, ‘the deserted heroine’ — but the result was a drama that was certainly ‘up close’ but not very ‘personal’.

Forced to adopt such stock gestures, Annunziata Vestri, as Rosa Mamai, struggled to communicate the human side of the mother’s anguish but revealed a dazzling mezzo soprano — her dark, impassioned tone was matched by a notable stamina. Despite the tiresome tortured hand-wringing and head-clutching — she spent Act 3 grasping an over-sized white perambulator, just in case we hadn’t cottoned on to the fact that a mother’s overbearing love is the cause of the tragedy — Vestri demonstrated a bold stage presence and impressive technical prowess: her Act 3 ‘Esser madre è un inferno’ was the undoubted highlight of the night.

Mariangela Sicilia’s radiant sheen complemented Vestri’s duskier shades, particularly in their Act 2 exchange. But, Sicilia was a one-dimensional Vivetta, an unconvincing ‘temptress’, stripping to a white shift when instructed to ‘tighten your corset and loosen your headscarf’ by the agonized Rosa (and what was in the plastic box that Sicilia clutched all evening?).

The Russian tenor Dmitry Golovnin successfully conveyed Federico’s grim emotional disintegration, but his unalleviated doom-laden demeanour was a little wearing.

Golovnin made excellent use of his warm, round tone in the famous lament, even though Cucchi placed him horizontal on a kitchen table, beneath which slept his younger brother — perhaps a juxtaposition of the peaceful tranquillity of the innocent and the disturbed unrest of the suffering.

As L’innocente, Eleanor Greenwood sang sweetly but was required to traipse incessantly and redundantly after her brother, curling into a ball in response to his grief-stricken outbursts. Quentin Hayes’ Metifio was a black-clad stock villain, but competently performed.

Cilèa’s drama is heavily symbolic. Adapted from a short story by Alphonse Daudet, the action is ‘framed’ by the tale told by the shepherd Baldassarre — here sung in a rather unfocussed manner by baritone Christopher Robertson — to L’innocente, of a small goat which fights all night long with a hungry wolf before collapsing and dying at daybreak. The whole point is that ‘girl from Arles’ does not appear, and may not even exist; she is a mythic figure, originally an entrancing representation of an idealised Provencal past, latterly a tainted, degraded temptress. Cucchi, however, chooses to present a flesh-and-blood L’Arlesiana, in a series of mimes, commencing during the overture, dramatising Federico’s erotic dreams of love and betrayal, and his fears of Metifio’s malevolent, murderous passion.

Simon Corder’s lighting was effective, particularly in Act 3, and David Angus conducted the intense score with bravura and vigour. The cast were unanimously committed but, hindered by the distancing effect of the direction, struggled to engender much sympathy for the troubled fates of such angst-ridden personnel.

With Emmanuel Chabrier’s 1887 comedy Le roi malgré lui (The King In Spite of Himself) the following evening, there was an abrupt switch from turbulent tragedy to lunatic farce. Premiered at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College in July this year, Thaddeus Strassberger’s production is manic, inventive, visually resourceful but ultimately rather cluttered and lacking in cohesion.

One thing that Chabrier’s highly contrived comedy needs is clarity of presentation. Henri de Valois has, to his dismay, been elected King of Poland, and to distract him from his homesickness — and from his nostalgic yearning for a beautiful Polish woman he once rescued in Venice — his courtiers have transplanted an array of French comforts to Poland. While the Duc de Fritelli mocks the Polish people, Henri’s friend, the Comte de Nangis, is trying to raise an army to protect the King, for the Polish nobleman Laski is opposed to Henri’s rule. Nangis is enjoying Polish life, having fallen in love with Minka, Laski’s slave. On the eve of Henri’s coronation, Laski mounts a coup. Declaring Nangis to be the King, Henri intends to get himself thrown out of Poland, so he can return to his beloved France (and somehow manages to communicate this strategy to Nangis); but, his plan goes awry when Laski declares that the King must be assassinated and Nangis (the King in disguise) is chosen by lot to do the deed. An opportune intervention by Minka allows (the real) Nangis to escape. Meanwhile, an innkeeper, Basile, is preparing to welcome the new King of Poland. One by one the principals assemble: Henri seeking a horse to escape the mob, Fritelli tactlessly praising the French, Minka lamenting for Nangis, and Fritelli’s Polish wife, Alexina, disguised as a maid and searching for her former lover. Eventually disguises are dropped, identities revealed, couples reunited; Henri, exhausted — as are the audience — by his efforts to evade his fate, accepts the Polish crown.

Chabrier’s convolutions and substitutions seem to have inspired imaginative hyperactivity in the Wexford design department. Set designer Kevin Knight gives us a continental gamut ranging from the boudoirs of Versailles to twentieth-century Polish game shows, garnering everything from shipping containers to gondolas along the way — one piece of scenery was reputed to weigh nine tonnes. Mattie Ullrich’s gaudy costumes are similarly eclectic, courtiers’ powdered wigs rubbing shoulders with sharp Italian designer-wear and the imprisoned Comte de Nangis’ Guantanamo-orange boiler suit, the King’s flannelette pyjama-suit giving way to glitzy Strictly ball gowns.

Past and present are brought together through the filter of a television screen, projected at the start, through which an unnamed viewer observes the action. Act 2 is thus rendered as a Polish TV show à la Eurotrash — complete with Antoine de Caune-style presenter. The irony is furthered by the side-of-stage presence of the anonymous television viewer, who becomes increasingly irritated and frustrated by the intermittent transmission signal and resultant fuzzy screen. The Act 2 waltz is a Come Dancing extravaganza of floating gowns and natty footwork — expertly played and sung by the Wexford Festival orchestra and chorus, who were on top form throughout the three performances seen. Zany and visually engaging perhaps, but this surfeit of directorial inventiveness didn’t help to elucidate the already over-complicated action.

A superb cast of principals made significant amends for the barmy antics. As the disinclined monarch, baritone Liam Bonner was fittingly cocksure and confident, his voice as smooth as his preening and posing. Bonner has a big voice but used his power judiciously and sparingly, making Henri’s moments of haughty imperiousness the more telling. A pre-curtain announcement made apologies for Luigi Boccia’s ill health but while his voice was a little light-weight at times and flagged somewhat in Act 3, Boccia sang with flexibility and naturalness as Henri’s alter ego, the Comte de Nangis.

Argentinean soprano Mercedes Arcuri despatched Minka’s Act 2 Chanson tzigane with aplomb, revealing a glittering, crystal clear coloratura, and Nathalie Paulin was a comic, vivacious Alexina, blending beautifully with Arcuri in their Act 3 duet. Moreover, Paulin’s gondola-sited barcarolle duet with Bonner was an alluring respite from the surrounding helter-skelter shenanigans. Frédéric Gonçalvès (Duc de Fritelli), Quirijn de Lang (Laski) and Thomas Morris (Basile) all gave accomplished performances, and Jean-Luc Tingaud conducted with verve and panache, delighting in the brilliant orchestral colours and lithe rhythms of Chabrier’s vibrant score.

The third of Wexford’s offerings, Frederick Delius’s 1907 A Village Romeo and Juliet, directed by Stephen Medcalf, made a truly convincing case for the theatrical presentation of a work so often dismissed as six discrete ‘tone poems’ which lack dramatic momentum and coherence.

In contrast to Chabrier’s chaotic elaborations, Delius’ libretto, drawn from a short story by Gottfried Keller, is blessedly simple. Two farmers, Marti and Manz, feud over a narrow strip of ground that separates their fields. The land has run wild since the death of its former owner, for his illegitimate son, the Dark Fiddler, cannot inherit. The farmers forbid their children, Sali and Vreli, to have anything to do with each other, and undertake a long-drawn out legal dispute which bankrupts both families. But, Sali and Vreli continue to meet secretly and as their friendship blossoms into love, the Dark Fiddler appears and tempts them to join him in his life of bohemian freedom. When they are discovered together by Marti, Sali becomes enraged and strikes the older man, whose mind is damaged by the blow. The young lovers vow eternal devotion; falling asleep, they dream of their marriage and upon awakening determine to spend a single day together, at the fair where they will be unknown. When they are recognised by the local crowd, Sali suggests that they should go to the Paradise Garden where they can dance all night. In the garden the Dark Fiddler and his friends are drinking and carousing; again he tempts the lovers to join him but they desist, choosing instead to drift down river in a gradually submerging boat, resigned to the Tristan-esque double suicide which must follow.

