Opera Today

Ariadne auf Naxos, Royal Opera

Unimpressed by the librettist’s pretentiousness, Strauss replied that as a ‘superficial musician’ he couldn’t understand Hofmannsthal’s complex symbolism concerning the nature of Ariadne's salvation and transformation, and that the audience was likely to share his bafflement.

Hofmannsthal is certainly equivocal about why the interaction between the two seemingly incompatible philosophies of art and life presented in Ariadne auf Naxos results in the transfiguration of Ariadne as she lies in Bacchus’ arms at the end of the work. And, Christof Loy’s 2002 production doesn’t really address the opera’s theoretical conundrums; but, in the hands of a superlative cast, it does offer visual and musical sumptuousness and gratification. Back in 2002, the production marked both the re-opening of the Royal Opera House after a major refurbishment and the arrival of Antonio Pappano as musical director. The adventurousness of the striking coup de theatre at the start of the Prologue is an apt symbol of the aspiration and confidence which Pappano has brought to the House, and twelve years on this second revival retains its classiness and ambition.

Ariadne, daughter of Minos, the King of Crete, has helped her Athenian lover Theseus slay the Minotaur and escape from the labyrinth. However, upon their arrival on the island of Naxos, Theseus deserts his saviour and Ariadne languishes alone until Bacchus arrives, having fleed from Circe’s evil clutches. The grieving Princess mistakes Bacchus for Hermes, the messenger of Death, while he believes she is an enchantress — although this time he is happy to submit to her magic.

Jane Archibald as Zerbinetta and Ruxandra Donose as the Composer

This is the subject of the after-dinner Opera commissioned by the ‘richest man in Vienna’ which forms Strauss’s second ‘Act’. It is preceded by a Prologue in which we see the Composer learn, with dismay and impassioned disbelief, that his noble opera seria is to be performed ‘simultaneously’ with the dances and distractions of a commedia dell’arte troupe. Consoled by his Music Master, he is forced to make sacrilegious cuts to his score while the comedians and dancers delight in devising the intrusive diversions.

Designer Herbert Murauer opening set is the entrance salon of an affluent mansion: it’s glossy and sleek, but also soulless. His Lordship’s money can buy anything, except sensibility; served by a haughty Major Domo (an imperious Christoph Quest) who can bark out orders but is denied the language of music, the master commissions masterpieces but rates fireworks about art.

Murauer swiftly takes us from the clinical vestibule into more creative, if somewhat chaotic, realms, the whole set magically rising as we descend into the cellar where the artists are at work. The transformation is slick, but it’s a pity that a 40-minute interval is necessary to dismantle the complex machinery that it necessitates and to assemble the Poussin-esque set for the ensuing Opera. Moreover, although the candle-lit emeralds and aquamarines of the ‘island’ are an effective representation of seventeenth-century taste (Jennifer Tipton’s lighting design is particularly atmospheric and emphasises the ‘artifice’ which is such a significant element of Strauss’s dialectic), the classical French Baroque landscape mural has little in common with the modern-period Prologue and there are scant directorial connections between the two parts of the opera. Costumes are similarly confusing: Ariadne dons mourning black, the nymphs and spirits sport eighteenth-century dress (one looks suspiciously like Mozart) and Zerbinetta — her stilletto boots and skimpy dress sluttishly flirtatious — is accompanied by a cast of entertainers dressed respectively in combat gear, a shiny shellsuit, tartan and rockers’ black leather. Ariadne’s cave is a dressing table perhaps to suggest that, peering into the mirror, she is consumed by her own solipsism?

But, things cannot fail to please with Karita Matilla taking the title role for the first time. Wittily self-parodic as the Prima Donna in the Prologue, she tranforms into a ‘real’ diva for the Opera proper, rapturous of voice and expertly balancing nobility with excess. Matilla’s soprano possesses a powerful Straussian lustre, easily capable of soaring over the orchestra, and she sings her long monologues with heartful commitment. But, she also finds variety of colour: recalling her happiness with Theseus in ‘Ein schönes war’ her tone is bright and joyful. And, Matilla demonstrates a strong lower range, particularly when she sings of the ‘Realm of Death’, building this monologue to an ecstatic climax.

Matilla commands the stage but the other principals are no less satisfying. Ruxandre Donose’s Composer was overflowing with adolescent fervour and idealism. Her smooth mezzo is perfect for Strauss’s flowing arioso melodies, and her outburst that ‘Musik ist eine heilige Kunst’ (music is a holy art) was full of elevated feeling and conviction. Donose made engaging use of a wide dynamic range and was totally convincing in her interaction with Jane Archibald’s Zerbinetta. The latter has all the necessary vocal weapons in her arsenal and she had no trouble whizzing nimbly through the coloratura tricks of ‘Großmächtige Prinzessin’ and sustaining a reliable high F. Archibald’s tone is silvery and even in the stratosphere retains its sweetness. She had a good stab at capturing Zerbinetta’s less-than-innocent coquetry and effervescence; and one could forgive the Composer for submitting to the charms of her Prologue number, ‘Ein Augenblick ist wenig’. But, she didn’t have quite enough stage presence or depth of characterisation for this production — a touch more of Despina needed, perhaps?

Kiandra Howarth as Echo, Wynne Evans as Scaramuccio, Paul Schweinester as Brighella, Karita Mattila as Ariadne, Jane Archibald as Zerbinetta and Jeremy White as Truffaldino

Roberto Saccà tenor doesn’t have quite enough dramatic energy or openness at the top for the demanding role of Bacchus — it is after all the voice that frees Ariadne from her torment and pain — but in many other ways he acquitted himself well and had the stamina to cope with the unforgiving challenges, and tessitura, of the part. There were some deft comic touches during the tomfoolery of the Prologue, and his overall performance was robust, maintaining focus through to the final duet.

Thomas Allen was typically dependable as the rather frazzled Music Master, the diction superb as always. Ed Lyons had all the high notes, including a secure top B, and delivered the preening Dancing Master’s comic lines with waggishness. Baritone Marcus Werber sang Harlequin’s song with a pleasing cantilena and strong high notes. Tenor Wynne Evans was a powerful Scaramuccio, while Truffaldin was sung with smooth lyricism by bass Jeremy White. Paul Schweinester used his flexible tenor well in the role of Brighella. However, as the commedia dell’arte troupe insinuate themselves into the Opera, choreographer Beate Vollack’s routines at times verged on slapstick and the pantomimesque steps of ‘Die Dame gibt mis trübem Sinn’ — danced in an attempt to cheer up the gloomy Princess — were tiresome.

Echo (Kiandra Howarth), Naiad (Sofia Fomina) and Dryad (Karen Cargill) blended beautifully, especially in their trio commenting on Ariadne’s grief. Howarth’s pure, youthful soprano is just right for Echo’s simple imitations; Cargill’s mezzo is fittingly dark and rich. In the smaller roles of the Lackey, Officer and Wig-maker, Jihoon Kim, David Butt Philip and Ashley Riches, respectively, all performed well.

Supportive of his singers throughout, Pappano brought a surprising mix of luxuriousness and lucidity — there were some very effective pianissimi — to Strauss’s richly textured score. Solos from clarinet, horn, flute and bassoon were beautifully executed in sentimental dialogue with the vocal lines; and the string playing in the overture to the Opera was sorrowful and affecting. The conductor paced the drama with mastery, especially the final duet, controlling the ever-accumulating waves of sound with fine judgment. In Pappano’s hands, Romanticism and Classicism were perfectly blended.

Claire Seymour

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Cast and production information:

Ariadne/The Prima Donna, Karita Mattila; Bacchus/The Tenor, Roberto Saccà; Zerbinetta, Jane Archibald; The Composer, Ruxandra Donose; Harlequin, Markus Werba; A Music Master, Thomas Allen; Dancing Master, Ed Lyon; Wig Maker, Ashley Riches; Lackey, Jihoon Kim; Scaramuccio, Wynne Evans; Brighella, Paul Schweinester; Truffaldino, Jeremy White; Officer, David Butt Philip; Naiad, Sofia Fomina; Dryad, Karen Cargill; Echo, Kiandra Howarth; Major Domo, Christoph Quest; Director, Christof Loy; Conductor, Antonio Pappano; Designs, Herbert Murauer; Lighting, Jennifer Tipton; Choreography, Beate Vollack; Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, Wednesday 25^th June 2014.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/2662ashm_1020.gif image_description=Karita Mattila as Ariadne [Photo © ROH/ Catherine Ashmore] product=yes product_title=Ariadne auf Naxos, Royal Opera product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id=Above: Karita Mattila as Ariadne

Photos © ROH/ Catherine Ashmore

Leoš Janáček : The Cunning Little Vixen, Garsington Opera at Wormsley

In a letter to Kamila Stösslová dated the 10th of February that year he writes wistfully “I have begun writing The Cunning Little Vixen. A merry thing with a sad end: I am taking up a place at that sad end myself ……and I so belong there”.

It is tempting to see a connection between the opera’s composition and the purchase of his country home in Hukvaldy “beyond the stream, great forests” which he began to regard as something of a retirement home. The opera is one of those works, earthy, especially in this translation, and yet all the more affecting for containing a profound truth. Humans and animals alike inhabit the forest, we share the same emotions, we live briefly, all too soon we die but the forest lives on. As in that wonderful epilogue to Das Lied von der Erde, “The beloved earth everywhere blossoms and greens in springtime anew. Everywhere and forever the distances brighten blue”. The Forester’s ecstatic farewell at the opera’s close touches similar emotions, albeit refracted through Janáček’s unique prism.

Of course Cunning Little Vixen can also be taken as entertainment pure and simple with its hilarious scenes in the local pub with the repressed minister, the even more repressed schoolmaster and the almost equally repressed Forester getting as we would say in Scotland “fou and unca happy” (ie ‘smashed), then at the Forester’s hut with the hens, the cock - here summarily ‘bobbited’ on stage by the Vixen - and the dog Lapak, and last but not least the rapturous (and extremely funny) courtship and mating of Vixen Long Ears with the Fox and other scenes in the forest. For that reason it is ideal summer opera - Glyndebourne did it recently - although, given the overt but scarcely suppressed sexual longing of nearly all the characters, it is a moot point - unlike, say, Hansel & Gretel- whether it would ever be suitable for children. However, it is certainly a ‘feel-good’ opera - at least until the Vixen is shot by the macho poacher Harasta who, as we hear from subsequent conversation in the pub, will shortly marry the local object of desire, Terynka, who will be wearing a new fox fur muff for the occasion. At that point the plot darkens.

Given Janáček’s own unconsummated passion over many years for Kamila Stösslová, it is hard not to see the main character’s emotions as at least partly autobiographical. Thankfully Janáček’s relationship with Kamila seems to have remained entirely proper. Had it been otherwise we should probably never have had that magnificent flow of late masterpieces. Ironically I knew an old Czech gentleman in Malta called Jaroslav who had fallen in love with a married woman across a crowded theatre in Prague in the 1920’s and whose unrequited passion for her lasted till his death some 50 years later. He produced an epic love poem in her honour running to over 100 pages which he would read to his friends with tears streaming down his face.

This, the final opera in Garsington’s current season of three operas, is an undoubted delight and there are no obvious weak links in the substantial cast, Claire Booth consistently excellent as the Vixen and the stentorian Grant Doyle impressive as the Forester. The Cunning Little Vixen has a large cast of other animals - the frog, the grasshopper, the badger, the hens (excellent in their movements) as well as those already mentioned and assorted humans of whom both Timothy Robinson’s sad schoolmaster and Henry Waddington’s priest both deserve special mention. So too does Victoria Simmonds characterful fox.

That said, there have to be a number of minor reservations about the production itself. With its rural setting Garsington should be an ideal location for Cunning Little Vixen (the sliding doors behind the stage open onto woods beyond, surely a perfect backdrop for the forest scenes but, unlike Vert-Vert, this was not used).The interior scenes in the inn had a set that looked uncomfortably like Laura Ashley wallpaper from the 1960’s - one could see what the designer had in mind since this had to double as the forest glade when the set worked (on several occasions it jammed and the stage staff had difficulty moving it). Nor were the Vixen’s nonchalant movements entirely convincingly foxy (I speak from experience as we have a vixen which regularly uses our back garden and has even joined us for lunch on sunny days, sitting on the roof of our garden shed and eyeing us up curiously as we eat; she either moves very cautiously or trots along quite rapidly).

For the most part Garry Walker and the orchestra had the score’s measure, refusing to jolly it along too quickly and allowing its moments of wonder and ‘wood magic’ to emerge naturally; however, there were some occasions where the music cried out for greater weight and intensity, notably that glorious pantheistic epilogue where the Forester, alone in the forest, reflects on his lost youth and his loveless marriage and - when he sees a fox cub resembling the young vixen - wonders if he should take it home with him.

A postscript. Given the awful story of the tenor at the Met who took a heart attack some years ago during a performance of The Makropoulos Case and fell from a ladder, it was interesting to see boys/cubs clambering up and down ladders without helmets, body harnesses and carabiners. Fortunately the ubiquitous Health & Safety’s writ does not seem to have reached Garsington. After all, boys will be boys and we all survived falling out of the odd tree. Long may it continue. Viva la liberta!

Douglas Cooksey

The Cunning Little Vixen
Music Leos Janáček
Libretto Leos Janáček based on the novel Liska Bystrouska by Rudolf Tesnohlidek,
Forester:: Grant Doyle, Forester’s wife : Lucy Schaufer, Schoolmaster \: Timothy Robinson, Priest :Henry Waddington, Harašta : Joshua Bloom, Pásek (innkeeper) : Aaron Cawley, Pásek’s wife : Helen Anne Gregory, Pepík : William Gardner, Frantík : Theo Lally, Young Vixen Bystrouška : Alexandra Persinaru, Vixen Bystrouška : Claire Booth, Fox : Victoria Simmonds, Cricket: Isaac Flanagan, Grasshopper : Sophie Thomson, Frog : Gabriel Kuti, Mosquito : Richard Dowling, Lapák a dog: Anna Harvey
Cock : Alice Rose Privett, Chocholka a hen : Katherine Crompton, Badger :Bragi Jonnson, Woodpecker : Marta Fontanals-Simmons, Owl : Grace Durham, Jay : Elizabeth Karani, Vixen dancer :Chiara Vinci, Forester dancer :Jamie Higgins,
Conductor :Garry Walker, Director : Daniel Slater, Designer : Robert Innes Hopkins,
Lighting Designer : Tim Mascall, Choreographer: Maxine Braham, Assistant conductor Holly Mathieson, Garsington Opera Orchestra

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La Traviata in Marseille

Maybe because it had a bad reputation as a betrayal of Alexander Dumas fils’ novel La Dame aux Camélias and maybe because local critics had already objected to its jumpy motifs and its vulgar rhythms. Once on the stage of Marseille’s venerable Opéra (1787) however it has become, with Rigotetto, Marseille’s most performed opera.

These June performances were sold out three months in advance — one wonders what foresight will have informed the Marseillais that this was a Traviata not to miss?

Alexander Dumas fils too might have been pleased. His 20 year-old Marguerite, renamed Violetta in the opera was very young as well, and very beautiful. The honesty and ironic innocence that Dumas finds in his ill-starred prostitute radiated from young Czech soprano Zuzana Marková in her role debut.

Act I, Gaston, Alfredo, Le Marquis, Violetta, Flora.

Mlle. Marková may have been a somewhat tentative Lucia last winter in Marseille, but as Violetta she moved with new found grace and delivered a deeply studied performance with complete mastery and conviction. She is a remarkable technician in the first flower of beautiful, clear, coloratura voice. The E-flat taken in “Sempre libera” rang with silvery confidence, the mid-voice of the second act and death shone with strength and warmth.

It was a sterling performance allowed by remarkable conducting, that of Stuttgart formed young Korean maestra Eun Sun Kim (it is already an established career with credits at English National Opera, Frankfurt Opera, Vienna Volksoper). The maestra is clearly of a new generation of conductors who feel tempos in a minimalist sense — slower macro-pulses offering sound spaces where immediate depths may be probed. Musical energy is discovered by the exploration of this microcosmos rather than in energy found by forcing brute speed and sudden braking.

This musicianship allows for the lyric expansion inherent in bel canto and here it laid bare the roots of the mid-period Verdi in this rapidly disappearing style. Mlle. Marková exposed bel canto’s purity of melodic intention by stylishly suspending her musical lines, plus she exploited these long, carefully sculpted melodic contours in lovely pianissimos and full fortes, and with beautiful vocal colors.

The conducting of Eun Sun Kim well served the artistry of Canadian baritone Jean-François Lapoint as Giorgio Germont. Mr. Lapoint who counts both Pelleas and Golaud among his roles is primarily known in the French repertory. He brought a projection of text from these roles, and a delicacy of delivery that created an unusual depth of personality and musical presence to Germont. The absence of an Italianate color and inflection, and an inborn leading-man presence were overcome here by the convincing sense of bel canto that he and Mlle. Eun achieved (Mr. Lapointe also counts Donizetti’s Alphonse XI [La Favorite] among his roles).

Zuzana Marková as Violetta, Jean François Lapointe as Giorgio Germont

It was a new production, the work of Renée Auphan, the former general director of Marseille Opera (perhaps accounting for the care in its casting). In her program notes she cautions us not to think too much about the Dumas novel, that that demi-monde is far removed from our experience. She asks us instead to focus on Verdi’s universal humanity.

But the characters in her staging are very much those of Dumas, starting with the youth of Mlle. Marková (if not the brattish confidence of Dumas’ Marguerite) and the forty-some age of the has-been prostitute Flora. Her Act III party admitted the startling vulgarity of the demi-monde as described by Dumas. French mezzo Sophie Pondijiclis made this role vividly real, a revelation. French mezzo Christine Tocci played Annina, here transformed from Verdi’s dramatic utility into Dumas’ Nanine, a factotum confidante, possibly a lover of Marguerite, not a chamber maid. Costumed in male styled trousers and top, with a bright smile and strong voice Mlle. Tocci was constantly at Violetta’s side, a vivid, voiceless presence in Act I.

Act II begins with Alfredo’s outpouring of contentment, the emotion ironically compromised by the presence of Dr. Grenvil, who sits writing something, perhaps a prescription, while Alfredo sings the opening of "dei miei bollenti spiriti" to him. The doctor then departs, imparting a perfunctory gesture of professional sympathy to Alfredo. Romanian tenor Teodor Ilincâl made Dumas’ obsessive Armand quite real as Verdi’s Alfredo. Mr. Ilincâl is a strong voiced, Faustian tenor who well embodied Dumas and Verdi’s single minded and selfishly Romantic lover. Verdi simply does not award him the delicacy or complexity of feeling that he lavished on Violetta and Germont.

