November 30, 2015
Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg in San Francisco
Verdi looks ahead, Wagner looks back. It is hard to tell if the current production of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnburg on the War Memorial stage looks forward or backward. Happily it is a return to an international production standard, increasingly rare at SFO, with British stage director David McVicar’s 2011 Glyndebourne version of Wagner’s masterpiece.
The conceit of the production seems to be that there are no cuts whatsoever to Wagner’s score. This resulted in an evening of five hours and forty minutes. Knowingly conducted by Mark Elder it did feel somewhat briefer than that, maybe like just about five hours. Still it was a long, very long evening.
This excellent conductor, once the music director of English National Opera, gave a firm, powerful and satisfying traditional hand to the famous overture, a tone that dissolved into a convincing lyricism that prevailed for the duration.
The David McVicar production was all about home-spun tradition, in fact the most moving moments of this lovely, emotional evening were Hans Sach’s admonition to Walther that he respect artistic tradition and Walther’s acquiescence to such respect.
As Wagner intended the philosophical and artistic meat of the opera was the shoemaker Hans Sachs. The real i.e. historical Hans Sachs shoemaker lived to the ripe old Renaissance age of 82, and there are those of us who remember the silver haired Hans Sachs of the four [!] SFO Meistersinger productions between 1959 and 1971. Just now the youthfulness of 43 year-old British baritone James Rutherford — an accomplished artist of wide expressive range — seemed at odds with the gravity we wanted and needed to award Hans Sachs for the first two acts.
The Act III quintet
But with Hans Sachs extended soliloquy that dominates the first scene of the third act we entered into a real and tortured, not yet age-resigned psyche. As Hans Sachs uncovered and contemplated a portrait of his dead wife and child his conflicts gained an apparent philosophical realness that took us to the elusive, profound plane Wagner wished to achieve. This high minded angst then dissolved into the famous quintet, the love triangle (Sachs, Eva and Walther) holding hands with the lesser beings (David and Lene) in a simple, soft lyricism that forsook the musical gravity that should illuminate this magnificent moment and make it magical.
Ain Anger as Pogner, Rachel Willis-Sorensen as Eva, Brandon Jovanovich as Walther, James Rutherford as Sachs
The McVicar production and the Mark Elder orchestra more than anything else worked to demystify Wagnerian thought and to quell Wagnerian rhetoric. Further example were the phenomenal complexities of mid-summer night riot chorus graphically reduced to a few dancers and children cavorting across the front of the stage, and as more example, the phenomenal choral complexities of the mid-summer day celebration graphically defined by three jugglers on stilts — fortunately the solidity of the musical preparation was not compromised by the fragility of the precarious balancing and juggling.
Director David McVicar’s slick stagecraft was always supported by conductor Mark Elder’s direct lyricism. As intended on the stage and from the pit the result was anything but intimidating and this despite the extraordinary length that was so wittily and unnecessarily imposed.
The production discretely toyed with Beckmesser, revealing but not dwelling on the famous anti-semitic polemic inherent to this opera. Here Beckmesser was superbly enacted by German baritone Martin Gantner who towed a very fine line between ridicule and caricature. Distinctly costumed in all-black he somehow evoked our sympathy within the larger warmth of the production. However at the end Beckmesser the Jew was left seated at the extreme edge of the stage, far from and pointedly exiled from the Wagnerian reconciliation of art and love.
San Francisco Opera’s casting perhaps inadvertently supported the home-spun nature of the production as it unfolded on the War Memorial stage. With the exception of the two baritones it was unpretentiously cast. Montana tenor Brandon Jovanovich was a vulnerable Walther whose prize song (“Morgenlich leuchtend im rosigen Schein") was just persuasive enough. Eva was sung by recent Houston Opera Studio graduate Rachel Willis-Sorensen whose tone I found shrill and whose vocal strength was not sufficient to hold together the quintet (not all my friends agree with me). Alek Shrader was vocally miscast though an exquisitely charming David while Sasha Cooke as Magdalene was vocally splendid. German bass Ain Anger as Eva’s father Veit Pogner added a further homey touch, his first act monologue shakily delivered.
It is a very great pleasure to hear San Francisco Opera’s fine orchestra and chorus in service to a fine conductor and a solid production.
Michael Milenski
Casts and production information:
Hans Sachs: James Rutherford; Walther von Stolzing: Brandon Jovanovich; Eva: Rachel Willis-Sorensen; Magdalene: Sasha Cooke; David: Alek Shrader; Sixtus Beckmesser: Martin Gantner; Veit Pogner: Ain Anger; Fritz Kothner: Philip Horst; Kunz Vogelgesang: AJ Glueckert; Balthasar Zorn: Joel Sorensen; Augustin Moser: Corey Bix; Ulrich Eisslinger: Joseph Hu; Konrad Nachtigall: Sam Handley; Hans Schwarz: Anthony Reed; Hermann Ortel: Edward Nelson; A night watchman: Andrea Silvestrelli; Hans Foltz; Matthew Stump; An apprentice: Laurel Porter. Chorus and Orchestra of the San Francisco Opera. Conductor: Sir Mark Elder; Production: Sir David McVicar; Revival Co-Directors: Marie Lambert and Ian Rutherford; Production Designer: Vicki Mortimer; Lighting Designer: Paule Constable; Choreography: Andrew George. War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, November 24, 2016.
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image_description=San Francisco Opera Chorus, Act 1 [Photo by Cory Weaver courtesy of San Francisco Opera]
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product_id=San Francisco Opera Chorus, Act 1 [All photos by Cory Weaver, courtesy of San Francisco Opera]
Le Nozze di Figaro, Manitoba Opera
However, it does make for a terrific night of madcapopera buffa as proven during Manitoba Opera’s 2015/16 season-opener of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro ( The Marriage of Figaro).
Last staged by the 43-year old company in 2006, the four-act opera buffa based on Lorenzo Da Ponte’s Italian libretto is regarded among the top 10 operas performed worldwide. The three-hour plus production directed by MO newcomer Brent Krysa featured the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra led by Tadeusz Biernacki (who also prepared the Manitoba Opera Chorus), as well as a dream team of accomplished Winnipeg-born sopranos.
The first of those is Andriana Chuchman, whose skyrocketing career has already taken her to the Metropolitan Opera house as well as seeing her gracing the stage with fabled Spanish tenor Plácido Domingo during her LA Opera debut this fall. An equally compelling actor who last appeared on the MO stage in 2011, Chuchman crafted a radiant Susanna with her Act III aria “Deh, vieni, non tardar” particularly showcasing her luminous, soaring vocals.
Charismatic local soprano Lara Ciekiewicz continues to prove her gifts as a natural stage chameleon, able to crack viewers up one moment with her razor sharp comic timing before breaking their hearts the next with her soulful performances — such as her MO debut as slave girl Liù in Turandot last April. Her two solos as the Countess Almaviva: “Porgi, Amor,” matched only by her later mesmerizing “Dove sono I bei momenti” did the latter, as she revealed the complex emotional underbelly of her deeply conflicted, all-too-human character.
Canadian bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch likewise dazzled with his swaggering portrayal of the skirt chasing Count who petulantly stomps his feet and wields large axes. His robust vocals, as displayed during his Act III recitative and aria “Hai già vinta la causa! ... Vedrò, mentr'io sospiro,” added brooding gravitas to the comic froth. His truly touching finale “Contessa perdono!” added its own grace note to the entire show.
Kudos to veteran mezzo-soprano Donnalynn Grills, grappling with real-life illness as housekeeper Marcellina. Singing mostly sotto voce, Grills’ strong acting chops helped sell her character for all she’s worth, aided by simpatico sidekicks Dr. Bartolo (baritone Peter McGillivray) and Don Basilio (tenor David Menzies) who valiantly rallied by her side in support.
Canadian bass-baritone Gordon Bintner (MO debut) created a convincing Figaro, including his “Non piu andrai farfollone amoroso” sung with military precision, with his portrayal noticeably growing more confident throughout the performance. He also received the night’s biggest guffaws after leaping into Grills’ waiting lap as his long-lost mother, later tossing off his tongue-twisting “Aprite un po’ quegli occhi” that earned cries of bravo.
Mezzo-soprano Alicia Woynarski (MO debut) created an admirably convincing male persona in the trouser role of page Cherubino, despite suffering minor intonation issues during “Non so piu cosa son.” Her later “Voi che sa pate” fared better, although her lovesick character mooning for women could have gone much further.
A highlight proved to be seeing now Toronto-based colouratura soprano Anne-Marie MacIntosh, a recent graduate from the University of Manitoba’s Desautels Faculty of Music marking her impressive MO debut as Barbarina. This rising star made every minute of her relatively short stage time count, including delivering a riveting “L'ho perduta, me meschina” under a starry night sky.
The stylish, albeit decidedly traditional production included ornate period costumes and effective sets originally created for Pacific Opera Victoria and Calgary Opera. Revolving mirrored door panels spun throughout the production at strategic moments captured designer Bill Williams’ flashing shards of light, adding to the overall, crazy funhouse atmosphere that’s a bit like love itself.
Holly Harris
image=http://www.operatoday.com/_RWT2708.png image_description=Andriana Chuchman as Susanna and Gordon Bintner as Figaro [Photo by R. Tinker] product=yes product_title=Le Nozze di Figaro, Manitoba Opera product_by=A review by Holly Harris product_id=Above: Andriana Chuchman as Susanna and Gordon Bintner as FigaroPhotos by R. Tinker
Arizona Opera Presents Florencia in el Amazonas
Co-commissioned by Houston Grand Opera (HGO), Los Angeles Opera, and Seattle Opera, Florencia premiered on October 25, 1996. Since then, HGO has remounted it and Los Angeles Opera has staged it twice. The Opera de Bellas Artes in México City, as well as Seattle Opera and numerous other U.S. companies have each performed it once.
Daniel Catán composed a melodic score that brings modern tonal music to a fresh group of operagoers who attend the theater for the enjoyment of newly wrought melodies. Part of the inspiration for this story is Magic Realism, a literary style popularized by Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez. The opera’s librettist, Marcela Fuentes-Berain, who studied with Garcia Márquez, imbued her work with elements of the style, which includes the appearance of river spirits and, at the finale, a magnificently colored butterfly. On November 13, 2015, Director Joshua Borths brought Magic Realism to life in the Arizona Opera production designed by Douglas Provost and Peter Nolle.
The lush, neo-Romantic colorations of Catán's orchestration reflect his impressions of the river’s unique sounds. Although his vocal lines recall early Puccini, Catán’s many-layered orchestral sonorities are reminiscent of the complexities heard in music by Richard Strauss, Heitor Villa-Lobos and the French Impressionists. Catán wrote that the greatest of his debts was having learnt that the originality of an opera need not involve the rejection of tradition but the assimilation of it. As a result, he wanted his twenty-first century opera to be a continuation of opera’s melodic tradition. In Phoenix, conductor Joseph Mechavich led a well-constructed and exciting performance of this lush, complex score.
The opera’s title character, Florencia, is a mature singer who returns home to the Amazon after years of success abroad. The music of this dramatic role requires a voice with the spin and polish of youth, however. Although Sandra Lopez was not the quintessential Florencia, she portrayed the role with passion and sang with a strong, resonant voice. Luis Alejandro Orozco was Riolobo, a member of the crew on the ship taking Florencia and several music lovers up the Amazon. Orozco’s charisma and smooth singing introduced the river’s magical world and he told the story with excellent diction. Imbued with the magic of the waters, River Spirits danced Molly Lajoie’s inventive choreography as they appeared and disappeared from its mists.
Susannah Biller was Rosalba, a young woman whose main interest was in documenting Florencia’s biography. Biller’s silvery tones acquired a luminous quality when her character fell in love with the Captain’s nephew, Arcadio, sung by the robust-voiced Andrew Bidlack. His ringing, lyrical tones blended beautifully with the clarity of Biller’s notes. Levi Hernandez and Adriana Zabala portrayed Paula and Alvaro, a couple who had begun to fall out of love. The river worked its magic, however and, as their voices began to blend, they rediscovered the love that had once bound them together. It was the ship’s Captain who led all these passengers on their trip into the life-changing mysteries of the river. Lyric bass baritone Calvin Griffin sang the role with a smooth dark voice as he commanded his beleaguered ship. It was a treat to see this lush, green opera in desert-dry Arizona! I hope Florencia in el Amazonas will make the rounds of many more regional opera companies. I know I would like to see it again in the near future.
Maria Nockin
Cast and production information:
Florencia Grimaldi, Sandra Lopez; Riolobo, Luis Alejandro Orozco; Rosalba, Susannah Biller; Arcadio, Andrew Bidlack; Paula, Adriana Zabala, Alvaro, Levi Hernandez; Capitán, Calvin Griffin; Conductor, Joseph Mechavich; Director, Joseph Borths; Lighting Designer, Douglas Provost; Scenic Designers, Douglas Provost, Peter Nolle; Costume Designer, Adriana Diaz; Chorus Master Henri Venanzi; Choreographer, Molly Lajoie.
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image_description=A scene from Florencia in el Amazonas [Photo by Tim Trumble]
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product_id=Above: A scene from Florencia in el Amazonas [Photo by Tim Trumble]
Viva la Mamma!: A Fun Evening at POP
His librettist, Domenico Gilardoni, adapted the libretto from two plays by Antonio Simone Sografi. In 1827, Donizetti and Gilardoni originally based a one-act farce on Le convenienze teatrali for the Teatro Nuovo in Naples. Revising it for performance at the Teatro alla Cannobiana in Milan in 1831, they expanded the work to two acts by adding recitatives and other material based on Le inconvenienze teatrali.
Not many opera composers have been able to write both comedy and tragedy successfully. Donizetti was one of the few. He embodied his musical jokes in his imitations of music by Rossini, Bellini, and Mozart. His Rossini-inspired passages got faster and louder while his faux Bellini melodies were stretched to almost impossible lengths. Donizetti wrote such convincing music in Mozart’s style that people often wonder which opera he took it from.
Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali, or Viva la Mamma, is supposed to take place in a provincial theater. For the Pacific Opera Project (POP) presentation on November 19, 2015, the intimate table settings of the Highland Park Ebell Club provided the correct sized hall but not the provincial atmosphere. Ebell was the perfect hall for a modern version Donizetti comedy updated by Josh Shaw, POP’s director, scenic designer, and supertitles translator.
As Mamma, baritone Ryan Thorn was the star of the show with far more forceful diva antics than any leading soprano would dare. Thorn had a stentorian baritone voice and a charismatic presence that gave him control of the stage and everyone on it. No mere artist was going to upstage this theatrical “mamma” and from the black and blue marks on her daughter, the audience knew she did not accept defeat often at home. Soprano Amy Lawrence who exhibited strong, well placed high notes was Mamma’s long suffering daughter, Luigia Castragatti, (cat castrator). Perhaps we will hear more of her in the future.
Sung by Katherine Giaquinto, Prima Donna Daria Garbinati sings beautifully, but this character has florid coloratura where her brain should be. When her husband, baritone Don Procolo, sung by Carl King, trys to plead her cause, he only causes more friction. Eventually the Don has to replace the foreign born tenor, Guglielmo Hollerachevogelfänger-Lopez (Revengeofhellbirdcatcher-Lopez) who was portrayed with great enthusiasm by Kyle Patterson.
While Maestro Stephen Karr was actually conducting the orchestra, bass-baritone Scott Levin was playing the part of Conductor Biscroma Strappaviscere (bowel ripper) on stage. Thus two conductors were working within sight of each other. Phil Mayer was a business like Impressario, Eleen Hsu-Wentlandt an amusing Pippetto and Matthew Welch gave a sparkling account of librettist Salsapariglia’s lines. With Viva La Mamma, Pacific Opera Project ended its 2015 season in a blaze of glory.
Maria Nockin
Cast and production information:
Mamma Agata, Ryan Thorn; The Prima donna, Katherine Giaquinto; Biscroma Strappaviscere, Scott Levin; Don Procolo, Carl King; Luigia Castragatti, Amy Lawrence; The Impresario, Phil Mayer; Cesare Salsapariglia, Matthew Welch; Guglielmo Hollerachevogelfänger-Lopez, Kyle Patterson; Pippetto, Eileen Hsu-Wendtland; Conductor, Stephen Karr; Director, Scenic Designer and Supertitles Translator, Josh Shaw; Costume Designer, Maggie Green.
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product_id=Above: Viva la mamma! [Photo courtesy of Pacific Opera Project]
LA Opera Norma: A Feast for the Ears
The Teatro alla Scala in Milan gave the first performance in 1831, on the day after Christmas. The role of Norma was written for Giuditta Pasta who regularly sang leading bel canto roles in London, Paris, Milan and Naples between 1824 and 1837. Besides Norma, Pasta created the title role in Donizetti’s Anna Bolena and Amina in Bellini’s La sonambula. Maria Callas, the most famous bel canto diva of the twentieth century, portrayed Norma in eighty-nine performances with important opera companies around the world.
On Saturday evening, November 21, 2015, Los Angeles Opera premiered Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma in a production by Anne Bogart that was originally seen at the Washington National Opera. It featured a severely raked minimal set by Neil Patel and colorful, luxurious costumes by James Schuette. Like many operas of the bel canto era, Norma is more about singing than acting and LAO assembled an outstanding cast that easily handled Bellini’s difficult music.
Angela Meade was the Druid priestess and dedicated virgin who had secretly borne two children to her Roman lover. Meade sang her music in the grand style of this seminal opera. Despite an occasional shrill high note, her singing grew in authority, confidence and effect as the voice warmed and her “Casta Diva” was emotionally and dramatically eloquent. Although not much action was played out on stage, this Norma always used her vocal resources to express the drama.
Bellini used simple technical methods of instrumentation, together with long melodies bolstered by conventional harmony, to produce the passionate emotional qualities of the score. Casting some of the finest singers performing today, Bogart relied on their ability to act with their voices and she allowed them to put the story of the love triangle across the footlights with their vocal colorations. She showed the Gauls’ dislike of Roman occupation by her treatment of Grant Gershon’s chorus, members of which sang their melodic and rhythmic lines with gusto.
The most beautiful voice in the performance belonged to debutante mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton who sang a creamy-smooth Adalgisa. It’s unfortunate that her character has no aria, but Barton showed her virtuosity in a most exquisite rendering of the duet “Mira o Norma.” Also debuting that night, tenor Russell Thomas was Pollione, the Roman proconsul in Gaul. Because Pollione has betrayed Norma with Adalgisa it is an ungrateful part, but Thomas sang it with a powerful dark voice that he used in fine bel canto style. Morris Robinson’s Oroveso commanded the stage and provided all the breadth, dignity and ocean-deep sonority that Bellini's music demanded.
Two members of the Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program sang the parts of Flavio and Clotilde. Rafael Moras and Lacey Jo Benter showed great promise and proved they can hold the stage with the best singers of our age. Choreographer Barney O’Hanlon’s dancers reminded us that the piece takes place in a Druid stronghold and they added to its religious aspect. James Conlon’s masterly conducting grounded and emphasized the beauty of the singing. His translucent interpretation reminded listeners of the numerous simple but original strokes of genius to be found in Bellini's instrumentation. Sometimes opera is great theater, at other times it is simply incredible singing. Los Angeles Opera’s Norma was a feast for the ears.
Maria Nockin
Cast and production information:
Conductor, James Conlon; Director, Anne Bogart; Set Designer, Neil Patel; Costume Designer, James Schuette; Lighting Designer, Duane Schuler; Chorus Director, Grant Gershon; Choreographer, Barney O’Hanlon; Oroveso, Morris Robinson; Pollione, Russell Thomas; Flavio, Rafael Moras; Norma, Angela Meade; Adalgisa, Jamie Barton; Clotilde, Lacey Jo Benter.
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image_description=Jamie Barton as Adalgisa in LA Opera's 2015 production of "Norma." (Photo: Ken Howard)
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product_id=Above: Jamie Barton as Adalgisa [Photo by Ken Howard]
Alban Berg’s Wozzeck at Lyric Opera of Chicago
Just such an effort is part of the current season at Lyric Opera of Chicago as led by its music director Sir Andrew Davis and in a production designed by Sir David McVicar. The roles of Wozzeck and Marie are performed by Tomasz Konieczny and Angela Denoke, both making significant debuts in this house. Gerhard Siegel and Brindley Sherratt sing the Captain and the Doctor, roles of authority in Wozzeck’s tormented life. Andres, friend of Wozzeck, and Margret, the neighbor of Marie, are portrayed by David Portillo and Jill Grove; Stefan Vinke is cast as the Drum Major. The roles of the apprentices are taken by Bradley Smoak and Anthony Clark Evans, a Soldier by Alec Carlson, and the Fool by Brenton Ryan. Messrs. Siegel, Vinke, Carlson, and Ryan are singing in their house debuts. Vicki Mortimer and Paule Constable are the Set and Costume as well as the Lighting Designers in this new production. Michael Black has prepared the Chorus and Josephine Lee the Children’s Chorus.
Angela Denoke and Zachary Uzarraga
Before the start of the first scene a raised platform bearing the memorial likeness of a soldier is visible above the central back part of the stage. An outstretched arm protrudes here from a prostrate figure, just as a sword and helmet are perched atop. This image bears directly on Wozzeck’s lowly position within the military and also reflects McVicar’s dating of the action during a period showing the effects of the First World War. Scenic divisions within each of the three acts are ingeniously marked by a white half-curtain, manipulated to open or close rapidly from behind by stage hands. As the curtain is withdrawn to reveal the first scene with a focus on Wozzeck and his Captain, Siegel cries out with high pitches on the “Ewigkeit” [“eternity”] which he fears will intrude on his mundane existence. Konieczny’s Wozzeck proceeds to shave the Captain while responding in steady, deep tones of respect, “Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann.” [“Yes indeed, Captain”]. Yet this acquiescence soon shifts to reveal an underlying resentful tension. When the Captain chides Wozzeck for acting immorally by fathering an illegitimate child, the responding vocal line and its delivery changes. Low pitches by Konieczny on “Lasset die Kleinen zu mir kommen” [“Suffer the little children to come unto Me”] have a more ominous ring; Wozzeck’s attempts to defend himself before the Captain, “Wir arme Leut’!” [“We poor folk!”] show still the controlled resentment of societal oppression. Konieczky’s remarkably attentive delivery highlights “Tugend/tugendsam” [“Virtue/virtuous”], aspects of moral behavior which his standing is not privileged to enjoy. The statement by this Wozzeck concludes with an extended and onomatopoetic emphasis on “donnern” in the phrase, “Wenn wir in den Himmel kämen, so müßten wir donnern helfen” [“If we arrived in heaven, we would have to help produce thunder”]. Once the half-curtain is pulled across this scene, as though affecting a shutter in an early film, the orchestral postlude, with its emphases here on brass and percussion, underlines the confrontational repression just related. A subsequent opening of the half-curtain reveals in the second scene Wozzeck and his friend/fellow-soldier Andres cutting and gathering sticks on a field at some distance from the village or barracks. It is in this scene that Wozzeck first appears as one possessed in contrast to the simplistic nature of Andres singing a folk-tune. Indeed the musical title given by Berg to this scene, “Rhapsodie,” emphasizes the growing, unavoidable gap between Wozzeck and his intimates. While Mr. Portillo’s Andres sings liltingly the traditional “Das ist die schöne Jägerei” [“A hunter bold I’d like to be”] and encourages Wozzeck “Sing lieber mit” [“Just sing along”] to forget his visions, the latter accelerate throughout the scene. Just as the mushrooms “nachwachsen” [“are growing”] with a pitch expressing horror before their spread, Konieczny stamps and sings “es wandert was mit uns da unten!” [“There’s something following us down there”] with deepened color. The “rhapsody” concludes with a simply delivered comment on nature’s sudden silence, “als wäre die Welt tot” [“as though the world were dead”].