Formed of six separate scenes or ‘pictures’, each with its individual colour and mood, Delius’ opera is Wagnerian also in its use of leitmotiv and in the primacy of the orchestral fabric in delineating the internal narrative which develops within the protagonists’ hearts and minds. For, though the external action is minimal, the opera presents powerful emotional events, and Medcalf found ingenious, affecting ways to convey these conflicts, passions and dreams. With graceful choreography, the Scene 4 dream-sequence was effectively staged: the visual enactment of the imagined joyful marriage strengthened both its credibility and the lovers’, and our own, hopefulness, thereby deepening the sorrow of disillusionment upon awakening. The well-known instrumental sequence, ‘The Walk to Paradise Garden’, was similarly inventive, two dancers superbly articulating the purity and power of the lovers’ passion. Most touching of all were the transcendent final moments when Simon Corder’s evocative, shimmers of green light enwrapped the house in the shifting waters which embrace the fated pair.

Jamie Vartan’s wooden, sparse set — which seemed to extend effortlessly from the warm wooden interior of the auditorium, drawing us all into the ensuing drama — served to emphasise the opera’s focus on elemental philosophical questions. Small details conveyed much: thus, Vreli’s over-turned pram and broken doll, damaged during the children’s argument in Scene 1, remained littering the stage, a reminder of the essential roots of the tragedy and its inescapability.

After the minimalist simplicity of the first four scenes, the shift to the fairground setting in Scene 5 was appropriately jarring and disconcerting; here the bright artificiality of Vartan’s inspired costumes and the lack of naturalism emphasised the capricious unreality of this world.

As Sali and Vreli, John Bellemer and Jessica Muirhead were unfailingly sympathetic. Bellemer brought just the right touch of impetuousness to the role, his buoyant tenor conveying the optimism and conviction of the young lover, while Muirhead’s clear ringing soprano combined burgeoning ardour with eloquent innocence. There were strong performances too from Quentin Hayes (Manz) and Andrew Greenan (Marti), the latter particularly effective in establishing character and motivation. Stephanie Kinsella and Jack Power acted and sang convincingly and confidently sweetly as the young Vreli and Sali, never overwhelmed by the dense orchestral fabric.

Dressed in shabby white, looking every inch the unruly vagabond, David Stout’s Dark Fiddler was a suitably menacing presence although Stout’s baritone did not quite have the ominous resonance needed to fully evoke the threatening air of intimidation which exudes from the Fiddler. The smaller roles — the fairground characters and the Fiddler’s friends — were deftly characterised, and once again the Wexford Festival Chorus was in fine form. Rory Macdonald conducted with great skill and sensitivity, creating translucent textures and forward momentum. I cannot imagine a more thoughtful and illuminating staging of this opera.

As ever, in addition to the three operas performed in the main house, the 2012 Festival offered vocal recitals, instrumental concerts, lectures and films in the Jerome Hynes Theatre and various offer venues around the town, as well as a lively Fringe programme. The ‘Short Works’ have been rather itinerant in recent years, finding a home in venues such as the Dun Mhuire Theatre and White’s Hotel. This year they travelled to the auditorium at the Presentation Secondary School, a short walk from the opera house, and although there were some initially teething problems which briefly delayed the start of Lennox Berkeley’s one-act opera, A Dinner Engagement, the performance was certainly worth waiting for.

Lord and Lady Dunmow have fallen on hard times after WWII, and decide to solve their financial difficulties by arranging an advantageous marriage for their daughter, Susan. They invite the wealthy Prince Phillippe of Monteblanco and his mother, the Grand Duchess, to dinner, but do not reckon on Susan’s distaste for being valued solely as a family funds-raiser, or on the Prince’s predilection for the kitchen. A sharp social comedy — imagine a more sophisticated and satirical Albert Herring — A Dinner Engagement is packed with sharp observations about class, money and hypocrisy, culminating in a joyous ending celebrating our human capacity for resourcefulness and survival. Berkeley’s score — dexterously performed by music director Adam Burnette at the piano — is not particularly memorable but it is economical, energetic and witty, every musical gesture perfectly suited to the dramatic situation.

Director Caitriona McLaughin (having resisted the temptation to update the setting to modern Ireland, a country somewhat ‘down on its luck’ and in need of a bailout!) presents a slick comedy, making the most of the small period details which Kate Guinness incorporates into the set and costumes: the Countess’s delight when spying a whisk in the Dunmow’s kitchen — the first time she has seen such an object (or even been in a kitchen?) — was priceless, as was the Prince’s rather precious expression of revulsion when presented with a bottle of Heinz ketchup.

The performers’ diction was uniformly excellent; not a word, or joke, of Berkeley’s skilful, droll libretto was lost. Fine performances from Adam Gilbert as Lord Dunmow and Hannah Sawle as his wife established the hard-up aristocrats an honest pair who share a genuine affection; we can laugh at their short-comings but sympathise with their weaknesses. Laura Sheerin was a feisty Susan, pouting and flouncing, violently relieving her anger on some unfortunate vegetables, and rebelling against her parents’ matrimonial machinations by plastering herself in lipstick — as if she had had an accident with the ketchup bottle. Sheerin displayed a strong technique, shaping her melodic lines clearly and intelligently, and, with tenor Alberto Souso’s Prince Phillippe, creating moments of tenderness and realism to balance the farce. Much of the hilarity resulted from Raquel Luis’s crisp comic timing as a ‘Hyacinth Bucket’-styled Grand Duchess, with Lawrence Thackeray contributing to the mayhem as the indignant delivery boy determined to be paid for his groceries.

The Festival’s recital programme gives the Wexford audience an opportunity to hear both established and rising stars in more intimate settings. To mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Waterford composer, William Vincent Wallace, pianist Una Hunt and soprano Máire Flavin presented a programme of short piano works, songs and opera excerpts selected from Wallace’s 1854 American Music Album. Performed with fresh lyricism and characterised by melodic inventiveness, the varied works were introduced by Una Hunt, whose well-informed and engaging commentaries revealed her commitment to Wallace’s music which she has championed and recorded.

In the first of the Festival’s lunchtime recitals, in St. Iberius Church, tenor Thomas Morris — who, as he pointed out, is 100% French despite his Irish-sounding name — welcomed the chance to demonstrate the wit and theatricality which he had displayed as Basile in the previous evening’s performance of Le roi malgré lui. Morris revealed his accomplished appreciation of French chanson in works by Chabrier and Poulenc, which followed a lively rendition of Manuel Rosenthal’s Songs of Monsieur Bleu.

2013 will bring Nino Rota’s Il Cappello di Paglia di Firenze (The Florentine Straw Hat), a Massenet double bill of Thérèse and La Navarraise, and Jacopo Foroni’s Cristina, Regina di Svezia. I can’t wait.

Claire Seymour

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L’Arlesiana:

Rosa Mamai: Annunziata Vestri; Federico: Dmitry Golovnin; Vivetta: Mariangela Sicilia; Baldassarre: Christopher Robertson; Metifio: Quentin Hayes; Marco: Andrew Greenan; L’innocente: Eleanor Greenwood; conductor: David Angus; director: Rosetta Cucchi; set designer: Sarah Bacon; costume designer: Claudia Pernigotti; lighting designer: Simon Corder.

Le roi malgré lui:

Henri de Valois: Liam Bonner; Comte de Nangis: Luigi Boccia; Le Duc de Fritelli: Frédéric Gonçalvès; Minka: Mercedes Arcuri; Alexina: Nathalie Paulin; Laski: Quirijn de Lang; Basile: Thomas Morris; Lincourt: Carlos Nogueira; D’Elboeuf: Lawrence Thackeray; Maugiron: Simon Robinson; Comte de Caylus: Owen Webb; Marquis de Villequier: Simon Meadows; Un soldat: Colin Brockie; conductor: Jean-Luc Tingaud; director: Thaddeus Strassberger; set designer: Kevin Knight; costume designer: Mattie Ullrich; lighting designer: Simon Corder; choreographer: Marjorie Folkman.

A Village Romeo and Juliet:

Manz: Quentin Hayes; Marti: Andrew Greenan, Sali as a child: Jack Power; Vreli as a child: Stephanie Kinsella; Sali: John Bellemer; Vreli: Jessica Muirhead; The Dark Fiddler: David Stout; Farm Men: Jamie Rock, Cozmin Sime; Farm Women: Eleanor Lyons, Angharad Morgan, Cátia Moreso; Gingerbread Woman: Iria Perestrelo; Wheel-of-Fortune Woman: Maria Miró; Cheap-Jewellery Woman: Mae Heydon; Showman: Leonel Pinheiro; Merry-go-round Man: Owen Webb; Shooting-gallery Man: Thomas Faulkner; Slim Girl: Hannah Sawle; Wild Girl: Kate Symonds-Joy; The Poor Horn-Player: Daniel Joy; The Hunchbacked Bass-Fiddler: Simon Robinson; Bargemen: Adam Gilbert, Quentin Hayes, Patrick Hyland; Dancers: Jan Patzke, Ryan O’Neill, Aaron Jones, Olivia Quayle, Jenny Reeves, Máire Dee; conductor: Rory Macdonald; director: Stephan Metcalf; set and costume designer: Jamie Vardon; lighting designer: Simon Corder; choreographer: Paula O’Reilly.

