Opera Today

Brenda Rae's superb debut at Wigmore Hall

In this recital, her debut at Wigmore Hall, Rae showed that her flawless technique, thoughtful artistry, careful exploration of the text and beautifully silky and sumptuous vocal tone can serve nineteenth-century lieder and mélodie just as satisfyingly.

My Opera Today colleague, James Sohre, praising Rae’s performance as Lucia at Opera Philadelphia in September, described the soprano as a ‘Donizettian’s dream’: ‘Her attractive lyric instrument has good bite and power, and she never needs to push to make her effects. Her intelligent delivery of the text invests each phrase with truth and empathy, and her unerring sense of line is a joy to hear. […] Her alluring tone is even from top to bottom, and her stage demeanor exudes star quality.’

Those qualities, together with masterful contouring and control, and discreet mastery by pianist Jonathan Ware, made Rae’s opening group of five songs by Richard Strauss musical magic. Her voice crept in, mysterious, mercurial, at the start of ‘Die Nacht’, conjuring Night herself who ‘steps from the woods, slips softly from the trees’ (‘Aus dem Walde tritt die Nacht, Aus dem Bäumen schleicht sie leise,’). Her sound production is effortless, and while here she held back, drawing the listener into Night’s journey as she extinguishes the lights of the world, the reserves of power were plainly evident. And, some of this golden force was freed in the sweeping lyricism of ‘Befreit’ (Released), in which Ware’s understated mellifluousness carried the broad phrases forward. The pianist was similarly inobtrusive but aware in ‘Muttertändelei’ (Mother-talk), imbuing the left-hand line with warmth to enrich the characterisation of the doting mother and deepen the poem’s irony.

The performers’ musical intelligence made coherent the complex melodic unfolding of ‘Schagende Herzen’ (Beating hearts), and Rae built compelling towards the climactic anticipation of fulfilment - ‘Oh wenn er bei mir nur, bei mir schon wär!’ (Ah! would he were with me, with me already!) - her soprano gleaming with a thrilling excitement and a potent charge of emotional energy. Strauss binds the song with onomatopoeic repetition, ‘Kling-klang schlug ihr das Herz’ (Pit-a-pat went her heart); here the palpitations at the close were spirit-soaring and roof-raising. The piano’s rippling accompaniment in the last of the group, ‘Frühlingsgedränge’ (Spring’s profusion), infused the song with a sense of restlessness and Rae’s vocal line was rich and urgent; one could only marvel at the ease with which she sculpted the broad lines, culminating in a silky pianissimo whisper which gleamed with a love of spring, and with love itself.

The subtlety and nuance that Ware had demonstrated through the Strauss group similarly brought insight and sensitivity to the sequence of songs by Debussy that followed the interval, where Rae likewise explored the French texts with great care and delicacy, wonderfully shaping the emotional shifts. Confidently shaping the opening of ‘Rondel chinois’, Rae relished the melismatic explorations, using vocal colour to draw the exotic images in the text. She roved high and low in ‘Coquetterie posthume’ (Posthumous flirtation), and the agile vocal acrobatics were anchored by the piano’s repeating rhythmic motif and jazzy syncopations.

The first of Debussy’s settings of ‘Clair de lune’ floated with utmost delicacy before ‘Pierrot’ brought us back down to earth with the rhythmic bump of popular song. It was in ‘Apparition’, however, that Rae and Ware were truly able to indulge in the quasi-operatic dimension of Debussy’s song writing, Rae singing with increasing, and magnetic, power and focus, and Ware highlighting the emotional peaks: ‘C’était le jour béni de ton premier baiser’ (It was the blessed day of your first kiss). The soprano’s smooth shaping of the final, quiet, arching line was mesmerising and Ware’s closing gesture, with left and right hands at the extremes of the piano’s compass, opened up a scented vista filled with the falling flowers dropped like snow by the fairy upon the sleeping child.

We had songs from earlier in the nineteenth-century too. The group of songs by Fanny Mendelssohn highlighted Rae’s relaxed lyricism, nowhere more so than in ‘Wanderlied’ (Song of travel), where Ware’s dancing triplets leapt lightly, and ‘Bergeslust’ (Mountain rapture) which shone with the lustre of heavenly light. ‘Wo kommst du her?’ was fresh and direct, leading my guest to remark that Rae is ‘a very human performer’. There was always, too, a strong sense of direction: Rae was quite restrained at the start of ‘Warum sind den die Rosen so blass?’ (Then why are all the roses so pale?), but from the withdrawing thread of sound a strong melody inevitably and compellingly emerged, while in ‘Die Furchtsame Träne’ (The timid tear) it was Ware’s focused bass line that propelled the music forward through the song’s tentative questionings.

In choosing ‘Wanderlied’ for the title of the first of the group heard here, Fanny Mendelssohn seems to have positioned her song within a certain type of lieder, and some commentators have noted an allusion to Schubert’s ‘Der Lindenbaum’ in one particular musical gesture. And, Rae and Ware ended their recital with six songs by Schubert in which it was the simplicity and economy of musical means, resulting in such cogent and commanding music, which was most striking, and which cleansed the palette after the preceding complexities. The crystalline transparency of ‘Von Ida’ was breath-taking, the voice diminishing magically at the close to a suspended thread of silver. Ware’s accompaniment to ‘Die verfehlte Stunde’ (The unsuccessful hour) was similarly lucid, while the piano’s introduction to ‘Du bist die Ruh’ was even and expressive, inviting in the lullaby, which Rae held back, so as not to wake the sleeping child, but which shimmered with love and, in the final verses, transcendence. Here was a huge emotional drama delineated by the simplest of musical and vocal means.

It was the group of five songs by Franz Liszt, though, that made the strongest impression on this listener. Despite the spare texture of ‘Es muss ein Wunderbares sein’ (How wondrous it must be), Rae used diverse vocal colours and timbres to progress with growing intensity and flowing sweetness, then allowed her soprano to withdraw at the close, leaving us with a consoling image of two souls united in love. ‘Bist du’ (Art thou) pulsed with a lovely confidence and joy, enriched by the piano’s harmonic delineations of the text’s listing of the analogies between the glories of the beloved and of Nature, and culminating in glistening vocal transfiguration: ‘Denn aus den Tiefen, den Tiefen des Seins/Kommst du!’ (for from the depths, the depths of being art thou!). There was a complementary quiet expectancy at the close of ‘Wie singt die Lerche schön’ (How beautifully the lark sings), as the glow of the morning sun promised to assuage the night’s pain and grief.

Two settings of Victor Hugo framed the group. Rae entered and departed ‘Comment, disaient-ils’ (How? They asked) with delicacy, emerging gently from the piano’s rustling and allowing the final improvisatory flights to slip into silence. ‘Oh! Quand je dors’ (Ah, while I sleep!) was more overtly dramatic, the tempestuous dreams conjured by the leaping piano bass and four-against-three rhythms gradually quelled, the darkness illuminated by the starry vision of the beloved’s countenance. Who knew that a finely graded crescendo and retreat could speak so tellingly and touchingly?

Liszt, who set text in five languages (German, French, English, Hungarian and Italian) described his songs as ‘orphaned’, perhaps in the hope that performers would bring them in from the cold margins of the repertory. Here they seemed to have found their perfect home.

Claire Seymour

Brenda Rae (soprano), Jonathan Ware (piano)

Richard Strauss - ‘Die Nacht Op.10 No.3, ‘Befreit’ Op.39 No.4, ‘Muttertändelei Op.43 No.2, ‘Schlagende Herzen’ Op.29 No.2, ‘Frühlingsgedränge’ Op.26 No.1; Fanny Mendelssohn - ‘Wanderlied’ Op.1 No.2, ‘Warum sind den die Rosen so blass’ Op.1 No.3, ‘Wo kommst du her?’, ‘Die furchtsame Träne’, ‘Bergeslust’ Op.10 No.5; Franz Liszt - ‘Comment, disaient-ils’ S276, ‘Es muss ein Wunderbares sein’ S314, ‘Bist du’ S277, ‘Wie singt die Lerche schön’ S312, ‘Oh! quand je dors’ S282; Claude Debussy - ‘Rondel chinois’, ‘Coquetterie posthume’, ‘Clair de lune’, ‘Pierrot’, ‘Apparition’; Franz Schubert - ‘Vergebliche Liebe’ D177, ‘Aus ‘Diego Manazares’ (Ilmerine)’ D458, ‘Von Ida’ D228, ‘Die verfehlte Stunde’ D409, ‘Du bist die Ruh’ D776, ‘Lied der Delphine’ D857 No.1.

Wigmore Hall, London; Sunday 23^rd December 2018.

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Photo courtesy of brendarae.com

POP Bohème: Melodic, Manic, Misbehaving Hipsters

To my un-Hipster sensibility that thought might casually be amended to “nothing exceeds like excess.”

The good news is that the prodigiously talented Josh Shaw is commendably doing triple duty as stage director, executive director and artistic director. I am worn out just writing it. He has a fourth accomplishment as devisor of the Supertitles, which perhaps was one “job too far.” More on that below. More good news news is that the production is beautifully cast and the vocal accomplishments are substantial.

On the evening I attended, tenor JJ Lopez’s singing was a quiet revelation as Rodolfo, his alluring lyric tenor having ample spinto leanings to fully surmount the demands of this quintessential Puccini hero. Mr. Lopez’s stage demeanor was engaging, his attractive presence (enhanced by blue horn-rimmed glasses as featured on a likeness of Puccini in the promotional graphics) allowed us to believe Mimi’s instant infatuation, and his stylistic acumen was always in evidence. This was an assured, accomplished role traversal.

As the star-crossed Mimi, Maya Rothfuss’s plaintive, limpid soprano struck just the right combination of pathos and calculated determination as she wove a spell over her unsuspecting poet. Ms. Rothfuss sang with veristic poise and dramatic understanding. Moreover, she is a lovely, slender woman who was totally believable as the hard-on-her-luck seamstress.

Ben Lowe contributed a stirring Marcello thanks to a burnished, sizable baritone that was richly deployed. Mr. Lowe is a major talent, his uninhibited acting balanced by his meticulously controlled, beautifully calculated vocalizing. His and Lopez’s memorable duet was among the evening’s musical highpoints.

Aubrey Trujillo-Scarr was a glam, leggy Musetta, who prowled the stage like Ann-Margret on a mission. Her gleaming lyric soprano fell easily on the ear, easily encompassed the role’s requirements, and she mined a good deal of nuance from her well-modulated portrayal.

Vincent Grana provided a boyishly appealing turn as Colline, his coltish demeanor wedded to a mellifluous, smoothly produced bass baritone of considerable accomplishment. So appealing was his singing, one longed that Maestro Puccini had given him even more to sing, although his brief Coat Aria was rendered with heartfelt sheen. E. Scott Levin was a committed, animated Schaunard whose characterful outpourings were a nice complement to the others in the quartet of male soloists. If he fudged a top note or two, he was always involved in the action and was an effective comic presence.

William Grundler was not particularly well served by triple casting as Benoit, Alcindoro, and Parpignol. First, he is a solid tenor, making him well equipped as Parpignol but less suitable as a candidate for the remaining two baritone roles. He essayed both of those with loose-limbed, conscientious attention, but the amusing, blustering gravitas that a lower voiced singer can bring to these roles somewhat eluded him.

Josh Shaw’s fifth (!) job as set designer resulted in a competent, contemporary, fluid environment that was straight forward and effective. I especially liked the use of the stage left door to the garret that made good use of the natural access stairs to the stage in the theatre of the Highland Park Ebell Club.

Maggie Green and Vanessa Stewart’s initial garish costumes of holiday-ugly attire for the men were more admirable for their audacious consistency than their visual appeal. Mimi’s muted contemporary look and Musetta’s sequined mini dress were far more revelatory of the characters. I found I wanted more delineation and contrast between Mr. Grundler’s looks in his tripling.

Music Director Parisa Zaeri played valiantly at the keyboard, although when the piano was placed behind the garret wall, the effect was somewhat muted. Why not put the piano on the house floor out front? The musical ensemble was generally congenial, although there were some releases that might have been enhanced by a monitor so that singers could see the music director.

Mr. Shaw’s staging offered lots of manic macho interaction that contrasted well with the more sedate stage pictures when the ladies were present. The constant motion in the first half of Act I was a bit dizzying, but it was mostly infectious fun. The Café Momus scene often finds all the characters’ interjecting comments, and it might have benefitted from more pointed focus. Still, the playing space was used effectively and the entrances through the house added immediacy and audience appeal to the mix.

For all its many strengths, clever ideas, and good intentions, my great reservation of this popular run is with the “Surtitles” for the performances. They are not often enough translations as is usual, but rather one-liners that generate highly jocular responses, at the expense of the piece at hand.

In an attempt to make the piece “hipster relevant,” Mr. Shaw has gone to extreme lengths to coax audiences to laugh at La boheme. Few of Luigi Illica’s libretto texts are translated per se, but rather turned into self-conscious local references. The result threatens to turn the show into a laff-riot accompanied by incidental opera singing.

Audiences seem to be “reading” their experience rather than being engaged by it. On many, many occasions the text, misrepresenting the original, causes audiences to cackle so loudly as to obliterate the singing. And it encourages patrons to anticipate everything as a laugh line. When Rodolfo observes that Mimi does not look well, it should not generate the yucks it did. Nor should the joining of hands before Che gelida manina. Nor should any of the ensuing two arias. And yet, unwelcome chuckling intruded throughout. Blatant changes are made. When the boys are chanting (Café) Momus! Momus! Momus! the text reads The York! The York! The York! As a visitor, I don’t know what that is. . .a bar on nearby Figueroa perhaps?

With another revival of the Hipster La bohème promised next year, I urge: Please edit the content of the titles and moderate the laughs to meaningful resonances that do not remove audiences from the gently tragic emotional core of Puccini’s masterpiece.

With this fifth annual edition already being planned, I am betting on the seriously talented Josh Shaw to be able to rein in the hijinks to better balance them with the enduring sentiment of Puccini’s appealing masterwork. On the upside, perhaps this unbridled romp will prove to be a gateway experience for new audiences to attend other, more sober POP events like La Traviata or Carmen. If so, it was arguably worth the silliness.

Truth in advertising: 95% of the audience at POP’s La bohème: AKA 'The Hipsters' seemed to be having a great time. Ultimately, for this viewer, it proved to be the “wrong” time.

James Sohre

La bohème: AKA 'The Hipsters'

Rodolfo: JJ Lopez; Mimi: Maya Rothfuss; Marcello: Ben Lowe; Musetta: Aubrey Trujillo-Scarr; Schaunard: E. Scott Levin; Colline: Vincent Grana; Benoit/Parpignol/Alcindoro: William Grundler; Music Director/Pianist: Parisa Zaeri; Director/Set Design: Josh Shaw; Costume Design: Maggie Green and Vanessa Stewart

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Photo courtesy of Pacific Opera Project.

Edward Gardner conducts Berlioz's L’Enfance du Christ

There was certainly much for which to be grateful in this BBC SO performance. An initial tendency, heard for instance in the first scene’s Marche nocturne, for Edward Gardner to drive Berlioz’s music too hard, was mercifully not maintained. Indeed, as time went on, Gardner’s tempi relaxed more, greatly to the music’s benefit. The BBC Symphony Chorus’s singing, at the outset a little woolly, sharpened up too. If orchestral colours tended to be stronger on individuality then on blend, that was only a tendency, with plenty of exceptions, not least the opening woodwind recitative, in which the orchestra, Robert Murray, a fine Narrator, drew us in, his entry and that of the strings having the drama gather pace nicely and without exaggeration.

There is something enduringly and endearingly strange to any ‘sacred’ or perhaps better ‘religious’ work by Berlioz. Just as much as with the Requiem, it is perfectly clear, without his needing to say so, that he does not believe a word of it. If that stands very much in a grand, public, ceremonial tradition ultimately as empty as Robespierre’s Cult of the Supreme Being, this becomes an illustrated children’s story that is yet not for children. The vividness of the writing and, one hopes, the performance too has characters, scenes, even locations stand out from the pages, but the lack of belief - not hostile, just ‘as it is’ - remains. That presents its own very particular challenges to the performers, challenges to which they rose very well. Herod’s Aria, for instance, sung darkly and clearly by Matthew Rose, ‘accompanied’ by due orchestral darkness too, might have been sung by a Shakespearean king; it was difficult not to think of parallels in the writer Berlioz loved above all others. In the ensuing scene with the soothsayers, the clarinet first commenting on, then seemingly confirming, the king’s dream, much must be accomplished by instrumental means alone, the ‘stage directions’ acting ‘as if’ there were a stage, written explications to musical ‘illustrations’. Such was certainly the case with the ‘cabalistic’ movements of the soothsayers as they moved to conjure the dark spirits to be ‘appeased’. A dark, Theresa May-like tyrannical resolve was inculcated, heedless of the consequences: infanticide meant infanticide. Just after the Strong and Stable One had flounced out of Parliament ‘in real life’, so too did Herod walk offstage: ‘Malgré les crie, malgré les pleurs de tant de mères éperdues, des rivières de sang vont être répandues, je serai sourd à ces douleurs.’

