December 23, 2012
Subject: Aimez-vous Meyerbeer?
True, Meyerbeer lacks the high melodic genius of Verdi, whose every work is both obviously his yet paradoxically also has its own unique sound world; but I think the problem is not that. We are out of sympathy with the social world for which such works were conceived.
Marina Poplavskaya as Alice and John Relyea as Bertram
Long, leisurely five-acters? Plots elevated to the level of the hieratic? Above all comfortable plushness, with little apparent intellectual bite? All that suited opera audiences of the time, but something more is needed for survival, and you don’t have to listen very hard to discern it. Skill in the construction of a theatre piece, to start with: how different do the two long scenes between Bertram/Raimbaut and Bertram/Alice sound, for instance, reflecting Bertram’s manipulation of each of these victims and their differing reactions (no pushover, she); how each character is delineated through the music, their unfolding scenas certainly not generic as is the libretto; how atmospheric are the orchestral passages, even though perhaps some might long for Weber.
All this would go for naught, of course, without a fine performance. Do you ever have that feeling, when the lights dim and the first notes arise, that all will be well this evening, and there is nowhere else you would rather be? It was that way on Saturday last, softly bathed in pellucid sound (Daniel Oren conducting) perfectly judged for the auditorium, without that muddiness that often tells you you’re in for a sticky ride; above all the singers had the measure of the style: to my ear French display opera has a certain chic restraint, without the glitz of its Italian counterpart, and whilst Damrau would have been starrier, Ciofi (yes, an Italian) was most touching, every cadence perfectly placed. Poplavskaya excelled herself, with an unusual combination of staunchness and thrilling ease; Hymel paid Meyerbeer the compliment of taking him seriously, and was utterly believable in the role, which he made seem child’s play to sing; Relyea has been seriously undervalued, and Jean-Francois Borras was a delightful new discovery for me. And the Chorus excelled themselves.
A scene from Robert le Diable
Which brings me to Laurent Pelly’s production. When it comes to the chorus, modern directors seem to model themselves on Eisenstein. Here there is a difference: Pelly’s chorus is sometimes Greek, hovering en masse, but always in articulated geometrical forms — think Pina Bausch dance, where we see individuals impelled however to move in unison. So in Act 1 we see the knights tightly choreographed but moving like lava when the occasion demands; later they assume a diamond formation, as if grouped in a giant boardgame. Sounds odd, maybe, but it has the effect of throwing the main characters into individual relief, and aiding the flow of the plot.
The nuns’ music surprised me (I must have been confusing them with Casanova’s); it is hard to guess what the original movement must have been, but the costumes were closely modelled on lithographs of that time, the music perhaps self-indulgently long and unvaried, the dancers nicely distinguished even if all in the same plight. Only ten, on this big space? I thought; but then the whole chorus flooded on, swamping the stage, even more deshabilles, and equally frantic, in a splendid coup de théâtre. Costumes might well have been taken from contemporary miniatures; settings from prints of the time (the stage department excelled itself in their manipulation).
I came away elated, thinking that the composer had achieved an integrated piece of work on a high level, with that afterglow you get following a really good meal. I guess that’s what the original audiences felt too. Will Meyerbeer catch on? Don’t put money on it. Maybe you have to be a bourgeois Marxist to like it?!
Kenneth Brown
Click here for additional production information.
image=http://www.operatoday.com/RobertLeDiable_109a.gif image_description=Patrizia Ciofi as Isabelle and Bryan Hymel as Robert [Photo by Bill Cooper courtesy of the Royal Opera House] product=yes product_title=Subject: Aimez-vous Meyerbeer? product_by=A review by Kenneth Brown product_id=Above: Patrizia Ciofi as Isabelle and Bryan Hymel as RobertPhotos by Bill Cooper courtesy of the Royal Opera House
December 17, 2012
Courageous Winterreise : Florian Boesch, Wigmore Hall, London
This wasn't "easy listening", for Boesch doesn't do superficial charm. But true Lieder devotees know their Schubert so well that they can appreciate new perspectives. Boesch and Roger Vignoles took an original, courageous approach which proved just how much there is yet to find in this well known cycle.
Boesch made his point from the very first word, "Fremd", projecting it forcefully so there was no mistaking that what was to come would be comfortable. Schubert sets the word twice for emphasis. Boesch and Vignoles separate it from the rest of the phrase with the tiniest pause, so subtle you might miss it, but the chill lingers through the following images of May, love and flowers. "Nun", Boesch continues. But is this just a journey through landscape ? "Nicht wählen mit der Zeit, Muß selbst den Weg mir weisen In dieser Dunkelheit". By emphasizing key words, like "Fremd" and "Was", Boesch establishes a thrust that intensifies the chilling, cutting edge in the music, often muffled by the impressionistic "snow" imagery in the piano part.
Later on the journey, the protagonist addresses crows, trees and metereological phenomena. In some interpretations, this is a sign of madness. Perhaps even the old beggar is a hallucination. Boesch, however, is more humanistic, drawing his ideas from psychological theory. Wilhelm Müller, the poet, saw battle in the wars against Napoleon. He'd also overcome an unhappy love affair. A sensitive reading of his texts shows how purposeful this journey might be. "Die Liebe liebt das Wandern, Gott hat sie so gemacht". It's not an aberration, but natural development. Boesch's almost conversational style is understated and direct. Lieder singing turns the listener inward, identifying with the performer rather than observing from outside. For Boesch, there are no histrionics, no exaggerated operatic mad scenes. If the protagonist is indeed insane, then so are we.
Boesch's direct, conversational style suggests a rational, though very intense, man who is working things out from different angles. When Boesch sings of the girl he's leaving, the tenderness in his voice suggests that she was a real person with whom he's had a genuine relationship. His anger is quite appropriate. In "Estarrung", the numbness the poet feeels is suggested by the quiet desparation in Boesch's voice. He listens to Vignoles play the prelude to "Der Lindenbaum", and the mood changes. In this performance, Boesch took longer pauses than he does in his recording of Winterreise last year with Malcolm Martineau. This creates a more contemplative effect, as if the protagonist is actively assessing the world around him and considering his options. Although the music flows between songs, Schubert purposefully changes the mood in each song. The poet cannot wallow but must keep moving forwards, pulled ahead by the piano. ""Es war zu kalt zum Stehen".
In true Romantic fashion, Boesch's protagonist responds to Nature. "Irrlicht" was taken with such a sense of wonder that you could imagine the unearthly halo that illuminates the marsh spirits. The "Blumen in Winter" shone with deftly defined lyricism. Because Boesch listens carefully and enunciates his words with deliberation, we too listen to how the images in this text recur, in different guises as the journet progress. The friendly will o' the wisp reveals itself as delusion, Village dogs bark no less than three times in this text, but eventually the Leiermann shows that they can be ignored.
Often it's assumed that Winterreise ends in death. But is death the only alternative to the values of the village ? The Romantic spirit focussed on the individual, and on persoal enlightenment. The protagonist in Winterreise is setting out on a road "die noch Keiner ging zurück" but that could mean that he's not the man he was before he set forth. In "Das Wirthaus" the piano part suggests a tolling death knell, but the wreaths here are for other travellers. This protagonist cannot rest. Boesch sings "Mut" defiantly. Already we hear Vignoles's playing evoke the folksy sound of a hurdy-gurdy, as the poet resolves to mock the wind and weather. The phrase "Will kein Gott auf Erden sein, sind wir selber Götter", was enunciated with deliberation.
The whole winter's journey has been leading to the final song, "Der Leiermann". How carefully Boesch describes the old man, barefoot in the snow, "mit starren Fingern dreht er was er kann". Perhaps the Leiermann is an apparition, since few people might survive is such conditions. But the very fact that the Leiermann continues playing against all odds is what makes him a "Wunderlicher Alte". Boesch intones the words as if they were strange prophecy. In summer the Leiermann might play at village dances, but in winter he somehow continues to play, as if driven. The instrument itself is simple, droning as its handle is moved in a circular motion. It's music in a very basic form, but music nonetheless.
The protagonist wonders if he should follow. "Willst du meinen Liederen deine Leier drehn?". Boesch articulates so you clearly hear the connection between "Lieder" and "Leier". Perhaps in some circles, outsiders like the Leiermann might seem "mad" because they don't conform to convention. Romantic period sensibilities would, however, have identified the Leiermann with the image of an artist who persists with what he believes in, however isolated he is from society. Boesch and Vignoles gave us at the Wigmore Hall much to contemplate. We cannot dismiss this Leiermann as mad or irrelevant any more than we can dismiss the role of Art itself.