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1612 Italian Vespers

The title, 1612 Italian Vespers, is a little misleading, the year being chosen because it marks the death of Giovanni Gabrieli, the departure of Monteverdi from Mantua and his move to Venice, and a notable composition of the little known Parmesan composer, Lodovico Grossi da Viadana — the ambitious 4-part Vesper Psalms — rather than because of the provenance of any one substantial work. Moreover, the most ambitious work recorded is itself highly speculative: Giovanni Gabrieli’s 28-voice Magnificat is, according to the press release, reconstructed by Hugh Keyte and I Fagiolini’s founder and director Robert Hollingworth from 8 extant parts with “scholarship fired by imagination”. Similarly, the hymn Ave, Maria Stella, unites the double-choir setting from Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers with Francesco Soriano’s collection of canons and oblighi, published in the same year. Yet, since Monteverdi’s revered Vespers have long inspired debate about the authenticity of the cohesiveness of the constituent parts (were they ever performed as a whole, or were the Vespers a publishing project designed to win Monteverdi a new job in Venice?), perhaps such inventive conjecture does not matter, especially when the resultant recording as sumptuous and full of vitality as this one.

Gabrieli’s lost masterpiece recreates a thanksgiving Vespers, The Feast of the Holy Rosary, reputedly celebrated for 200 years in commemoration of the famous Venetian victory over the Turks at Lepanto in 1574. The diverse performers — vocal and instrumental — ‘choirs’ signifying ensemble groupings rather than denoting vocalists or instrumentalists — rejoice in the immense sound-scape and the intricate complexity of the idiom: dialogues, echoes and extravagant rhetorical gestures, such as the vigorous repetitions of the fittingly jubilant ‘He have shown strength in his arm/ scattered the proud’, are fore-grounded, and their declamatory effects celebrated. Monumental blocks of sound, conjuring the awesome, inspiring nature of the original setting and context of performance contrast with sparser instrumental textures. And, after a momentous pause — which Keyte presumes originally offered an opportunity for a “‘military’ interpolation”, and for which he duly supplies a fanfare and brief reminiscence of Andrea Gabrieli’s Aria della battaglia for eight wind instruments — bells and cannon fire surprise and excite, resurrecting the triumphant, self-congratulatory festivities of years long hence and empires long lost.

The elder Gabrieli, Andrea, also features, in the form of the densely textured, two-choir, Benedictus Dominus Deus Sabaoth, an assemblage of war-like scriptural texts, presumed to be assembled for Lepanto celebrations, which interposes rhythmically enlivened passages within the weighty sonorities of the massed forces. Andrea Gabrieli’s Toccata del 9 Tono is a brief but impressive study in finger technique, here ornamented impressively by organist James Johnstone.

Despite the monumental scale of Gabrieli’s Magnificat it is Claudio Monteverdi’s Ab aeterno ordinata sum, a supremely virtuosic solo motet, which inspires most admiration, show-casing the range and flexibility of bass, Jonathan Sells, as it moves from imperious dignity to increasingly florid rhetorical splendour.

Of the less renowned composers represented, Viadana’s expressive text setting impresses in a sequence of poly-choral psalms characterised by expressive text setting, dramatic declamation and melodic richness — and framed by beautifully pure, resonant antiphons, reflecting various aspects of the Rosary feast, performed by the members of De Profundis. Massive sonorities contrast with solo passages of inventive virtuosic expression, as two vocal choirs are supplemented by additional high and low choirs for instruments, creating a kaleidoscopic of colours and a rich, invigorating ambience. Viadana’s O dulcissima Maria, for solo soprano is performed with exquisite, piercing sweetness and dexterous agility by soprano Clare Wilkinson, accompanied by theorbo and chamber organ.

Exaudi, Deus by Barbarino from the composer’s second book of solo motets, allows an instrumentalist to shine, show-casing a wonderfully reedy, resounding and elaborate cornetto solo by Gawain Glenton. The earlier generation of composers is represented by Palestrina’s Quae ets ista from the composer’s setting of the Song of Songs.

The disc concludes with an extra-liturgical motet: Giovanni Gabrieli’s In ecclesiis which rejoices that ‘God [is] our helper for ever’. Conjecture and assumption are necessary aspects of music-making among devotees and scholars of Renaissance repertoire and Hugh Keyte introduces an additional element of romance, commenting that when ‘resurrecting’ the original choirs presumed to have been omitted from the later printed edition, the “recovery process has often felt semi-automatic; as though the rejected parts were phantoms jostling at my elbow, eager to be resuscitated”.

Standards of musicianship and technical accomplishment are extraordinarily and consistently high. The diversity of textures, colours and combinations ensures freshness and animation; the monumental balanced by the intimate. And, the crisp definition of recording allows full appreciation of both massive sonorities and subtle dialogues between contrasting groups and individual voices.

Claire Seymour

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Decca_4783506.jpg image_description=1612 Italian Vespers product=yes product_title=1612 Italian Vespers product_by=I Fagiolini/Robert Hollingworth product_id=Decca 0289 478 3506 6 [CD] price=$14.99 product_url=http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?ordertag=Orchrecom65207-741622&album_id=743625

The Resurrection of Italo Montemezzi’s Epic La Nave

Critics who wrote about La Nave in the past were given to playing on the title (La Nave = The Ship), and talked of launchings, sailings, dockings, calm seas, anxious sailors, and so forth. Extending that tradition, Hurricane Sandy almost left La Nave high and dry, for Teatro Grattacielo’s performance scheduled for Monday 29 October had to be cancelled on account of squalls, and only some heroic behind-the-scenes efforts allowed it to be put on two days later instead. It was not undamaged by the weather, for the chorus was slightly below strength and the Rose Theater full of empty seats reserved by those who sadly couldn’t make it. But those who could gave every sign of feeling very fortunate to be there.

Montemezzi (1875-1952) has gone down in operatic history as the ultimate “one work” composer, that work being L’Amore dei Tre Re (The Love of Three Kings) of 1913, an opera which enjoyed enormous international success and acclaim for about three decades after its premiere. As Alan Mallach found occasion to state in The Autumn of Italian Opera: From Verismo to Modernism, 1890-1915 (2007), “While even moderately serious opera buffs know of Mascagni’s L’amico Fritz and Iris or Leoncavallo’s Zazà, it is hard to imagine anyone but a true specialist who can name another Montemezzi opera, or proffer even the most minimal information that might illuminate who he was, and how this shadowy figure came to write this one notable opera.” Yet Montemezzi himself considered La Nave of 1918 to be his masterpiece, and his close friend Tullio Serafin, who conducted the premieres of both operas, agreed. Montemezzi wrote in 1931, “La Nave … is my major work. I insist: my major work. I shout it to the rooftops so that I may be heard.” It was a source of great frustration to him that he continued to be associated almost wholly with the earlier opera.

When La Nave was premiered at La Scala in 1918, the Italian critics had a number of reservations. They found Montemezzi’s choice of a play by Gabriele D’Annunzio, Italy’s most famous and notorious living writer, both unsuited to operatic treatment and (in many cases) not very well handled. And they found the music too heavily Germanic, too saturated with Wagner and Strauss — the First World War had, unsurprisingly, hardened attitudes to German music in Italy — and insufficiently tuneful. By 1938, when there was a very important revival of La Nave at the Teatro Reale dell’Opera in Rome, Mussolini’s showpiece opera house, the force of these criticisms had abated considerably, and the general attitude was surprise that such an obviously major opera had been neglected for so long. But in 1943 all the performance materials were destroyed by allied bombing, putting an end to the opera’s stage career. The manuscript full score survived, however, and from this new parts have been generated which allowed the historic revival of La Nave on 31 October. The opera is now generally available for hire again.

Teatro Grattacielo put on concert performances, which have the benefit of focussing attention firmly on the music, though in this case the ballet sequence in the second “Episode” was enacted by the I Giullari di Piazza Dancers, which brought some curious visual diversion half way through. How well La Nave would stand up dramatically today it is hard to say: it is a strange story concerned with the foundation, or rather the promise of the foundation, of Venice as a great maritime power; the plot is permeated with Italian nationalism, and contains a good deal of obscure motivation. But the music is magnificent from start to finish, and the opera certainly deserves to be staged, so the full grandeur of Montemezzi’s conception can be appreciated. Almost all the critics of the opera in the past agreed, whatever their other objections, that Montemezzi’s orchestration and treatment of the choir were extraordinarily impressive, and the New York performance showed they were right. The orchestration, clearly akin to that of L’Amore dei Tre Re, is Wagnerian, yet the Wagnerianism is refracted through an Italian sensibility, with a gripping nobility, sweeping, cinematic quality, lyrical voluptuousness, and restless play of instrumental textures. The sheer lushness of the score was beautifully brought out by Israel Gursky’s passionate conducting of the Teatro Grattacielo orchestra, and his timing seemed to me faultless — he let the music breathe, but also drove it along with irresistible momentum. The opera was shorter than I had expected, the Prologue and three “Episodes” adding up to a little over two and a quarter hours of music. Perhaps Montemezzi had learned from Mascagni the danger of making epic operas too long.