Pastoral innocence was just what we needed as balm to such malevolence, and so we heard - even saw - it at the Bethlehem stable. Karen Cargill’s beautifully floated lines as Mary remained alert to Berlioz’s idiosyncracies. Joined by Etienne Dupuis, whose suave, stylish, yet heartfelt singing proved very much one of the evening’s highlights, this Holy Family gave us something we might or might not believe in, but which could certainly enchant. Berlioz’s tone-painting did likewise, although it had me think his strictures against Haydn in The Creation not without double standards. Joined by offstage members of the BBC Singers as angels, singing very much in a choral tradition of French semi-archaism, this was a scene not just of contemplation but of readiness to depart. It prepared us as well as the Holy Family well for the short second part: ‘La fuite en Egypte’, its Overture having me wonder again - as I had during Herod’s music - whether Mussorgsky knew the music and unconsciously had it in mind when at work on Boris Godunov. The Russian composer certainly cherished Berlioz’s treatise on orchestration. Sometimes a correspondence is just a correspondence; at any rate, parallels, such as they be, may be worth consideration. The celebrated ‘Shepherds’ Farewell’ flowed nicely, integrated rather than a ‘set piece’. Murray’s narration reminded us how stylish and meaningful his French singing could be; sweet toned too, it was really rather wonderful.

The third part, entitled ‘L’Arrivée à Saïs’, is indeed an arrival in more than a strictly narrative sense. The Holy Family, following malevolent calls, as May would have it, to GO HOME - ‘Arrière, vils Hébreux,’ shout the Roman and Egyptian Tories de leurs jours - nevertheless find shelter with fellow ‘migrants’: an Ishmaelite and his family. And yet - something that came across gently yet strongly in performance - this is not the end of the story. Anticipatory narration, clearly, vividly delivered by Murray and the BBC SO alike, is never quite fulfilled, events and sentiments in the Ishmaelite house - Berlioz’s fugal chorus especially relished - a challenge to us, to the readers of his picture-book to respond or, like many self-styled ‘Christians’, to cross to the other side of the road, with or without ‘citizens of the world’ abuse. Berlioz’s closing chorus, euphonious to a degree, sounded a gentle warning: ‘O mon cœur, emplis-toi du grave et pur amour qui seul peut nous ouvrir le céleste séjour.’ Will any of us heed it?

Mark Berry

Berlioz, L’Enfance du Christ, Op.25

Karen Cargill (mezzo-soprano); Robert Murray (tenor); Etienne Dupuis (baritone); Matthew Rose (bass); Members of the BBC Singers; BBC Symphony Chorus (chorus master: Neil Ferris); BBC Symphony Orchestra/Edward Gardner (conductor).
Barbican Hall, London; Monday 17^th December 2018.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Mark%20Allan%20Berlioz.jpg product=yes product_title=Berlioz's L'Enfance du Christ, performed at the Barbican Hall by the BBCSO conducted by Edward Gardner product_by=A review by Mark Berry product_id=Above: Edward Gardner conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra & Chorus in Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ; Karen Cargill, Robert Murray, Étienne Dupuis, and Matthew Rose complete the cast.

Photo credit: BBC/Nick Rutter.

Fantasia on Christmas Carols: Sonoro at Kings Place

But in the event, what was most striking about this Fantasia on Christmas Carols was not a spirit of innovation but the continuity and freshness of social, cultural and performance traditions, stretching back over many centuries and, this programme attested, into the future.

The twelve-strong Sonoro were founded in 2016 by their conductor Neil Ferris and composer-pianist Michael Higgins, and the choir has quickly made a strong mark on the musical scene. Their debut album, Passion and Polyphony , featuring music by James MacMillan and Frank Martin, was followed by Christmas with Sonoro , which was chosen as BBC Music Magazine’s 2018 ‘Christmas Choice’. And it was the eclectic selection of carols old and new on that recording that the group performed at Kings Place.

Ferris, who is Chorus Director of the BBC Symphony Chorus and at the Royal College of Music, has a relaxed rapport with his singers, and they clearly enjoy their music-making. His fluid gestures coax a vibrant sound from the group, but an impressive precision and sensitivity is also garnered by focused and unfussy guidance. The choir profess to be notable for their ‘distinctive and perfectly blended sound’, but on this occasion, while some items did demonstrate Sonoro’s ensemble accord and responsiveness, I didn’t feel that the ‘blend’ was always entirely balanced. There was certainly animation and brightness, but occasionally I felt that the vigour unsettled the intonation with the four sopranos not always in absolute agreement; and, I’d have liked a fuller sound from the middle voices to create a richer roundness. But, any blemishes were minor and did not detract from a performance that was characterised by varied colour, energy and joyfulness.

Such qualities were immediately apparent in the opening carol, Malcolm Archer’s A little child there is yborn for voices and piano, in which the lightness of the female voices was followed by robustness from the men, the dynamics always responsive to the text and Ferris’s flamboyance getting the show on the road with flair. A similar ebullience characterised Gareth Treseder’s Blessed be that Maid Marie which was rhythmically vigorous and carefree of spirit.

Several of the unfamiliar carols made a very strong impression. The sonorous bass pedal which opens Cecilia McDowall’s O Oriens is illuminated from above by an aurora of shifting harmonies, creating shimmering waves of sound-light. It’s a truly magical setting of one of the Advent antiphons, and the precision and focus it received here enhanced its transcendental glow. Becky McGlade has found new things to say in setting a well-known text, Christina Rossetti’s ‘In the bleak midwinter’, and Ferris built persuasively through the verses towards the climactic repetition, “give my heart”, then quelled the swelling sound at the final cadence which was marked by a beautifully shaped resolving suspension in the tenor line.

The homophonic mellifluousness that Sonoro achieved here also enriched Paul Spicer’s In a field as I lay, which had a comforting warmth, and there was a notable concord of phrasing and breathing in Sally Beamish’s In the Stillness. In contrast, it was the detailed interplay between the voices which was most striking in Higgins’ own The Angel Gabriel. Here, the finely etched phrases of the lower voices settled against the ‘loop’ created by the four separate sopranos who repeat fragments of melody. The isolation of the sopranos’ revolutions at the close left us with mystery and strange wonder. I particularly liked, too, Kerry Andrew’s Out of the Orient Crystal Skies in which Ferris crafted finely defined vocal lines of strong character which drove towards the harmonically intriguing final cadence.

There were familiar names too among the varied items. Herbert Howells A spotless rose had a lovely fluency and breadth, as the voices ranged apart and came together, and the dynamic ebbed and flowed. It also allowed us to enjoy Stephen Kennedy’s solo baritone as he shaped the melody with sustained pathos. Kennedy was also the soloist in Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on Christmas Carols where his thoughtful diction drew forth the meaning of the text - though I have to confess to finding the piano accompaniment less satisfying than the version for string orchestra. Peter Warlock’s Bethlehem Down was one of the highlights of the programme, the fairly low register and ‘flattened’ modality, together with sensitively shaped phrasing, creating deep feeling.

A carol concert would not be complete without the presence of John Rutter, and here we heard Rutter’s arrangement of the twelfth-century Irish carol Wexford carol, as well as the characteristic rhythmic vitality of the Shepherd’s Pipe Carol, which Higgins accompanied with an airy lightness, and which featured a firm, bold tenor solo.

We had enjoyed Higgins’s arrangements of Tomorrow shall be my dancing day - in which he has set himself some keyboard challenges - and Silent Night, in which the movement of the inner voices complements the overall sense of peace. It was fitting, then, that Sonoro chose another arrangement by Higgins for their encore, Away in a Manger, which, like this whole programme, offered a few surprises but was immensely satisfying.

Claire Seymour

Sonoro : Fantasia on Christmas Carols
Neil Ferris (conductor), Michael Higgins (piano)

Malcolm Archer - A little child there is yborn, Cecilia McDowall - O Oriens, Paul Spicer - In a field as I lay, Howard Skempton - Adam lay y-bounden, Michael Higgins -The Angel Gabriel, Gareth Treseder -Blessed be that Maid Marie, John Joubert - There is no rose, Herbert Howells - A spotless rose, Becky McGlade - In the bleak midwinter, Vaughan Williams -Fantasia on Christmas Carols, Trad. (arr. Michael Higgins) -Tomorrow shall be my dancing day, Betty Roe - The holly and the ivy, William Mathias - Sir Christmas, Sally Beamish - In the stillness, Kerry Andrew -Out of the Orient Crystal Skies, Peter Warlock - Bethlehem Down, John Rutter - Shepherd’s Pipe Carol, Will Todd - My Lord has come, Franz Xaver-Gruber (arr. Michael Higgins) - Silent Night, John Rutter - Wexford Carol, Stuart Nicholson - Ding dong! Merrily on high.

Kings Place, London; Sunday 16^th December 2018.

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Dickens in Deptford: Thea Musgrave's A Christmas Carol

The Conservatoire’s season focus, Venus Blazing , is a pledge that during this academic year, of the operatic, classical and jazz music performed, at least 50% will be by women composers. One can see why Thea Musgrave thought that A Christmas Carol had musico-dramatic potential. There are ready-made ‘set-pieces’ such as the Christmas parties and the Cratchits’ lament; the characters are larger-than life, ‘operatic’, though they are never caricatures - this is a very human story. Moreover, it’s one that speaks to and of our time as much as Dickens’ own. A growing gap between rich and poor, homelessness, poverty, food banks: plus ça change? In Dickens’ parable, Ebenezer Scrooge - a man of ‘grasping, scraping, clutching’ greed, suffers a dark night of reckoning which leads him to right his wrongs and make recompense: perhaps a few venture capitalists, chief executives and stock brokers might take note.

One can understand, too, why the opera lends itself to a student performance. Musgrave’s vocal lines are eminently sing-able, the inflections natural and persuasive. With role-doubling, the opera can be performed by a cast of just seven, but there are more than forty characters offering opportunities for a large cast to get involved and supplying some handy supernumeraries for the scene-shifting.

Theo Perry (Scrooge as a Young Man).

Not that there was much of the latter in Jennifer Hamilton’s production; Scrooge would surely have approved of the frugality of Ian Sommerville’s designs which made economical use of a few props - a ledger desk, a kitchen table, a curtained four-poster, a sumptuous armchair - to identify the narrative’s locales, as we moved from Scrooge’s workplace and home, to the Cratchits’ and Fezziwigs’ dwellings, and through London’s streets which thronged with charity collectors, factory girls, delivery boys, rag-and-bone men, city gents and urchins.

A back-wall of crumbling brick, Sommerville’s dramatic use of shadow and Jack Sommerville’s Doré-inspired projects evoked the bleakness of mid-Victorian London, the grim, fog-bound reality occasionally alleviated by a symbolic splash of colour, such as Tiny Tim’s trailing crimson scarf. The realism took a surreal turn with the ghostly visitations, as the eerie Spirits climbed a central staircase to trouble the sleeping Scrooge with memories of childhood suffering and visions of the cemetery where he would be lain to rest, unloved, un-mourned. After such darkness, the bold brightness of the concluding Christmas Party was as transformative as The Wizard of Oz’s technicolour.

Space considerations led conductor John Pryce-Jones to pare down Musgrave’s chamber orchestra scoring still further, and with just one string player per part the instrumental textures were rather wind-dominated, with strongly defined piano and harp contributions, though the strings were silkily sentimental when required. The large percussion section, positioned stage-right, issued a brutal battering during Scrooge’s breakdown at the end of the first Act and pounded a spine-chilling warning when the Spirit of Christmas Future appeared, accompanied by the wretched figures of Poverty and Want. In many ways it is Musgrave’s instrumental music that tells the story - bells ring out the strange retrograde of Scrooge’s surreal nightmare and a clarion peal colours the concluding Christmas feast - and the score was finely played. Pryce-Jones was alert to every detail and created strong narrative impetus.

Giuseppe Pellingra (Ebenezer Scrooge).

Giuseppe Pellingra’s Ebenezer Scrooge trod a convincing path from bullying to benevolence, acting courageously with voice, body and soul. He found a range of colours to convey the miser’s belligerence and spitefulness, his baritone glowing with a darkness that cowered Scrooge’s employees and repelled his relatives. Pellingra worked hard with the text - the diction of the cast was unanimously excellent - and was not afraid to spit and snarl. If occasionally the phrasing lacked refinement or there was a little coarseness of tone, then perhaps that’s how it should be as Scrooge defiantly scorns the visions of his past misdemeanours. But, his reflections on his errors require a greater lyricism if they are to persuade us of the conversion of Scrooge’s cold heart.

Sandeep Gurrapadi’s tenor bloomed with paternal warmth at the heart of the Cratchit family home as Bob hugged Rachel Maby’s colourful, good-humoured Mrs Cratchit and teased his children, who were vividly characterised and richly sung by Sofia Celenza (Belinda), Megan Linnell (Martha), Blaize O’Callaghan (Harriet) and Oliver Kotla (Peter). Gurrapadi’s deeply expressive response to the death of Tiny Tim (William Beckingham-Hughes) was equalled by the eloquence of the ensemble lament.

Sandeep Gurrapadi (Bob Cratchit).

There was much strong characterisation. As Scrooge’s nephew, Fred, Theo Perry sang with a lovely freshness and clarity, and acted convincingly as a younger Scrooge. Belle’s extended scene, in which her neglect and rejection by Scrooge are re-enacted, was sung with compelling intensity by Arianna Rebecca Firth, accompanied by some passionate string playing. In ash-flecked white tails and top hat, Lars Fischer cut a Mephistophelian figure as Marley’s Ghost, issuing stentorian spoken warnings. Scrooge’s sister, Fan, was neatly sung by Valva Datenyté.

The harrowing hauntings by the Spirits of Christmas Past (Eleanor Strutt, a Grim Reaper who ripped a post from Scrooge’s bed to use as a staff of admonishment), Present (Isabella Morgan, who emerged clad in emerald foliage, from the forest of Scrooge’s nightmare), and Future (Melissa Davies) were strikingly sudden and stark. Morgan and Strutt joined Michael Collins (Mr Fezziwig) and Nicola Jane Roberts (Mollie) in the dancing at the Fezziwigs’ family party, and Musgrave offered further, similarly rousing, pastiche during the final festivities when Fred, his wife Rosie (Liberty Spears) and other relatives (Anna Marmion as Lucy, Eleanor Rosser-Smyth as Vickie, Rose Clarke-Williams as Bertie, Rachel Colley as Aunt Louise) entertained themselves with parlour songs and charades.

The final scene was a comforting Christmas card tableau as the Spirits took up position within a gilded frame above the roaring fireplace. Merry Christmas one and all. Though I’m not sure that Scrooge’s scissor-kick of glee was quite apt: Dickens was as much preacher as novelist, and Ebenezer Scrooge needs to have psychological credibility. And, Dickens’ fight has not yet been won, as Margaret Atwood has suggested, ‘“Scrooge Lives!” we might write on our T-shirts.’

Claire Seymour

Thea Musgrave: A Christmas Carol

Ebenezer Scrooge - Giuseppe Pellingra, Fred/Scrooge as a Young Man - Theo Perry, Bob Cratchit - Sandeep Gurrapadi, Mrs Cratchit - Rachel Maby, Belinda Cratchit - Sofia Celenza, Martha Cratchit - Megan Linnell, Harriet Cratchit - Blaize O’Callaghan, Peter Cratchit - Oliver Kotla, Tiny Tim - William Beckingham-Hughes, Mr Fezziwig/Portly Gentleman - Michael Collins, Mrs Fezziwig/Spirit of Christmas Future - Eleanor StruttLiza Fezziwig/Spirit of Christmas Present - Isabelle Morgan, Mollie Fezziwig - Nicola Jane Roberts, Fan -Valva Datenyté, Marley’s Ghost/Marley - Lars Fischer, Aunt Louise - Rachel Colley, Rosie - Liberty Spears, Lucy - Anna Marmion, Vicky - Eleanor Rosser-Smyth, Bertie - Rose Clarke-Williams, Spirit of Christmas Future/Starving Woman - Melissa Davies, Mr Dorrit - Robert Lydon, Charwoman/Great Aunt Ermintrude - Rhian Davies, Fat Man/Topper - Konrad Jaromin, Man with Red Face - Yanou Pauwels, Laundress - Gemma Wahl, Dick Wilkins/Man with Snuff-box - Alexander White, Factory Girl - Charlotte Bröker, Factory Boy - Pablo Boira-Boulding, Scrooge as a Young Boy - Kay Allan, Joe/The Rag-and-Bone Man/Mr Gabriel Grub - Niall Windass, Paper Boy - Tom Hornby, Children under the Cloak - Beth Clarke-Williams/Max Glasser-Batdorff, Carollers and Children’s Chorus; Director - Jennifer Hamilton, Conductor - John Pryce-Jones, Set & Lighting Designer - Ian Sommerville, Projection - Jack Sommerville, Costume Designer - Jo Robinson, Orchestra of Trinity Laban.

