Opera Today

Diana Damrau’s Richard Strauss Residency at the Barbican: The first two concerts

As the first recital amply demonstrated, there is a linear path - in German lieder especially - that reaches its Romantic highpoint with Strauss. But as Debussy himself said it’s also impossible to resist the overwhelming power of his music and whether this is on the smallest or biggest of scales (both of which we had here) Strauss’s music can seem almost cinematographic. Debussy had in mind Ein Heldenleben when he pointed to the “book of images” that Strauss’s music resembles - and it was this very work which closed the second concert.

Diana Damrau, it should be said, is not one of those sopranos whose voice easily resonates in a hall the size of the Barbican. The lack of power, and sheer heft, the occasional unwillingness to project the voice more dramatically, can sometimes make the sound she produces seem uncommonly small. But the depth, and range, of her register is quite remarkable despite this one drawback, and it’s certainly not one that is evident all the time. The big notes might feel a little compressed, but her pianissimos are astonishing. As quiet as some of her singing can be, the clarity of what she is singing is like a perfectly cut diamond. On the other hand, the shimmering, almost silver-like tone, the ability to convey youthfulness and warmth, and the unmannered phrasing, places her in a different league to many lieder singers performing Strauss today. Those floating high notes, the perfectly sustained legato and the ability to draw you into the music is often quite magical. Here we have a singer much closer to Lisa Della Casa, Lucia Popp and Margaret Price rather than, for example, Jessye Norman - who in one of her last Wigmore Hall recitals sang Strauss with such power you could feel the waves of sound washing over you.

Damrau opened her first recital with five songs by Liszt. Liszt’s canon of lieder, and his place in the pantheon of great song composers, has never seemed as assured, even today, as those written by Schubert, Wolf or even Strauss. And yet, the line between Liszt, Wolf and Strauss - all of which appeared in this first recital - couldn’t really be clearer. Although perhaps not immediately obvious at first, this intuitive and clever programming of Damrau’s opening concert pointed towards the climax of the second. This was entirely about perspective, about the revolution in Romanticism, and the Neo-German path of lieder and orchestration which went beyond lyricism and opened up the gates towards drama and expressionism in song, and the great Tone Poems that Strauss composed at the close of the Nineteenth Century.

One of the dominant features of this recital was how much the piano mirrored so much of the text - and it began with Liszt. Helmut Deutsch was certainly much more than an accompanist in these opening Liszt songs - though perhaps the somewhat symphonic nature of some of the piano writing, allied with Damrau’s slightly more introspective singing, made him overly dominant at times. In ‘Die Loreley’, for example, the sweeping, flowing - even unrelenting - power of the Rhine was a little more turbulent and overwhelming than one sometimes hears in this song. A stronger voice might have made the piano writing seem less overloaded - but it was thrilling, even if the magic shifted from the voice to Liszt’s piano scoring. But despite this, Damrau often embraced the Homeric - in ‘Die Loreley’ the luring of sailors to their deaths conjured up allusions of the Sirens in The Odyssey: she was at once seductive and devastating in her ability to wreak torment as a temptress of fate. If the vocal strength sometimes fell a bit short, there was never a shred of doubt that Damrau was as fine a storyteller as we’re likely to hear in the concert hall today.

If there was death, these lieder embraced nature too. Schiller - never perhaps the most luminous, or most inspired, of poets - paints a landscape of innocence and boyhood in ‘Der Fischerknabe’. This opening song set the trajectory of where Damrau was going with her Liszt lieder (which was almost to become a microcosm of the two concerts themselves). Just as the voice takes you inwards, the shifts in tonal and vocal colour fuse a distinct narrative. Perhaps more suited to Damrau’s quicksilver, lighter voice the shimmering movement of the water achieved greater reflection, and more balance with Deutsch’s playing, than in the third song ‘Es war ein König in Thule’ which sometimes seemed to elude Damrau altogether. If there’s a simplicity to Goethe’s text here, the depths to which Liszt has gone are exceptionally more demanding on a singer. One never quite felt that the nobility of this piece, or the darker, and more mysterious palette, really quite suited her, or lay easily within her range. There’s something Faustian about this song - perhaps better achieved here by Deutsch’s lugubrious blend of darkness and weight - a distinct contrast to the magnificent second song, ‘Die stille Wasserrose’ where Damrau had been so successful in being so overtly feminine, youthful and - yes - unabashedly erotic. Of all the Liszt songs this was the one which probably hit the mark best of all - one where both Damrau and Deutsch achieved a level of harmonic unity that they never quite managed in the other Liszt lieder. The softness of the piano, the breath-taking beauty of the voice was spellbinding.

There is no question that Damrau made a very persuasive argument for these Liszt songs, even to the extent that one could argue that Liszt’s setting of ‘Die stille Wasserrose’ sounded finer than the same song by Schumann. One certainly felt at times that Damrau and Deutsch were not entirely in unison - though in part this has much to do with Liszt himself who explores significantly more drama in the piano - and Deutsch wasn’t shy in displaying this. I didn’t necessarily find Damrau’s German precise or exact - in fact, it often seemed to be quite the opposite. A tendency to meld phrases into one another, clip words here and there, became a touch grating at times. This was a noticeable problem in ‘Die Loreley’ where you often expected (or should have expected) a more rounded sound and it was simply missing. The penultimate lines of the fifth stanza, for example, ‘Er schaut nicht der die Felsenrisse/Er schaut nur hinauf in die Höh’ were flexed to a state where they were pretty much inaudible.

The Vier Lieder der Mignon by Hugo Wolf were largely magnificent, however. Why Damrau should have been so strong, and compelling, in these Wolf songs isn’t hard to understand. Her gift as a singer lies in her ability to convince the listener that you are very much involved in the psychological complexity behind a composer’s imaginative re-contextualising of the words. In the case of Wolf, these Goethe settings felt incredibly well articulated and almost operatic in their depth of interpretation. Put simply, Damrau just drew you in like a viper does to its prey.

If Liszt had begun to rebalance the voice and the piano in his lieder, Wolf takes it just that bit further - and with it explores the dramatic and sensual power of a composer like Wagner, notably in Tristan, but on a much smaller scale. You sometimes felt in the Liszt songs that Damrau and Deutsch were splitting apart at times; in the Wolf lieder the effect was quite the opposite. Here, if the piano moved one way with its motivic material Damrau chose to follow it. But the obverse was also true. If in the Liszt songs Deutsch had shown he was willing to go-it-alone with the piano writing, his tendency in the Wolf lieder was to mirror more closely with Damrau’s voice.

There is certainly something disturbing, almost pathological, about Wolf’s characterisation of the Mignon setting. Helmut Deutsch instinctively sees the piano part as gravitating towards menace; Damrau, if she didn’t convey enough mystery or darkness in a song like Liszt’s ‘Die Loreley’, here enshrines Mignon with a profound sense of grief and sorrow that is manifestly deeply emotional. They were gripping to hear. Sometimes you got the feeling of a profoundly unstable relationship happening on stage (in the best possible way, it should be said). In ‘Kennst du das Land’, for example, as Damrau sang out ‘Dahin! Dahin’ you felt that Deutsch was each time on the brink of overwhelming and crushing her. Damrau would have none of it and pushed back against this ruinous cruelty by soaring above the keyboard. Wolf had sought to rebalance the relationship between his two protagonists on stage - and this was achieved with mesmerising effect by Damrau and Deutsch where neither singer nor pianist dominated the other. It was all in beautiful, perfect symmetry.

The second half of Diana Damrau’s opening recital was devoted entirely to the lieder of Richard Strauss. The chronological path of Damrau’s programme of lieder - and in the case of the second concert the Vier Letze Lieder - in one sense diverts attention away from Strauss’s singularity as a composer moving in a definite musical direction. Strauss’s songs undoubtedly look back towards the Romanticism of Liszt and Wolf - but they also embrace the Expressionism that was a hallmark of his great single-act operas, Elektra and Salome, only for Strauss to, again, look back to the Nineteenth Century in some of his final works. His output can certainly seem uneven - but so is that of Liszt and Wolf - but Strauss’s great gift was to turn a miniature piece of writing into something that was hugely impressionistic and vivid. It rather confirms the view of Strauss the composer, as described by Debussy, as one who thought largely in images and pictures.

Diana Damrau. Photo credit: Peter Meisel.

If there is one thing that many of Strauss’s songs have in common - and this, too, follows on from Liszt - it’s that the accompaniment can often seem orchestral. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the song which ended the recital - ‘Cäcilie’. A highpoint of this recital - perhaps the highpoint - it was simply majestic. The demands placed on both singer and pianist are huge, but here both Damrau and Deutsch had reached a state of symbiosis that was inspired. The lushness they both brought to this song was exceptional, but so was the artistry and refined technique. If you detected agility in Deutsch’s quicksilver fingers it was because he was identifying so closely with the movement of the text. Likewise, Damrau’s breath control was exceptionally precise. If she had struggled in Liszt, her Bavarian German was much more aesthetically pure in Bavarian Strauss. Some of Strauss’s phrases in ‘Cäcilie’ can seem uncommonly long, almost meandering, but perhaps none tax the singer more than the final one and to Damrau’s credit her singing of it (“wenn du es wüsstest, wenn du es/wüsstest, du lebest mit mir!) was a miracle of voice control and pristine enunciation.

‘Einerlei’ had been the shortest of introductions to this Strauss part of the recital - almost a bon-bon in its paradigm brevity - though it wasn’t until the third song, ‘Ständchen’, that the depth of Damrau’s immersion into Strauss became more apparent. There is far more urgency to the rhythms here - Strauss’s writing for the voice often paralleling the text itself in a far more descriptive and visual way. The impact that both Damrau and Deutsch brought to this felt as if both were painting the music with brushstrokes rather than simply singing or playing the notes - trees bent in the breeze, a brook babbled. ‘Mädchenblumen’, a set of four lieder in which the singer is metaphorically transformed into a garden of flowers, can sometimes seem a touch monochrome in performances. These are songs that stretch the imagination, songs which ask a soprano to walk a tightrope between simple sentimentality and deeper thinking. Strauss certainly doesn’t make life easy for his singer launching into the first song ‘Kornblumen’ without any piano introduction whatsoever. If Damrau was fractionally behind Deutsch here she more than made up for this by managing the long, even tortuous, first phrase so well. ‘Mahnblumen’ fizzed, with Deutsch especially displaying a lightness in the piano trills. With ‘Efeu’ the dynamic changes again. In a great performance of this song you want singer and pianist to intertwine with one another, the phrasing to both feel mysterious but borne of a single, irreplaceable event: “Denn sie zählen zu den seltnen/Blumen, die nur einmal blühen”. It’s exactly what we heard here, a moment of blossom that felt so very singular. With the final song, ‘Wasserrose’, we get Strauss at his most impressionist. Damrau and Deutsch rippled through the water, cadences expressed through small waves of inflected tone in the voice, with long chords on the piano that pushed Damrau to soar through them.