Please also see this interview, where Boesch speaks about his unorthodox approach to Die Schöne Müllerin. Read what he says carefully, because he's extremely perceptive. His performance at the Oxford Lieder Festival was a great artistic experience. Boesch's ideas apply even more to Winterreise,and were, at the Wigmore Hall, expressed with great emotional conviction.
Anne Ozorio
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Wigmore Hall, London, 12th December 2012
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December 16, 2012
Grieg : Peer Gynt, Barbican Hall London
Edvard Grieg never did leave a definitive version of his incidental music for Ibsen’s play, Peer Gynt. The pity is that the power of the music cannot be quite appreciated out of context. Individual movements make fine concert pieces, but heard in dramatic context they make even more sense. For his concert of the complete incidental music with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Singers at the Barbican on Saturday 15 December, Mark Minkowski chose to present the music with a stripped down version of Ibsen’s play created by director Alain Perroux. Young actors from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama performed the play in English, whilst three distinguished Scandinavian singers (Miah Persson, Ann Hallenberg and Johannes Weisser) sang Grieg’s solo music for Anitra, Peer Gynt and Solveig in Norwegian, with singers from the BBC Singers taking smaller sung roles. The result could have been a bit of a muddle, but in fact it was magical and a dramatic revelation.
The version performed of the music was the edition by Finn Benestad from 1988, which keeps the order of the composer’s score from the premiere performance of 1876, omits the cuts and amendments from later performances, but does include corrections and uses Grieg’s fuller orchestration from the 1886 performances in Copenhagen.
Mark Minkowski is best known for his performances of French baroque music and Offenbach, though his recent Schumann symphony series has been gaining plaudits. In 2010 he conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a programme which paired Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater with Stravinsky’s Pulcinella. His performance of Grieg’s music had none of the stylisation which I associated with period performance specialists working with a modern orchestra. Instead he elicited from the orchestra a performance of freshness, vitality and clarity.
What Minkowski removed was the layer of Romantic gloop which can overlay this warhorse. In fact, Grieg’s music uses a variety of forces from a single violin solo emulating the traditional Hardanger fiddle through to moments with full orchestra and chorus, though the use of full orchestra was quite sparing. The composer had a very nice ear for orchestral timbres, and Minkowski brought this out. The orchestration was vivid and varied with great use made, in various ways, of the four horns.
Grieg wrote a series of small numbers, there are no really big extended musical pieces. But the small moments build into bigger dramatic structures when combined with the drama, and Grieg used thematic links too. The music that opened the Arabian scenes in act 4, the famous Morning Mood contains very distinct echoes of the music for the scene the girl in green in act 2, implying that wherever Peer Gynt is, he takes Norway with him.
Many of the small orchestral moments would get lost in a pure concert and they did contribute to the drama immensely. The way small musical elements could point up the text was a revelation. The well known movement, "Ase’s Death" was used both as a prelude to the scene of Peer’s mother’s death, but also repeated to underscore the dialogue between her and Peer in a way which rendered the drama even more poignant.
The way Grieg constructed large scale scenes is best seen in the scene in the hall of the King of the Trolls. The well known "In the Hall of the Mountain King", complete with a lively chorus part (of bad-tempered Trolls) led into a scene which mixed speech and music, including a grotesque dance for the King’s daughter. It ended with Peer Gynt fleeing, to music in which Grieg distorted the opening music, thus creating a larger and very satisfying musico-dramatic structure. Something similar is seen with the Arab scene, where a series of movements including the well known "Anitra’s Dance" and Peer’s serenade (the only time the character is required to sing) form another linked musico-dramatic whole.
The young actors were all miked, so that balance was always correct in the many melodramas. Patrick Walshe McBride was brilliantly charming as an Irish Peer Gynt, making a complete, entrancing character out of the fragments of the play allotted to him, holing us in the palm or his hand and being the focus of the drama for the whole piece. Grace Andrews played the women in Peer Gynt’s life, the Girl in Green (the daughter of the King of the Trolls), Solveig and Anitra , giving each a nicely differentiated shading. Cormac Brown was a lively King of the Trolls and other characters, Melanie Hislop had a nice nagging edge to her delivery as Ase, Peer Gynt’s mother. Tom Lincoln played all the strange characters; the Boyg (the obstacle Peer Gynt encounters), the passenger and the button moulder (the messenger of death). Apart from McBride, accents were a bit variable but all created a real feeling of drama, helped by the poised narrations of Evelyn Miller.
The smaller vocal roles were all taken by members of the BBC Singers. Micaela Haslam, Alison Smart and Olivia Robinson were cow girls calling for their Troll lovers in a beautiful little number. Andrew Rupp and Charles Gibbs were a fence and a thief in a tiny duet.
Soprano Ann Hallenberg sang the Arab maid Anitra, effectively a single solo, and tenor Johannes Weisser had a similar cameo appearance in Peer Gynt’s serenade. Frankly this was rather luxury casting and seemed an extravagance; though it was lovely to hear Weisser’s genuine Norwegian tones in the serenade. Where this luxury paid off was in the casting of Miah Persson as Solveig, singing Solveig’s Song and Solveig’s Cradle Song. Both dramatically necessary, and with Persson contributing singing that was extremely fine indeed. Her account of Solveig’s Song was profoundly beautiful, but when it was repeated, with hushed strings and with Persson off stage in a scene where Peer Gynt is hesitating outside her cottage, then the result was pure magic. The evening closed with Persson’s touching account of Solveig’s Cradle Song.
The entire performance was something of a revelation. Dramatically it worked with Grieg’s music and Ibsen’s words combining into a fascinating whole
This performance will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 iinternationally, online and on demand for seven days from Sunday 23 December 2012
Robert Hugill
The performance from Minkowski, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Singers had a freshness and a new minted quality which made you realise quite why Grieg’s score made such a big impression at its first performances.
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Michaela Haslam: cow girl 1, Alison Smart: cow girl 2, Olivia Robinson: cow girl 3, Andrew Rupp:Fence, Charles Gibbs: Thief, Grace Andrews: Solveig, the Girl in Green, Anitra
Cormac Brown: Mads Moen, the King of the Trolls, Melanie Heslop: Ase, Tom Lincoln: The Boyg, the Passenger, the Button-moulder, Evelyn Miller: Narrator: Patrick Walshe McBride: Peer Gynt. BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Marc Minkowski: conductor; Alain Perroux: stage director
Barbican Hall, London, 15th December 2012
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December 14, 2012
Vienna: the window to modernity
Selecting five composers “whose tracks were closely linked” — personally, musically and influentially — Fleming began with Hugo Wolf and Gustav Mahler, both born in 1860 and students of Robert Fuchs at the Vienna Academy of Music, but whose music developed in divergent ways.
Wolf’s Goethe Lieder began quite conservatively, though relaxed and discursive in delivery. Although a little subdued and restrained, Fleming conjured a pastoral sweetness in ‘Frühlings übers Jahr’ (‘Spring all year round’) and ‘Gleich und gleich’ (‘Like to like’). Her trademark generous legato helped to establish an easy ambience, strolling through meadows where ‘snow-white snowdrop bells are swaying’ and ‘crocuses unfold their intense glow’; yet while the elision of consonants may have aided the luxurious tone and silky sinuousness, occasionally the trademark portamenti took one liberty too many.
Pianist Maciej Pikulski’s understated accompaniment — delicate, suggestive, airy — was surprisingly effective in complementing the rhythmic freedom and tonal blossoming of the voice; this was particularly noticeable in ‘Die Bekehrte’ (‘The repentant shepherdess’), where Pikulski’s unassuming yet sensitive traceries contributed much to the mood of modest ruefulness. In ‘Anakreons Grab’ (‘Anacreaon’s grave’) the performers communicated an affecting meditative tranquillity.
Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder followed. In these songs we see the Mahler who looks within himself for answers to twentieth-century crises — personal, musical, social and political; and Fleming’s approach - more concerned for the overall musical line than in small nuances of text — is well-suited to music which offers a full and intense expression of personality. Growing from the delicate whisperings of ‘Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft!’ (‘I breathed a gentle scent’), Fleming gradually extended her range of colour; in ‘Mitternacht’ she vividly invested the repetitions of the title with deeply evocative hues. Voice and piano, both remarkably restrained, conversed intimately in ‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen’ (‘I am lost to the world’), and produced a disquieting ‘peace’ in the final verse, the sound palely dissolving with the line ‘Und ruh’ in einem stillen Gebiet!’ (‘And I rest in a quiet realm’).