Laban Theatre, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, London; Saturday 15^th December 2018.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Christmas_Carol-Closing%20Scene.jpg image_description= product=yes product_title=Thea Musgrave’s A Christmas Carol at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id=Above: Closing scene of A Christmas Carol

There is no rose: Gesualdo Six at St John's Smith Square

The programme that they presented was very similar, though longer, to that performed at Temple Church during last year’s Winter Festival , but with the items in a re-arranged order and with additional items interspersed, new relationships between musical works were articulated.

The singers made the most of the architectural space. A lone voice floated purely from the gallery at the start of Veni, veni Emmanuel, inviting first alto and tenor to join him in, then welcoming the full ensemble into the rejoicing: ‘Gaude, Gaude, Emmanuel.’ The supple polyphonic windings and the deftly negotiated harmonic progressions that followed had a smooth assurance which characterised the whole performance, and the tapered unison of the close was compelling. They moved segue into the plainchant Rorate Caeli, during which the ensemble processed through the nave; and then, moved on without pause, the vigorous and robust counterpoint of Michael Praetorius’ Nun Komm, der Heiden Heiland seeming to spring free from the poised chant.

The programme incorporated several traditional carols. Gaudete (arranged by Brian Kay), which had opened the lunchtime concert in Temple Church, here accompanied the procession through the nave which marked the recommencement after the interval. Park joined five of his ensemble for Praetorius’ arrangement of Es ist ein Ros Entsprungen, and here there was a lovely lyrical breadth. A deepening of the texture in the central verse was balanced by the freshness of the final verse, which depicts the new-born Christ as a ‘Flower whose fragrance tender with sweetness fills the air’, where James Guy’s countertenor melody floated above the ensemble hum with unaffected simplicity and sweetness, the phrasing beautifully eloquent.

There is no rose reduced the ensemble to three - alto, tenor, bass; somehow the trio sound seemed simultaneously lean and sumptuous, the pure clarity of Alexander Chance’s upper line placed against the freely moving lower voices. Coventry Carol followed segue, from the gallery, the tenor line imbuing vigour into the central verse which tells of Herod raging and slaying of the children, before another processed chant,Laetentur caeli brought the singers back together. In dulci jubilo as arranged by Bach allied a gentle lilt with a strong sense of spiritual purpose and musical direction.

Alongside the old we had the new. The concordance of dynamic, tone and rhythm at the pianissimo opening of Jonathan Harvey’s The Annunciation was impressive and this carol had a delicate preciousness, the sliding harmonies - perfectly tuned - suggesting the ‘strangest strangeness’ of the divine visitation and the homophonic melodiousness of the close conveying the rapture of the communion between angel and girl. Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s The Promised Light of Life was similarly tender of timbre, but more comforting in spirit, the ensemble voices swelling and receding with organic oneness; similar fluidity characterised Arvo Pärt’s Morning Star, the ebbs and flows of voices bringing to mind the softly pulsing star in the night sky, promising ‘everlasting day’.

I was impressed by the recent release, by Hyperion, of a collection of Park’s choral music and so it was good to have an opportunity to hear again Park’s own On the Infancy of our Saviour. The harmonic roving matched the initial questioning anxiety of Francis Quarles’ text which reflects on the child’s grace with bewildered hindsight of the betrayal to come, while the strong consonance of the closing episode seemed to swell from deep within the ensemble, blooming with the expressed certainty of faith. Such certainty is absent from Thomas Hardy’s poem ‘The Oxen’, but there is frail hope, and this was conveyed by the flowing continuity of the counterpoint in Jonathan Rathbone’s setting, particularly in the lower voices. Here, too, we had a compellingly well-projected narration of the poetic text - perhaps the slow tempo was advantageous in this regard, as elsewhere the group’s diction was not always so clear.

Masterpieces of Renaissance polyphony completed the programme. I had some misgivings last time I heard the Gesualdo Six perform Thomas Tallis’s Videte Miraculum, and they were not entirely swept away here. Again, the intonation was unsettled, the countertenor line seeming to tug away from the centre, and as the counterpoint did not blend into a seamless whole, so the unfolding episodes did not cohere convincingly. But, the performance became increasingly persuasive as Park pushed towards the close where the inner voices had compelling strength above the anchoring bass.

William Byrd’s Vigilate was a vigorous call to attention culminating in a florid final command, ‘omnibus dico: vigilate’ (I say to all: Watch.). And, the Bohemian composer Jacob Handl provided an example of late-Renaissance music from Europe, Canite tube (Blow the trumpet), which buzzed with festive energy and uplifting verve. Then, to Italy, for Andrea Gabrieli’s Hodie Christus natus est in which Park joined his singers. The full ensemble exhibited wonderfully relaxed and finely crafted phrasing as the voices worked in pairs and threes, running through the scalic lines and pushing towards the jubilant triple-time floridities of the ‘Alleluia’ close.

Claire Seymour

The Gesualdo Six: Owain Park (director), Guy James (countertenor), Alexander Chance (countertenor), Tom Castle (tenor), Josh Cooter (tenor), Michael Craddock (baritone), Sam Mitchell (bass).

Trad. arr. Lawson - Veni, veni, Emmanuel, Anon. (Plainchant) - Rorate Caeli, Praetorius - Nun Komm, der Heiden Heiland à 6, Harvey - The Annunciation, Trad. German harm. Praetorius - Es Ist ein’ Ros’ Entsprungen, Owain Park - On the Infancy of our Saviour, Tallis - Videte Miraculum, Cheryl Frances-Hoad - The Promised Light of Life, Byrd -Vigilate, Trad. arr. Brian Kay - Gaudete, Arvo Pärt -Morning Star, Anon. - There is no rose, Trad. - Coventry Carol, Anon. (Plainchant) - Laetentur caeli, Handl - Canite tuba, Gabrieli - Hodie Christus natus est, Praetorius arr. Bach - In dulci jubilo, Jonathan Rathbone - The Oxen

St John’s Smith Square, London; Friday 14^th December 2018.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Gesualdo%20Six%20SJSS.jpg image_description= product=yes product_title=There is no rose: Gesualdo Six at St John's Smith Square product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id=Above: Gesualdo Six

Temple Winter Festival: The Tallis Scholars

Certainly, the double-choir motet which Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina published in his third volume of motets in Venice in 1575, and with which the Tallis Scholars directed by their founder Peter Phillips opened this Winter Festival concert at Temple Church, is inspired and inspiring. Here, the antiphonal richness of the motet, kindled by the silvery gleam of the first SSAB and the softer warmth of the complementary ATTB group, was further invigorated by the glorious acoustic of Temple Church. And, if the first consonant of ‘Hodie’ didn’t quite click simultaneously and the singers took a while to settle into the tempo, then it wasn’t long before the sound was swinging back and forth, enwrapping us from all directions as it swirled up and down the chancel, and round the circular nave, then rose rapturously to the rafters as the climbing phrases of the rejoicing angels’ song flew joyfully to the heavens.

Phillips and his singers know how to make the most of a good venue. The characteristic blended sound was seamless and silky, the voices trickling together, like the running colours on a painter’s palette, to form a shining new hue; but that’s not to suggest that individual voices don’t make expressive contributions in their own right. Occasionally one may have to look up to discern which of the four sopranos has taken a solo or dominant line, so well-matched are they for colour, depth and projection, but Amy Haworth’s astonishing reserves of power are notable, while Emily Walshe’s pure, rounded richness of tone makes its mark. Alexander Chance relishes the opportunity to mould an alto line with nuance, raising it to the fore, while tenor Stephen Harrold is ever alert, glancing to and from his musical colleagues, his phrasing more expressively nuanced than is perhaps common within the Anglican cathedral tradition, but compelling none the less. And, complemented by Simon Whiteley’s flexible, light bass, Rob Macdonald’s fine-grained refinement has the stature to anchor all together.

Tuning wasn’t spot on at the opening of the Kyrie of Palestrina’s parody Mass, but the ensemble sound had a beautiful ‘lift’, enhanced by the clarity of the diction, and the accumulating rhythmic energy swept the music forward towards the spirited triple-time closing Kyrie. The Gloria might perhaps have been more robust and exuberant, but Phillips seemed to strive for spaciousness through which the double-choir effects could swell, and the flowing phrases of the ‘Quoniam tu solus Sanctus’ were beautifully modulated and tapered.

In the expansive Credo, the contrasts between homophony and vigorous counterpoint suggested faith, and the jubilant optimism that such faith inspires, and Phillips conjured buoyancy and energy, often driven by rising figures in the inner and lower voices. There was blaze of warmth and increasing thrust for the final assertion: I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. In contrast, after the expansive richness of the Sanctus, the ‘Hosanna in excelsis’ episode had a lovely light triple-time lilt, with robust articulation, ‘Ho-’, and swinging emphasis. After such exuberance, the Agnus Dei was consolatory.

The Gloria and the final three sections of the Mass were separated by music old and new. Nico Muhly has set an eclectic range of texts in his vocal and choral compositions: Syllables (2007) fragments an Old Icelandic account of the end of the world, while the internet provided the inspiration in 2008 for Confessions, which drew its lyrics from YouTube. The rediscovery of the bones of Richard III in a car par in Leicester initiated the words of Old Bones (2013) and The Last Letter (2015) sets letters sent between soldiers and their loved ones during the First World War. Peter Phillips explained that the text of Muhly’s Rough Music, receiving its premiere here, was determined by a change in the ensemble’s travelling plans: having been told that they had performed in every continent on the planet except Antarctica, they got ready to set off to sing to the penguins but eventually settled on commissioning a new work about the icy wastes instead.

Rough Music sets two fragments from the diary of Captain Scott, recording the closing days of his doomed Antarctic misadventure. The first part depicts the vision of an extraordinary landscape, and the spiritual mysteries of the aurora australis were captured in the semi-tonal dissonances and shimmering vibrations of Pärt-like tintinnabulations. Occasionally a gleam of light broke free, a single voice soaring; elsewhere the colours coalesced, the homophonic ensemble voices deepening in weight and depth. First a single soprano floated above the waves and washes of sound, poignantly aspiring; then, Harrold became the focal narrator, describing in delicately sculptured but shapely phrases the ‘waving curtains’ and ‘patches of brighter light’, with innocent wonder. The homophonic declamation, ‘For four days we have been unable to leave the tent’, marked a disturbing shift towards inevitable tragedy, darkly foreshadowing the crew’s deaths. Ironically, the collective utterances that ‘Englishmen can endure hardships, help one another’ only served to highlight the individual loneliness, as articulated by the expanding registral range and shifting harmonies which seemed to embody the ineffability of the polar ice itself. The final phrase, ‘These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale …’ drifted into nothingness, an unresolved soprano line dissipating into a poetic, pathetic silence.

Muhly’s music resonates with the musical idioms of the Anglican tradition - its long, extended gestures, the episodic develop of the material - the linearity being coupled with ‘minimalist’ features and neo-Romantic harmonies which enable Muhly to enrich the narrative and spiritual power of the music of English composers from Tallis to Howells, with a very human drama.

The following work, the Magnificat of the fifteenth-century composer John Nesbett - of whom little is known, other than that he worked for a time at Canterbury Cathedral - returned us to the origins of those Anglican traditions. The composer’s Magnificat is his sole representation in the Eton Choir Book: its canonic writing imbues it with an archaic sobriety, but the Tallis Scholars’ vigorous and well-delineated rhythms brought forth the music’s spiritual confidence - the declarative certainty of ‘Deposuit potentes de sede’ (He hath put down the mighty from their seats) would have uplifted the most doubting soul, as the music strove towards the gloriously resonant open intervals of the final ‘Amen’.

For Byrd’s Lullaby the forces were reduced to five, SAATB, and the tone took a darker turn. The intonation took a while to settle - Byrd’s false relations twist and wriggle uncomfortably - as the singers embedded themselves into the sparser and more sombre sound-world; but a soporific mellifluousness soon evolved. Some of the cadences have a real ‘tang’ and not all were comfortably negotiated, but perhaps that’s what Byrd intended: images of ‘shedding the blood of infants all’ overwhelm the appeal to the sleeping child to rest.

Like Byrd’s consort song, Joseph lieber, Joseph mein by Hieronymous Praetorius has embedded deep roots in the Tallis Scholars’ repertory. Here, it framed Praetorius’ Magnificat Tone V, which interleaved within the lines of sacred text a popular medieval tune, In dulci jubilo - replicating the presentation of this music in the 1622 volume which formed part of Praetorius’ collected sacred music. The carols seemed to encourage a welcome relaxation of the ensemble’s phrasing and expression, and the shifts between the triple-time carols and more four-square counterpoint of the Magnificat were exciting and energising; the slippage into a seductive three-in-a-bar in the closing Gloria Patri, et Filio was the perfect conduit to the repetition of the dulcet appeal to ‘Joseph, my dear Joseph’.

We had an encore. John Tavener’s The Lamb. It was a fittingly contemplative, comforting and compelling close to a wonderful musical preface and guide to festive rituals to come.

This concert was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and can be heard for 30 days on BBC iPlayer.

Claire Seymour

Temple Winter Festival 2018: The Tallis Scholars, Peter Phillips (director)

Palestrina - Hodie Christus natus est, Missa Hodie Christus natus est (Kyrie and Gloria); Muhly -Premiere; Nesbett - Magnificat; Palestrina - Missa Hodie Christus natus est (Credo, Sanctus and Agnus dei); Byrd - Lullaby; H. Praetorius: Magnificat V (with In dulci jubilo).

Temple Church, London; Thursday 13^th December 2018.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Tallis%20Scholars%20Nick%20Rutter%20%281%29.jpg image_description= product=yes product_title=Tallis Scholars: Temple Winter Festival product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id=Above: Tallis Scholars

Photo credit: Nick Rutter

A new Hänsel und Gretel at the Royal Opera House

The Royal Opera's new production of Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel replaced Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier's rather dark, contemporary vision of the opera, one that was mostly aimed at adults. On 13 December 2018, Antony McDonald's new production was firmly on the family-friendly side, the production notes saying that it was suitable for children over the age of six. McDonald, who both directed and designed, took a picture-book fairy-tale approach, yet did so with style and intelligence.

The eponymous children were played be Jennifer Davis and Hanna Hipp with Michaela Schuster and Eddie Wade as their parents (Wade was a very late replacement for an ailing James Rutherford), and Gerhard Siegel as the witch. Plus, Christina Gansch as the Dew Fairy and Haegee Lee as the Sandman. Sebastian Weigle conducted.

During the overture, the drop curtain depicted a picture-perfect Alpine valley, but we had two glimpses of Hänsel, Gretel and their family, the first happy and prosperous, the second dejected and poor, with a Swiss clock at the top of the proscenium indicating the passage of time. The look of the opening act was very much that of older traditional productions, with a realistic wooden chalet and even a stove (on which Mother would 'cook' at the end of the act). Yet the realism only went so far, and this was very much a fairy-tale with the family's hard times not having any of the dirty, sharp edges which some productions bring to it.

James Rutherford as Peter, Michaela Schuster as Gertrud. Photo credit: Clive Barda.

Michaela Schuster was a magnificent mother, really singing the role and making the character quite serious yet approachable. Eddie Wade gave sterling support as Father, a role which he only took over as short notice, and their scene at the end of Act One was a complex delight.