The following scene introduces Marie and her child by Wozzeck, a segment again defined by Berg with musical types, “Militärmarsch” and “Wiegenlied” [“Lullaby”]. Ms. Denoke’s Marie defines the character as both protective mother and sensual woman in a convincing summation. Her fascination with the passing military band led by the Drum Major prompts her to sing unabashedly, “Soldaten sind schöne Burschen!” [“Soldiers are handsome fellows!”] with a melting tone of expectation. After her verbal confrontation with the neighbor Margret, replete with mutual accusations, Marie adapts her voice to the lullaby. Here Denoke produces one of the most striking images of this production. The lyrical transformation of her character, with soft, high pitches on “Sing ich die ganze Nacht” [“Though I sing the night through”] is accompanied by her tender gesture of a cradling embrace as she lies down with the child. Her sense of temporary peace is interrupted by Wozzeck, who comes to tell her that he is on the track of his visions, yet they are still “finster” [“dark”]. When he refuses to stay and spend time with the child, Marie concludes resignedly “Er schnappt noch über mit den Gedanken!” [“He’s going crazy with his ideas!”]. In an echo of Konieczny’s earlier soliloquy, Denoke declares “Wir arme Leut’” [“We poor folk”] while she releases a chilling, low pitch on “Es schauert mich …” [“It makes me shiver in fear …”].
In the following scene with the Doctor the medical assistants place Wozzeck in a chair behind a giant magnifying glass, so that his enlarged image is displayed for the audience’s speculation. Mr. Sherratt expresses the Doctor’s irritation and self-important pronouncements on Wozzeck as a test-case with emphases on high pitches and sibilants in “ärgern” and “ungesund.” When Wozzeck asks about the formations of mushrooms he has observed, the Doctor identifies triumphantly “eine köstliche aberratio mentalis partialis” [“a splendid aberratio mentalis partialis”] in his patient’s psyche. Wozzeck is assured now of an additional “Groschen” in pay because of his cooperation; as a consequence, his attention migrates to Marie whom he hopes to support and whose name Konieczny repeats in hushed introspection. In the final brief scene of the act, marked “Andante affettuoso,” Marie’s liaison with the Drum Major begins the ultimate challenge in Wozzeck’s humiliation. Despite the lyrical emphases in Denoke’s protest, “Rühr’ mich nicht an!” [“Don’t touch me!”], Marie leads the Drum Major behind the half-curtain into her dwelling. With true resignation Denoke declares, “Meinetwegen, es ist alles eins!” [“Oh, what difference does it make to me!”]; their physical union is seen as two shadow-figures behind the curtain.
The five scenes of Act Two, described by Berg as a “Symphony in Five Movements,” intensify Wozzeck’s interaction with the characters introduced in Act One. As though a continuation of the preceding act, Marie sits here in the first scene with the child at her feet. As she admires the gift of earrings from the Drum Major, Marie encourages he boy to sleep and leave her to her reveries as one of the beautiful “Madamen.” Denoke’s frustrated demeanor with her child indicates her character’s slide into self-interest, indeed magnified by a defensive pose at Wozzeck’s reappearance. Now it is Wozzeck who shows concern for the boy as he watches the child sweat in his sleep. After surrendering his meager pay, Wozzeck departs. Denoke’s heartfelt lament, “Ich bin doch ein schlecht’ Mensch! Ich könnt mich erstechen!” [“I’m a horrible person! I could stab myself to death!”], replete with self-recrimination, is a soul-wrenching premonition of the dramatic progression to the end. As the Doctor and Captain dispute in a subsequent scene, Wozzeck appears and is led by their insinuations to the full realization of Marie’s actions. His confrontation with Marie illustrates now the violence to which personal and societal pressure have driven him. In response to Marie’s “Was hast, Franz?” [“What’s the matter, Franz?”], delivered by Denoke with a full reserve of mock innocence, Konieczny’s surly accusations nearly lead him to strike her. Marie’s declaration, that she should prefer to be stabbed, reveals both to Wozzeck and to the audience a possible end to the tension. The following scene at a public house merely strengthens Wozzeck’s resolve, when he sees Marie dancing with the Drum Major. Denoke’s cries of “Immer zu!” [“On and on!”] suggest complete abandon and the likely transfer of her emotions. The climax of this triangle occurs in the barracks at the return of the Drum Major and his challenge of Wozzeck. After their struggle and Wozzeck’s defeat, the other soldiers present watch, yet each returns to sleep. Konieczny’s intonation of “Einer nach dem Andern!” [“One after the other!”] indicates Wozzeck’s resignation at being left - simply - alone.
At the start of Act Three Marie reads the Biblical passage of the woman taken in adultery. Denoke’s clear, high pitches on “Herr Gott” are followed by corresponding low pitches of self-disgust. She clutches the child now, as in Act One, in her attempt to rebuild an emotional web which has become shattered. The interweaving of Biblical lines with a folk-song on an orphaned child are here especially touching in performance. Wozzeck comes to take Marie for a final walk. As the stage rear turns red, he stabs her. When Wozzeck returns to the public house to participate in a dance, Konieczny seems, for the moment, carefree. He drinks, carouses, and dances with gusto in his facial expressions. As soon as blood is noticed on his person, Wozzeck realizes he must return to the scene of Marie’s murder and hide the knife. The sense of guilt now washes over him, as the water into which he casts the knife seems to be blood; he wanders further and drowns. Marie’s earlier premonition of an orphaned child is realized in the final scene. Her son sings “Hopp hopp” while he rides his hobby-horse, at first in the company of other children, and then alone on the stage. The melodic line ends abruptly, just as life has ended for Marie and Wozzeck. Lyric Opera of Chicago has met the challenge of Berg’s score in a riveting production that will long be remembered.
Salvatore Calomino
image=http://www.operatoday.com/Gerhard%20Siegel_Tomasz%20Konieczny_WOZZECK_F2A5470_c.Cory%20Weaver.png
image_description=Gerhard Siegel and Tomasz Konieczny [Photo by Cory Weaver]
product=yes
product_title=Alban Berg’s Wozzeck at Lyric Opera of Chicago
product_by=A review by Salvatore Calomino
product_id=Above: Gerhard Siegel and Tomasz Konieczny
Photos by Cory Weaver
A Prize-Winning Rediscovery from 1840s Paris (and 1830s Egypt)
Over the past few decades, it has been brought back to the concert hall—and introduced to the recording studio—by prominent and adventuresome conductors. The recording reviewed below is only the second that the complete work has ever received. On 18 November 2015, it was awarded the Grand Prix du Disque from the Académie Charles Cros, in the category “Redécouverte du répertoire” (that is: for rediscovering an important work from the past).
I wrote a mostly glowing review of this recording for American Record Guide (July/August 2015). It is reprinted below (with kind permission of ARG), lightly expanded and updated.
* * *
Félicien David (1810-76) was one of the most admired French composers of his day. He was particularly known for his songs and for Le désert. The latter, a fascinating 49-minute-long work for voices and orchestra, is performed (twice!) on the CD set here reviewed.
In the past three decades, a number of David’s works have received first recordings, including all his piano trios and string quartets, his brass nonet, and some of his twenty-four one-movement pieces for string quintet (with double-bass). Within the past year, two separate discs have surveyed his songs. A recent 2-CD set (on Naxos) makes a strong case for David’s imaginative comic opera Lalla-Roukh, whose plot unfurls in northern India and Uzbekistan.
A recording of his only grand opera, Herculanum (just released by Ediciones Singulares) features major singers, including Véronique Gens and Karine Deshayes. (The first stage production of Herculanum in nearly a century and a half will occur at Wexford Festival Opera, in Ireland, during October-November 2016.) Forthcoming are yet more first recordings, including Christophe Colomb, a work that reenacts and celebrates Columbus’s first voyage to America. Most of these recordings (including the present one) were made possible to a large extent by the scholarly efforts—and with the financial assistance—of the Centre de musique romantique française (located at the Palazetto Bru Zane, in Venice), which is directed by the astute and indefatigable musicologist Alexandre Dratwicki.
The various recordings mentioned above, like the live performances upon which some of them were based, have been greeted with delight by listeners and reviewers. Maybe I should say “with surprised delight.” Most of us tend to assume that, if music that was composed 170 years ago has gone unrecorded until now, the composer must be at fault. But Félicien David’s strong melodies, imaginative instrumental writing, and often endearingly innocent tone are helping to make his compositions welcome again.
Le désert and the aforementioned Christophe Colomb are works in a genre that David invented: the ode-symphonie. An ode-symphonie consists of a series of symphonic movements and vocal numbers, all linked by a narration in spoken verse. It was intended to be performed “in concert” (that is: without costumes, sets, or on-stage action). We might describe an ode-symphonie as a secular oratorio but with poetic spoken recitations added.
At its premiere in Paris (December 1844), Le désert was hailed as a masterpiece by Berlioz and other critics. Berlioz soon conducted Le désert himself, and the work went on to be performed and published (often in translation) across Europe and in the United States. Though the genre was short-lived, late echoes of it are perhaps found in such well-known works with narrator (in French: récitant) as Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex and Honegger’s Le roi David.
Le désert describes the progress of a caravan in an unidentified Arabic-speaking land. In part 1 of the work, the endless sands are pictured in slow string chords, the travelers sing their joy at being out under the open sky, but then are hit by a blinding sandstorm. In part 2, they pitch their tents for the night and entertain themselves and each other with love songs and with another choral declaration of freedom from urban constraints.
Two orchestral movements within Part II require a bit of explanation. The first, an energetic and emphatic movement entitled “Fantasia arabe,” presumably represents a shooting competition by men on horseback. (During the nineteenth century, this sort of equestrian event was widely known in Arabic-speaking lands as a fantasia.) The second, entitled “Danse des almées,” presumably encourages the listener to imagine the supple movements of some dancing women. (No females, by the way, sing in Le désert: the chorus is all-male.) The work’s third and final section begins with an orchestral evocation of a sunrise; a muezzin then calls the faithful to worship; and, finally, the travelers resume their journey across the trackless dunes.
David had spent the years 1833-35 in Egypt and other nearby lands. Le désert makes use of some general impressions that he had brought back with him to France and also incorporates specific tunes and dance rhythms (notably in one of the tenor solos in Part 2, entitled “Rêverie du soir,” and in the aforementioned “Fantasia arabe”) that he had transcribed while living and traveling in the region.
Le désert went largely unperformed from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth. One exception: a wonderful early twentieth-century recording exists of David’s version of the muezzin call, sung—in Arabic, as the score prescribes—by Eugène de Creus. (The long-held chords, originally in the strings, were here arranged for a mixed ensemble that the acoustic microphone could capture better.) Since the 1960s, David’s Le désert has been revived in performance at least five times that I know of. One of those performances—in Berlin, 1989—got recorded by Capriccio and is still available on that label. It can also be heard in its entirety on YouTube.
The recording here reviewed was made in May 2014 at a performance in Paris (at the Cité de la Musique), with some inserts from a one-hour touch-up recording session. (Major excerpts from it can be heard on YouTube, but the complete performance is only available as a commercial CD or download.) The performance, beautifully recorded, proves once again that the work’s wildfire success during the nineteenth century was no aberration: the music is full of novelty (considering its date: 1844) and has a satisfying shape, thanks to the composer but also to Auguste Colin, the skillful author of the spoken and sung verses.
The performance is mostly enchanting. Conductor Laurence Equilbey chooses appropriate tempos and encourages the chorus and orchestra to phrase more sensitively than their counterparts did in the 1989 Capriccio recording. I enjoyed various subtle shifts of tempo, some unwritten crescendos and decrescendos, and a few slight adjustments of rhythm to create a more overtly “Middle Eastern” effect. The superb male chorus is from Accentus, a choral ensemble of which Equilbey is music director and with which she has made numerous recordings. The wind solos are exquisitely turned.
Of the three solo vocal numbers, the longest two, “Hymne à la nuit” and “Rêverie du soir,” are sung by tenor Cyrille Dubois. Dubois’s vocal technique is typically French, he clearly understands every word he is singing, he keeps the vibrato under exquisite control, and he can file the voice down to a near-whisper while keeping the breath supported. (In the 1989 recording—the one that is on YouTube, complete—the Italian tenor sings all three numbers, healthily but with little nuance.) The third solo, a short but crucial “Chant du muezzin,” is here performed—over the aforementioned long-held string chords—by American tenor Zachary Wilder, who stepped in on short notice when the singer originally hired had to cancel. Wilder performs this muezzin call (using—like de Creus in the century-old recording mentioned above—the Arabic words) with alert rhythmic sense and clear coloratura. Wilder has been widely admired for his early-music performances under such conductors as William Christie and Christophe Rousset. His sweet, flexible voice adapts perfectly to this very different purpose. (Full disclosure: he was a student in an undergraduate music-history class that I taught at the Eastman School a decade or so ago. But I can take no credit for his remarkable artistry.)
I said the new CD set is “mostly enchanting.” The one slight disappointment, for me, is the spoken narration. Winling speaks gently, in a private, reflective voice that would surely not carry without a microphone, whereas the narrator in the 1989 Berlin performance used a fuller dynamic range. The majesty and terror of nature—repeatedly invoked by the chorus and orchestra—are better matched by a narrator declaiming with full breath. Winling’s quiet understatement makes him sound emotionally distant from the events he is describing, or regretful, or even pained.
The conductor and record label have decided to offer the work twice, for the price of a single CD: one disk has the performance without narration, the other with it. Anybody who dislikes Winling’s untheatrical manner—or who prefers not to have to listen to speech between musical numbers and “over” purely orchestral passages—can simply use the other disk, containing the un-narrated version. There is, to my know ledge, no historical precedent for performing Le désert without its spoken verses. I was prepared to hate the result but found that the music held up well on its own. I suspect that Equilbey may have here paved the way for future performances of Le désert without strophes déclamées, just as orchestras generally perform Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra without its original pedagogical chatter and sometimes even offer Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf minus the storyteller.
The importance of Le désert has been recognized by noted music historians, including Richard Taruskin ( Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 3, pp. 386-92) and Robert Laudon (in his path-breaking book The Dramatic Symphony, published in 2012 by Pendragon). Its influence is undeniable: not just on French composers, such as Bizet, Delibes, and Massenet, but also on Verdi (the opening of Attila; the ballet music he added for the Paris production of Otello), Grieg (“Morning Mood,” from Peer Gynt), and Borodin ( In the Steppes of Central Asia). Even apart from its historical importance, David’s appealing work rewards close listening and study. The full score is scheduled to be reprinted soon by Musikproduktion Jürgen Höflich (Munich). The piano-vocal score can still be found in music libraries around the world. Who knows?—some enterprising choral conductor may soon be bringing the work to a concert hall near you.
One final grumble: the booklet’s (uncredited) translation of the poetic texts could have been a bit more precise. “Une amante” is not just any “lover” but a female one. “Les solitudes profondes” is bizarrely translated as “my vast wastes” (without any indication of who “my” might refer to); the phrase actually means something like “the endless empty spaces [all around our caravan].” And, to the four helpful footnotes, a fifth could have been added, indicating that the phrase “mon bien-aimé”—though masculine—refers most likely to a female beloved. The French phrase here was presumably Auguste Colin’s attempt at reflecting a centuries-old tradition, in Arabic and Ottoman poetry alike, by which a poet used a masculine-gender word to protect the identity of the woman whom he was praising and also to protect himself from accusations of expending too much time and attention on affairs of the heart instead of on such manly pursuits as religious devotion, scholarly study, productive labor, or patriotic soldiering. Recent scholars—such as Walter G. Andrews, in the richly documented book Ottoman Poetry, pp. 14-16—do allow that, at least in certain poems, the term “beloved” did refer to a man (perhaps a younger one than the poet). Still, there is no evidence in writings about Le désert, whether by David or by Berlioz or other contemporaries who wrote about the work, that a homoerotic subtext was in any way intended—or even noticed as possible—in this particular tenor solo.
Ralph P. Locke
Ralph Locke is Professor Emeritus of Musicology at the Eastman School of Music. His most recent books are Musical Exoticism: Images and Reflections and Music and the Exotic from the Renaissance to Mozart . He is also the founding editor of Eastman Studies in Music, a book series published by University of Rochester Press.
image=http://www.operatoday.com/006063.png image_description=Felicien David: Le Desert (Naïve V5405) product=yes product_title=Félicien David: Le désert, “ode-symphonie.” product_by=Cyrille Dubois and Zachary Wilder, tenors; Jean-Marie Winling, speaker; Accentus [choral group], Orchestre de chambre de Paris/Laurence Equilbey. product_id=Naïve V5405 [2CDs] price=$17.99 product_url=http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=1735617November 29, 2015
Florilegium at Wigmore Hall
The work of these three composers may be less familiar to listeners, but Florilegium revealed the musical sophistication — under the increasing influence of the Italian style — and emotional range of this music which was composed during the second half of the seventeenth century.
Franz Tunder was born in Lübeck, a town whose most well-known musical inhabitant is probably Tunder’s son-in-law, Dietrich Buxtehude. Buxtehude succeeded Tunder as organist of St. Mary’s Church where he developed the renowned free concerts, ‘Abendmusiken’, which his father-in-law had founded and which continued for several hundred years. Few compositions by Franz Tunder have survived: just fourteen works for organ and seventeen vocal works, plus an instrumental sinfonia to a motet. It is thought that the vocal compositions were not intended for performance in church — as such works had no place in the liturgy followed at Lübeck — and were instead composed for the evening concerts at St. Mary’s. They are evenly divided between works with German texts and those that set Latin devotional texts, and it was two of the latter that we heard here.
The motets ‘Da mihi, Domine’ (Give me wisdom, Lord) and ‘O Jesu dulcissime’ (O sweet Jesus) might in fact be termed ‘sacred concertos’, formed as they are of short movements for voice and obbligato instruments. The text of ‘Da mihi Domine’ consists of two responds for matins, the first recalling verses from Chapter 9 of the Book of Wisdom, and the second ‘Ne derelinquas me’ (Do not forsake me) bearing similarities to verses 1 and 3 of Ecclesiasticus Chapter 23. There was a gentle intimacy about this performance by Roderick Williams and six members of Florilegium (Catherine Martin and Jean Paterson [violin], Ylvali Zilliacus [viola], Reiko Ichise [viola da gamba], Jennifer Morsches [cello] and Terence Charlston [chamber organ]), but also a convincing progression through the short movements and increasing sense of urgency and triumph.
There is an Italian influence evident in Tunder’s work: the late German composer, singer and music theorist, Johann Mattheson, reported in 1740 that Tunder had studied with Frescobaldi when he was in Florence from 1627 to 1630. In the opening Sinfonia the instrumental lines entwined like voices in a Monteverdi madrigal. Though marked ‘Adagio’, the movement had a flowing two- then three-beats-per-bar impetus which made Tunder’s unusual use of rests effective, the silences never staying the momentum of the phrases. The first vocal passage, with organ accompaniment, lay quite low for Williams but the tone was full and focused, and as the phrases rose and become more florid the baritone imbued the melismatic appeals to the Lord, and the large vocal leaps, with grandeur and nobility. Imitative rhythms between the voice and organ bass line created propulsion, and this section led fluently into the more dance-like triple time section which follows. After the commanding pronouncement of the imperative ‘Mitte, mitte’, Williams displayed impressive control in the movement’s long vocal lines, the rising scalic motifs transferring seamlessly between the strings and voice. Similarly, there was rhetorical power during the section which sets the second text, as Williams repeated his calls to the ‘father and ruler of my life’, ‘domine pater’; and vitality was injected by the dotted rhythms of the alternating interpolations of the strings and voice, an interplay which became increasingly complex — and saw the return of the expressive rests of the opening — in the concluding sections of the motet.
‘O Jesu dulcissime’ is scored for bass voice, two violins, and continuo — the latter provided here by organ and viola da gamba. In the brisk Sinfonia, the close thirds of the violins were plangent and swelled expressively; after Williams’ solo entry his vocal line was embraced by the string lines and subsumed into the continuity of the ongoing step-wise phrases. While there were moments when the violins almost over-powered the vocal line, with the phrase ‘Quod per sacramentum tuum’ (What is your secret), the melody became more decorative, allowing Williams’ baritone to bloom, exhibiting precision and evenness during the melismatic runs. After the ‘mystery’ of the earlier sections, the fluid passagework created a spirit of ecstatic joy which flourished in the buoyant ‘Amen’ which concludes the work.
Bohemian-born Heinrich Biber spent most of his life in Salzburg where he was recognized as one of the finest violinists of his generation; as a composer, he is best known for his series of dazzling, virtuosic violin sonatas, titled the ‘Mystery’ or ‘Rosary’ sonatas. But, Biber also wrote ‘programme’ music, including the ‘Night Watchman’ Serenade for five instruments and bass voice, so-called because its fifth movement, Ciacona (which follows four instrumental movements, Serenada, Adagio, Allamanda and Aria). In this Ciacona, a ‘Night Watchman’ enters, to the pizzicato accompaniment of the upper strings whose players mimic lutenists by placing their instruments under their arms. As the watchman creeps through the streets he recites his nocturnal cry: ‘Lost ihr Herr’n und last euch sag’n’ (Listen folk and mark the hour,/ The bell strikes nine (ten) within the tower,/ All’s safe and all’s well,/ And praise to God the Father and to Our Lady).
There was some vigorous rhythmic articulation and exaggerated dynamic contrasts in the opening Serenada, while the Adagio was richer and warmer in tone; the cadences of the Allamanda were attractively decorated by organist Terence Charlston, whose chromatic bass line was relaxed and created an easy flow. Williams entered the platform from the stage-right rear door, effected a slow circumambulation of the stage, before exiting left; the textual enunciation of this night-time messenger was aptly crisp and the tone clarion. Strong accents restored rhythmic vitality during the Gavotte, and were complemented by fast bow strokes and rapid trills in the Retirada.