The Drei Lieder der Ophelia in some ways mirror the Wolf Mignon songs which Damrau had sung earlier. Taxing they may be, but they also impress with their dramatization of a character on the brink of madness and paranoia. Overwhelming in their depiction of mortality, of a death in the making, Damrau was often shattering. The huge, expansive leaps in the voice, the lurching between moments of sanity and the impending doom-laden hysteria and psychosis which will result in her impending drowning, they were visceral - like a Goya painting. She never held back for a moment in vocalising the existential crisis facing Ophelia. If the theme of water in her earlier Strauss had focused on its natural beauty, its movement, here the darkness in the voice, so often lacking in the Liszt, was elemental.

There were three encores - Liszt’s ‘es muss ein Wunderbares sein’, and Strauss’s ‘Nichts’ and ‘Morgen’. In a sense, ‘Nichts’ came closest to Damrau’s Bavarian roots - and the legato she displayed was exemplary. ‘Morgen’ was both fragile - rather as it should be - but also inhabited by a glorious pathos in which Damrau scaled down her voice to make the song seem almost endless.

Diana Damrau’s second concert as part of her Strauss residency consisted of a single work, his Vier Letze Lieder accompanied by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Mariss Jansons. I think that even if you accept that some of the works for voice and piano which Strauss subsequently orchestrated (and which Damrau had included in her first recital) - such as ‘Cäcilie’ and ‘Morgen’ - are superlative examples of Strauss’s mastery as an orchestrator none quite rival the sheer scope, or beauty, of the four songs which Strauss wrote in 1948. Few singers in my experience of hearing this work in the concert hall seem to manage to make all four songs work - though perhaps Felicity Lott has come closest. Damrau didn’t quite achieve this either - and nor did you always really feel a sense of deep and profound involvement in her singing of them.

This was one of those performances which did have moments of greatness - but it was also one which leaned heavily the other way. ‘Frühling’, so often the song which causes sopranos the most problems, was extremely fine mainly because Damrau’s more lyrical voice is so ideal for it. The sense that this music had momentum was inescapable - though Jansons had set a very fleet tempo to begin with in the strings and woodwind which Damrau was in part forced to follow. There was undeniable sweep to the voice, so when she soared above the orchestra at the end of the first stanza (‘von deinem Duft und Vogelsang’) the purity of her sound became more apparent. Likewise, there was little effort required to sustain that wonderfully ethereal extended note on “Gegenwart” which closes the song. The more autumnal mood of ‘September’ proved elusive for Damrau, not helped by a lack of poise, with much of the song’s quivering inflections coming from the orchestra’s woodwind and horns - indeed the first horn’s wonderfully played solo in the final bars seemed to dramatize Hesse’s solemn, hymnal text so much more exquisitely.

‘Beim Schlafengehen’, as in so many performances of these songs, was where this performance might have proved uneven - but it shifted into something rather special. The expectation that the voice might be rather light was misplaced mainly because Damrau has such an innate ability to think beyond the words themselves. There was considerable art on display here, as well as a beautiful technique. As with so much of her Strauss and the Wolf in her first recital, what made ‘Beim Schlafengehen’ so deeply impressive was the emotional context in which she placed this Hesse poem. The elegant way in which she managed the hugely long phrases, the impeccable pronunciation and the (mostly) unbroken lines were flawless. If she didn’t quite manage to sustain the final line “Tief und tausendfach zu leben” in a single breath without breaking the phrase at “zu” (but almost no soprano is able to do this) we were compensated with a glowingly lengthened final note on “leben” that was thrilling (and all too often abbreviated in some performances).

‘Im Abendrot’ worked too, largely because Damrau is a singer who understands that what Strauss what trying to convey in this final song is the simplicity of love. Again, the phrasing was impeccable - the voice lush enough against the orchestral backdrop but able to ride effortlessly above it, and at times merge into it. It was a magnificent ending to a performance that had unevenness, but moments of inspiration which showed such depth and beauty.

I have often found Mariss Jansons to be an uneven conductor - even a rather wilful one - but his Richard Strauss is exceptional. If his accompaniment to the Strauss songs had been almost minimalist, but imbued with a sense of wonderful clarity, it came as no surprise that his performance of Ein Heldenleben should display a similar sense of brilliance. No matter how you look at this performance - from the point of view of the conducting, the interpretation or the playing - it was magnificent. The virtuosity of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra is in many ways in a class of its own - at a famous, and utterly memorable, performance of Ein Heldenleben given at the Proms in 2004 under Jansons, the orchestra played on a blacked-out stage much of the Battle Scene when the lights in the hall malfunctioned. No such problem happened during this Barbican concert but the brilliance of the orchestra, that sumptuous sound, the expressive range of its principals leaves an unforgettable impression on the listener.

Ein Heldenleben can sometimes seem an over-long and densely orchestrated work but Jansons has a gift for making this masterpiece seem neither. The clarity he brings to it is quite remarkable, in fact. Rarely have I heard the harps play with such definition in this piece - and the characterisation he asks of the woodwind is stunning. Whole desks of flutes, clarinets, oboes and bassoons are voiced - not simply played as instruments. Strauss is so specific in what he demands of his players it often requires an exceptional orchestra to bring if off and so you get the shriek of a piccolo, the snake-like hiss of a cymbal or the arrogance of some of the lower brass. The solo horn - played here by Eric Terwilliger - was dazzling, with breath control that was effortless. That beautiful lower string sound, the very foundation of this orchestra on which everything else is built, is like crushed velvet. That searing love music which Strauss writes for ‘Der Helden Friedenswerke’ and ‘Der Helden Weltflucht und Vollendung’ has rarely sounded so intense or voluptuous when played by the Bavarian strings, with soaring horns playing meltingly above them. Dynamics are so accurate that you can imagine every detail of this vast score in your mind - and Jansons’s control over the orchestra is absolute. Radoslaw Szluc’s solo violin was so beguiling you couldn’t but be entirely hypnotised by the playing.

One anomaly with Janson’s performances of Ein Heldenleben - and it’s been one ever since I can remember him conducting this work - is the insertion of two unmarked timpani strokes in Strauss’s score. The first (in my ancient Leuckart/Leipzig edition of the score) occurs just before M.93 at the Im Zeitmass marking and the second in the very final bars of the work when the timpani should fade from a ff to a p . I can’t think of another conductor - going as far back as Toscanini and Rodzinski in the 1940s - who does this. I think most listeners scarcely notice it - and in a performance as exceptional as this one was one can overlook this intervention.

These two concerts were largely events of some stature, placing Strauss’s vocal works in a wider historical perspective. There were flaws here and there, but the quality of the singing and, in the second concert, the brilliance of the Bavarian orchestra made for two events that were entirely memorable. Diana Damrau will return to the Barbican in March to complete this Strauss series when she will sing the closing scene fromCapriccio and give the world premiere of a new work, The Hidden Place, by Iain Bell.

Marc Bridle

Diana Damrau (soprano) and Helmut Deutsch (piano)

Franz Liszt: ‘Der Fischerknabe’, ‘Die stille Wasserrose’, ‘Es war ein König in Thule’, ‘Ihr Glocken von Marling’, ‘Die Loreley’; Hugo Wolf: Vier Lieder der Mignon; Richard Strauss: ‘Einerlei’, ‘Meinem Kinde’, ‘Ständchen’, ‘Mädchenblumen’, Drei Lieder der Ophelia, ‘Der Rosenband’, ‘Wiegenlied’, ‘Cäcilie’
16^th January 2019, Barbican Hall, London

Diana Damrau (soprano), Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Mariss Jansons (conductor)

Richard Strauss: Vier Letze Lieder, Ein Heldenleben
26^th January 2019, Barbican Hall, London image=http://www.operatoday.com/Diana_Damrau_Helmut_Deutch_Barbican_0463%20%281%29.jpg image_description= Diana Damrau’s Richard Strauss Residency at the Barbican product=yes product_title= product_by=A review by Marc Bridle product_id=Above: Diana Damrau and Helmut Deutch

Photo credit: Peter Meisel

De la Maison des Morts in Lyon

These seven performances at the Opéra de Lyon wrap up the run of the Warlikowski production of From the House of the Dead that started last spring at London’s Covent Garden and continued in the fall at the Brussel’s Monnaie. Veteran bass Willard White has remained the prisoner Goriantchikov, Warlikowski’s protagonist for the full run as has Czech tenor Stefan Margita (San Francisco Opera’s Loge) as the prisoner Luka. Both artists are veterans of the 2007 Patrice Chéreau Aix Festival production also seen at the Metropolitan Opera in 2009.

Note that spellings of the Russian names have been Anglicized for this review.

It is ironic that black, “veteran” (the critical adjective for the past 20 years) bass White is both Chéreau and Warlikowski’s choice for the only prisoner to be freed from the horrors of modern penal servitude. For Chéreau it was a release from a physically detailed world of drudgery and degradation and suffering, for Warlikowski the prisoner’s release is a metaphorical death, the abandonment of a vibrant, intense, and principled world in which wounded human souls can truly soar. Warlikowski with conductor Pérez find, finally, the essence of Janacek’s most forgiving line “a divine spark (a soul) shines in every being” and it was an emotionally and intellectually thrilling, in fact mesmerizing conclusion to this evening of unrelenting brutality.

Warlikowski inaugurates his From the House of the Dead with a video of the late French philosopher Michel Foucault musing about justice and the police. He speaks over Janacek’s introductory music, the intense pace of concept and the inflection of the French is exponentially enlivened by Janacek’s already boiling motives. Janacek then drives a commanding musical climax to which the video expands the monumental gates of a soaring castle — and it is a prison!

Willard White as Goryantchikov (far left), Nicky Spence as the Fat Prisonor with Ladislav Elgr as Shuratov (center)

A basketball court is revealed, a black player (a “pro” equivalent) dribbles and shoots a basket, among the prisoners who enter are four break-dancing acrobats (of the various skin tones that populate Western prisons) who project an unbridled spirit of freedom in their movement and in their energy, a canny take on the wildness of the Janacek score. A fight breaks out, the basketball player is wounded. We understand that the basketball player is Dostoevsky’s taunted eagle as we know that an eagle is a visual epithet of freedom.