As the two children, Jennifer Davis and Hanna Hipp created an engaging and believable interaction, though these were fairy-tale children and the games never descended into nastiness or awkwardness. Jennifer Davis sang Elsa in the Royal Opera recent new production of Wagner's Lohengrin [see my review], so this was no light-weight account of the role, but Davis brought lightness and flexibility to her performance as well as admirable depth of tone. And she was well matched by Hanna Hipp's engaging Hänsel, so that there were none of the balance problems incipient in the opera when youthful voices collide with Humperdinck's neo-Wagnerian orchestrations.

Jennifer Davis as Gretel, Hanna Hipp as Hansel. Photo credit: Clive Barda.

McDonald's vision of the forest in Act Two moved us firmly away from naturalism and into the world of fairy-tale, as his rather dark yet stylish forest was peopled with animals and magical beings, including a striking insect which slowly crawled up McDonald's false proscenium, a fox with a spade and a deer with a gun. Haegee Lee was unrecognisable as the charmingly gnome-like Sandman who was joined by a fairy who seemed to be the presiding genius of the forest.

The dream pantomime at the end of the act always presents a challenge for directors, and few try to implement directly the stage directions with the vision of fourteen angels, though here McDonald wittily gave reference to this when the Sandman and the Fairy placed strings of cut-out angels above the sleeping children's heads. Instead the forest was suddenly filled with characters from other fairy-tales by Brothers Grimm, all interacting in unusual ways so that Little Red Riding Hood stops Snow White from eating the apple. A charming idea, but it rather liked the cathartic emotional climax which this scene needs.

Act Three introduced us to Christina Gansch's delicious Dew Fairy with her watering can, a lovely cameo. The witch's house, when it appeared was firmly in the haunted house category, evoking either the motel in Psycho or perhaps the house belonging to the Adams Family . It certainly did not look like the classic gingerbread house, though there was a giant cherry on the top.

Gerhard Siegel as Witch. Photo credit: Clive Barda.

Gerhard Siegel made a cosily characterful witch, transforming from a dirndl-clad Hausfrau into something of a mad-scientist in charge of the complex chocolate-making apparatus contained within the witch's house. Siegel sang well, and if you have to have Rosine Leckermaul played by a man, then this was perfectly admirable though I still prefer having her sung by a mezzo-soprano (that said, the one time I heard a counter-tenor singing the role was memorable indeed). The scene was delightful rather than disturbing or scary, and the climax was very much the moment when Rosine was pushed into the chocolate vat, its subsequent explosion and the witch's reappearance as a chocolate figure!

The children at the end, all chocolate covered, were played by members of the ROH Youth Opera Company.

Sebastian Weigle drew a richly romantic account of the score from the Royal Opera House Orchestra, making the music form a fine part of the overall fairy-tale.

I have to confess, that I rather prefer my productions of Hänsel und Gretel to have something of a psychological edge to them, but if you want pure fairy-tale then this production does it with great imagination.

Robert Hugill

Englebert Humperdinck: Hänsel und Gretel

Hänsel - Hanna Hipp, Gretel - Jennifer Davis, Mother - Michaela Schuster, Father - Eddie Wade, Sandman - Haegee Lee, Dew Fairy - Christina Gansch, Witch - Gerhard Siegel; Director/designer - Antony McDonald, Conductor - Sebastian Weigle, Lighting designer - Lucy Carter, Movement Director - Lucy Burge, Associate Set Designer - Ricardo Pardo.

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, 13 December 2018.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/1928%20Hansel%20and%20Gretel%20production%20image%20%28C%29%20ROH%2C%202018.%20Photographed%20by%20Clive%20Barda.jpg image_description= product=yes product_title=Hänsel und Gretel, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden product_by=A review by Robert Hugill product_id=Above: Hänsel und Gretel, production image

Photo credit: Clive Barda

Bohuslav Martinů – What Men Live By

What Men Live By is an adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's Where Love, God Is (1885) though the composer borrowed the title from a different Tolstoy story. At its first full performance, by students at Hunter College in 1955, critics heard it was "a profoundly Christian opera" but did not understand its context. That was not the composer's intention. He wrote to a friend in Brno comparing it to his earlier works based on medieval miracle plays, such as The Miracle of Mary, emphasising that "it must not be performed 'pathetically' but joyously. That is why it is called an opera-pastoral. The text tempts one to adopt a serious and grave approach yet that was not what I planned. For me, it is a blithe work, and the listener must not perceive it as a religious moral (guidance) but has to feel joy".

It is also significant that The Miracle of Mary, written in Paris in 1936, reflected interest at that time among many composers, such as Arthur Honegger's Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher (please read more HERE), which Martinů would have known of, and Walter Braunfels's Die Verkündigung (Please read more HERE) which he would not have known, or even Carl Orff's Carmina Burana (1935-6). At a time when Europe was facing the rise of extreme nationalism that used medievalism for legitimacy, Martinů and his peers’ adaptation of medieval form served a radically different purpose. Therefore, it is a mistake to assume its lack of success was caused by its being deemed old-fashioned, when it in fact represents a significant thread in European music, which critics at the time might have missed. In any case, by 1955, it could not have been lost on audiences that the composer himself was in exile and could not easily return to his homeland. What Men Live By is simple, but not naive, a very sophisticated work despite its cheerful lightness: it’s a chamber oratorio sparsely but deftly scored, which benefits from Bělohlávek's sprightly touch.

Distinctively Czech themes run throughout the piece, notably in the introduction, which begins with a pipe organ, its melody taken up by pipes and then drums in jolly mock-medieval procession. Martinů's What Men Live By tells the story of Martin Avdejic, a lonely old cobbler who lives in a basement, where his window on the world allows him to see only the feet of those who pass by. Ivan Kusjner sings Martin, his deep baritone suggests a down-to-earth working man. The chorus (Martinů Voices) surround him with ethereal harmonies. Martin has almost given up on life. A sorrowful solo violin plays, as Martin's lines are solemnly intoned, the choir repeating his words, like a response in church, the pattern reflected in the balance between the two Narrators, Josef Špaček (spoken) and Jaroslav Březina (tenor). A vision appears, embodied in the voice of the alto Ester Pavlů, who tells Martin that she will visit him the next day. A very Bohemian sunrise, with horns, pipes and jaunty strings. Zig-zag piano lines suggest the street outside Martin's workshop, full of busy people rushing past. Though he's waiting for his special visitor, he welcomes in old Stepanovich (the bass Jan Martiník) and gives him shelter from the snow. Martin spots a woman (Lucie Silkenova) shivering in the cold, holding a baby. Martin gives her a warm coat and cradles the child. "Surely it was He, himself, who sent me to you!", she sings. The chorus returns, singing as joyfully as pealing bells. An old woman ( Ester Pavlů) is in the street, selling apples. A boy (Lukáš Mráček) playing harmonica (heard in the orchestration) steals one and runs but Martin stops work and chases him. The old woman wants to call the police. Martin asks the old woman to forgive the child, and she does. She once had seven children but now she's all alone. The boy then helps the old woman carry the sack and they walk off happily, to the sound of the harmonica. A rustic chorale prepares us for the finale. Martin goes to bed, disappointed but in the darkness he spots the people he'd met during the day. The alto and soprano join to sing the words of the Visitor Martin had been expecting. " In as much as ye have done to one of the least of these my brethren you have done it unto me,” the last two words haloed by the chorus. The radiance in the last moments may suggest that Martin is borne up into Heaven.

Although What Men Live By might seem simple, Martinů emphasised the pitfalls of performing it without understanding its purpose. "The technical hurdles include the fact that the singer should not sing as is customary today (but) he should 'preach' and edify, striving to make the text moere expressive. By and large these days, instead of a melody one hears something like uauauauaua, imbued with 'affection'" (possibly translation error for 'affectation'). "That would not be good", he continued. "It should be sung like a folk song devoid of pathos. I think that the text itself is beautiful and so it does not need to be in any way enhanced". Fortunately Bělohlávek and the Czech Philharmonic understand the Bohemian folk sources so thoroughly that they capture the free-spirited vigour in the piece, as far as one can get from stuffy "churchiness". The text is in English, written by Martinů himself, so Bělohlávek's soloists, not being native English speakers, have strong accents. But this is is in fact an advantage, because their accents emphasise the fundamentally Czech nature of this music and also the non-realism which Martinů was trying to achieve. They are all top-rank experienced singers, not students, and understand the idiom properly. As I was listening, I thought of the stylization of medieval mystery plays, where directness of message mattered most, without any pretence of verismo and over-colouring. This also connects to the clarity of the orchestration, simple figures and single instruments used for maximum effect.

On this disc What Men Live By is paired with Martinů's Symphony no 1 which is a good choice, since the symphony begins with a striking ascendant theme which complements the finale of What Men Live By. As Aleš Březina writes in his notes, "it should be pointed out that the avant garde composers in interwar Paris, where Martinů lived and worked from 1923 to 1941, set up their own aesthetic criteria in opposition to Late Romantic music.....while in the USA, symphonic music enjoyed great popularity". Martinů, who had no income other than royalties from earlier work, was glad to accept a commission from Serge Koussevitsky. The composer had some difficulty in proceeding, but, once he was satisfied with that introduction, the rest of the symphony flowed. Bělohlávek conducted all the Martinů symphonies in London with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, which are available on CD. He had planned to record them again with the Czech Philharmonic, but his illness intervened. On the basis of this performance, that series which never came to pass would have been outstanding. Though here it is an add-on to the much rarer What Men Live By, it is a recording to be cherished.

Anne Ozorio

      

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Martinu%20What%20Men%20Live%20By.jpg
image_description=Bohuslav Martinů What Men Live By (H336,1952-3)

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product_title=Bohuslav Martinů: Symphony No.1 (What Men Live By)
product_by=Jiří Bělohlávek,the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra
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price=$19.99
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Berlioz: Harold en Italie, Les Nuits d'été

This is what "Romanticism" meant to those who lived in the early and mid 19th century, very different indeed from what "romanticism" has come to mean since the mid 20th century. This helps frame Les Nuits d'été with baritone rather than the more common version for female voice. Berlioz has been a strong presence in the history of Les Siècles virtually since the orchestra was formed. they feature every year at the Berlioz Festival in La Côte-Saint-André. Roth established his Berlioz credentials early on, as assistant to Sir Colin Davis at the London Symphony Orchestra, and has also worked with Sir John Eliot Gardiner. "Berlioz", says Roth, "like other innovative orchestrators, brought out the best qualities of the instruments he had at his disposal at the time. He kept up with the latest developments in instrument making and, like a chef, was keen to use the right ingredient to season his musical recipe. It’s really exciting to encounter the original flavours of the instruments of his time because you realise almost instantly what these new combinations of timbres were". He adds "With Harold en Italie, things are much more complex: the viola is not a concertante soloist, as it would be in a Romantic concerto, but rather a musical character, a narrator, an actor in the story of Harold that is related to us. Berlioz invented a genuinely new role here in the relationship between the soloist and the orchestra. Roth often compares Harold en Italie to Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote "a symphonic poem with a principal cello which also seems to embody a character". Perhaps that was why Paganini was at first dismayed, since he had hoped for a vehicle for solo viola.

In the Romantic aesthetic, heroes are loners in a vast landscape, accentuating the monumental challenges before them. Berlioz's first movement is titled "Harold aux montagnes". Ominous figures loom up in the orchestra, ascendant lines stretching outwards. When Zimmermann enters, her line is quietly confident, garlanded by harp and winds. Just as the hero engages with the panorama, the viola engages with the orchestra : a good balance here, the soloist not overwhelmed by larger forces. As Roth himself writes, "Harold’s melody seeks to bring out these specific timbres and rhythms, the grain of the sound. (And here the decision of François-Xavier Roth and Les Siècles to use period instruments once again demonstrates its importance, its necessity.) superimposed on the other orchestral voices, and contrasts with them in tempo and character without interrupting their development". The movement ends with a sense of adventure. In the "Marche des pèlerins", the understated melodic line in the orchestra suggests the humility of pilgrims, singing as they journey. Thus the arppegiated chords, the viola beside the orchestra.

In the third movement, the use of period instruments brings out the distinctive timbres and rhythms of folk music in the serenade and saltarello. The dances become drama in the "Orgie des Brigandes". Brigands, like gypsies in 19th century folklore, represent "natural" forces, freedom versus inhibition, danger versus comfort. Thus the quicksilver energy with which Les Siècles brings this movement to life : even the quieter figure before the entry of the viola bristles with anticipation. A glorious coda !

Berlioz orchestrated Les Nuits d'été op 7 for different voice types, though they are usually done by female singers, so there is no reason per se why they can't be tackled by men ; tenors have done them fairly frequently in the past. On this recording, paired with Harold en Italie, a male voice extends the idea of a "hero" bravely venturing forth. In any case, Stéphane Degout has the range and finesse. Indeed, a stronger, deeper voice highlights the punching rhythms in "Villanelle", and brings out the erotic allure in the line "Et dis-moi de ta voix si douce :'Toujours'.” The resonance of Degout's timbre also works well with the more elaboarate orchestration of "Le spectre de la Rose", which includes prominent parts for cello, clarinet, flute and harp. Berlioz orchestrated "Sur les lagunes" for baritone, so the fit between voice and the flowing "water" sounds in the orchestra. A soaring "Ah ! sans amour s’en aller sur la mer !". "Absence" is followed by a very good "Au Cimetière – Clair de Lune" where Degout restrains the inherent power in his voice, suggesting mystery. A stylish "L'île inconnue", further proof that it is not so much voice type that makes these songs work, but artistry.

Anne Ozorio

      

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image_description=Hector Berlioz: Harold en Italie, Les Nuits d'été

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product_title=Hector Berlioz: Harold en Italie, Les Nuits d'été
product_by=François-Xavier Roth, Les Siècles, Tabea Zimmermann, Stéphane Degout
product_id=Harmonia Mundi HMM902634[ SACD]
price=$19.98
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Rouvali and the Philharmonia in Richard Strauss

Over the years, the Philharmonia, an orchestra which has a particular affinity for the music of Strauss, has given some memorable concerts of this composer under Maazel, Sawallisch, Thielemann and Sinopoli - and Rouvali’s came very close to equalling them. The magnificent playing was one thing, but this young conductor’s ability to understand what makes Strauss’s music such an unforgettable experience in the concert hall made this an event and not just a concert.

Strauss is that rare thing in a composer in that even when he writes purely orchestral music the feeling that you’re listening to opera never wholly disappears. Some of his works do better reflect this than others, and some conductors are much better at negotiating the thickets of notes that can occlude Strauss’s orchestration. Some have argued (Manfred Honeck, for example), that even in the operas the true star isn’t the voice but the orchestra itself. The three works on this programme, however, were notable for the detailed solos that Strauss writes for individual instruments and Rouvali was careful to shape those solos. His style of conducting is quite open to this approach - the left hand is expressive, much as Abbado’s used to be, although I sometimes found his stick technique to be as vague as I did Sinopoli’s (this would become less obvious with Sinopoli later in his career). Rouvali’s sweeping right-hand can seem a little mannered but it was never less than clear that the Philharmonia Orchestra understood everything asked of them. And rarely have I seen any orchestra look at their conductor so intently as the Philharmonia did throughout this concert. Rouvali’s ear for detail is very fine - but I found myself sat on the wrong side of the orchestra to hear sufficient lucidity from the harps - a notable feature of Straussian orchestration that few conductors seem able to get right, especially in Eine Alpensinfonie, the work that ended this concert. Generally, however, there was a marvellous sense of clarity in the playing - even allowing for the uncommonly rich lower-strings, and resonant brass, not always a hallmark of this orchestra’s playing today.

The opening work, Artur Rodzinski’s orchestration of excerpts from Der Rosenkavalier is a strange piece. Completed in 1944, the very specific rubato of the work adheres reasonably closely to the opera’s Viennese roots - though when you listen to the suite you constantly long to hear the voices themselves. Rodzinski’s answer was to give the voices to the orchestra - so in Act II’s Silver Rose Scene the oboe represents Sophie, and the clarinet Octavian. The definition of the Philharmonia’s solo playing here was exquisite, even rather ravishing - much as you’d expect from this orchestra’s fabulous woodwind section. Ideally, a conductor should take this music at, or near, an identical tempo to the lyrics themselves - and Rouvali came close to doing so. The Act II waltzes were never less than interesting to hear, but didn’t come across as particularly Straussian - the playing was extraordinarily refined, the phrasing and opulence of tone so beautifully done that Rouvali somewhat forgot to conduct them in tempo. At times they just felt very slow, rather as if a Finnish winter had chilled the ballroom under a layer of ice. Rouvali found himself back in tempo with the trumpet solo (representing the consignment of the rose) just before the Trio between the Marschallin, Octavian and Sophie. The expansiveness Rouvali brought to this music was not necessarily a problem (many conductors have done so) and he allowed the Philharmonia strings to soar. There was great intimacy here, but it was also emotionally driven. Rodzinski doesn’t use Strauss’s original ending to Rosenkavalier - instead supplanting it with another waltz, and then composing his own closing bars to end the suite on a dramatic, if bombastic, high note. It was undeniably exciting - if undeniably garish.