The complete assimilation of the chorus into the structure of the opera was Montemezzi’s major technical advance in La Nave. Apart from a lengthy section in the first “Episode,” where the epic tone of the work is relaxed, the chorus, representing the early Venetians, is almost constantly involved in the unfolding story, shaping as well as responding to events. Matteo Incagliati (reviewing it in 1938) was right to categorize La Nave as a “choral opera” and to see it as akin to Boris Godunov. Montemezzi, like Mussorgsky, believed that he could distil the longing, lyrical essence of his people in music, and the Teatro Grattacielo chorus did full justice to his inspiration, singing with resounding force that never turned harsh or descended into mere noise.

By far the biggest role in the opera is that of Basiliola, an alluring, cruel, capricious and vengeful woman whom D’Annunzio originally imagined as touched by madness and into whom he poured all his great love and hatred of women. It is an incredibly demanding role, and Tiffany Abban told me afterwards that it was the most difficult thing she had ever done: “as difficult as the title role in Aida, but much more unrelenting.” Yet she made it look and sound, if not easy, at least comfortable, and gave an assured, commanding performance with a thrilling voice which seemed capable of anything. Her Basiliola was more gentle and sympathetic then I had imagined the character sounding, and perhaps that was, in part at least, because the nature of a concert performance tends to limit the full expression of character — this Basiliola did not need to kill people on stage! But clearly Montemezzi’s musical portrayal of the character allows some freedom of interpretation, and for anyone directing a stage performance one of the big questions would be how sympathetically Basiliola should come across.

The next biggest role, again by a wide margin, is Marco Gratico, the tenor. Robert Brubaker sung with exhilarating power, and made Marco sound thoroughly heroic — whether the character should sound quite that heroic is another interpretative issue a staged production would need to consider, for Marco, who is incited by Basiliola to kill his brother, is a seriously flawed hero. From a purely musical point of view, however, much could be said for Brubaker’s decision to simply concentrate on bringing out the soaring beauty of Montemezzi’s vocal writing. Most of the other solo roles are comparatively small, though by no means easy, and were generally very ably filled, Ashraf Sewailam, who sung the part of Orso Faledro, Basiliola’s blinded father, and Kurt Dougherty, taking three of the minor roles, being particularly outstanding. The only disappointment was Joseph Flaxman as Traba, the monk, a character who appears to sternly denounce Basiliola’s immoral goings on in the first “Episode.” He is a vital character in the opera, for he is the only one who holds Basiliola’s behaviour up to something like objective examination, and he reveals her infidelity to Marco. Yet Flaxman sang sweetly, with no hint of moral outrage. Here, perhaps, the limitations of a concert performance were most acutely felt.

Altogether Teatro Grattacielo made a triumphant case for an opera that must, in any historical or artistic point of view, count as one of the major Italian operas of the 1910s. All credit to them for their ambitiousness and ability to instil enthusiasm in supporters and performers that makes such projects possible. If there were a prize for the operatic revival of the year La Nave would be a strong contender. Let’s hope that other companies will now take it up.

David Chandler

David Chandler has edited a book of Essays on the Montemezzi-D’Annunzio “Nave” (Durrant Publishing, 2012).

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Cast and Production:

Basiliola: Tiffany Abban; Marco Gratico: Robert Brubaker; Sergio Gratico: Daniel Ihn-Kyu Lee; OrsoFaledro: Ashraf Sewailam; The Monk Traba: Joseph Flaxman; The Stonecutter Gauro / The Miller / The Survivor: Kurt Dougherty. The Teatro Grattacielo orchestra and men’s chorus with the Dessoff Symphonic Choir. Conductor: Israel Gursky. Production Director: Duane D. Printz. Rose Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall, New York, 31 October 2012.

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Oliver Knussen: Where the Wild Things Are and Higglety Pigglety Pop!

This co-production of the two operas with the Aldeburgh Festival and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association was a delight. Netia Jones employs a cunning, loving mix of animation and live action to retain as much as humanly possible of Sendak’s celebrated drawings. Sometimes we see more of one than the other, though the principal characters — the boy Max in Where the Wild Things Are and Jennie the Sealyham Terrier in Higglety Pigglety Pop! — are ‘real’ throughout. How much lies their — or our? — imagination? What is real anyway? The use of animation for the monsters save at the beginning and end of the first opera — we see the singers go behind a screen and emerge at the end, and of course we hear the, throughout — heightens our questioning. The screen in neatly reversed in Higglety Pigglety Pop! so that we see the secondary characters both on stage and on film. Again, what is real? Are not both varieties of apparition and/or depiction? In the land of the Mother Goose World Theatre, all the world’s a stage — a tribute, surely, as much to Stravinsky and his Rake’s Progress tribute to Mozart, the latter parodied in Knussen’s final scene, as to Ravel. (Both Higglety and Don Giovanni end 'outside' their dramas, in bright if tarnished D major.) The repetitions of that gala performance, the time-honoured tradition of a play within a play, unsettle as they should. What do they mean? When will they stop? Again, what, and who, is ‘real’? That is very much the stuff of imaginary worlds, strongest for some in childhood, but for many of us just as powerful in subsequent stages of our lives.

Crucially, the sense of fantasy in libretto and production is at the very least equally present in Knussen’s scores, kinship with Ravel especially apparent in Where the Wild Things Are. And we all know who composed the most perfect operatic depiction of childhood. Stravinsky sometimes seems close too, for instance in the fiercer rhythmically driven music of the second scene (Mama and her hoover), the Symphony in Three Movements coming to my mind. And the musical material itself of course delightfully pays tribute both to Debussy’s La boîte à joujoux and most memorably to Boris Godunov, direct quotation reminiscing of the Tsar’s ill-fated coronation when Max is crowned King of all Wild Things.

A scene from Higglety Pigglety Pop!

Ryan Wigglesworth’s direction was palpably alive to this sense of orchestral wonder and fantasy, his programme notes an exemplary tribute from one composer-conductor to another from whom he has learned a great deal. The tone of performance darkened in tandem with that of the score for Higglety Pigglety Pop! Detail was meaningful without exaggeration, for instance in the subtle pointing up of certain intervals associated with different characters. Those with ears to hear would do so, consciously or otherwise. Moreover, the orchestra’s response was as assured, as disciplined, as generous as the conductor’s direction. The Britten Sinfonia was throughout on outstanding form, thoroughly inside Knussen’s idiom, unfailingly precise without sacrifice to warmth of tone. Despite relatively chamber-like forces, at least in the string section (6.6.4.4.4), one often felt that was hearing a larger orchestra, for this was anything but a small-scale performance. Indeed, accustomed as I am to hearing the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican, there were many times when I should not have been surprised to discover that I had in fact been hearing the LSO.

Claire Booth headed a fine cast for Where the Wild Things Are, her Max as quicksilver on stage as vocally. Lucy Schaufer proved every inch her equal as Jennie in Higglety Pigglety Pop! Very much the singing actress, her deeper mezzo tones were perfectly suited to the darkened tones of the score. There is something a little dangerous about Jennie and the acting world of ‘experience’ for which she forsakes her comfortable home — yet in a sense all children must at some point act similarly. All members of the two casts, however, were richly deserving of praise, a particular favourite of mine Graeme Danby’s surreal, apparently innocent Pig-in-Sandwich-Boards. These performances came across as true company efforts, a state of affairs doubtless deepened by ‘experience’ in Aldeburgh and Los Angeles.

Mark Berry

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Where the Wild Things Are

Max: Claire Booth; Mama/Voice of Tzippy: Susan Bickley; Moishe: Christopher Lemmings; Emil: Graeme Broadbent; Aaron: Jonathan Gunthorpe; Bernard: Graeme Danby; Tzippy: Charlotte McDougall

Higglety Pigglety Pop!

Jane: Lucy Schaufer; The Potted Plant/Baby: Susanna Andersson; Rhoda/Voice of Baby’s Mother: Claire Booth; Cat-Milkman/High Voice of Ash Tree: Christopher Lemmings; Pig-in-Sandwich-Boards: Graeme Danby; Lion/Low Voice of Ash Tree: Graeme Broadbent

Netia Jones (director, designs); Britten Sinfonia/Ryan Wigglesworth (conductor). Barbican Hall, Saturday 3 November 2012.

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image_description=From Where the Wild Things Are [Photo by Mark Allan / Barbican]

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Photos by Mark
Allan / Barbican

Michael Spyres: Star Ascendant

Beatrice di Tenda, presented by the Collegiate Chorale with James Bagwell conducting will command much attention owing to the participation of Angela Meade in the title role to be sure. However, Michael may just threaten to steal a fair bit of the NY spotlight as Orombello as he caps off a calendar year in which his star keeps rising ever higher.