The player will remain in a wheelchair until the final moments of the opera when he stands, shoots the ball and misses, then he takes it to the rack. Blackout.

Unnamed South African gangster (video), Willard White as Goryantchikov, Pascal Charbonneau as the wounded Alyeya

Warlikowski separates the acts of the opera with a video from American film director Teboho Edkins’ Gangster Backstage in which a black South African gangster (a real gangster) muses during the musical silences about death, knowing that he wishes a legacy and that legacy might be, he imagines, saving a small boy from danger. We know now why the prisoner Goriantchikov (Willard White) will teach the young prisoner Alyeya to read and write, his legacy and gift to the spirited, truly human world that he must leave. And why he is the opera’s protagonist though he has very little to say or sing.

Warlikowski’s frenetic intellectual and physical world is deeply embedded into the continuum of Janacek’s sonic world, a world in which stories are told — Luka who stabbed the abusive commander of his prison, Skuratov who shot the rich man his mistress married, Shapkin who robbed a rich man and was tortured, and finally Shishkov who murdered his wife because she dishonored him.

Finally, more than the merely recounted violence, Shishkov elevates Janacek’s narrative opera to action — Shishkov resolutely murders Luka who he has learned is the man who had falsely denounced his new wife as unchaste. Janacek’s continuum hammers Shishkov’s revenge and his remorse, and the bravado and regret of the other raconteurs. Shishkov’s action is finally release. Violence and brutality redeemed. And Janacek drives the pathos ever deeper in the Old Prisoner’s epithet of the dead Luka, “he too had a mother.”

That Warlikowski’s plays (Kedril and Don Juan and The Lovely Miller’s Wife) within Janacek’s play added gratuitous grotesquery and violence to his prison world can be attributed to blind, probably necessary adherence to the dictums of “regietheater.” Unfortunately these attributes also became boring, detracting from the honest, effective intellectualism of the Warlikowski concept.

Lyon’s Opéra Nouvel (named after it’s architect, Jean Nouvel) offers a very present, very bright acoustic. The Opéra de Lyon’s fine orchestra was well rehearsed and poised to deliver. Conductor Pérez, new to the production, was able to exploit (to the hilt) the quite detailed urgencies of the Janacek’s orchestral continuum, giving Warlikowski a musical force to well support the overwhelming physical and intellectual energy emanating from the stage.

From which there had been no escape. That final basket was deeply felt liberation.

Much of the sterling cast survives from the Covent Garden premiere, including the Luka of Stefan Margita and the Skuratov of Ladislav Elgr. Karoly Szemeredy was new to the production as a truly riveting Shishkov (he was Warlikowski’s Captain in last summer’s The Bassarids at Salzburg), as was the Shapkin of Dmitry Golovnin.

Michael Milenski

---

Cast and production information:

Alexandre Petrovitch Goryantchikov: Sir Willard White; Alieïa: Pascal Charbonneau; Filka Morosov (Louka Kouzmitch): Stefan Margita; Le grand forçat (prisoner): Nicky Spence; Le petit forçat / Le forçat cuistot / Tchekounov: Ivan Ludlow; Le commandant: Alexander Vassiliev; Le vieux forçat: Graham Clark; Skouratov: Ladislav Elgr; Le Forçat ivre: Jeffrey Lloyd‑Roberts; Le forçat jouant: Don Juan et le Brahmane / Le forçat forgeron: Ales Jenis; Un jeune Forçat: Grégoire Mour; Une prostitiuée: Natascha Petrinsky; Kedril: John Graham-Hall; Chapkine: Dmitry Golovnin; Chichkov / Le pope: Karoly Szemeredy; Tcherevine / Une voix de la steppe: Alexander Gelah; Un garde: Brian Bruce; Un garde: Antoine Saint-Espès. Orchestre et Chœurs de l’Opéra de Lyon. Conductor: Alejo Pérez: Mise en scène: Krzysztof Warlikowski; Décors et costumes: Malgorzata Szczęśniak; Lumières: Felice Ross; Chorégraphie: Claude Bardouil; Vidéo: Denis Guéguin; Dramaturgie Christian Longchamp. Opéra Nouvel, Lyon, France, January 23, 2019.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Dead_Lyon4.png

product=yes
product_title=From the House of the Dead in Lyon
product_by=A review by Michael Milenski
product_id=Above: Karoly Szemeredy here as the bearded Orthodox pope (later he is Shishkov), Stefan Margita as Luka (far right in red) [All photos copyright Stofleth, courtesy of the Opéra de Lyon]

A First-Ever Recording: Benjamin Godard’s 1890 Opera on Dante and Beatrice

Many recent Godard recordings have been made possible with support from the Center for French Romantic Music, located at the Palazzetto Bru Zane (Venice).

What Godard’s several operas are like as a whole, though, has been hard to guess. The only number from any of them to survive through the years was a tenor aria, entitled Berceuse, from Jocelyn. That lovely lullaby has been recorded by an astonishing range of singers, including Bing Crosby (with, yes, Jascha Heifetz) , Plácido Domingo (with Itzhak Perlman), and my favorite: the Belgian tenor André d’Arkor, recorded in 1930 (and including, for once, the marvelous introduction and recitative).

Now a Godard opera, Dante—an imaginative tale about the poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) and his beloved, Beatrice—has been committed to disc, and in a first-rate performance . (Click here for a video containing some excerpts from the work.) I really had little idea what to expect. Yet what greeted my ears was one of the most confidently written and stylistically consistent operas I have recently encountered. The work’s basic manner might be compared to that of Gounod, but I was led to think at times also of Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila and of some passages in middle Verdi. A few moments reminded me of Tchaikovsky (prelude to the final scene) and Musorgsky. But this only goes to show that Godard took solid models and that they worked well for him.

Samson (with its magnificent choruses of Hebrews and Philistines) occurs to me especially when I listen to Act 1, which consists in large part of big, oratorio-like choral tableaux, involving the struggle between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines in Renaissance Florence, and the question of whether Dante will be voted to become the city’s political leader. A direct influence of one opera on the other is perhaps unlikely, given that Saint-Saëns’s masterwork went unperformed in France until 1890, two months before the premiere of this opera. Still, Godard may have managed to see a score of Samson in the thirteen years since the its premiere in Weimar (1877).

Despite the heavy presence of chorus in Act 1, there are also extended, stirring solos (quasi-arias) for two of the main characters, Dante and Beatrice. Dante’s can be heard and seen on YouTube. The beginning of Act 2 brings a similarly gratifying solo scene for the third main character, Simeone Bardi. The latter is (as operatic tradition demanded) a baritone and stands in the way between the somewhat idealized lovers, who are of course a soprano and tenor.

(Bardi loves Beatrice and is already betrothed to her when the opera starts, thus setting up the major plot-conflict. The fourth major role is Gemma, a confidante of Beatrice who, for further complication, is in love with Dante.)

Picking up the plot where I left it: in the middle of Act 2, Dante and Beatrice get to have a passionate love duet . The act ends with an event that is historically accurate, namely the invasion of Florence by the French, who condemn Dante to exile. Bardi consigns Beatrice to a convent. Act 3 escapes history entirely. Here Dante wanders in the mountains, falls asleep, and has two dreams: first of Hell, then of Heaven. In short, Dante’s frustrated love is shown as inspiring the Inferno and Paradiso sections of his literary masterpiece, the Divine Comedy. (The genre of opera, with its love of excess in either the negative or positive direction, clearly left little room for a middle-of-the-road Purgatory dream.)

The two dream scenes contain much skillful and varied writing for orchestra and chorus, bringing the work, again, very close to oratorio. Indeed, the portrayal of Hell was so powerful (great opportunities for the brass!) that I feared that Heaven would be a disappointment, but I should have known better from a composer who wrote programmatic and “descriptive” symphonies (“Gothic,” “Oriental,” “Legendary,” and one based on the life of Renaissance poet Torquato Tasso), some of which incorporate solo and choral singing. The Heaven dream is of course colored by traditions of French religious music (well handled by Godard), but then links up with the main plot by allowing Dante to see an apparition of Beatrice, who—in eloquent musical phrases—expresses confidence in his ability to complete his epic.

In Act 4 (back in real life), Bardi, having agreed to give Beatrice up, leads Dante to her, but by this point she is sick and dying. She and Dante have a final love duet, which brings back material from the one in Act 2, and she repeats words that Dante had heard her voice uttering in the midst of the Heaven dream. Beatrice dies, and Dante commits himself to completing his literary work in her memory.

All of this would not perhaps amount to much if the music weren’t good. But it is better than good: clear in intent, melodically memorable, secure in harmony, and full of inventive accompanimental figures. Most gratifying are the short orchestral commentaries that punctuate the work: not just preludes before scenes but also statements in between phases in the action or between declarations by one character and responses by another. The opera repeatedly shows a deft ability to integrate the symphonic and the dramatic, in ways very different from the procedures advanced by Wagner. Godard is said to have wanted to have nothing to do with Wagnerianism. (He was of Jewish origin and utterly opposed to Wagner’s antisemitic polemics.)

The performance is splendid. The Palazzetto has here re-hired two of its most successful vocalists from previous volumes of their “French Opera” series. Gens is perfection itself as Beatrice. Montvidas (from Lithuania) makes a plangent Dante, secure in loud passages and especially touching in soft, doubt-filled ones. (Gens and Montvidas were superb as the central figures in Félicien David’s Herculanum, and Gens revealed a particularly wide range of emotions in Saint-Saens’s Proserpine.)

The big new discovery for me is the alto, Frenkel (from Israel), who commands the necessary low register for the role. Baritone Lapointe, as Bardi, lacks strength in his low notes. In his middle register, the vibrato can get a bit wide and slow. Lapointe is splendid, though, when things go high. Andrew Foster-Williams does a capable job as an Old Man and as the Ghost of Virgil (who guides Dante on the tour of Hell and Heaven). His voice is not ideally steady, but perhaps one excuses this somewhat because one of the characters is aged and the other is a vision rather than flesh and blood. Diane Axentii sings well in the role of “a schoolboy,” who offers a strophic ode to the greatness of Virgil in Act 3 (shortly before the spirit of the great writer arrives in order to guide Dante on a tour of Hell and Heaven).