I had not been convinced during the Wolf and Mahler that the expanse of the Barbican Hall, even when bathed in a glossy pink glow, was truly the most appropriate venue for these intimate lieder. However, in the second half of the recital, which began with Schoenberg and moved on to Zemlinsky and Korngold, the spaciousness was filled with Fleming’s blooming gleam, the size of the venue granting her the amplitude and resonance required to commit fully to the music’s grandiose emotional outbursts.
Fleming offered helpful introductions to the sometimes challenging music offered, engaging her audience directly, although Schoenberg’s Erwartung, Op.2 No.1 (not to be confused with the later melodrama of the same title), a setting of a Richard Dehmel poem describing the sexual anticipation of two lovers, and Jane Grey Op.12, an ardent ballad telling of the fate of the young woman who ruled England for just nine days in 1553, needed no ‘justification’. This is music of pained intensity, and Fleming conveyed the narratives directly and with emotional freedom. Pikulski contributed considerably to the melancholic poise which tempered the animation of the emotional tales.
Zemlinsky’s Fünf Lieder auf Texte von Richard Dehmel are more enigmatic, but Fleming’s legato sheen did much to bring coherence to these ambiguous fragments. Bitterly chromatic and characterised by unexpected harmonic twists, these songs, unpublished in the composer’s lifetime, seem determined to retain their secrets; they may have been prompted by Zemlinsky’s disquiet at the affair between his sister Mathilde, who was married to Schoenberg, and the painter Richard Gerstl, who later committed suicide when Mathilde returned to her husband in 1908. Fleming’s confident, accurate rendering offered a route to understanding while never destroying their mystery.
Fleming concluded her Viennese sojourn with the music Erich Korngold. The broadly elegiac chromaticisms of ‘Sterbelied’, a setting of Christina Rossetti’s ‘When I am Dead’ — but, why did the programme present a rather lifeless re-translation of the German version of the original, rather than Rossetti’s original poem? — blossomed into the spacious lines of ‘Was du mir bist?’ (‘What are you to me?’), where Fleming’s expansiveness at the top was finally indulged in astonishing blooms of wonderful sound, a paradox of weight and ethereality. Here, Fleming demonstrated how she can release the fullness of her voice at the moment when the text demands but, like an emotional ambush, still catch us unawares. Concluding the Korngold sequence, the composer’s take on Johann Strauss II’s waltz, ‘Frag mich off’ (‘I often wonder’), allowed Fleming to indulge her kitschier, melodramatic instincts.
The omission of Fleming’s beloved Richard Strauss was remedied in the first of three encores, ‘Zueignung’, which was effortlessly gleaming and luminous. Delibes’ ‘Les Filles de Cadix’ was, Fleming declared, designed as a sorbet to refresh the palette after “too much sachertorte”. The trills were perhaps less tight and tremulous than of old, but the elevated vocalism just as winning: embarking upon the wrong verse text, Fleming offered a nonchalant shrug, set off again and won a round of applause! Korngold’s ‘Mariettas lied’ from Die tote Stadt signed off a consummate display of musical artistry and eloquent communication. Pikulski’s playing in the closing bars was exquisitely graceful and charmingly tender.
So much for the music; glorious as it was, at times it was at risk of being over-shadowed by ‘The Diva’. The avidly warm welcoming reception, the statuesque frocks — an extravagant golden silk confection garnered the pseudo-apology, ‘I wanted you to get the Klimt connection’ — the insouciant banter and the rapturous standing ovation all indicated that a ‘star’ had alighted.
But, she deserved the adulation and the rapturous standing ovation: it was clear that she could ask her voice to do whatever she willed, confident that the result would be technically masterful yet seem effortlessly articulated.
Just one tiny, humble, suggestion: if your feet can’t be seen beneath the taffeta fanfares, there’s no point crippling yourself in tottering, un-walkable Louboutins — when you sing this gloriously, flat pumps will do!
Claire Seymour
Click here for the programme and other information relating to this recital
image=http://www.operatoday.com/R_Fleming.png image_description=Renée Fleming [Photo by Andrew Eccles courtesy of Decca] product=yes product_title=Vienna: the window to modernity product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id=Above: Renée Fleming [Photo by Andrew Eccles courtesy of Decca]The Met’s Un Ballo in Maschera difficult to unmask
Somewhere in the heated imagination of director David Alden there may be a convincing production of Verdi’s Januslike masterpiece, Un Ballo in Maschera, part Italian barn-burner and part French operetta.
In this new production, Alden’s considerable talents did not come to the fore until Act Three, Scene One. This is where Renato, counselor to King Gustavo III of Sweden, confronts his wife Amelia. She has been unfaithful to him by loving the King from afar. The King loves her in return, but the two have never managed to consummate the relationship, this being an opera. Betrayed by both his King and his wife, Renato, heretofore a loyal lieutenant, is in a murderous mood.
Stephanie Blythe as Madame Ulrica Arvidsson
For this grim scene Alden and set designer Paul Steinberg reduced the playing space on the enormous Met stage to a small box that is all angles with a stark black and white color scheme. The ceiling slopes down at a vertiginous angle. The walls close in on the emotionally tortured couple as Renato says he will kill her; he then swears vengeance on the King.
Baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky as Renato and soprano Sondra Radvanovsky as Amelia are both fine actors, so Alden had much to work with in this scene. He introduced an element of sexual tension between the couple — a hint that Renato would take her in violent sex one last time before killing her. Hvorostovsky handled her roughly, lending a particular urgency to their singing. When the two conspirators (the Counts Ribbing and Horn) assisting Renato in the assassination plot suddenly appeared through a back wall of the boxy set, the effect was chilling.
Had the entire production been at this level, the Met would finally have a hit Ballo. But it was not.
Alden told the opera website Parterre Box that he sees King Gustavo as “a dreamer and a fantasist.” This is the inspiration for his conception. To demonstrate how out-of-control the King is, Alden compares him to Icarus, the mythological boy who disregards the advice of his father and flies too close to the sun. An enormous mural showing Icarus falling into the sea is a constant presence in the production.
This choice is banal. Indeed, Alden bristled when Met General Manager Peter Gelb used the word “obvious” for the Icarus image in an intermission interview. Gelb backpedaled furiously from this honest assessment as soon as he realized Alden’s displeasure. But it is obvious, and boring, and it adds nothing to our understanding of Verdi’s conception.
Alden has directed this dreamy fantasist of a king as a goofball from a Marx Brothers film. He laughs a lot (some of which is in the music). He yearns, he swoons, and he waves his arms. But he is never credible as a strong king beloved by some of his people and hated by others. The tragedy of his doomed love for Amelia never registers.
Dmitri Hvorostovsky as Count Anckarström and Marcelo Álvarez as Gustavo III
Alden has imposed no other vision than this on the opera. Is it at heart a political drama about the assassination of a tyrant, or the assassination of a good man by his enemies? If so, why are the conspirators Ribbing and Horn almost invisible in this production until Act Three? Or does Alden see Ballo as simply a tragic love triangle with a political backdrop?
Alden’s stage pictures (with the exception of Act Three, Scene One) are designed to heighten the fantasy. They are by turns risible or puzzling: dancing waiters; an Oscar (the loyal page to the King) who flaps her own Icarus mini-wings (talk about obvious) and smokes cigarettes; courtiers in brown trench coats; and the King slumming in a fisherman’s sweater topped with a royal ermine cape seemingly cadged from a Salvation Army store.
So it was left to the singers to make some sense of this hodgepodge. They did so with mixed success.
Hvorostovsky, one of the world’s leading Verdi baritones and a matinee idol with his shock of perfectly groomed white hair, brought a gravitas to the proceedings that was sorely lacking. It was hard to imagine that such a serious man could be counselor to this frivolous king. Hvorostovsky delivered both of his major arias with power, particularly “Eri Tu” in Act Three in which he hurls invective at a portrait of the king. He and Radvanovsky were believable as a couple in serious need of marriage counseling.
Radvanovsky spent the entire opera looking anguished. She is most effective when singing quietly. She floated some beautiful notes at the end of her Act Two aria as she searches for some magic herbs to rid her of her feelings for the King. When she sings at a mezzo forte or forte, and at the top of her range, she is somewhat raw. But she is an honest artist, and she did her best to make sense of the enigmatic Amelia. Her duet with the King in Act Two when they acknowledge their forbidden love was electrifying, and it received a huge ovation.