Mme. Auphan is wise to suggest that we not dwell on Dumas. But understanding the detail of her mise en scène together with the exemplary casting and the musical depth of the conducting explains why this staging brought unexpected vitality to this old warhorse. It was not a moving Traviata so much as it was an almost clinically musical and dramatic examination of this masterpiece. And finally it was mesmerizing art.

The new production provided an unobtrusive, standard mid-nineteenth century setting designed by Marseille born Christine Marest, a veteran of the late 20th century avant garde. The scenery, beautifully lighted by photographer Roberto Venturi, was a stage box that easily transformed its feeling from salon to an intimate, emotional interior space most notably in the “sempre libera.” In Dumas novel this scene takes place in Marguerite’s boudoir, in the Auphan production the lights of the salon are softened into dim, candle light, and just as in the Dumas novel Alfredo is present, making this scene an operatic pas de deux, Violetta voicing her conflicts while Alfredo crumples a white camellia.

There were performances on six consecutive days, thus there were two casts. Jean-François Lapointe however unexpectedly sang all performances (and was still in fine form at the fifth performance). Intelligence from the pressroom indicates that the alternate cast was quite impressive — Romanian soprano Mihaela Marcu as Violetta and Turkish tenor Bülent Bezdüz as Alfredo.

Michael Milenski

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Casts and production information:

Violetta: Zuzana Marková; Flora: Sophie Pondjiclis; Annina: Christine Tocci; Alfredo Germont: Teodor Ilincäi; Giorgio Germont: Jean-François Lapointe; Le Baron: Jean-Marie Delpas; Le Marquis: Christophe Gay; Le Docteur: Alain Herriau; Gaston de Letorières: Carl Ghazarossian; Giuseppe: Camille Tresmontant. Chorus and Orchestra of the Opéra de Marseille. Conductor: Eun Sun Kim; Stage Director: Renée Auphan; Scenic Designer: Christine Marest; Costume Designer: Katia Duflot; Lighting Designer: Roberto Venturi. Opéra de Marseille, June 21, 2014.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Traviata_MRS1OT.png

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product_id=Above: Zuzana Marková as Violetta, Teodor Illingäi as Alfredo [Photos by Christian Dresse, courtesy of Opéra de Marseille)]

Is Tamar Iveri’s career over?

Opera Radio

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Dallas Opera Teams with San Diego Opera

By Mark Lowry [TheaterJones, 20 June 2014]
The Dallas Opera's previously announced world premiere of Great Scott in 2015 will now be co-produced with the recently saved San Diego Opera.
[More . . . .]

Madama Butterfly in San Francisco

It was an Italian opera, the abstract visual images of a Japanese born American and an American fable that converged magically into artistic totality.

The 2006 production itself (design and staging), is from Opera Omaha. It has since traveled to Madison, Dayton, Vancouver, Honolulu, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Charlotte. It would hold the stage in any opera house in the opera world. It is a masterpiece.

The sets and costumes are by Omaha based ceramic artist Jun Kaneko who collaborated with stage director Leslie Swackhamer, a professor at Sam Houston State University (Houston) whose theatrical roots are in Seattle, to create this unique production.

Jun Kaneko works primarily in repeated patterns in two dimensional clay, a visual process that brilliantly found its way into Puccini’s verismo — the abstracted, multi-colored umbrellas of the wedding guests was the kaleidoscope of village life, the sliding panel of black and white squares meant the house. Screens flew in and out on which repeating, jagged lines of growing tension were drawn. These were but some of the patterns that multiplied the joyous and horrific emotional obsessions that are at the base of verismo.

Act I, Patricia Racette as Butterfly. Photo by Cory Weaver.

Kaneko creates abstract location (background) in giant swaths of solid color — a golden yellow for the marriage, this color carried through the opera by the golden trousers of Trouble, reds and blues for the American presence, and finally brilliant red for blood, in a dripping image that mirrored the neck seppuku committed by the Butterfly standing just below. These were some of the colors that conveyed the powerfully contrasting forces of verismo.

San Francisco Opera’s Nicola Luisotti was in the pit. This powerful musical presence usually dominates the War Memorial stage. However here the tyrannical maestro met his match — the evolving visual statements riveted our eyes to the stage, diva Patricia captivated our emotions. The maestro did no more than hold us in thrall to this masterwork. It was what great operatic conducting can be. And very seldom is.

Act II vigil. Photo by Cory Weaver.

This was the performance in its finest moments.

Soprano Patricia Racette no longer has the bloom of voice to create the Act I Butterfly or to deliver a resplendent “un bel di.” But she has gained vocal force and darker colors to execute with soul-wrenching power the words that take her gently and brutally to sacrifice and suicide.

Patricia Racette’s Butterfly has been legend for many years. It is a role she is not likely to keep in her voice much longer.

Mezzo soprano Elizabeth DeShong portrayed a Suzuki that could easily become legendary as well. She possesses a lyric mezzo voice in full flower, and a presence that offers an expanded dimension of character for roles like Suzuki and Cenerentola (her Glyndebourne debut) and trouser roles like Hansel (Chicago) and Maffio Orsini (ENO and SFO).

Baritone Brian Mulligan made an adequate Sharpless but did not resonate with the stature of the Racette Butterfly. The Pinkerton was tenor Brian Jagde, a recent Adler Fellow who does not have the refinement necessary to appear on a major stage (the War Memorial claims it is). It was a raw performance, made embarrassing by the strutting onto the stage apron (and even upon the prompter box) to attempt to impress us with his high notes. This young tenor will perform Pinkerton at Covent Garden, casting that is surely manifestation of artistic anti-Americanism. Current Adler Fellow Julius Ahn is not a big enough performer to fill the Goro pants in a major production.

Michael Milenski

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Casts and production information:

Cio-Cio-San: Patricia Racette; Lt. B.F. Pinkerton: Brian Jagde; Suzuki: Elizabeth DeShong; Sharpless: Brian Mulligan; Goro: Julius Ahn; Kate Pinkerton: Jacqueline Piccolino; Prince Yamadori: Efrain Solis; The Bonze: Morris Robinson; Commissioner: Hadleigh Adams. Chorus and Orchestra of San Francisco Opera. Conductor: Nicola Luisotti; Stage Director; Leslie Swackhamer; Production Designer: Jun Kaneko; Lighting Designer: Gary Marder. War Memorial Opera House, June 15, 2014.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Butterfly_SF3OT.png

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product_id=Above: Patricia Racette as Butterfly, Brian Jagde as Pinkerson [Photo by Cory Weaver]

Luca Francesconi : Quartett, Linbury Studio Theatre, London

When visiting a new country, it helps to know its language and customs. Francesconi's music may seem strange, but that doesn't make it invalid. Francesconi's music is modern but connects deeply to European culture.

Quartett might seem gruesome but no more so than the original story, which was written in 1782. In Choderlos de Laclos's Les Liaisons damgereuses Valmont and Merteuil play kinky mind games. They manipulate other people , and pride themselves on their cynical lack of emotional engagement. They're specially drawn to good people like Madame de Tourvel, because they get a special kick from destroying genuinely good and sincere people. The original book is so well known that it should be part of basic education, but there's also a summary on Wikipedia and a Meryl Streep movie.

Francesconi's setting, based on a play by Heiner Mueller, predicates on the idea that Merteuil and Valmont are alone in an apocalyptic wasteland. It doesn't really matter what disaster has befallen them, save that they've lost the wealth and privileges that let them get away with so much for so long. Perhaps they're in Purgatory, forced to face the consequences of what they have done. Can there be any greater hell for two people who have escaped responsibility for their actions because of their social status.

At first we see a woman ( Kirsten Chávez) in the tatters of an 18th century noblewoman's gown, her corset still tightly laced. Despite what's around her all she can think of is sex. "The skin remembers touch", she groans, "whether hand or claw". At least she's facing one aspect of her depravity. Significantly, the word "Tourvel" intrudes on her consciousness. Tourvel, the virtuous wife Merteuil challenged Valmont to seduce. Tourvel gave into Valmont out of warped Christian generosity because she thought her love might redeem him: the complete opposite of Merteuil Thus Meretuil is obsessed with her memory

The book, Les Liaisons damgereuses is a collection of letters, reputedly exchanged by Merteuil and Valmont as they plot their stratagems and taunt one another. In a modern novel, we read multiple points of view, and the author's commentary. In letter-novels we have only the letter writers' perspective: we have to guess between the lines how other people feel. The structure of Francesconi's Quartett replicates this anomie, so fundamental to the emotional disengagement Merteuil and Valmont seek to achieve.

The epistolary nature of the original also influences Francesconi's dramatic form. Miniature scenes progress seamlessly, ideas and persona changing back and forth. The vocal lines are arch, like the tone in the letters. In the opera, Leigh Melrose sings great falsetto! Valmont and Merteuil act out different scenarios, like method actors, trying to find their way into an experience. They switch rapidly between personas, sometimes reversing parts. Fransceoni's mentor was the late Karl-Heinz Stockhausen, whose influence can be heard in Francesconi's use of spatial relationships and electronic sound. Sometimes the singers stand silent, listening to recordings of their own voices singing other parts, making them reflect. . Perhaps that's why the opera is called "Quartett", though there are only two players. It may also refer to the chamber music upon which Francesconi's reputation was built, where players interact with each other in intricate formation.

Andrew Gourlay conducted the London Sinfonietta. This isn't easy music to play although it's so atmospheric that it sets the background to the story. The orchestra murmurs comment, and screams in frustration, suggesting the unseen voices of people whom Valmont and Merteuil block out of their consciences. Quartett is much more sophisticated and satisfying than much of what the London Sinfonietta has been doing in recent years.

Gradually Valmont and Merteuil get deeper into the wider implications of what they have done. Valmont and Merteuil think of Cécile, the young virgin straight from convent whom Valmont seduced, and ruminate on the idea of sin and the church, They ponder the irony that the parts they pollute once gave them life. In the book, Valmont is thrown off his scams because he developed genuine feelings for Tourvel. Merteuil had to acknowledge that she had feelings for him under her tough exterior. Perhaps, as Valmont sings, they'll get together in hell. Thus he willingly drinks poison and dies, while Merteuil is left alone, waiting.

John Fulljames's staging highlights the psychic dislocation. Soutra Gilmour's simple panels of fabric hang down from the ceiling, giving a vertical dimension to the horizontal stage. With intelligent lighting (the wonderful Bruno Poet) the fabric can resemble torn lace, or mountains, or reversed, black flames reaching upwards from Hell. Sounds Intermedia mixed the electronics. Ravi Deepres created the video projections. Mark Stone and Angelica Voje sing in the second cast.

Please also read ">Susana Malkki on Francesconi . She conducted Quartett in Milan and Amsterdam.

Anne Ozorio

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Opera Conference 2014: Audiences Reimagined

Puccini Manon Lescaut, Royal Opera House, London

When Antonio Pappano is fired with the passion he feels for this music, few other conductors even come close. He' was phenomenal. He took risks with depth and colour, which pay off magnificently. He wasn't afraid of the way the music at times veers towards extremes of vulgarity, expressing the greed and nastiness of nearly every character in the plot. In this score, there's no room for polite timidity. Themes of freedom occur throughout this opera, which Pappano delineates with great verve. Yet there's discipline in Pappano's conducting. His firm, unsentimental mastery keeps the orchestral playing tight. Manon may lose control of her life, but Pappano keeps firm a moral compass. In the Intermezzo, this tension between escape and entrapment was particularly vivid. No need for staging. Instead, Puccini's quotation from Prévost's text was projected, austerely, onto the curtain.

Kristine Opolais created a Manon that will define her career for years to come, and become a benchmark against which future Manon will be compared. Her voice has a lucid sweetness that expresses Manon's beauty, but her technique is so solid that she can also suggest the ruthlessness so fundamental to the role. The Act Two passages she sings cover a huge range of emotions, which Opolais defines with absolute clarity. In every nuance, Opolais makes us feel what Manon might feel, so intimately that one almost feels as if we were intruding on Manon's emotional privacy. It's not "easy listening" but exceptionally poignant.

In the final scene, Puccini specifies darkness and cold, undulating terrain and a bleak horizon. There are no deserts around New Orleans, which is on a delta. Opolais lies, literally "at the end of the road", suspended in mid-air devoid of every comfort. Then Opolais sings, transforming Manon from a dying wretch in a dirty dress through the sheer beauty and dignity of her singing. "Sei tu, sei tu che piangi?", she started, building up to the haunted "Sola, perduta, abbandonata, in landa desolata. Orror!"". The glory of Opolais's singing seemed to make Manon shine from within, as if she had at last found the true light of love. I was so moved I was shaking. Anyone who couldn't be touched by this scene and by Opolais must have concrete in their arteries, instead of blood.

Opolais and Jonas Kaufmann are so ideally cast. Their presence might push up the cost of tickets, but think in terms of investment. These performances will be talked about for decades to come. Kaufmann's deliciously dark-hued timbre makes him a perfect Italianate hero. On the first night, in the First Act, some minor tightness in his voice dulled his singing somewhat, but he's absolutely worth listening to even when he's not in top form. In the love duets, his interaction with Opolais was so good one could forgive him anything. By the crucially important last scene, his voice was ringing out true and clean again - a heroic act of artistry much appreciated by those who value singing. He'll get better as the run progresses.

Manon Lescaut is very much an ensemble piece although the two principals attract most attention. Christopher Maltman sang Lescaut, Manon's corrupt brother. Lescaut is low down and dirty, a calculating chancer with no scruples who'll gladly set upon his friends if it suits him. Maltman's gutsy energy infused his singing with earthy brio, completely in character. Maurizio Muraro sang an unusually well-defined Geronte, who exudes slime and malevolent power. How that voice spits menace!

The lesser parts were also extremely well delivered. The Sergeant is a more significant role than many assume it to be. Jihoon Kim sang it with more personality than it usually gets. he makes the role feel like a Geronte who hasn't made enough money to kick people around, but would if he could. Significantly Puccini places the part in context of the female prisoners who are Manon manquées.Benjamin Hulett sang Edmondo, Nigel Cliffe the Innkeeper, Nadezhda Karyazina the Musician, Robert Burt the Dance master, Luis Gomes the lamplighter and Jeremy White the Naval Captain. Good work all round. Although attention focuses on overall staging, the director's input in defining roles should never be underestimated. Jonathan Kent's Personenregie was exceptionally accurate.

This production attracted controversy even before the performances began. However, it is in fact remarkably close to Puccini's fundamental vision. Those who hate "modern" on principle often do so without context or understanding. So what if the coach at Amiens is a car? How else do rich people travel? So what if Manon wears pink? Puccini's Manon Lescaut hasn't been seen at the Royal Opera House for 30 years, but Massenet's Manon is regularly revived. So Londoners are more familiar with Manon than with Manon Lescaut. Yet the two operas are radically different. Mix them up and you've got problems. In Massenet, Manon and Des Grieux have a love nest in a garret. But Puccini goes straight past to Geronte's mansion and to the sordid business of sex and money.All the more respect to Puccini's prescience. Anyone who is shocked by the this production needs to go to the score and read it carefully.

Geronte thinks he's an artist. Because he thinks he owns Manon - so he uses her as a canvas to act out his fantasies. Jonathan Kent isn't making this up. Read the score. One minute Manon is in her boudoir, putting on makeup, talking to her brother. Next minute, musicians pour in and the have to be shooed out. Then, "Geronte fa cenno agli amici di tirarsi in disparte e di sedersi. Durante il ballo alcuni servi girano portando cioccolata e rinfresch"i. Geronte beckons to friends to stand on the sidelines and sit. During the dance some servos are bringing chocolate and refreshments). The guests know that Manon sleeps with Geronte. They have come in order to be titillated. It's not the dancing they've come to admire. They're pervs. Geronte is showing off, letting his pals know what a catch Manon is. Hence the dancing: a physical activity that predicates on the body and the poses a body can be forced into "Tutta la vostra personcina,or s'avanzi! Cosi!... lo vi scongiuro" sings the Dancing master. But he has no illusions. "...a tempo!", he sings, pointing out quite explicitly that her talents do not include dance. "Dancing is a serious matter!" he says, in exasperation. But the audience don't care about dancing. They've come to gape at Manon. There's nothing romantic in this. Geronte is a creep who exploits women. It's an 18th century live sex show. Geronte's parading his pet animal.

So Manon concurs? So many vulnerable women get caught up in the sick game, for whatever reason. The love scene that follows, between Opolais and Kaufmann, is all the morer magical because we've seen the brutality Manon endured to win her jewels. Perhaps we also feel (at least I did) some sympathy for Manon's materialistic little soul. She knows that money buys a kind of freedom.When news of Mark Anthony Turnage's commission for Anna Nicole first emerged, some were surprised. Others said "Manon Lescaut". The story, unfortunately, is universal..At first I couldn't understand what the film crew and lighting booms meant but I think they suggest the way every society exploits women and treats them as objects for gratification. Later, the lighting booms close down like prison bars. Some of the women being transported are hard cases but others are women who've fallen into bad situations, but are equally condemned. Far from being sexist, this production addresses something universal and very present about society. I'm still not sure about the giant billboard "Naiveté" but there is no law that says we have to get every detail at once. Perhaps Kent is connecting to advertising images and popular media, which is fair enough.

People wail about "trusting the composer". But it is they who don't trust the composer. Any decent opera can inspire so much in so many. No-one owns the copyright on interpretation. But the booing mob don't permit anyone else to have an opinion and insist on forcing their own on others who might be trying to engage more deeply. It's time, I think, to call the bluff on booers. They don't actually care about opera. Like Geronte, they're into control, not art..

Anne Ozorio

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The Pearl Fishers, ENO

Certainly, the opera is more than a one-hit wonder, and its celebrated ‘lollipop’, the tenor-baritone duet ‘Au fond du temple saint’, is one of many melodic gems in a sumptuous score.

It’s what holding them together that’s the problem. Cormon and Carré’s flimsy tale of the forbidden love of two best friends for one High Priestess suffers from one-dimensional characterisation and a generous dose of the nineteenth-century French obsession with ‘the Orient’ — the armchair traveller hoping for an authentic Eastern sojourn has to wade through such nonsense as the notion of the ancient Ceylonese venerating Hindu gods with European music.

Woolcock’s solution is a visual one; and in places it works. Designer Dick Bird’s opening image of elegant divers swooping and plunging with astonishingly balletic grace to scoop pearls from the ocean bed is arresting (although it was a pity that conductor Jean-Luc Tingaud did not coax a similarly exotic aural kaleidoscope from the pit during the rather lacklustre overture). Later, billowing silk evokes the ebbing moonlit waves, and these swell in the storm sequence into a raging video tsunami which surges and heaves, threatening to over-spill into the auditorium.