The Munich orchestra and chorus under Schirmer respond with total assurance, as if they have known the work for years. The one weakness, I felt, was a certain start-and-stop quality in Act 4. I had just finished reviewing Berlioz’s Les Troyens and noticed how much more adroit Berlioz was at ensuring continuity from one section of a scene to the next (i.e., not requiring much adjustment on the part of the conductor). Perhaps Act 4 would flow more persuasively if the pauses between musical numbers could be kept shorter. I did not notice any such problem in Acts 1-3. This is the kind of problem that gradually get “fixed” (in both senses of the word: repaired and also standardized) as an opera finds its way into the repertory. For example, conductors make all kinds of unmarked but by-now-traditional tempo shifts in middle Verdi to help a work be fully effective. I noticed this while listening to a recent and relatively conventional live recording of Il trovatore from the Macerata Festival: back-and-forths between characters are often underscored by pointed adjustments in tempo (from conductor Daniel Oren) that suit each character’s current emotional state and that thus integrate the dramatic arc into the sung and played music.

The Palazzetto’s scholarly team prepared the score and parts and commissioned and edited the first-rate essays in the accompanying hardcover book.

Imagine what a stage director and designer could do with the Heaven and Hell visions of Act 3! Let’s just hope they don’t try to update or alter the onstage action in the rest of the opera. Perhaps they could even do something that today might be considered daring: set the opera in fourteenth-century Florence and try to evoke the afterlife, in Act 3, in ways that would have suited the era of Dante himself, or of the composer and librettist, rather than how we might imagine them today. (Late bulletin: a stage production is scheduled for February 2019 at the opera house in the French city of Saint-Etienne, about an hour from Lyons.)

Or perhaps the work is best suited to performance “in concert” (i.e., without sets or costumes). That way, each audience member can imagine a Hell and a Heaven that speaks to him or her.

Ralph P. Locke

---

The above review is a lightly revised version of one that first appeared in American Record Guide . It appears here by kind permission of ARG.

Ralph P. Locke is emeritus professor of musicology at the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music. Six of his articles have won the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for excellence in writing about music. His most recent two books are Musical Exoticism: Images and Reflections and Music and the Exotic from the Renaissance to Mozart (both Cambridge University Press). Both are now available in paperback, and the second is also available as an e-book. His reviews appear in various online magazines, including The Arts Fuse , NewYorkArts , and The Boston Musical Intelligencer .

      

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Dante_front.jpg image_description=Ediciones Singulares ES1029 product=yes product_title=Benjamin Godard: Dante (opera) product_by=Véronique Gens (Beatrice), Rachel Frenkel (Gemma), Edgaras Montvidas (Dante), Jean-Francois Lapointe (Simeone Bardi), Diana Axentii (schoolboy), Andrew Foster-Williams (an old man, ghost of Virgil), Andrew Lepri Meyer (herald). Munich Radio Orchestra and Bavarian Radio Chorus, conducted by Ulf Schirmer. product_id=Ediciones Singulares ES1029 [2 CDs] price=$30.09 product_url=https://amzn.to/2DBSGpw

La Nuova Musica perform Handel's Alcina at St John's Smith Square

Were the expectant punters enticed by promise of a ‘prelude’ to the 2019 London Handel Festival - which runs from 27th March to 29th April - sung by a superb cast of soloists, or by the appearance of Joanna Lumley as the ‘narrator’ reading June Chichester’s recitative-replacing inter-aria text?

For, the evening’s performance was an “experiment”, one which, according to Katie Hawks’ programme article, “dipped in the waters of authenticity” by following the practice of German opera houses in Handel’s day of singing the recitatives of opera seria in the native language, while retaining the original Italian text of the arias. Here, though, the Italian recitative was done away with altogether, replaced by spoken English summaries which were “intended to convey the drama better”.

Certainly, the romantic entanglements of Alcina do require intricate unravelling. The opera premiered at Covent Garden in April 1735 during Handel’s first season at the Theatre Royal and presents episodes from Ariosto’s Orlando furioso in which the eponymous Sorceress lures heroes to her enchanted island, quickly becomes disenchanted with their merits and charms, and so casts spells which turn her former lovers into animals and trees, rocks and streams. The virtuous Bradamante - disguised as her brother Ricciardo - arrives on the island with her friend Melisso to rescue her fiancé, the bewitched Ruggiero. Complications ensue when Morgana, Alcina’s sister who is loved by the Sorceress’s steward, Oronte, falls in love with ‘Ricciardo’. Her jealousy aroused, Alcina sets out to turn the latter into a wild beast. Magic rings and Ruggiero’s moral awakening intervene, and the Sorceress finds herself suffering the afflictions of true love.

This drama, somewhat absurd and sometimes confusing, is presented in the recitatives; and, even if one does not understand the sung language, one can appreciate the tenor of the situation and action, the changing nature of the relationships, the pace of the drama. The recitatives provide the contexts for the emotional effusions of the arias. And, they provide contrasts of musical colour. Take them away and you’re left with the jewels without a chain to thread them together.

Joanna Lumley and William Berger. Photo credit: Nick Rutter.

Descending from her armchair-throne behind the instrumentalists, Joanna Lumley read June Chichester’s text - which often seemed simply to summarise the arias - with judicious lip-curling, eye-brow raising wryness. Occasionally she addressed a singer directly, at other times she re-positioned a music stand in advance of an aria. But, despite the clarity and nuance of her delivery (was amplification really necessary?), the musico-dramatic focus and momentum drooped during the spoken text. Conductor David Bates worked tremendously hard to drive the drama forwards and drew playing of tremendous rhythmic élan and textual clarity from La Nuova Musica. But, the performance didn’t have the sort of dramatic fluency that can carry the listener through the admitted irrationalities of some of the libretto’s romantic muddles and misunderstandings. I wasn’t convinced that the ‘experiment’ clarified the action, and the omission and re-ordering of some arias did not help in this regard.

John Caird (who is an Honorary Associate Director of the RSC and Principal Guest Director of the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm) was billed as the ‘director’, but I struggled to discern his contribution. The singers, most of whom used scores, simply did what good singers do; that is, respond naturally to the dramatic situation through voice, gesture, manner. They sang their arias in turn, sometimes standing amid the instrumentalists, sometimes behind them, often seated - unfortunately so in the latter case, given the poor sight-lines in SJSS. Even a simple lighting design would have enhanced our sense of the mystery and menace of Alcina’s fantastical realm, of the Sorceress’s struggle to control her victims and to understand the growing affections of her own heart. And, her devastation when both her magic powers and her former lovers, restored to human form, have vanished, leaving her alone and bereft. There was an elaborate display of candles above the seated singers at the rear, but it wasn’t clear what this was supposed to represent or evoke.

Anaïs Chen and Patrick Terry. Photo credit: Nick Rutter.

Fortunately, the musical performances more than made up for these frustrations. Particularly impressive was countertenor Patrick Terry who conveyed both Ruggiero’s initial boyish need for reassurance and affection, and his subsequent self-knowledge when he comes to appreciate the emptiness of his earlier happiness. Handel’s original Ruggiero, the castrato Giovanni Carestini, so the story goes, was dissatisfied with the simplicity of the plaintive ‘Verdi prati’ - in which Ruggiero recognises that the beautiful green island is an illusion which will soon dissolve into a barren reality - and sent it back to Handel, whose riposte was that if Carestini didn’t sing the aria he would be paid nothing. I admired Terry’s singing when I first heard him perform in the Kathleen Ferrier Awards Final in 2017 (when he won the Song Prize), and the fullness of his tone and smoothness of line that I noted on that occasion have grown even more beguiling. ‘Verdi prati’ was the emotional heart of this performance, in which Ruggiero’s regret was enhanced by leader Anaïs Chen’s exquisite violin solo, but Terry was just as stirring in ‘Sta nell’Ircana’ - to which the natural horns of Anneke Scott and Joseph Walters offered a vibrant, colourful complement - phrasing the exuberant runs stylishly and powering sonorously to the final cadence.

Madeleine Shaw, Rebecca Bottone and Leo Duarte. Photo credit: Nick Rutter.

Rebecca Bottone was a characterful Morgana, her upper register shining. Morgana’s initial mischievous flirtatiousness was engagingly embodied by oboist Leo Duarte’s juicy obbligato, while the expressive phrasing of Morgana’s later plea for forgiveness was complemented by the gracious muscularity and plaintiveness of John Myerscough’s cello obbligato. Not surprisingly, Christopher Turner’s Oronte could not resist his wayward beloved’s entreaties, the nuanced legato line of his subsequent ‘Un momento di contento’ expressing the assuagement bestowed by true love. As the hollow-hearted Sorceress, Lucy Crowe sang with characteristic liquefaction and limpidity, but while Crowe’s elegance was unwavering, at times I found her tone rather ‘white’, and not fully expressive of Alcina’s wide-ranging emotions.

As Bradamante, Madeleine Shaw conveyed a feminine warmth beneath ‘Ricciardo’s’ vengeful anger, and baritone William Berger - who, like Terry, sang from memory - projected Melisso’s single aria well, displaying strength at the bottom of his range, and rising easily with even colour. I look forward to hearing both Berger and Terry again when they join the cast of Berenice, at the ROH’s Linbury Theatre, during the forthcoming London Handel Festival ‘proper’.

This performance of Alcina was warmly appreciated by the SJSS audience, and certainly whetted the appetite for this year’s LHF. But, oddly, the real ‘enchantment’ on this occasion occurred during the instrumental obbligatos, which were performed from memory with the solo players moving forward to participate in the ‘action’; here was real musical magic.

Claire Seymour

La Nuova Musica: Alcina

Alcina - Lucy Crowe, Ruggiero - Patrick Terry, Morgana - Rebecca Bottone, Bradamante - Madeleine Shaw, Ornote - Christopher Turner, Melisso - William Berger, Narrator - Joanna Lumley, Director - David Bates, Director - John Caird.

St John’s Smith Square, London; Tuesday 22^nd January 2019.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Alcina%20rehearsal.jpg image_description= product=yes product_title=Alcina, La Nuova Musica (London Handel Festival) product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id= Above: La Nuova Music at St John’s Smith Square (in rehearsal)

Photo credit: Nick Rutter

Ermonela Jaho is an emotively powerful Violetta in ROH's La traviata

Conductor Antonello Manacorda didn’t inject much life or spirit into the overture: uncharacteristically, the ROH Orchestra seemed drained of colour, the cellos neither bloomed nor ached, and tempi were sluggish. The lacklustre opening certainly wasn’t a case of ‘aging’. Eyre’s production may be 25-years-old but it’s still handsome in conception and design, Bob Crowley’s sets sculpting gracious spaces.

Violetta’s Parisian apartment has a stylish grandeur which brings to mind the art deco entrance hall at Eltham Palace - the overarching dome, through which light seems to burst, highlighting the beautiful veneer and marquetry. Subsequently, the Act 2 rural retreat exudes classy minimalism and artistic taste, while the crimson is still pulsing in the gambling scene, voluptuously lit by Jean Kalman who bathes his frolicking gypsy girls and strutting matadors in rich hues of complementary red and green. Then, finally, the vivacity is blanched and bleached for the death scene, which takes place in a grey, bare room dominated by a huge slanting mirror, its glass blackened and rotting - a photo negative of Violetta’s inner physical decline.