As the King, tenor Marcelo Alvarez was badly in need of better direction from Alden. He is not a natural actor. Playing an unstable character trying to fly away from his royal duties is not easy to do. Alvarez could not pull it off. The intrusive close-ups of the HD telecast didn’t help convince the audience that there was much of anything on his mind.
Mark Schowalter as the Judge and Kathleen Kim as Oscar
The middle and top of Alvarez’s voice remain solid and exciting, but he is losing the low notes, and he clipped some of his phrases. Powerful as it is, his voice is a bit characterless. It’s hard to keep his basic sound in mind. This was not a performance to put alongside Tucker or Peerce or Bergonzi, not to mention Pavarotti.
Kathleen Kim has given impressive performances at the Met as Olympia (in Hoffman) and Zerbinetta (in Ariadne auf Naxos). She has lost some of the agile, silvery quality to her voice, however. Perhaps her stint as Chiang Ch’ing in Nixon in China changed her instrument. Oscar, a character drawn from French operetta tradition, must be sung lightly, with humor and great agility. Alden worked against the happy sound of Kim’s arias by making this Oscar menacing. She wore a mustache and goatee, smoked, and flapped her wings. Alden also suggested that Oscar was not even faithful to the King; she was a witness to the assassination plot and clearly knew the King was a marked man. Yet she did nothing to stop it. All this undermined Kim’s performance.
The stentorian mezzo Stephanie Blythe delivered her usual blast-furnace performance as the fortune-teller Ulrica. No production concept can undermine this artist.
As Fabio Luisi conducts more Met performances, his strengths and weaknesses are starting to come into view. The Met Orchestra played with precision. His tempos were fleet. Everything was tidy, and spot-on. But, although he is Italian, this performance lacked an Italianate throb. He didn’t give his singers much room to just run with it. As a result, the performance was highly professional but cold. Listen to the CD of a live Ballo at the Met conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos (available from Sony and the Met). It’s a bit reckless, but the Greek Mitropoulos is more Italian than Luisi, and his performance crackles with electricity. Luisi’s merely hums with efficiency.
Director Elijah Moshinsky’s 1980 Met production of Ballo seemed to be set in a sauna. Now this. Is Ballo really that hard to pull off?
David Rubin
image=http://www.operatoday.com/bal_1003a.png image_description=Sondra Radvanovsky as Amelia and Marcelo Álvarez as Gustavo III [Photo by Ken Howard courtesy of The Metropolitan Opera] product=yes product_title=The Met’s Un Ballo in Maschera difficult to unmask product_by=A review by David Rubin product_id=Above: Sondra Radvanovsky as Amelia and Marcelo Álvarez as Gustavo IIIPhotos by Ken Howard courtesy of The Metropolitan Opera
December 10, 2012
The Met’s La Clemenza di Tito blends inspired singing with dazzling wind obbligatos
The Roman Emperor Titus was by all accounts a forgiving man. At least when compared to the likes of Caligula, Nero and Commodus. But even Titus (or Tito, as he’s known in this opera) would have been hard-pressed to find anything in need of a pardon at the Met’s handsomely sung and visually appealing production of Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito.
A splendid cast of singers, led by the brilliant Latvian mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanĉa, included strong supporting efforts by Kate Lindsey and Lucy Crowe — as well as some outstanding efforts from the orchestra pit. Put it all together, and the Met’s revival of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s 1984 production, set in ancient Rome, is worthy of, well, lending an ear.
Mozart began working on his final opera soon after beginning Die Zauberflöte, and completed it in 18 days — an astounding feat, even making all allowances for his subcontracting out of the continuo-accompanied recitatives.
La Clemenza di Tito was commissioned in 1791 to commemorate the coronation of Austrian Emperor Leopold II as King of Bavaria. Mozart obliged by reaching back in time to the crusty old Italian opera seria style championed by Pietro Metastasio — the early 18th century librettist whose plots extolled the magnanimity of enlightened kings and emperors.
Mozart settled on a revision of the Metastasio’s libretto by Venetian poet Caterino Mazzola that afforded him greater flexibility in structuring the arias.
The plot focuses principally on first-century Roman Emperor Titus (Giuseppe Filianoti) and Vitellia (Barbara Frittoli), the self-centered and manipulative daughter of the former emperor usurped by Titus. Jealous of the emperor’s affections toward other women, Vitellia convinces her love-struck suitor Sesto (Elīna Garanĉa) to assassinate him, and Sesto obliges by settings the royal palace on fire in an unsuccessful attempt on the emperor’s life. Unaware of the conspiracy, Titus agrees to marry Vitellia — who realizes her good fortune will come at the expense of Sesto, now imprisoned for treason and prepared to face execution rather than implicate her. In the magnificent aria “Non più di fiori,” Vitellia wrestles with her conscience and ultimately admits complicity in the plot, hoping to save Sesto. Titus, displaying royal compassion endemic to all Metastasio protagonists, decides to forgive all. Long live the emperor. Long live Leopold II. (Applause.)
Elīna Garanča as Sesto and Barbara Frittoli as Vitellia
Garanĉa, whom Met audiences no doubt remember as the title character in both Carmen and La Cenerentola, was in outstanding form in the “trousers role” of Emperor Titus’s confidante (and would-be assassin), Sesto. Here, she crafted a dramatically three-dimensional character torn between his genuine friendship for the emperor and his dysfunctional infatuation with the vengeful Vitellia.
Her signature aria “Parto, parto” revealed an agile vocal quality sufficiently nimble to weave up and down the scale in rapid triplets figures that were handsomely in-sync with the accomplished clarinet obbligato provided by Anthony McGill.
It was nevertheless Garanĉa’s lengthy second-act aria, “Deh per questo istante,” which proved the showstopper. This emotionally charged aria ranks among Mozart’s very best, and its relaxed and leisurely tempo left ample room for Garanĉa to lay bare her character’s soul, which she did to powerful effect.
When I last saw Barbara Frittoli as Micaëla in the Met’s 2010-2011 season production of Carmen I praised the Italian soprano’s formidable vocal skills, but added that her acting abilities left much to be desired. Judging from Saturday’s performance, little has changed. Void of any appreciable degree of meaningful facial expressions (and one cannot hide from the close-up camera work), Frittoli remained emotionally aloof from the complex character she portrayed.
Vitellia must undergo a complete about-face in this story — from a raging femme fatale to a contrite, conscious-stricken human being prepared to sacrifice everything in order to spare the love-struck but well-intentioned sucker she had duped into murder. It didn’t happen. Frittoli’s “Non più di fiori,” the lengthy aria where this transformation must take place, was well sung but dramatically and emotionally vacuous.
In the pants role of the young patrician, Annio, mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey sang beautifully and her acting throughout the production was beyond reproach. The lustrous quality of Lindsey’s voice was evident in her every solo and ensemble number, but it was the degree of expression and nuance that left an indelible mark on the listener’s psyche. I especially enjoyed the profound intensity of Lindsey’s second act aria “Tu fosti tradito,” sung as her character mounts a stirring appeal to the emperor for mercy.
Lucy Crowe as Servilia and Giuseppe Filianoti as Tito
It appears that Lindsey has carved a niche in “trouser roles” at the Met. In addition to Annio she has played Nicklausse (Les Contes d’Hoffmann) and Cherubino (Le Nozze di Figaro). But with or without pants, it’s clear that Lindsey is a first-rate singer-actress, with an ability to climb into any costume and fill every limb with body and substance.
In her Met production debut as Sesto’s sister, Servilia, English lyric soprano Lucy Crowe delivered “S’altro che lagrime” with such warmth and purity of tone I felt cheated that Mozart only allowed her character this single aria. The delicate quality to Crowe’s voice seems especially well suited to lieder, although it was clear from her delivery that she is capable of packing considerable power when needed. I eagerly await Crowe’s next role at the Met.
As the benevolent Emperor Tito, an impeccably attired Giuseppe Filianoti looked and acted well enough to qualify as the noblest Roman of them all. His pleasant sounding voice nevertheless appeared weak and shaky throughout much of the first act, beginning with the aria “Del più sublime soglio” — where the Italian lyric tenor’s middle register sounded raspy and his legato uneven.
Filianoti, who has battled the effects of a paralyzed vocal cord following the removal in 2007 of a cancerous thyroid gland, came alive in Act 2 with a much sturdier voice. He finished strongly in the second act “Se all’impero,” in spite of some difficulty keeping up with the orchestra during the 16th-note coloratura runs.