Having begun 2012 with a well-received Candide (Rome Opera) and a notable outing as Edgardo (Minnesota Opera), Michael won favorable press for his first Masaniello in Opera Comique’s La Muette de Portici, along with an enthusiastic reception from the discerning Parisian public. Following a lauded Caramoor turn in Rossini’s Ciro in Babilonia he repeated the success with his debut in the same production at the Pesaro Festival.

Book ending his assumption of the title role of La Damnation de Faust for his Flemish Opera debut and the upcoming Beatrice were a handful of successful concert appearances. After trying for months to find a time to talk to the peripatetic tenor, Opera Today caught up with Michael Spyres via email as he was putting the finishing touches on his upcoming Bellini role.

OT: You "grew up in a family of musicians." Have any other family members pursued a career in music?

MS: Yes! I was named after my uncle whose life was cut short by cancer. He was pursuing a career in Opera and at age 35 was diagnosed with a rare form of throat cancer. My mother was on her way to studying voice at Juilliard back in the 60's but decided to have a family instead. My older brother and I have toured Japan in Traviata, I was Alfredo and he was Gastone. He and I also recorded Rossini's Otello together in Germany. My sister is quite a successful singer and actress in the New England area of the United States. As a family we have performed 5 different operas together!

OT: Did you always think you would be a professional singer? If you weren't a singer what would you be doing?

MS: To be honest I always wanted to be a singer. I have done many other things in my life such as teaching, waiter, construction worker, gardener, but I always considered myself a singer even in the 5 years that I did no singing at all on stage. My other passion in life has always been comedy and I also wanted to be a stand up comedian. Now if I was not singing I would more than likely be a construction worker and have my own building crew. I love physical work.

OT: Speaking of family or relationships what are the challenges of sustaining ties with a busy travel schedule? What practical solutions have you found? Do family and friends get to see you perform often? Who is your toughest critic?

MS: I am married and she is a singer as well. We travel together 90 percent of the time and are lucky enough to get to sing together about twice a year. My family and friends travel and see me at least once a year. We have managed my career to where we see friends and family every three months because any longer than you start to become a bit disconnected. Both of my parents are retired teachers so they have a little more time to come and visit. Well my toughest critics are my two best friends, my wife and my agent. But if we are being really honest I am my own biggest critic. That is the only way that I have learned to sing, by being relentless at deconstructing my weaknesses as a singer. I have not had a teacher since I was 21 and so one needs to be quite self aware and critical if one wants to improve.

OT: You have a varied repertoire, with a good deal of Rossini and Mozart. Do you have any role models for singing in this style?

MS: My biggest influence in the Rossini repertoire is Raul Gimenez. His elegance and style are something to behold. Very few people have become the artist that he is. Every intention is heard and you hear how intelligently crafted each phrase is. For Mozart it is of course Fritz Wunderlich. He understood and felt Mozart as no one else has. His handling of his instrument had such grace and dignity that few others have even come close to his understanding of the voice.

OT: The role of Candide always seems deceptively simple, even naive to me, but has been essayed by top singers like Rounesville, Hadley, and Groves among others. What drew you to the part?

Michael Spyres as Masaniello in La Muette de Portici [Photo by E. Carecchio courtesy of Michael Spyres]

MS: Candide is one of the truly well rounded characters for the tenor repertoire. Bernstein perfectly captured the character that Voltaire wrote. Candide is the nature of man's journey from child to man. He is constantly questioning and trying to find answers in a world that doesn't make sense. Candide is unabashedly naive but he does not stay that way. Through his difficult journey he begins to understand the world better and in turn starts to realize what a responsibility and burden it is to be a sentient being and in this sense it must be noted that the parallels between Tamino and Candide are undeniable.

He begins as a privileged child of the world with a family and home and he is then excommunicated and has to start living his life for himself. Indeed he is forced to live every stage of life; bliss, love, loss, pain, loss of faith, enlightenment, despair, anger, frustration, and finally acceptance of it all. He goes through, albeit in extreme form, what all of us go through in our path to becoming a true Mensch. I love the fact that throughout the entire journey he never stops believing in the good of the world. Maybe this is a naive thought to some but if it were not for this thought we would never have evolved to this point. Essentially, Candide is the reflection of what we all are which is children trying to make some sense of life. Any questions?

OT: Has any role(s) become a calling card, or point of entry to certain houses?

MS: Well, it seems that I have carved my niche in doing the roles that only a handful of people do. Fortunately I feel right at home in the ‘baritenori’ roles as well as the French grand opera repertoire and happily these types of roles are the roles that I've always been interested in because of the extreme vocal and acting challenges involved. I will be performing my first Hoffmann in French (I've sung the role before, but in German) in Barcelona next year and I'm hoping that that might become my calling card. I am extremely attracted to the role of Hoffman because of the fact that you need to be a good actor as well as (have the) voice and these types of roles to me are the most exciting because they challenge you to become a true artist rather than just a ‘facet’ of a what an operatic singer is required to be. I find it very disheartening and quite tragic that many people believe that in order to be an operatic singer you just need to have a voice. This needs to change.

OT: You seem to be committing to certain roles in titles that are not often performed like Tell, Muette, Betulia, and Huguenots. And certainly Ciro in Babilonia in Pesaro last August was a real rarity. Is there a payoff for a rising (or established) singer to undertake the huge effort to learn these parts, even if you will likely not have that many chances to perform them? What is the payoff on the investment?

MS: I love a challenge and I love to learn new music. Nothing is more exhilarating to me than learning a new piece of music. I find that every new part that I take on helps me become a more well rounded singer. Every new challenge forces you to learn about your voice and yourself in a different way and this is why I love singing the more obscure repertoire, not to say that I have anything against our modern view of standard repertoire but there is a wealth of knowledge if only you search for it in the rest of the operatic repertoire that will touch and move you in a way that our current standard repertoire can not. To date I have sung 44 different roles in four languages and I must say that each of these roles have been extremely beneficial in shaping who I am and it has humbled me by broadening my horizons and making me realize how much great art is out there.

OT: Like many other exciting American singers, you seem to be working most of the time in Europe. What's up with that? There seem to be numerous stateside companies. Are they not asking? Or just not interested in American names? Not doing repertoire that interests you or that you are currently performing? Is there possibly a snob factor at work in American houses' hiring?

MS: I am starting to sing in the United States but to be honest the U.S. and the E.U. are two different operatic worlds. I have been living mostly in Europe for eight years now and it just takes time to start making the connections back home. Just like in any business it is who you know and who they know. I did not attend any of the prominent schools in the United States and I was only involved in one young artist program which was Opera Theatre Saint Louis. I think this is a very big part of why I haven't sung much in the United States to date but that is changing.

I am very excited to be singing my first Bellini role as Orombello in Beatrice di Tenda with the ASO and the Collegiate Chorale at Carnegie Hall on 5 December. I have been very fortunate to have sung many Bel Canto roles thus far but with every new composer comes new discoveries of my own instrument through the study of the unique writing from each composers wishes. Bellini truly understood the beauty of the human voice through the simplicity of the creative melodic line and along with Rossini and Mozart knew how to spin a breathtaking melody. Next April, I will be singing Leicester in Maria Stuarda in Washington D.C. and in the near future I will be singing in Chicago Lyric Opera and returning to the Caramoor Festival.

OT: Was there a production/performance where, because of personal achievement, or critical/audience reaction that you felt "okay, I have 'arrived' and I can make a living at this?" Or better, "wow, I have gotten really good at this!???" Have you had any moments like, "I can't believe I am on the same stage with (major star)"? Any star-struck experiences?

MS: The last few years have been very important for me in terms of confidence and achievement. I feel as though I started to realize that I was on my way when Deutsche Oper Berlin asked me to sing German repertoire, then La Scala invited me to sing Italian repertoire, and subsequently Opera Comique of Paris asked me to sing French repertoire. La Muette de Portici at the Opera Comique was a real success for me because of the audience reaction and the critical reaction to my performances made me very touched. The greatest audience response that I have ever had was actually in Caramoor of this year. It was quite a special moment when I was singing the trio from La donna del Lago at La Scala with Juan Diego Florez and Joyce DiDonato. These two singers have garnered massive success over the years and to sing on stage with the top of your field is a good feeling!

OT: How do you learn your roles? Do you listen to other singer's recordings? Do you play any instruments? Major influences on your career? Teachers? Can you sum up your approach to singing technique?

MS: Because of the amount of new repertoire that I perform I usually start familiarizing myself with a piece around eight months before and then three months before I start actively memorizing then the month before is intense study. Most of the time I am learning two operas while performing another and this can be maddening unless you have a system.