John Tessier as Nadir, Sophie Bevan as Leïla and George von Bergen as Zurga

Jen Schriever’s lighting enhances the fantasy: the colours evoke the opulent emeralds and aquamarines of the omnipresent waters, and the burnished ochres and oranges of the tropical sun. The change from day to night — as the dockside dwellings fade into shadow, beneath the glint and shimmer of distant hillside lights — is magical.

In an attempt to inject some realism into the orientalist schmaltz, Woolcock and Bird transfer the action to modern Sri Lanka and construct a chaotic shanty-town of corrugated shacks, the barbed wire and concrete jumble suggesting an ideological slant relating to global warming and/or western commercial exploitation. I wondered for a moment whether the be-suited Westerners wandering through the hovels were corrupt pearl-factory owners, but as they disappeared after the opening act I assume they were simply goggle-eyed tourists.

While these are worthy touches, they are not sustained; static mise en scènerather than enlivening dramatic threads. Kevin Pollard’s costumes lean towards cliché and, more importantly, Woolcock offers the cast almost no direction. It doesn’t matter what they are singing or in what context — making eternal vows of loyalty, swearing undying devotion, threatening revenge — there is scarcely any physical or visual interaction between the principals who stand, sit or lie stock still, facing the audience. Only in the fight sequence between Leila and Zurga in Act 3 is there any sense of choreographed dynamism.

One problem is that the set is cramped; there is just room enough for the chorus to assemble collectively amid the staggering lean-tos and for the principals to walk to the front of the stage, or climb the side-stairs. The result is that the ENO chorus looks rather ‘amateur’, although after a slightly hesitant start, they are on cracking musical form. ‘Brahma divin Brahma!’ at the close of Act 2 was fervent and resounding.

A scene from The Pearl Fishers

A pre-curtain announcement warned us that Sophie Bevan was suffering from a virus but it didn’t seem to affect her performance as the High Priestess Leila too adversely, although perhaps there was initially a sense that she was saving her brightest sparkle for the big moments. ‘Comme autrefois dans la nuit sombre’, when Leila reflects on her past secret assignations with Nadir, was persuasive and charming, and Bevan bloomed in the lovers’ passionate Act 2 duet. In Act 3, despite being thrown around by an enraged, vengeful Zurga, her voice was characteristically accurate and vivid.

As Nadir, John Tessier made good use of his attractive tenor in his Act 1 aria ‘Je crois entendre encore’: the phrasing was flexible, the tone appealing and the upper register unforced as Tessier conveyed both Nadir’s rapturous devotion and his essential honour. But, his voice is quite light-weight and he didn’t quite have the resonance to carry the long, arching lines in the duet with George von Bergen’s Zurga. Von Bergen had more punch and power, and his diction was superb; the Act 3 aria ‘L’orage est calmé’ was full of feeling as Zurga expresses his remorse for his angry condemnation of Nadir. But, both men needed more variety of colour to compensate for the lack of psychological complexity provided by the librettists. Barnaby Rea was a full-voiced Nourabad but his dreadful costume was a hindrance to any notable dramatic impact.

After their uninspiring start, the ENO instrumentalists shone in some exquisite solos, with horn and flute particularly impressive, but Tinguad never quite drew playing of sufficient lyric passion from his players. Martin Fitzpatrick’s rather staid translation added scant fire or frisson to the mix.

Dissatisfaction with the ending — Bizet’s own and that of the critics — resulted in various versions and no clear picture of the composer’s preferred form. Woolcock leaves us with the depressing image of suffering children being carried from the all-consuming flames of the burning ghat, the pyre ignited by Zurga in order to facilitate the lovers’ escape; a somewhat dispiriting end given the selfless nature of Zurga’s sacrifice.

Claire Seymour

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Cast and production information:

Leïla, Sophie Bevan; Nadir, John Tessier; Zurga, George von Bergen; Nourabad, Barnaby Rea; Director, Penny Woolcock; Conductor, Jean-Luc Tingaud; Set Designer, Dick Bird; Costume Designer, Kevin Pollard; Lighting Designer, Jen Schriever; Video Designer, 59 Productions Ltd; Choreographer, Andrew Dawson; Translator, Martin Fitzpatrick. English National Opera, London Coliseum, Monday 16^th June 2014.

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Photos © ENO/Mike Hoban

The Metropolitan Opera to cancel its Live in HD transmission of John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer scheduled for this fall

New York, NY (June 17, 2014 ) — After an outpouring of concern that its plans to transmit John Adams’s opera The Death of Klinghoffer might be used to fan global anti-Semitism, the Metropolitan Opera announced the decision today to cancel its Live in HD transmission, scheduled for November 15, 2014. The opera, which premiered in 1991, is about the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship and the murder of one of its Jewish passengers, Leon Klinghoffer, at the hands of Palestinian terrorists.

“I’m convinced that the opera is not anti-Semitic,” said the Met’s General Manager, Peter Gelb. “But I’ve also become convinced that there is genuine concern in the international Jewish community that the live transmission of The Death of Klinghoffer would be inappropriate at this time of rising anti-Semitism, particularly in Europe.” The final decision was made after a series of discussions between Mr. Gelb and Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, representing the wishes of the Klinghoffer daughters.

In recent seasons, the Metropolitan Opera has championed contemporary operatic masterpieces as part of its ongoing efforts to keep opera artistically current. Previously, the Met has presented John Adams’s other two major operas, Doctor Atomic (in 2008) and Nixon in China (in 2011). “John Adams is one of America’s greatest composers and The Death of Klinghoffer is one of his greatest works,” said Gelb. The Met will go forward with its stage presentation of The Death of Klinghoffer in its scheduled run of eight performances from October 20 to November 15. In deference to the daughters of Leon and Marilyn Klinghoffer, the Met has agreed to include a message from them both in the Met’s Playbill and on its website.

In recent years, The Death of Klinghoffer has been presented without incident at The Juilliard School (2009), the Opera Theatre of St. Louis (2011), and as recently as this March in Long Beach, California. The Met’s new production was first seen in London at the English National Opera in 2012, and received widespread critical acclaim.

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Britten: Owen Wingrave, Aldeburgh Music Festival

Indeed, the protection of innocence and the condemnation of cruelty runs through nearly all Britten's work, powerfully informing his whole creative persona. Owen Wingrave is critical to any real appreciation of what Britten stood for.

The Aldeburgh Music Festival and the Britten-Pears Foundation are wise to stage Owen Wingrave again, in the same place where the composer conducted the first public performance back in 1970. In 1914, men marched to war because they were led to believe that they were fighting "the war to end all wars". One hundred years later, those who believe in military solutions seem to have learned nothing from a century of almost incessant warfare. More than ever, we need Owen Wingrave and Britten's passionate opposition to mindless conformity.

Owen Wingrave was commissioned for television. Nearly a quarter of a million people watched it when it was first broadcast by the BBC in 1972, reaching audiences far beyond any opera house. That in itself is a statement about its significance. Composers wrote for film almost as soon as technology added sound to movies. Britten enjoyed going to the cinema, and spent his war years working for the GPO Film Unit. In Owen Wingrave, music and an understanding of film technique go together. The abstraction of music can be expressed through devices like split frames and juxtaposed images. On the physical stage, such things aren't easy to carry off. At Aldeburgh, director Neil Bartlett has chosen a minimalist set, enhanced by dramatic light effects (Ian Scott). This reflects the austerity in the music, which in turn reflects the stark moral situation Owen is faced with. "Listen to the house!" the female singers repeat, their lines intertwining, as if a knot - or noose - were being drawn tight. For the house does speak - "creaks and rustles, groans and moans" .The oppressiveness is almost palpable. "The "boom of the cannonade", created by percussion and low brass is so sinister that we could be hearing a thousand years of ghosts marching relentlessly towards death. The spirit of Paramore looms so large in the music that we don't need to see the house to feel its malign presence. Better the dark shadows and spartan set, so our imaginations can conjure up unseen images of horror.

In the original film, portraits of Wingraves past line the walls, menacingly, and come alive, leaping at Owen, like the present members of his family scold him, singly and in unison. On film, that's plausible, on stage it would be contrived. Bartlett, and choreographer and movement director Struan Leslie, use a group of young soldiers as a silent chorus. They operate in tight formation, as befits soldiers, but their movements also reflect figures in the music: a very subtle effect, which justifies their value in the production. They're also useful for technical reasons - they move such furniture as there is on the bare stage, "building" the haunted room by reversing the panels that serve as walls. Most perceptive of all, the soldiers are young, inspiring more sympathy than if they mere replicas of wizened old Wingraves, ghosts perhaps of young men sent to early deaths. Victims and perpetrators, harnessed together in perpetuity, like the ghosts in the haunted room, like Owen and Paramore.

The stark staging has a further advantage in that it throws extra focus on the singers and on the Britten-Pears Orchestra, conducted by Mark Wigglesworth, designated Music Director at the ENO when Edward Gardner moves on. Britten, Nagano and Richard Hickox hover over Wigglesworth, but he gives a good account of the music, stressing the clarity of the writing for solo instruments versus larger groups. Excellent experience for the young players in this orchestra, many of whom will go on to play in larger ensembles.

Ross Ramgobin sings Owen. Again, one retains memories of Gerald Finley and above all, Jacques Imbrailo, who created the part ten years ago when he was still a member of the Jette Parker Young Artists programme at the Royal Opera House. Imbrailo is perhaps the ideal Owen, since his voice shimmers with preternatural purity, but Ramgobin does well against such competition, which says a lot in his favour. Ramgobin's voice is agile and light, with a much more convincingly youthful timbre than Benjamin Luxon and Peter Coleman-Wright.

Susan Bullock sings Miss Jane Wingrave. The part contains sharp edges, to emphasize the character's sterile frustration. Bullock creates the effect of strangled tension without tightening throat or chest, but articulates her words with rapier-sharp diction. Catherine Backhouse sings a pert Kate, and Janis Kelly sings her mother Mrs Julian. Isaiah Bell sang Lechmere unusually well, his voice adding colours to the part, which could otherwise be interpreted as bland and callow. A singer to watch. Jonathan Summers sings Spencer Coyle and Samantha Crawford sings his wife, artfully suggesting the dynamic between the couple, where he controls and she is left to flutter prettily, but bleakly along. Richard Berkeley-Steele sang General Sir Philip Wingrave and James Way sang the Ballad singer, again with more personality (a good thing) than the part might otherwise attract.

Anne Ozorio

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Show Boat in San Francisco

Critical consensus seems to be that Jerome Kern’s Show Boat was acceptable in San Francisco’s 3200 seat War Memorial (and at Chicago’s 3500 seat Lyric Opera). This acceptance has come at a price — sophisticated electronic amplification of voices and the imposition of a scale of production that well exceeds the stature of the piece.

At the press conference before this San Francisco run of performances (the production has already been seen in Washington D.C. and Chicago) there were three primary rationales offered for presenting Show Boat on a grand opera stage.

The first rationale is that if operettas such as, and specifically mentioned, Die Fledermaus, La Périchole and Die Lustige Witwe are firmly established in the international operatic repertory, why not an American operetta (you must first of all consider Show Boat an operetta and that is a complicated rationale). Note that La Périchole has never been on the War Memorial stage, nor has any other Offenbach operetta. What small amount of dialogue that has occurred in SFO productions of Die Fledermaus and Die Lustige Witwe productions has used the natural acoustic of the opera house. No singing voices have been amplified.

The second rationale is that given the demise of American light opera companies it becomes the responsibility of American grand opera companies to preserve the American Musical Theater heritage. Note that most of the musicals that comprise this current popular theater heritage occurred before the advent of sound reinforcement.

The by now classic American musicals were staged in theaters adapted to acoustical voice projection (recall the focused nasal sound of spoken dialogue delivered in earlier times that projected easily to the last rows of a vaudeville “opera house”). If American grand opera companies feel compelled to step outside their mission of producing opera they should at least move from opera houses to appropriately sized theaters where acoustic voices are possible.

The third rationale is that Show Boat dared introduce racial issues into popular theater. The presence of this stain on our national history evidently elevates the importance of Show Boat, and imposes a moral duty on grand opera companies to remind us that we have sins to expiate. Maybe like American imperialism in Madama Butterfly, and narrow, what we now call Victorian mores like in La Traviata. Opera can make it painfully pleasurable to go through this cathartic process.

Angela Renée Simpson as Queenie, Morris Robinson as Joe. Photo by Cory Weaver, courtesy of San Francisco Opera

Upon a bit of consideration however the racial issues addressed in Show Boat are more about problems white skinned people encounter than the inequalities encountered by black skinned people. The blacks in Show Boat contentedly remain the underclass throughout the story (white girl gets rich and may or may not take back her no-good husband) and these blacks seemed happy to represent little more than caricatures of what whites wanted blacks to be back in 1927. It was surprising to see contemporary black skinned people willing to accept this assignment.

Finally Show Boat was a sing along. The songs are immortal it seems, or at least inescapable to those of us who grew up in mid-century America — songs sort of like “Di Provenza il mar” and “Un bel dì” for the current opera crowd. However after we have hummed along with a Verdi and Puccini aria there remains so much more to invade our souls than a few more catchy songs.

Many contented critics did finally confess the triviality, read poverty of the story once it was revealed in the second act. Other contented critics admitted that the razzle dazzle of the production numbers was pale imitation of what should occur in a real Broadway show.

Patricia Racette as Julie. Photo by Cory Weaver, courtesy of San Francisco Opera

The San Francisco cast included opera soprano Heidi Stober who achieved a sufficient level of sparkle as Magnolia. Opera diva soprano Patricia Racette brought some presence but little tone to the role of Julie, opera baritone Michael Todd Simpson as Magnolia’s gambler husband Ravenal was highly miked making his voice sound like a musical comedy voice, a voice that seemed quite tired by end of the second act. Operatic bass Morris Robinson made appropriate bass sounds as Joe who sings “Old Man River” over and over again.

Michael Milenski

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Casts and production information:

Magnolia Hawks: Heidi Stober; Gaylord Ravenal: Michael Todd Simpson; Cap’n Andy Hawks: Bill Irwin; Julie la Verne: Patricia Racette; Queenie: Angela Renée Simpson; Party Ann Hawks: Harriet Harris; Ellie Mae Chipley: Kirsten Wyatt; Joe: Morris Robinson; Frank Schultz: John Bolton; Mrs. Obrien: Sharon McNight; et al. San Francisco Opera Orchestra and Chorus. Conductor: John DeMain. Stage Director: Francesca Zambello; Set Designer: Peter Davison; Costume Designer: Paul Tazewell; Lighting Designer: Mark McCullough; Sound Designer: Tod Nixon; Choreographer: Michele Lynch. War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, June 3, 2014

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Anna Prohaska, one of Europe’s most promising sopranos

She is also releasing her third recording, “Behind the Lines” with Deutsche Grammophon.

Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites is intense, but Sister Constance is resolutely cheerful. What part does a character like that have in this opera? “The superficial answer would be: every tragic, complex opera needs comic relief. She is the sprightly, busy young novice, always a bit late with finishing her chores because she frequently drifts off into pastoral memories of her Breton village. But Bernados and Poulenc give her character a unique twist. She has an obsession with death, in fact with dying young and — as she insists to poor, already traumatized Blanche — dying with her fellow novice. This is when you start questioning — which one of the two is actually psychotic? Isn’t it absolutely natural and understandable for Blanche to be terrified, as an aristocrat during the Reign of Terror? Has Constance in fact lost her mind? She seems such a bouncy, life-affirming character, but at the same time she is seemingly impatient to get to ‘the other side’, the ‘better place’. But here we enter deeply theological territory! “

How does a sweet girl like that face death? It’s much more demanding role than some realize.

“This is the tricky part about the role. It’s not actually that hard to play a fanatic, a visionary. It’s fun to switch from banal banter to fanatical glares to illuminated, vocational moments. It’s more of a tightrope dance towards the end of the opera, where Constance faces her execution, stripped of her habit, where you have to try and find the human being that has the instinct to survive, and to show her inner battle without pushing the boundaries of the ensemble and this timeless production with its sparse aesthetics”.

Miss Prohaska’s voice is distinctive. What operatic roles does she enjoy most, and why?

“I have a lot of friends who play certain instruments and complain about the limitations of their repertoire, and say that that they envy us singers for the sheer amount of marvellous music that has been written for the human voice. We, on the other hand, have to listen to our bodies and damp our enthusiasm for roles that might be too dramatic or too light or too high or too low, even if the greatest maestro tries to convince you that you would be ‘phenomenal’. But isn’t it fabulous that we are so spoilt for choice as singers? Our repertoire is vast and theoretically everyone can pick and chose what suits them best. I must admit, I do have a strong penchant for melancholy music, for the dramatic. But that doesn’t mean I’m dying to sing Tosca. I can find these sentiments in Handel, in Pamina, which I sang for the first time this season, or Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier, which can have an immense emotional scope. In my opinion, you have to let a character grow in your mind first to help you falling into the trap of cliché — along with working with a good director of course! At the moment the early baroque composers, especially Cavalli, fascinate me. But one of my greatest loves will always be Henry Purcell. To sing Dido — one of the most perfect pieces of music theatre ever — on a concert tour this year with MusicAEterna was such a privilege and felt so right at the same time”.

Her repertoire is remarkably adventurous, and she sounds comfortable in many different styles, from Baroque to Hanns Eisler. Her recording and recital programmes are exceptionally well chosen.

Behind the Lines

“Funny — I subconsciously avoided Eisler for a long time. Probably because I went to the former East Berlin Hanns Eisler Music Academy. Wouldn’t it be a shame if we singers didn’t make use of the wide scope of what composers have left us and are still writing for us? With recital programmes I tend to make brainstorming lists over the years, where I collect songs I have either heard in concert or on recordings, or which I have stumbled upon reading a score. I group them according to topics. To give the programme a shape, I try to narrow down the topic more than the periods of music, because it interests me to find the differences and similarities between songs with similar themes from different musical periods. It’s tied very closely to the songs’ poetry, of course, and I sometimes search for poems first and find really interesting settings. In the end, the precept should be that it’s good music and that the final sequence has to ‘click’. There I try to trust my dramaturgical instincts.”

At the Royal Opera House, Miss Prohaska is singing for Sir Simon Rattle. Based in Berlin, she’s sung with the Berliner Philharmoniker many times. She also sang frequently with Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim and many others.