Ponnelle’s spacious period set, revealing a partially decaying interior of a huge palace in ancient Rome adorned with an array of imposing Corinthian columns, looked handsome from most every angle of Barbara Willis Sweete’s kaleidoscopic camerawork. Curiously, Ponnelle’s costumes appeared rooted in the 18th century — an anachronism suggesting perhaps that the director was trying to forge an artistic connection between “classical architecture” and “musical classicism.” Either that, or the Met costume department was running low on togas.
Kate Lindsey as Annino
English conductor and early music specialist Harry Bicket directed an alert Met Opera Orchestra that played with alacrity, even during the routine recitativo accompagnato sections. In addition to Anthony McGill’s flashy clarinet obbligato accompaniment in “Parto, parto,” James Ognibene deserves kudos for his dazzling basset horn obbligato in “Non più di fiori.” Ognibene’s liquid tone throughout the range of this tenor clarinet sounded as warm and focused as that of an A or B-flat soprano clarinet. (Both obbligato parts were tailored for Mozart’s close friend and fellow Freemason, Anton Stadler.)
It’s understandable why Clemenza fails to muster the universal level of interest enjoyed by the composer’s more popular Italian operas Le Nozze di Figaro, Cosi fan tutte and Don Giovanni: It simply is not as good. On the other hand, there’s much to love and admire about Mozart’s final opera, including signature arias such as “Deh per questo istante.” Perhaps the current Ponnelle production will reignite listener passion for this deserving work.
If not, we may be needing yet another pardon from Titus.
By David Abrams
image=http://www.operatoday.com/TITO_2151a.gif
image_description=Elīna Garanča as Sesto [Photo by Ken Howard courtesy of The Metropolitan Opera]
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product_title=The Met’s La Clemenza di Tito blends inspired singing with dazzling wind obbligatos
product_by=A review by David Abrams
product_id=Above: Elīna Garanča as Sesto
Photos by Ken Howard courtesy of The Metropolitan Opera
December 9, 2012
Meyerbeer Robert le Diable, Royal Opera House
Bryan Hymel is outstanding, singing the difficult, unusual part with exceptionally fluid, lyrical singing, the cruel tessitura negotiated with such strong technique that we hear the part, not the effort. He isn't simply displaying vocal skill, but infusing the part with greater psychological depth than the text itself suggests. That is true artistry. Opera is not singing alone, it is drama with music at its heart. The extremes Meyerbeer writes into the vocal line express Robert's tortured soul: Hymel makes them ring with emotional conviction. In the duet "Mon coeur s'élance et palpite", he almost steals the show though Isabelle has the killer high notes. Many other exquisite moments, like the Act Four "du magique rameau". Hymel, still only 33, is a voice to cherish.
The parts of Alice and Isabella are tours de force. Alice is a maid from Normandy, as the orchestra tells us with vaguely folk melodies. Although she carries a letter from Robert's mother she is not Micaëla whose love for Don José is tainted with possessiveness. Meyerbeer's audiences would have no trouble identifying Alice with Joan of Arc, another girl from Normandy who fought against all odds. Marina Poplavskaya's Alice is no bimbette, but a heroine worthy of Jeanne d'Arc herself.
Poplavskaya's voice soars clear over the orchestra in the tricky early parts of the opera. But it's in her confrontation with Bertram that she shows the intelligence she brings to the characterization. Poplavskaya reaches the horrendously high notes with clarity. Alice is direct, she doesn't make a fuss, so this intense portrayal is psychologically true. Yet it also refects the recurrent staccato in the music, and the thrusting, stabbing passages in the orchestra. The mock medieval battle in the text is outclassed by the cosmic battle for Robert's soul. Poplavskaya's Alice is lithe and energetic, for she's a swordsman duelling against death.
Isabella's two biggest arias, "Idole de ma vie" and "Robert, toi que je t'aime" define the word "show stopper". Done well, the audience is stunned and the action stops until applause subsides. That alone can make good theatre. In the Cavatina, the word "Grâce" is repeated in elaborate variations. Then the orchestra chimes in, provoking even greater feats of vocal gymnastics. You're left gasping. Patrizia Ciofi received much applause for standing in at the last moment. She's very experienced, having first taken the role more than ten years ago. Perhaps she'll slip back into gear as the run continues. She's excellent, but this is a role that needs heart shatteringly astonishing singing.
John Relyea sings Bertram's set piece arias at the end of Act Four impressively but he is no pantomime villain. Tellingly, he sings details like the recurrent "mon fils, mon fils" with gruff tenderness. He wants Robert because Robert is his son. Relyea's subtlety suggests why Bertram was once loved by the saintly Rosalie, Robert's mother. While Meyerbeer milked the plot for melodrama, there's room in the music for the depth Relyea brings to it.
Since many people know nothing of Meyerbeer other than Wagner's slander, our modern approach to Meyerbeer is distorted. Wagner was such a complex person that it's nonsense to take a simplistic view of the Wagner/Meyerbeer relationship. Alberich-like, Wagner attacked Meyerbeer, as if to downplay how much he owed him If Meyerbeer's use of the orchestra seems over the top to us, it's because we are thinking in Wagnerian terms. Meyerbeer extends his characterizations with motives that run through the opera like a thread - drinking songs, marches, Norman folk songs. Develop these further and call them Leitmotivs. He also uses the orchestra sparingly - harps around Isabella's angelic singing, brooding winds and brass around Bertram. The large orchestral flourishes are deftly done, and move the action forward, without overpowering - we want to hear those clear high vocal notes shine, after all.
If we free ourselves of Wagner snobbery, we can appreciate Robert le Diable's true place in music history. Its obvious antecedent is Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz and its direct descendant Berlioz The Damnation of Faust. All derive form the High Romantic fascination with Gothic fantasy and the occult. Meyerbeer may not be "modern" taste but that reflects on our awareness of period opera. Even Bach was largely forgotten until Mendelssohn championed his music. It's only in relatively recent decades that Rossini and Handel operas have enjoyed the respect they deserve. Perhaps the shadow of Wagner is so strong that we don't let ourselves enjoy Meyerbeer because we're too worried about what others might think.
We should bear this background in mind when assessing this Royal Opera House production, directed by Laurent Pelly with designs by Chantal Thomas and atmospheric lighting by Duane Schuler. This staging would go a long way towards a reasessment of Meyerbeer because it is well researched and erudite. The ballet, where the ghosts of dead nuns are seem rising from their graves, is based almost exactly on the original Paris designs. The etchings we see are also based on authentic period imagery. The huge revolving mountain that dominates the stage could come straight out of a Gothic painting or novel. To 19th century people, wild landscapes represented fear and superhuman forces. Think the Wolf's Glen in Der Freischütz.
Robert le Diable is melodrama, but by no means po-faced. Even Heinrich Heine noted that the plot wasn't great.
"Es ist ein großes Zauberstück
Voll Teufelslust und Liebe;
Von Meyerbeer ist die Musik,
Der schlechte Text von Scribe."
This staging is colourful because the music is colourful. How Meyerbeer's audiences must have thrilled to the sight of semi-naked nuns dancing lustfully. They would have enjoyed mock medieval pgeantry without worrying too much whether it was authentic. Our modern obssession with period-specific staging meant nothing to audiences who were used to seeing zany mixtures of period and style. Ironically, this is a much more authentic staging than many realise. In many ways, we are less open to the art of imagination now than our forebears were once. Why shouldn't we have as much fun as they did? Pelly and Thomas are giving us a chance to see the opera in context. We should value the chance to see this opera done in this way because chances are we won't get many opportunities since it's not at all an easy work to stage.
This ROH production is being recorded and filmed. BBC Radio 3 is broadcasting an audio version on Saturday 15th December (link here).
Anne Ozorio
image=
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product_title=Giacomo Meyerbeer : Robert le diable
product_by=Robert : Bryan Hymel, Alberti : Nicolas Courjal, First Chevalier : David Butt Philip, Second Chevalier : Pablo Bemsch, Third Chevalier : Ashley Riches, Fourth Chevalier : Jihoon Kim, Bertram : John Relyea, Raimbaut : Jean-Francois Borras, Alice : Marina Poplavskaya, Isabelle : Patrizia Ciofi, Lady-in-waiting : Dusica Bijelic, Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House Conductor : Daniel Oren, Director - Laurent Pelly, Designer :Chantal Thomas, Costumes : Laurent Pelly and Jean-Jacques Delmotte, Lighting : Duane Schuler, Video : Claudio Cavallari, Choreography : Lionel Hoche
The Royal Opera House, London, 6 December 2012
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December 7, 2012
Rigoletto, Manitoba Opera
Its three-performances were held November 24through 30, 2012 at Winnipeg’s Centennial Concert Hall.