Santtu-Matias Rouvali. Photo credit: Kaapo Kamu.

Strauss’s Vier Letze Lieder, sung by the British soprano Sophie Bevan, was one of the better performances I have heard of this work recently - even if her German sounded a little unconvincing. What this performance shared with a memorable one that Sinopoli gave with Jessye Norman at Salzburg in 1990 was expansiveness - though I think Rouvali got even finer playing from the Philharmonia on this occasion. In one sense, Bevan’s is not a huge voice - it’s quite the opposite - and she brought an unusual intimacy to most of the songs; but she faced a significant vocal challenge when Rouvali was so apt to linger over orchestral phrases. This was particularly the case in ‘Beim Schlafengehen’, perhaps the most difficult of the four songs for any soprano. The long, huge phrases of this song can often trap sopranos into breaking the longer line - something that Bevan didn’t do. There was no suggestion she needed to take an unnecessary breath between the preceding phrase (though when she did, it felt entirely natural to do so), nor were there any notable problems accenting the words.

‘Beim Schlafengehen’ often feels like a treacherous vocal arc, culminating in a final stanza of such intensity and sheer beauty that many sopranos fall at the final hurdle. Its very last line ‘tief und tausendfach zu leben’ poses the problem of breath control like no other line in these songs: singers who attempt to take it in a single breath can’t sustain the length of the note on ‘leben’; Bevan didn’t try to do that, and instead floated a gloriously phrased final note that simply vanished into silence. Rouvali played dangerously with his tempo - but the overlapping violin solo was outstanding.

‘Im Abendrot’, too, had an epic feel to it at the opening, taking us back to the opening work on the programme, Der Rosenkavalier in how Rouvali used the orchestra to create an atmosphere that proved unusually gripping. This all felt just a little darker, a little bleaker, the resignation more palpable, the uncertainty in the violin and horn solos just a little tremulous. Bevan struck exactly the right tone - the voice as mysterious as it was able to embrace solitude and to convey that sense of finality that ends by asking the question: ‘ist dies etwa der Tod?’

Despite the difficulty of the final two songs of Vier Letze Lieder - both technically, and interpretatively - it’s often the first two songs I find sopranos are most ill at ease with in a concert performance. ‘Fruhling’, is slightly more exacting because it has such dramatic force. Almost minimally scored in comparison with the other three songs - using just a harp, horns, strings and woodwind - it exposes the singer rather early on. Bevan didn’t show insecurity in her phrasing - which was assured enough above the stave - but the brevity with which she ended her last note on ‘Gegenwart’ was a little unnerving. She was rather more poised and elegant in ‘September’, the voice stretching over the orchestra like a Gothic arch. If the autumnal darkness of this song sometimes eludes some singers, Bevan darkened her voice sufficiently enough that when she sang of ‘Golden tropft Blatt und Blatt’ you felt the colour in her voice was cinematographic.

Eine Alpensinfonie is a work which divides opinion: some find it to be bloated, others Strauss’s greatest orchestral achievement. I’m firmly in the latter group, and Rouvali’s performance was magnificent. He takes a relatively spacious view of this work - it clocked in at exactly 55 minutes - but the dramatic intensity of this interpretation, the epic scale of it, the fluidity of the pacing and the loftiness of the vision were often extraordinary. That is not to say, however, that Rouvali didn’t court danger because he sometimes did. Some of his tempos were dangerously slow, others almost brought this particular mountain crashing down around him. It was rarely, if ever, a case of orchestral ensemble being shaky - the Philharmonia Orchestra’s playing was superb - rather a question of the orchestra going one way, and the conductor quite another. This made for an exhilarating ascent, and a performance that will long stay in the memory.

There were advantages to being sat on the same side of the Philharmonia’s cellos, basses, trombones and lower brass when Rouvali was so intent on cultivating the deeply expressive sound he achieved here. This was the kind of broodingly stormy mountain climb that was enveloped in dark clouds before we ever got to the summit with its thunder and tempest. On the other hand, Strauss writes so evocatively for the harps that Rouvali wasn’t able to always make them audible - especially during the climax of ‘Auf dem Gipfel’ (in my experience, only Sinopoli has ever achieved this in concert). ‘Gefahrvolle Augenblicke’ was exceptionally well done, and highly dramatic, but the sense that orchestra and conductor weren’t entirely in step with one another was palpable. I’m not sure wind machines during the storm itself had much impact (though the timpani were just thrilling). Often the performance was at its best during the sublime ‘Nacht’ sections that bookend the opening and closing of this vast work - the trombone playing was stunning, Rouvali’s ability to control the low, mysterious dynamics was magical. The weft of orchestral interweaving brought great clarity to a work that isn’t always played in such a way. It was all rather special.

There is a clear chemistry between this young conductor and the Philharmonia - something of a rarity today. And this concert was a rarity, too - a Strauss concert which was memorable.

Marc Bridle

Sophie Bevan (soprano), Santtu-Matias Rouvali (conductor), Philharmonia Orchestra

Royal Festival Hall, London; 6^th December 2018.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/%28c%29%20Sussie%20Ahlburg%202%20%281%29.jpg image_description= product=yes product_title=Philharmonia Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall product_by=A review by Marc Bridle product_id= Above: Sophie Bevan

Photo credit: Sussie Ahlburg

‘The Swingling Sixties’: Stravinsky and Berio

In the meantime, let us be grateful for every opportunity we have to hear this exquisite, deeply moving music. There were occasional signs of the (slightly) tentative to the London Philharmonic’s performance of the Aldous Huxley Variations under Vladimir Jurowski: perhaps no surprise, given infrequence of performance. There was nothing to disrupt, though: anyone listening, whether for the first or the n^th time, would have gained a good sense of what the work was ‘about’ – if only ‘itself’ – and how it ‘went’. Jurowski’s trademark formalism – I am tempted to say ultra-formalism – clarified structure and procedures. Stravinsky’s post-neo-Classical intervallic games, symmetries, inversions, and yes, melodies registered not only with great clarity but also unerringly chosen colour. That involved opposition – for instance, strings versus woodwind – as much as blend or synthesis. If the variation for twelve violins – ‘like a sprinkling of very fine broken glass,’ the composer approvingly reported of the premiere – hinted at Ligeti, even Xenakis, there was never any doubt as to the mind, the ear behind it. As ever, the more Stravinsky changed, the more he stayed himself. And never more so than here, in his ultimate reconciliation with the (Schoenbergian) number twelve.

Threni – to give it its full title, Threni: id est Lamentationes Jeremiae Prophetae – has not proved fortunate in performance, whether in quantity or quality. Its 1958 premiere in Paris seems to have been an unmitigated disaster. The recording on Columbia/Sony’s Stravinsky Conducts Stravinsky series gives little idea of the work’s expressive riches. I have only heard it once before in concert, in an excellent performance from the BBC Singers, London Sinfonietta, et al., under David Atherton , at the Proms in 2010. Here, Jurowski, the London Philharmonic Choir, the LPO, and some of the soloists did an excellent job; some of the latter’s colleagues proved more variable, a pity in a work of chiselled precision, in which accuracy is far from everything, but remains a necessity to unlock those expressive riches. Again, though, one should not exaggerate: no one would have left without a strong sense of the work and what it might be in performance. Moreover, cantorial tenor Sam Furness, deputising at very short notice, shone perhaps the most brightly of all. Necessity, as so often, proved the mother of invention.

In context, it sounded not unlike a continuation of, or perhaps better a posterior preparation for, the procedures heard and felt in the Variations. There were anticipations, moreover, of the Requiem Canticles , heard only last month as part of this same Stravinsky series from the LPC, LPO, and Jurowski: most obviously, perhaps, in the spoken choral text. That said, Threni may speak with Stravinsky’s unmistakeable voice, but it also, like all of his works, speaks with its own unmistakeable voice. Does the music ‘express’ something beyond itself, that age-old Stravinskian question (itself surely a clever pose, partly intended to prevent us from asking other, more apposite questions)? Here the question, perhaps rightly, remained unanswered, even unanswerable. The cumulative drama, mathematical and yet surely also theological, of the ‘Querimonia’ (first section of ‘De elegia tertia’) registered both directly and at a distance, female choir members and trombones punctuating its sections, each adding a further male soloist, with an almost divine ‘rightness’ that, like a Bach cantata or passion, brooked no dissent. Likewise the relative rejoicing of the opening of the following section, ‘Sensus spei’, Les Noces distilled and serialised, spoke of and through intervals, but yet also of something else, which may or may not have lain beyond. As words and music progressed – I am tempted to say turned – it was as if the spirit of plainsong, its function if not its style, were reinvented before our ears, until darkness fell toward its close. ‘Invocavi nomen tuum, Domine, de lacis novissimo.’ The final ‘De eleigia quinta’ seemed to perform a synthetic role, an impression enhanced by the occasional surprisingly Bergian harmony. A text whose straining to be ‘timeless’ rendered it all the less so had been consulted, read, heard, perhaps even experienced. Had it, though, been understood? That, one felt, was emphatically not the point.

I had forgotten that the 1940 Tango was on the programme. It therefore came as all the more lovely a surprise to hear it at the beginning of the second half, performed neither by piano nor orchestra, but by The Swingles: a winning introduction to Berio’s Sinfonia. Its opening chord, instrumental and vocal, acoustic and electronic, primaeval and modern, announced an entirely different approach to synthesis, all-embracing in a mode I am almost tempted to call ‘popular’ as opposed to ‘aristocratic’. Or such, perhaps, is Berio’s trick – for surely he is just as adept with games and, yes, masks as Stravinsky. It was interesting to note, though, perhaps especially during the first movement, how much I re-heard Berio through lessons learned from Stravinsky (and beyond him, Webern): just, indeed, as I re-heard words from Lévi-Strauss and others through lessons I was learning from Berio (and had from Stravinsky, Webern, et al.) Again, such is surely part of the game, the aesthetic, even the humanistic vision. In the second movement, my ears again doubtless schooled by serial Stravinsky, musical procedures once again sounded very much to the fore. That was also, I suspect, partly a consequence of Jurowski’s aforementioned formalism. Precision in performance ultimately enabled connection in listening.

How to listen to the third movement? So much there is present in our consciousness already; or is it? (Or are its quotations and underlay really so very different from other music(s)?) ‘Keep going’. At any rate, I found myself convinced I was hearing a very different performance from any I had heard before, certainly quite different from that given by Semyon Bychkov at this year’s Proms . ‘Keep going.’ What sounded like a weirdly unidiomatic way with Strauss and Ravel proved compelling in this context. How can anyone make a reminiscence from Wozzeck sound amusing? I genuinely do not know, but Berio – and his performers – did. We kept going – or did we?

The fourth movement emerged ‘as if’ Mahler’s ‘O Röschen rot’ were rewritten before our ears, within our minds – which, surely, it both was and was not. The music retained a trace of that Mahlerian function, whilst (apparently) effortlessly remaining itself. ‘The task of the fifth and last part,’ Berio wrote, ‘is to delete … differences and … develop the latent unity of the preceding fifth parts.’ Again, it both happened and did not. A traditional finale role of a sort was both very much with us, immanent, and yet questioned, facing imminent destruction. Jurowski’s clarity paid dividends here, ironically turning the music around to resemble other Berio works more closely than any other performance I can recall. One final Stravinskian lesson learned, then – after which two highly enjoyable encores: The Swingles singing Piazzolla (Libertango) and the LPO and Jurowski rounding off their year-long Stravinsky survey with Circus Polka: for a Young Elephant.

Mark Berry

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Programme:

Stravinsky: Variations (Aldous Huxley in memoriam); Threni; Tango’; Berio: Sinfonia. Elizabeth Atherton (soprano); Maria Ostroukhova (mezzo-soprano); Sam Furness (tenor); Joel Williams (tenor); Theodore Platt (baritone); Joshua Bloom (bass); The Swingles; London Philharmonic Choir (chorus director: Neville Creed)/London Philharmonic Orchestra/Vladimir Jurowski (conductor). Royal Festival Hall, Saturday 8 December 2018.

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Le Bal des Animaux : Works by Chabrier, Poulenc, Ravel, Satie et al.

The beasts, and hence the songs, also vary in temperament, from the endearing ducks in Chabrier’s springy “Villanelle des petits canards” to the deadly reptile in Poulenc’s darting “Le Serpent”. Tenor and tempo change constantly during in the 70-minute program. There are recital staples, such as Saties’s wryTrois Mélodies de 1916 and selections from Ravel’s Histoires naturelles. All of Poulenc’s settings of poems from Apollinaire’s Le Bestiaire are included. Among the less frequently heard numbers are “L’oiselet”, a Chopin mazurka arranged by Pauline Viardot, and Chabrier’s “Pastorale des cochons roses”, a rolling melody in praise of the quivering pinkness of pigs.

Animal poems often mirror human behaviour, and there is parody aplenty. Karthaüser is a vibrant narrator and delivers the humor naturally, cannily skewering the pithy aphorisms. Her crystalline timbre is immensely gratifying and she extracts a wide array of colors from her light lyric instrument. In delicate pieces, such as Hahn’s “Le rossignol de lilas”, she lets tonal beauty prevail, but also enjoys smacking out derisive syllables, such as when mocking the philistine turkeys in Chabrier’s “Ballade des gros dindons”. Her interpretative sensibility and vocal grace make favorites such as Fauré’s “Le papillon et la fleur” sound appealingly fresh. About two thirds of the way, two Italian cats join the parade of French mice, birds and insects. Countertenor Dominique Visse makes a surprise appearance and joins Karthaüser for some meowing and spitting in Rossini’s popular cat duet. Their slender, focused voices sound more authentically feline than the pillowy sopranos and mezzos one usually hears in this piece. Visse even sends up these vibrato-rich pairings at one point.

On the piano, Eugene Asti is boldly descriptive. He creates twinkling ripples around the swan in Ravel’s “Le cygne” and surrounds Baudelaire’s owls with nocturnal mystery in De Séverac’s Les hiboux. When required, such as in Chausson’s Le colibri, his playing has a gossamer transparency. The variety of the program is enriched when he goes solo in four playfully elegant extracts from Debussy’s Children’s Corner and Ibert’s Histoires, adding a drowsy elephant and a frisky white donkey to the menagerie. The recording strikes a good balance between an intimate closeness to Karthäuser’s voice and atmospheric space for the piano. The CD booklet contains the original poems with English translations and an informative essay by Denis Herlin. This recital is an excellent introduction to the genre. For those already familiar with these sometimes quirky, sometimes dreamy, always refined songs, Karthäuser and Asti will join the list of their worthy interpreters.

Jenny Camilleri

      

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The Pity of War: Ian Bostridge and Antonio Pappano at the Barbican Hall

Their recently released Warner Classics recording, Requiem: The Pity of War , closes with three songs about war from Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Here, Bostridge and Pappano opened with Mahler’s provocative, astringent settings, and these three songs were quasi-operatic in their theatrical impact. This might not be how everyone likes their Mahler; but anyone who has seen Bostridge’s remarkable Weimar-inspired performance of Hans Zender’s Winterreise must surely admire the way the tenor can inhabit the fragile bitterness of a world which pits anger against fear, the frailty of anxiety against faux insouciance. Bostridge did not just bring the poetic personae to life, he ‘lived’ their experiences, deeply and disturbingly. Roughness not refinement was the touchstone: these were real lives, lived and lost. There was a razor-sharp bite to the sarcasm and bravado as Bostridge stared and challenged, stalked, stooped and floundered, flinging and spitting words at us, with a snarl and shout, prowl and pounce.

In ‘Revelge’ (Reveille), the bold bluster was hurled at us in cocky, spiky dotted rhythms, through the snarling rolled ‘r’ of ‘tral-la-li’ and in the cold nonchalance of the repeated ‘Ich muß’, ‘Ich muß’, as the soldier marches to his death. At times the frenzy bordered on hysteria. And, though Pappano was seated at the piano rather than standing on a podium, his contribution was no less theatrical. The violent accents at the start of ‘Revelge’ stabbed the soul. But, in the third stanza, when the soldier rejects his wounded comrade’s pleas for assistance - ‘Ach, Bruder, ich kann dich nicht tragen,/ Die Feinde haben uns geschlagen!/ Hell’ dir der liebe Gott!’ (Brother, I cannot carry you there. The enemy has beaten us. May dear God help you!) - the painful pragmatism was expressed through the juxtaposition of the sweetness of the right hand which follows the vocal line, and the astringent left-hand broken chords, vicious stabs of alienation. Similarly, the gothic horror of the battlefield, the carefree irony of the interlude prior to the final stanza, and the horrible growl of the close which punctuates with dreadful finality the voice’s desperate sneers, were delineated in spine-chilling musical close-up.