The vocal items were interspersed with instrumental works. The concert opened with Buxtehude’s Sonata in C BuxWV266 (for 2 violins, viola da gamba and organ) in which the somewhat reedy timbre of the Adagio was supersede by a brightness and lucidity in the Allegro. Leader Catherine Martin was unflustered by the bravura passagework of the Adagio and the ceaseless triplets of the Presto, and the ensemble made expressive use of the passages in the minor tonalities, shifts of tempo and changes of texture culminating in the solid harmonic progressions of the final Lento. Flautist and Florilegium director Ashley Solomon joined the instrumentalists to perform J.S. Bach’s Trio Sonata in G Minor BWV 1038 and Georg Philipp Telemann’s Concert in D TWV51: D2, his wooden flute adding a warm glow to the ensemble’s colour, as Charlston’s harpsichord gave freshness and light. The withdrawn pathos and veiled melancholy of the Adagio of Bach’s Sonata was particularly touching, and the phrases and cadences were beautifully tapered.
If these works demonstrated the increasing sophistication of the Austro-German Baroque style, and also the link between the early Baroque style and the later Baroque composers such as J.S. Bach, the concluding performance of Bach’s solo cantata ‘Ich habe genug’ left no doubt that Bach’s works were the crowning pinnacle.
From the start Williams, performing from memory, established a devotional mood, one of stillness, intimacy and consolation, spinning wonderfully long lines with superb breath control as he sang of contempt for worldly life and a yearning for death and the life beyond. In the first Aria, Alexandra Bellamy’s oboe sang assuredly and lyrically; the string lines were smoothly articulated, carrying the oboe on its ornamented journey. And while the instrumental dissonances were never exaggerated, the chromaticisms and decorations spoke of the pain suffered in the world, while Williams’ vocal line conveyed noble forbearance, as he used the consonant ‘h’ expressively in the eponymous utterance, ‘Ich habe genug’, (It is enough) to complement the violins’ melodic mordant. The tempo was relaxed but controlled; indeed, the whole cantata possessed an intensity which was never mannered but suggested fervent introspection. The Recitativo was muscular but relaxed, the penultimate textual line, ‘Mit Freuden sagt ich’ (With joy I say to you), powerful and direct, particularly after the gentle yearning of the first Aria. Williams ‘crept’ into the subsequent Aria, ‘Schlummert ein. Ihr matten Augen’ (Close in sleep, you weary eyes), and the lyricism of the vocal line in this section was greatly affecting; a more forthright tone, however, was appropriate for the assertion, ‘Welt, ich bleibe nicht mehr hier’ (World, I shall dwell no longer here) — such sensitivity to the text and its meaning was impressive throughout. The flowing semiquavers of the final Vivace Aria, ‘Ich freue mich auf meinen Tod’ (I look forward to my death), were a graceful stream, elegant and clear — and, paradoxically, life-affirming.
Claire Seymour
Performers and programme:
Florilegium: Ashley Solomon, director. Roderick Williams, baritone
Buxtehude: Sonata in C BuxWV266; Tunder: ‘Da mihi Domine’; Biber Serenada a 5 “Der Nachtwächter”; Tunder:’ O Jesu dulcissime’; J.S. Bach: Trio Sonata in G major BWV1038; Teleman: Concerto in D for flute, violin and strings TWV51:D2; J.S. Bach: ‘Ich habe genug’ BWV82. Wigmore Hall, London, Wednesday, 25th November 2015.
image=http://www.operatoday.com/Roderick-Williams.png image_description=Roderick Williams product=yes product_title=Florilegium at Wigmore Hall product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id=Above: Roderick WilliamsLeoncavallo’s Zazà by Opera Rara
Ruggero Leoncavallo’s eponymous opera lives by its heroine. Tackling this exhausting, and perilous, role at the Barbican Hall, Argentinian soprano Ermonela Jaho gave an absolutely fabulous performance, her range, warmth and total commitment ensuring that the hooker’s heart of gold shone winningly.
This concert performance of Leoncavallo’s Zazà by Opera Rara with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, saw the company make its maiden venture into verismo waters. Written in 1900, eight years after I Pagliacci, and first performed at the Teatro Lirico di Milano conducted by Toscanini, Zazà was initially a huge popular success. In the 20 years following its première, the opera received over 50 new productions in opera houses around the world and the title role became a show-case for a number of prima donnas, including Rosina Storchio (who created the role), Emma Carelli and Geraldine Farrar. The latter even selected it for her farewell performance at the Metropolitan Opera in 1922.
At the time of the premiere of Zazà, things must have looked auspicious for Leoncavallo. His career seemed to be on a roll: the acclaim received by his two previous operas, I Pagliacci (1892) and La Bohème (1897), suggested he was enjoying a golden streak. Now, though, Zazà — along with the almost all of Leoncavallo’s twenty or so operas and operettas — has fallen out of the repertoire. Pagliacci alone assures the longevity of the composer’s name, and even that opera rarely stands alone but is ‘coupled’, as ‘Pag’ to Mascagni’s ‘Cav’.
The libretto of Zazà is based upon a highly successful play by Pierre Breton and Charles Simon, written in 1898 for the flamboyant actress, Gabrielle Rejane. The action takes place in contemporary Saint-Étienne and Paris, and takes us back-stage at a seedy music-hall where we follow the emotional breakdown of the chanteuse Zazà when she discovers that the man whom she loves is already married.
The tale is predictably tawdry and trashy but it has a surprising, if somewhat syrupy, ending. The fêted cabaret star Zazà wins a bet with the journalist Bussy that she can seduce one of the frequent visitors to the theatre, Milio Dufresne — an international businessman on the prowl for a casual fling — even though he seems indifferent to her charms. Zazà’s fellow singer Cascart, smitten and rejected by the diva, reveals to the now infatuated Zazà that Milio is having an affair. Cascart and Anaide, the singer’s alcoholic mother, try to persuade her to leave Milio but Zazà refuses and determines to travel to Paris to confront him. Milio is in fact married and has a young daughter, Totò (an affectionate diminutive for Antonietta). When Zazà meets Totò she is overcome by, and identifies with, the child’s vulnerability, and recalls the unhappiness of her own childhood which she is anxious to spare Totò. Showing respectful deference to Madame Dufresne, whose essential goodness she recognises, Zazà returns to Saint-Etienne. When Milio follows her, the low-born courtesan — now a sadder but sager woman — surprises us, and perhaps herself, by demonstrating greater moral integrity than the high-born gentleman, and in so doing she exposes the cad’s callousness.
Leoncavallo’s score is a riot of vivid colour, bursting with infectious dance tunes and inventive musico-dramatic flourishes. It moves fluently between arioso and aria, the big numbers emerging naturally from the ebb and flow of the protagonists’ exchanges. Maurizio Benini encouraged the BBC Symphony Orchestra to relish the Italianate lusciousness and allowed us to appreciate Leoncavallo’s gift for orchestration. But, with the large orchestra — which included a ‘cabaret band’ placed stage left during Act 1 — pushed right to the fore of the stage, and Benini disinclined to restrain his players’ vitality, the singers were sometimes overpowered in the more conversational episodes, especially during the first Act when it was initially quite difficult to ascertain who was who in busy cabaret scenes. However, amid the Puccini-esque scraps and fragments, some terrific tunes emerge from the melodic cul-de-sacs, including one soaring upwelling of sentimentality that serves as a sort of leitmotif for Zazà's love, and Benini ensured that the lyric high-points packed their punch.
The orchestral theatricality was not always matched by the ‘staging’, though it’s hard to know what stage director Susannah Waters should have done given that the small front strip of stage available for the singers was strewn with music stands, and most of the cast, wearing modern evening dress, were pretty bound to their scores. There was some atmospheric lighting, the dazzling pinks of night-time revelry giving way to the cool green of morning sobriety, and some distinguishing of the setting — the cabaret band were replaced by a single piano in Dufresne’s apartment, upon which Totò does her daily practice. But only Jaho truly ‘lived’ her part, unstintingly using her voice, face and body to convey Zazà’s self-consuming passions and sentiments. The opera has only one off-stage women’s chorus — sung attractively by the ladies of the BBC Singers; it therefore seemed unnecessary to seat a full chorus behind the orchestra for the duration of the evening when for the most part they had little more to do than applaud the charming ‘Kiss Duet’ with which Zazà and Cascart entertain the night-club clientele. Totò is a spoken role and Leoncavallo supplies just light orchestral support for her dialogue, but while Julia Ferri’s enunciation of the lines was touching in its directness and openness, the over-amplification and wide reverberation surreally disembodied her voice from the dainty figure we saw before us.
But such minor misgivings were swept aside by Jaho’s incredible commitment and vocal allure. She ran the emotional gamut from predatory sensuality to euphoric happiness to anguished sorrow, utterly convincing us and drawing us into her tragic journey. The lower-lying passages may sometimes have made less impact, and occasionally Jaho strayed sharp at the top, but who cares when one is enveloped by surging, supply lyrical outpourings that are by turns glossily luxurious and exquisitely delicate.
A scheduled replacement for the indisposed Nicola Alaimo, Stephen Gaertner was excellent as Cascart, the rejected lover whose indignant vexation is out-weighted by his undiminished love. Gaertner was rare among the cast in singing securely off the score. He was commanding in his big arias, his rich, dark baritone rising powerfully above the orchestral roar; and his nuanced and expressive phrasing made for convincing interaction with Jaho in their duets. Cascart’s Act 4 show-stopper, ‘Zaza, piccola zingara’, was one of the high-lights of the evening.
As Dufresne, Riccardo Massi revealed a strong upper register capable of carrying a clear line, and the tenor’s phrasing was unfailingly intelligent and sensitive. But, I found his lower voice a little withheld and he had a tendency, initially at least, to approach notes from below. Massi cut an elegant figure but didn’t make much effort to ‘act’; that is, until Dufresne’s self-justifying Act 4 aria when Massi convincingly revealed the shallowness and self-pity of this bounder’s grumbles about the complexities of his messy romantic predicament. His lack of remorse was worthy of a Pinkerton.
A strong cast filled the smaller roles, with Nicky Spence (the impresario, Courtois) and Kathryn Rudge (Natalia, Zazà’s maid) making a particularly strong impression. Moving from the ranks of the BBC Singers, and stepping in at 24-hours’ notice to fill the indisposed Patricia Bardon’s shoes, Rebecca Lodge used her bright mezzo effectively to convey the boisterousness of the boozy Anaide, Zazà’s mother. Soprano Helen Neeves was a dignified Mme Dufresne, and as Floriana (a singer), Fflur Wyn sparkled in her Act 1 aria.
Perhaps a fully staged production is necessary to do justice to Zazà’s melodramatic excesses — although a concert performance at least spares us a mawkish ending. On this occasion, Jaho almost single-handedly provided passion and theatre sufficient to convince us of the veracity of the drama. At the close she seemed, understandably, drained somewhat dazed. She had powerfully engaged us all in Zazà’s agonising predicament and utterly deserved the admiring and affectionate adulation bestowed.
Claire Seymour
Cast and production information:
Zazà — Ermonela Jaho, Milio Dufresne — Riccardo Massi, Cascart — Stephen Gaertner, Anaide — Rebecca Lodge, Bussy — David Stout, Natalia — Kathryn Rudge, Floriana — Fflur Wyn, Courtois — Nicky Spence, Signora Dufresne — Helen Neeves, Duclou (a stage manager) — Simon Thorpe, Augusto (a waiter) — Christopher Turner, Il Signore — Robert Anthony Gardiner, Marco (the Dufrenes’ butler) — Edward Goater, Totò — Julia Ferri (spoken role); Susannah Waters — director, Maurizo Benini — conductor, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers. Barbican Hall, London, Friday, 27 November 2015.
image=http://www.operatoday.com/u16PlGcrfoprht0C0ldIMluFR4ejd-HXuX9ouIU3no8%2C39FMt4iQ5QQ3luLEq8IEsd4S_e8SUi5we0eDYat_unc%2CxcsXQeZ2AE2DqrL47mw4DxW6p5rv1UqsA1xQQCOds64%2CVCeD35cQ7PmFBaI7s1_uxLztKxBvjFYX5xN5w0KsFsU%2CNKLltOxZFltZzHDVh1znzZm2cZKTSs-bwpKuysLLaio%2Ce.png image_description=Riccardo Massi and Ermonela Jaho [Photo by Russell Duncan] product=yes product_title=Leoncavallo’s Zazà by Opera Rara product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id=Above: Riccardo Massi and Ermonela Jaho [Photo by Russell Duncan]November 27, 2015
L'ospedale - an anonymous opera rediscovered
What is astonishing about this anonymous opera, which was rediscovered in the Marciana Library in 2003 by musicologist Naomi Matsumoto and superbly presented here by Solomon’s Knot baroque collective, is that Abati’s biting invective is so strikingly modern, and topical. With NHS junior doctors set to go on strike three times next month, issues such as the state funding of the health service, doctors’ pay and working hours, and patient waiting times have never been more hotly disputed in the UK. Moreover, the creeping privatisation, fragmentation and destabilisation of the NHS, in the guise of euphemistically termed ‘efficiency savings’, has brought the ‘profitability’ debate to the fore, and left many fearing that those unable to pay for healthcare will be vulnerable to growing health inequality. As Abati’s libretto asks, ‘Who can find a cure for poverty and desperation?’
The action takes place in an ospedale, a type of charitable institution which in seventeenth-century Italy formed part of the ‘welfare system’: ospedali were usually attached to churches, and they housed and treated those with ailments and social conditions that made them undesirable to the rest of society - such as lepers, syphilitics, abandoned children and orphans, prostitutes and the homeless. (Fittingly, one role of the ospedali was to educate their patients, and this involved musical education; musical ensembles, cori, were formed and these gave performances designed to raise funds and attract sponsors, with the result that in the in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the grandest of the ospedali were at the core of Venetian culture.)
In Abati’s shabby ospedale, four patients languish amid squalor, seeking cures for their varied ailments: unrequited love, professional disappointment, mental deficiency and poverty. (It says much for the potency of the purse in quelling the wealthy hypochondriac’s neurosis that it is only the last of these four ailments which proves truly incurable.) They await the arrival of a new doctor whose medications and remedies will, they hope, restore them to health; but the charlatan’s idiosyncratic treatments have unexpected and unwished-for side-effects, and the sufferers risk losing more than their money.
This is Solomon’s Knot’s first fully staged production. Director James Hurley’s staging updates the action to the present, as immediately confirmed by a supplementary Prologue in which we seem to be eavesdropping on a disingenuous circumlocution by the Minister for Health to the House of Commons, as he justifies the need, in this age of austerity, for reductions to the health budget, and calls for greater efficiency within the NHS as well as an enlarged role for the ‘Big Society’ in order to alleviate the potentially adverse effects of the government’s reforms. (The Minister returns in an Epilogue, to announce his resignation in the light of the first-rate achievements of professional medics.)
The production was sung in Italian with English surtitles, and I found myself wishing that my own Italian was less rudimentary so that I might have a better appreciation of how far the double (even triple), entendres were evidence of Amati’s wit, or were the result of the ‘transcriptions, translations and workshop projects’ which Solomon’s Knot have undertaken during the past two years to bring the opera ‘back to life’. Either way, the satire was certainly au courant, the gags inventive, and the polemic provocative.
Wilton’s Music Hall was the perfect venue. Situated in the historic East End, it is the world’s oldest music hall. For many decades the Hall has been afflicted with damp and dereliction; a flyer for a 1997 production of The Wasteland, directed by Deborah Warner and performed by Fiona Shaw, advised mid-winter visitors to the unheated hall to ‘please dress warmly’, to which a journalist added ‘wear hard hats’. But, despite the welcome completion in September this year of long-running renovations, the makeover has retained the genuine historic fabric and, sitting in the dimly lit, smoke-filled hall (lighting by Ben Pickersgill) it was easy to imagine oneself in an insalubrious infirmary - historic or modern. Rachel Szmukler’s set consisted of a curtained hospital bed, towering piles of orange garbage bags containing medical waste (and new ‘inmates’’ personal belongings), and a trolley laden with urine samples. The harsh glare of strip lights and a glowing vending machine - peddling sugar foodstuffs unlikely to nourish the needy - spread an unforgiving glare. Performing in the round can have its pitfalls though, and while the sight-lines from my seat were superb, others seated on the opposite side of the arena may have found the frequent drawing of the curtain around the operating couch to be frustratingly obstructive.
The quack doctor - actually the disguised Minister for Health, undertaking secret scrutiny of his ailing health care system - attends to the four patients in turn. Rebecca Moon light, clear soprano conveyed profound depths of passion during Innamorato’s melodramatic tale of unreciprocated lesbian desire (presumably the role was originally sung by a castrato?); her lovelorn lament matched Monteverdi for rhetorical urgency, but the doctor was not touched by her distress, basically advising that she should ‘get over it’. Overlooked for career advancement, Cortigiano may be suffering from work-related stress, but tenor Thomas Herford did not let the City boy’s anxieties infect his own lyrical elegance. Countertenor Michal Czerniawski’s Matto was the embodiment of hyper-manic instability, fluctuating between insight and insanity, the latter moments enhanced by some inane shrieking. Nicholas Merryweather displayed characteristic dramatic confidence and vocal sureness as Povero, whose inability to pay the doctor’s fees exposes the latter’s avarice. Merryweather’s well-centred baritone made for a pleasing contrast with Czerniawski, and provided a strong foundation in the lively ensembles. As the fraudulent physician, Jonathan Sells showed considerable comic nous, while Lucy Page demonstrated a crystalline soprano as the put-upon hospital orderly, Forestiero.
The score alternates arias - madrigals, laments, balletti - arioso, ensembles and spoken dialogue, and is melodious, briskly energetic and inventive. To the mix were added two madrigals by Gesualdo, whose bitter-sweet dissonances and chromatic lamentations perfectly complemented the mood of emotional disturbance and anguish. James Halliday drew superb playing from the small instrumental ensemble: rhythmically alert, vigorous and colourful.
Music, medicine and madness are a potent mix. Indeed, my guest for the evening was a retired psychiatrist who has just published a study of operatic heroes who might be considered to exhibit a range of personality disorders (and who, ironically, undertook his training at the nearby London Hospital). This production by Solomon’s Knot perfectly balanced satire and silliness; it was an earnest critique of the medical profession, historic and modern, and also exuberant fun. It took risks, and while not all of them came off, it communicated directly and with thought-provoking candour.
Claire Seymour
Forestiero - Lucy Page, Povero - Nicholas Merryweather, Matto - Michal Czerniawski, Innamorato -Rebecca Moon, Cortigiano - Thomas Herford, Medico - Jonathan Sells; Director - James Hurley, Musical Director - James Halliday, Designer - Rachel Szmukler, Lighting Designer - Ben Pickersgill.
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Wednesday 17th November 2015
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Šimon Voseček : Biedermann and the Arsonists
The words of the Chorus of Firemen and the images of a burning citadel which open Independent Opera’s production of Šimon Voseček’s opera, Biedermann and the Arsonists - receiving its UK premiere at Sadler’s Wells, following the premiere of the 90-minute opera at Neue Oper Wien in 2013 - are disturbingly close to the bone, in the light of recent terrorist atrocities in Paris and the IS attack upon Russian Airbus A321-200.
The opera sets Swiss playwright Max Frisch’s Biedermann und die Brandstifter, which was written for radio in 1953 and adapted for the theatre five years later. David Pountney has provided a new English translation, though as Voseček has noted, ‘[t]he piece is already written as if it were a libretto - it was hardly necessary to do anything to it’; thus, except for the excision of the prologue, epilogue and one character, a ‘Dr of Philosophy’, Pountney has made few significant changes. The play reflects Frisch’s contempt for Europe’s lack of vision or moral cowardice when faced with the rise of Nazism in the 1930s, and the continent’s similarly complacent response to the annexation of Czechoslovakia in 1948. And, despite the Kremlin’s announcement this week that Russian President Vladimir Putin and his French counterpart, François Hollande, have spoken by telephone and agreed to coordinate military attacks in Syria, it is hard not to see parallels between the West’s recent unwillingness to acknowledge, confront and challenge the threat from radical Islam.
Gottlieb Beidermann (whose name implies ‘Everyman’) is a bourgeois businessman who has made his fortune peddling fake hair lotion. His town has a problem: arsonists are burning down its houses. Biedermann thinks the perpetrators should be lynched. But, when two homeless strangers - a brutish former jailbird turned wrestler and a slick head waiter - knock on his door, and weasel and wangle their way into his home, taking residence in the attic, Beidermann, inhibited by middle-class guilt, pushes aside his suspicions that his lodgers are the fire-raisers in the vain hope that politeness and courtesy will keep the threat they pose at bay. His pyromaniac tenants subsequently fill his garret with barrels of petrol but he turns a blind eye to their evil intent, failing to recognise that his wilful ignorance implicates him in their destructiveness. The ineffectualness of denial and self-deception as a strategy for self-protection is overtly confirmed when Beidermann literally becomes their accomplice, handing them the very match that they use to turn his own home into an inferno.
The director of this production, which celebrates Independent Opera’s 10th anniversary, is twenty-five year old Max Hoehn - the recipient of Independent Opera at Sadler’s Wells 2015 Director Fellowship: the first competition of its kind for opera directors in the UK, offering a young director the chance to stage a chamber-scale piece in London with resources comparable to those of the main UK companies.
Frisch assigns no designated time or place to the action, and Hoehn and his designer Jemima Robinson set the drama in the present. Inside Beidermann’s chic abode, the minimalist décor, unread books and token art, decorative candelabras and domestic maid, confirm his wealth, status and pseudo-culture. Amid such comfort, Biedermann enjoys his cigars and the wine flows copiously. The split-level set frames a modish dining room with a bathroom stage-right (where the characters take refuge as the tension escalates) and an attic stage-left, where the barrels of petrol are stored. The domestic realism is tempered by the surreal glow of lurid greens and pinks, and the blinding flashes of search-lights and red hazard beacons.
Frisch employs a Chorus of Fireman, which functions to some degree in the manner of a Greek chorus, describing and commenting on action which takes place off-stage. Adam Sullivan, Johnny Herford and Bradley Travis sang with precision, forming a well-coordinated ensemble, but also distinguishing the fire-fighters as individuals. Lodged in a pillar-box red, children’s-book fire engine, these ‘officers of order’ were portraits of inanity, the cartoonish stylisation of their movements, together with the juxtaposition of overly grave recitation and hysterical falsetto heightening their idiocy. The angel-wings they sport on their high-vis uniforms might infer that they guard the town with religious zeal, but while their role is to protect the population, the images of blazing buildings and their ‘Keystone Cops’ style clock-working suggested that, though they are preparing for the worst, they are doing little to stop it happening. They repeatedly warn and observe: ‘We are ready!’ But, they do nothing but wait, strewing the set with yellow ‘Do not cross’ fire-tape and danger signs, and tying themselves in knots with a snaking red fire-hose.