Based on Victor Hugo’s play Le roi s’amuse (The King Amuses Himself), the three-act opera composed in 1851 is considered one of Verdi’s greatest works also including his (slightly) later Il Trovatore and La Traviata. Its complicated plot set in 16th century Mantua revolves around hunchbacked court jester Rigoletto, torn between defending his cherished only daughter Gilda’s virtue and avenging the lascivious Duke of Mantua who has dishonoured her. But — like any good opera — it also firmly posits the redemptive power of love as well as becomes its own cautionary tale about the vicious games people play.
Any piece of theatre is often only as good as its casting. In this case, a stellar choice of leads directed by former Winnipegger Robert Herriot created a strong production with nary a weak link onstage. Realistic sets designed by Lawrence Schafer (New Orleans Opera) depicting the opera’s respective locales of castle, house and inn helped create effective stage pictures — including a striking opening tableau for the opening party/orgy scene. MO music advisor/principal conductor Tyrone Paterson sensitively led the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra throughout the three-hour evening.
American baritone Todd Thomas’ powerhouse performance as the white-faced, sunken-eyed jester showcased not only his booming voice, but equally mesmerizing acting ability. He subtly nuanced his title character with every emotional shade imaginable, turning instantly on a dime from bitter pitifulness during Act I aria “Pari siamo!” — including self-flagellating while decrying his deformity — to hell-bent fury against all those who torment him.
Winnipeg’s musical treasure, world-class colouratura soprano Tracy Dahl also triumphed in the role of Gilda. The petite singer with a stratospheric voice hit just the right note with her not-so-innocent character desperately longing for love and freedom. Her electrifying Caro Nome, with each note crafted as a multi-faceted jewel rightfully earned sustained applause from the audience. Dahl’s effortlessly sung Act II aria “Tutte le feste al tempio” also displayed her innate gifts as a singing actress, as did touching finale “Chi mai, chi è qui in sua vece?” where she tearfully begs her father for forgiveness.
Newfoundland tenor David Pomerory imbued his lecherous Duke with hotheaded passion and wanton playfulness. He projected his deeply resonant voice well beyond the footlights in opening “Questa o quello«, as well as during Act II’s intricate quartet “Bella figlia dell’amore« sung with Dahl, Thomas and South African-Canadian mezzo-soprano Lauren Segal as seductive harlot Maddalena. Pomerory also filled the opera’s eternally famous aria La donna è mobile with swaggering confidence and ringing high notes that becomes key to its tragic dénouement.
American bass Peter Volpe double-cast as the villainous Count Monterone and assassin Sparafucile created an intriguing doppelgänger worthy of further contemplation. Volpe’s thunderous curse on the jester as the Count during Act I’s ”Ch'io gli parli” would make anyone collapse in fear. His slithery hit man included his declamatory voice sinking to the utter depths in “Quel vecchio maledivami!”
An all-male ensemble from the MO Chorus prepared by Tadeusz Biernacki presented as the velvety-courtiers, crisply enunciating choruses Zitti, ziti and later Possente amor mi chiama. But as pranksters who ultimately drive the action by goading the jester, they often appeared too courtly-mannered, with their relatively stiff staging bypassing many golden opportunities to show their true, nasty stripes.
Bill Williams’ lighting design proved mostly effective despite Act III’s wild storm flashes that appeared too stylized in an otherwise traditional production. And Dahl — especially when costumed in her drab boy’s disguise in the final scene virtually disappeared into the shadows during trio “Ah, più non ragiono!” where she vows to sacrifice herself for her lover.
It might seem a no-brainer for Manitoba Opera to program an entire season of Verdi’s works, especially during its milestone anniversary season that also includes Aida next spring. The composer’s intensely dramatic operas still resonate — for better or worse — with 21st century audiences. Still, MO has made a wise choice in Rigoletto, with its particularly strong cast fearlessly delivering this timeless and ever-tragic tale.
Holly Harris
Click here for cast and production information.
image=http://www.operatoday.com/_DSC2313.jpg image_description=Tracy Dahl as Gilda and Todd Thomas as Rigoletto [Photo by R. Tinker courtesy of Manitoba Opera] product=yes product_title=Rigoletto, Manitoba Opera product_by=A review by Holly Harris product_id=Above: Tracy Dahl as Gilda and Todd Thomas as Rigoletto [Photo by R. Tinker courtesy of Manitoba Opera]Britten’s Lachrymae at Wigmore Hall
Composed for its dedicatee, William Primrose, who premiered the work at the 1950 Aldeburgh Festival, Lachrymae once again occupied Britten in the final months of his life, when he returned to the work in order to arrange the original piano accompaniment for string ensemble, charging the relationship between soloist and accompanists with increased tension and concentration.
The viola was Britten’s own instrument and so often — as in the passacaglia in Peter Grimes, or the second movement of the two Portraits for strings, written when he was just 17 years old, or the Third String Quartet, composed shortly before his death — is seems to be the instrument through which he speaks most personally. In Lachrymae, inspired by Dowland’s melancholy song ‘If my complaints could passions move’, Britten’s own voice converses discursively with voices from the past, creating an ambience of ambiguity and mystery.
Soloist Lawrence Power conveyed the searching hesitancy of the melodic line with probing eloquence. Although the opening is tentative — a quotation from Dowland’s song is introduced and submerged in a low-lying register in the accompaniment — Power established his presence and poise, while sustaining the air of expressive mystery. The viola’s fragments of quotation from Dowland, haunting snatches of an archaic sound world, were poignant lyrical utterances when juxtaposed with the uneven, unstable, more modern instrumental fabric.
Martin Brabbins deftly shaped the unfolding exchanges between soloist and players, and within the ensemble, crafting interchanges suggestive of conversation and quotation. There was a sense of distancing and translation: from voice to viola, and from Elizabethan past to modern present. The co-presence of Dowland’s compositional voice and Britten’s idiosyncratic idiom seemed both curious and inevitable, the two held in balance and in alternation throughout.
Brabbins was concerned with the minutiae of the score but also controlled the whole form as the sequence of variations (or ‘Reflections’ as Britten called them) progressed towards the full revelation of its source. From the shadowy opening of the Lento, with its muffled tremolos and muted una corda playing, the piece built in intensity. The approach to the interruption of this evolution by the viola’s statement of the Lachrymae of the title, Dowland’s Flow My tears’, in Reflection 6 was electric; and Brabbins’ emphasis on the vivid textural contrasts, complemented by the viola’s direct utterance, made for a powerful and moving climax.
Britten’s innate and renowned sensitivity to words can seem wasted on Rimbaud’s somewhat self-indulgent poetry, which expresses the nineteen-year-old Frenchman’s sense of excitement when faced with the thrilling potential of modernity and new frontiers, and which the composer set in the instrumental song cycle, Les Illuminations. Britten himself was only 26 at the time of composition, but it is clear that he already had an ear for French idioms and rhythm. And, this was emphasised further by soprano Sandrine Piau’s beautiful, understated enunciation of her native language, highlighting by turns the languid repose and racy energy of the verse.
This was a commanding, polished performance, one which retained the sensuality of Rimbaud’s animated, colourful outpouring but which also maintained a certain distance, clarity and composure. ‘Villes’ was light and airy, Piau momentary blossoming when the poet-speaker exalts: “Old craters, encircled by colossi and palms of copper, roar melodiously in the fires”. The string lines and voice are very much of equal import, the latter often melodically subordinate to the on-going instrumental discourse; Brabbins and the players of the Nash Ensemble were firmly focused, alert to the instrumental arguments and colourings which embrace the voice. The violins’ dance-like melodies in ‘Antique’ were wonderfully undulating and sinuous, while the march-like tune in ‘Royauté’ had real rhythmic bite.