The piano’s low drumming at the start of ‘Der Tambourg’sell’ (The Drummer Boy) was a terrible rattle of chains which cascaded bone-shaking trills throughout the song, Pappano’s rhythmic regularity holding the drama together, as the captured boy marched towards the gallows. At the start of the drummer boy’s address - first resigned, then rhetorical - bidding ‘goodnight’ to the ‘stones of marble, hills and high mountains’, to officers, musketeers and grenadiers, Bostridge’s bending of the pitch captured every atom of weariness; physically, he seemed to fall, as Pappano’s subdued close suggested a world retreating from the realities of such horror.

There followed two song cycles - one renowned, one ‘resurrected’ by Bostridge and Pappano - by composers whose young lives and creativity were cruelly curtailed in the mud, maelstrom and misery of conflict, one hundred years ago.

Listening to Bostridge’s recording of ‘Loveliest of Trees’, one of George Butterworth’s six settings from A.E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad, I have been struck by how much the opening calls to mind the tone and manner of Peter Pears, with the exaggerated openness of the initial vowel made even more pressing by the swelling bloom of the first passagio-hovering E. Here, the impression was different, as Bostridge’s floating ‘Loveliest’ seemed to emerge from the ether and tumble gently, extending the drooping pathos of Pappano’s opening fall.

There also seemed less languor and listlessness than in the recorded performance of these Butterworth songs. ‘When I was one-and-twenty’ pushed forward only to lapse at the close into melancholic self-awareness. ‘Look not in my eyes’ was troubled by a restlessness that is perhaps innate to the 5/4 pulse. The sergeant’s mendacities hung, pertinently insubstantial and insincere, in ‘Think no more, lad’, pausing to impress with bullying falsity - ‘’tis only thinking that/Lays lads underground’ - then pushing on to resist questioning. With the reprise of the initial encouragement to ‘laugh, be jolly’. Bostridge’s instinctive story-teller came to the fore in the narrative rubato and intimate sensitivity of the voice which tells of ‘The lads in their hundreds’. But, ‘Is my team ploughing?’ was the theatre of poetry. Pappano’s first chord was barely audible: a whisper from a world beyond. And the contrast between the vulnerability of the tentative questioning from the grave, ‘Is my girl happy … as she lies down at eve?’, and the almost violent dismissiveness of the living voice’s self-defensive urgency - symbolised by the trampling horses, and flying footballs - was distressing. Similarly, Bostridge’s pure tone, ‘Is my friend hearty,/ Now I am thin and pine’, was crushed underfoot by the precipitous response, ‘Yes, lad, I lie easy’, the haste belying the professed sentiment.

Before the Butterworth cycle, we heard Ich will dir singen ein Hohelied by Rudi Stephan, who died on the Ukrainian front in September 1915, felled by a Russian bullet near Tarnopol in Galicia, at the age of 27. The lyric sensuousness of Richard Strauss and Schoenberg infuses these six songs and, allied with Bostridge’s sensitivity to the text, they made a deep emotional mark. The melodic unfolding was fluent and beautifully coloured, offering - as in the lovely sustained arc which depicted ‘Kythere’, Aphrodite’s island realm - escape into worlds far removed from strife, suffering and grief. Pappano’s accompaniment rippled with rapturous suppleness in ‘Pantherlied’ (Panther Song), Bostridge’s final piercing exclamation pressing home the metaphoric simultaneity of love and war: ‘Lass mich nie, nie deine Krallen spüren;/ Neulich im Traum grubst du sie mir in’s Herz!’ (Never, never let me feel your claws’; Lately, in a dream, you sank them deep into my heart!). The wreath-like misty illusions of ‘Abendfrieden’ (Evening’s Peace) brought the dreams and delusions of Schubert’s ‘Nebensonnen’ to mind, the mood being enhanced by the subsequent interiority of ‘In Nachbars Garten duftet’ (In the neighbour’s garden) at the end of which Bostridge’s head voice seemed to evaporate into ecstasy, the protagonist’s eyes overflowing with ‘burning pain’ at the sight of two lovers entwined beneath a linden tree, wrenched asunder from the piano’s low ostinato of reality. A paradoxical blend of hollowness and warmth made ‘Glück zu Zweien’ (Happiness for Two) unsettling, while the final drooping line of ‘Das Hohenlied der Nacht’ (The High Song of the Night) was almost unbearably laden with the weight of sublime passion.

After the interval, Weill’s Four Walt Whitman Songs, written shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbour, made a similarly visceral impact. Weill explained that he had chosen Whitman’s ‘Beat! Beat! Drums!’ because of its ‘extraordinary timeliness ... as a passionate call to arms to everybody in the nation’, and apparently his first choice to sing the four songs was Paul Robeson, though that did not come to fruition. Again, we were transported from the world of ‘lieder’ to ‘music theatre’, with words made physical by gestures such as Pappano’s violent ‘thump’ at the close of ‘Beat! Beat!’ - a terrible call-to-arms, the dreadfulness of which was enhanced by Bostridge’s expressive raucousness. The suave rhythms of ‘O Captain! My Captain!’ exerted a different type of persuasive rhetoric, one undermined by the final image: ‘But I with mournful tread,/ Walk the deck my Captain lies,/Fallen cold and dead.’ In the long ‘Come up from the fields, father’, Bostridge and Pappano sustained the narrative tension and the final image of the mother’s longing to be with ‘her dear dead son’ presented a bitter contrast between the consoling sweetness of Bostridge’s head voice and the abrupt curtailment of the cadence.

Four of Benjamin Britten’s songs from Who Are These Children? (which are not included on the Warner Classics CD) concluded the recital, a cycle that Britten wrote in the traumatic shadow of the fire that destroyed Snape Maltings in 1969, and which was his final substantial song-cycle for tenor and piano, setting ‘Lyrics, Rhymes and Riddles’ by the Scots poet William Soutar. In fact, we had only the lyrics here, the violent images of ‘Nightmare’ and ‘Slaughter’ being deprived of the contrasting whimsey of ‘The Aulk’ and the youthful vigour of ‘A Laddie’s Sang’. One might feel that this was a Blake-ian ‘experience’ without the contrasting ‘innocence’, and shorn of the daunting Scots dialect - one thinks of the role of the Proverbs which are in dialogue with the Songs in Britten's Blake settings.

That said, Bostridge inhabited the dissonant wrenches of ‘Nightmare' and the metaphysical bleakness of the landscape of ‘Slaughter’ with almost overwhelming immediacy, making a strange, compelling beauty of ugliness: ‘The phantoms of the dead remain/ And from our faces show.’ The piano’s reflective patterning in ‘Who are these children?’ could not resist dissolution into questioning ‘nothingness’; and, in the final song, ‘The Children’ who ‘Upon the street lie/Beside the broken stone’ were removed from our world by an austerity that was terrible and terrifying.

There was some assuagement. I found myself longing to hear the ambiguous but ultimately restful strains of Ivor Gurney’s ‘Sleep’ to wash away the stains, stabs and suffering; but, the lyrical tenderness of Schubert’s ‘Litanei’ was just as soothing, though I left the Barbican Hall wrought and wracked by the expressive power of Bostridge’s singing. It’s hard to imagine a voice that could communicate more harrowingly and honestly, in Wilfred Owen’s words, ‘the pity war distilled’.

Claire Seymour

Ian Bostridge (tenor), Antonio Pappano (piano)

Mahler: Three songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn (‘Revelge’, ‘Der Tambourg’sell’, ‘Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen’); Stephan -Ich will dir singen ein Hohelied, Butterworth - Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad; Weill - Four Walt Whitman Songs; Britten - Four songs from Who Are These Children (‘Nightmare’, ‘Slaughter’, ‘Who are these children?’, ‘The Children’)

Barbican Hall, London; Wednesday 5^th December 2018.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Bostridge%20Pappano%281%29.jpg image_description= product=yes product_title=Requiem: The Pity of War: Ian Bostridge and Antonio Pappano, Barbican Hall product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id=Above: Antonio Pappano (piano), Ian Bostridge (tenor)

First revival of Barrie Kosky's Carmen at the ROH

This first revival - perhaps it should be the last - of Barrie Kosky’s Frankfurt Carmen rather reminded me of Gounod, though in a different way. What happens, for example, when you take almost the entire plot out of the opera and you’re left with just the music to hold it together? What if you don’t really bother staging it at all? And what if you have the temerity to think one of the great Nineteenth Century operas needs a little bit of improving here and there?

In a sense it’s obvious where Kosky is going with his Carmen, and it’s equally obvious he is stripping away decades of production history to get there. But Bizet is not Kurt Weill - and this is not Weimar Germany with its hedonism and liberated sexual identities (which I’ll come to later). Kosky, too, embraces the theatre to such an extent that you sometimes forget entirely you’re watching opera. The shadow of Bertolt Brecht looms so heavily over this production it’s not in the remotest a subtle gesture: Brecht’s concept of theatre was all about fragmenting it, turning it into incoherence by disrupting the balance of it, and Kosky does the same. This happens immediately after the Act I prelude - and is a constant source of invasion throughout the opera - where Kosky replaces Bizet’s original dialogue and recitative with a spoken narrative. It’s almost irrelevant who the narrator is - it could be Carmen, but it might not be - it’s the form of the narration which is a huge problem. Part-Bizet, part-Mérimée, too often it just sounds like stage directions - and it stalls the momentum of opera fatally.

Given the allusions to the period, and to the genre, Kosky’s production is oddly not particularly decadent - in fact, I often felt it came with a health warning. There’s not a cigarette in sight, and yet the references to Dietrich in Blonde Venus are unmistakable. Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel, with its themes of cabaret, sexual jealousy and madness seems startling prophetic as a recurring metaphor throughout Kosky’s staging - even down to such small details as Carmen’s top hat - but it also seems codified in incompletion. Kosky might have gone further, but he doesn’t. You can see parallels between Dietrich’s Lola and Kosky’s Carmen - not least in the concept of sexual corruption - but you really want this to be explored more, especially when this is all you have to rely on for dramatic context.

To the extent that Kosky places the opera in a more liberal sexual age might actually be the most progressive thing about his production. It is not Carmen’s hands that are bound, as the libretto suggests, but in Kosky’s staging a visual depiction that comes closer to shibari. There is a homoflexibility to the dances, with shirtless males dancing flamenco or tangos - entirely in keeping with the 1920s. But whether these theatrical, balletic concepts deflect from the fundamental operatic basis of Carmen remains questionable. The pastiche of whitened faces seemed just as close to kabuki as it did to the Brechtian construct of theatre being used for political statement. You could take it either way.

The staging itself is entirely constant - a huge pyramidic staircase that takes up the entire stage. To suggest this is awkward is an understatement - from a purely visual point of view it shape-shifts so often you often feel you’re hallucinating. Only once does it seem to be used for any startling dramatic effect and that is when Carmen’s huge wedding train is fanned out like a crêpe scallop behind her on the steps - an image that almost recalls Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. Otherwise, it is simply a means to an end - a staircase for a cabaret show, the arena of a bullring, the amphitheatre for an audience.

Photo credit: Bill Cooper.

The cynic might argue that Kosky’s production gravitates towards the theatrical because Michael Rot’s edition of Carmen, which restores many of the cuts Bizet made, makes this hard to bring off as pure opera. You get two Habanera for the price of one, the extended version of Don José’s Dragon d’Alcala and a marginally altered ending. Not withstanding the insertion of spoken narration at the expense of the recitatives, the evening dragged. I don’t think hearing music that was fundamentally new to most listeners was a significant issue but the extensive interruption that the spoken dialogue caused - no matter how evocatively, even smokily, it was phrased by Claude de Demo - was problematic. You often felt the orchestra were playing in extended paragraphs, and where there should have been a feeling that every note of the music was embracing Bizet’s love of melody and intensity you were left with the impression you were being drawn into Brecht’s theatre of distanciation.

I’m in two minds about the quality of the singing in this production. It’s certainly true that the demanding choreography and the stamina required of the singers in this staging is unusual for Carmen (or, indeed, would be in any opera outside Wagner). I think this was especially the case for the Carmen, sung by the French mezzo-soprano Gaëlle Arquez, who replaced Ksenia Dudnikova at quite short notice. She did have the advantage of having sung the role during part of last season’s first run of this production, but nevertheless it must have been daunting given the complexity she faced. If choreographically her performance was tight, even accomplished, her voice sometimes seemed to come under strain. But, it’s always a bonus to hear a French mezzo sing Carmen and the warmth of her phrasing doesn’t hide the sexuality - or, her own brand of it - that she brings to the part. This is, however, quite like the distinctive kind of sexuality that Dietrich brought to the screen: distant, fateful, enigmatic, perhaps even a little asexual. She is just the right side of convincingly dangerous, though there is little chemistry between her and Don José or any other man she encounters.

Brian Jadge as Don José. Photo credit: Bill Cooper.

Brian Jagde as Don José often seemed unforgettable; except when you see him he looks almost dream casting. He’s an imposing stage presence, but I didn’t find the voice compelling, his tone a little too bright rather than dramatic. Alexander Vinogradov’s Escamillo was rather the opposite. Russian basses seem rather in vogue for this role these days, and the resonance and richness of his voice was perhaps the best thing all evening in a largely unevenly sung production. His ‘Votre toast, je peux vous le rendre’ had considerable swagger. Eleonora Buratto as Micaëla, a little too fragile for my taste, was secure enough but seemed to come and go like smoke vapour (had there been any, of course).

The Canadian conductor, Keri-Lynn Wilson, seemed to get things off to a flying start - quite literally - during the opening prelude when her baton landed somewhere in the orchestra stalls (and, yes, it seems conductors do have a spare one to hand) but by-and-large I think what she wanted to achieve with Bizet’s score was hampered by both Rot’s edition and the fragmentation imposed on it. Should Covent Garden wish to give us a traditional staging of Carmen it might seem reasonable to invite her back to conduct it because when the music had some pace she drove it forward like a charging bull. It’s evident she knows how to make an orchestra phrase (and this score is full of opportunities to do that) and it’s clear she can get the orchestra to play well.

Some will find Barrie Kosky’s Carmen inventive and imaginative because it dares to offer a new perspective on this opera. The question I asked myself after I left Covent Garden after the opening night wasn’t so much what it all meant, but rather why I had found the whole production such an effort to sit through. I’m certainly not immune to directors subverting opera into something post-modernist or expressionist, or challenging assumptions about the art form into something entirely new and different, but Kosky somewhat lost me when he turned Bizet’s Carmen into a clunky tableau of theatrical - and operatic - sketches with nothing discernible to give it dramatic impact.

And, never have I felt less guilty about smoking a cigarette after a performance of Carmen than after this particular production.

Marc Bridle

Bizet: Carmen

Gaëlle Arquez - Carmen, Brian Jagde - Don José, Alexander Vinogradov - Escamillo, Eleanoro Buratto - Micaëla, Dominic Sedgewick - Moralès, Haegee Lee - Frasquita, Germán E Alcántara - Dancaïro, Claude de Demo - Voice of Carmen, soldiers, children, cigarette girls, gypsies, smugglers; Barrie Kosky - Director, Alan Barnes - Revival Director, Katrin Lea Tag - Designer, Joachim Klein - Lighting, Royal Opera Chorus, Royal Opera House Orchestra/Keri-Lynn Wilson - conductor, Chorus and Dancers, Streatham & Clapham High School Choir, Tiffin Boys’ Choir.

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; 30^th November 2018.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Carmen%20production%20image%20%28C%29%20ROH.%20Photo%20by%20Bill%20Cooper%20%281%29.jpg image_description= product=yes product_title=Carmen, Barrie Kosky's production returns to the Royal Opera House product_by=A review by Marc Bridle product_id= Above: Cast of ROH's Carmen

Photo credit: Bill Cooper

Stanford's The Travelling Companion: a compelling production by New Sussex Opera

The production was not well received by the Musical Times’ reviewer (June 1925), who noted that the company deserved ‘every praise for their enterprise and, generally, for their good intentions’ in electing to present an opera which was unduly neglected and for their ‘get things done’ spirit, but felt that the production failed to reach artistic heights: ‘The actual task, however, proved beyond their capacity - partly through lack of rehearsals. With a more careful and thorough preparation they would have succeeded far better; but other interests had apparently more serious claims on their time, and the opera suffered in consequence.’