These are images and spaces which conjure passion, excitement and fear. And, given the strong cast assembled it was a surprise that there were few genuine on-stage emotional frissons in Act 1. There was some fine singing but even the redoubtable ROH Chorus, while as vocally secure as always, seemed rather staid and sturdy. Indeed, though on previous occasions I’ve not been troubled by the way the set often pushes the cast and Chorus forwards to the fore-stage, throughout this performance there seemed to be a disappointing predominance of stand-and-sing non-choreography.

Eyre’s production has had countless revivals with numerous divas in the title role. The Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho first stepped into Violetta’s shoes at Covent Garden when she deputised at short notice for an indisposed Anna Netrebko in 2008, and she returned to the role here in 2010 and 2012. Internationally, Violetta Valéry has become one of her most successful roles. But, in Act 1 Jaho and Charles Castronovo - who was Jaho’s Alfredo in Paris last autumn - seemed to be singing ‘at’ rather than ‘to’ each other: there was more emotional spark from the central ice sculpture around which the revellers swirled.

Ermonela Jaho (Violetta). Photo credit: Catherine Ashmore.

I wondered if I’d simply seen too many Traviatas of late, after performances by Opera Holland Park , the Glyndebourne Tour and Welsh National Opera in the last few months. But, I think my initial disenchantment has a different root. Jaho is a superb dramatic communicator, but she lacks the sort of lyric sumptuousness that can convince us of Violetta’s captivating allure - such as is required in ‘Ah, fors’ è lui’ and ‘Sempre libera’, which Jaho approached somewhat tentatively. Conversely, the more infirm and fractured Violetta becomes, the more credible is Jaho’s communication of physical and mental vulnerability through vocal slenderness - her frailty, of body and utterance, is compelling. We might expect a singer to use colour and muscular strength to shape a line, phrasing and projecting to convey character; Jaho’s expressive impact seems to be achieved by the inverse. Her tone is rather monochrome, but she can withdraw her soprano until it is the merest whisper - the scant thread which holds Violetta in this world, as the afterlife beckons. And, it is breathtakingly beautiful and touching at times, if occasionally repetitive.

That said, Violetta’s Act 3 demise was heart-breaking. Every tremor, every brief flame, was piercingly emotive. If her Act 2 exchanges with Alfredo’s father were less successful, than that is partly owing to Igor Golovatenko’s inflexible phrasing and overly pressing sound: the tone was strong and true, but it was unwaveringly loud, and this Giorgio Germont came across as a heartless patriarch whose condescension and cruelty - his iron-rod back, and iron-hard delivery - simply overwhelmed Jaho’s brittle delicacy. Golovatenko was more dramatically effective in his subsequent exchanges with Castronovo. And the latter, if he seemed to be lacking the party spirit in the Act 1 brindisi, was chillingly vicious in his humiliation of Violetta in the gambling scene, conveying a truly hurting heart battling with spitefulness.

Charles Castronovo (Alfredo), Ermonela Jaho (Violetta), Catherine Carby (Annina), Simon Shibambu (Doctor Grenvil). Photo credit: Catherine Ashmore.

Overall, though, this was effectively a one-woman show. There were consistent, well-considered performances from Catherine Carby as Annina, and Simon Shibambu as Doctor Grenvil. And, the two Jette Parker Young Artists also impressed: Aigul Akhmetshina was a vivacious Flora, while Germán E. Alcántara showed confidence and presence as Baron Douphol.

But, it was Jaho who, in Acts 2 and 3 at least, commanded and demanded our attention. If a wrenching portrait of physical and psychological demise is what you’re after, this is a Traviata for you. There are, however, two casts for this production , and Angel Blue and Plácido Domingo may throw some different ingredients into the mix.

Claire Seymour

Verdi: La Traviata

Violetta Valéry - Ermonela Jaho, Alfredo Germont - Charles Castronovo, Giorgio Germont - Igor Golovatenko, Annina - Catherine Carby, Flora Bervoix - Aigul Akhmetshina, Baron Douphol - Germán E Alcántara, Doctor Grenvil - Simon Shibambu, Gastone de Letorières - Thomas Atkins, Marquis D'Obigny - Jeremy White, Giuseppe - Neil Gillespie, Messenger - Dominic Barrand, Servant - Jonathan Coad; Director - Richard Eyre, Revival director - Andrew Sinclair, Conductor - Antonello Manacorda, Designer - Bob Crowley, Lighting designer - Jean Kalman, Director of movement - Jane Gibson, Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House.

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London; Monday 21^st January 2019.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Charles%20Castronovo%20as%20Alfredo%20Germont%20and%20Ermonela%20Jaho%20as%20Violetta%20Val%C3%A9ry%20%28c%29%20Catherine%20Ashmore.jpg
image_description=
product=yes
product_title=La traviata, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
product_by=A review by Claire Seymour
product_id= Above: Charles Castronovo as Alfredo Germont and Ermonela Jaho as Violetta Valéry

Photo credit: Catherine Ashmore

Garsington Opera’s 30th anniversary season: four new productions including an Offenbach premiere

The season culminates with concert performances of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610, celebrating the start of a partnership with The English Concert. The season runs from 29 May to 26 July.

Garsington Opera remains committed to engaging great singers from around the world as well as showcasing the best talent from the UK. They are joined by the Garsington Opera Chorus and Orchestra, and for the performances of The Bartered Bride, the Philharmonia Orchestra.

The UK stage premiere of Offenbach’s little-known opera Fantasio celebrates his bicentenary year. A beguiling tale of love and mistaken identity, it will feature Hanna Hipp, who sang Clairon in Capriccio last season, in the role of the Jester, a melancholy, moon-struck dreamer yearning after Princess Elsbeth, performed by Jennifer France, winner of the Critics Circle Emerging Talent Award 2018, the Leonard Ingrams Foundation Award 2014 and praised for her appearance as Susanna in John Cox’s legendaryLe nozze di Figaro. They are joined byHuw Montague Rendall (Prince of Mantua),Timothy Robinson (Marinoni),Brian Bannatyne-Scott (King of Bavaria) and Bianca Andrew (Flamel). Three singers, formerly on the Alvarez Young Artists’ Programme, Benjamin Lewis (Sparck),Joseph Padfield (Hartmann) and Joel Williams (Facio) complete the cast. This fantastical story is performed in a lively new English translation byJeremy Sams. The creative team of directorMartin Duncan and designer Francis O’Connor return after many admired productions at Garsington Opera, and are joined by lighting designerHoward Hudson and choreographerEwan Jones. Making his Garsington Opera debut, Justin Doyle, Artistic Director of RIAS Kammerchor , Berlin, will conduct.

The Bartered Bride , a celebration of Czech culture and identity, will be reimagined into the heart of the English countryside, and will open the season.Natalya Romaniw, last seen at Garsington as Tatyana inEugene Onegin, sings the heroine Mař enka who uses all her charm and cunning to marry the man she loves - Jeník, sung by American tenor Brenden Gunnell. The cast includes Joshua Bloom (Kecal) last seen as Figaro (2017),Stuart Jackson (Vašek), Peter Savidge (Krušina), Heather Shipp (Ludmila), Brian Bannatyne-Scott (Mícha),Anne-Marie Owens (Háta), andJeffrey Lloyd-Roberts (Circus Master). Lara Marie Müller, a former Alvarez Young Artist, sings Esmeralda. Dance is at the heart of this sparkling work from the vibrant overture to the riotous and festive polka; Jac van Steen, who returns after his success with Pelléas et Mélisande (2017), will conduct the Philharmonia Orchestra. The creative team of Paul Curran (director) and Kevin Knigh t (designer), whose production of Death in Venice (2015) was much acclaimed, returns with Howard Hudson (lighting designer) and Darren Royston (movement director).

Mozart's enduring masterpiece Don Giovanni will feature several role debuts including Jonathan McGovern in the title role, David Ireland (Leporello), formerly an Alvarez Young Artist, Australian soprano Sky Ingram (Donna Elvira) and Welsh tenor Trystan Llŷ r Griffiths (Don Ottavio). The cast also includes two UK debuts - Brazilian soprano Camila Titinger (Donna Anna) and Canadian soprano Mireille Asselin (Zerlina).Paul Whelan (Commendatore) and former Alvarez Young Artist Thomas Faulkner (Masetto) complete the cast. Garsington Opera’s Artistic Director Douglas Boyd conducts and former Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare CompanyMichael Boyd (director) returns to direct together withTom Piper (designer), after their success withPelléas et Mélisande (2017) and Eugene Onegin (2016) with Malcolm Rippeth (lighting designer).

The Turn of the Screw with a libretto by Myfanwy Piper, based on the novella by Henry James, is considered to be one of Britten’s finest stage works. The gripping story of a young governess, performed by Sophie Bevan, sent to a remote country house to care for two children, also features the tenor Ed Lyon (Prologue/Quint), making his role debut. Also in the cast are Kathleen Wilkinson (Mrs Grose) and Katherine Broderick (Miss Jessel). Emerging American director Louisa Muller makes her UK debut together with two-time Olivier and Tony Award-winnerChristopher Oram (designer) andMalcolm Rippeth (lighting designer). Richard Farnes, conductor of last year’s admired Falstaff, will conduct.

Celebrating the start of a new partnership, the renowned Baroque and Classical chamber orchestra The English Concert makes its Garsington debut playing on period instruments in three concert performances of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610. They will be joined by soloists Mary Bevan,Sophie Bevan, Benjamin Hulett,Robert Murray and James Way.Laurence Cummings returns to conduct with the Garsington Opera Chorus.

Marking the end of the 30^th anniversary season, on the three concert days there will be an afternoon cricket match, tours of the Walled Garden and Green Theatre Recitals showcasing the Alvarez Young Artists, as well as the opportunity to visit the Getty Library.

OPERAFIRST AND FANTASIO

As part of an extensive Learning & Participation Programme, there will be a full performance of Fantasio by the Alvarez Young Artists for local school pupils and adults, all of whom take part in preparatory workshops to introduce them to opera and deepen their enjoyment of the performance.