In the latter, Piau revealed her wit and humour; but she was equally at home with the more prosaic recitative of ‘Phrase’, producing an incredible gracefulness at the very top of her register, and dancing weightlessly through the glissandi, accompanied by delicate string harmonics. The virtuosic twirls and runs of ‘Marine’, “tourillons, tourillons’, and the constant and surprising shifts of mood, presented no difficulties. After the drolleries of the opening of ‘Parade’, Piau’s gleaming rich sound bloomed in the ecstatic ‘final’ phrase: “J’ai seul la clef de cette parade sauvage.” (“I alone hold the key to this savage parade!” Her ability to convey diverse nuances in different contexts was strongly evident here: this phrase appears in both the opening ‘Fanfare’ and the ‘Interlude’ but Piau drew completely different meanings from the phrase through tone and articulation. This was a fresh and direct performance, which received a well-deserved rapturous reception.
Fittingly, for the work received its world premiere in the Wigmore Hall in 1943, the concert concluded with the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings. This was an almost overwhelmingly intense rendering, both soloists — tenor John Mark Ainsley and horn player Richard Watkins — performing from memory. Ainsley was movingly expressive and eloquent; but, for me Watkins was the star of the whole evening, every note intelligently conceived and produced with supreme technical mastery, the considerable challenges of Britten’s writing for the natural horn despatched effortlessly. In the opening ‘Prologue’, Watkins manipulated the inherent out-of-tuneness of the instrument to marvellous effect. Throughout the work his phrasing was beautifully judged, nowhere more so than in the haunting echoes of ‘Nocturne’. Elsewhere his golden legato and glowing tone simply took my breath away.
Ainsley’s flexible, relaxed opening phrase in ‘Pastoral’ — rounded, perfectly placed and beautifully poised — set the bar for the rest of his performance. ‘Nocturne’ was elegant but unfussy, the dialogue between voice and horn. In the extended horn preface and postlude of ‘Elegy’ Watkins’ eerily descending semitones powerfully embodied the sense of sin which Blake’s troubling verse obliquely conveys. The darkness which settled over this number carried to ‘Dirge’, as Ainsley’s insistent, increasingly fearful tone brought the shadows of nightmare into the hall, the high keening of the tenor’s melody reiterating the mocking semitone of the ‘Elegy’, extending its terrible influence. The tension was released by the fleet hunting calls and cascading scales of ‘Hymn’, a setting of Ben Jonson’s ‘Hymn to Diana’, goddess of the moon and of the hunt. After a virtuousic cadenza at the close of this movemenr, Watkins unobstrusively left the stage; Ainsley delivered a silky if not soothing performance of Keats’ “O soft embalmer of the still midnight”. Shades of unease were latent in the high Ds of the final line, “And seal the hushed Casket of my Soul”, intimating the ultimate ‘rest’, and confirming that the disturbing dreams of the earlier movements had not fully been banished.
The Nash Ensemble strings were superb throughout, and Brabbins tempi were unfailingly well-judged. If I were to admit to one small misgiving it would be that the Epilogue, delivered by Watkins from the gallery at the back of the Hall, seemed to have too much presence, too much solidity. A more diffuse, ethereal quality — one that might have been achieved if Watkins had played off-stage, perhaps with door ajar, behind the platform — would have sustained the enduring ghostliness that lingered in so many of the movements. But, this complaint seems ungenerous when we were treated to such a wonderful evening of music-making.
Claire Seymour
Sandrine Piau: soprano; John Mark Ainsley: tenor; Richard Watkins: horn; Lawrence Power: viola; Martyn Brabbins: conductor; Nash Ensemble.
Lachrymae for solo viola and strings Op.48a; Les Illuminations Op.18; Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, Op.31. Wigmore Hall, London, Tuesday 4 December 2012.
image=http://www.operatoday.com/Lachrymae.jpg image_description=Lachrymae by Frederic Lord Leighton product=yes product_title=Britten’s Lachrymae at Wigmore Hall product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id=Above: Lachrymae by Frederic Lord LeightonDecember 6, 2012
Britten: The Canticles
‘Canticle’ is the term Britten used to denote an extended setting of a text of spiritual substance. The five Canticles span his career: the first dates from 1947, two years after the celebrated premiere of Peter Grimes; the last was composed in 1974, two years before the composer’s death. Britten’s texts are complex conceptually, semantically and syntactically. But, underpinning all five works is the blend of the spiritual, public and personal which characterises so much of the composer’s work.
This concert — which forms part of a three-week series of concerts celebrating Britten’s chamber music in anticipation of the composer’s centenary year in 2013, and also belongs to the series ‘A Singularity of Voice’, the title of countertenor Iestyn Davies’ residency at the Hall — presented a rare opportunity to hear the complete cycle of five works.
‘My beloved is mine’ is a musical meditation on a single line from the Song of Solomon, translated by the seventeenth-century poet Francis Quarles. Britten dedicated the work, and his choice of text, to Dick Sheppard who had been a founding member of the Peace Pledge Union, and at whose Memorial Concert in Westminster Central Hall it was first heard.
It is concentrated and quietly ecstatic, and tenor Mark Padmore immediately captured its quality of rapturous ethereality, the sparse airiness of the opening, with voice and piano moving discursively in diverging registers, increasingly enlivened by sudden injections of elated energy. Padmore’s searching melismas and the oriental tint of the Julius Drake’s piano accompaniment cohered to create a sense of distance and ‘strangeness’. After the recitative-like clarity of the central section, Padmore’s declamatory precision, which was punctuated by fragmentary piano interjections, gave way to more lyrical reflection — “He is my altar, I his holy place” — a low, syncopated piano gesture adding resonance and substance to the text: “He’s my supporting elm and I his vine;/ Thus I my best beloved’s am/ Thus he is mine.”
Padmore was joined by countertenor Iestyn Davies in the second canticle, ‘Abraham and Isaac’, a more dramatic work which enacts a variation on Britten’s favoured theme, the destruction of innocence. Recitative and aria alternate to create a single condensed structure, and the performers produced a seamless dramatic entity, the musical and dramatic climaxes cohering with impact. Turning their backs on the audience, Padmore and Davies intoned God’s words to Abraham instructing him to slay his son, Isaac, in sacrifice to his deity: their rhythmic homophony was unwavering but retained a touching translucency, a spiritual organum whose dissonances were both delicate and piercing. Padmore articulated Abraham’s responding recitative with warmth and intensity; turning to his son to explain his task, the tenor employed a clear, ringing high register which conveyed Abraham’s faith and resolution. In contrast, the vibrato-less purity of Davies’ trusting reply, “Father, I am all ready/ To do your bidding most meekëly”, set against Drake’s portentous staccato bass, was poignantly open and naïve.
As the sacrifice approached, Drake’s tremulous accompaniment enhanced the thrilling rhythmic dynamism which accrued, climaxing in a moment of astonishing and tense stillness, as Isaac, accepting his fate, asks for his father’s blessing. The leaping octaves of Davies’ unaccompanied line betrayed the equivocal emotions of the young boy, at once both steadfast and fearful, while his plea, “Father, do with me as you will”, was affectingly eloquent. Preparing to do God’s will, Padmore created a terrifying intensity, underlined by Drake’s disturbing bass pedals, climaxing in an apocalyptic tumult. Spared by a God in whom Abraham has demonstrated absolute faith, father and son join in an ‘Envoi’ of gentle counterpoint and consonance, Drake’s closing gesture creating a sense of integration and sweetness.
Electing to perform the Canticles out of sequence, the performers now delivered a startling change of mood, following such melodious resolution with the sparse sombreness of the fifth Canticle, a setting of T.S. Eliot’s early poem, ‘The Death of Narcissus’, which mediates on spiritual and creative striving and vision. Britten dedicated his setting to the writer William Plomer, his librettist of Gloriana and the church parables. The unique syntax of the text, and its oblique meaning, must have presented Britten with many challenges; his style here, and in the ‘The Journey of the Magi’, is concentrated in response to the multifarious nuances and strong cadences of Eliot’s poetry.
Padmore was joined by harpist Lucy Wakeford in an enigmatic performance. With characteristic alertness to the capacities and potentialities of particular instruments, Britten drew on the distinctive reverberations and harmonic resonances of the harp to create a mood of ambiguity and inscrutability. Here, the focused sobriety of the opening — “I will show you his bloody cloth and limbs. And the gray shadow on his lips” — enlarged into an energetic and expansive array of colours exploiting the harp’s full arc and scope: “First he was sure that he had been a tree,/ Twisting its branches among each other/And tangling its roots among each other. Wakeford’s articulation was simultaneously precise and sweeping; Padmore brought a dark mystery and sensuousness to his low range: “Because his flesh was in love with the burning arrows/ He danced on the hot sand.” In the final lines, “Now he is green, dry and stained/ With the shadow in his mouth”, Padmore’s ghostly modal ascent diminished into insubstantiality, while the harp’s sparing octaves dissolved into the air.