There are obvious echoes of Brecht’s alienation techniques in Frisch’s use of the Chorus, but, as Hoehn shows, the Swiss playwright is not as didactic as Brecht.
Frisch’s Chorus is deliberately ironic: while their remarks on the action of the play reinforce our awareness of the citizens’ helpless, we know that it is in fact Biedermann’s actions that are leading to his demise. Frisch’s firemen admit they are, ‘Always well-disposed citizen/Towards the well disposed citizen. Who in the end pays our wages’, and boast, ‘Sometimes we stop, take the weight off our feet, But never in order to sleep. We are untiring’. Hoehn deepens the irony, for his fire-fighters do in fact take a snooze.
The principals all negotiated Voseček’s tricky vocal lines successfully and demonstrated considerable vocal stamina. Moreover, despite the vocal challenges the text was unfailingly clear, rendering the surtitles (which shook during moments of more frenzied physical chaos) redundant.
We are familiar with the padded excess of actors’ fat-suits, but Leigh Melrose, as the tattooed, moustachioed wrestler, Schmitz, sported an outlandish variation on the plumping prosthesis: a muscle-suit whose grotesqueness was enhanced by Melrose’s comic-strip costume and deranged psychotic stare. Melrose was admirably dynamic as the maniacal fire-raiser; his attention to detail - to the nuances of vocal colour, facial gesture, physical timing - was impressive, and he employed a wide expressive range, by turns snarling then crooning, that conveyed the unpredictability, indeed lunacy, of Schmitz. Melrose’s commitment to the role was absolute, whether impersonating the black-veiled, high-heeled widow of one of Biedermann’s sacked employees, or stuffing himself with goose and red cabbage at his host’s dinner party. As Schmitz’s partner-in-incendiarism, Eizenring, Matthew Hargreaves was a wiry figure of restlessness, his charred apron suggest combustible mishaps more furious that those that might occur in the kitchen. Hargreaves’ is a large, grand baritone, and he imbued it with thunder and darkness to convey Eizenring’s menacing mania.
Tenor Mark Le Brocq was superb as Biedermann: he convincing communicated the businessman’s increasing anxiety and unease, and while it was clear that pride and over-confidence were the cause of Biedermann’s downfall, his guilt and insecurities were evident too - ‘tragic’ flaws which inspired pity.
The two female roles were taken by previous recipients of Independent Opera’s Postgraduate Vocal Fellowships. Alinka Kozári was a neat, conventional Babette Biedermann, and demonstrated a good sense of comic effect. As the put-upon maid, Anna, Raphaela Papadakis was both wittily melodramatic - throwing frustrated tantrums, manhandling the crockery and coffee carafe - and genuinely despairing, as she yielded in defeat to Schwitz’s grotesque embrace and fed him ladles of sauerkraut.
I enjoyed this high-octane theatrical event; but reflecting afterwards I had some reservations about both the production and the work. Hoehn’s approach seemed to me to emphasise the undoubted comedy of the piece at the expense of its tragic dimension. The physical theatre was well-choreographed, the caricatures appropriate. Frisch’s play is after a descendant of the medieval morality play with its archetypal representations of vices and challenges: just as Biedermann is ‘Everyman’ (in German ‘bieder’ means respectable and unsophisticated), so Eisenring is ‘The Trickster’, Schmitz is ‘The Sidekick’. But, the laughter which came readily should, perhaps, stick in our throats; Hoehn might have discomforted us still further, inferring our own complicity.
There was a decline from pointed satire into comic chaos, particularly so in the final alcohol-fuelled dinner-party scene. So, when Babette sang an aria of love for her husband, the sincerity of her feelings was undermined by her incongruous stuffing of the splayed goose. ‘Who are you?’ pleads Biedermann in confused anguish: to which the music ‘replies’, Mozart’s Commendatore - as the Voseček’s score slips into the graveyard scene from Don Giovanni and Schmitz calls for Biedermann’s hand, luring him to hell. This had the potential to be a frighteningly powerful theatrical moment: but Babette’s exclamation, ‘Oh! We saw that at Glyndebourne’, while it mocked her bourgeois pretention, also weakened the polemic of the parody.
More might have been made too of the arrival of the policeman who informs Biedermann of the death of the employee he fired, Knechtling. I was reminded at this point of Joe Keller, from Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, who similarly lives a life of denial, refusing to take responsibility for the deaths of US airman whose planes were brought down by faulty mechanical parts supplied by Keller, or for the destruction of his colleague Steve Deever’s life, whose imprisonment results from Keller’s lies. Both men verify to the harmfulness of those whose failure to act condemns both others and themselves.
Voseček incorporates much spoken text alongside his straining vocal lines; indeed to some extent it is only during the spoken dialogue that the relentless theatrical tempo and pitch are alleviated. The score itself, too, is similarly feverish, but it functions more like a Hitchcock sound-track - illustrative of, but separate from the action, rathe than an integral part of a musico-dramatic narrative. That’s not to suggest that Voseček’s score is not inventive and colourful: the abrasive sound-world conjured by violin, three cellos (one tuned down a third from standard pitch), three clarinets/saxophones, three trombones, tuba and percussion is exploited resourcefully by the composer, and the screeches, whines, bangs, dissonances and quartertones are aptly disorientating, seeming almost to ridicule the singers.
This is an overtly theatrical production. But I found the end somewhat anticlimactic. The fuse is lit, a sparkler fizzes, and then we are plunged into a darkness which is punctuated by a final flash and an image of an askew fire-exit arrow. By removing Frisch’s epilogue - in which Biedemann and his wife are seen burnt to a crisp but still in denial - Voseček has also removed the moral frame: we have no heaven and hell. But, that said, even in Frisch’s play there are no answers, just absurdity. We do not know what stops Beidermann from confronting and standing up to the arsonists. We do not know what motivates these grotesque characters.
Fritsch subtitled his play, ‘Ein Lehrstuck ohne Lehre’ - ‘a moral play without a moral’ - ironically contradicting Brecht’s notion of the ‘lehrstuck’ or ‘teaching piece’. At the final reckoning, the only ‘message’ evident is the insistence on man’s need to interrogate his world and his actions. As Edmund Burke said, ‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing’. This production was a timely reminder of the dangers of bourgeois orthodoxy and timidity in the face of terror.
Claire Seymour
Independent Opera at Sadler’s Wells (Baylis Studio Theatre)
Tuesday 17th November 2015
Biedermann - Mark Le Brocq, Babette - Alinka Kozari, Schmitz - Leigh Melrose, Eisenring - Matthew Hargreaves, Anna - Raphaela Papadakis, Firemen - Adam Sullivan, Johnny Herford and Bradley Travis, Policeman - Laurence North; Director - Max Hoehn, Conductor - Timothy Redmond, Designer - Jemima Robinson, Lighting Designer - Giuseppe di Iorio, Video Designer - Daniel Denton, Britten Sinfonia
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November 16, 2015
René Pape, Joseph Calleja, Kristine Opolais, Boito Mefistofele, Munich
Boito's Mefistofele adapts Goethe's Faust to develop the idea of Mefistofele and his relationship with God. They are equals, sort of, the Devil a punk with a huge chip on his shoulder, bristling with resentment even as he struts and shows off. Hence the sprawling set, which resembles the inside of some large structure, with pipes and scaffolding. In this sealed cocoon, Mefistofele is king though he's cut off from the real world outside where presumably God reigns. René Pape, singing Mefistofele is dressed part rock star, part oligarch, surrounded by groupies in an artificial fantasy world. Are we in a film set ? Or an infernal machine ? Mefistofele watches dull TV clips of John Lennon in New York and of a plane flying over the NY skyline. We don't see Twin Towers, but we can draw our own conclusions without the point being made too obvious.
Like so many big shots too big for their boots, Mefistofele thinks he can have a conference call with God, and place a bet. All the while the Heavenly Chorus sing. We don't see them, for they are unsullied by evil. René Pape is an ideal Mefistofele - suave, slimy and tacky, with that 70's shirt open to his waist. He suggests the Devil's twisted charm, but also makes us feel sorry for Mefistofele and his ardent desperation. This double-edged portrayal adds depth to Pape's characterization. He whips through his lines with poisonous bite, but one senses that, deep down, Mefistofele is a misguided fool.
Faust, or a facsimile thereof, is brought on stage and dressed in white, readied for sacrifice. When the orchestra, conducted by Omar Meir |Wellber, begins again, the stage has been transformed, This time it's dominated by a giant fairground carousel. The peasants, as in Faust, are celebrating. More pointed wit. This production takes place in Bavaria. The peasants sit at long tables drinking giant steins. Pape picks up a gingerbread heart with the motto "I mog di", "I love you" in Bavarian slang.
Joseph Calleja doesn't automatically spring to mind as an ascetic old monk, but Boito's Faust is different to stereotype. By changing the part from baritone in the 1868 version to tenor in the 1875 Bologna version, the composer capitalized on a voice which could scale heights even French tenors might envy, while retaining the sensual loveliness of the Italian language. Calleja hits the notes and how ! He sings with enthusiastic flourish - this is a Faust who genuinely enjoys sensual pleasures. A wizened old hermit might not understand. Calleja is also a good visual foil to Pape's sophistication : devil and innocent. Or so it seems. Calleja nails, and holds, stratospheric heights. We can sense that a part as lovely as this will triumph in the end.
Kristine Opolais shines with understated Grace Kelly elegance, which makes her seduction feel more like rape, for it is, since Faust is not what he really should be. The trio at the end of the scene sparks with tension Faust and Margherita are swept away by the force of the sharp, dotted rhythms that mark Mefistofele's music.
The Walpurgisnacht scene is demonic: sharp woodwind flurries suggesting hellfire, perhaps, or moonlight? Calleja and Pape sing in tight lockstep "Folletto ! Folleto!". The manic staccato theme is taken up by the chorus, which then switches to quiet whisper, while the orchestra creates the sprightly "hellfire" motif, first in the woodwinds, then through the celli and basses. The brightness of Calleja's voice contrasts well with Pape's, whose voice grows darker and more malevolent now that Faust is in his realm. The final chorus whips along with crazed energy: the witches are dancing wildly before the "flames" in the orchestra. "Sabba, Sabba, Saboè!"
Back on earth, Opolais sings L'altra notte in fondo al mare and what follows with great emotional depth. Her Margherita is a woman steeled by suffering. When she and Calleja sing Lontano, lontano, lontano, they bring out tenderness and tragedy, beauty and pain. Opolais sings the Spunta, l'aurora pallida with such calm heroism that Calleja's O strazio crudel! tears at the heart. Faust sees the suffering, and women writhing in labour, but soon comes underb the spell of Elena, Helen of Troy ( (Karine Babajanyan)
In the orchestra we hear the exquisite harp sequence, setting the tone for the love duet between Elena and Faust that will follow. The harmony, though, is but a dream. Faust is back in his study, dimly lit, as we might imagine from the quiet murmurs in the orchestra. Faust is a very old man again, presumably wiser, and in this production is seen in a home for geriatrics. This is a sharper observation than one might expect because it shows Faust as part of a community, rather than alone, and makes connections to Goethe's Faust who believed so strongly in society and humankind. It was Wagner (Andrea Borghini) who thought peasants were a waste of time. This ending also emphasizes the idealism with which Faust defeats Mefistofele. The good of mankind versus the Devil's enticements.,
"Cammina, cammina" Mefistofele calls. This time, Faust fights back. Calleja sings with undecorated, but heroic firmness. "Faust ! Faust!" Pape cries, but his prey has slipped from his grasp. The chorus returns, in full, glorious voice with the orchestra in full glory. Even René Pape is no match. But Mefistofele is defeated. Faust has overcome his sensual needs, choosing instead the greater good of mankind. Heaven breaks through Mefistofele's realm with blinding light. The director is Roland Schwab, who started his career with Ruth Berghaus. the sets are by Piero Vinciguerra. On small screen broadcast, we might have lost some of the overwhelming impact of the live experience, but we see the details. And what glorious singing ! Later, it dawned on me that the other people in the nursing home, who gathered to sing the final chorus, might have been angels all along.
Anne Ozorio
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November 14, 2015
Calixto Bieito’s The Force of Destiny
Seated at a grandiose table, a black silhouette, swirled in mist, is suddenly illuminated by blazing white light, next framed by a towering triangle of light whose tip points upwards like an aspiring cathedral tower (lighting design by Tim Mitchell). But, we are in a world wrenched by violence and chaos, and the Church will offer no consolation or salvation. Bieito’s milieu is Spain, during the Civil War: the only brief flashes of colour are provided by the waving of the red-yellow nationalist flag and the shedding of blood.
It’s also a world that Bieito feels close to: born in northern Spain’s Miranda de Ebro in 1963, Bieito tells us, in a programme note, of his grandmother’s stories of ‘shots being fired behind the cemetery walls as she lay in her bed at night […] every morning she would be greeted by the same scene: a pile of dead bodies in the forecourt by the wall’. Her ‘terrible stories’ are invoked by the production’s visual imagery. Upon the white, balconied façades which border the public square — then swivel, slide and tilt to form depressing back-alleys and fire-escapes — contemporary newsreels of marching armies, public protests and the wailing distress of a dying child are projected. Alongside them, Picasso’s icons of pain and anguish tell their own story: agonised faces, severed limbs, gaping wounds, a horse falling in agony, the bare lightbulb of a torturer’s cell (video designs by Sarah Derendinger).
Updating Verdi’s opera to the years of the Spanish Civil War makes sense. Both Picasso and Verdi employ a big canvas; and, the cover-image of the ENO programme — a sword up to its hilt in blood and casting a crucifix-shadow on an ochre wall — may allude to the toxic tensions between the Catholic hierarchy and the Republic, and the Church’s role in adding fuel to the flames when conflict broke out.
But, the drama of Verdi’s opera hinges on the private and not the public world; specifically the triangle formed by Leonora, her beloved Alvaro, and her vengeful brother Carlo di Vargas. Here, Bieito’s touch is less sure. The static nature of the thought-provoking images he and his designer, Rebecca Ringst, present ultimately hinders the dramatic currents that Verdi’s score articulates. We are presented with photographic snap-shops but these do not come alive to form a tragic narrative. The ENO chorus, in tremendous voice, stand and deliver. Even the principals seem barely to communicate; all the relationships are dysfunctional. In the opening scene Leonora and her father, the Marquis of Calatrava, sit at the table, immobile, paralysed by patriarchal disapproval and oppression. During the impassioned duets — for Alvaro and Leonora in Act 1, and Alvaro and Carlo in Act 3 — the protagonists’ emotions are sung but not dramatized.
There are no assassins from whom Alvaro may rescue Carlo. And, there is no sign of army life or military action. When Alvaro sings of his misery in his Act 3 aria, ‘La vita è inferno all’infelice’, he appears, not among his fellow troops but poking through, and isolated by, the gaping window of one of the sloping façades. He is later joined, in another window frame, by the surgeon — whose white apron might have been stained as much by blood from the abattoir as from the battlefield. The only thing that moves is the scenery: and even this paradoxically hindered the momentum when, after Carlo and Alvaro had dashed off to fight their duel, a lengthy pause intervened as the stage-hands struggled to re-position the façades, forcing Leonora to put her great prayer for peace, ‘Pace, pace mio Dio!’, on hold.
Scene from The Force of Destiny
The significance of some of Bieito’s smaller gestures was not immediately fathomable. Why, when she crouches over her father’s dead body in the opening Act, does Leonora remove his belt? What does the image of a girl scribbling on a blackboard — which is projected onto the front-cloth during the second interview — portend? On the other hand, the symbolism of some motifs is heavy-handed: Don Carlo’s Act 2 aria, in which he pretends to be a student from Salamanca named Pereda, was ‘sabotaged’ by the noisy shredding of books by the peasant crowd — an allusion, one presumes, to the burning by Franco’s troops in 1939 of the entire library of Pompeu Fabra, who had dedicated himself to the study of the Catalan language — an act of cultural vandalism which was accompanied by cries of ‘Abajo la inteligencia!’ (Down with intelligentsia!)
The directorial gestures leave us in no doubt, though, of the cruelty of the world depicted. In Act 3, Preziosilla’s ‘Rataplan’ hymn of praise to military life becomes an incitement to brutality: the soldiers oblige by executing some of the starving refugees, while Preziosilla indulges her own bloodlust by savagely kicking a pregnant woman. Fra Melitone’s chastisement of their godlessness feels ineffectual and impotent in the face of such depravity. On becoming a hermit, Leonora is crowned with a barbed wire laurel — with which she later chokes herself.
If the human relationships between the protagonists interest Bieito less than abstract notions of fanatical hatred and passion, then the singers still create compelling portraits. As Alvaro, Gwyn Hughes Jones demonstrated a gallant Verdian power: in Jeremy Sams’ rather clunky and mundane translation, Alvaro sings of a ‘fiery beacon’ and ‘glory and splendour’ in his Act 1 aria, apposite terms for Hughes Jones’s vocal heroism. However, it didn’t always feel comfortable: he reached the top, but the effort required was evident, and Hughes Jones’s tone and intonation lost focus in some of the quieter passages.
Anthony Michaels-Moore convincingly portrayed Carlo’s bitter, obsessive vengefulness. This was a well-judged performance: Michaels-Moore took command of the stage at the start of Act 4 when Carlo forces Alvaro to fight. Throughout he used his baritone expressively, and employed a range of colours which conveyed Carlo’s private torments.
The real star, though, was American soprano, Tamara Wilson, making her role debut as Leonora and her first appearance in the UK. She has a magnificent voice, a gleaming lirico-spinto which can soar with enormous power at the top but which also has richness, depth and hints of darkness at the bottom. Able to modulate the dynamics with sure control, Wilson rode the dramatic climaxes with ease, effortlessly ascending above and cutting through the orchestra. Her intonation was unfailingly true, and in Act 1 Leonora was tender and vulnerable. Wilson brightened her soprano in the monastery scene, floating above the monks’ chanting, perhaps intimating hope; but she saved her best for a resplendent ‘Pace, pace, mio Dio!’ in the last Act.
Matthew Best as Marquis of Calatrava, Tamara Wilson as Donna Leonora di Vargas, Clare Presland as Curra, and Gwyn Hughes Jones as Don Alvaro
Rinat Shaham’s Preziosilla was feisty and vivacious, and Andrew Shore — who is coming to the end of his run as Bartolo’s in ENO Barber of Seville — swapped comic foolishness for ecclesiastical menace and, as a petulant Fra Melitone, found some surprisingly dark baritonal tones. He was effectively complemented by James Cresswell’s mellifluous and well-projected Padre Guardiano. Replacing the indisposed Matthew Best, Robert Winslade —Anderson sang the short role of the Marquis of Calatrava with a firmly supported bass-baritone; when accidentally shot by Alvaro, he slid with impressive melodrama to the floor, dragging table-cloth and candelabras with him.
Conductor Mark Wigglesworth chose to perform Verdi’s original, shorter Overture. During the evening, he drew playing of tremendous vigour and strength from the ENO orchestra, moving swiftly through the score — sometimes thwarting the audience’s desire to applaud individual arias — and injecting momentum which went some way to compensate for the lack of movement on stage.
Overall, Bieito presents many arresting moments but they are not connected by a sustained dramatic thread and this weakens the impact of the score’s own dramatic persuasiveness. The director cites Antoine Saint-Exupéry: ‘Civil war is not war, but disease. The enemy is internal, people fighting themselves.’ Perhaps that is why Bieito has decided that Leonora should take her own life, rather than die at the hands of the mortally wounded Carlo who, in Piave’s libretto, stabs her as bends over his body. But, in so doing — and though Carlo sings, ‘I am weary of this struggle with fate’ — Bieito denies us a revelation of the tragic force of destiny.
Claire Seymour
Cast and production information:
Don Alvaro: Gwyn Hughes Jones, Donna Leonora di Vargas: Tamara Wilson, Don Carlo di Vargas:Anthony Michaels-Moore, Padre Guardiano: James Creswell, Fra Melitone: Andrew Shore, Preziosilla: Rinat Shaham, Marquis of Calatrava: Robert Winslade Anderson, Curra: Clare Presland, Trabuco: Adrian Dwyer, Alcade: Nicholas Folwell; Director: Calixto Bieito, Conductor:Mark Wigglesworth, Set Designer: Rebecca Ringst, Costume Designer: Ingo Krügler, Lighting Designer: Tim Mitchell, Video Designer: Sarah Derendinger, Orchestra and Chorus of English National Opera. English National Opera, London Coliseum, Monday 9th November 2015.
image=http://www.operatoday.com/14556.png image_description=Anthony Michaels-Moore as Don Carlo di Vargas [Photo by Robert Workman] product=yes product_title=Calixto Bieito’s The Force of Destiny product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id=Above: Anthony Michaels-Moore as Don Carlo di VargasPhotos by Robert Workman
Morgen und Abend — World Premiere, Royal Opera House
But consider what music is — it's a means of communicating complex, abstract ideas which can't easily be articulated in words
No-one knows what happens when we die, or what the transition might feel like. Morgen und Abend is a tone poem on a grand scale, with singing and personalities as signposts to point the way. It is opera in the very deepest meaning of the word, for it operates on our subliminal senses, activating our response to the human emotions we hear enacted on the stage.
Morgen und Abend begins with an Overture, of sorts. Loud, thudding percussion loud enough that our heartbeats begin to synchronize. The sounds come from the boxes on both sides of the auditorium, like the ears we have on each side of our heads, or the two lungs thar pump within so we can breathe, like the ventricles in our hearts that pump blood to keep us alive. This is “Invisible Theatre”, drawing the audience physically into the drama. Perhaps that’s why Morgen und Abend is both compelling and disturbing. Listening becomes an active, not passive experience, challenging emotions we might find hard to deal with. We, too, are part of the story.
An old man Olai (Klaus Maria Brandauer) sits in an empty room. A door stands on its own without walls. perhaps the man could pass through, but he doesn’t. At first he notices the unnatural silence of his surroundings. A midwife (Sarah Wegener) appears, telling the old man that his baby son is born. Yet, listen to the strange broken phrases in the vocal parts, repeating cadences which are taken up subtly by the orchestra. This isn’t normal speech, even by opera standards. Is Olai re-living happy memories in a dream? The boy , named Johannes, “will be a fisherman like me”, intones Brandauer Woodwinds and horns create strange sounds - the crying of a newborn, the agony of a mother. When Olai was a young man, birth was dangerous, the cusp of life and death. I nursed someone in his last days, who had nursed me long before. Dying is a lot like being born: you’re helpless, you don’t know what’s coming, you resist.