GARSINGTON OPERA AT WORMSLEY

Opera patrons are invited to arrive from 3.30pm to enjoy the extensive gardens and Deer Park of the Wormsley Estate in the heart of the Chilterns, before performances begin in the early evening. Those arriving early can take a short trip in a vintage bus to the 18th century Walled Garden. On their return, they can enjoy traditional afternoon tea overlooking the cricket pitch, admire the spectacular views across the Deer Park and lake from the Champagne Bar, or stroll around the Opera Garden and grounds. In the long dinner interval patrons can dine in the elegant restaurant marquee overlooking the famous Wormsley Cricket Ground or they can have a picnic by the lake, in the garden or in one of the private picnic tents. Performances resume as the evening light begins to fade and end around 10.15pm. A minibus service connects with High Wycombe station, a half hour train journey from London. A short open-air recital by Alvarez Young Artists awaits Saturday patrons in the Green Theatre in the Walled Garden (weather permitting).

WIDENING ACCESS TO GARSINGTON OPERA

Garsington Opera is passionate about widening access to a young audience and has a much sought-after GO≤35 membership scheme which offers subsidised tickets, priority booking, free train transfers, pre-performance parties and half price programmes.

DIARY OF EVENTS AT WORMSLEY

The Bartered Bride - 1 29, 31 May, 6, 8, 11, 15, 20, 23, 30 June (start time 6.05pm)
Don Giovanni - 30 May, 1, 7, 13, 24, 29 June, 3, 6, 12, 14, 18, 21 July (start time 5.45pm)
Fantasio - 14, 16, 22, 27 June, 5, 8, 11, 17, 20 July (start time 6.05pm)
The Turn of the Screw - 1, 4, 7, 13, 15, 19 July (start time 6.35pm)
Vespers of 1610 - 2 4, 25, 26 July (start time 8.30pm)

Tickets £60 - £225 including a suggested but non-obligatory donation of £70 (Vespers £30).

Public booking opens Tuesday 19 March 2019. Book online: www.garsingtonopera.org or Telephone 01865 361636.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Garsington%2030%20logo.png

Vivaldi scores intriguing but uneven Dangerous Liaisons in The Hague

No wonder that, by the end of the evening, they have all defected to join the revolution. As imaginative and ambitious as their previous projects, OPERA2DAY’s latest production is a pastiche of vocal gems from Antonio Vivaldi’s operas, his Stabat Mater and Juditha triumphans, his only surviving oratorio. Sonatas and concertos provide the instrumental intermezzos. The libretto, by Stefano Simone Pintor and Serge van Veggel, is an adaptation of that fecund inspiration for plays, films, operas and ballets, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s 1782 epistolary novel Les liaisons dangereuses. Arias were reworded and recitatives added. Composer Vanni Moretto threaded it all together and scored the recitatives, which at times sounded more like Mozart than Vivaldi. Despite an uneven cast and a debatable finale, the production was visually entertaining and had many striking moments.

Since Vivaldi supplied the music, the setting was moved from France to Venice. Otherwise, the quintet of soloists more or less sticks to the original tale. Two jaded aristocratic ex-lovers, the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, casually ruin a young couple in love while chasing the real prize, Madame de Tourvel, a morally spotless judge’s wife. It all starts off light-heartedly, with much innuendo about the storming of citadels. Things turn grim, however, when Valmont unexpectedly falls in love with Marie de Tourvel and the Marquise is consumed with jealousy. Perhaps alluding to this green-eyed monster, the mixed-era costumes are in every shade of green imaginable, from wrinkled pea to deep olive, contrasting with the set’s scarlet-and-gold palatial splendor. Actors and extras play an army of servants, constantly fetching and carrying props. Van Veggel, who also directs, marshals them with droll inventiveness. When the flunkey-flogging Valmont seeks out Madame de Tourvel in church, one of his men carries in a huge cross and, like Christ on the road to Calvary, buckles under its weight. The theatrical high point is the consecutive conquests by the older couple of the Chevalier Danceny and Cécile de Volanges. Under the guise of lessons in the art of seduction, the convent graduate and her music teacher are deflowered on a canopy bed with a perfect mix of eroticism and humor. Coloratura leading to orgasm is a mainstay of Baroque opera, but Stefanie True’s Cécile atop countertenor Yosemeh Adjei’s Valmont did it in the best of taste, while warbling “Sperai la pace qual usignolo” from Orlando, finto pazzo.

True was a charming Cécile. The core of her pleasant soprano was a tad flimsy, but it rose clearly to a flute-like top. As Danceny, male soprano Maayan Licht displayed a bewildering flexibility. Apart from his unusual voice type, he had the technical proficiency to deliver the role’s musical witticisms in the most natural manner. Adjei’s highly amusing Valmont swaggered around on high-heeled boots with complete confidence, even when fornicating with a fortepiano. He sang very well, but, his voice not having the cut for the furious arias, was much more convincing in lyrical mode. Contralto Candida Guida showed plenty of temperament as the Marquise. Unfortunately, on opening night she was not in good voice. Uncertain intonation and imprecise runs marred such virtuoso challenges as “Nel profondo” from Orlando furioso. Singing with a velvety legato, mezzo-soprano Barbara Kozelj as Madame de Tourvel made her every appearance an event, including the favorite “Sposa, son disprezzata”, filched by Vivaldi from Geminiano Giacomelli. In the pit, the Netherlands Bach Society under Hernán Schvartzman were limber and expressive and gave one of the best musical performances of the evening.

The opera hops along nicely until the seventh and final scene, when swathes of spoken dialogue provide the denouement. Suddenly, we’re in a play rather than an opera. The disillusionment of the young couple when they realize they’ve been used, the Marquise humiliating Valmont, Valmont allowing Danceny to kill him in a duel—all this happens without a single sung note. No doubt this was a deliberate choice, but it felt as if the writers had lost faith in opera as narrative. Laughing hysterically, the Marquise prepares for her final ball. In a gown of iridescent raven feathers, she dances to Moretto’s arrangement of the Trio Sonata in D minor Op.1 no.12, “La Follia”. It’s the perfect soundtrack for the Marquise’s breakdown and the ancien régime collapsing all around her. Moretto’s orchestration highlights the dissonants in La Follia’s wild conclusion and the opera ends with an arresting pairing of sound and visuals, which could have done without the wordy lead-up. Instead, more great vocal stuff was called for, such as when Cécile and Madame de Tourvel both retreat to convents, the former to take the veil and the latter as a mental patient. Their lonely cries rose forlornly out of the darkness in the echo aria “L’ombre, l’aure e ancora il rio” from Ottone in villa—piercingly beautiful. Dangerous Liaisons continues to tour the Netherlands until the 16^th of March. Performances are subtitled in English and Dutch.

Jenny Camilleri

Vivaldi: Dangerous Liaisons

Marquise de Merteuil: Candida Guida; Vicomte de Valmont: Yosemeh Adjei; Présidente de Tourvel: Barbara Kozelj/Ingeborg Bröcheler (February 13 and 21); Chevalier Danceny: Maayan Licht; Cécile de Volanges: Stefanie True/Emma Fekete (February 1 and 8); Victoire: Emma Linssen; Azolan: Merijn de Jong; Lahaye: Fabian Smit; Serafia: Emma van Muiswinkel; Faubourg: Luciaan Groenier. Direction and Concept: Serge van Veggel; Libretto: Stefano Simone Pintor and Serge van Veggel. Additional Music: Vanni Moretto. Set Design: Herbert Janse; Costume Design: Mirjam Pater; Lighting Design: Marc Heinz. Conductor: Hernán Schvartzman. Netherlands Bach Society. Seen at the Koninklijke Schouwburg, The Hague, on Thursday, 17^th of January, 2019.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Dangerous%20Liaisons.jpg image_description= product=yes product_title=Dangerous Liaisons, Koninklijke Schouwburg, The Hague product_by=A review by Jenny Camilleri product_id=

Between Mendelssohn and Wagner: Max Bruch’s Die Loreley

Bruch (1838-1920) may be best known for his Violin Concerto no 1, but this first ever recording of his full opera should broaden interest in his output as a whole. Bruch's Die Loreley is a very early work indeed, written between 1860 and 1863, and shows how the composer responded to the influences around him. The text, by eminent poet Emanuel Geibel (1815-1884), was conceived for Felix Mendelssohn, whose music Geibel loved dearly. He so identified the text with Mendelssohn that he was reluctant to give Bruch permission to use the libretto. But Bruch (in an era before copyright enforcement) was not deterred. The Mendelssohn connection is significant, because it shows the context in which the opera was written, which shapes the way in which the opera should be assessed. Far from being retrogressive, Bruch was in tune with the values of German music theatre, as represented by Mendelssohn, Carl von Weber, Heinrich Marshner (whose 1833 opera Hans Heiling addresses the Lorelei legend) and even Robert Schumann. Though Bruch's Die Loreley doesn't, understandably, have the astonishing originality of mid and late period Wagner, it can be heard as a young composer's response to the "new", heralded by Richard Wagner.

Immortalized by Heinrich Heine's poem Die Lorelei (1822) the Lorelei legend epitomizes the aesthetic of the early Romantic era, where Nature spirits inhabit idyllic landscapes where humans encounter extraordinary adventures. Seduced by beauty, mortals meet their doom. The Romantic spirit wasn't "romantic", but haunted by a sense of death, mystery and inevitable change. In Heine's words, "Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten, Daß ich so traurig bin".

In Geibel's libretto, Leonore, (sung by Michaela Kaune), daughter of a ferryman who works on the Rhine, sings a love song for a hero of her dreams, as she sits on a rock above the river. Hearing her voice, Pfalzgraf Otto (Thomas Mohr) becomes entranced, but he's due to be married the next day to Bertha the Gräfin von Staleck. Leonore is so pure that when she sings, she's accompanied by an angelic chorus who sing the Ave Maria. Leonore lives in a world of the imagination, so Geibel introduces, for contrast, Leonore's father Hubert (Sebastien Campione), the boatmen and the vintners, busy at work on the river bank. Bruch uses energetic, simple rhythms to suggest physical labour and stability, with choruses for men, women and combined voices. A procession passes by, bearing Gräfin Bertha (Magdalena Hinterdobler,) who is loved by the villagers for her kindness. Banners fly, and presumably horses prance, suggested by jaunty march.

Act II is short, but pivotal. A storm gathers and the Spirits of the Rhine rise up from the waters.; Surging figures in the orchestra evoke Mendelssohn, choral lines swaying wildly. Heartbreak has changed Leonore's personality. She calls on the Spirits to avenge her : they echo her words, leading her on. "Mein Herz versteine wie dieser Felsen!" If she cannot have Otto, her heart will turn to stone. She throws her golden ring to the Spirits and pledges herself to them if they'll enact a curse on the unwary. In Geibel's version, Leonore herself initiates the curse, and suffers for it., and the Spirits of the Rhine are both male and female. In Wagner's Der Ring der Neibelungen, the Rhinemaidens were innocents, tricked by Alberich, who placed a curse on the Rheingold. But such is the nature of art : each approach to the legend inspires new ideas.