“Sir Simon is simply a dream to work with. On the podium he manages to incorporate a paradox: the reliability and support of the classic ‘Kapellmeister’ and the inspired and innovative risk taker. He has this intellectual knowledge of the repertoire and the arts in general but is anything but a snob. When I took over a concert of Webern songs when I was 25 — my first regular concert series with the Berliner Philharmonic — I was terribly nervous before the first rehearsal. The first thing Simon said to me in front of the orchestra was ‘Thank you Anna, for taking over so short notice. We really appreciate that.’ I can tell you - you get spoilt by that sort of treatment! “

“I learned a great deal from working with Claudio Abbado, and it was a huge privilege to be part of his musical world for a short time while he was still with us. I would rather say though that the conductor and arranger Eberhard Kloke has been my mentor, opening up my ears and mind to the far corners of the repertoire from an early age on, and my voice teacher Brenda Mitchell taught me how to sing it healthily! Daniel Barenboim has had a huge part in my musical development since I started working with him at the Berlin State Opera when I was 23. Back then I was offered my contract as an ensemble member in the wake of learning the middle-sized role of Frasquita (Carmen) overnight. The morning of the performance — I had hardly slept due to cramming the French text into my head all night I wanted the musical rehearsal with Daniel to be perfect. So I sang from the score. He snatched it out of my hand, threw it on the floor and shouted ‘Are you using this tonight on stage as well?!’ He can be intimidating, and pushes you to your limits. But if you beat your inner demons of fear in these situations, there’s very little that can frighten you afterwards. “

“Contrasting colour and intention within a piece plays a major role in Daniel’s music making: ‘The colour between the first and the second phrase has to be so different, you need a visa to go across’, he would say. Last November I gave my first Lieder recital with him in Berlin. For me, it was so natural and on the other hand miraculous how we seem to have become musical partners, the way he listens to my ideas, the way we can discuss interpretation or simply make music spontaneously on stage.”

The renowned conductor, Felix Prohaska was Anna Prohaska’s grandfather. With that background, when did she realize she’d be a singer?

“My mother tells me that I could sing before I could talk. Apparently certain atonal scales were coming from my cot when I was nine months old, after I had been infused by my English grandmother’s nursery songs. I sang at family parties from the age of six, in church and school choirs from my early teens onwards, and professionally have worked as a soloist since I was 16. It all seems it was written in the stars. But there were times where I was toying with becoming an archaeologist or an art historian — like my uncle and aunt. These are still passions of mine. Whenever I go to a town in Italy it’s — ‘how many Roman ruins, churches and museums can I cram into one day?’ up to the point where I’m nearly fainting and need to find a ciabatta as soon as possible to stuff my face with, so I can move on! I feel quite sad not to have been able to work with or be taught by my grandfather. He also must have been a fabulous accompanist. Yet through working on Schubert songs with my father Andreas — who was also a singer before he became an opera director — I think quite a bit of Felix’s knowledge has been passed on to me.”

With a voice as pure and versatile as hers, Miss Prohaska could do a lot. What does she plan for in the near future ?

“Thank you ever so much! I would hate to develop a wobble or breathy sound, or any other irreparable damage to my cords because I didn’t have the willpower to say no to unsuitable roles or a cluttered schedule. Of course the offers of Verdi’s Violetta, Berg’s Lulu or Mozart’s Konstanze dangle in front of you like Tantalus’s fruit, and perhaps (or even probably) my voice will develop into that direction. But for now I am thrilled and fulfilled to sing my current repertory. I would be so thrilled to expand my baroque repertoire to sing Cleopatra in Handel’s Giulio Cesare, or Cavalli’s Calisto. And having sung Yniold in Pelléas et Mélisande when I was 17, I’d love to sing Mélisande.”

Anne Ozorio

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Anna_Prohaska-2798-480.gif image_description=Anna Prohaska [Photo by Patrick Walter] product=yes product_title=Anna Prohaska, one of Europe’s most promising sopranos product_by=An interview by Anne Ozorio product_id=Above: Anna Prohaska [Photo by Patrick Walter]

La Traviata in San Francisco

And unwelcomed. Take for instance the 2009 San Francisco installment which was the 2006 art deco version imported from L.A. Opera directed by Marta Domingo. Violetta, a flapper, arrived at the party in a Rolls Royce during the overture, and it was downhill from there even though the soprano was Anna Netrebko.

Just now in San Francisco there was a welcome surprise, and that was Verdi’s orchestral score made vividly present in moods and colors, rushes and hesitations, pianos and fortes, well, pianissimos and fortissimos. It was the high octane conducting of Nicola Luisotti that made Verdi’s first truly masterful score the star of the show. The pit was the sentient center of Verdi’s personal and deeply felt domestic tragedy.

Never mind that this intense emotional focus emanating from the seemingly inspired musicianship of a superb orchestra revealed Francesco Maria Piave’s (and one assumes Verdi’s) dramatic structure to be truly clumsy. Or that Luisotti’s ultimate acceleration missed the emotional beats of the opera’s final moments — the blow of the intense release was summarily trampled over — a not atypical Luisotti conclusion.

La Traviata, Act I. Photo by Cory Weaver, courtesy of San Francisco Opera

The reliable 1987 (twenty-seven years ago) San Francisco Opera production by John Copley was back on stage. It is definitely mid-nineteenth century in concept as required by Verdi, glowing in warm colors (the splendid lighting designed by Gary Marder). The wash of colors, the swish of lavish gowns, the brilliant red flash of the flamenco dancer, the weight of nineteenth century architecture were however at odds with the detail and precision emerging from the Luisotti pit, and the emotional depth of the score itself.

The cast was decidedly low octane, and intimidated by the conductor. The stage action by the principals was kept downstage center, looking not at each other while singing to one another but presentational, addressing the audience and most importantly remaining able to have direct eye contact with the conductor.

Soprano Nicole Cabell replaced the originally announced Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva as Violetta. Mlle. Cabell has previously proven herself a fine bel canto singer in San Francisco (Giulietta in Bellini’s I Capuleti ed i Montecchi) in an integrated production (musical and production elements were compatible). A fine singer and artist, here undirected, she struggled to dominate the stage as required of Violetta, and did not possess an energy or brilliance of tone to bring Violetta to vibrant life. She opted out of the optional E-flat in “Sempre Libera.”

Albanian tenor Saimir Pirgu has also proven himself in San Francisco as a bel canto singer (Tebaldo in Bellini’s I Capuleti ed i Montecchi). A fine singer and artist, vocally he cannot make the leap from easily fulfilling the demands of well-directed bel canto to the specific vocal and histrionic requirements of proto-realism roles (a larger, warmer voice and presence) or the higher powered vocal demands of mid- and late Verdi theater.

Nicole Cabell as Traviata, Vladimir Stoyanov as Germont. Photo by Cory Weaver, courtesy of San Francisco Opera

Bulgarian baritone Vladimir Stoyanov sang Germont. This esteemed artist possesses a quite beautiful voice, and more than Mlle. Cabell or Mr. Pirgu fulfilled the Luisotti musical vision. Yet he too seemed a too small vocal and histrionic presence on the War Memorial stage.

Conductor Nicola Luisotti brings very specific and very powerful musicianship to opera. San Francisco Opera has yet to build a production around his unique talent. One hopes this may one day happen.

Luisotti conducts the first six performances (through June 29). The remaining four July performances, including the July 5 performance beamed directly onto the gigantic scoreboard of AT&T Park (home of the Giants), have a different cast of principals and a different conductor. Opera-at-the-Ball Park is not to be missed. It may be the Traviata you want to see.

Michael Milenski

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Casts and production information:

Violetta Valéry: Nicole Cabell; Alfredo Germont: Saimir Pirgu; Giorgio Germont: Vladimir Stoyanov; Flora Bervoix: Zanda Svede; Gastone: Daniel Montenegro; Baron Douphol: Dale Travis; Marquis D’Obigny: Hadleigh Adams; Doctor Grenvil: Andrew Craig Brown; Annina: Erin Johnson; Giuseppe: Christopher Jackson. Chorus and Orchestra of San Francisco Opera. Conductor: Nicola Luisotti. Original stage director: John Copley; Stage director: Laurie Feldman; Set design: John Conklin; Costume design: David Walker; Lighting design: Gary Marder; Choreographer: Yaelisa. San Francisco War Memorial Opera House, June 11, 2014.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Traviata_SF1OT.png
image_description=Traviata

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product_title=La Traviata in San Francisco
product_by=A review by Michael Milenski
product_id=Above: Nicole Cabell as Violetta Valéry, Saimir Pirgu as Alfredo Germont [Photo by Cory Weaver, San Francisco Opera]

A Digital Orchestra for Opera? Purists Take (and Play) Offense

By Michael Cooper [NY Times, 11 June 2014]
Nothing about Wagner’s epic “Ring” cycle is small in scale, but when a would-be impresario came up with the idea of staging it in West Hartford, Conn., he envisioned replacing its massive orchestral forces with the digital sounds of sampled instruments.
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Ariadne auf Naxos trailer (The Royal Opera)

Opera Las Vegas Presents Stellar Barber of Seville

Daniel Sutin, who sang the title role, held the audience in thrall as he described his activities with strong burnished bronzed tones in his “Largo al factotum.” As the beautiful and not-quite-so-meek Rosina, Renée Tatum sang with true bel canto tone, excellent taste, and fine musicianship.

Pierre Caron de Beaumarchais wrote his play, The Barber of Seville, in 1773, but could not get it publicly performed until two years later, because its politics offended French nobility. In the meantime it was often read privately read at artistic salons. Thus, when its content was becoming known without public performance, the authorities decided that they might as well allow it to be staged.

Beaumarchais invented the name Figaro for the character he modeled on Brighella in the traditional Italian Commedia dell’arte. The illegitimate son of Dr. Bartholo and his maid Marceline, Figaro is a clever flatterer and liar. He is usually is good humored and helpful. Only on rare occasions is he bitter and cynical, but in the play Figaro notes: "I must force myself to laugh at everything, lest I be obliged to weep.” It was the occasionally brazen actions of Figaro that upset the nobility. The opera audience does not see his bold tactics in Rossini’s work, but his actions in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro are quite revolutionary.

The first opera produced on Beaumarchais 1782 play was Giovanni Paisiello’s The Barber of Seville, which had a respectable run, but could not stand comparison with Gioachino Rossini's 1816 opera Il barbiere di Siviglia ossia L'inutile precauzione (The Barber of Seville or the Useless Precaution). The latter has remained in the repertoire ever since despite other operas having been based on Beaumarchais’ play.

Robert McPherson as Almaviva with chorus

On June 6, 2014, Opera Las Vegas presented Gioachino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville with a cast drawn from the Metropolitan Opera and other major companies. Daniel Sutin, who portrayed the Barber, Figaro, recently sang the title role in Alban Berg’s Wozzeck at the Met. Although this was his first portrayal of the Rossini character, he commanded the stage with his presence. He held the audience in thrall as he described his activities with strong burnished bronzed tones in his “Largo al factotum.”

As the beautiful and not-quite-so-meek Rosina, Renée Tatum appreciated Figaro’s assistance in helping her resist marriage to her elderly, controlling guardian, Don Bartolo. Tatum, who has been in several major productions at the Met, sang with true bel canto tone, excellent taste, and fine musicianship. Veteran bass-baritone Peter Strummer was a hysterically funny Bartolo who actually thought he could get his young ward to marry him. He sang his patter aria at lightening speed but the words were always intelligible. Bartolo’s partner in crime was the conniving Don Basilio who sang an amusing, resonant, and totally villainous “La calunnia.”

Coloratura tenor Robert McPherson was as perfect an Almaviva as you could find anywhere. He not only sang all the notes with gorgeous tone, he decorated just enough of his lines to create maximum interest in his interpretation. I understand he will be at the Met next season and the New York audience will love his artistry. Baritone Mark Covey, the Fiorello, who is also a guitar virtuoso, accompanied the opening serenade from the stage. As the maid, Berta, soprano Stephanie Weiss seemed to be the most sensible person in the house. She sang with bright silver tones that contrasted well with Tatum’s golden legato.

Henry Price’s stage direction was perfect for this audience, many of whom had seen few operas. He told the libretto’s story in a realistic manner. For the finale, he showed the marriage of Rosina and Almaviva. Berta catches Rosina’s bouquet, but from the look on Bartolo’s face she will have to find another man to marry. The charming scenery by Dennis Hassan and Jim Lydon was placed on the Bayley Theater’s turntable so that the audience saw one set showing the inside of Bartolo’s home and another showing its outside.

Maestro Gregory Buchalter gave his artists enough room to create meaningful characterizations. Together with the singers, orchestra, and recitative harpsichordist Karen McCann, he gave us a wonderful rendition of Rossini’s beloved comic opera. This excellent performance bodes well for Opera Las Vegas, from which that city's citizens and guests can hope to enjoy more great opera in the near future.

Maria Nockin

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Cast and production information:

Rosina, Renée Tatum; Count Almaviva, Robert McPherson; Don Basilio, Philip Cokorinos; Don Bartolo, Peter Strummer; Figaro, Daniel Sutin; Fiorello (playing own guitar) Mark Covey; Berta, Stephanie Weiss; Notary, Erickson Franco; Ambrogio, David McKee; Sergeant, Eugene Richards;* Conductor, Gregory Buchalter; Harpsichord, Karen McCann; Stage Director, Henry Price; Costumes Malabar Ltd.; Scenery, Dennis Hassan and Jim Lydon; Production Coordinator, James Sohre.

* Member of Opera Las Vegas Young Artist Program.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Ren%C3%A9e-Tatum-as-Rosina.gif
image_description=Renée Tatum as Rosina [Photo by Richard Brusky]

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product_title=Opera Las Vegas Presents Stellar Barber of Seville
product_by=A review by Maria Nockin
product_id=Above: Renée Tatum as Rosina

Photos by Richard Brusky

Il barbiere di Siviglia, Holland Park

Into the greys and browns of a Dickensian street — all gas-lights, Peelers, down-and-outs and street urchins — juts the sharply angled exterior of Dr Bartolo’s abode (designs, Neil Irish). From an archway emerges a staggering drunk; he droops against a lamp-post and, annoyed at being awoken by a motley band of musicians, stubbornly sticks his fingers in his ears as the incognito Count Almaviva’s delivers an amorous address to his beloved Rosina. She lingers, tantalisingly glimpsed through the askew — and none too clean — white curtains of the upper-floor bedroom which overhangs the street.

The set intrudes into the fore of the stage, and there is not much room for ensemble choreography; but, this matters little as Platt doesn’t really ask them to do anything other than take their positions and sing — they do the latter very pleasingly. At the start of Scene 2 the oblique walls are heaved open to reveal the mayhem of the scatter-brained doctor’s daily routines, as professionalism and domesticity collide. The split-level house is a mound of muddle: tottering piles of consultation notes and scientific research, optical charts, crumbling treatises. Above Rosina’s dressing table a large drawing of an anatomical eye glares out forbiddingly. Amid the general chaos lurks some unsavoury medical debris — as the pandemonium escalates a severed hand is flung in the street attracting the suspicious attentions of first a ragamuffin and then the metropolitan constabulary — suggesting that the old governess Berta is past her housekeeping prime.

Kitty Whately as Rosina, Nico Darmanin as Count Almaviva and Nicholas Lester as Figaro

It’s all detailed and precise. And, the simultaneous view of interior and exterior is effective: quotidian life — washing day, bobbies on the beat — forms a commonplace backdrop to the mad capers within. As the self-indulgent lovers ignore Figaro’s advice to flee, we witness Bartolo’s removal of the ladder which they confidently assume will facilitate their escape — a neat touch of dramatic irony. Mark Jonathan’s lighting design is fairly simple and naturalistic, excepting a lurch towards the surreal at the end of Act 1 where, surrounding a spot-lit Bartolo, the plotters bathe in lurid green and pink aptly emphasising the wackiness of the comic commotion.

Design and direction may not surprise, but the cast certainly tell the tale with musical aplomb. Australian baritone Nicholas Lester has a large, opulent voice which he put to excellent effect as the quick-thinking barber. His bass-inclined resonance grabbed the attention from his first entrance. Pushing a stripy-poled hand-cart, this Figaro peddled his talents and wares — some wild wigs dangle from his wagon — with confidence and composure, a nonchalant single swipe of the razor de-whiskering a client during ‘Largo al factotum’. Lester’s lines were clearly formed, of pleasing tone, and his performance was well-paced. His on-stage presence ensured that the uproar never lapsed into anarchy, and when a commanding hand was required he assuredly stepped in.

As the wayward young minx, Rosina, Kitty Whately was likewise superb. Whately’s mezzo has a lovely golden glow at the bottom reminding us, perhaps, that the role was originally written for a contralto. Her lustrous tone projected well, beguiling all; but, this Rosina’s potential for menace was plainly evident, as Whately stropped and pouted in frustration and exasperation. The coloratura of ‘Una voce poco fa’ was cleanly executed, as Rosina turned her indignation on the hapless skeleton collecting dust amid the clutter; Platt might have offered Whately more direction here — she looked a bit uncertain why she was draping the bones with Bartolo’s overcoat — but her comic acumen shone through in the singing lesson.

A scene from Il barbiere di Siviglia

Young Maltese tenor Nico Darmanin was an ardent Almaviva and slipped deftly between his varied personae. Lindoro’s velvet frock coat added a splash of colour to the opening scene but I felt that initially Darmanin tried a bit too hard — he has all the notes and a strong, unwavering tone, but perhaps a softer hue would more readily win Rosina’s heart. But, as Darmanin relaxed into the role his sure technique served him well and the decorative lines were stylishly phrased. The tenor also revealed a penchant for comic exaggeration, as the inebriated cavalry-man determined to be billeted chez Bartolo, and even more so as Basilio’s apprentice, cleverly mimicking his master’s mannerisms and his sartorial style. The piano-top shenanigans of Rosina and the Count, under Figaro’s impatient glower, offered playful high-spirits and characterful singing.

As the unfortunate dupe, Jonathan Veira showed why he deserves his reputation as one of the best buffo basses today, making Bartolo the butt of our ridicule but also winning sympathy for the befuddled, bamboozled buffoon.

With William Robert Allenby indisposed, Nicholas Crawley added Basilio’s outré peri-winkle — straight from Pickwick Papers ­ — to Fiorello’s bowler hat, performing both roles excellently and with fine-judged parody. As Berta, Alinka Kozari revealed a bright, nimble soprano, and as she went doggedly about the household chores she was well complemented by Tom Asher’s Ambrogio.

Conductor Matthew Waldren led the City of London Sinfonia through a sparking overture, but from then on things were rather more conservative. Although there was much attention to detail, it felt a bit too earnest; the string ensemble was good and the woodwind and horn solos sang warmly, but the ‘Rossini Rockets’ needed a bit more oomph. Walden’s tempi erred on the side of caution and a greater sense of recklessness, particularly in Act 2 finale, would have added some spice. Perhaps he wished to support his young cast, but there was certainly no sense that they needed cossetting. The thunderstorm was disappointing, and the over-amplification of the digital piano in the recitatives was irritatingly distracting.

Overall this is a smashing Il barbiere: no nasty surprises and plenty of fun. There may be pressure on finances — Irish’s set is all wobbly walls and bendy lampposts — but there is no scrimping on musical values.