Another old man rises from his bed. The atmosphere here, too, is unnaturally still and silent, though the percussion ticks gently, as if marking the passage of time. The old man is Johannes (Christoph Pohl). He rises from his bed, but notices that his aches and pains have disappeared. Instead, he feels oddly weightless, and the room glows with light, as if objects are floating. Johannes notices that his body doesn’t ache as it did before. He feels a strange weightlessness, and objects seem to float in light. Things haven’t been the same since Erna, his wife (Helena Rasker), died. Yet he sees her, and she sings.
He sings about Signe, the name of his mother, who long ago gave him birth, and also the name of his youngest daughter, a symmetry that suggests continuity and subtle change, reflected in the understated but complex instrumentation. Johannes’s old friend Peter (Will Hartmann) appears. Why is Peter’s hair so long? Why is he so grey? “Let me cut your hair for you” sings Johannes, “like we did 50 years ago”. “You can’t” sings Peter.
Johannes wants to sail again as he used to. “When the sea as still and calm as this”, he sings, “I could sail out far into the west”. Like his father Olai before him, Johannes is remembering happiness past. In the horns and low woodwinds, we hear the roar of the ocean and feel the freedom Johannes must have enjoyed when he was young. This journey, this time, is different.
Johannes appears in his daughter’s house, but she can’t see or hear him. Significantly, the part is sung by Sarah Wegener, who sang the Midwife. Yet Signe feels his embrace.. “Passing through a great chill” she sings, “But nothing evil”. Love doesn’t die, there’s nothing to fear, though Signe doesn’t yet know what has happened. The music bubbles along, occasionally spiking up, with long drawn slow diminuendos. It’s as if the complex machinery of a human body is gradually shutting down, the blood chilling, cells shutting down Long, keening lines which seem to stretch out to limitless horizons.
A story this surreal needs abstract presentation. Greys, whites, silvers blend into each other, changing with light. Nature itself operates in this way. Stand on any beach and see the myriad gradations of colour in the sand, in the sky, in the sea. Nothing is colourless unless you want it to be.
Objects seem to materialize out of nowhere: the props constantly shifting. Johannes’s boat seems to disappear as quietly as it came. The effect is as in a dream, or memory, though it’s created by a turntable mechanism under the floor, which works so well - and so quietly - that we hardly notice. A lot like the passage of time.
This Morgen und Abend operates on many levels, literally and figuratively. Although the texts are direct and conversational, this makes the characterizations human and sympathetic, allowing the music to work its magic on our emotions. The libretto is by Jon Fosse, based on his novel Morgon og Kveld. Against a backcloth the English text is projected, the words moving and changing in tune with music and mood.
Georg Friedrich Haas (born 1953) is an important composer, so the Royal Opera House gives Morgen und Abend the attention it deserves. The cast are well known and well respected. The director is Graham Vick. The designer is Richard Hudson. But in an opera like this, where the music is protagonist, the orchestra makes all the difference. We take the Royal Opera House Orchestra for granted because we hear them so often, but as Antonio Pappano has said, they are an extremely good band. Conducted by Michael Boder they sound as idiomatic as a specialist new music ensemble, clearly inspired by the challenge of Haas’s music. In 2013, Haas’s In Vain was done by the London Sinfonietta. Please read my piece “Invisible Theatre” HERE. Technically, Haas’s music is nowhere as demanding as most of the London Sinfonietta’s repertoire, but any comparison is an achievement.
Haas’s music is beautiful, compelling and poetic. It can stand on its own merits, but conceptually it is sophisticated. New music isn’t an easy sell to audiences expecting the music of 100 years ago. This is where the ROH could improve its marketing. Fortunately the programme notes are good and include a piece by Tim Rutherford-Johnson on Haas’s music, but the real need is to give the public enough good information about the composer that they want to come in the first place.
For details of further performances see the Royal Opera House website.
Anne Ozorio
image=http://www.operatoday.com/22953824682_a075b257d8_z.png image_description=Sarah Wegener and Christoph Pohl [Photo © ROH 2015. Photograph by Clive Barda] product=yes product_title=Morgen und Abend — World Premiere, Royal Opera House product_by=A review by Anne Ozorio product_id=Above: Sarah Wegener and Christoph Pohl [Photo © ROH 2015. Photograph by Clive Barda]November 12, 2015
Company XIV Combines Classic and Chic in an Exquisite Cinderella
Though the story remains faithful to the well-known and oft-interpreted Cinderella story, Company XIV dazzles the audience with novelty from every angle. The dancers move with the grace of trained ballet dancers while seamlessly shifting to modern dance, propelling their sculpted bodies in rhythmic thrusts. There’s the nod to the traditional movement of the court of Louis the XIV, particularly in the courtly scenes of the Prince’s ball, but only for a moment, after which the party devolves into a series of hypersexualized dance duos.
What’s most satisfying about it all, especially for the opera aficionado, is that it works. Of all the recent attempts to bring opera back into relevance or to recapture the excitement, sensuality, and titillation opera and ballet held for audiences in the Baroque Era, this production is the most successful. It combines sex with beauty, novelty with tradition, and never feels like an unconvincing effort to innovate innovation’s sake. It is sexy, it is innovative, and yet it’s still just the same fairy tale of Cinderella—except the audience is thrown between ecstasies of laughter, fascination, and confusing sympathies with characters usually given perfunctory depictions.
Allison Ulrich and Davon Rainey
The true queen of the stage is Davon Rainey, playing the part of Cinderella’s Step-Mother. He manages to portray the fragility of a woman fearing the passing of time and the loss of her own beauty, while instantly snapping to a cruel, vindictive version of the classic evil step-mother. He sashays around the stage with equal parts feminine sexiness and masculine vitality, his body firm and robust with every sharply executed bit of choreography. The oscillation between the longing between hope for the success of her daughters combined with her own secret desires to retain her youth and sex appeal causes the Step-Mother to become one of the most compelling characters in the show. The final moment of Rainey strutting across the stage, staring concernedly into a mirror, with Cinderella dutifully at her side, is one of the most devastating and moving moments of the show. No longer a confusingly abusive foster mother for Cinderella as in the classic tale, the Step-Mother evokes simultaneous sympathy and disgust. Rainey inhabits this complex interpretation perfectly, bursting with an aggressive sexuality that’s both titillating and tragic.
Austin McCormick’s choreography is rife with symbolism and teeming with creativity, with profound commentary on not only the story of Cinderella but greater issues of heteronormative relationships and gender as a social construct. Cinderella (Allison Ulrich) spends the first half of Act I on her hands and knees into total servitude to her step-sisters (who first appear in a comedic, German cabaret-style entrance, the first of many brilliant syntheses of historical musical periods and art forms dreamt up by McCormick.) Ulrich spends most of Act I scurrying around, mouselike, as Cinderella endures abuse and ridicule by her step-mother and step-sisters, used by them as a literal footstool as the trio cackles their way through excess and frivolity. With Cinderella on her hands and knees, her step-sisters (Marcy Richardson and Brett Umlauf, two opera singers with bright and lovely sounds) sing joyfully of their enjoyment of the finer things in life, with a version of Lorde’s pop hit “Royal” so seamlessly rendered into classical-sounding duet that it took me a moment to register what was happening.
Allison Ulrich and Katrina Cunningham
Katrina Cunningham (The Fairy Godmother) takes the stage by storm with a husky-voiced rendition of Lana del Ray’s “Born to Die,” and proves in a few fluid movements that she’s there not just to sing, but to dance. As a younger, sexier interpretation of The Fairy Godmother, she embraces Cinderella in an unforgettable dance duet that fluctuates between a struggle for sexual power and a sensual display of lovemaking. The duet leaves the atmosphere uncomfortably erotic right before the first of the “drink breaks” that broke up the acts of the evening. McCormick, seeming to never forget a thread in the story he’s weaving, allows The Fairy Godmother one last longing glance at her protégé, Cinderella, as she winds her body with the Prince in a display of consummation of their love at the end of Act III.
Ulrich takes the traditionally innocent-minded Cinderella and gives her a trajectory into truly realized womanhood during Acts II and III, her hair loose and her body open in acceptance of the Prince’s desires; the Prince, played smarmily by Steven Trumon Gray, croons beautifully before pulling himself up for a dance into the suspended ring, just in case the audience thought those rippling muscles were just for show. Richardson, Umlauf, and Rainey appear and reappear like mirages throughout the ball and the search for Cinderella, their antics to ensnare the Prince’s affections culminating in The Jewel Song from Gounod’s Faust. Sung beautifully by Marcy Richardson, this feat of physical and musical skill has to be seen to be believed. The ensemble struts across stage with large black narration cards, when they’re not busy dancing with finely executed fervor across the stage.
Company XIV’s production of Cinderella is a true modern Gesamtkunstwerk. No detail is left unforgotten, from the careful bedazzling of the Louis XIV-style dance shoes to the final spotlight on Cinderella, a fairytale maiden who learns that all dreams must end.
Alexis Rodda
image=http://www.operatoday.com/Company_XIV_3.png image_description=Allison Ulrich [Photo by Mark Shelby Perry] product=yes product_title=Company XIV Combines Classic and Chic in an Exquisite Cinderella product_by=A review by Alexis Rodda product_id=Above: Allison UlrichPhotos by Mark Shelby Perry
Monteverdi by The Sixteen at Wigmore Hall
It is a work notable for its assimilation of old and new styles, and liturgical and secular elements, though the precise origins and intention of the large-scale, 90-minute composition are unknown, and have been the subject of lively musicological debate. First printed in Venice in 1610, the work may have been an ‘audition piece’ for a musical position in that city at a time when Monteverdi was still in the employ of the Duke of Gonzaga in Mantua. Whatever the context, by 1613 Monteverdi was working at St. Mark’s in Venice; he was not to compose another entire Vespers, but he did produce settings of some of the individual biblical texts which form the service. And, it was a selection of these works, arranged in almost-symmetrical formation across the two halves of the concert, which The Sixteen performed, under the direction of Harry Christophers.
Framing the programme were two settings of Psalm 100, Dixit Dominus (‘The Lord said’), the first drawn from the composer’s virtuosic collection of sacred works, Selva morale e spirtuale of 1641. Listening to this lively 8-voice work — which was accompanied by violins, cello, theorbo, harp and organ — I was struck by the arresting vivacity of the individual musical lines. In contrast to the perfectly blended tone of ensembles such as The Tallis Scholars, Harry Christophers encouraged the singers to bring individual character and colour to their vocal parts, while never sacrificing unity and coherence. The result was ‘operatic’ in effect; voices dramatically moved to the fore and then retreated, asserting their dynamic role in the narrative, then withdrawing to allow other voices to hold sway. Solos alternated animatedly with ensemble textures, and the two violins added their own vibrant interaction. Such was the spirited nature of the rhythmic movement of the inner voices that at times the work seemed more festive and dance-like than devotional. Christophers was a flexible guide, creating changes of pace within and between individual episodes, complementing and enhancing the variations of timbre. Arriving at the fifth stanza’s soprano duet, ‘De torrente in via bibet:/ Propterea exaltabit caput.’ (He shall drink of the brook in the way: therefore shall he lift up his head.), we seemed to enter the world of the madrigal, so lilting and sweet were the sighing phrases. The closing ‘Gloria Patri’ moved from homophonic grandeur to impressive floridity.
The ‘mirror’ work at the close of the concert was Monteverdi’s 1650 Dixit Dominus, also for eight voices. Large parts of this setting are identical to that from Selva Morale e Spirituale. While the 1650 work is less complex than the earlier publication, and so may in fact have been written first, with the lines ‘Judicabit in nationibus’ (He shall judge among the heathen), the voices engaged in gloriously complex rhythmic debates and the subsequent ‘De torrente’ was enriched by exciting harp flourishes.
The second Dixit Dominus was published in Monteverdi’s posthumous collection Messa et salmi, which also contained the remaining items in the programme, including the two settings of Confitebor tibi Domine (‘Psalm 111, I will praise you Lord’) that formed the next ‘inner layer’. The first is for solo soprano. The theorbo’s contribution to the quiet instrumental opening was particularly expressive, and the dancing ritornello for violins which is interspersed between the voice’s ornate melodies might have been drawn from Orfeo. Elin Manahan Thomas’s soprano was agile and light, and she confidently shaped the performance, manipulating the tempo and interacting with the instrumental parts in imitative sequences. A tenor is added for the second Confitebor, and Mark Dobell and Grace Davidson, accompanied by the violins and continuo, made much of the madrigalian chromaticism and word-painting: ‘Exquisita in omnes voluntates eius.’ ([the Lord’s works are studied by all who delight in them) ‘Misericors et miserator Dominus’ (merciful and compassionate is the Lord) was passed expressively between the voices, as if to emphasis the duality of His qualities, underscored by dissonance. Later, the unification of the voices for ‘Fidelia omnia mandata eius’ (All his promises are ordained) was beautifully enacted. The harpsichord’s sweeping flourishes celebrated the glory of His divine justice and the cello continuo line contributed eloquently to the whole.
Monteverdi’s 1650 Laetatus Sum (Psalm 122, ‘I was glad’) for six voices was mirrored in the second half by two works:Laudate Dominum omnes gentes (Psalm 117) — here performed as a bass duet — and Lauda Jerusalem a 3. The ostinato of Laetatus Sum rolled forwards compelling — and the change to a triple meter and back further energised the work — as the duetting voices, first sopranos, then tenors and finally bass, skipped and twirled vivaciously above. The high tenor lines were bright and strong; the darker basses vigorous and nimble. The paired sopranos blended wonderfully with the two violins, the sonorities seeming to imitate each other, almost deceiving the ear. The homophonous ‘Gloria Patri’ was a powerful statement of ‘oneness’ after such diversity. After the melismatic liveliness of the Laudate Dominum, the monotone ‘Amen’ presented a striking contrast. The three male voices of Lauda Jerusalem (BTT) again relished every opportunity to indulge in expressive textual heightening. The melismas, dissonances and quivers of the lines ‘Emittet verbum suum, et liquefaciet ea:/Flabit spirit eius, et fluent aquae’ (He shall send out his word, and shall melt them: his wind shall blow, and the waters shall run) were gloriously dramatic, and the low, narrowly spaced vocal parts in the final lines of the ‘Gloria Patri’ were thrillingly dark-hued.
Two settings of Monteverdi’s Nisi Dominus (Psalm 127, ‘Unless the Lord builds a house’), the first for three voices, the second for six, surrounded the central ‘core’ — Cavalli’s Magnificat, also published in 1650. The first Nisi was splendidly theatrical, characterised by seemingly spontaneous invention, as the singers — alto, tenor then bass — sang their verses in turn, while the flexibility and responsiveness of the singers in the six-part version was notable. After such imaginative ingenuity, the series of solos, duets and trios of Cavalli’s Magnificat seemed, to this ear at least, somewhat prosaic, though there was no lessening of the vibrancy of the delivery of the contrapuntal interplay — and the contrast of timbre offered by the commencement, in the middle of the work, of a chaconne bass line introduced, as so many of the Monteverdi works had done, a secular tone within the sacred.
Everything about this concert was consummately prepared and executed; even the complex choreography required as the requisite musicians and singers entered, traversed and quitted the platform throughout the evolving programme. This was a performance that was undoubtedly much more than the sum of its parts.
Claire Seymour
Programme and performers:
Claudio Monteverdi: Dixit Dominus (Primo) (from Selva morale e spirituale), Confitebor tibi Domine (Primo),Laetatus sum a6, Nisi Dominus a3; Francesco Cavalli: Magnificat; Claudio Monteverdi: Nisi Dominus a6, Laudate Dominum omnes gentes (for solo bass), Lauda Jerusalem a3, Confitebor tibi Domine (Secondo).
The Sixteen: director: Harry Christophers; soprano: Grace Davidson, Elin Manahan Thomas; tenor: Jeremy Bud, Mark Dobell, Steven Harrold, George Pooley; bass: Jimmy Holliday, Stuart Young; violin 1: Simon Jones, violin 2: Andrea Jones, cello: Joseph Crouch, harp: Frances Kelly, theorbo: David Miller, organ & harpsichord: Alastair Ross. Wigmore Hall, London, Tuesday 3rd November 2015.
image=http://www.operatoday.com/Monteverdi.jpg image_description=Claudio Monteverdi product=yes product_title=Monteverdi by The Sixteen at Wigmore Hall product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id=Above: Claudio MonteverdiFélicien David: Songs for voice and piano
Now two estimable Greek-born performers offer an excellent and varied selection of 18 David songs in performances that bring delight to ear and mind.
Félicien David is not generally thought of as a songwriter. He is known in the history books (e.g., Richard Taruskin’s thoughtful appreciation in Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 3) for a single, large-scale work: a “symphonic ode”—David’s term for a kind of a secular oratorio, but with spoken narration in verse—entitled Le désert (1844), about a caravan moving through a sandy wasteland and stopping overnight at an oasis. Le désert is available in a recording of a live performance (1989), with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, on a Capriccio CD; a second recording, made in Paris, appeared on the Naïve label in November 2014. Other CDs in the past three decades have featured first recordings of David’s three piano trios; his four string quartets; 11 of the 24 delightful one-movement pieces for string quintet (quartet plus double-bass) that David published under the title Les quatre saisons; some short works for violin and piano; and two collections of piano pieces: Les brises d’Orient and Les minarets (first published together under the title Mélodies orientales). Best of all, for those among us who believe that the composer was one of the most imaginative and influential of his generation, David’s operas are finally getting the attention from performers that scholars such as Dorothy V. Hagan, Morton Achter, and Hugh Macdonald have long urged: the comic opera Lalla-Roukh, touching and witty by turns, on the Naxos label, and his one grand opera, Herculanum. The latter, in a recording that features Véronique Gens and Karine Deshayes, appeared in September 2015 on the Ediciones Singulares label, as no. 10 in an “Opéra français” series. That series of opera recordings is sponsored by the Centre de Musique Romantique Française, an admirable organization—based at the Palazetto Bru Zane in Venice—that has helped fund most of the recent David recordings, including the present song recital. Herculanum is also going to get its first staging in nearly a century and a half: at Wexford Festival Opera, in Ireland (October-November 2016). Amazing to see a forgotten composer getting attention like this—and the attention is extraordinarily well deserved.
Sample Track: Félicien David — “Le nuage”
The songs on this CD—dating largely from the late 1830s and 1840s—show remarkable range in mood: from tender confessions of love (“J’ai peur de l’aimer”; “L’amitié”) and reflections on the transience of human life and sorrows (“Le nuage”) to sharply contrasting genre pieces (the folk-Italian “Saltarelle”; a barcarolle entitled “Le pêcheur à sa nacelle”; a soldier’s song, “En chemin”—i.e., “Let’s hit the road!”; and the lullaby “Dormez, Marie”). Two of the songs set, very effectively, poems by Théophile Gautier that vocal fanciers know much better from versions by Berlioz (“Reviens, reviens”—Berlioz’s “Absence”—and “La chanson du pêcheur”—Berlioz’s “Sur les lagunes”). Most of the songs are strophic, but David sometimes enriches the piano accompaniment in the second and later strophes. A few create substantially different music for the final strophe (“Adieux à Charence”) or are through-composed and intense, ignoring the meter and rhyme of the verse in order to create a kind of operatic scena or accompanied recitative (“L’océan: méditation”). Aside from Gautier, the poets are all forgotten figures today: some were personal friends of the composer (e.g., Emma Tourneux de Voves), but others were widely published at the time, e.g., Charles de Marecourt, Marc Constantin, and Eugène Barateau.
Most distinctive are two songs to texts written in the voice of a Middle Eastern man. “Le tchibouk” draws its title from a word indicating a long-stemmed Turkish pipe. The song quickly reels off a host of stereotypical images of Middle Eastern life: the curling bluish smoke that rises from the pipe, the hazy feeling that smoking the pipe induces, the coffee’s fragrant aroma, the gracious movements of Fatma the dancing-woman, and the attentions of ma brune amoureuse (“my dark-complexioned lover”).
Even more specific and characterful are the verbal images in “Le Bédouin,” a song whose poem was described by its author, Jacques Cognat, as “imité de l’arabe” (i.e., in the style of an Arab poem). The character who sings it, a Bedouin Arab, urges his camel (well, we have to figure out that it’s his camel—the Bedouin calls it “my faithful friend”) to fly with him across the desert “like a gazelle,” and he compares the animal’s swaying to that of “an enticing dancing-woman.” As the song proceeds, the man shows himself to be full of yearning but also religiously devout: “In anticipation of seeing me again, my beloved has put kohl around her lovely eyes. . . . [Refrain:] Allah, grant the true believer [i.e., me] a safe journey. You alone are wise, and I am a Muslim!” David and Cognat had lived for a time in Egypt during the early 1830s as members of the Saint-Simonian movement, a utopian-socialist movement that sought, among other things, to modernize the educational system in Egypt and to persuade Egyptian officials to cut a canal through the Isthmus of Suez. It is perhaps for this reason that poet and composer created a song that, quite unusually for that time, conveys in sympathetic terms the desires, travails, and modest lifestyle of an Arab desert-dweller. (Regarding the Suez project: the Saint-Simonians believed that a canal would enable the major world nations to become more interdependent economically and that this would make them less likely to wage war against each other. The Suez Canal would finally be built some thirty-five years later by governments and banking organizations that gave little or no credit to these foresighted thinkers.)
The music of “Le tchibouk,” with its bolero-like rhythm, may seem more Spanish than Arab in style, but it is undeniably attractive. “Le Bédouin” uses a quasi-Middle Eastern style that David made famous in Le désert and that other composers, such as Bizet and Delibes, soon copied. Most notable here are frequent pounding chords—which suggest the beating of a drum—and some subtle touches of modality.
The translations in the booklet, by Mary Pardoe, are generally skillful and communicative. But she seems not to have understood that the “loyal friend” in “Le Bédouin” is a camel rather than, say, a male servant. Several times she even changes a plural verb to a singular (e.g., “volons” becomes “let me fly”), missing the basic point that the Bedouin and his camel are inseparable companions.
The baritone, Tassis Christoyannis, has sung such roles as Germont père and Don Giovanni at major opera houses in France and Germany. He applies an impressively wide range of colors to this repertoire. The voice is always fully supported, with a wondrous legato. The high range is silky-smooth, yet the voice expands gratifyingly in the more emphatic songs. Christoyannis nicely elaborates on the flamenco-like vocal cadenza at the end of “Le tchibouk” and throws in a high note at the very end of the song: a spontaneous-sounding and appropriate touch. His pronunciation is remarkably fine for someone born outside of France, though I caught some slightly problematic vowels (the e in “sera” and the nasal i in “étincelle”). Throughout the disc, the pianist, Thanassis Apostolopoulos, gives fine support, relishing the occasional moments of more elaborate figuration.