In the Pflazgraf's castle, the wedding feast is being celebrated with cheerful choruses. A Minnesänger, Reinald (the veteran Jan-Hedrik Rootering, still in good form) sings of love and fidelity. Otto is terrified, but no-one knows why. Suddenly, Leonore materializes, singing the song of the Loreley. Otto can hold himself back no longer and claims Leonore, raving and starting a fight among the knights. The Archbishop (Thomas Hamberger) and priests accuse Leonore of witchcraft and have her sent, in chains, for trial. But she sings her defence so beautifully that all who hear it are enchanted. Otto still rages, and is excommunicated and driven away. Bertha dies of a broken heart. In Hubert's village, the boatmen and vintners mourn her. Otto sits outside the church , hearing their hymns but still cannot escape the curse. He heads back to the rock where he first encountered Leonore , begging her forgiveness, but she's no longer of his world, her lines plaintive and keening. "Zwischen dir und mir steht einfort eine dunkele Macht. The orchestra surges, and the Spirits of the Rhine well up around her. Their curse is fulfilled, and they claim her for their own, the "Köningin vom Rhein".

Given the connection between Geibel and Mendelssohn, it's almost impossible not to hear echoes of Mendelssohn in Bruch's score, though it's clear that Bruch was responding to Wagner, with echoes of Tannhäuser, and to much else popular in the period. Geibel's libretto for Die Loreley is superb, so well written that Bruch can set each scene to catch the atmosphere. The Grand Scene of the Spirits, which forms the Second Act, is quite an achievement for a composer in his early 20's. Though the opera is not a major milestone, it is well worth hearing as part of the evolution of German music theatre in this period. Stefan Bunier and the Münchner Rundfunkorchester give a rousing account, which probably won't be improved upon for some time, since the opera was only recently revived in full. A good cast all round. Kaune and Mohr are particularly impressive, she at turns meek and ferocious, malevolent and wistful, epitomizing the complexity of Leonore's character. Mohr's clear tenor rings as though Otto were a hero, which he is, in a way, since he was cursed through no real fault of his own.

Anne Ozorio

   

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Loreley_front.jpg
image_description=

product=yes
product_title=Max Bruch: Die Loreley
product_by= Stefan Blunier, Münchner Rundfunkorchester, Michaela Kaune, Magdalena Hinterdobler, Thomas Mohr, Jan-Hendrick Rootering Prager Philharmonischer Chor.
product_id=CPO777 005-2 [3CDs]
price=£32.89
product_url=https://amzn.to/2CyKhBs

Porgy and Bess at Dutch National Opera – Exhilarating and Moving

Gershwin’s folk opera, with a libretto by Ira Gershwin and DuBose and Dorothy Heyward, has been accused of many wrongs­–cultural appropriation, propagation of minority stereotypes, too many musical-like numbers. One can refute or accept these assertions, but Gershwin’s love for the music of the black South Carolina population, among whom he spent a whole summer composing, bursts through his scintillating score. So does his admiration for their strength in the face of adversity. The residents of Catfish Row continue to speak to new generations because they struggle with ever-relevant issues­–intergenerational poverty, addiction and violence. At the same time, the solidarity within this marginalized community is uplifting. Although poor, they don’t think twice about donating money for a funeral or raising an orphaned child as their own. At the heart of this communal portrait is the disabled beggar Porgy, whose unstinting efforts to keep Bess away from cocaine and her no-good boyfriend Crown are nothing short of heroic.

Booming bass-baritone Eric Owens as Porgy started out a bit stiffly, but his voice freed up after the optimistic banjo ditty “Oh, I got plenty o’ nuttin”. For the love duet, “Bess, you is my woman now”, Owens was in resplendent voice, matched by the full, penetrating soprano of Adina Aaron as Bess. In the final scene, when Porgy discovers that Bess has left for New York with her drug dealer, Owens was heart-rending, releasing a flood of raw emotion that left him visibly drained at the curtain call. Besides singing formidably, Aaron encompassed all aspects of the tragic Bess–her physical attractiveness, kindness and ongoing struggle against her weaknesses. Bass-baritone Mark S. Doss was to sing the violent Crown, but had to cancel due to illness. Luckily, DNO was able to fly in Nmon Ford from the States to replace him. Ford, who had sung the role in London, was wholly persuasive as the brutish drunk who kicks off the plot by killing a man over a game of dice. When, on the run from the law, Crown seduces Bess away from Porgy, he was sexy and dangerous. He and Aaron made the stage sizzle. Perhaps fighting jetlag, he seemed to tire towards the end and did not have enough volume to project the racy “A red-headed woman”.

Tenor Frederick Ballentine was a class act as the slippery cocaine dealer Sportin’ Life. He turned the irreverent sermon “It ain’t necessarily so” into a spectacle of vocal suppleness and style. Another star turn was Latonia Moore’s golden-voiced Serena, harrowing as the keening widow in “My man’s gone now” and powerful when leading the faith healing session for the ailing Bess. Donovan Singletary and Janai Brugger were an engaging Jake and Clara, her soprano clear as a bell in the lullaby “Summertime”. The powerhouse Maria of mezzo-soprano Tichina Vaughn put Sportin’ Life in his place with a flawlessly inflected “I hates yo’ struttin’ style”. The singing got even better in the ensembles, above all in the rousing spiritual harmonies. The especially assembled chorus, more a set of soloists really, also took the smaller roles. They were all taken beyond reproach, with outstanding performances by tenor Ronald Samm as Peter the honey seller and sopranos Sarah-Jane Lewis and Pumza Mxinwa as, respectively, Annie and Lily. As a chorus they were galvanizing, deeply moving as mourners at the wake, infectious in foot-tapping numbers such as “Oh, I can’t sit down”. As for the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra under the expert baton of James Gaffigan–they got rhythm. Gaffigan approached the score respectfully while delighting in its exhilarating mix of jazz, Jewish religious melodies and spirituals. All sections of the orchestra were firing on all cylinders from the first bar, but special honors go to the killer xylophone.

Director James Robinson’s straight-up staging does not hold any surprises. The picturesque set, a wooden skeleton of the once genteel, now run-down, residences occupied by stevedores and fishermen, is beautifully lit to evoke the different times of the day. It revolves to reveal the boats at the waterside. Both design and direction seem to aim for a benign realism, although there were moments of heightened drama, such as when Porgy kills Crown. The large cast is directed to go about their daily business, but the choruses have a stand-and-deliver feel. The church picnic needed more dynamic choreography, the hurricane scene more differentiated blocking. The sameness extends to the costumes, which retain their attractive earth tones throughout. Not even the picnic merits a Sunday best palette. More detail and variety would have enhanced the performance, which, despite sensible cuts, was close to three hours long. However, the singing was the thing. I’d recommend anyone nearby to catch this show, but all performances are sold out.

Jenny Camilleri

---

Cast and production information:

Porgy: Eric Owens; Bess: Adina Aaron; Crown: Nmon Ford (replacing Mark S. Doss); Sportin’ Life: Frederick Ballentine; Robbins/Crab Man: Chaz’men Williams-Ali; Serena: Latonia Moore; Jake: Donovan Singletary; Clara: Janai Brugger; Maria: Tichina Vaughn; Mingo: Rheinaldt Tshepo Moagi; Peter: Ronald Samm; Lily: Pumza Mxinwa; Frazier: Byron Jackson; Annie/Strawberry Woman: Sarah-Jane Lewis; Jim: Njabulo Madlala; Undertaker: Whitaker Mills; Nelson: Thando Mjandana; Scipio: Dyshairo Dania/Miquel Dankfort; Detective: Stephen Pallister; Policeman: Christian Hurst; Coroner: Neil Kelly. Director: James Robinson; Set Design: Michael Yeargan; Costume Design: Catherine Zuber; Lighting Design: Donald Holder; Video: Luke Halls; Choreography: Dianne McIntyre. Conductor: James Gaffigan. Porgy and Bess Ensemble. Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra. Seen at Dutch National Opera, Amsterdam, on Wednesday, 16^th of January, 2019.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Porgy_Bess_DNO.png image_description=Above photo by BAUS courtesy of De Nationale Opera product=yes product_title=Porgy and Bess at Dutch National Opera – Exhilarating and Moving product_by=A review by Jenny Camilleri product_id=Photos by BAUS courtesy of De Nationale Opera

Il trovatore at Seattle Opera

There are flaws, absurdities, inconsistencies: but even these feel more like virtues than faults; like so many homage to the eternal genius of Verdi and his immortal warhorse Il trovatore.

The very setting exudes the shabby, sturdy spirit of Italian Romantic opera. Commissioned from John Conklin (no one seems to remember just when) as a set for Bellini’s Norma, built in Seattle Opera’s shop, reconfigured before it first was seen in Cincinnati as a Trovatore, and repeatedly re-reconfigured since until it more resembles bricolage than organic unity.

But, when not cluttered by the shambling male chorus (think of the Penzance police force in full black body-armor), it does offer a decent platform for melodrama: ragged, foreboding Conklinesque walls, central altar-like platform, a sharply raked stage overhung by a gargantuan sanguineous moon-shape.

 

The musical side is well supported by the Seattle Opera house-band under the (rather too tasteful) baton of Carlo Montanaro, but Trovatore is nothing without the right voices, and with a few caveats, the ones we hear more than make the grade. Nora Sourouzian’s is not the ideal molten Azucena voice, but her singing is dramatically spot-on and, particularly in her duets with Manrico, deeply moving. The Manrico himself, Martin Muehle makes a physically frail figure, but that’s all to the good in emphasizing the fearful hopelessness of the character’s situation. In mid-register his voice is dry and inexpressive, but as it rises toward the half-dozen crucial notes of the role it opens into full-throated bronze; Muehle gives the end of “Di quella pira” the full Pavarotti, and the audience responds accordingly.

Michael Mayes is much closer to physical and vocal norm of a di Luna; his portrayal suffers most from Montanaro’s genteel, overly lyrical baton, but he is a consistently powerful and idiomatic singer; as the climax approaches his fury and frustration achieve the necessary dangerous near-madness.

And then there is Angela Meade. I can add nothing to the encomia that more distinguished critics have awarded her. She has only deepened as an artist since her dazzling Met debut as Elvira in Ernani. I do not believe there is another soprano living who can touch her in this repertory: her mere presence at Seattle Opera, 100 miles from her birthplace, seemed a miraculous intervention to me, and the audience on Sunday afternoon, thirsty, nay parched for this kind of taste and artistry and presence, provided her the appropriate hosannas.