Il barbiere di Siviglia continues in repertory until 28 June.

Claire Seymour

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Cast and production information:

Figaro, Nicholas Lester; Rosina, Kitty Whately; Count, Almaviva Nico Darmanin; Doctor Bartolo, Jonathan Veira; Don Basilio, Nicholas Crawley; Berta, Alinka Kozari; Fiorello, Nicholas Crawley; Ambrogio, Tom Asher; An Officer, Alistair Sutherland; Director. Oliver Platt; Conductor, Matthew Waldren; Designer, Neil Irish; Lighting Designer, Mark Jonathan; City of London Sinfonia; Opera Holland Park Chorus. Opera Holland Park, London, Saturday 7^th June 2014.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Barber-3.gif image_description=Kitty Whately as Rosina and Jonathan Veira as Dr Bartolo [Photo by Fritz Curzon] product=yes product_title=Il barbiere di Siviglia, Holland Park product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id=Above: Kitty Whately as Rosina and Jonathan Veira as Dr Bartolo

Photos by Fritz Curzon

Rising Stars at Lyric Opera of Chicago

All of the singers performed their chosen pieces and ensembles admirably, indeed each selection as sung was memorable for the degree of lyrical and dramatic commitment transmitted. As a supplement to the vocal offerings Maureen Zoltek, the Ryan Opera Center’s new pianist, played the first movement of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major. The conductor for the entire program was Kelly Kuo.

The first half of the program spanned operatic selections, in four languages, ranging from the eighteenth through the twentieth century. The second half of the evening was dominated by American and French selections after the performance of the movement from the Ravel Concerto. Perhaps most revealing from this program was the opportunity to hear each of the talented singers in a variety of repertoire, with performances that emphasized an encouraging versatility. As an example of such range, Tracy Cantin sang, in the first part of the concert, Cressida’s recitative and aria, “How can I sleep? … At the haunted end of the day,” from Sir William Walton’s Troilus and Cressida. Ms. Cantin’s involvement in this brief evocation of the title character was riveting. Her searing top notes emphasizing “betrayed” and “a phantom” led to the dramatic concluding declaration of “my conqueror.” In the second part of the program Cantin was equally impressive in a very different role, the concluding scene of Jules Massenet’s Thaïs. Here as she was supported by the Athanaël of baritone Anthony Clark Evans the vision of Thaïs came alive and her transformation from courtesan to saint was believable. Cantin produced soft, pure pitches in contrast to the appropriately urgent, sincere appeals by Evans. The final “Je vois Dieu” [“I see God”] communicated the apotheosis of a blessed figure. A comparable set of performances was offered by bass-baritone Richard Ollarsaba. In his rendering of Figaro’s Act IV aria, “Tutto è disposto … Aprite un po quegl’occhi” [“All is prepared … open your eyes a little”], Ollarsaba demonstrated excellent sense of color and the ability to use his resonant sound as a means to suggesting varying emotional states. Even within the single word “Ingrata” the expressive range that Ollarsaba attached to individual vowels communicated both distress felt by the character portrayed and a growing sense of irritation. Ollarsaba’s later contribution was also by Mozart, this time in the trio ensemble, “Soave sia il vento,” from Act I of Così fan tutte, sung together with soprano Laura Wilde and mezzo soprano Julie Anne Miller. Each of the three performers retained a distinct vocal personality while also blending effectively at requisite moments. As Don Alfonso, Ollarsaba’s upper register and fluid legato connecting multiple pitches outlined an impressive backdrop for the myriad emotions expressed, just as the women’s voices rose and fell in touching pathos. In their solo pieces during the concert both Miller and Wilde also gave exciting performances. Ms. Miller showed a masterful sense of Handelian style in the aria of the title character, “Dopo notte,” [“After night”] from Act III of Ariodante. While communicating the sense of the text, Miller took the word “splende” [“radiantly”] with appropriate forte emphasis. Especially noteworthy are Miller’s breath control and Italian diction, both serving her well in the embellishments she used in the repeat of the A section of the aria. In the second part of the program Ms. Wilde sang Marguerite’s aria, “Oh Dieu! Que de bijoux!,” [“O God! What jewels!”] from Gounod’s Faust; she held a mirror in hand and acted through her character’s delight with the jewel box as she sang this famous showpiece aria. In decorating the line of this piece Wilde was careful in observing textual import, so that her decorations on the “princesse,” whom she fantasized at becoming, were especially well chosen. Her final notes showed an emotional outburst that spoke more of the character’s naïveté than of her entrancement with the jewels produced by Mephistopheles.

Among other singers performing in both solo and shared pieces J’nai Bridges gave a sublime account of Sapho’s aria, “Où suis je … Ô ma lyre immortelle” [“Where am I … o my immortal lyre”] from Gounod’s opera Sapho. Bridges led the listeners into Sapho’s emotional world, the character’s distress at the end of her life being expressed in contrasting lines with “nuit eternal” [“eternal night”] and “douleur” [“pain”], both descending to full deep notes, and her wounded “cor” [“heart”] showing the singer’s glistening upper register. As Sapho’s inevitable act of suicide approached, Bridges’s voice rose at the contemplation “sous les andes” [“beneath the waves”]; she invoked her watery death with chilling, individual low pitches on “dans las mer” [“in the sea”] before appealing to the ocean to indeed open itself up [“ouvre toi”] with a final, shockingly dramatic top note on the repetition of “dans la mer.” A very different sort of character emerged in her duet from Porgy and Bess, shared with the Porgy of baritone Will Liverman. Mr. Liverman has an excellent command of legato which he sustained throughout, just as Bridges declared “I’s your woman now.” Both singers’ voices suggested the mutually enveloping emotions of their characters as the line “We is one now” remained the predominant theme communicated. In his solo contribution, “Batter my heart” from John Adams’s Doctor Atomic, Liverman showed very effectively the tension felt by Oppenheimer as he struggled with the responsibilities of his scientific research and its effects on humanity. Yet another couple deserves mention for their vocal and dramatic commitment. Soprano Emily Birsan and tenor John Irvin sang a delightful account of “Chiedi all’aura lusinghiera” from Act I of Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore. Both artists demonstrated their ease and technical skill at bel canto singing, while each was especially sensitive to weaving a lyrical statement that suggested a growing sense of attraction and an independent resistance to the same. As a fitting conclusion to the evening the latter two performers were joined by Miller, Evans, and Ollarsaba, as well as the full ensemble, in “The promise of living” from Aaron Copland’s The Tender Land.

Salvatore Calomino

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Final_Rotator_RSIC.gif image_description=Rising Stars in Concert [Photo courtesy of Lyric Opera of Chicago] product=yes product_title=Rising Stars at Lyric Opera of Chicago product_by=A review by Salvatore Calomino product_id=Above: Rising Stars in Concert [Photo courtesy of Lyric Opera of Chicago]

Is cinema the future of opera?

By John Suchet [Classic FM, 11 June 2014]
I love opera, but sometimes even the thought of going to see it is nerve-wracking. Are the tickets going to bankrupt me? Do I have to dress up? And how much will I actually see (if I am up in the gods will the action be too far away and if I use those little binoculars, will I be able to read the surtitles)? In short: is it worth the hassle?
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Thomas Hampson sings Strauss’ “Befreit” op. 394

In 2014, American baritone Thomas Hampson celebrates Richard Strauss’ 150th anniversary.

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Naxos App: Wagner's Ring Cycle

Harrison Birtwistle Documentary: Notes from the bottom of a garden

The Queen Takes a Bow: Eve Queler Brought Devia to ‘Devereux’—and Wowed Audiences

By James Jorden [NY Observer, 10 June 2014]
At Carnegie Hall last Thursday, a capacity crowd witnessed what might be the final official act of a monarch who has reigned for more than four decades.
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Don Giovanni, Glyndebourne

It was not perfect; perfection we leave for Mozart. But Kent’s staging, as revived by Lloyd Wood — I am afraid I am in no position to say how much is Kent and how much is Wood — treats this masterpiece seriously and joins a select group of productions I should happily see again, not least because I suspect there would be intriguing points revealed to me that I had missed upon a first viewing. (Incidentally, its Glyndebourne predecessor, from Graham Vick, forms part of that small band.)

Kent’s staging may lack the cocaine-fuelled kinetic energy of Calixto Bieito’s unforgettable ENO production, or the (apparently) all-encompassing, Calderón-like Salzburg World Theatre of Herbert Graf’s production for Furtwängler (the most precious opera DVD this side of the Boulez-Chéreau Ring?), but even such magnificent achievements as those can only begin to hint at the possibilities Mozart and Da Ponte offer us. Most stagings come nowhere near accomplishing even that. Social tensions are either absent or underplayed — an all too common shortcoming — but a seriousness and sensibility it is perhaps not unduly exaggerated to call theological nevertheless comes to the fore. Giovanni’s unflinching, libertine atheism is of course the true heroism of the opera. The dark force of what to him may be reaction is symbolised by the darkness of Paul Brown’s excellent set designs, from out of which the action seems to emerge and into which it retreats. But some in the audience — and some of the characters too — might equally decide that it is the temporal stability of the revolving cube (the Mother Church, perhaps?) which protects and which ultimately proves the villain’s downfall.

Such openness to interpretation is quite different from a lack of direction. There is room for the burning conviction of strong directorial lines — Bieito is surely one of the greatest and unquestionably one of the most celebrate examples — and for more reticent yet nevertheless intelligent productions, permitting of various understandings. In that respect, Kent’s likening, in his brief director’s note, of Brown’s spinning cube to ‘a kind of Cabinet of Curiosities or, perhaps, a great sarcophagus,’ proves fruitful both in itself and for the further consideration it might suggest. Moreover, such properly Baroque references, in a more broadly cultural sense rather than the narrow conceptions of ‘style’ prevalent today, prove equally stimulating to the imagination — just as they do in Mozart’s score and Da Ponte’s libretto. The 1950s updating registers if one wishes: Kent suggests a ‘time of transition, in which a sexual, social and moral revolution, a dolce vita world, coexisted with the remnants of a devout society. However, at least to my eyes, it does not force itself unduly upon one’s consciousness. The staging is again, then, suggestive; it does not make the mistake of trying to shoehorn the drama into a pointlessly narrow conception, let alone somehow attempt to make Don Giovanni ‘about’ the era in question.

There remains, however, one significant reservation. I do not know whose decision it was to serve up what seemed pretty much to be the Vienna version of the score, but I wish he or she had thought again; it made a change, though, from the unholy conflation of Vienna and Prague generally foisted upon us. To anyone who cares to think about it, Prague wins every time, although I have yet to attend a single performance in which Mozart’s dramatic sensibility is thus honoured. At any rate, we heard both of Donna Elvira’s arias, just the one of Don Ottavio’s (‘Dalla sua pace’), and the very rare Vienna duet for Zerlina and Leporello, ‘Per queste tue manine’. It was not, of course, uninteresting to hear the latter, for once, but it is almost unworthy of late Mozart, and holds up the action just as much as if we were to hear both of Ottavio’s arias (and/or, for that matter, both of Elvira’s: just as much a problem with Vienna). There was, at least, no messing about with the scena ultima — a relief, given the recent butchery perpetrated by the Royal Opera. It was a great pity, though, about the surtitles, whose translation was unworthy of Da Ponte’s matchless marriage of wit and profundity.

Andrés Orozco-Estrada’s Mahler I greatly admired in Vienna a year-and-a-half ago. At first, that is, in the Overture, I found him somewhat wanting in Mozart. I have learned to live with the opening being taken at an allegedly alla breve tempo far too fast to my ears; off the top of my head, only Barenboim and Muti, amongst living conductors, come close to what I hear in my head. More concerning were a general thinness of tone and apparent lack of concern with harmonic rhythm. If those were not actually natural trumpets — I could not see the pit — they certainly sounded like them; others, of course, respond better to that rasping sound than I do. However, once past that disappointing opening, there was much to admire, though such tendencies were far from entirely banished. There will always be tempi with which one can quibble, but this was a variegated performance which did not harry the music, and which permitted both the on-stage drama to develop and the excellent London Philharmonic Orchestra to have its say. The Stone Guest Scene, however, was strangely un-climactic: partly, I think, a matter of the failure to use the Prague score, but it was more than that, for that failing is common to many other performances. Though beautifully played by the LPO and — for the most part — well sung, the final scene therefore did not jolt quite as it should.

Indeed, the main factor was probably the underpowered singing of Taras Shtonda’s Commendatore. The other disappointment amongst the cast was Layla Claire’s vibrato-laden Donna Anna, whose musical line really needed to be clearer throughout. Otherwise, a cast almost entirely unknown to me acquitted itself well, with a fine sense of company. Ben Johnson, whom I had heard before as Ottavio, albeit in English, sang exquisitely, almost to the extent of having one regret the lack of ‘Il mio tesoro’. Serena Farnocchia was a stylish Elvira, whilst Lenka Máčiková and Brandon Cedel offered vocally lively assumptions of the roles of Zerlina and Masetto. If Elliot Madore lacked the charisma of the great Giovannis, then he nevertheless delighted in the musico-dramatic quicksilver of the role, sufficiently differentiated from the equally lively Leporello of Edwin Crossley-Mercer. There was genuine chemistry between them. Perhaps ironically, given the ‘loss’ of his aria, it was only Johnson’s Ottavio which continued to ring in my ears; but this, like the production and performance as a whole, was a cast that proved considerably greater than the sum of its parts.

Mark Berry

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Cast and production information:

Leporello: Edwin Crossley-Mercer; Donna Anna: Layla Claire; Don Giovanni: Elliot Madore; Commendatore: Taras Shtonda; Don Ottavio: Ben Johnson; Donna Elvira: Serena Farnocchia; Zerlina: Lenka Máčiková; Masetto: Brandon Cedel. Director: Jonathan Kent; Revival director: Lloyd Wood; Designs: Paul Brown; Movement: Denni Sayers; Lighting: Mark Henderson. The Glyndebourne Chorus (chorus master: Jeremy Bines)/London Philharmonic Orchestra/Andrés Orozco-Estrada (conductor). Glyndebourne Festival Theatre, Saturday 7 June 2014.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Don-Giovanni_Glyndebourne_2.gif image_description=A scene from Don Giovanni [Photo by Robert Workman] product=yes product_title=Don Giovanni, Glyndebourne product_by=A review by Mark Berry product_id=Above: A scene from Don Giovanni [Photo by Robert Workman]

Lucky Number

[Opera News, June 2014]
F. Paul Driscoll talks to the cast and creative team of "27" — a new opera by Ricky Ian Gordon and Royce Vavrek about the singular world of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. The curtain goes up at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis on June 14.
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How to Sing Bel Canto: Sutherland, Pavarotti and Horne (1981)

HGO: The Passenger

Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s The Passenger has been called by the Independent (U.K.) “the most significant opera composed in the Russian language since Prokofiev’s War and Peace.” With an unflinching eye, this late 20th-century masterwork focuses on a former SS prison camp overseer on board an ocean liner who fears her secret past is about to be revealed.
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Metropolitan Opera could go bankrupt in 'in two years'

[BBC News, 6 June 2014]
The boss of New York's Metropolitan Opera says it will "face a bankruptcy situation in two or three years" if it does not cut its wages bill.
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Offenbach’s Vert-Vert at Garsington Opera

Invidious perhaps to make the suggestion that Glyndebourne might be about to be knocked of its perch, especially when the opera in question — Vert-Vert — features a girl’s school in collective mourning for a dead parrot, Monty Python meets the Belles of St Trinians? Sacré bleu!

Certainly Garsington’s musical standards are not far short of Glyndebourne’s and the place itself, the London side of Oxford but far easier to reach for people in London, the Midlands or the West Country, has an intimacy which recalls Glyndebourne’s ‘old house’ in its heyday. Garsington also has a canny management in that the three operas featured this year — Fidelio, Vert-Vert and Cunning Little Vixen — appeal to three potentially different audiences, Fidelio to the audience for grand opera but one ideally suited to a smallish house, Vert-Vert to an audience unashamedly in search of entertainment and a good evening out — it is a hoot — in an English country house setting, and Cunning Little Vixen to an audience prepared to try something quite different yet appealing to children. Astute.

Under Douglas Boyd’s leadership Garsington also seems to have grasped two other important factors. Firstly, that if we are going to pay top dollar we do not want to be treated to the absurdities — designer opera may all be very well in European cities where going to the opera is no big deal and you can walk home afterwards but not here, thank you — and secondly the need for proper conductors (who wants to go to, say, Le Nozze di Figaro conducted by a repetiteur when one has heard it conducted by the likes of Sir Colin Davis or Otto Klemperer). In this respect next year’s Garsington points the way with three productions led by three conductors any of whom one would happily see in a major opera house.

Once popular, Offenbach’s operettas — there are some 90 of them — might almost qualify, at least in England, as a lost genre. They call not merely for excellent singers but also the lightest hand on the orchestral tiller. The conductor David Parry’s passion for them and his certainty of touch is manifest at every turn. Their plots are convoluted to say the least but so was Offenbach’s own life. Born in Cologne, the son of a Jewish cantor, Isaac Eberst who in his travels as an itinerant violinist also became known as “der Offenbacher” (the name of his home town), he decided to use this name for his children. He took his two sons to Paris where young Jakob became Jacques and his cello playing was sufficiently impressive to impress Cherubini. Despite a ban on foreign students, he was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire, leaving after a year and becoming a cello sensation (he was dubbed “le Liszt du violoncelle”).

Naomi O’Connell as La Corilla with Quirijn de Lang as D’Arlange, Andrew Glover as Bergerac and Dragoons

In 1844 Jakob/Jacques married Herminie d’Alcain who was the step-daughter of an English impresario, John Mitchell. After a brief period back in Cologne following the 1848 revolution he was back in Paris, by now composing, but the doors of the Opéra-Comique were firmly closed to him (he had made the mistake of making fun of the great Meyerbeer) and he had the unusual but rather modern idea of starting a musical theatre himself. His opportunity came in the wake of the Great Exhibition when he acquired a tiny wooden built theatre in the grounds of the Exhibition called the Salle Lacaze and a licence to mount small-scale productions. “Ce petit spectacle d’été aurait pour titre les Bouffes-Parisiens” (ie. according to its licence the Bouffes-Parisiens was only intended as a temporary summer affair). Like Garsington, Offenbach had spotted a gap in the market since the Opéra-Comique had strayed from its original light opera purpose, putting on instead miniature grand operas. The rest, as they say, is history and Offenbach never looked back. Over the next 30 years he turned out some 90 operettas of which Orphée aux Enfers, La Vie Parisienne, La Belle Hélène and La Périchole (performed at Garsington 2 years ago) have endured. By a final delicious twist it was the much grander Les Contes d’Hoffmann — grand opera at its grandest — which he was working on at the time of his death by which he now best remembered.