Despite the riches on display here, numerous other equally fine songs had to be excluded. A second CD of David’s songs, just released in France (on the Passavant-Boutique label), offers many of the same items but also some different ones, including the marvelous “Tristesse de l’odalisque.” The singer on that CD, Artavazd Sargsyan, is a young, award-winning lyric tenor—and apparently French-born, to judge by his exquisitely comfortable handling of the texts. He takes slightly faster tempos, ably seconded by a highly responsive pianist, Paul Montag. Still, nobody has recorded one of my favorites: “Sultan Mahmoud” (to words by, again, Théophile Gautier). The score can be easily found in David Tunley’s indispensable six-volume anthology Romantic French Song, 1830–1870 (Garland Press, 1994).
Ralph P. Locke
Ralph P. Locke is Professor Emeritus of Musicology at the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music. His books include two from Cambridge University Press: Musical Exoticism: Images and Reflections and Musical Exoticism from the Renaissance to Mozart. A version of the review printed above originally appeared in American Record Guide.
image=http://www.operatoday.com/AP086-cover.png image_description= product=yes product_title=Félicien David: Songs for voice and piano product_by=Tassis Christoyannis, baritone/Thanassis Apostolopoulos, piano product_id=Aparté/Palazetto Bru Zane AP086—[CD] price=$21.99 product_url=http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=1458543November 9, 2015
Dialogues des Carmélites Revival at Dutch National Opera
As Dutch National Opera’s most successful export ever, it gets to be the only revival in the company’s celebratory 50th season. Eighteen years on, it is still overwhelming.
Musically, this revival is equally worthy of the 1957 masterpiece about the Carmelite nuns guillotined in 1794 during the Reign of Terror for refusing to renounce religious life. The Residentie Orkest under Stéphane Denève was nothing short of inspired. Wind solos wept quietly. The brass section, crucial in expressing anxiety churning itself into blind terror, distinguished itself, forgetting the odd rogue note, with honed technique and supreme control. Mr Denève kept things transparent, in service to the words. He conducted the interludes with elegant restraint and his graded build-up to the final horror had the feel of a superior thriller. In fact, Georges Bernanos’s play was written for the screen, and the opera’s division into twelve scenes, some of which start in mid-conversation, is partly why its structure feels so modern and familiar. No doubt Mr Denève’s pacing was the result of long study, but it came across as instinctive and uncontrived.
Doris Soffel as Madame de Croissy and Sally Matthews as Blanche
The whole cast, meticulously directed by Mr Carsen, gave theatrically acute performances, without as much as an eyebrow raised gratuitously. All the shorter roles were well-sung. Michael Colvin made a convincing Chaplain. The women of the Dutch National Opera Chorus were top-notch, joining the soloists in a refulgent Act II Ave Maria and a note-perfect closing Salve Regina. Jean-François Lapointe and Stanislas de Barbeyrac as, respectively, Blanche’s father and brother, were both forceful and vocally rock-solid. Mr De Barbeyrac’s expressive dynamics made the Chevalier’s visit to his sister in the convent stand out as one of the more memorable scenes.
Sally Matthews injected the fearful, hypersensitive Blanche with toe-curling awkwardness, accentuating her self-hatred rather than her timidity. Vocally, her middle-to-lower range sounded clotted, but her missile-like top went a long way towards conveying the panic that has the novice nun in her grip. Michelle Breedt’s Mother Marie was probably caught on a lesser night. Upward climbs were marred by skidding and her lower notes did not project freely enough for this overbearing character. Mother Marie is, after all, the one who persuades the sisters to take a vow of martyrdom, although she herself is denied that glory. It would be useless to analyze where Doris Soffel’s mezzo-soprano tends to shake and spread—her Old Prioress was simply grand, every word thrumming with meaning, her dying howls terrifying. A frail woman brimming with tenderness one moment, a vocal tornado railing against God the next, Ms Soffel’s moribund nun was the stuff of nightmares, and of great moments at the opera. No less impressive was Sabine Devieilhe as that pious equivalent of the flibbertigibbet, Sister Constance. She propelled her laser-sharp soprano with a thrust that far exceeded its size and her text clarity and physical energy were a complete joy. Making her DNO debut, Adrianne Pieczonka brought vocal beauty and dignity to the role of Madame Lidoine. Her highest notes did not always come easily, but her ariosos, wrapped in the velvet of her luxurious timbre, revealed a deeply touching, motherly Prioress.
Michelle Breedt as Mère Marie and Sally Matthews as Blanche
Mr Carsen’s production affects with its simplicity, which belies a wealth of detail. The way the nuns lie face down around Madame de Croissy’s death bed, for example. It is the same position nuns assume when taking their vows and here it presages their death, while drawing a parallel between Blanche’s decision to die with them and her commitment to the order. Mr Carsen finds true poetry in his subjects, in the draping of their habits and the tranquil mechanics of their daily chores. As Poulenc’s music darts in and out of their inner life, Mr Carsen confines and opens spaces with minimal demarcations, such as spotlights and candles. The biggest barriers are human: the row of nuns forming a grille between Blanche and her brother, the angry crowd sweeping across the stage leaving disorder in its wake. In the end, the safest refuge is also human, not topographical. As Madame Lidoine says in her prison speech: “No one could take away from us the freedom that we surrendered with our vows so long ago.” By choosing a common destiny, the nuns conquer their fear. Despite the savage swipes of the guillotine, their Salve Regina rises in hopeful phrases. Their final prayer is an Ascension as well as an execution and staging it as an ethereal dance is pure genius.
Jenny Camilleri
Cast and production information:
Blanche: Sally Matthews, Le Marquis de la Force: Jean-François Lapointe, Le Chevalier: Stanislas de Barbeyrac, L'Aumônier du Carmel: Michael Colvin, Geôlier: Jean-Luc Ballestra, Madame de Croissy: Doris Soffel, Madame Lidoine: Adrianne Pieczonka, Mère Marie— Michelle Breedt, Soeur Constance de Saint Denis: Sabine Devieilhe, Mère Jeanne: Virpi Räisänen, Soeur Mathilde: Wilke te Brummelstroete, Officier: Roger Smeets, 1er Commissaire: Mark Omvlee, 2ième Commissaire: Harry Teeuwen, Thierry: Michael Wilmering, M. Javelinot: Sander Heutinck, Conductor: Stéphane Denève, Director: Robert Carsen, , Set Designer: Michael Levine, Costume Designer: Falk Bauer, Lighting Designer: Jean Kalman, Choreographer: Philippe Giraudeau, Dramaturge: Ian Burton, Dutch National Opera Choir, Residentie Orkest. Seen at Dutch National Opera & Ballet, Amsterdam, Saturday, 7th November 2015.
image=http://www.operatoday.com/dno_dialogues_-_a4-300dpi.png image_description=Dialogues des Carmélites [Photo: Petrovsky & Ramone] product=yes product_title=Dialogues des Carmélites Revival at Dutch National Opera product_by=A review by Jenny Camilleri product_id=Above: Dialogues des Carmélites [Photo: Petrovsky & Ramone]All other photos by Hans van den Bogaard
November 5, 2015
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari: Le donne curiose
Wolf-Ferrari is better known today, though, for his series of operas in the spirit of, or directly derived from, the plays of Carlo Goldoni — the first of which was Le donne curiose (1903). And, on this occasion, this battle-of-the-sexes comedy of manners was performed by the opera students of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama which a responsiveness to Goldoni’s ‘world’ the equal of the composer’s own buffa sensibility.
Milan Siljanov as Arlecchino
The scenario of Le donne curiose, or ‘The Inquisitive Women’ (libretto, Luigi Sugana), is somewhat dated, though. A gaggle of gossiping girls is obsessed by what goes on behind the doors of the gentleman’s club which is frequented by their husbands and fiancés. Its strict ‘no women admitted’ policy fuels their frustration and their imaginations. Beatrice, wife of Ottavio, believes the club is a gambling den; Lelio’s spouse, Eleonora, is convinced that the men are indulging in occult practices and alchemy. Rosaura is tormented by the idea that her betrothed, Florindo, is frequenting a house of ill repute; Colombina, whose dark glasses and trench-coat suggests that she’s watched too many episodes of Colombo, is sure she’s solved the mystery — they are digging for hidden treasure. Instead, over a pizza and pint, the men are simply seeking peace from the ladies’ chattering, and congratulating themselves on their male Amicizia, or friendship — as celebrated in the club’s slogan. Thus, when the insatiable sinner-seekers connive a way inside and find their men doing nothing more debauched or outlandish than sharing the feast that Pantalone has served up to celebrate the imminent marriage of Florindo and Rosaura, it’s a bit of an anti-climax for them, and for us. There’s not nearly as much comic business, particularly in the final Act, as one might expect. When their espionage is discovered, embarrassment replaces prurience; they beg for forgiveness and the magnanimous males oblige.
Goldoni’s plays and libretti blend contemporary wit with the masks, mode and improvised mayhem of the commedia dell’arte; director Stephen Barlow and his designer Yannis Thavoris translate Le donne curiose to the almost-present, combining the stock characterisation of commedia — miserly merchants, foolish old men, pedantic wind-bags and wily servants — with the cheerful vulgarity of a 1970s sit-com.
We glide into Venice — the home of the commedia — down the Grand Canal, courtesy of Dom Baker’s screen-credit video designs which ingeniously transform Thames Television’s London-landmark logo into a Venetian waterside vista of palazzi and vaporetti. (Baker is a student on BA Technical Theatre Arts at GSMD.) Against this baroque Venetian backdrop, the cast are presented to us in a series of ‘opening credits’, grinning and preening like day-time soap-opera stars. This raised guffaws but did distract somewhat from some stylish playing in the pit during the overture (which was a shame, as there was good ensemble and some brave playing by the horns).
Yannis Thavoris’ sets are colourful and characterful. The bold orange, yellow and brown concentric circle designs, the shag carpet-rug, the bright chrome and plastic furniture, garish lamps, and finally the huge white-leather semi-circular sofa arrangement of the gentleman’s club re-create the height of 1970s (bad) taste. The dark-stained cabinets, extended Formica counters, combo oven/range and the clashing décor of avocado green and burnt orange would have delighted Fanny Craddock.
A tacky souvenir shop is the ‘front’ for the club, the latter signalled only by the symbolic over-sized key-hole in the centre of a rear door. Tourists (members of the Guildhall Chorus) wander through to flick through post-cards and gawp at the Carnival masks and strip gondoliers’ shirts that hang from the walls. The club interior is a shrine to boys’ toys — football and fast cars, motorbikes and music idols: the characters sport an eclectic array of costumes indicating diverse musical tastes from Frank Zappa to the Bee Gees. There’s a fantastic coup de theatre in the final Act: as the women jostle each other to peer through the keyhole, the whole set swivels and in the blink of an eye outside becomes inside. On the whole, the set is brightly lit, which makes the dimmer, duskier moments more arresting. Ottavio’s misery in Act 2, aggravated by the women’s schemes to get him to remove his jacket so they can filch his keys — machinations which result in him being doused in wine and catching cold — initiates darker tones and longer shadows. The aquamarine canal, which is projected during the Act 3 overture, ripples in the moonlight evoking nocturnal mystery and romance.
Bethan Langford as Beatrice; Nicola Said as Rosaura; Thomas Atkins as Florindo; David Ireland as Ottavio
Le donne curiose , with a cast of 17, is a good choice for a student opera and the young singers here demonstrated strong and well-balanced vocal and theatrical skills, although some found the most high-lying passages challenging. The ensemble work was polished and the honours shared; no one individual dominated the crowd. On the whole, the singers did not let the farce and foolishness distract them: the light-hearted routines are slick — and well-matched to the music.
Thomas Atkins’ tenor has an incipient Italianate gleam and he was a beguiling Florindo, so obviously enamoured of Rosaura and at the mercy of her emotional mood swings. Looking as if he had strayed from the set of Saturday Night Fever, Atkins sustained a strong tone through his arching melodies, and showed impressive stamina in his long aria; but he also revealed a beautifully dreamy quieter voice. His Rosaura, Nicola Said demonstrated a creamy tone complemented by a strong low register, and she commanded attention.
Although the scenario nods in the direction of the eighteenth century, the opera’s score borrows from closer to home — Verdi’s Falstaff and Rossini’s Barber of Seville and Daughter of the Regiment' are the most obvious fore-runners, although there’s a debt to Mozart too, and some pastiche in the form of Handelian bravura and a gondolier’s serenade. The musical idiom is generally through-composed but at times arioso and conversational exchanges crystallise into discrete numbers, the best of which are the Act 2 quartet and the beautiful duet for Florindo and Rosaura, ‘Se in voi cotanto’. During their expression of devotion the lighting may have been rose-tinted but the singers conveyed a candour which aroused our own empathy, something which the opera’s superficiality and foolishness generally banish elsewhere. The throb in Florindo’s voice was surely genuine.
Bass-baritone David Ireland’s optimistic Ottavio sang with an easeful flow and grace; Christopher Cull’s tenor had real power and incisiveness, but the characterisation of Lelio was a little discomforting — was he a buffoon, an object of ridicule, when, frequently enraged by his wife, he readily whipped off his belt to thrash her? Or, was he a reminder of the darker side of marital relations? Swiss bass-baritone Milan Siljanov (winner of the Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation International Song Competition in September 2015) was superb as Arlecchino, Pantalone’s side-kick; his big aria doesn’t come until the final Act, but it was worth the wait. Dominick Felix used his attractive tenor to suggest Leandro’s happy-go-luckiness. Baritone Josep-Ramon Olivé made an impact as Pantalone; though in Act 1 he was a trifle over-emphatic, he modulated Pantalone’s contemptuousness and bitterness subsequently.
Nicola Said as Rosaura; Elgan Thomas as Florindo; Katarzyna Balejko as Colombina; David Ireland as Ottavio
The women formed a well-balanced quartet. Bethan Langford conveyed Beatrice’s indignant exasperation through both the richness of her mezzo soprano and the violence that she inflicted on Ottavio’s pasta supper. In Act 1 I found that Jennifer Witton, as Eleanora, let theatrical exaggeration (there were shades of Hyacinth Bucket) overpower her vocal focus; but she quickly re-established her control, and in Act 2 she delivered elegantly shaped phrases, with soft effortlessness. Katarzyna Balejko was the instigator of much of the farce — and showed her comic timing when spilling liquids and swinging doors. ‘Disguised’ is an Italian football fan, sporting the national kit, this Colombina nevertheless found her way to Arlecchini’s in the final Act.
Conductor Mark Shanahan ensured that proceedings breezed along charmingly, but there’s quite a bit of padding in Wolf-Ferrari’s score and the melodic invention is on the thin side. That said, there is some imaginative orchestration and Shanahan made sure that we heard the delicate motifs for bassoon, or other woodwind, and appreciated the more unusually scored passages, such as the overture to Act 3.
Overall, I’d say that Barlow judged this production perfectly — excepting one small detail. Wolf-Ferrari never quite attains Mozartian clarity or matches the comic sincerity of Verdi’s Falstaff, but there are intimations and echoes: these were swept aside, however, when the cream pie fight broke out in the closing scenes. However, Barlow and his cast made a strong case for the theatrical effectiveness of Le donne curiose and contributed greatly to our appreciation of its musical charm.
Claire Seymour
Cast and production information:
Leandro: Dominick Felix, Lelio: Christopher Cull, Ottavio: David Ireland, Florindo: Thomas Atkins, Almoró: Andrew Brown, Alvise: James Robinson, Asdrubale: Eduard Mas Bacardit, Lunardo: Likasz Klimczak, Mènego: Bertie Watson, Mòmolo: Jack Holton, Pantalone: Josep-Ramon Olivé, Arlecchino: Milan Siljanov, Beatrice: Bethan Langford, Rosaura: Nicola Said, Eleonora: Jennifer Witton, Colombina: Katarzyna Balejko, Gondolier: Chavdar Mazgalov; director: Stephen Barlow, conductor: Mark Shanahan, designer: Yannis Thavoris, lighting designer: Howard Hudson, video designer: Dom Baker, GSMD orchestra and chorus. Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, Monday 2nd November 2015.
image=http://www.operatoday.com/12182439_10153276853916365_7144504192528608391_o.png image_description=Nicola Said as Rosaura [Photo ©Guildhall School / Clive Barda] product=yes product_title=Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari: Le donne curiose product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id=Above: Nicola Said as RosauraPhotos ©Guildhall School / Clive Barda
Moby-Dick Surfaces in the City of Angels
Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s opera is enormously successful and it has been touring the English-speaking world since its 2010 premiere in Dallas. Despite the opera having been seen on television, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion was nearly full for the first performance.
Like many other twenty-first century operas, Moby-Dick is tonal; after a few hearings its themes take root in the mind. Musically, Heggie’s ocean music relates somewhat to the blue-green tones of the Sea Interludes from Benjamin Britten’s opera Peter Grimes. Heggie is his own man, however, and finds a unique sound for each of his works. The ship and its many sailors relate to Britten’s Billy Budd except that Heggie and Scheer have a woman sing Pip, the Cabin Boy. A very good idea, and on this occasion the voice of Jacqueline Echols’ Pip soared gracefully over Heggie’s orchestra, soloists and chorus for much of the first act.
Leonard Foglia’s production featured lighting by Gavan Swift based on Donald Holder’s spectacular original designs with projections from the inventive mind of Elaine J. McCarthy. Robert Brill’s set was a huge sailing ship with decks that seemed to unfold out of a sea mist, while Jane Greenwood’s costumes placed the action securely in the nineteenth century. Choreographer Keturah Stickann and Fight Director Ed Douglass made shipboard life real with sailors’ dances and the fighting that often accompanies groups of men.
The story tells of Ahab and his increasingly reckless pursuit of the white whale. Jay Hunter Morris has been singing this role for five years, and his interpretation has gotten deeper and more intense with each outing. Fanatical but sane and cogent in Act One, Ahab’s focus constantly narrows as the opera progresses. His purpose becomes more evident when he refuses to let his sailors capture other whales. This refusal, which denies them their just wages, leads to the eventual death of all but one sailor, the Greenhorn. Morris is nothing if not a charismatic communicator. He sang with polished clarion tones, impressive breath control, and diction that allowed the listener to stop watching titles.
Tenor Joshua Guerrero, whose voice was new to many, sang Greenhorn with liquid phrasing and dulcet lyrical tones. Musa Ngqungwana was an intense, commanding Queequeg whose musings showed the spiritual side of the voyage. As Starbuck, the First Mate, Morgan Smith sang with impressively colored tones. Smith will be Don Giovanni at Arizona Opera later this season. Malcolm MacKenzie was an intelligent Stubb and Matthew O’Neill a credible Flask. Because he was only heard from off stage, Nicholas Brownlee’s Captain Gardiner was hard to characterize.
Conductor James Conlon puts his singular stamp on everything he does and Moby-Dick is no exception. Although I’ve seen this opera 3 times, I heard new and different sonorities at the Chandler Pavilion and I loved the sparkling lyricism of Conlon’s interpretation. His sea is not always angry. It varies as does the weather and only at the end does it rise up and overpower humanity. I enjoyed Moby-Dick and suggest opera lovers try to see it more than once to savor its many layers.
Maria Nockin
Cast and production information:
Captain Ahab, Jay Hunter Morris; Greenhorn, Joshua Guerrero; Starbuck, first mate, Morgan Smith; Queequeg, Musa Ngqungwana; Pip, Jacqueline Echols; Stubb, Malcolm MacKenzie; Flask, Matthew O'Neill; Captain Gardiner, Nicholas Brownlee; Conductor, James Conlon; Production, Leonard Foglia; Set Designer, Robert Brill; Costume Designer, Jane Greenwood; Lighting Designer, Gavan Swift; Original Lighting Design, Donald Holder; Projection Designer, Elaine J. McCarthy; Associate Director and Choreographer, Keturah Stickann; Fight Director, Ed Douglas.
image=http://www.operatoday.com/Moby-15259-0406p.png
image_description=Jay Hunter Morris as Captain Ahab [Photo by Craig T. Mathew / LA Opera]
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product_title=Moby-Dick Surfaces in the City of Angels
product_by=A review by Maria Nockin
product_id=Above: Jay Hunter Morris as Captain Ahab [Photo by Craig T. Mathew / LA Opera]
Great Scott at the Dallas Opera
To get her pet opera produced, Arden has come back to her hometown where the American Opera, run by impressaria Winnie Flato (Federica von Stade), is based. Winnie’s husband runs the local pro football team and makes enough money to indulge his wife’s passion for opera. The team is playing across town in the Super Bowl the night “Rosa Dolorosa” opens. Onstage with Arden is a fiercely ambitious young Eastern European soprano, Tatyana Bakst (Ailyn Perez), who is eager to supplant the veteran diva. There are romantic subplots between Arden and her former high school sweetheart (Nathan Gunn), and between the cute young stage manager (Anthony Roth Costanzo), and the conductor (Kevin Burdette). In addition, there is a barihunk intent on revealing his torso onstage and a witty tenor.
As you can see from this description, there’s a lot going on in Great Scott. Master playwright Terrence McNally has created characters that are much fully drawn than is usual in opera. The libretto is witty, warm-hearted and eloquent.
Jake Heggie’s score for Great Scott raises all sorts of questions. It’s a meta-operatic work, an opera about the making of an operatic production filled with pastiche of bel canto composers plus a dollop of Richard Strauss. Heggie’s virtue is his talent for writing melodies for the voice in an era in which many operatic composters think of the human voice as just another instrument in the orchestra and often not the most important one. No wonder singers love his music. However, the score for Great Scott is so easy on the ear that, apart from the pseudo Rossini, the sweet, melodic music often sounds like old-fashioned Broadway. Its best moments, like the rapturous quartet toward the end, echoing the trio from Der Rosenkavalier, tend to sound like someone else. There were times when I thought the opera would be better if Heggie had gone more in the direction of Broadway. The echoes of Rossini in Cy Coleman’s brilliant score for On the Twentieth Century are wittier than Heggie’s parodies. There’s nothing wrong with musicals combining Broadway and opera – think of Porgy and Bess, Street Scene, Regina or The Most Happy Fella. McNally’s libretto does this masterfully. Heggie’s music isn’t quite in either camp. He wants the music to be approachable, but is it distinctive?
On opening night, Great Scott ran for nearly three and a half hours. Here is a case where less would be more. The longish overture is weak and could easily be cut and there’s too much operatic parody. The joke wears a bit thin after a while. An edited version of Great Scott focusing more on the backstage story with less faux Rossini would be far more potent.