Thorough preparation, as well as significant talent, vision and accomplishment - allied with a ‘get things done’ pragmatism - characterised this semi-staged performance, at Cadogan Hall, by New Sussex Opera - a community-based company now in its fortieth year which, as this production attests, brings together professionals, enthusiasts and volunteers to sterling effect. And, with bravery and commitment.

The libretto of The Travelling Companion is based on a story by Hans Christian Andersen, as adapted by Henry Newbolt. It’s a blend ofThe Magic Flute and Turandot, Parsifal and The Pilgrim’s Progress. No wonder it flummoxed early listeners. John, made destitute by the death of his father, shelters from a storm in a church, interrupting two reprobates who are ransacking a grave. John stops the robbers’ sacrilegious pillage by giving them his last pennies. His selflessness raises the dead man’s spirit, and the latter escorts and guides John as he woos a beautiful Princess whose previous suitors have sacrificed their lives in failing to correctly answer her courtship riddle. The Princess is psychologically enslaved by a Wizard, but the latter is slain by the Traveller who passes on the secret answer to John and who thus wins her hand in marriage. Upon the fortuitous denouement and marriage, the Companion returns to whence he came.

It’s a tale not without enchantment, but the characterisation is often one-dimensional: the motivation of the Princess and her father, who is determined that she must marry, is ambiguous and the Wizard himself is the epitome of cartoon cliché. Moreover, since the Travelling Companion defeats him in Act 3 by slicing off his head, it’s not clear why or how the Wizard still manages to compel the Princess to continue with the riddle-ritual in which her suitors must identify the focus of her thoughts … nevertheless, the severed head, bloodily flourished from a hessian sack on this occasion, does the trick for John.

Director Paul Higgins sets the opera at the time of its composition, which seems reasonable enough. But, the Freudian effusiveness of Higgins’ programme note - which grabs by the scruff of their collective necks, and attempts to cohere, Arthur Rackham’s 1909 illustrations of the tales of the Grimm Brothers, the Land Girls’ Army, the Women’s Suffrage Movement, Egon Schiele’s sexually explicit art, and the notion that the Princess ‘would have been drawn to the cult-like figure of an artist-cum-therapist promising an alternative way of living’ - is less coherent.

The production doesn’t overcome all the libretto’s short-comings. Act 3 - in which we were transported to a Wizard’s den is inhabited by the ugly 'Pied Piper' himself and his entourage of dancing nymphets and ghastly goblins - disrupts the dramatic narrative and seems merely an excuse for Stanford to indulge in lengthy symphonic episodes. Isabella van Braeckal’s designs, elsewhere so economical, were less than helpful here and exacerbated the problems. Rather than allowing us simply to ‘imagine’ during the long instrumental interludes we treated to much scenery shifting to supplement Stanford’s kinetic side-show. Ian Beadle’s long-locked Wizard perched atop a step-ladder, cartoon-choreographing the pseudo-erotic squirming and silk-waving of the sinuous dancers with flourishes of his wand-less hands; while the chorus of gremlins, cloaked in red and black, stood inertly staring at the choreographic indulgences. The Wizard would have had a bit more authority if the front of his shirt hadn’t been lopped away, leaving an absent bib-shaped hole.

Moreover, given that, in the absence of a pit, the orchestra took up half of the stage, with space for the chorus to hover behind, the front-stage seemed unnecessarily cluttered with props, especially as Tom Turner’s lighting was so economical, effective and enchanting. A vivid ultramarine floor-square created the strangeness of a world bathed in otherworldly moonlight in Act 1, and while a ‘coffin’ might be useful, the addition of benches (church pews?) simply made for lots of to-ing and fro-ing by the scene-shifters. Such stage re-furnishing was repeatedly disruptive during the lengthy instrumental preludes and interludes. During Act 2’s Palace Square scene, the transmuting colours effectively conveyed evolving moods. The blood-red glow that bathed the stage told us all we needed to know about the Wizard’s machinations: and the easels, stepladders, chiffon drapes and other paraphernalia simply resulted in cumbersome stage business. Higgins could surely have trusted the music to do its work.

But, if there was slightly too much stage clutter at times, and Act 3 went slightly off the musico-dramatic rails - a skid-route unhelpfully delineated by Stanford himself - then musically and vocally, this production set off and stayed on a straight path, driven by engaging vocal performances and convincing dramaturgy.

One thing that was instantly noticeable was the excellent diction of both soloists and chorus; there were no surtitles at Cadogan Hall, though the facility exists, so perhaps costs were prohibitive, or Higgins and conductor Toby Purser just trusted all to deliver the text cleanly and directly, as they did.

Cast of NSO’s The Travelling Companion.

Most powerful was the central relationship between David Horton’s John and Julien van Mellaert’s Traveller; this is the core of the opera and the two singers made the connection both unsettling and utterly convincing. Horton’s John was literally thrown onto the stage by an explosion of musical and visual thunder at the start of Act 1. His wonderfully expressive diction, lovely tone and strong characterisation were heart-warming: we were ‘with him’ from the first, and if occasionally he strayed a little sharp when pushing towards the end of phrases, then Horton’s commitment ensured that such minor blemishes would be forgiven.

Van Mellaerts has impressed many times of late - not least last year at the RCM’s French double bill , which followed the baritone’s Kathleen Ferrier Award First Prize. Surely a big break is beckoning. As the resurrected Fairy Godfather, Van Mellaerts used his lovely, beguiling tone and dramatic nous to make us warm to this Nick Shadow with good intentions. His stage presence was finely judged: so often he appeared in a blink, leaning against a wall, hovering at the rear, meandering through the crowd.

As the Princess, Kate Valentine sang with a fervour which was perhaps a little unalleviated, but no less impressive for that. Ian Beadle and Felix Kemp were splendid Ruffians, forming a dark and sumptuous blend which overcame the blandness of Stanford’s musical characterisation of the drama-triggering villains; and, as Beadle summoned authority as the wicked Wizard, so Kemp was appropriately stentorian and clear as the Herald. The role of the Princess’s Father is a tricky one dramatically, but Pauls Putnins effected a nice shift from sternness to evidently warm affection. The fairly small orchestra forces couldn’t really do justice to Stanford’s quasi-Wagnerian intentions and aspirations, but that mattered not the least. The Irish composer’s aspirations actually remain just that, and the NSO Orchestra were secure throughout, with lovely exploitation of the emotional dramas embodied by the low, grainy woodwind groupings. Solo cellist Keiron Carter, harpist Isabel Harries and timpani/percussionists Edward Scull and Ryan Hepburn added considerable expressive colour and sentiment.

Conductor Toby Purser had the full measure of the score. The overture summoned the innocence and idealism of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel - we knew a happy ending would be assured - and if there were not perhaps of sufficient number to sculpt the ideal strength of sound to convey Stanford’s own Wagnerian ambitions, then the tone of the NSO Chorus was warm and the balance between instrumentalists and choral and solo singers was consistently excellent. Purser energised his chorus, and shaped the instrumental lines consummately and without undue fuss. Even though Standford’s rhythms are rather unmalleable, Purser found the fluidity which was needed to keep things ticking along. His leadership was an example of the sort of preparation, proficiency and good engagement with musical colleagues that companies such as NSO need but don’t always get.

Stanford’s The Travelling Companion is melodious if not very memorable. One senses that Stanford had the weapons in his arsenal to produce an excellent opera but failed to get all guns firing at the same time. That said, the large audience at Cadogan Hall were loud-voiced in their praise and appreciation. We should be grateful to NSO for giving us the chance to hear this opera which undoubtedly has merits and appeal. Perhaps we can hope for a production by one of the larger houses or festivals - at Wexford perhaps?

Claire Seymour

Stanford: The Travelling Companiont

John - David Horton, The Travelling Companion - Julien Van Mellaerts, The Princess - Kate Valentine, The King - Pauls Putnins, The Wizard/Ruffian - Ian Beadle, The Herald/Ruffian - Felix Kemp, Two Girls - Tamzin Barnett/Lucy Urquhart; Director - Paul Higgins, Conductor - Toby Purser, Designer - Isabella Van Braeckal, Lighting Designer - Tom Turner, Choreographer - Roseanna Anderson, NSO Orchestra and Chorus.

Cadogan Hall, London; Friday 30^th November 2018.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/NSO%20title%20image.jpg image_description= product=yes product_title=Charles Villiers Stanford’s The Travelling Companion: New Sussex Opera at Cadogan Hall product_by=A review by Claire Seymour

Russian romances at Wigmore Hall

This was the second concert in the Hall’s Russian Song Series which began in September. Curated by pianist Iain Burnside, the series is bringing repertoire by leading Russian composers from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries to the UK concert platform, allowing us an opportunity to hear infrequently performed songs by composers such as Myakovsky, Gretchaninov, Cui, Glazunov and Glière.

In a recent interview , Burnside identified some of the ‘themes’ which unite this rich repertoire and what he described as ‘the vocabulary of star gazing, breast beating and soul searching’ was certainly in evidence here. There is an operatic intensity and scale about many of these songs, as Burnside’s two musical partners - the Ukrainian tenor Dmytro Popov and Lithuanian mezzo-soprano Justina Gringytė - confirmed in performances of drama, vivid characterisation and colour.

Both singers have powerful voices and can unleash a full-throated intensity which ease. Popov’s lyric tenor is beautiful of tone, generally steady of intonation - there was just an occasional wavering from the centre of the note at phrase-end climaxes - and rises to the top without strain. Relaxed and singing with obvious enjoyment, he took great care with the Russian texts, bringing words and notes together with engaging focus and clarity, though perhaps not always capturing the tender simplicity and sincerity of some of the more folk-like songs.

Gringytė sings with a fervour and power which, in the intimate environs of Wigmore Hall, were at times somewhat overwhelming, but the vibrant energy which I noted when I saw the mezzo-soprano perform the role of Preziosilla in David Pountney’s WNO production of La forza del destino in March this year was equally impressive here. Gringytė’s tone, particularly her chest voice, is marvellously rich and she used her unwaveringly secure technique to luxuriantly amplify the sound, communicating the emotional tortures and raptures expressed in some of these songs with a soul-engulfing intensity - although sometimes there was a shrillness as her mezzo rose and she reached ever deeper in the music’s wells of agony and suffering. The astonishing strength of her voice was, however, advantageous in controlling the softer phrases, the moments of vulnerability and gentleness, and like Popov, Gringytė was unfailingly attention to the texts.

Beside such drama and extroversion - and, at times, exaggeration - Iain Burnside himself adopted an assuming, supportive role. He was a quietly reassuring presence (the Steinway lid was only slightly raised), but, the piano accompaniments were ever sensitive to the singers’ needs and nuances, and Burnside’s thoughtful expressivity in the piano preludes and postludes defined wonderfully discrete environments from which he sung dramas could emerge.

Dmytro Popov. Photo credit: Anton Ovcharov.

Tchaikovsky wrote romances throughout his career, his hundred or so songs spanning from his early years as a student at the St Petersburg Conservatoire to the Op.73 set of 1893, the year of his death. In selecting his texts, he generally avoided the work of the great Russian poets, such as Pushkin or Lermontov, preferring to set poetry by writers such as Daniil Rathaus, Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, Ivan Zakharovich Surikov, whose lyrics we heard here, and he also had a penchant for the poems of the Grand Duke Konstantin Romanov. César Cui suggested that Tchaikovsky viewed poetry as a ‘necessary evil’ in the process of song composition, but his settings of Lev Alexandrovich Mey’s translations of Heine, which framed the sequenced presented here, seemed rather to demonstrate an instinctive, uncomplicated response to text which inspired directness of melodic expression. Popov sculpted a strong line in ‘Khotel by v jedinoje’ (I wish I could pour into a single word (the translations, from the Cyrillic and into English, were not credited)) and in ‘Otchevo?’ (Why?) built the short, questioning phrases to a powerful concluding climax, ‘Why, oh tell me right now, did you leave me and forget me?’. Popov sang three of the Op.73 settings of Rathaus, beginning ‘Mi sideli s toboy’ (We sat together) seated stage-left besides Gringytė. But, after Burnside’s unsettling bass line and wandering minor harmonies had delineated the storm which embodies, in its driving rain, the protagonist’s grief and tears, he moved to the centre - ‘once again, as before, I’m alone’ - his loneliness exacerbated by the cruelly growling piano bass. ‘Zakatilos solntse’ (The sun has set) was full of persuasive passion, the final phrase almost exploding with the lover’s boundless joy, while ‘Snova, kak prezhde, odin’ (Again, as before, alone), a song which is gently propelled the piano’s repeating rhythmic motif, came to a quieter, more poignant point of rest: ‘Say a prayer for me. I am praying for you.’ Popov combined an even middle-voice and controlled head-voice effectively in ‘Mochi bezumnye’ (Frenzied nights), capturing the oppositions of the protagonist’s recollections of love.

Gringytė’s dynamic and coloristic range were immediately apparent in ‘Uzh gasli v komnatakh’ (The lights were going out in the rooms), the drama of memories of ardent love being tempered by the piano’s poised repetitions creating an almost Chekhovian resignation. ‘Kaby znala ya’ (If only I had known) grew from the piano’s high, delicate tapestry-weave - with Gringytė seated, eyes cast downwards - to a quasi-hysterical expression of disillusioned love culminating in a terrible cry of pain, ‘If only I’d know, I’d realised’ that could not be assuaged by the return of the piano’s subtle sparkling. The latter now seemed hollow and haunting. This song is the first of seven which form Tchaikovsky’s Op.47 set, and Gringytė also presented the final song, ‘Ja li b pole da ne travushka byia’, known as ‘The Bride’s Lament’. The latter was inspired by the duet between Christ and Mary Magdalene in Jules Massenet’s oratorio Marie-Magdeleine which Tchaikovsky described in a letter of 1880 to his benefactor Nadezhda von Meck as a ‘masterpiece’: ‘The duet between Jesus and Mary Magdalene touched my very self and even led me to shed tears.’ Disbelief, woe, suffering, despair: the emotional trajectory, which Gringytė did not just delineate but also seemed to ‘live’, was again projected with immersive power and intensity. The rhapsodic expressivity of the Op.63 ‘Serenade’, in contrast, occasionally had a folk-like tint and the mezzo-soprano showed that she could withdraw to a sweet thread of sound to convey dreamy introspection: ‘Sleep then, darling girl, and surrender to the harmonies of my serenade.’

Iain Burnside. Photo credit: Gerard Collett.

In the sequence of songs by Rachmaninov which followed the interval, I was impressed by the way that Burnside was able to maintain a dramatic impetus within each song, and from song to song, despite the heavy emotional weight of the texts and the richly expressive explorations of the piano parts. A lovely bloom coloured Popov’s rendition of ‘Ne poj, krasavica, pri mne’ (Sing not to me, beautiful maiden’, and his strong high notes were further injected with a flash of vigour by the piano’s final flourish. ‘Ne ver mne, drug!’ (Don’t believe me, friend!) had impulsiveness, youthful drive and passionate heroism worthy of Pushkin’s Lensky. The sinuousness of the piano’s prelude to ‘Khristos voskres’ (Christ is risen) was complemented by Popov’s purposeful declamatory focus as he described a world ‘soaked in blood’ and a hymn sung before an altar which ‘sounds so insulting and unjust’. I thought that Burnside might have unleashed even more emotional thunder at the end of ‘Ya opya’ odinok’ (Again I am alone), where the piano’s final fantasia expresses a despairing alienation so powerfully communicated by Popov but the pianist did conjure a surging current at the start of ‘Vesennye vody’ (Spring waters) where again the tenor’s steadiness and strength were admirable.

The agility of Gringytė’s lower voice was apparent at the start of ‘O, ne grusti’ (O, do not grieve) though more restraint subsequently would have allowed the countering rhythm presented in the piano’s bass to make its expressive mark more readily. In ‘Jest’ mnogo zvukov’ (There are many sounds), however, Burnside really did rise to meet the vocal drama before expertly shaping the subdued close. The mezzo-soprano adopted a less rapturous mode in ‘Pred ikonoj’ (Before the icon), shaping the line with delicacy and delineating the ‘night’s silence’ and the flickering of the icon-light with floating beauty and reverence. And, ‘K detjam’ (To the children) was wonderfully personal and direct, the line simple and true.