I absolutely listen to other singers in fact I am adamant and almost obsessed with old recordings. I usually listen to live recordings as they are much way for me to judge how the opera should sound. I am fortunate to have a huge advantage in my voice category simply for the fact that Nicolai Gedda came before me. As far as instruments I play the guitar, the piano, the trumpet, and the saxophone a bit. My father was a band and choir teacher and so I had my pick of any instrument to play after school. I had voice lessons in high school for a year and then I had 3 years of college as a voice major with Dr. Robert Mirshak. He was instrumental in my career as well as Dr. Guy Webb, my choir director in college. Since I was 21 I have been a self taught singer.

As far as technique goes I have a lot to say on the subject. Firstly, one must always strive to sing healthfully and intelligently. It takes many, many hours in the practice room with even more hours of self reflection. Look at Jean de Reszke, or Ivan Kozlovsky, and Nicolai Gedda, and Placido Domingo: the most common thread within these tenors is the fact that they all had/have a great understanding of their instrument. Unfortunately I feel that in the realm of vocal technique very few people actually think for themselves. This is understandable because of the complex and enigmatic nature of our voice. Up until the last few years we were never able to see inside of the throat when someone is singing.

I think it is about time that people start being more scientific about their claims. The realization that I have come to is that one should sing through an entire role and analyze if there are inconsistencies in where ones overtones are occurring. If you do not understand the role with your own voice then it might be too soon and you should work on your technique for that specific repertoire. The reality of the situation is that almost every role was composed for a different singer in mind based on their particular strengths or weaknesses. Our job as a singer is to find the right repertoire for ones specific voice and the fach system is a good guide but it is not the end all be all. I believe that whether you speak of Concone, Vacchai, Marchesi, Rossini, etc... All technique is based on a few basic principles.

My belief of technique is that of Breath, support of that breath and the study of how to manipulate your body to make the most effective sound for the expression you need to convey. I was fortunate in that I learned from a young age about how important breath coupled with support and self expression was because of the various instruments I played. One can argue a lifetime on how to best support or convey expression, but you must always keep in mind that singing technique has fundamentals and there are physical laws to the body, such as without air there can be no sound and without support of that air the proper sound cannot be achieved.

The area of technique that concerns me is that many people do not realize that all performers need to be multi tasking and flexible enough to honor the wishes of the director, the conductor, and most importantly the composer. One must understand first how to make the proper sounds for the repertoire that one sings. I have sung every type of music since I was able to make a sound but I have always kept an acute sense for proper technique of each type of music that I sing whether it be folk, gospel, pop, lieder, or opera. I feel that this is where many people fail in their idea of "technique" because many people's definition of technique is so small minded.

OT: How was your experience with Edgardo in Minnesota? It's a big leap from Arturo, huh? I have seen a couple of top tier lyric tenors (including Araiza) be challenged to their limit by the part. Last Edgardo I heard was Filianoti with his big steely voice. How do you feel it fit, for you?

MS: You are correct that Edgardo is a difficult sing and a big leap from Arturo. The funny thing is that Edgardo is not on stage nearly as much as Arnold, Raoul, or Romeo but when he is, he is always singing in the passaggio. I felt quite good about Edgardo but it is a role that your throat and mindset have to adjust to and once you become more aware of the problematic areas you can start to feel comfortable. The truth is that it was written for a specific voice in a different era with a different singing technique and us modern singers are always going to be in trouble unless we strive to slightly change our views on why it was written in that way.

OT: I am especially impressed by the richness and presence of your middle and lower voice (hmm, does any tenor want to hear that??). Did you always train as a tenor? I hasten to add, your top has excellent body, and a vibrant ping as well. Was it easy above the staff from the start?

MS: Thank you. No I did not always train as a tenor. When I began my studies at 18, I was a baritone because it was much more natural for me. The first aria I ever learned was Leporello's Madamina aria from Don Giovanni. My voice teacher was the one who realized that I was actually a tenor. It took many years of practice to get used to that idea. It actually took years before I could sing above an F sharp without reverting to head voice, but I am a quite obsessive person once I have decided to do something. I left school and lived with my parents for five years while working temp jobs. When I would come home I would sing and learn rep for six to eight hours and often till one or two in the morning. I have amazing parents! What is interesting is that only in the last three years have I gotten used to the tenor sensations. Many of these factors in combination with my body structure lend themselves to the idea of me becoming a dramatic tenor in the years to come, we'll see hopefully!

OT: With the Faust and Muette and Tell figuring prominently in your ascent, and with the upcoming Idomeneo and Cellini do you see yourself moving more permanently into heavier lyric parts? You seem to be charting a course into Gedda or even Vickers territory with these role assumptions. On purpose? Coincidence?

MS: Honestly, for the most part I am doing the roles that people are casting me in. My voice does have a darker quality which lends itself to these heavier lyric parts but on a conscious level Gedda is one of my biggest heroes so that probably factors in subconsciously as well. I am honestly just trying to do every role that comes my way in a healthy and well thought out manner. If people want to categorize me as a specific type of singer then that's their business. I do not put so much stock in worrying about which voice category I am going to be or am currently. What interests me the most is the pursuit of becoming a better artist.

OT: Any current directors you especially enjoy working with? Singers? The great Ewa Podles is certainly a towering, imposing vocal presence on stage. How do you find her as a colleague?

MS: Terry Gilliam was always one of my heroes as a child. It was a dream come true to be able to perform Faust with Terry on his La Damnation de Faust. He was truly an inspiration and his vision of what an opera can be should be taken to heart. I believe that he will change the face of Opera! I have had the amazing honor of working with many great directors but I feel one the most incredible directors out there is Thaddeus Strassberger. He and I have formed a friendship and a mutual respect over our collaborations. His understanding of opera in the broader spectrum of entertainment and art combine to make the performer and audience experience an astounding night at the opera. Ewa has a confidence on stage like no one else and her commitment to her actions no matter how grandiose the gesture is something to behold and something that we can all as performers learn from
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OT: What is the worst thing that has happened to you during a performance? And the best performance moment ever? Anything you would refuse (or have refused) to do on stage? Anything weird you have been directed to do? Any thoughts on Konzept productions?

MS: The worst thing was my debut as Lindoro in Belgrade when I was singing my opening aria and I looked down to my astonishment having a bloody right hand. I had somehow cut myself and didn't realize it and in the middle of the aria I was going through many mixed emotions of trying to figure out what to do while singing a very difficult aria. I still have the scar to this day and I wear it proudly.

The best moment on stage I ever had was while doing La Boheme in Springfield, in the Cafe Momus scene. I stood up to sing to toast friends and Mimi, and I realized that everything I was singing about was happening because my wife was singing Mimi, my brother Benoit/Alcindoro, and my Father, Mother, sister in-law, niece, and nephew were all in the chorus! That was a great moment that I will always cherish.

As far as anything I would refuse to do I have not come across it. Actually in Terry Gilliam's production of La damnation de Faust I was hung upside down and hoisted 20 feet in the air nailed to a swastika...so. I understand the need for wanting something new in concept productions but many productions I have seen have little to no continuity because let's face it, there are specific reasons why composers composed for a certain period and also why certain dramatic implications only work in that period. Truly successful productions understand this fact and strive to make their concept true to what has been written.

When I see a new production that is so obviously not well thought out I am always reminded of people who say they are modern artists and have come up with some brilliant new idea, but in fact they have just not done their research and have too big of an ego to delve into the true meaning of art in operatic form; careful study, constant questioning, self reflection, honing one's craft, being fearless, etc... These are the qualities of an artist and not who can come up with the best one liner, unless of course your profession happens to be a comedian!

OT: Who are you eager to work with and why? Who are among your favorite singers, current or past?

MS: I am so honored to have been able to know and work with three living legends; Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Riccardo Muti, and Alberto Zedda. I have learned so much with my collaboration of each of these men and welcome the chance to work with them again. Almost every singer that I listen to is from the past to be honest. Here is a list of some of my favorite tenors: Aureliano Pertile, Andre D'Arkor, Miguel Fleta, Fernando de Lucia, George Thill, Ferrucio Tagliavini, Gigli, Caruso, Bjoerling, Lanza, Wunderlich, Gedda, Bruce Ford, and Raul Gimenez but I will stop there.

OT: Your recent solo CD, A Fool For Love (released on Delos) was certainly well-received. Were you happy with the experience? Anything you wish you could change about it? Any selections you regret leaving out, or that ended up on the cutting room floor?

MS: Well firstly I'm extremely honored and happy to have a solo CD with orchestra out on the market. It was always a dream of mine to have my own album come out and now that is reality and I couldn't be more thankful for Delos and Constantine Orbelian for believing in me enough to make this CD. I was able to manage almost every piece that I wanted on to the album but unfortunately I was not able to record Plus blanche hermine from Les Huguenots as planned.