The premiere production couldn’t have had a better cast. Great Scott calls for singers with excellent technique and personal charisma. This cast had both. It’s difficult to single out any of the leads for particular praise. Joyce DiDonato sang like an angel but acted equally well as a star in midlife crisis. Federica von Stade still has a beautiful voice and made Winnie into a lovable character. Ailyn Perez has certainly met sopranos like Tatyana Bakst and gives a spot-on performance as an embodiment of diva ambition. Her star turn is a bizarre version of “The Star Spangled Banner” at the Super Bowl that almost steals the show. Anthony Roth Costanzo, is totally winning as Roane, the stage manager who can’t decide whether he is a realist or a romantic. Costanzo also gets a show stopping number in which he confesses to his non-operatic musical preferences. He can dance too! As he always does, veteran director Jack O’Brien gives the work both warmth and pizzazz. Opera never gets enough rehearsal. I wish I had seen the last performance instead of the first. I’m sure the production will settle in even more over time.
I doubt that Great Scott will withstand the test of time. I couldn’t help thinking of Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Last Savage, another comic opera filled with pastiche that doesn’t have a firm enough musical profile. Great Scott is thoroughly enjoyable but not great.
Ian MacKenzie
image=http://www.operatoday.com/Great_Scott_4.jpg image_description=Photo: Karen Almond product=yes product_title=Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally’s Great Scott at the Dallas Opera product_by=A review by Ian MacKenzie product_id=Above photo by Karen AlmondSchubert and Debussy at Wigmore Hall
Continuing the series’ intention to place the composer’s little-known songs alongside his most acclaimed and familiar works, the performers also offered another juxtaposition within the work of art-song: Schubert’s uncommon sensitivity to the poetic texts of his lieder is familiar, though never taken for granted, but here Crowe and her musical partners allowed us to consider, and compare, Claude Debussy’s finely crafted musical responses to the French language and poetic sensibility.
The first line of the opening song, ‘An den Mond’ (Hölty, To the moon), seemed apposite, as Crowe extended her own ‘silvery gleam’ across the Wigmore Hall, here and throughout the recital, bathing the audience in a radiant auditory lustre. All the musical elements were employed to convey meaning: the slow tread of the third stanza introduced a melancholy quality as the protagonist speaks of his desire to ‘lay a wreath on every meadow’ (‘Und einen Kranz uaf jeden Anger streue’); the long silent pause at the end of the verse suggested the retreat of the moon which will veil itself once more in the final verse, a retreat embodied too by the delicate weight of the vocal line and Martineau’s withdrawing accompaniment. Crowe did not always use the text, though, as much as I would have liked. In a recent reflection on art-song, I wrote that ‘audiences have to work hard to understand and enjoy a song: they have to listen intently to a text, perhaps in a language not their own, and can’t just sit back and let the music ‘wash over’ them. There’s nowhere to hide in a small venue, and they can feel as much a part of the performance as the singer. It can be difficult too, even for regular lieder attendees, to both follow a text, especially a translation, and simultaneously listen in a sustained way. The processes of listening can get in the way of the ‘experience’ of the song. But, the rewards for trying are immense …’ And, I felt here that during this sequence of German songs at times sheer beauty of tone and elegance of delivery took priority over the textual narrative and sounds.
That said, there were many exquisite moments. The extreme delicacy of the appeal, ‘Sinke, liebe Sonne, sinke!’ (Sink, dearest sun, sink), at the opening of ‘An die Sonne’ (von Baumberg) was magical (though the mood was sadly marred by the audience coughing and spluttering which repeatedly intruded throughout the performance). The poet-speaker’s avowal that the vision of Mary has caused the tumult of the world to vanish like a dream, rose to a transcendent suspended peak in ‘Marie’ (Novalis), swelling and declining with supreme grace and control. ‘Lob der Tränen’ (von Schlegel, In praise of tears) was wonderfully mellifluous, the gently drooping vocal phrases introduced by eloquently aspiring melodic motifs above inconspicuous triplet quavers in the left hand. Crowe suggested a coy delicacy with the image of ‘sipping kissing from fresh lips’ (‘Frischer Lippen/ Küsse nippen’), and the ebbs and flows of Martineau’s piano postlude were equally subtle in inference.
As ever, Martineau was a consummate accompanist. And, there was strong communication between the duo, as in the middle verse of ‘Nachtviolen’ (Mayrhofer, Dame’s violets) — a song in which voice and piano are in almost constant rhythmic synchronicity — where the tempo moved forward in the middle stanza which depicts life and brightness. Martineau demonstrated great responsiveness, and varied colours and inflections, in ‘Du bist die Ruh’ (Rückert, You are repose). In ‘Ellens Gesang III’ (Scott, trans. Adam Storck, Ellen’s song III) Crowe was joined by harpist Lucy Wakeford, reminding us that in Scott’s The Lady of the Lake when Roderick Dhu leads his men in rebellion against King James, his march is momentarily halted when he hears the distant song of Ellen Douglas, the Lady of the Lake, offering a prayer to the Virgin Mary, accompanied by the harpist Allan-bane. The timbre was atmospheric and the composed serenity of Wakeford’s playing suggested a mysterious and captivating suspension of time.
Crowe seemed more in her natural element in the second half of the recital, when she presented songs by Debussy, singing with restraint and refinement, and creating a compelling intimacy. Her enunciation of the French texts was more convincing, perhaps because there is a softer emphasis on the consonants, and she was wonderfully attuned to the melodic lyricism of Debussy’s vocal phrases, colouring the lines with a light vibrato.
The Chinese pastoral scene depicted in ‘Rondel Chinois’ (Marius Dillard, Chinese rondel) was given an exotic tinge by the long, ornate, high-lying vocalise which opens the song and the silky trills which decorated the vocal description of ‘le lac bored d’azalée/ De nénuphar et de bambou’ (the lake bordered with azaleas, waterlilies and bamboo), and complemented by the rich range of colours within Martineau’s accompaniment. The rhythm and meter of the song is less languid than is sometimes the case with the French composer’s songs, and the irregularity — with passages gaining momentum, then waning — enhanced further the sense of ‘strangeness’. ‘Jane’ (Leconte de Lisle), which tells of the poet’s submission to a pair of beautiful eyes — ‘Je pâlis et tombe en langueur:/ Deux beaux yeux m’ont brisé le coeur’ — was more tender and unassuming, and Crowe shaped the long, high melodic passages which skill and control. The piano’s lower lines imbued ‘La fille aux cheveux de lin’ (de Lisle, The girls with flaxen hair) with a rich warmth that contrasted with the directness and clarity of the singer’s statement: ‘L’amour, au clair soleil d’été,/ Avec l’alouette a chanté.’ (Love, with the clear sun of summertime, has sung with the lark.) In this song, and in ‘Flot, palmes et sables’ (Armand, Renaud, Waves, palms, sands), Crowe spun gloriously silver threads; in the latter, the tumbling cascades depicting the showers of blessings which fall in the palm grove were thrilling. In ‘Les papillons’ (The butterflies), too, the crystalline, concentrated sweetness of the soprano’s upper register was enchanting, and drew attention to the syllabic setting of the text, especially as the vocal line was sensitively doubled in the piano left hand. Here, it was Martineau’s turn to effect light-fingered, restive tumbles, breezing through the right-hand arppegiated figuration.
There was a great range of mood and motion within these Debussy songs. There was wit and insouciance: the faster tempo of the second verse of ‘Séguidille’ (Théophile Gautier, Seguidilla) was charmingly initiated by Martineau’s chromatic slidings, and the showy trills and roulades were exuberant. ‘Coquetterie posthume’ (Posthumous coquetry) was urgent and impassioned, reflecting Gautier’s potent mix of sacred and sensual love, and the imagery which blends love and death; Crowe was untroubled by the extensive range and extraordinarily large leaps of the song, which were dramatic and arresting. The octave grace note which opens ‘Mandoline’ (Paul Verlaine, Mandolin) signalled the sprightliness and excitability of the song; Martineau’s dissonant ‘strumming’ formed an volatile bed for the vocal lines and the slippery harmonic progressions produced dips and sways which culminated in the ‘la la’ farewell of the courtier’s light-hearted serenade. So often during the recital it was Crowe’s glistening top range that seduced, but in ‘En sourdine’ (Verlaine, Muted), she found a mysterious darkness at the bottom, particularly in the song’s closing lines: ‘Voix de notre désespoir,/ Le rossignol chantera’ (Voice of our despair, the nightingale shall sing). Indeed, one of the highpoints of the evening, ‘Rondeau’ (Alfred de Masset) demonstrated Crowe’s vocal focus and strength across the range; here, too, she used the text dramatically, working hard to communicate clearly through the busy piano part.
This concert was persuasive evidence of the rightness and necessity of the Hall’s commitment to art-song: evidence that the fusion of poetry and music, when performed with such sympathetic artistry, results in potency and poignancy in equal measure.
Claire Seymour
Performers and programme:
Lucy Crowe, soprano; Malcolm Martineau, piano; Lucy Wakeford, harp. Wigmore Hall, London, Saturday 31st October 2015.
Schubert: ‘An den Mond’, ‘Heidenröslein’, ‘An die Sonne’, ‘Iphegenia’, ‘Lob der Tränen’, ‘Marie’, ‘Der Fluss’, ‘Nachtviolen’, ‘Du bist di Ruh’, ‘Ellens Gesang III’, ‘Die Männer sind méchant!’
Debussy: ‘Rondel chinois’, ‘Jane’, ‘La fille aux cheveux de lin’, ‘Rondeau’, ‘Flot, palmes et sables’, ‘Les papillons’, Séguidille, ‘Coquetterie posthume’, ‘Tragédie’, ‘Mandoline’, ‘En sourdine’.
image=http://www.operatoday.com/Lucy_Crowe_2581.gif image_description=Lucy Crowe [Photo © Marco Borgreve] product=yes product_title=Schubert and Debussy at Wigmore Hall product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id=Above: Lucy Crowe [Photo © Marco Borgreve]November 4, 2015
John Taverner: Missa Corona spinea
Like its predecessor, this recording of the Missa Corona spinea (recorded in Merton College Chapel, Oxford) showcases The Tallis Scholars’ musical and technical strengths. The music makes enormous technical demands on the singers; not least the trebles whose lines (sung by Janet Coxwell and Amy Haworth) push unremittingly upwards — as if striving for celestial heights: indeed, the treble lines sometimes seem to have floated free from their ensemble moorings, so stratospheric are their meanderings. There is certainly a sense of the thrill of a communion with heavenly realms as Phillips generates tremendous dynamism and excitement, rippling through the six vocal lines. Taverner’s invention is seemingly infinite: the melodic effusions spin and swirl, and The Tallis Scholars combine clarity and precision with the ability to sustain the musical narrative of the elongated, elaborate vocal phrases — through extensive sequences, ornamental decoration and passages of antiphony. Characteristically, intonation and blend are superlative. Impressive, too, is the way Phillips shapes the phrases and structures — the sequences and canons which impose ‘order’ on the melodic extravagance — with an ear and eye to their function within the liturgical context, but also injects interpretative freedom.
The circumstances of the first performance of the Mass are unknown, but in a succinct, informative liner-article Peter Phillips speculates that it may have been written for performance in Thomas Wolsey's gigantic new foundation of Cardinal College, Oxford — an institution where Taverner was Informator between 1526 and 1530. There is apparently evidence that Henry VIII visited Cardinal College in 1527, with his new queen, Catherine of Aragon. Moreover, Phillips relates Hugh Benham’s appealing conjecture that since Catherine was a known devotee to the cult of Christ’s passion, one of whose emblems was the Crown of Thorns, the Mass may have been written for her; after all, the queen’s own emblem was the pomegranate — whose prickly appearance may resemble a crown, and her motto as ‘Not for my crown’.
Whatever its origins, this is a truly magnificent and extravagant festal mass for 6 voices (TMATBB). The first silvery phrases of the ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo’ emerge fluently from the tenor’s chant, and as the trebles’ crystalline threads are gradually fused with the voices below it is as if light from the heavens is gradually steeping the earth. The ‘Qui tollis’ reverses this transference; here the open-textured, slow-moving bass and tenor parts, earnest and solemn in tone, are joined by upper voices whose lines aspire aloft. The long-breathed imitation pushes ever onwards, the motifs evolving and the voices entwining. The more homophonic passages are warm and focused, conveying an assurance and faith.
The meticulous clarity of the recording is evident in passages such as the opening of the ‘Credo in unum Deo’ where the pairs of voices are astonishingly pristine. Phillips generates compelling forward momentum in this movement, effecting an uplifting crescendo as the texture thickens; after such excitement, the subsequent ‘Et incarnatus est’ offers quieter consolations.
Throughout the Mass, the contrasts of timbre are wonderfully defined, and the second ‘Agnus Dei’ offers a particularly ravishing arrange of vocal textures and colours, from the rich low resonance of the opening to translucent brilliance of the higher lying episodes. When the two strata converge the result is a thrilling rainbow of sound. ‘Dona nobis pacem’ is bright and spirited, a wonderfully joyous conclusion.
The Tallis Scholars reveal and relish the ‘medievalism’ of this Mass: its unconstrained profuseness suggests a decorative rather than an expressive splendour, but the sheer grandeur of the architecture and its embellishment — and the infinite variety of texture — makes a heady impact. There is immense vigour within and between the vocal lines, and the vocal sound is one of utmost beauty. The constant fountain of elaborate sound might be overwhelming, were it not for Phillips’ discerning craftsmanship.
The CD is also be available from iTunes in their ‘Mastered for iTunes’ format and in a variety of high resolution stereo and surround-sound downloads from the Gimell website at www.gimell.com.
Claire Seymour
The Tallis Scholars. Director, Peter Phillips. Gimell CDGIM 046, CD (1:02:07)
image=http://www.operatoday.com/Missa%20Corona%20Spinea.png image_description=John Taverner: Missa Corona spinea product=yes product_title=John Taverner: Missa Corona spinea product_by=The Tallis Scholars. Director, Peter Phillips. product_id=Gimell CDGIM 046 [CD] price=$19.99 product_url=http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=2137510November 1, 2015
A Bright and Accomplished Cenerentola at Lyric Opera of Chicago
The stylized costumes and stage props exemplify both character and action in this production which has been seen at the Houston Grand Opera, Welsh National Opera, the Gran Teatre del Liceu, and the Grand Théâtre de Genève. As Cenerentola, or Cinderella, and her stepfather Don Magnifico Isabel Leonard and Alessandro Corbelli perform roles with which they are frequently associated. New to the Chicago Lyric stage are Lawrence Brownlee as the Prince, Don Ramiro, and Vito Priante as his valet Dandini. Christian Van Horn takes the role of the beneficent Alidoro, and the step-sisters Clorinda and Tisbe are sung by Diana Newman and Annie Rosen, the latter two in their debut season here. Sir Andrew Davis conducts the Lyric Opera Orchestra and Michael Black has prepared the Lyric Opera Chorus.
After an exciting performance of the overture growing appropriately in rapid intensity, the first scene depicts the three daughters of Don Magnifico’s household. Clorinda and Tisbe are positioned at first atop the stairs while Cenerentola remains on the ground level immersed in domestic duties. During her plaintive song of a king in search of emotional companionship, “Una volta” [“Once upon a time”], Ms. Leonard folds brightly colored garments in keeping with the typically exaggerated hues worn by the stepsisters. Cenerentola’s own drab garb matches the atmosphere of the hearth where she seems to spend much of her existence together with the silent yet very mobile and sympathetic rats, played adroitly by skilled actors in this production. Indeed the rats attract considerable attention during assorted moments of this staging, their movements often being syncopated to the orchestral or vocal melody. In this first scene Leonard’s concluding decoration of “L’innocenza e la bontà” [“Innocence and goodness”] delineates the positive associations of her character, just as the railing of the contentious stepsisters is delivered in brief, lyrical leaps. A sudden interruption to the domestic scene occurs when Alidoro, court philosopher of Prince Ramiro and here disguised as a beggar, raps at the door and desires food. In keeping with the heroine’s resulting “bontà,” Mr. Van Horn’s confident prediction of Cenerentola’s fate is sealed with a rich bass pitch in “Pria di notte vi darà” [“Will reward you before night falls”]. The courtiers of the Prince burst unexpectedly into Don Magnifico’s palace with the announcement of the royal intention to take a wife. From their first moments on stage the men of the Lyric Opera Chorus, each sporting a bluish-purple elevated coif, deliver their spirited news with commanding vocal discipline. During the ensemble with reactions from the collected sisters, Leonard’s character could be more assertively portrayed, since her vocal part is here dominated by other emphases taken forte. At the awakening of Don Magnifico from his dream of a donkey who grows feathers and flies to rest on a steeple Mr. Corbelli combines in lush decoration and expert comic posture the irritation of being awakened with the colorful description of his dream. In addressing “Miei rampolli femminini” [“my female offspring”] with, at first, declamatory emphasis, Magnifico chides his daughters for interrupting this utopian vision of the family’s prosperity. The prediction of each becoming “a fertile queen” is enhanced by Corbelli’s repeated embellishments on “fertilissima regina.” Ultimately, the reputation of the family will reflect on its progenitor, a hope expressed by Corbelli’s never-ending final pitch in “la gloria mia sarà” [“and the glory will be mine”].
In the subsequent scene introducing Don Ramiro - in the guise of his valet - together with Cenerentola as a pair, Mr. Brownlee and Ms. Leonard present a bel canto feast for the audience. Brownlee’s voice is secure and richly focused from his entrance at Ramiro’s “Tutto è deserto” [“all is deserted”]. High pitches are here a natural extension of Brownlee’s vocal line rather than a layered effect. At the same time, embellishments on “Legge” [“decree”] and “mi condanna” [“condemns me”] suggest the heightened emotional state of the male protagonist as he searches for a suitable mate. Leonard’s response in their duet beginning “Un soave non so che” [“A sweet something”] is equally effective in presenting an expressive filigree. Both singers use touching ornamentation in their duet, “Una grazia, un certo incanto” [“a grace, a certain enchantment”], such that the listener is assured that love has indeed been kindled. As the step-sisters summon Cenerentola, the newly declared pair bids farewell, yet Leonard’s dramatic delivery on “Questo cor più mio non è” [“This heart is mine no longer”] seals the emotional bond. A brief comic exchange between the supposed valet and the father leads to Ramiro’s words, “Ecco Dandini” [“Here comes Dandini”]. The latter character’s entrance, perched on a mock horse and costumed in the Prince’s court attire, sets the tone for his charade of roaming “fra le belle” [“among the fair maids”] in order to assure the royal succession. Mr. Priante’s comic poses and ease in the rapid patter of his vocal line make him an ideal Dandini: the fine line of overacting is touched but never exceeded in this self-satisfied assumption of the Prince in disguise.
Despite Cenerentola’s pleading to attend the Prince’s ball for “un’ ora sola” [“just one hour”] or even less, Magnifico and the step-sisters depart to seek their own future. After Leonard’s sincere appeal, expressed with effective runs in the vocal line, she is left here to find solace with her true companions, the rats. The creatures align themselves in a row in keeping with Alidoro’s return and his promise, “Si, tutto cangerò” [“Yes, everything will change”]. In his aria, “Là del ciel” [“There in heaven”], M. Van Horn’s resonant pitches on “fanciulla innocente” calm the fears of Cenerentola and bring order to her heart, just as the companions have lined in a row expectantly. Van Horn’s encouraging “No, non temer” [“No, do not fear”] is followed by repeated and varied decoration on the line “La tua pena cangiando già va” [“Your suffering will be eased”]. In the rapid second part of his aria, signaling Cenerentola’s final preparations to attend the royal evening, Van Horn’s voice swells with occasional forte notes, just as he calls attention to the “increasing sound” of his approaching carriage [“Un crescente mormorio”]. As he announces that the storm of suffering is past, Van Horn embellishes with declarative pitches “il destino” and “l’innocenza brillerà” [“fate,” “innocence will triumph”] as watchwords for the journey.
In the scenes before Cenerentola’s arrival at the palace Priante’s Dandini is especially adept at unmasking the shallowness of Magnifico and the self-interest of Clorinda and Tisbe. At the arrival of the “dama incognita,” announced by the omniscient Alidoro, the curiosity of all parties turns to her identity. In reaction to these attentions, Leonard’s solo “Sprezzo quei don” [“I scorn those gifts”] with a rising line spurs hope in Ramiro’s heart. Once dinner is announced, staged here as a colorful multi-level scene, Dandini declares that he will eat with the appetite of four. The watchful rats gather in front of the formal table as they are clearly satisfied with Cenerentola’s designated placement.
In Act II the identity of the woman remains at first unresolved, while Magnifico counsels his remaining daughters. Despite uncertainty over the unexpected resemblance of the “madama anonima” to Cenerentola, Magnifico muses on his own elevation if the Prince marries one of his daughters. In his aria, “Sia qualunque delle figlie” [“Whichever one of you my daughters”], Corbelli sings with buffo delight as he relishes the thought of supplicants petitioning his own potential generosity. When he dreams of sending a petition to the palace, he lingers with exaggerated decoration on “Da palazzo può passer.” The rats now act as mock intermediaries, while they hand petitions to the delusional father, just as Corbelli accelerates his vocal gusto.
The role of Dandini changes soon in the following scenes. He follows Cenerentola in his attempts to woo her for himself, a development already suspected by the Prince. Obeying the dictum of his philosopher, “Quel che consiglia il core” [“Whatever your heart counsels you”], Ramiro declares Dandini unmasked and resolves to find the unidentified maiden. In “Sì, ritrovarla io giuro” Brownlee performs the signature tenor aria with a polished technique and individual touches of color by which he puts his own stamp on the character. “giuro” is sung with decorated legato, just as rising pitches on “amor” show the fervor of Ramiro’s emotions. In the second part of the aria with chorus Brownlee’s athletic embellishments are exciting and well-placed, his final pitch on “m’hai da guidar” [“you must guide me”] extending past the orchestral finish.
Once the search has brought Ramiro, via a stalled carriage, close to the palace of Magnifico, identities are revealed and a happy ending is inevitable for the protagonists. Yet Cenerentola’s appeal for the forgiveness of her family enhances her own nobility of heart. Leonard’s heroine declares “sarà mia vendetta il lor perdono” [“my revenge will be their forgiveness”] with a simplicity of line suggesting her sincerity. In the final “Nacqui all’ affanno” [“I was born to sorrow”] she uses an opposing effect, applying multiple decorations on “core,” “la sorte mia,” and “rapido” to describe the swift change in her fortune. Leonard performs “Non più mesta” [“No longer sad”] with breathless runs and forte spirit, while she is here left to muse, accompanied only by her companions of the hearth, on “il mio lungo palpitar” [“my long years of heartache”]. Goodness has won out, at least in spirit.