It was the three songs by Medtner, though, which were most compelling, as the music - with its complex piano writing and sense of continuous development and searching - seemed to invite a greater freedom of rhythm and emotional colour from Gringytė. The heart’s flights and sighs were conveyed by a judicious rubato at the start of ‘Ne mogu ja slyshat’ ’etoj ptichki’ (When I hear birdsong); the full piano chords which open ‘Nash vek’ (Our age) inspired powerful declamatory rhetoric from Gringytė. Bu, it was in ‘Bessonitsa’ (Sleeplessness) that the sophistication of Medtner’s writing was most apparent. The interaction of voice and piano is detailed and complex and Burnside listened meticulously as the piano’s repetitions supported the vocal line as it withdrew with weariness, languorously shaped by Gringytė who exploited a great range of colour. The emotional palette was further enhanced by the piano’s beautiful closing vocalise.

Gringytė and Popov proved perfect advocates for these Russian romances, conveying an innate empathy with the ‘voice’ of these songs which seem to grow out of the experiences and history of the Russian nation itself.

Claire Seymour

Justina Gringytė (mezzo-soprano), Dmytro Popov (tenor), Iain Burnside (piano)

Tchaikovsky : ‘I wish I could pour into a single word’, ‘The lights were going out in the rooms’ Op.63 No.5, ‘We Sat Together’ Op.73 No.1, ‘The Sun has Set’ Op.73 No.4, ‘If only I had known’ Op.47 No.1, ‘Frenzied nights’ Op.60 No.6, ‘Serenade’ Op.63 No.6, ‘The Bride’s Lament’ Op.47 No.7, ‘Again, as Before, Alone’ Op.73 No.6, ‘Why?’ Op.6 No.5; Medtner: Whenever I hear birdsong’ Op.28 No.2, ‘Our Age’ Op.45 No.4, ‘Sleeplessness’ Op.37 No.1; Rachmaninov: ‘Sing not to me, beautiful maiden’ Op.4 No.4, ‘Oh, do not grieve’ Op.14 No.8, ‘Fragment from A Musset’ Op.21 No.6, ‘The dream’ Op.8 No.5, ‘Before the icon’ Op.21 No.10, ‘Don’t believe me, friend!’ Op.14 No.7, Christ is risen Op.26 No.6, ‘To the children’ Op.26 No.7, ‘The ring’ Op.26 No.14, ‘Again I am alone’ Op.26 No.9, ‘There are many sounds’ Op.26 No.1, ‘Spring waters’ Op.14 No.11.

Wigmore Hall, London; Thursday 29^th November 2018.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Justina%20Gringyte%20Paul%20Marc%20Mitchell%20.jpg image_description= product=yes product_title=Russian Song Series at Wigmore Hall: Justina Gringytė (mezzo-soprano), Dmytro Popov (tenor), Iain Burnside (piano) product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id=Above: Justina Gringytė (mezzo-soprano)

Photo credit: Paul Marc Mitchell

Wolfgang Rihm: Requiem-Strophen

Rihm is perhaps the most prominent living German composer, so his engagement with the Requiem form is significant, particularly as he deals thoughtfully with the issues of life and death which any true requiem should address. This Requiem is secular but very spiritual and sincere, more so than many that just borrow the form. It is austere, yet lucidly beautiful, and deeply felt. It is strongly structured, fourteen sections in four parts with an epilogue, like an interlocking puzzle, with interconnecting themes and internal patterns. The orchestration is concise, nothing frivolous, nothing wasted. The word “Strophen” means verses, but it's used here not just because the piece uses verse, but because this provides yet another level of meaning, reflecting the formal internal procession of the piece through different stages : a true Mass in the deepest sense.

Rihm's Requiem-Strophen begins, not with the blaze like the Angel of Death at the end of Time but with the cry of an oboe, a more “human” voice. Significantly, it is cradled by the two female soloists, singing not in unison, but in harmony. “The oboe never starts a sentence”, writes Brachmann, “it always answers, just as every Requiem is a reaction to that which is unalterable - a person, with whom we shared our life, is no more”. The oboe is also a reed instrument, wordlessly reflecting the parable from Isiah which serves as text in the Initial. “Omnis caro faenum” (All flesh is grass, and all, its loveliness is like the flowers of the field), which must die, but may set seed. This carries through to the rest of the First Part, where the oboe's low timbre is extended by the slow beats of muffled percussion - a funeral march - the chorus and later the soloists singing long chromatic lines, lit by calls from muted brass and a string instrument, being plucked in a deliberately unsettling discord. The Kyrie offers a note of hope, though it is brief and operates like a reiteration of the first section.

Three Sonnets from Michelangelo form the framework of the Second Part, In the first sonnet, bright sounding brass announce the entry of the bass soloist (Hanno Müller-Brachmann) singing of the inevitability of death. The text is Michelangelo, transcribed by Rainer Maria Rilke. This is a pointed reference to Shostakovich (Please see my piece on Shostakovich Sonnets of Michelangelo here). This requiem is a meditation, too, on artists and the role of art in a nihilist civilization that seems hell-bent on self-destruction. Thus the ominous murmurings in the orchestra as the Psalm (De profundis clamavi ad te Domine) begins, and the elliptical lines of the chorus,which stretch forth then break off suddenly yet keep returning, wave after wave. As the lines become firmer, individual instruments in the orchestra awaken and join in. This structure reiterates the words of the sonnet “Des Todes sicher, nicht der Stude wann, das leben kurz und wenig komm ich weiter”. The second Sonnett (“VonSünden voll, mit Jahren überladen”) begins with a sudden crash,soon retreating to a smooth string line behind the bass, intoning with intense depth, his voice rising very high on the words “….hin, Wo sich die Seele formt” as if trying to reach upwards. The last line “und mach ihr sicherer die Wiederkehr” repeats the ellipse employed before, which is further replicated by a reprise of the Psalm, this time again subtly varied, though the stop start rhythm is retained. Typical Rihm patterns within patterns ! Just as the Kyrie provided a bridge between the First and Second Parts of Rihm's Requiem, Sonnett II (“Schon angelangt ist meines Lebens Fahrt”) draws the Second Part together as a coherent whole, as well as leading into the Third Part.

The chorus sing Rilke's Der Tod ist groß wir sind die Seinen in what is effectively a Libera me. This first section of the Third Part contains a strophe within a strophe, the choral part interrupted by a dramatic interlude executed with spartan simplicity - sinle notes of hollow, beaten percussion, repeated in succession before the chorus returns, not singing but chanting the word “Libera me”, and then, after a silence interrupted briefly by percussion, the blunt words “de morte”. Nothing else - no “aeterna”. Where does the liberation in this Requiem come from ? The female soloists (Erdmann and Prohaska) who were largely silent during the Second Part return in the Lacrimosa, their lines intricately intertwined. The Missa pro defunctis surges through Rihm's Requiem-Strophen like an underground river, resurfaces as a reminder that, however new the music, what it represents is beyond time. Thus the Sanctus, the holiest point in any Mass, where Rihm weaves the text in elaborate patterns, single words and parts of words repeated creating depth of texture. “Hosanna in excelsis” emerges in a blaze of chromatic radiance, even though it follows the pattern of stop and start that is the pulse of this requiem. “Der Tod ist groß“ returns too,accompanied by percussion, alternately full throated and quietly hollow. Rihm's Requiem-Strophen reaches its conclusion in the present, so to speak, with a Fourth Part that begins with a Lacrimosa based not on liturgy but on Der Tod, a poem by Johannes Bobrowski published in 1998. This poem, like the Rilke poem, was quoted briefly in the First Part of the piece. This Lacrimosa is scored for the two female soloists,yet again singing complex cross-harmonies, this time with an extended interlude for orchestra and choir, where turbulent chords replace the hollow percussion in the First Lacrimosa, This interlude surges forwards, wiping away what has gone past, preparing the way for the Lacrimosa of the Missa pro defunctis intoned, in Latin, by Müller-Brachmann. His final “Libera me” rings out before he falls silent and the voices of the choir ring out around him, like an angelic chorus. At last, in this Agnus Dei, the protagonist has found peace, of a sort. The words “Dona nobis Pacem” are divided into fragmented patterns, but warmed by the refined writing for voice, the words have radiance.

Is there an afterlife in Rihm's meditation on life and death ? His Requiem-Strophen concludes with an Epilog, using the text of Hans Sahl's poem Strophen, published in 2009. The poem itself is elliptical, phrases repeated with slight variation, so it lends itself perfectly to Rihm's approach. “Ich gehe langsam aus der Welt heraus in eine Landschaft jenseits aller Ferne”…..and what I was and am and will stay forever, “zeht mit mir ohne Ungeduld und Eile, als war ich nie gewesen oder kaum”.(Go with me without impatience as if I had never been or hardly was). The soloists are in repose, but the choir sings on, serenely, and the orchestra rises to new heights. The ebb and flow and stop start pulse remains, its significance revealed. The pulse of an individual human body might cease, but others continue to beat and will do so in bodies as yet unborn. Rihm, like Schoenberg before him, has always acknowledged his appreciation of Johannes Brahms, whose German Requiem is an obvious model, though Rihm's idiom is uniquely his own. Rihm's Requiem-Strophen is therefore much more than a generalized Requiem but also a tribute to artists, poets and composers who have gone on before, and an inspiration for creative minds in the future.

It's worth getting this recording on disc rather than online, because the CD includes an almost poetic essay CD by Jan Brachmann on the philosophy behind it,describing Rihm's discussions with George Steiner. “Intellectual” should not put anyone off, even in these days when critical thinking is treated as thought crime : all sentient human beings should have the capacity to listen and learn. Nonetheless, it is not at all difficult to approach Rihm's Requiem-Strophen on a musical and emotional level.

Anne Ozorio

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image_description=Wolfgang Rihm: Requiem Strophen

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product_title=Wolfgang Rihm: Requiem-Strophen
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Don Giovanni: Manitoba Opera

It’s also a mystery why it’s taken 15 long years for local audiences to see the Wunderkind’s supernatural masterpiece based on an Italian libretto by Lorenzo de Ponte, in turn originally inspired by the legend of Spanish libertine Don Juan with its last MO incarnation staged in 2003.

However, Canadian bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch hailed as “flat out brilliant” by Opera News proved well worth the wait, donning – in this case – the matador’s mantle, as he reprised his signature title role he’s now performed a dozen times worldwide. The Ottawa-born artist electrified the November 24^th opening night crowd with his stylized, swaggering toreador the fulcrum to Spanish-born director Oriol Tomas’s artistic vision (marking his MO debut), nearly stealing the show with every haughty, struck pose and whip-cracking foot stomp, as well as oozing charisma during his serpentine seduction of his female prey caught in his crosshairs.

Photo by R. Tinker

MO Music Advisor and Principal Conductor Tyrone Paterson led the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra with his customary finesse throughout the 175-minute (including intermission) production. Scott Henderson created eye-popping lighting effects heightened by billowing stage smoke, while a wonderfully imagistic, tiered set of a skeletal bullring with hipster-vibe costumes from Edmonton Opera evokes past glory – and gory - days of blood-soaked bullfights, or alternatively a futuristic, burnt-out shell still moaning with death and decay from a not-so-distant past.

What makes this production sing are its two male leads. Okulitch as a fine actor displays supreme conviction and ease as he traverses his narrative arc, matched equally by his unflinching embodiment of Giovanni’s deepest, most volatile desires.

His wheedling of Zerlina, sung by soprano Andrea Lett during the Act I wedding party scene, which quickly escalates into a full-on sexual assault juxtaposed with Mozart’s genteel orchestral accompaniment is the stuff of nightmares - and kudos to both these strong perfomers for their no-holds-barred realization of the stomach-churning narrative.

Okulitch’s richly resonant vocals, including clear diction and agile phrasing were also exhibited during his effortless, trip-off-the-tongue Italian recitatives, and a rapid-fire delivery of famous, fizzy champagne aria, “Finch’han dal vino,” as effervescent as a glass of bubbly.

Photo by R. Tinker

But his chameleonic artistry also includes an impressive emotional palette, with an innate ability to mine the subtlest nugget of gold from this operatic Gibraltar, including his lushly romantic “Deh vieni alla finestra,” wooing Elvira’s maid with his soaring, lyrical voice that seemingly knows no bounds.

Canadian bass-baritone Stephen Hegedus easily holds his own against Okulitch’s bravura performance as Giovanni’s valet/sidekick – and witness – creating oceanic undertows of sub-text as he rails against, reveres, and finally, triumphantly wrests power during the final brilliant image as his master perishes. His biting into an apple as forbidden fruit packed its own emotional wallop, courtesy of Tomas’s sensitive direction that also showed his knack for creating numerous, compelling stage tableaux.

Hegedus’s spot-on comedic timing during Act II’s opening scene, where he disguises himself with Giovanni’s sartorial jacket had viewers in stitches with his buffoonery, as well as during his “catalogue aria,” “Madamina, il catalogo e questo,” in which he nonchalantly lists Giovanni’s conquests to a gaping Elvira.

The trio of female leads that serve as the opera’s backbone must create a compelling, collective whole, as well as individuate their own respective characters as they embark on their own journeys. Mostly, the three Winnipeg-born, bred or based sopranos succeeded, albeit with a few bumps along the road.

Jessica Strong, marking an auspicious MO debut as soloist projected her lusciously warm vocals, including gleaming top notes during each of her major arias, including “Or sai chi l’onore Rapire a me volse,” and later, a limpid “Non mi dir,” as well as eye-of-the-storm trio “Protegga il giusto cielo” sung with Don Ottavio (tenor Owen McCausland) and Elvira as they plead for heavenly protection. She also instilled fascinating sub-text into her role, torn between lust and revulsion for Giovanni, with her solid acting skills morphing through prismatic gradations of emotional colour.

Lyric soprano Monica Huisman crafted a wildcat Elvira who becomes the scourge — and moral checkpoint — of Giovanni’s existence, bringing bushels of energy to the stage with her indignation, at times so heightened that it caused slight intonation issues with her uppermost range. Still, this powerhouse delivered her “ Ah, chi mi dice mai” with the fury of a woman scorned, as well as her subsequent “Ah, fuggi il traditor” in which she thwarts Giovanni’s first seduction of Zerlina that also showcased her innate dramatic flair.

Last but not least, Lett’s lighter, albeit crystal clear, assured lyric soprano voice nailed each of Zerlina’s arias, including (mercifully) injecting dramatic irony into “Batti, batti o bel Masetto,” in which she invites husband Masetto (baritone Johnathon Kirby) to punish her for being tempted by Giovanni, as well as “Vedrai carino,” that flips the narrative on its head as she sly seduces Masetto making this opera equal-opportunity.

American bass Kirk Eichelberger instilled gravitas in his ghostly role as The Commendatore, including his booming “Don Giovanni! A cenar teco m’invitasti” sung to an increasingly unrepentant Giovanni. The Act II cemetery scene, in which tombstones are replaced by hanging, severed bulls’ heads created an arresting trompe l’oeil, with (depending on sightlines) his own human skull appearing replaced by that of a hulking beast.

Tomas (wisely) opted to omit the final ensemble, as per the Viennese libretto of 1788 in which the cast reappears to deliver a neatly sewn up moral, typically included since the early 20^th century. Still, the opera’s shuddering finale felt oddly anti-climatic. All-too-brief pyrotechnic effects, while still shocking, felt less flaming-tongues-from-hell, than nifty special effects borrowed from your latest rock concert. And a rafter-shaking voice like Eichelberger’s really doesn’t need to be amplified, which only jarred the senses, while the female demons that suddenly appeared onstage felt far too Canadian-polite.

Having said all this, kudos to Tomas and his committed cast for bringing Mozart’s perennial classic to life, now grown even more resonant with today’s brave new #MeToo bullrings still blood-soaked with beasts of cutthroat power, politics and ever-threatening, pervasive sexual predation.

Holly Harris

image=http://www.operatoday.com/MB%20Opera%2C%20Don%20Giovanni%2C%20Andrea%20Lett%20%28Zerlina%29%20and%20Daniel%20Okultich%20%28Don%20Giovanni%29%2C%202018.%20Photo%20-%20R.%20Tinker%20-%20Copy.jpg image_description=Andrea Lett (Zerlina) and Daniel Okultich (Don Giovanni) [Photo by R. Tinker] product=yes product_title=Don Giovanni: Manitoba Opera product_by=A review by Holly Harris product_id=Above: Andrea Lett (Zerlina) and Daniel Okultich (Don Giovanni) [Photo by R. Tinker]