Vert-Vert was first performed — ironically given its initial rejection of the composer — at the Opéra-Comique in 1869, the year before the Franco-Prussian war and, although it was performed in London in a much-reduced version at St. James’s Theatre in 1874, the current run of performances at Garsington is its first complete staging in England. Catch it if you can. It is a riot and deserves to transfer to the West End.

The plot, suitably Pythonesque given the dead parrot, is more or less impossible to précis. Suffice it to say we are in a girls convent school in mourning for its dead parrot, Vert-Vert. Cue general lamentations. The girls choose an innocent young man, Valentin, as a substitute parrot. Two of them, Bathilde and Emma, are secretly married to dashing young aristocratic dragoons, the Comte d’Arlange and the Chevalier de Bergerac. Mimi, another girl, is secretly in love with Valentin. There is a stern deputy headmistress who is also secretly married to the dancing master Baladon. Other characters include Binet, a gardener (here played with a broad Scots accent), La Corilla, a famous singer to whom to whom the originally goody two shoes Valentin clearly loses his innocence (in Manon Lescaut the Abbé Prévost describes it as “cheating the church of its dues”) and an assorted cast of dragoons and theatricals. Rather like a demented Brian Rix farce, mayhem ensues. All is happily resolved in the rousing final chorus (“A slurp of wine”) but in between there are some notably tender and affecting moments. This may be comic but it is comedy with a heart.

The production — a fine demonstration of ‘more is less’ but nonetheless with several coups de théâtre as when the back of the stage opens wide and the school/chateau is wheeled to the open space beyond with Garsington’s woods as a backdrop or another occasion when the rear of the stage opens to admit the barge named Hortense which bears Valentin away — was an object lesson in pointful economy. The costumes were gorgeous, colourful dragoons and an impromptu party of ‘theatricals’ in the second act, but above all as well as colourful they were entirely period appropriate.

Most importantly — and this is probably why the genre has never really caught on in Britain — in David Parry we had a conductor who, like Beecham, has the idiom at his fingertips, exuding panache, élan and élegance in equal measure (only French words will do). Beecham once talked of combining the maximum delicacy with the maximum virility, a comment which might well have applied to the Garsington orchestra on this occasion with its polished strings, an excellent first clarinet (Peter Sparks) in his several solos and a notably secure horn section. The score absolutely fizzed along.

As far as the singers are concerned a large cast with no obvious weak links was headed by the tenor Robert Murray as Valentin/Vert-Vert. a Jette Parker Young Artist at the Royal Opera with a superb voice (he has sung Tamino in Magic Flute and one can imagine him as excellent in the role), and by a diminutive but wonderfully feisty (shades of Ethel Merman) Welsh soprano, Fflur Wyn, in the role of Mimi. Other notable successes were the Dutch Quirijn de Lang and Andrew Glover as the two dragoon officers and Geoffrey Dolton as the Dancing Master giving a gloriously OTT display of the Pavane, the Gavotte and the Minuet (Yes, he can dance too).

One small quibble. David Parry’s translation into English is of course essential if a non French audience is to capture the piece’s absurdist, madcap quality and its various nuances. The translation’s rhyming couplets do sometimes sit inelegantly though with the actual musical line, occasionally giving it a MacGonegal-esque quality. However, I for one am more than happy to put up with the occasional infelicity in the interests of the many LOL moments. In short, a bonne bouche — even a canapé — and an undiluted triomphe from first note to last.

Douglas Cooksey

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Cast and production information:

Valentin later called Vert-Vert: Robert Murray; Baladon dancing master: Geoffrey Dolton; Binet gardener: Mark Wilde; Bellecour singer: Alessandro Fisher; Le Comte d’Arlange officer of dragoons: Quirijn de Lang; Le Chevalier de Bergerac officer of dragoons: Andrew Glover; Friquet dragoon: Henry Neill; Maniquet theatre director: Jack Gogarty; La Corilla singer: Naomi O’Connell; Mademoiselle Paturelle assistant headmistress: Yvonne Howard; Mimi schoolgirl: Fflur Wyn; Bathilde schoolgirl: Raphaela Papadakis; Emma schoolgirl: Katie Bray; Conductor: David Parry; Director: Martin Duncan; Designer: Francis O’Connor; Lighting Designer: Howard Hudson; Choreographer: Ewan Jones; Assistant conductor: John Andrews; Assistant director: Matthew Eberhardt; Garsington Opera Orchestra & Chorus of schoolgirls, soldiers, actors and actresses.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Vert_Vert_01.gif image_description=Robert Murray as Valentin and Fflur Wyn as Mimi [Photo by Mike Hoban for Garsington Opera] product=yes product_title=Offenbach’s Vert-Vert at Garsington Opera product_by=A review by Douglas Cooksey product_id=Above: Robert Murray as Valentin and Fflur Wyn as Mimi

Photos by Mike Hoban for Garsington Opera

What makes Don Giovanni tick?

He’s opera’s most notorious bad boy — seducing women across the globe and leaving not just broken hearts, but also broken homes in his wake. But what really makes Don Giovanni tick? Here’s a peek at the psyche of this fascinating character from the point of view of his therapist.

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Bernarda Fink Sings Mahler Lieder

Fink’s approach to Mahler’s music commands attention for its attention to the details of the scores, as well as vibrant interpretations of the music. The recording stands well alongside the best of the existing discography and in some cases serve as touchstones for future performers as they explore this repertoire. Most of all, this exciting recording captures a performer fully engaged with Mahler’s music.

The program itself warrants attention because it intersects Mahler’s Lieder by offering selections from the composer’s early songs, his settings from Des Knaben Wunderhorn and also a generous sampling of the Rückert settings. The performances include versions for voice and piano, songs with orchestra, and also Arnold Schoenberg’s 1920 arrangement of the cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen for chamber ensemble. On the surface, this may seem inconsistent, but the result is quite effective, as each track is convincing, with the aggregate reflecting thoughtful interaction of Fink with various collaborators, including her accompanist Anthony Spiri, the chamber musicians of the Gustav Mahler-Ensemble, and the conductor Andrés Orozco-Estrada leading the Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich. In each of these venues Fink’s voice is resonant and warm, and she sounds as comfortable within the intimacy of the keyboard milieu as she does with the support of a full orchestra.

A case in point is the song “Im Lenz” that opens the recording with the well-executed pianistic flourishes setting the tone for Fink’s entrance. While these three early Lieder (1880) have been known since the 1970s, when Dame Janet Baker first recorded these youthful pieces, this performance has the presence that others do not always give this music. The sensitive reading gives full voice to Mahler’s ambitious early work, and brings out the qualities that connect the style he used in these songs with the Lieder of the previous generation. This, in turn, sets the tone for what follows, with just one more early song, “Winterlied,” preceding the Wunderhorn setting “Ablösung im Sommer” (1885). The latter demonstrates Fink’s affinity with Mahler’s style, as she delivers the lines of the song clearly and without affectation. This allows the humor to emerge readily from the music, an element enhanced by Fink’s clear articulation of the text and persuasive phrasing.

Fink’s performance of the chamber-ensemble version of the cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen is at the core of this release, and the reading merits attention. The ensemble is exemplary, with the voice and instruments working together in ways that do not always occur in other performances. The rhythms are note-perfect throughout, with Fink’s resonant voice sometimes seeming like another instrument in the ensemble. The interpretation is memorable, with the sad resignation of the opening song transforming into the bucolic joy of the second. The opening of the latter song warrants close attention for its ringing sounds that not only carry the text, but also color it. Yet the third song, “Die zwei blauen Augen,” stands out as the musical and emotional core of the performance. The phrasing, articulations and dynamic levels combined to support the interpretation. In this piece Fink is absolutely in her element, and delivers a moving reading of this familiar piece. It seems fresh in her hands, with the expressive qualities never compromising the deft musicianship that Fink brings to this piece. In the middle section, Fink colors her voice to add nuance to the performance, a details that sets her apart from other Mahler singers. This helps to set up the reprise of the first section, and then to bring the song to a conclusion that lingers in memory, even as the final piece commences. The latter song is dramatic, with the histrionics some use thankfully absent her. The result is a satisfying conclusion to this performance. While it is possible imagine Fink singing this piece in Mahler’s original scoring, the remains a convincing performance.

The recording includes an equally strong performance of the cycle Kundertotenlieder in Mahler’s orchestration. In the opening song, “Nun will die Sonn’ so hell aufgehn” establishes the tone of the piece from the outset, and her phrasing serving the text well. She captures the style of this piece convincingly and infuses the rest of the songs in this cycle with it. Just as“Wenn dein Mutterlein” has a certain elegiac quality, the final song “In diesem Wetter” is memorable for its sustained agitation, which resolves in the second half of the piece. The tempos for the latter are convincing, and make more sense than some historic performances which can be either too fast or too slow at the outset. Here, Fink’s performance seems geared to the concluding strophe, which caps the song and, with it, the entire cycle fittingly.

In addition to this cycle, the recording includes four of the five other of Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder, which Fink delivers with aplomb. “Ich atmet’ einen Lindenduft” has the appropriate sense of delicacy that Mahler intended for the song. Likewise, “Liebst du um Schönheit” fits Fink’s voice well, with the negation of the text counterbalanced by her assured delivery of the melody. The tempo is somewhat brisker than occurs in some interpretations, a difference that makes musical sense. Such sense informs the approach to “Um Mitternacht,” which has a certain intimate quality that fits the piece well. As much as Fink’s sensitivity to dynamic levels is strong throughout the tracks of this release, it is particularly effective in this song, where the modulation of the voice supports the delivery. The transition to the final stanza of the poem warrants attention. The recording concludes with the iconic song “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,” which Fink presents with the dignity and musicality she has accorded of the pieces in this exceptional new recording of Mahler’s Lieder. As familiar as this music may be in 2014, this recording contains new performances that add to the existing discography and serve well to show the mastery Bernarda Fink brings to Mahler’s song.

James L. Zychowicz

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Bernarda-Fink---Mahler-Lied.gif image_description=Bernarda Fink Sings Mahler Lieder [Harmonia Mundi HMC 902173] product=yes product_title=Bernarda Fink Sings Mahler Lieder product_by=Anthony Spiri, piano; Gustav Mahler-Ensemble; Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederosterreich, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, conductor. product_id=Harmonia Mundi HMC 902173 [CD] price=$17.99 product_url=http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=1256823

Placido Domingo moves goalposts on long opera career

Photo © REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni

By Mary Milliken [Reuters, 5 June 2014]

As the World Cup nears, soccer fanatics will inevitably jink the conversation toward the beautiful game. That includes Placido Domingo, who explains why at 73 he can still get down on one knee to declare his love to the soprano.

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The Juilliard School’s 109th Commencement Speech ~ Joyce DiDonato

Chairman Kovner, President Polisi, most distinguished honorees, dedicated family, friends, faculty, and to EACH of the talented, ambitious, courageous, adventurous Juilliard graduates of the class of 2014 before us here today, thank you!

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The Met’s Summer Recital Series

The Met's annual concert series in New York City parks is one of the most beloved summer traditions in the city. This year, the Summer Recital Series returns with six performances in the parks of all five boroughs. The series kicks off with a concert at Central Park SummerStage on June 23, featuring rising opera stars soprano Amber Wagner, mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, and tenor Russell Thomas, accompanied by Dan Saunders.

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Hector Berlioz: Benvenuto Cellini

upon Terry Gilliam’s ‘Springtime for Hitler’ Damnation of Faust. If that sounds like faint praise, for beating a ‘Holocaust as entertainment’ travesty is perhaps setting the bar unreasonably low, then such is not entirely the intention. Gilliam’s Cellini has its virtues, though for me they are considerably fewer than they seemed to be for the audience at large. It is far from unreasonable to depict anarchy and ribaldry in the Carnival, and indeed during the ‘carnival’ overture — though Gilliam’s reported remark that ten minutes of music are ‘too long for the audience to sit through waiting for the show to begin’ are unworthy of anyone working in opera. There is nothing wrong in principle with ‘staging’ an overture, but the reason should be better than that; if the results are a little over the top, they are certainly superior to the justification.

And yet… here and in the Carnival itself we also experience the main problem: Gilliam’s seeming inability to trust Berlioz’s opera, an infinitely more successful work than ignorant ‘criticism’ will suggest. Yes, there is excess, even at times an excess of excess, in Berlioz’s work, but what I suspect Gilliam’s fans will applaud as ‘wackiness’, be it the director’s or the composer’s, is far from the only or indeed the most important facet of the opera. Despite the handsome, splendidly adaptable Piranesi-inspired designs, the plentiful coups de théâtre, the impressive collaboration of set design and video for the forging, etc., etc., what matters most of all — Berlioz’s score and, more broadly, his musical drama — often seems forgotten. Perhaps that also explains the unaccountable cuts, which serve to exacerbate alleged ‘weaknesses’ — many of which turn out to be deviations from the operatic norm — instead of mitigating them.

Matters improve considerably after the interval, and there is a genuine sense of dark, nocturnal desperation to the foundry and surroundings at dawn on Ash Wednesday (though there was, admittedly, little sense of the significance or even the coming of that day of mortification). Much of the first act, by contrast, is overbearing and in serious need of clarification. Yes, by all means harness spectacle as a tool of drama, but too often it runs riot in an unhelpful sense; it also encourages a large section of the audience to guffaw, applaud, chatter, make other, apparently unclassifiable, noises, often to the extent that one cannot hear the music. I could not help but think that a smaller budget would have removed a good number of excessive temptations and resulted in something less perilously close to a West End musical. There are the germs, and sometimes rather more than that, of something much better here, but those ‘editing’ Berlioz perhaps themselves stand in need of an editor. The updating to what would appear to be more or less the time of composition, perhaps a little later, does no harm; indeed, it proves generally convincing.

Edward Gardner’s conducting of the first act was disappointing, the Overture, insofar as it could be heard, setting out the conductor’s stall unfortunately: excessive drive followed by excessive relaxation. Wild contrasts are part of what Berlioz’s music demands, of course, but there still needs to be something that connects. Throughout, there were many occasions once again to mourn the loss of Sir Colin Davis, whose 2007 LSO concert performance of this work was simply outstanding. The orchestra proved impressively responsive, though, and, once both Gardner and Gilliam had somewhat calmed down, truly came into its own, sounding as the fine ensemble that it undoubtedly is. Gardner is rarely a conductor to probe beneath the surface, but as musical execution, there was a good deal to savour following the (protracted) interval. Choral singing — and blocking — were more or less beyond reproach, a credit to chorus master Nicholas Jenkins and Gilliam’s team alike, as well of course as to the singers themselves.

Michael Spyres performed impressively in the sadistically difficult title role, there being but a single example, quickly enough corrected, of coming vocally unstuck. His stage swagger seemed true to Gilliam’s conception, and his vocal style — insofar as one can tell, in English translation — was keenly attuned to that of Berlioz. A few ‘veiled’ moments notwithstanding, especially later on in the first act, Corinne Winters impressed equally as Teresa. ‘Entre l’amour et le devoir’ could hardly have been more cleanly sung in the most exacting of aural imaginations. Nicholas Pallesen revealed himself to be a thoughtful and at times impassioned baritone as Fieramosca, though Pavlo Hunka’s Balducci sounded thin and generally out of sorts. Despite Willard White’s undeniable stage presence, his appearance as the Pope did little to dispel suspicions that, sadly, his voice is now increasingly fallible. Paula Murrihy, however, proved an excellent Ascanio: characterful and attractive of tone in equal measure. There were few grounds for complaint from the ‘smaller’ roles either.

ENO’s description of this opéra semi-seria as a ‘romantic comedy’ is puzzling. It is, to be fair fair to Gilliam and all those involved, a description that stands at some distance from their vision too. An opéra comique was originally Berlioz’s conception, but that is a matter of form rather than of sentimentality. We should doubtless be grateful that we were spared a ‘heart-warming’ Richard Curtis version. Nor does it help, of course, that we are subjected to an English translation, which inevitably sounds ‘wrong’ for Berlioz, especially when so apparently deaf to musical line and cadence as this present version. If only ENO would reconsider its stance on a once vexed question, now resolved by the use of surtitles, it could truly transform its fortunes.

Mark Berry

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Cast and production information:

Benvenuto Cellini: Michael Spyres; Giacomo Balducci: Pavlo Hunka; Teresa: Corinne Winters; Fieramosca: Nicholas Pallesen; Pope Clement VII: Sir Willard White; Ascanio: Paula Murrihy; Francesco: Nicky Spence; Bernardino: David Soar; Pompeo: Morgan Pearse; Innkeeper: Anton Rich. Director: Terry Gilliam; Co-director, movement: Leah Hausmann ; Set designs: Terry Gilliam and Aaron Marsden; Costumes: Katrina Lindsay; Video: Finn Ross. Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Nicholas Jenkins)/Orchestra of the English National Opera/Edward Gardner (conductor). Coliseum, London, Thursday 5 June 2014.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/benvenuto_cellini.gif image_description=Portrait of Benvenuto Cellini 1822 product=yes product_title=Hector Berlioz: Benvenuto Cellini product_by=A review by Mark Berry product_id=Above: Portrait of Benvenuto Cellini 1822

Giacomo Puccini: La fanciulla del West

Never a simple thread, all muddle, and, at times, bad taste and old hat.’ It was nevertheless there and then that the first dramatic seeds were sown for La fanciulla del West were sown; it would be written to a libretto after Belasco, dedicated to Queen Alexandra (!), and premiered in New York in 1910. Even after considerable compression, modification, and so forth, I am not convinced the work is a resounding triumph, though many Puccini lovers esteem it highly indeed. It is certainly full of musical interest: the Wagnerisms of old are perhaps not so prominent, though the love scene in the second act surely takes partly after Tristan , but the influence of Debussy in particular is fruitful indeed. Whole tone scales pervade the score, and there is more than the occasional nod to Pelléas. The story itself, the characters included, remains more of a problem. They are not the easiest people to care about, and without that, Puccini’s trademark emotional manipulations cannot do their work. He may have wished the opera to be a ‘second Bohème, only stronger, bolder, and more spacious,’ but that ambition would only fitfully be fulfilled. The sentimentality of the ‘redemptive’ ending is, alas, only too readily resisted.

Or so it seemed here, despite an excellent orchestral performance from the City of London Sinfonia under Stuart Stratford. The number of occasions when one really felt the lack of a larger orchestra was surprisingly small, the strings proving more luscious than one would have had any right to expect, the woodwind piquant and alluring, and the brass offering dramatical fatalism aplenty. Stratford’s direction seemed to me splendidly judged, those Debussyan resonances both readily apparent and seamless incorporated into the score. There is little that can be done about a rather annoying theme - friends tell me that it has been ‘borrowed’ by a composer of musical theatre, though it stands out like a sore thumb even before one is aware of that - but the score was certainly given its due. Stratford’s - and his cast’s - crewing up of musical tension during the second-act wager was beyond reproach.