The journeying motif is present in all of the three last Canticles. Another setting of Eliot, the fourth Canticle, ‘Journey of the Magi’, explores the difficulty of grasping the significance of Christ’s birth, as the three Magi make their arduous journey through the desolate desert. Following an urgent, dissonant piano rumbling, the crisp rhythms of Padmore, Davies and baritone Marcus Farnsworth conveyed the energy of departure, the vocal close harmony underpinned by the lively punctuation of Drake’s accompanying ostinato. A boisterous vigour was conjured, “With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness … And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow”, the precisely delivered homophony suggesting a unity of thinking among the travellers.
Such sense of purposefulness was disturbed however by a prevailing unease, which erupts in Eliot’s final stanza, when the Magi reach their destination. Eliot is resentful and aggrieved: “I had seen birth and death/, But had thought they were different.” The singers’ focused, perfectly blended unison enhanced the sense of disturbance and fear, for the men will return to their Kingdoms of “alien people clutching their gods”. At this point, Britten introduces the plainchant ‘Magi videntes stellam’ in the piano and Drake relished the clanging strangeness which suggests the troubling disquiet of those who, so changed by what they have witnessed, “should be glad of another death”.
The recital closed with ‘Still Falls the Rain’, a setting of text from ‘The Canticle of the Rose’ by Edith Sitwell. This third Canticle was written following the suicide of Britten’s close friend Noel Mewton-Wood, and was first performed at the Wigmore Hall in January 1955 by the composer, Peter Pears and Dennis Brain. Padmore, perhaps inspired equally by the work’s history and Britten’s genius, rose to extraordinary heights of musical expression and discerning perceptivity, accompanied by the astonishingly sensitive horn playing of Richard Watkins.
Mimicking the variation structure of The Turn of the Screw, the work which immediately preceded it, this Canticle never settles, by turns expansive then austere, rhetorical and then reserved. Watkins exploited every timbre available, while Padmore found an astonishing range of colours in response to the nuances of the text, as exemplified by the startling change of tone from beauty to anger in the opening unaccompanied lines. Tempo was used to convey unrest, the staccato piano accompaniment and horn counterpoint indicative of the disturbing knowledge of man’s guilt: “the small hopes breed and the human brain/ Nurtures its greed, that worm with the brow of Cain.” Nowhere was the mood more despairing and angry than Padmore’s half-spoken outburst, “O Ile leape up to my God: who pulles me doune — ?”, a quotation from Marlowe’s Dr Faustus. The veiled quality of the tenor’s subsequent reflection on man’s human heart, “dark-smirched with pain/ As Caesar’s laurel crown”, painfully deepened the anguish.
Sitwell’s poem bears the subtitle, ‘The Raids, 1940, Night and Dawn’; she presents images from the Passion to reassure man of the continuing existence of God in a world torn apart by man’s inhumanity. If there had been any questioning about the non-chronological ordering of the Canticles, they were dispelled by the heartrendingly breathtaking close, voice and horn ultimately united in a brief but blissful moment of transcendence and reconciliation, the horn’s pianissimo almost unimaginably hushed: “’Still do I love, still shed my innocent light, my Blood, for thee.’”
Britten claimed that the canticles were ‘a new invention in a sense although … modelled on Purcell’s Divine Hymns’ . Here, surely, was music divine.
Claire Seymour
Wigmore Hall, London Friday 30th November 2012
Britten: The Canticles
Iestyn Davies countertenor Mark Padmore tenor Marcus Farnsworth baritone Richard Watkins horn Lucy Wakeford harp Julius Drake piano Britten
Canticle I: My beloved is mine Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac Canticle III: Still Falls the Rain — the Raids, 1940, Night and Dawn Canticle IV: Journey of the Magi Canticle V: The Death of Saint Narcissus
image=http://www.operatoday.com/Britten.gif image_description=Benjamin Britten product=yes product_title=Britten: The Canticles product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id=Above: Benjamin BrittenDecember 5, 2012
WNO proves a point with Handel’s Jeptha
Poor Handel’s marvellous music has suffered in recent years with some truly awful productions just in the UK alone (no names, no pack-drill) where misguided directors just couldn’t bear to trust a master word-painter and consummate entertainer. Some of his finest operas have almost crumbled beneath the autocratic boot of boorish self-aggrandisement or misplaced comedic ambition. Thank heaven then — pardon the allusion — for his later oratorios based on mainly Old Testament themes where the story lines and libretti have largely avoided the hand of The Director mainly because they have not been seen as very stage-able — at least not until the last ten or so years. Thank heaven also then for directors such as Katie Mitchell and companies such as Welsh National who back in 2003 created what must now be regarded as a classic of this genre, oratorio staged as opera: Handel’s Jeptha. This production truly lets the music live and breathe, yet with its 20th century setting in a vaguely mid-European 1940’s wartime, it also usefully reflects the original martial/royalist background of Handel and librettist Morell’s time. They were writing for an audience who perfectly understood the sub-texts; pulling the story into our own time allows today’s audience to ponder our own dilemmas and recent history in relation to the human and religious angst portrayed on the stage.
Revived for at least the second time, and on tour this Autumn, Mitchell’s original production has stood the test of recent times exceedingly well and, since the 2006 outing which boasted truly world-class vocalists (Mark Padmore, Iestyn Davies and Susan Bickley to name but three), all but one of the singers has changed. So, it was a good chance with this final performance of the run to hear the new voices in the roles and look back on old notes and, inevitably, compare.
Interestingly, one of the two most likeable singers at Bristol Hippodrome’s performance on 27th November was the sole returnee from 2006: soprano Fflur Wyn as Jeptha’s daughter Iphis who has now grown into a wonderful young singer in this repertory. She has a silvery shimmer to her voice which remains at all levels of her dynamic range (which is considerable) and her command of the specifics of Handel’s music — the fiendish divisions contrasting with melting legato — is now consummate. Matching her in both these elements of her own, lower-lying, music was mezzo soprano Diana Montague as Jeptha’s wife Storge, who was in marvellous form; her “Scenes of horror, scenes of woe…” were a master-class in dramatic singing.
The male roles of the piece, tenor Robert Murray as Jeptha, countertenor Robin Blaze as Hamor and bass Alan Ewing as Zebul, didn’t fare quite as well although Blaze certainly won the “handelian style” competition outright. His straight, rather green timbre isn’t perhaps to everyone’s taste, but he can certainly sing Handel in a way that brooks no argument. Still looking ridiculously youthful, his many years of experience really showed. Ewing’s portrayal of Jeptha’s half-brother Zebul was dramatically excellent but his bass seemed to struggle somewhat with the passage-work and this detracted from the overall effect. In the title role — and tenors don’t exactly proliferate in Handel’s title roles — Robert Murray, who is not known for his Handel, worked hard to establish this quite tricky character’s personality but seemed in the first Act to be struggling vocally to get his voice around the music. This improved with time, but a tightening of the voice in the higher registers was worrying as this also seemed to affect his legato singing. The “signature” tune of the piece is of course the famous “Waft her, angels, through the skies” which is very high and here, glad to say, Murray gained a quiet, but mellifluous head voice which was workmanlike, if not memorably mesmerising as this music can be in the hands of a true Handelian tenor. Claire Ormshaw, as the deus ex machina Angel who saves Iphis’s life in the dying minutes of the work, sang affectingly and effectively in the short-but-vital role.
In some operas, the chorus can be a mixed blessing but in a Handel oratorio — staged as here, or not — it should be a real ornament and an essential ingredient in the dramatic mix. WNO chorus was simply first class; their acting and their singing would be hard to beat anywhere in the world and they were truly integrated into the action in every way at every turn of events. For most of the run Paul Goodwin had conducted but on this particular night Thomas Blunt took over the WNO orchestra in elegant and effective style and proved most considerate of the singers throughout whilst keeping the tempi accurate and sound most stylish. I have no doubt that this is a production which will open many people’s eyes to the marvels of Handel’s music and perhaps encourage them to re-assess their view of the oratorio as a musical form.
Sue Loder
Click here for cast and production information. image=http://www.operatoday.com/Jephtha-7038-Fflur-Wyn.gif image_description=Fflur Wyn as Iphis [Photo by Bill Cooper] product=yes product_title=WNO proves a point with Handel’s Jeptha product_by=A review by Sue Loder product_id=Above: Fflur Wyn as Iphis [Photo by Bill Cooper]