I tried to make the CD with half standard repertoire and half slightly more obscure and I would say that we achieved this. I do wish that I would have had more recording time in the studio. We literally had 13 hours to rehearse and record 13 different arias with a newly formed orchestra who had never played together. We recorded four days then directly after we also performed two concerts, one in Moscow and one in St. Petersburg two days after. I am not complaining but it was a bit extreme and these types of difficulties and time/money constrains are a reality for putting out an album of this nature.

OT: What do you do to unwind? On a 'dream' night off what would you do? Where are you living now? And where would you like to live (if it's not the same place) and why?

MS: My wife and I go for drives and explore the local history and food of every location we go to. We plan on lots of good eating and beach time. I would have a great meal and conversation with my wife and friends and then go for moonlight drive while listening to Nick Drake or Sarah Siskind. After arriving at home we would fall asleep watching old movies. That sounds pretty perfect to me! I am based in Missouri in the U.S. but we are only ever there around three months out of the year so the rest of the time it is on the road. We really want to live in Portugal for our E.U. base because the people are so nice and open and the food and wine is fantastic. It is truly the most underrated country in the E.U.

OT: Any major house debuts coming up besides Covent Garden? Any nibbles from the Met?

MS: Yes! Here is my debut schedule for next year as it stands right now: Teatro Liceu in Barcelona as Hoffmann, Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari as Masaniello, my debut in Munich with two concerts of La damnation de Faust with Salonen conducting, and finally Alfred in Fledermaus at the Chicago Lyric. Nothing planned for the Met at this point in time.

OT: Where would you like to see your career (and life) taking you in the next five years? What role would you love to do some day? What role do you wish you could do but don't ever see it being in your Fach?

MS: I would love to be having the same type of career doing new and challenging repertoire that I am having now but I would like to be doing more concert repertoire while teaching part time as well. I would also like to do more charity work and benefit concerts to help various causes that I believe in. My wife and I are explorers and we would love to backpack around Asia, Australia, and South America. A few roles that I would love to perform is Peter Grimes, Eleazar, Hermann, Huon, Mitridate, Tito, Orfeo, Vasco da Gama, Tom Rakewell, and Otello. I would love to sing Hamlet in Ambrois Thomas' Hamlet, and Boris Godunov, as well as Falstaff but this may never happen...but one can dream!

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Spyres_03.gif
image_description=Michael Spyres

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product_title=Michael Spyres: Star Ascendant
product_by=An interview by James Sohre
product_id=Above: Michael Spyres [Photo courtesy of Michael Spyres]

Ralph Vaughan Williams: The Pilgrim’s Progress

Oft criticised for its lack of dramatic shape, it has taken a similarly long of time for this meditative, visionary opera, or ‘Morality’ as the composer termed it, with its patchwork libretto drawn from Bunyan’s allegory, the Psalms and other biblical texts, to receive a subsequent theatrical hearing: indeed, ENO claim that this is the first fully staged professional production for 60 years.

Director Yoshi Oïda and his designer Tom Schenk present us with a sombre vista: distressed buttress-like doors topped by metal cages, which twist and reconfigure in flexible combinations to suggest the infinite, labyrinthine corridors of incarceration. Bunyan does not leave his prison, but his dream enables him to escape physical confinement through spiritual liberation and transcendence, and Vaughan Williams indicates this in a Prologue and Epilogue in which Bunyan is seen in his cell, his back bearing a weighty burden. Further developing this frame, Oïda compels his Pilgrim to wander ceaselessly through various prison chambers, accompanied by fellow prisoners who become first his accompanying pilgrims and later the doleful creatures of the Valley of Humiliation and the lecherous debauchees of Vanity Fair. As the staging is shifted and turned, a thickly encrusted backdrop of deep ochres rising to smoky turquoises is momentarily revealed, like a Renaissance fresco. It is perhaps a glimpse of more ethereal worlds; but, elsewhere Oïda and Schenk offer few visual consolations and put their faith in Vaughan Williams’ radiant score to communicate the inspiring force of Bunyan’s dream and transport us to higher realms.

In Acts 1 and 2 the music certainly fulfils this task. All of Vaughan Williams is contained within this richly self-allusive score: the majestic dignity of the Sea Symphony, the dissonant conflicts of the Fourth, the meditative contemplations of the Fifth, the gentle pastoralism of the Third and Flos Campi, the spiritual consolations of the Serenade to Music. Conductor Martyn Brabbins conjured from the ENO orchestra music of epic grandeur and sweep, and of tender, diaphanous beauty. The opulent brass chords which chime out the opening psalm-tune modulated to a more mysterious, profound choir of trombones underpinning the arrival of the Evangelist. Similarly, the flashing trumpet fanfares which jubilantly herald the King’s Highway suggested hope for the world to come. The Evangelist was sung convincingly and with calm composure by Benedict Nelson, who subsequently, in Watchful’s Intermezzo between Acts 1 and 2, ‘Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit’, conveyed the peaceful simplicity of the monadic baritone line.

Oïda makes interesting use of the aesthetic concepts of Japanese theatre, drawing on the stylised gestures and ritualism of Noh and Kyogen. In a striking coup de théâtre the Pilgrim wields a bunraku miniature of himself to defeat the giant monster Apollyan — which rises like a gargantuan tower of rotting detritus from the deep, topped with a garish gas mask — as his howls (resonantly intoned by Mark Richardson) mingle with the doleful cries of the inhabitants of his oppressive realm.

The stark contrast of the immediately succeeding scene is first disconcerting then reassuring. The discordant orchestral turmoil is salved by soothing harp and strings, heralding the arrival of Two Heavenly Beings, sung by Kitty Whaley and Aoife O’Sullivan, whose simple lyricism relieved and comforted the Pilgrim with Tree of Life and the Water of Life.

Sadly, both musical and dramatic momentum flagged in Act 3 and 4. Vaughan William’s musical idiom is less varied here, perhaps because fundamentally there is no real dramatic conflict: the Pilgrim’s struggles are essentially internal, philosophical. Having backed minimalist visual intervention, Oïda stuck to his guns, but at times the result was bland and monotonous.

The rot actually set in (and the low point was reached) in the Vanity Fair episode. The scene presents unfortunate echoes of the ‘progress’ of Stravinsky’s Rake, but Vaughan Williams’ music lacks Stravinsky’s wit and sensuality, and the sharp satire of Hogarth and Auden is entirely absent. Stale, derivative and ultimately neither shocking nor sensuous, Oïda’s clichéd staging of a realm riddled with transvestism and endemic hermaphroditism certainly provided a visual contrast but was bizarrely incongruous with the world and ‘meaning’ of the rest of the opera. Faced with a parade of Cabaret copies and gyrating fairground grotesques it was not surprising that Pilgrim did not find himself tempted.

In Act 4, woodwind and horns conjure a restorative pastoral serenity, and the mood of tranquillity was enhanced by the song of the Woodcutter’s Boy, ‘He that is down need fear no fall’, sung with sweet composure by Kitty Whately — and repeated at the close with touching instrumental counterpoint by clarinet and viola. But, although the Delectable Mountains can be seen on the horizon, the promised end to the Pilgrim’s journey is still some distance away! There is little musical connection between this passage and the next, marked by the arrival of the comical duo, Mr and Mrs By-Ends, and Oïda made no attempt to provide organic visual or dramatic threads.

Indeed, throughout Oïda relished disparity, combining realism and period authenticity with symbolism and eclectic historical and cultural references. This heterogeneity was sometimes jarring. In a ritual robing at the start of his quest, the Pilgrim is dressed in seventeenth-century breastplate and helmet but arrested by English soldiers in the uniforms of WWII. When the Evangelist blesses the Pilgrim at the end of Act 2, he gives him the Roll of the Word, the Key of Promise, and a staff —the latter, here, a gent’s 1930’s umbrella. Such juxtapositions may serve to emphasise the universality of the work; but, a sense of embracing cohesion was diminished by the precise and increasingly frequent allusions to the world wars of the twentieth century — a tiny screen projected film footage of the war — in the aftermath of which the opera was first performed. Thus, in the closing moments, Eleanor Dennis as The Voice of a Bird, clutches an outsize white feather, which then transmutes into the white quill with which the Pilgrim’s death warrant is signed: is he accused of cowardice? And, the electric chair with which the Pilgrim is threatened in Vanity Fair is the medium of his final transfiguration: placed aloft, mid-stage, are we to imagine it is the gate to Heaven?

This work needs a baritone protagonist of considerable prowess and stamina — the Pilgrim is on stage throughout almost every scene — to provide dramatic focus and, in this particular production, to hold Oida’s disparate parts together. Fortunately it has one, in Roland Wood who, from slightly uncertain beginnings grew in musical and dramatic stature, reaching rapturous heights in his Act 3 aria, ‘Show me the way, O Lord, teach me Thy paths’, his progress culminating in a wonderfully moving final aria which shone with emotional intensity. There was an outstanding performance too from Timothy Robinson, who engaging adopted an array of disparate guises.