Salvatore Calomino
La Bohème, ENO
McVicar’s production followed the 1990s Broadway musical, Rent, which re-located Puccini’s starving hedonists to New York’s East Village where the threat of AIDS cast a grim shadow over their creative struggles. And in 2004, McVicar was at it again, given us an opium-addicted Faust in his production of Gounod’s opera at Covent Garden, a counter-part for Claixto Bieito’s drug-crazed Don Giovanni at ENO of that same year.
So now it is Benedict Andrews’s turn: the bohemians of Andrews’s new ENO production of La Bohème live in an airy, light-drenched converted warehouse — décor: open-plan modernist minimalism — and hit their ‘highs’ courtesy of the needle rather than the pen or paint-brush. And, there’s no reason why 1990s’ heroin chic might not prove a convincing parallel for the Parisian pleasure-seeking of Henri Murger’s nineteenth-century bohemians, who inhabited a ‘country’ — as one contemporary remarked (as noted in Christopher Cook’s programme article) — ‘bordered on the [n]orth by need. On the south by misery. On the east by illusion. And on the west by the infirmary’. Tubercular pallor might well translate effectively into the waifish emaciation and gaunt angularity of mid-1990s fashion nihilism.
The problem is that for Andrews the dope house gesture, is just that — a gimmick: played for a shot of ‘shock’ and then pretty much abandoned, like a used syringe. If our four would-be geniuses were to be seen routinely shooting up and nodding out then the milieu might be more convincing. Instead, in Act 1 they indulge in school-boy horseplay, raucously baiting Benoit when he arrives demanding payment of the rent; like an infantile undergraduate, Schaunard seems to have stolen a trolley from Tesco in which to wheel home his party food. Then, in Act 4 the chaps’ idea of carousing is to bounce on a mattress, burst some feather pillows and spray each other with Marcello’s paint. More children’s playground than drugs den.
Andrews just dabbles with the habits. But, worse, he proposes that when Mimì — who has languished, shivering, fiddling with her mobile ’phone during the opening scene — enters the boys’ white-washed apartment and is rapidly overcome with weakness, Rodolfo offers her not a restorative glass of wine but a syringe of smack. Given that Mimì seems to be sporting in a shiny pink nurse’s uniform under her parka, when Rodolfo whipped out a tourniquet and needle I wondered briefly if she was about to give him a flu jab. But, no, as he tells her of his poetic ambitions and praises her beauty, he introduces her to the joys of narcotic addiction; then, he slumps to the floor in a drug-fuelled dream, totally oblivious of her own account of her life as a seamstress. Are we really supposed to believe that the musical climaxes of Puccini’s score represents a heroin rush? And that Rodolfo is won over by a biographical narrative he does not even hear. When his impatient friends return, Rodolfo deflects them, ‘I just have a few more lines to do’: the thought that Andrews had chosen the wrong drug prompted a wry grimace.
There’s no reason why up-dating Bohème shouldn’t work; but it needs to be more than a cosmetic flourish. At the end of Act 1 the curtain falls on the prostrate lovers; when it rises again, after some minutes, there they still lie — but any fears we might have about an over-dose are swept aside when the newly enamoured pair jump to their feet and wend their way cheerfully to the crowded Café Momus. And, that’s the last signal or inference we have that Rodolfo is a smack-addict who familiarises Mimì with his poison.
Johannes Schütz’s designs for the following Acts lack overall coherence, and the specific locale and period become less precise. The warehouse apartment walls separate into partitions which spin and re-arrange themselves, and during an overly fussy Act 2 — populated by assorted shoppers, clowns and children sporting ugly masks more suited to Hallowe’en than a Christmas Eve party — it becomes increasingly difficult to focus on individual characterisation and development; or to discern moments of intimacy between Rodolfo and Mimì, or Marcello and Musetta, amid the general clamour. A pink light suffuses the scene — to match Mimì’s unsightly bobbed-wig — but this adds not a jot of romantic sensibility.
In Acts 3 and 4, the production becomes yet more unanchored. Admittedly, the simplicity of Act 3, with its direct contrast of a freezing street scene ‘heated’ by genuine romantic feeling and a scorching hot tavern — whose interior is hidden but from whence spills a burning red glow — where the raucous revellers are coolly detached from real emotional engagement, is effective. As mist and snow swirl outside, night workers in hi-vis jackets gather round a brazier and cleaners make their way to their mid-night shifts, while Mimì and Rodolfo despairing confront the knowledge that their love cannot surmount his jealousy and her illness. But, it’s not clear where or when we actually are. And in Act 4, the artist’s Shoreditch squat seems to have been re-located to a more salubrious suburb; through the floor-to-ceiling windows (now decidedly cleaner than they were in Act 1) we espy children nonchalantly swinging from the trees in a residential park whose trees are bathed in a nostalgic warm light worthy of a Chekhov play.
The main problem with Andrews’s up-dating, putting aside its inconsistencies, is the clash of registers. On one hand the text (translation by Amanda Holden), which contains prosaic banalities such as ‘you stupid tossers’ and ‘this terrible crooning is really disgusting’, hardly speaks of grand poetic passions. When Musetta cries out in podiatric pain and Alcindoro rushes to kiss her ailing feet, Marcello’s cry of ‘Off to the shoe shop, quick!’ injects bathos into a moment where the latters real love, and emotional anguish, should be evident.
More dissatisfying still is the mis-match between musical and dramatic registers. In the programme, Music Director Mark Wigglesworth expresses his excitement at being able to ‘refresh the long performing tradition of a classic — to offer a view of the piece that is as relevant now as it has even been’. That’s all very well, but ‘relevant’ doesn’t have to refer to the visual or conceptual; untimely tragic deaths of young people are always ‘relevant’, as are tales of unfulfilled love. Moreover, as Cook points out, Murger’s Scènes de la vie de bohème, the source for Puccini’s librettists Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illaca, ‘is a product of its age … quintessentially Romantic — [insistent] on the paramount value of personal feelings’. To that, I would add that it is ‘Romantic’ in that the bohemians believe that art and life are inextricable: that intensity of emotion fuels the aesthetic experiences which the creative imagination of the ‘artist’ realises. Or, as Jonathan Miller, quoted by Cook, has suggested: ‘What matters is the romantic prematurity of the death and the fact it took some time to kill them. There was a sort of romantic wasting, a fading away which could be seen to be a metaphor for the wasting effect on the sensitive mind of the exercise of the fevered imagination.’
It is this ‘Romanticism’ that Puccini’s music confirms, but which during this performance conductor Xian Zhang distinctly failed to communicate. The orchestral playing was competent, though the fairly pedestrian tempi slowed still further at the emotional highpoints; but there was insufficient ardour and sumptuousness. These four young men, dramatically and musically, seemed to lack the very artistic sensibility and sensuality that should be the driving force within them. The only hints that they might possess the aspirations of a Romantic artist occur when Marcello complains that he can’t find the right hue of red for the mural he is painting and that his pencil is useless, and Rodolfo similarly blames his biro for his inability to pen purple prose. (And, in this regard, Rodolfo’s preference for a type-writer over a lap-top further blurs the specificity of the period-setting.)
Fortunately, American soprano Corinne Winters’ Mimì provided some compensation. Winters worked hard and with intelligence to find a variety of colours, each appropriate to the dramatic moment. Her soprano has real strength and character, and her technique is assured, though — while she never lapsed into sentimental insipidity — Winters did struggle to convey a persuasive vulnerability. That said, it was almost entirely thanks to her that the final moments — as Mimi crawls from her table-top mattress and slumps against the white-washed walls — had an emotional impact. Though we never know whether it is her chronic cough or compulsive crack cravings which have killed her, Mimi’s death still touched the audience’s hearts.
As Rodolfo, American tenor Zach Borichevsky was pushed to the limits of his technique. He did well to negotiate the challenges, but while he could reach the upper register with accuracy and focus, he struggled to sustain the upper-lying phrases, which often fell away anti-climactically. Borichevsky’s tone is pleasing and refined, but lacks a confident warmth. Over time he may grow into the role.
Duncan Rock’s Marcello was the stand-out performance — even though he was forced to wear a series of terrible costumes, in Act 2 throwing an overcoat over the out-sized striped pyjamas he sported in Act 1 and topping the outfit with a Stetson, before swapping the bed-wear for a baggy mustard sweatshirt in Act 4. The skinny jeans and ti-shirts of his friends are dull but at least not so distasteful; but despite these sartorial disadvantages, Rock used his powerful baritone to make Marcello a three-dimensional character, at times petulant but with a genuine sense of fun; a young man who seemed ‘real’ and about whom we might care.
Ashley Riches (Schaunard) and Nicholas Masters (Colline) were competent but vocally a little light-weight and dramatically somewhat disengaged. As Musetta, Rhian Lois was not sure whether she was supposed to be a vicious, selfish tramp — her violent assault on Alcindoro’s nether regions left him staggering off in excruciating agony, in search of new footwear — or a ‘tart with a heart’; probably Andrews wasn’t sure either: Musetta traded her gold lame provocateur image for powder-blue demureness in the final Act. Lois’s sparkling soprano made a strong impact on her entrance into the over-crowded Café Momus, but there was little sense of genuine feeling between Musetta and Marcello. Simon Butteriss engaged in some hammy over-indulgence as Benoit and the fur-coated Alcindoro, and his dramatic exuberance was as distracting as his tendency to over-emphasise the text. The assonance of Benoit’s demand, ‘Do you know how much you owe me?’, encouraged an exaggerated enunciation of vowels which distorted both word and vocal tone; throughout, a bit less would have been much more.
This isn’t a really dreadful Bohème — the audience were appreciative and the applause was warm — just one which is a bit misguided and which misses its opportunities. The young cast offer some pleasing singing. ENO need a few sure-fire hits; so one wonders why they have discarded Jonathan Miller’s esteemed 2009 production, which was revived just three times (given that Miller’s much more oft-seen Barber and Mikado are still on the bill this season). One can’t help feeling that it won’t be all that long before this junkie-Bohème is itself junked.
Claire Seymour
Cast and production information:
Mimì: Corinne Winters, Rodolfo: Zach Borichevsky, Marcello: Duncan Rock, Musetta: Rhian Lois, Colline: Nicholas Masters, Schaunard: Ashley Riches, Benoit/Alcindoro: Simon Butteriss; Director: Benedict Andrews, Conductor: Xian Zhang, Set Designer: Johannes Schütz, Costume Designer: Victoria Behr, Lighting Designer: Jon Clark, Associate Director: Ran Arthur Braun, Translator: Amanda Holden; Orchestra and Chorus of English National Opera. English National Opera, London Coliseum, Thursday 29th October 2015.
image= image_description= product=yes product_title=La Bohème, ENO product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id=Above:Luigi Rossi: Orpheus
Now the ROH have returned to the Sam Wanamaker Theatre at Shakespeare’s Globe — the scene of Kaspar Holten’s wonderful production of Cavalli’s L’Ormindo in spring 2014, which was the first of the house’s collaborations with Christian Curnyn and the English Opera Company — to present director Keith Warner’s new production of Luigi Rossi’s Orpheus.
First staged at the Palais Royal in Paris on 2 March 1647, Rossi’s Orpheus was substantially longer than its operatic precursors by Peri and Monteverdi; the first performance lasted 6 hours, and cost between 300,000 and 500,000 écus to produce. It featured stage machinery designed by Giacomo Torelli, and 200 hundred carpenters were required to construct the scenery. The libretto, written by Francesco Buti, was also far more complex than previous operatic treatments of the myth. The 24 scenes were framed by a prologue and epilogue. Rossi and Buti delayed the marriage of Orpheus and Eurydice until the end of Act I, the death of Eurydice until the end of Act II, and the failed rescue of Eurydice from the underworld until the end of the Act 3, and around the central myth they interwove sub-plots involving a pantheon of Classical deities — Apollo, Venus, Cupid, Bacchus, Jove, Juno, Mercury, Pluto, Proserpina, Charon, Hymen, the three Graces, and the three Fates. These gods were accompanied by embodiments of Victory, Jealousy, Suspicion and Mockery, and in total Rossi required 18 singers to perform the 27 solo roles.
The circumstances of the opera’s origins help to explain such excess, centred as they were in the political machinations of Cardinal Mazarin, Prime Minister to, and the lover of, Queen Anne of Austria — the mother of Louis XIV, who was just 9-years-old at the time of the opera’s first performance. Mazarin’s ambition to import Italian culture into France resulted in the migration of many Italian artists to Paris, of whom Rossi and Buti were two such. Unfortunately, the opera’s excesses had a rather different effect than that intended: they intensified the aristocratic opposition to the power-hungry Mazarin who was attacked by the nobility in a wave of anti-Italian spirit which was greatly aggravated by the tremendous expense of Orpheus.
Keith Warner simplifies things somewhat. Along with some of the exuberant choruses and the more tangential conflicts between the immortals, the Prologue and Epilogue are omitted; thus the contemporary political context is diluted, for the former compares the young Louis XIV to the heroic — ‘And because you, with your eternal virtue, are destined to conquer the abysses, today, as an omen of this, Orpheus conquers Hell’ — while in the latter Orpheus’s lyre is presented as the Fleur-de-lis of indomitable France, as Mercury steps out of character and directly heralds the young King as the brilliant sun whose beams presage a new dawn and who is himself destined for immortality.
But despite the ‘tidying up’, Warner still offers a wealth of dramatic and scenic incident. Details of Torelli’s staging can be gleaned from a pamphlet which was issued at the time of the first performance: we learn that the Palais Royal was equipped with the system of changeable scenery which Torelli had perfected in Venice, allowing the numerous scene changes to be effected with astonishing swiftness. A contemporary observer reported, for example, that the transition to the palaces of Act 2 Scene 1 from the pastoral groves of Act 1 so ‘surprised and delighted the audience … that they wondered whether they had not themselves changed place’. [1]
The Sam Wanamaker Theatre may not facilitate the reconstruction of Torelli’s original Elysian Fields, Pluto’s Kingdom and ‘Palace of the Sun’ but the beautiful, historically ‘authentic’ interior translates us figuratively to former times, and Warner makes the most of all its theatrical potential. We spin speedily between scenes, and exits and entrances are deftly executed: none more so that when Venus assumes her disguise as the ancient crone, Alkippe, with the two characters appearing, disappearing and morphing with magical slight-of-hand.
We have descents from the heavens, risings through the trap-doors, secret hideaways beneath table-tops; figures burst through wedding-cakes, the disembodied heads of the Three Graces appear beneath silver plate-domes. Props are simple: three tables and some benches suffice, re-arranged to form a wedding-banqueting table as well as the marble slab upon which Eurydice expires, and ingeniously manoeuvred in Act 3 to become the ‘stepping-stones’ upon which Orpheus and Eurydice tread on their exit from Hades to almost-safety.
The work of the ROH and Globe Theatre costume, wig and make-up departments dazzles. Indeed, the attention to detail in all aspects is impressive and thoughtful. The opening scene is playful: the soon-to-be-weds feed each other chocolates and play draughts. In Act 2, the fatal red viper — a comic cobra, hidden under a salver, which sways and lurches as if coaxed by a snake-charmer’s mantra until clamped down by Aristeus — is foreshadowed by the red ribbons which adorn the Fates’ pantaloons; and then echoed by the cat’s cradle hangman’s rope which is threaded across the theatre, anchored by the auditorium’s columns, and which will lower Orpheus to the netherworld in Act 3.
What is most striking about Warner’s direction is his ability to move from broad farce to utterly sincere emotion in the twinkling of an eye. Orpheus is a tragicommedia per musica. It was first performed during the Carnival season at a time when Mazarin was anxious to portray France under the reign of the regent Anne as a country of consummate joy and good fortune: hence, Rossi and Buti strive for a mood of celebration, inserting into almost every scene a character — such as the Satyr or Momus — whose function is to provide comic relief. The result is that the ancient myth undergoes a drastic change of tone: pathos and bathos are juxtaposed — as when Aristeus’s profession that his sole desire is for Venus to learn of his broken heart is undercut by the Satyr’s quip that his sole desire is to die of laughter at Aristeus’s idiocy. Such lurches between sincerity and superficiality might be jarring but Warner does manage to suggest emotionally satisfying connections between the different registers. And, Christopher Cowell’s translation, while perhaps leaning a little too far towards the earthy and impertinent at times, is frank and entertainingly profane.
Like the best Restoration tragedy, Warner’s production is both aware of its own theatrical hyperbole and utterly confident in the veracity of the emotions portrayed. Thus, the Graces despair luxuriantly when Orpheus’s creative fecundity abandons him, but elsewhere show true fellow-feeling for his distress. And, Aristeus’s ludicrous attempts to revive the waning Eurydice with CPR transmute instantaneously to Eurydice’s most delicate death-bed appeals to her beloved Orpheus, as astonishingly preposterous hysteria is replaced in a flash by anguish of undoubtedly authenticity and depth.
The entire cast gives of their utmost and the musical results are superb. Mary Bevan was to have taken the role of Orpheus but illness intervened and at the first two performances, Bevan acted the part while Siobhan Stagg sang the role from the gallery. For the subsequent four performances (including that reviewed her), Stagg is to perform the role entire. (Bevan is due to return for the final six performances from 4 November.) The Australian soprano, who has been making a name for herself in Germany since she joined the Deutsche Oper Berlin as a Young Artist in 2013, is being offered — and is making the most of — her chances of late, having been call at short notice by conductor Christian Thielemann to sing Brahms’s Requiem with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in January of this year. Here, Stagg showed why her star is in the ascendant, combining a ravishing tone with pinpoint accuracy. Her vibrant soprano combined wonderfully with Louise Alder’s richly coloured Eurydice: Alder showed both excellent breath control and musical intelligence in crafting the rolling vocal phrases, recognising the nuances that the small chromatic inflections can bring about, enriching the lines as they evolved. The contrast between the diminishing pianissimo vulnerability and the rhetoric outbursts in fear of death that marked Eurudice’s dying moments was incredibly touching.
Graeme Broadbent’s Satyr — irreverent and cynical, a master of the derisive witticism (he berates the lamenting Aristeus, ‘You’re too humble, meek and far too weepy’) — was superb; he demonstrated how to use both the text and vocal colour to entertain and intrigue. Later as Pluto, Broadbent’s accurate bass tones rumbled with regal profundity. As Venus, Sky Ingram was feisty and sexy; her anger with her ‘ungrateful son’, the duplicitous Cupid — (sung with attractive vivaciousness and urgent feeling by Keri Fuge) — who thwarts his mother’s schemes by aiding Orpheus was blunt but utterly credible: Venus yells ‘Come here, you little bastard!’ as the winged Cupid flees to the gallery. Ingram managed to convey Venus’s genuine sadness as well as her indignant haughtiness and roguish self-confidence, moderating the colour of her soprano even within extended vocal phrases, as when she warns Orpheus that he is ‘Set for disaster’.
The Three Graces blended alluringly, Lauren Fagan’s Thalia floating thrillingly above Emily Edmonds sensuous mezzo (Aglaea), with Jennifer Davis’s Euphrosyne forming the middle layer of the delicious vocal sandwich. In their Act 1 trio, the Graces’ elaborate extensions of the initially syllabic vocal phrases were mesmerizingly beautiful, while their Act 2 ensemble was characterised by heart-breaking suspensions and dissonances which sinuously unravelled into focused solo utterances, accompanied by the sparsest of accompaniment textures. Mark Milhofer demonstrated comic acuity as both Momus, mocker of high-flown grandiloquence and affection, and as Alkippe, Venus-in-disguise.
Caitlin Hulcup was similarly outstanding as Aristeus. So often Aristeus is the butt of Buti’s humour, particularly in Act III, where grief and loss induce insanity and Aristeus confuses Momus with the nurse and the Satyr with Eurydice: for Monteverdi such as scene would have had tragic grandeur but Rossi and Buti play it for laughs. However, Warner and Hulcup balance waggishness with genuine affliction. Thus, in Act 1, having been out-romanced by Orpheus, Aristeus longs for death and is obliged by Cupid and the Fates who provide first a bow and arrow, then a noose, next a dagger and finally a poisoned chalice, while Venus lies on the banqueting trellis looking bored. In contrast, Aristeus’s ‘mad scene’ had real tragic power.
The intonation and ensemble were flawless, even when the singers were dispersed around the auditorium; as in the Act 2 final, where black-shrouded, candle-bearing figures sing from the aisles of the lower gallery, mourning Eurydice’s death. Because of the small dimensions of the venue, even though the acoustics are not particularly helpful, the singers don’t have to work too hard in the recitatives, and the result is an engaging naturalism. Christian Curnyn adopted judiciously precipitate tempi, and the recitative accompaniments were springy and light. The instrumental ensemble is small, but the string playing was warm and full; which made the restrained plaintiveness of the instrumental episode which follows the Act 2 mourning chorus all the more affecting — it was as if the string lines expressed the squeezing of every drop of pain from the hearts of the grievers, concluding with Orpheus’s open-mouthed, silent despair.
The ending of the opera evidences Rossi’s and Buti’s need to reconcile the Baroque lieto fine with the tragic conclusion of the ancient myth; moreover, having established a parallel between Louis XIV and Orpheus in the Prologue, they could not risk concluding with Orpheus’s failure and death! Thus, after Eurydice’s demise Pluto announces that she is not be pitied as she will now dwell eternally with the blessed in the Elysian Fields. Bacchus, angered by the loss of Aristeus, orders the retributive murder of Orpheus: but the latter is unalarmed as he has resolved to join his beloved in the Underworld. The final chorus, which proclaims that the mortal lovers have found bliss in heaven, was indeed an idyllic conclusion to Warner’s outstanding production.
Claire Seymour
Cast and production information:
Orpheus: Siobhan Stagg, Eurydice: Louise Alder, Aristeus: Caitlin Hulcup, Endymion/Charon: Philip Smith, Venus: Sky Ingram, Cupid: Keri Fuge, Satyr/Pluto: Graeme Broadbent, Monus/Alkippe/Jove: Mark Milhofer, Aegea: Verena Gunz, Talia/Hymen/Clotho: Lauren Fagan, Euphrosyne/Lachesis: Jennifer Davis, Aglaea/Atropos/Bacchus: Emily Edmonds; Conductor: Christian Curnyn, Director: Keith Warner, Designer: Nicky Shaw, Choreographer: Karl Alfred Schreiner; Orchestra of the Early Opera Company. Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, London, Friday 30th October 2015.
[1] See Colin Visser (May 1983), ‘The Descent of Orpheus at the Cockpit, Drury Lane’, Theatre Survey, 24/1-2: 35-53.