Susannah Glanville as Minnie and Simon Thorpe as Jack Rance

Susannah Glanville shone as Minnie; I had not encountered her before, but was mightily impressed by her vocal reserves and the dramatic use to which they were bit. This was a performance that would have graced many a ‘major’ stage, not that the ever-enterprising Opera Holland Park has any reason to fear such lazy comparisons. Jeff Gwaltney sometimes struggled to make himself heard - in particular, his words - but offered a sensitive portrayal of Dick Johnson. Simon Thorpe presented the conflicting emotions of Jack Rance with considerable skill, permitting one initially to sympathise, then to be repelled. A strong supporting cast included a highly impressive performance by Nicholas Garrett as Sonora. Choral singing was likewise greatly to be admired.

The problem, then, lay with Stephen Barlow’s production. This, at least it seems to me, is a vulnerable work, and the updating to a 1950s Nevada atomic testing ground makes little sense. A number of those who know the opera far better than I do say that it is a work that resists relocation in any sense. I am not so sure; I can imagine, for instance, a metatheatrical treatment in Hollywood, which played upon musical themes as well as the more obvious metaphor of gold-digging. The name ‘Camp Desert Rock’ seemed to promise something that remained un-delivered, but perhaps that should come as a relief. Barlow’s concept, however ably assisted by Yannis Thavoris’s designs, seems not to involve any real re-thinking; re-location jars and perplexes, rather than reinvigorates. Puccini’s ‘never a simple thread, all muddle, and, at times, bad taste and old hat’? That would be too harsh, but work and musical performance alike are done no favours by pointless, eye- but hardly ear-catching interpolations, of Minnie’s final act arrival upon a motorcycle and the lovers’ subsequent airline departure. It was difficult to resist the conclusion that the opera would have been better off left in Gold Rush California.

Mark Berry

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Cast and production information:

Minnie: Susannah Glanville; Dick Johnson: Jeff Gwaltney; Jack Rance: Simon Thorpe; Nick: Neal Cooper; Sonora: Nicholas Garrett; Trin: Jung Soo Yun; Sid: Peter Braithwaite; Bello: James Harrison; Harry: Oliver Brignall; Joe: Edward Hughes; Happy: John Lofthouse; Jim Larkens: Aidan Smith; Ashby: Graeme Broadbent; Wowkle: Laura Woods; Billy Jackrabbit: Tom Stoddart; Jake Wallace: Simon Wilding; Jose Castro: Henry Grant Kerswell; Pony Express Rider: Michael Bradley. Director: Stephen Barlow; Designs: Yannis Thavoris; Lighting: Richard Howell. Opera Holland Park Chorus (chorus master: Timothy Burke)/ City of London Sinfonia/Stuart Stratford (conductor). Holland Park. Tuesday 3 June 2014.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Fanciulla-202db.gif image_description=Susannah Glanville as Minnie and Jeff Gwaltney as Dick Johnson [Photo by Fritz Curzon] product=yes product_title=Giacomo Puccini: La fanciulla del West product_by=A review by Mark Berry product_id=Above: Susannah Glanville as Minnie and Jeff Gwaltney as Dick Johnson

Photos by Fritz Curzon

Così fan tutte at the Los Angeles Philharmonic

Although advertized as the “grand finale” of the series, grand is hardly an adjective one can associate with Così fan tutte, though the work has many other operatic virtues: first and foremost, its exquisite music.

Così also requires a small cast. It can be produced on a small stage. And its plot, which revolves around mistaken identity, the stuff of comedy since the inception of drama (unless you’re Oedipus), can be set in almost any place in any era. And so it has been and will continue to be. This year alone 49 different productions will be presented in 42 cities.

The most important thing you need to know in regard to Così fan tutte is that no one knows what it’s about. The opera’s title means “all women are like that” and its subtitle “La scuola di amante” means “school for lovers.” Ostensibly it’s an education in love. However, in the 224 years since the opera’s creation, each era’s arbiters of morality have redefined their view of the work. They have told us to laugh at it or to cry, to sympathize with certain characters, or to revile them. The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s production team: director, Christopher Alden, set and costume designers, Zaha Hadid and Hussein Chalayan, have chosen not to moralize, but to show us the continually shifting ground upon upon which the work is based.

Mutability is the key to this production. The set, visible as the audience enters, is a smooth white, undulating ramp that represents the sea. (Così is set in Naples). Apparently slippery, and somewhat steep, the women were often barefoot and the audience gasped at one moment as a tenor slammed rather abruptly into a wall. The ramp, which was designed to reflect the curves of the concert hall itself, had a solo moment when no one was aboard, when it undulated rapidly to dramatic lighting changes.

The opera’s plot revolves around Guglielmo and Ferrando, two soldiers, who boast to Don Alfonso, their cynical old friend that Fiordiligi and Dorabella, the sisters to whom they’re engaged, will be faithful to them forever. Alfonso, portrayed as a nastier creature in this production than usual, bets the young men that if they follow his instructions he can manipulate the girls into taking new lovers in less than 24 hours. The women are told that their heroes have been called to war, and shortly thereafter the two men disguised as “Albanians” appear to declare their passionate love, each to the other’s fiancée. Alfonso tightens his trap by bribing the young women’s maid servant, Despina, here too, a tougher character than usual, to assist him. Torn by conscience and tempted by the joys of love, the girls suffer a few pangs, but soon agree to marry their new fiancés, whereupon their original fiancés reappear and everyone’s treachery is revealed. Since there’s no reconciling all this deceit — even in 1790 “I’m sorry, I’ll never do it again” seemed to work for all kinds of misdeeds — the opera ends with a cheerful sextet in which the characters agree, “let’s get over this and look at the sunny side of things.”

The musical aspects of this production sparkled. Gustavo Dudamel and the Philharmonic orchestra produced one of the most articulate, lustrous, most graceful orchestral performances of the opera I’ve heard. The six attractive, lithe and experienced Mozart singers excelled in their roles. Bass Rod Gilfry seemed to enjoy portraying the almost maniacal Alfonso. I’m not sure how mezzo soprano Rosemary Joshua, as Despina, managed to sing and strut her hard-boiled stuff on that stage. As Fiordiligi, the more resistant of the two sisters, soprano Miah Persson negotiated the difficult “Come scoglio” with aplomb. Mezzo-soprano Roxana Constaninescu was an eager to be loved Dorabella, while Baritone Philippe Sly as Guglielmo, and tenor Alek Shrader, Ferrando, were in turn earnest and zany lovers.

As in The Marriage of Figaro, despite the fizzy overture, crisp rhythms and perky tunes heard in the orchestra, the cast enters the stage at a measured funereal pace (indeed, there is a moment in this opera when we hear the funeral march). Once again there are bits of comedy enacted at the apron of the stage involving Dudamel and orchestra members. In this case, it is Alfonso, who engages with the conductor, as well as with the excellent continuo duo, harpsichordist Bradley Moore and cellist David Heiss.

In keeping with the concept of mutability, Hussein Chalayan, renowned for his changeable clothing (he once designed “a robotic dress with panels that mechanically separate and float upward”), created layered clothing for the four lovers that metamorphosed even as they sang. Some of the costumes were attractive, some distracting. Try as I will, I still don’t understand why, when the mutability terminated, the two former soldiers ended up in dresses.

Architectural, theatrical and fashion world sites posted laudatory comments on the artistic achievements of the opera’s production team. Still, as in Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro, the LA Philharmonic’s two previous Mozart/Daponte productions, Disney Hall’s staging area, which literally lacks depth enough for drama, and doors enough for farce. proved an unhappy venue for opera. My companion, a veteran theater goer, who had never before seen the opera, couldn’t figure out what was happening on stage - though the titles helped.

This was a conceptually fascinating, musically delightful Così fan tutte, but it was neither joyful, nor understandable. Maybe that’s all we can expect from it. The scholarly 1910 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica called its libretto “too stupid to criticize.”

Estelle Gilson

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Cast and production information:

Ferrando:Alek Shrader; Gugliermo::Philippe Sly: Don Alfonso:Rod Gilfry; Fiordiligi:Miah Persson; Dorabella:Rosana Constantinesco; Despina: Rosemary Joshua. Conductor: Gustavo Dudamel. Director: Christopher Alden. Set Designer: Zaha Hadid Architects. Costume Designer: Hussein Chalayan. Lighting Designer: Adam Silverman.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Cosi_LA_14.gif image_description=Miah Persson as Fiordiligi and Alex Shrader as Ferrando [Photos by Craig T. Mathew and Greg Grudt/Mathew Imaging] product=yes product_title=Cosi fan tutte at the Los Angeles Philharmonic product_by=A review by Estelle Gilson product_id=Above: Miah Persson as Fiordiligi and Alex Shrader as Ferrando

Photos by Craig T. Mathew and Greg Grudt/Mathew Imaging

Garsington Opera’s 25th anniversary unites its past with its future

The iconic country house festival opera was founded by Leonard Ingrams in his home at Garsington Manor in Oxfordshire. In 2011, Mark Getty welcomed the festival to his estate at Wormsley Park in the Chiltern Hills, a larger and even more spectacular setting. This has allowed Garsington Opera to develop its potential even further. With its award-winning Pavilion and high artistic values, Garsington fills a unique niche in the British opera world.

“Things are going well,” says Douglas Boyd, Music Director, of the 2014 season. “It’s a question of balance,” he adds. Beethoven’s Fidelio sets out high ideals, Offenbach’s Vert-Vert provides humour Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen mixes wit with warmth. Fidelio has special significance for Boyd, who conducted it in his first season as Guest Conductor, in 2009. #8220;Beethoven’s language means a lot to me,” he says, “and it’s so refreshing working with the director, John Cox. He has great craftsmanship, and cares about how the text is described in the music. Don Pizzaro gets pleasure from torturing Florestan, singing 'Triomphe, Triomphe' right into his ear, and only tries to kill him when he realizes that Don Fernando is on his way.”

Garsington Opera’s formidable reputation was built on pioneering on rarely heard operas. It’s releasing a deluxe three-CD recording through Avie Records of Rossini’s Maometto Secondo. It’s the first commercially available recording of a new edition of the “Naples” version with its dramatic finale. Rossini specialist David Parry conducted the first UK performance last year. This year’s rarity is Jules Offenbach’s Vert-Vert, a hilarious comedy about a talking parrot. “When I’ve gone into rehearsals,” says Boyd, “everyone seems to be rolling around laughing. It’s going to be incredibly good fun.”

Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen will be directed by Daniel Slater, so it will be edgy, exploring the crossover between animal and human behaviour. “Not all cuddly, fluffy little foxes,” grins Boyd, “the fly will have fly swatters for wings.”

Many performances in this year’s season are sold out (though it’s always worth trying for returns) but there are other thrilling new ventures to come. In July Garsington will commemorate the centenary of the beginning of the First World War, with “Peace in Our Time”?, a weekend of events engaging with the issues of war and idealism. Ironically, this connects Garsington Opera at Wormsley with its first home, Garsington Manor. ;"Before Leonard Ingrams bought it", says Boyd, "Garsington Manor belonged at one time to Lady Ottoline Morell." She was an influential patron, who created a milieu where free-thinking artists could meet. She was a pacifist at a time when such ideas were radical. “So Garsington Manor was a hive of anti-war ntiment”, says Boyd. “Siegfried Sassoon spent part of his convalescence from the Somme at Garsington Manor.”

The spirit of Beethoven inspired plans for the whole weekend. He is a composer whose music addresses things like war, totalitarianism, self-sacrifice, justice and love.” Garsington Opera’s Peace in Our Time ? commemoration will include a concert performance of Fidelio, and Beethoven’s Symphony no 9, with its message of brotherhood and hope. Steven Isserlis will play Beethoven sonatas. Backstage facilities have been considerably improved,to accomodate a larger orchestra. Garsington’s own orchestra will continue its expertise in specialist repertoire, but a new partnership with the Philharmonia Orchestra, London, from 2017 will mean larger-scale works can be produced. Garsington Opera’s Peace in Our Time ? will include Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw, narrated by Samuel West. This will be the first time a large orchestra has performed on this stage.

There will be a symposium featuring such authors as James Naughtie, Oxford historian Professor Margaret Macmillan, Jeremy Paxman and Miranda Carter, followed by masterclasses and readings. Some patrons may be able to visit the Getty Library, which houses treasures such as the Bible Mary Queen of Scots carried when she was executed, and a first edition printed by Caxton of The Canterbury Tales. There will also be cricket. “There’s a photograph of Sassoon in cricket whites in the Garsington Opera programme book,” Boyd adds.

Ironically, the greatest coup might be two previously unpublished poems, written by Siegfried Sassoon, which a friend of John Cox, who is directing Fidelio, found in an auction. “One of these poems,” says Boyd, “is called Atrocities, and the other is an ode to Beethoven. What an incredible coincidence! Imagine, an unknown poem by Sassoon about Beethoven being heard first at Garsington Opera!”

Details of Garsington Opera at Wormsley’s next two seasons have also been announced. In 2015, Mozart’s Così fan tutte will be conducted by Douglas Boyd and directed by John Fulljames, Britten’s Death in Venice will be conducted by Steuart Bedford, who conducted the world premiere in Britten’s presence in 1973. The director will be Paul Curran. The season will conclude with Strauss’s Intermezzo, conducted by Jac van Steen, and directed by Bruno Ravella. In 2016, Douglas Boyd will conduct a new production of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin directed by Sir Michael Boyd. David Parry will conduct Rossini’s L’Italiana in Algeri directed by William Tuckett, and Tobias Ringborg will conduct Mozart’s Idomeneo with Tim Albery as director.

Anne Ozorio

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Garsington-Opera-at-Wormsle.gif
image_description=Garsington Opera Pavilion at night [Photo by Mike Hoban]

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product_title=Garsington Opera’s 25th anniversary unites its past with its future
product_by=A commentary by Anne Ozorio
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Sir Harrison Birtwistle — Yan Tan Tethera: A Mechanical Pastoral

To have two, plus three associated concerts, all at the same venue, is something very special indeed. The Barbican has certainly done the composer proud with its ‘Birtwistle at 80’ series. Would that Britain’s greatest composer since Purcell were regularly so honoured; the contrast with the absurd overkill of last year’s Britten anniversary is instructive. At any rate, Yan Tan Tethera, written in 1983-4, first performed in 1986, and very rarely heard since — might Channel 4 make available its television broadcast? — shone both on its account and for the fuller sense it offered of Birtwistle’s musico-dramatic development.

To a libretto by Tony Harrison — any chance of seeing and hearing their Oresteia, someone? — this may perhaps seem more conventionally a chamber opera than Birtwistle’s earlier music-theatre pieces. And yet, listen more closely, and this tale of North and South, of shepherds counting sheep, of a malevolent piper, becomes more complex. There is a linear story, yes. Alan, the good, northern shepherd, who adheres to the old counting system, ‘yan, tan, tethera, …’ is drawn into the great hill — a precursor to Benjamin’s ‘little hill’? — by the piper and Caleb seems about to triumph, but the tables are turned. A modern, yet timeless, folk-like version of Virgil’s first Eclogue, Alan and Caleb the new Meliboeus and Tityrus, is far, however, from the whole, or perhaps better the only, story. The interaction, and at times apparent lack of it, between Harrison’s words and Birtwistle’s score are at least as much the story.

We are, as it were, in a ‘secret theatre’ once again. The ‘mechanics’ of the ‘mechanical pastoral’ tell of a story perhaps deeper than Virgil, even than Theocritus. Counting itself is both external and internal drama, which repeats, is broken, is reconstructed, yet is never the same. The choral sheep are counted and ultimately they too count. Birtwistle’s division of the ensemble into groups is part of that story, so is the journey towards unison, but, as Paul Griffiths noted in the final line of his helpful programme synopsis: ‘Alan leads his family and flock: Everyone is counting, eventually including Caleb underground, as the musical machinery moves on, now set aright.’ Who knows, however, whether the different perspectives, different pulses, different landscapes, different soundworlds we have passed through, will reassert themselves once again? Interestingly, and tellingly, Birtwistle (quoted in Michael Hall’s book on the composer, likened the structuring of his response to the libretto to that of Stravinsky to Auden. Yan Tan Tethera

… has things I’ve never done before and I’m really quite excited about it. Did you know that it was Stravinsky who divided Auden’s text for The Rake’s Progress into recitatives and arias? Auden wrote his libretto without the divisions. Well, I’m imposing something on Tony Harrison’s libretto. Had I asked Tony to provide it for me, it wouldn’t have worked; the result would be too formal in the wrong sense, too predictable.

As so often with this composer, anything but a Stravinsky epigone — there have been more than enough of those — but rather a true successor, the musical drama has a good deal of inspiration, conscious or otherwise, in his great predecessor. As Jonathan Cross has noted, the very notion of the ‘mechanical pastoral’ is rooted in ‘the imaginary song of a mechanical bird,’ just like Stravinsky’s Nightingale. The opposition between North and South, country and the town that encroaches upon it, above all natural and mechanical, may perhaps prove a further kinship between the two composers.

If at first, then, I was a little disappointed by the necessarily basic nature of John Lloyd Davies’s ‘concert hall staging’, I realised after the event that the concentration necessity had thrown upon the music had very much its own ‘dramatic’ virtues too, enabling me to experience and indeed to conceptualise crucial oppositions in a work I had never heard before. For that, of course, a great deal of praise must be accorded the excellent performances. Baldur Brönnimann’s leadership of the equally fine Britten Sinfonia and Britten Sinfonia Voices was assured and (mechanically) expressive throughout. String glissandi — are they echoes of Tippett perhaps? — embodying, to quote David Beard, ‘both Alan’s subjective expression and the representative pastoral anecdote’ evoke both human acts and, perhaps still more so, that of the landscape, as ever with Birtwistle a potent force indeed. Such was undoubtedly apparent even from this, my first acquaintance with the work. Likewise the distinction between the almost conventionally haunting piper’s melody — still lodged in my memory — and the dramatic mechanisms surrounding it. The scintillating brilliance of the Britten Sinfonia’s response to the score was not the least of the evening’s revelations.

Roderick Williams’s Alan and Omar Ebrahim’s Caleb — extraordinary to think he appeared also in the premiere — led a fine cast, all attentive to words, music, and disjuncture. William’s naïve, northern sincerity — flat vowels and all, though sometimes they came and went — contrasted just as it should with Ebrahim’s ‘southern’ malevolence. Claire Booth offered a typically fine performance as Alan’s wife, Hannah, beautiful of tone, dignified and assured of purpose. Daniel Norman’s Piper or Bad’Un, and four boys from Tiffin School, Kingston, all made their mark very well too. Above all, this was a splendid ensemble performance. Now, may we hope for a fully staged version, in which dramatic oppositions receive some degree of visualisation from an aurally alert director?