Forced into camp cliché in the Vanity Fair scene, the ENO chorus were nevertheless in outstanding voice: they relished the rhythmic vigour and nobility of the setting of ‘Who would true valour see’ that interpolates the dialogue between the Herald and Pilgrim in Act 2; and the exultations of the heavenly chorus, bathed in blinding light, of the closing moments were enrapturing.

There is no doubt of the sincerity of Vaughan Williams’ expression of humanity’s search for spiritual redemption. But, this production provided little evidence that the composer was correct in his insistence that it should be staged in the theatre, and not presented as a sort of church pageant or oratorio. Oïda invites us to view the allegorical events through the contextual prism of modern conflict; but then scatters a host of, admittedly sometimes imaginative and suggestive, visual allusions, which dilute the concept. The static qualities of the work are in fact deepened, not allayed, by the minimal set and frequent wide open expanses, as well as by the intermittent ritualistic gestures and motions. Ironically, perhaps a counter-intuitive visual radicalism might have been more effective.

That said, in addition to its ‘rarity value’, this production is worth catching for Roland Wood’s performance which communicates both human fallibility and divine holiness, and is complemented by the unfailing commitment and sensitivity of the whole cast.

Claire Seymour

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Cast and Production:

Pilgrim/John Bunyan: Roland Wood; Evangelist/Watchful/First Shepherd: Benedict Nelson; Obstinate/Herald/Lord Hate-Good: George von Bergen; Interpreter/Usher/Mr By-Ends/Second Shepherd: Tim Robinson; Timorous/Lord Lechery/Messenger: Colin Judson; Pliable/Superstition/Celestial Voice 1: Alexander Sprague; Mistrust/Apollyon/Envy/Third Shepherd: Mark Richardson ; First Shining One/Madam Wanton/Voice of a Bird/Celestial Voice 3: Eleanor Dennis; 2nd Shining One/ Branch-Bearer/ Malice: Aoife O’Sullivan; Third Shining One/Cup-bearer/Pickthank/Woodcutter’s Boy: Kitty Whately; Madam Bubble/Mrs By-Ends/Celestial Voice 2: Ann Murray.

Conductor: Martyn Brabbins; Director: Yoshi Oïda; Set and Video Designer: Tom Schenk; Costume Designer: Sue Willmington; Lighting Designer: Lutz Deppe; Choreographer: Carolyn Choa.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Pilgrims_Progress_ENO.gif image_description=The "Vanity Fair" scene [Photo by Mike Hoban courtesy of English National Opera] product=yes product_title=Ralph Vaughan Williams: The Pilgrim’s Progress product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id=Above: The “Vanity Fair” scene [Photo by Mike Hoban courtesy of English National Opera]

Exaudi, Wigmore Hall

The concert included four new works, commissioned by the group as part of their enterprise to create a contemporary book of Italians madrigals in order, as Weeks declares in a programme note, to “discover what they idea of ‘the madrigal’ might offer the present day, either as a concrete historical phenomenon or as a set of more general principles: perhaps to do with the relationships between individual voices or the singers themselves, or to do with the idea of vocal expression, or simply to do with the humanist, secular impulses underlying the genre”.

The best of the modern were those compositions which drew direct inspiration from the past, spinning a thread to span the centuries and create a dialogue of continuing experimentation and creative expression. Michael Finnissy’s ‘Sesto Libro di Carlo Gesualdo I’ (AATTBB) exploited the sinuous false relations, suspensions and dissonances of the sixteenth-century idiom, dividing the singers into two trios and thereby explicitly intertwining elements of Gesualdo’s original with Finnissy’s own elaborations and developments. The resulting rhetorical gestures fused passionate intensity with tender melancholy, all the while retaining the sensuous undercurrents which typify the Renaissance masters.

Evan Johnson offered ‘Three in, ad abundantiam’, ‘three micro-madrigals’ for two sopranos and one alto, which the composer describes as “tentative supplements; insecure, mumbled marginalia … three denied attempts at entry”. Fragments from Petrarch’s ‘Solo e pensoso’ — articulating, with ironic paradox, the impossibility of communication — appear and dissolve, the sparse textures, frequent silences (here sadly shattered by an intruding mobile ’phone) and disrupted rhythms threatening the dissolution of form itself. The work relies on the technical skill, and courage, of the performers to establish coherence, however tentative, and here they exhibited a dazzling virtuosity.

Christian Wolff’s ‘Ashbery Madrigals’ present three enigmatic texts by poet John Ashbery — ‘Occurrence’, ‘A Penitence’ and ‘Perplexing Ways’; ‘gaps’ and disarming shifts in melody and harmony reflect the poetic ambiguity, the final madrigal diminishing from an energetic combination of eight voices to a plainsong-like unison. For the preceding ‘Sherpa Tensing stands up from the piano, says something quiet, and walks outside’ by Larry Goves, Weeks stepped aside and, as frequently in this recital, allowed the singers to establish their own intimate communication. While the combination of a complex blend of solo voices — the soprano in the stratosphere — and an occasional homophonic texture did recall the Renaissance idiom, the banal repetitions of Matthew Welton’s text seemed strangely at odds with the elevated expressive aspirations of the earliest madrigalists.

The piercing rhetoric of Morgan Hayes’ ‘E Vesuvio monte’ (2010) — with its dense, accumulating dissonances, representing Pliny the Younger’s account of the eruption of Vesuvius, contrasting with the delineated individual lines of the eight singers conveying the narrative — and Salvatore Sciarrino’s rarefied ‘Tre Madrigal’ (2008) completed the modern contributions to the programme. Sciarrino’s refined, exquisite settings of the Japanese poet, Bashō, conjured the mysterious glissandi, ululations and micro-tunings of an oriental flute, the singers creating a clear, pure tone which conveyed the poet’s passionate response to the natural world — the waves, the cicada, the red sun — culminating in the stirring ‘hum’ of the autumn wind.

Exaudi opened the concert with a mellifluous rendering of Andrea Gabrieli’s ‘Vieni, vieni Himeneo’ (‘Come, come Hymen’, à8), notable for its open, full tone and judicious use of vibrato, before exploring the bold, diverse experiments of Claudio Monteverdi and Carlo Gesualdo, beginning in the first half with three madrigals from Monteverdi’s early books.

Insouciant decorative motifs characterised ‘Sovra tenere erbette’ (‘On the soft grass’) from the Third Book of 1592, evoking the delicate charm of the pastoral setting; changes of tempi were well-managed, leading to the affecting, slow concluding line, laden with erotic resonance, “Che per desire sento morirmi anch’io” (“that I too am dying of desire”). ‘Vattene pur, crudel’ (‘Go, cruel, go!’) demonstrated the more theatrical mode of the stilo rappresentativo, the slightly dry, restrained timbre at the opening evolving to a more impassioned utterance as the independent voices became ever more florid, before diminishing to an ethereal pianissimo chromatic descent, depicting the lover “in a swoon on earth outstretch’d she lies,/ stiff were her frozen limbs,/ closed were her eyes”. Even within the quiet, delicate dynamic a rich counterpoint of vigour and elasticity conveyed the emotional energy of Tasso’s final verse.

Gesualdo’s ‘Mercè!, grido piangendo’ (‘Mercy! I cry weeping’) opened the second half of the concert, the five singers revealing a supreme confidence as they exploited the rhetorical idiosyncrasies of the idiom, declining to a startling pianissimo to whisper “Ma chi m’ascolta?” (“But who hears me?”). The low register and striking unprepared dissonances of the close revealed the profundity of the treasures of the poet’s heart which he longs to disclose before death. ‘Asciugate I begli occhi’ (‘Dry those lovely eyes’) was characterised by intelligent, delicate understatement, the homophonic texture, sensuous harmonies and slowly accumulating dissonances communicating the text’s poignant blend of grief and ecstasy.

‘Ardita zanzaretta’ (‘Presumptuous gnat’) contrasted a spirited, mocking liveliness with a more serious sobriety, twisting dissonant contortions depicting the gnat’s poison and cruel death, as well as the painful ache of the poet’s love. The singers showed their appreciation of Gesualdo’s expressive eloquence in ‘Languisce al fin’ (‘He who is parting’), coolly layering the voices and allowing the harmony to infer the bittersweet pain of the poet’s fate.

Monteverdi’s ‘Rimanti in pace’ (‘Stay here in peace’) brought the programme to a moving close, embracing both the pain of desire — as the sorrowful Phyllis “fixes her shining eyes” on her beloved Thyrsis and transfixes his heart — and the desolation of loss.

The juxtapositions of style did not always flow fluently; and, Weeks’ enthusiastic explanatory introductions were perhaps unnecessary, further impeding the progression between moods and idioms. However, the insight, sincerity and musical prowess of Exaudi was never in doubt, and the contrasting parts combined to form an impressive and touching whole.

Claire Seymour

Click here for information regarding the performers and programme.

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