Mark Berry

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Cast and production information:

Alan: Roderick Williams; Caleb Raven: Omar Ebrahim; Hannah: Claire Booth; Piper/Bad’Un: Daniel Norman; Jack: Ben Knight; Dick: Benjamin Clegg; Davie: Joe Gooding; Rob: Duncan Tarboton; John Lloyd Davies (director, design, lighting). Britten Sinfonia Voices (director: Eamonn Dougan)/Britten Sinfonia/Baldur Brönnimann (conductor). Barbican Hall, London, Thursday 29 May 2014.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Virgil.gif image_description=Virgil between the muses Clio and Melpomene [Source: Wikipedia] product=yes product_title=Sir Harrison Birtwistle — Yan Tan Tethera: A Mechanical Pastoral product_by=A review by Mark Berry product_id=Above: Virgil between the muses Clio and Melpomene [Source: Wikipedia]

Gerald Finley, Wigmore Hall

Schubert’s seven settings of Ludwig Rellstab, which form the first part of Schwanengesang, frequently evoke the murmuring brooks and whispering breezes so common to the Romantic landscape, and pianist Julius Drake can deftly paint an aural soundscape, the rippling, rustling motifs always even, clear and subtly supporting the voice. But, what was noticeable through this first sequence of songs was how often Drake was the driving force shaping the songs’ narrative and architecture. The baritonal register at times shifted the accompaniment into deep realms, and as the dark bass lines articulated the progressions, at times poised, then pacing forwards with composure, it was as if the pianist’s left hand was sketching the underlying structure while the figurations and melodic interjections and dialogue above coloured in the details of these vignettes of unrequited love.

Above this sure foundation, Finley was relaxed and eloquent in ‘Liebesbotschaft’ (Love’s message) and ‘Frühlings-Sehnsucht’ (Spring longing). He produced intensity within the quietness of the former, rising gently to convey the poet-speaker’s affectionate appeal to the brook to ‘Rausche sie murmelnd/ in süße Ruh’ (Murmur her into sweet repose). Finley was not afraid to delay and emphasise the anxious questions — ‘Wohin?’, ‘Warum?’ — which close each stanza of ‘Frühlings-Sehnsucht’, while Drake ensured that the ceaseless breeze swept up each hesitant pause into the subsequent verse. The minor tonality of the final verse and the singer’s more agitated, earnest tone communicated the poet-speaker’s growing unrest, and Finley’s closing avowal that ‘Nur Du!’ (only you!) could set free the yearning in his heart was earnest and dignified.

‘Ständchen’ (Serenade) was warm and hopeful, although the telling alternations of major and minor were an affecting reminder that the courting singer is denied the vision of his beloved he desires, and Finley’s concluding phrase, ‘Komm’, beglücke mich!’ (Come, make me happy!), suggested his fear that she may not even hear his song. Fear grew to anguish in ‘Aufenthalt’ (Resting place), Drake’s pounding triplet-quavers, with their chromatic harmonic twists, confirming the baritone’s assertion that his grief remains, ever-unchanging. The emphatic diminished chords which open ‘Kriegers Ahnunhg’ (Warrior’s foreboding) were similarly unsettling, and the separate verses of the ballad progressively intensified the soldier’s turmoil, from his dreamy recollections to turbulent intimations of the battle ahead. Finley soared smoothly in the more expansive, arcing lines of the ultimate stanza, and the open tone of his farewell, ‘Gute Nacht!’, resting on the dominant above the final cadence, captured the poignant irony of the tender address.

The highlight of the Rellstab sequence was ‘In der Ferne’ (Far away), Drake’s theatrical prelude and inter-verse commentaries bursting forth, then retreating, creating a sense of high drama. The baritone’s wonderful pianissimo at the bottom of the voice, at the close of the first verse, unnervingly evoked the fleeing fugitive, forsaking family and friends; a shift to the major key, and the firm rocking octaves in the piano left hand, suggested faith that the lover’s message would be carried by the wind home to his beloved, but Drake’s furious ending pitilessly shattered hope, the minor cadence a sustained, brutal cry of denial. The departure in ‘Abschied’ (Farewell) is less melancholic, and Finley brought a warm lyricism to the repeated valedictions, ‘Ade’, while using the minor inflections in the closing verse to convey regret.

The driving excitement of the opening of ‘Der Atlas’ — the first of the Heine settings, which followed the interval — signalled a new tension and economy of expression, the poet’s sparser lines inspiring Schubert, and the performers, to greater intensity. Finley’s power, control and range were much in evidence, in the bitter blast of sorrow that wounds the poet-speaker’s heart and in the hushed pain of his wretchedness. Similarly, while the restrained unison which commences ‘Ihr Bild’ (Her likeness) was bleak and mournful, there was a gentle release as the beloved’s smile was recollected, before Drake mercilessly drove home the poet-speaker’s realisation of loss in the postlude.

‘Das Fischermädchen’ provided some emotional steadiness, before ‘Die Stadt’ (The town) rang with tremulous intensity. Drake’s eerie octave oscillations and upper register interjections created a strange, hallucinatory air which lent a dark hue to the poet-speaker’s view of his home, an unease which burst forth in urgent despair, Finley moving from stark restraint to passionate despair as the sun rose to illuminate ‘jene Stelle,/ Wo ich das Liebste verlor’ (the place where I lost what I loved most). I was impressed not only by the performers’ alertness to Schubert’s pictorial details, but also by their sure sense of scale and structure in ‘Am Meer’ (By the sea), from the chorale-like piano melody which embraced the singer’s voice at start, suggesting the gleaming surface of the sea, to the brooding chords of the conclusion.

Adopting a deathly tempo for ‘Der Doppelgänger’ (The wraith), Drake’s Hadean, circling ground bass, and the repetitive returns of Finley’s declamatory melody possessed the sombre ring of mortality, the baritone imbuing anguish with beauty. The shift to the seemingly lighter-spirited ‘Die Taubenpost’ (Pigeon post) — the last song that Schubert composed — can be difficult to accomplish, but the drifting quality of the question which closes the preceding song, ineffably released some of the tension, while there was no lessening of the sensitivity to textural and harmonic nuance thereby making ‘Die Taubenpost’ a fitting conclusion to an ongoing narrative of yearning: ‘Sie heißt — die Sehnsucht!/ Kennt ihr sie?’ (her name is — Longing! Do you know her?)

Separating Schubert’s two poets was a new work by Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara, which sets Edward FitzGerald’s English translation of Rubáiyát by Omar Khayyám. Rautavaara’s characteristic sound-worlds — by turns mystical, meditative, rhapsodic — are a fitting complement to Khayyám’s lyric quatrains which, rather than delineating a narrative, present the profound feelings and philosophical reflections of the poet on subjects such as religion, love and death.

Originally composed for baritone and orchestra, the composer has prepared a version for piano. He explains in a programme note that each song continues into the subsequent instrumental interlude, which prepares the song to follow (although the songs can be performed separately). In ‘Awake!’, Drake’s rippling harp-like cascades, intimating their orchestral origins, presented a rich Romantic vista of an emergent dawn. The baritone’s broad phrases soared powerfully, the sumptuous dark tone glowing, the text clearly articulated and inflected.

‘And Lately’ was preceded by a thoughtful stillness, the close middle-range lines gradually expanding, exploring harmonic shades and melodic pathways, the hands ever more distant. The Britten-esque vitality of the text setting in this song — Finley’s diction was superb throughout — brought energy and interest. ‘Here with a loaf of bread’ seemed less successful in terms of its rhythmic engagement with the text; and, this brought to attention a recurring ‘weakness’, namely the repetitive nature of the melodic development — perpetually roving stepwise motion, in uniform rhythmic values, which, despite Finley’s sensitivity and lovely sustained, even voice, failed to make a lasting impression. ‘We are no other than a moving row’ introduced more dynamic conflict, in the contrast between the voice’s meandering and the piano’s repeating notes, and the performers built passionately to the song’s climax before a subdued close, underpinned by wavering piano gestures.

The improvisatory piano interlude preceding ‘Oh, make haste!’ gave way to a grander, swinging rhythmic momentum in the opening stanza, reminiscent of the muscularity of some of Vaughan Williams’ songs, before the rippling runs of the opening returned, creating a fervent intensity for the work’s conclusion: ‘The Stars are setting and the Caravan/ Starts for the Dawn of Nothing — Oh, make haste!’

Rautavaara has said that he advises his composition students, “Don't ever try to force your music, because music is very wise and it has its own will. It knows where to go. You have to listen to it, to listen your material which you have chosen. Start with that and then the material will dictate where it wants to go. It's much wiser than you are. Don't push yourself, but try to find out what the music wants to become.” (Interview with Bruce Duffie, http://www.bruceduffie.com/rautavaara.html).

Certainly, this rhapsodic sequence had a roaming, sinuous quality, as if the melodies were searching for their form. Perhaps this is in keeping with the spirit of Khayyám’s philosophy for a rubáiyát is a collection of quatrains which may be re-arranged depending upon one’s interpretation of the poet’s meaning. The result is an appealing work — with diverse timbral and harmonic colours and a vocal melody which soars ardently — but one which is ultimately not very memorable. But, it was, as was this entire programme, performed with generous commitment by Finley and Drake.

Claire Seymour

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Performers and programme:

Gerald Finley, bass-baritone; Julius Drake, piano. Wigmore Hall, London, Saturday 31^st May 2014.

Schubert: Schwanengesang; Einojuhani Rautavaara: Rubáiyát (world première).

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Einojuhani-Rautavaara.gif image_description=Einojuhani Rautavaara [Photo by Heikki Tuuli] product=yes product_title=Gerald Finley, Wigmore Hall product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id=Above: Einojuhani Rautavaara [Photo by Heikki Tuuli]

Dialogues des Carmélites, Royal Opera

A scene from Boublil’s and Schönberg’s Les Misérables? No. The opening moments of Robert Carsen’s much-acclaimed production of Poulenc’s opera of courage, cruelty and redemption.

In need of some insurgent sans culottes, Carsen has (in partnership with an unlikely alliance of Streetwise Opera, Synergy Theatre Project, the Department for Work and Pensions, and the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama) supplemented his already large cast with a 67-strong ‘Community Ensemble’. Comprising those who ‘have experienced homelessness, the criminal justice system and long-term unemployment, as well as those studying drama and theatre in learning and community settings’, this massed crowd convincingly represents an oppressed, insurrectionary populace. Meticulously choreographed by Movement Director Philippe Giraudeau, they form a silent congregation of collective dissatisfaction and unrest — a palpable incarnation of menace and terror.

Dialogues des Carmélites presents a ‘true story’, recorded by a Carmelite nun, Sister Marie of the Incarnation, who survived the French Revolution. Her account of persecution and piety was subsequently presented in various forms by the German novelist, Gertrud von Le Fort and the playwright Georges Bernanos, and also adapted in a scenario by Philippe Agostini and the Rev. Bruckberger — the complex lineage being further knotted by the fact that writer Emmet Lavery had purchased the exclusive rights to Bernanos’ drama, causing Poulenc considerable difficulty when he sought to adapt his own libretto from Bernanos’ play.

Sally Matthews as Blanche

Despite the nonchalant indifference of her father, the Marquis de la Force, the young Blanche de la Force fears the mounting anarchic fervour in Revolutionary Paris; convincing the Carmelite Prioress of her vocation, she takes refuge in a convent but — despite the reputed protection of the Blessed Virgin — it rapidly becomes apparent that the cloistered walls are no safeguard against radical remonstration. The faith of the devout is tested, and the ultimate sacrifice is demanded.

Carsen’s production, designed for Netherlands Opera in 1997, has been widely seen and greatly admired worldwide in the years since; given that Dialogues des Carmélites has not graced the ROH stage since 1983, and that Sir Simon Rattle was scheduled to lead a fine cast of soloists (several of whom had previously performed roles in the 2008 revival at Theater an der Wien), one can understand the excitement and expectation surrounding the arrival of the production in London at last.

In many ways, it lives up to the hype. The minimalist staging is arresting and Carsen offers some powerful directorial gestures which are complemented by Jean Kalman’s expressionistic lighting; the latter provides many ravishing, and fearsome, moments. The soloist excel. And, Rattle clearly knows and loves this score: the brass play with purity and restraint in the chorale-like passages, and Rattle creates an iridescent sound-world in which glistening harps ripple and luscious strings surge in rapture, coloured by silky woodwind slithers, but one which is also ominously punctuated by shuddering, jagged rhythmic bursts of terror and brutality. The percussive slashes of the final march to the scaffold reveal the full unleashed force of the Royal Opera House Orchestra.

Yet, despite Rattle’s care and attention — and Carsen’s imaginative faithfulness to the composer’s reputed preference for stagings which adopt a monastic austerity — there is no getting away from the fact that the score is dominated by an ever-repeating two-bar progression, in various harmonic inversions and timbral colourings, an infinite chain which becomes increasingly more wearisome and which makes it difficult to establish and sustain any driving musico-dramatic direction. Typical of the nature of Poulenc’s idiom is the terrifyingly moving final scene, which is underpinned by a rocking minor third; it is the raw rip of the slicing guillotine which provides the drama, rather than any harmonic conflict.

Emma Bell as Madame Lidoine

One cannot deny that there are moments of musical exhilaration and stunning dramatic frisson — the Father Confessor (Alan Oke) devoutly leading the doomed nuns in a last prayer; Blanche, in fear and hysteria forebodingly dropping the statue of the Infant Christ. When the Revolutionary forces finally confiscate the nuns’ Carmélite habits, there is a gripping encounter between Blanche (Sally Matthews), who has now fled the cloister in dread, and Mother Marie (Sophie Koch), who tries to convince her to return to save her soul. So, there is thus much gripping theatre; but it doesn’t feel like music-drama, and there are some scenes where Poulenc overly draws things out. At times Carsen’s direction emphasises this ‘static’ quality, the crowded tableaux serving like photographs or freeze frames out of which the principals step for momentary, self-contained dramas.

There is, however, still much to relish. Carsen’s production has a stark beauty: the bare stage is adorned with just a chair, some wooden trellises, a white-draped bed. The monochrome simplicity is intermittently lit in chiaroscuro, the gothic silhouettes which loom suddenly upon the black back walls suggesting the terrible menace of the mob beyond. Streaks of light and colour occasionally animate the darkness, communicating mood and meaning. Reserved for the aristocrats, the regal red velvet and heraldic purple silk of the opening scene emphasises the irreconcilable chasm between those within the chateau walls and those on the streets beyond.

Attired pre-Carmélite vows in a sumptuous ivory gown, Sally Matthews visually embodied the ‘Power of innocence’ that her name, Blanche de la Force, implies. And, while she was rather tremulous in the middle range, Matthews produced a bright clarity at the top when Blanche succumbs to her fears. She seemed, however, to lack an innate feeling for Poulenc’s limpid idiom and the soprano’s French diction was poor — although she was certainly not alone among the cast in this regard.

Blanche’s companion and confidante, Sister Constance, was sung with charm and vivacity by Anna Prohaska, capturing all of the independent-minded nun’s eccentricities and vigour. Prohaska brought a beguiling tenderness to the erratic nun’s passionate temperament. As Mother Marie of the Incarnation Sophie Koch was superb, consistently an authoritative musical and theatrical presence; luminous of voice, Koch also has the power to convey the Assistant Prioress’s steely centre and religious intensity, and her absence from the final scene was as moving as the tragic fates which await those who are present.

Emma Bell, as Madame Lidoine, the second Prioress, was also full of voice, and Deborah Polaski offered a deeply committed cameo as the dying Madame de Croissy. This Prioress was certainly not going quietly, raging frantically against death and life — if anything one would have liked even more vocal ugliness to scar the lyrical fervency. Even if one shares the initial reluctance to embrace the spirit of voluntary mass martyrdom felt by Blanche (for personal reasons) and Madame Lidoine (for doctrinal motives), and feels rather removed from the self-abnegations of institutional cloisters and the spirit of Catholic obedience and devotion which might inspire mass martyrdom, this was the visceral stuff of life and death.

Amid the multitude of female voices there were also strong performances by the men, despite the indisposition of Alan Oke — who nevertheless was a dignified Father Confessor — and Yann Beuron, who was replaced as Blanche’s brother, Chevalier de la Force, by Jette Parker Young Artist Luis Gomez in Act 2. Gomez sang with full-throated passion in a striking confrontation between the siblings, as the Chevalier tries to persuade his sister to flee with him to safety. Thomas Allen (Marquis de la Force), Neil Gillespie (the valet Thierry) and John Bernays (the physician Monsieur Javelinot) all made effective, if brief, contributions.

One problem with Poulenc’s libretto is that there is little sense of the nuns as individuals, no information about their lives before they have made their commitment to God: instead, they maintain their ubiquitous — and rather distancing — chant-like serenity to the last. In the shocking final scene, clothed in pure white underdresses, the condemned nuns slowly succumb to guillotine, their outstretched arms an icon of mankind’s ultimate sin and grace. The choric voice gradually diminishes. As the Salve Regina floats heavenwards, we are reminded of Carsen’s opening image: neatly folded habits arrayed decorously across the stage. We now understand that, swathed in silver light, they were a foreshadowing of the redemption and transcendence to come. With this closing intimation of resurrection Carsen offers his final masterstroke.

Claire Seymour

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Cast and production information:

Blanche, Sally Matthews; Constance, Anna Prohaska; Madame Lidoine, Emma Bell; Mère Marie, Sophie Koch; Madame de Croissy, Deborah Polaski; Marquis de la Force, Thomas Allen; Chevalier de la Force, Yann Beuron; Mother Jeanne, Elizabeth Sikora; Sister Mathilde, Catherine Carby; Father Confessor, Alan Oke; First Commissary, David Butt Philip; Second Commissary, Michel de Souza; First Officer, Ashley Riches; Gaoler, Craig Smith; M. Javelinot, John Bernays; Thierry, Neil Gillespie.

Director, Robert Carsen; Conductor, Simon Rattle; Set designs, Michael Levine; Costume designs, Falk Bauer; Lighting design, Jean Kalman; Movement, Philippe Giraudeau; Orchestra of the Royal Opera House; Royal Opera Chorus. Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, Thursday 29^th May 2014.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/PR8A0443_r.gif image_description=Sophie Koch as Mother Marie [Photo © ROH / Stephen Cummiskey] product=yes product_title=Dialogues des Carmélites, Royal Opera product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id= Above: Sophie Koch as Mother Marie

Photos © ROH / Stephen Cummiskey