I must, sadly end this rave, as always, with a boo. As always, Marion McCaw Hall casts its stifling veil over every singer performing on its stage. That the orchestra’s sound is full and detailed only emphasizes the sense of a permanent sonic scrim between stage and audience.

As the Aiden Lang era dwindles to its close, it is more than time that the Opera board confront its biggest challenge yet: the company now has the modern, unified office and tech shop it has needed since the beginning. Now it must face its ultimate challenge: the hall it performs in.

Roger Downey

---

Cast and production information:

Manrico:Martin Muehle; Azucena: Nora Sourouzian; il Conte di Luna: Michael Mayes; Leonora: Angela Meade; Ferrando: Adam Lau; Inez: Nerys Jones; Ruiz: John Marzano. Stage director: Dan Wallace Miller; Set design (original): John Conklin; most recent revisions: Christopher Mumaw; Costumes: Candace Frank; Lighting: Christophe Forey; Choreography: Kathryn Van Meter. Seattle Opera Chorus, John Keene, chorusmaster. Seattle Opera Orchestra, Carlo Montanaro, conductor. McCaw Hall, Seattle Center, Seattle; Sunday 13^th January 2019.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Trovatore6.png image_description=Photo © Philip Newton product=yes product_title=Il trovatore at Seattle Opera product_by=A review by Roger Downey product_id=Above photo © Philip Newton

Plácido Domingo awarded Honorary Fellowship of the International Opera Awards

The evening will comprise of an illustrated talk, The Domingo Phenomenon, from his biographer Helena Matheopoulos who will then invite Domingo onto the stage to join her for a Q&A session that will include the audience. Drinks and canapés will end the evening with Domingo meeting audience members.

Plácido Domingo is a world-renowned, multifaceted artist who is recognized as one of the finest and most influential singing actors in the history of opera. He is also a conductor and a major force as an opera administrator in his role as Eli and Edythe Broad General Director of Los Angeles Opera. His repertoire now encompasses 151 roles, with almost 4,000 career performances.

Plácido Domingo comments:

“Luke in the New Testament says ‘to whom much is given, much is expected.’ This is a sentiment that is very important to me as I believe all artists have a duty to mentor and support young talent. As the founder of the Operalia Competition and named Young Artist programmes at Washington National Opera, Los Angeles Opera and in Valencia, I have always made the promotion of young singers one of the most important things I do.

“I’m delighted that the Opera Awards Foundation has made such a huge contribution to the lives of hundreds of young singers and people wanting careers in this profession. It is a pleasure to support them and I am honoured to accept the Fellowship of the Opera Awards Foundation.”

Harry Hyman, Founder of the International Opera Awards & the Opera Awards Foundation commented:

“In centuries to come people will marvel at Plácido Domingo’s extraordinary career and be envious of those of us who have been privileged to experience his artistry. No other singer has ever had a career that comes close to matching his.

“As Patron of the International Opera Awards, Maestro Domingo has supported the growth of the Awards and the inception of our Foundation which has awarded almost 100 bursaries to young singers and other aspiring artists to help them establish their careers.”

Founded in 2012, by opera lover and philanthropist Harry Hyman, the International Opera Awards is an annual celebration of excellence in opera around the world. The Awards aim to raise the profile of opera as an art form, to recognise and reward success in opera and to generate funds to provide bursaries for aspiring operatic talent from around the world. Since 2012 over £330,000 has been raised by the Opera Awards Foundation. Judging of the International Opera Awards is carried out by a jury of industry professionals headed by Opera magazine editor John Allison.

The Opera Awards Foundation was founded in 2012 by Harry Hyman and John Allison who recognised that there were many artistically talented individuals whose potential was not being nurtured to development. The Foundation awards annual bursaries to aspiring operatic talent. There are no restrictions on age or nationality, nor is support limited to singers: applications are encouraged from any artist working toward a career in opera, who needs financial support to achieve their career goals.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Placido%20Domingo%20%282%29.jpg image_description= product=yes product_title= product_by= product_id= Above: Plácido Domingo

Wexford Festival Opera Announces New Artistic Director

Rosetta brings with her a wide range of opera experience, musically, directorially and as a general manager. She began her career as a concert pianist having studied at the Rossini Conservatoire in Pesaro and DAMS University in Bologna, receiving her degree in both Piano and Music History. She later received her Master’s degree from Scuola di Alto PerfezionamentoPianistico di Imola.

Early on she took up a parallel career as an opera director, debuting at Teatro Bellini in Catania. Since then she has directed with many opera companies throughout the world including Teatro Comunale in Bologna, Teatro Comunale di Modena, Opera di Tenerife, Lubeck Theater, St. Gallen Theatre (Swiss) Teatro Pergolesi, Baltimore Theatre, Teatro Carlo Felice di Genova, Boston Lyric Opera, Teatro La Fenice Venice, Opera Las Palmas Spain and the Rossini Opera Festival. Future engagements include the Grange Park Festival, London.

From 2001 to 2015 she was appointed Artistic Director of Lugo Opera Festival and also began an intense collaboration with Teatro Comunale di Bologna. From 2005 - 2018 she served as Artistic Director of the Arturo Toscanini Foundation (FAT) in Parma where, among her many accomplishments, she brought the Arturo Toscanini Philharmonic Orchestra on tour throughout Italy, China, Germany and Bulgaria.

( www.rosettacucchi.com)

Her association with Wexford Festival Opera began in 1995 where she initially acted as a répétiteur. Her WFO directorial debut came in 2004 with Braunfels’ Prinzessin Brambila. She has since directed three other operas at Wexford, most recently Alfano's Risurrezione in 2017 and will direct Adina by Rossini and La Cucina by Andrew Synnott as part of the 2019 Wexford Festival Opera, a co-production with the Rossini Opera Festival. Rosetta was appointed the Associate to the Artistic Director in 2005.

Commenting on her appointment, Rosetta remarked, “I am happy and honoured to be appointed Artistic Director of the Wexford Festival Opera. I have a great passion for the Festival and the people who make it possible. My vision will be to preserve its great tradition while at the same time, bring a touch of new breath to it. To quote Jonathan Swift, “Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.”

Welcoming the appointment Dr Mary Kelly, Chairwoman of Wexford Festival Opera said,“I am really looking forward to working with Rosetta in her new role as Artistic Director as I begin my own position as Chairwoman of this world-renowned Festival.”

Wexford Festival Opera is supported by grants from the Arts Council, Wexford County Council and Fáilte Ireland/Ireland’s Ancient East.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/wexford%20logo.jpg

Opera as Life: Stefan Herheim's The Queen of Spades at Covent Garden

Quite, one might remark, upon seeing Stefan Herheim’s production of The Queen of Spades, first seen in Holland in 2016, and now given its UK premiere at the Royal Opera House.

Tchaikovsky’s letter to his brother Modest illustrates how boundaries between the real and imagined can be breached, with, perhaps, a conflicting mix of positive and negative artistic and personal consequences: ‘It seems to me that Hermann was … all the while a real, living human being, at the same time sympathetic to me … because Figner [the lyric-dramatic tenor Nikolai Figner who created the role of Hermann in The Queen of Spades at its premiere on 19^th December 1890 at the Maryinsky Theatre in St Petersburg] is very sympathetic to me … I also felt the most lively concerns for his misfortunes. Now I think this warm and lively relationship with the opera’s hero has probably expressed itself beneficially in the music’.

Opera as life, then. This is Herheim’s starting-point. The text projected onto a front-drop in the silence before Act 1 commenced reminded us of Tchaikovsky’s repressed homosexuality and consequent suffering, and of his death by cholera - a possible suicide-by-polluted-water, it is inferred, to prevent the revelation of his sexual proclivities and activities.

There are few, surely, who would deny the connections between life and art. And, in his recent book, Disordered Heroes in Opera, musicologist and psychiatrist John Cordingly cites the view of scholar Robert Layton that ‘Perhaps in Hermann, [Tchaikovsky] saw something of himself, unable to escape Fate and almost imprisoned by its inevitability’, and suggests that ‘Hermann’s sudden passion for Liza could even be seen as an attempt to resolve his latent homosexuality by a hasty marriage that could never work’: an allusion to Tchaikovsky’s own aborted marriage with Antonina Milyikova. Alternatively, Cordingly posits that perhaps, ‘Liza ‘stands in’ for a male lover, and he/she has to die as there can be no future in a homosexual relationship’.

Such theoretical and scholarly speculations are transformed into unyielding dramaturgical principles in Herheim’s production. The director re-imagines the opera as a fervent dream - at times a psycho-sexual fantasy - in the mind of Tchaikovsky. He inserts the composer, embodied by baritone Vladimir Stoyanov, into every scene, and suggests that the opera is being created in ‘real time’. To hammer this point home, ‘Tchaikovsky’ hyperactively waves and waggles his arms, ‘conducting’ the sound he imagines/we hear, vigorously plucks up his quill and scribbles on outsize manuscript sheets, and seats himself at the ebony grand piano offering in his keyboard excursions a fair impression of Liberace. It’s so cringe-making that I wondered if that was indeed ‘the point’: that this histrionic physical representation of creative invention and expression was a parody of the melodramatic self-dramatisation of the mythic Romantic artist … but I think that would be too subtle for a production that slathers on its concepts with a trowel.

.Aleksandrs Antonenko as Hermann. Photo credit: Catherine Ashmore.

What makes the hyperactivity all the more infuriating is that it goes on, and on, and on … why doesn’t Herheim trust us to get the point during the overture and opening scene. Here ‘Tchaikovsky’ humiliatingly pays a man, who turns out to be Hermann, for the previous night’s homoerotic encounter, and then collapses in a psychosomatic fit of self-castigation and disgust, falling on the floor beside a bird cage from which emits Mozart’s ‘Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen’. Presumably, the parakeets represent the composer’s own caged spirit; though Herheim might reflect on the fact that the implication of his own production is that it is in fact the bars of the cage which inspire the composer’s song: repression feeds creative expression. Whatever, it’s all irritating, fussy and messy. It didn’t help that a gentleman seated just across the aisle from me in the stalls seemed inspired by ‘Tchaikovsky’s’ arm-flapping so as to indulge in his own air-conducting throughout the performance. There was no escaping the (non-)rhythmic air-beating.

Felicity Palmer as Countess. Photo credit: Catherine Ashmore.

It is baritone Vladimir Stoyanov who embodies the opera’s composer, alongside his minor vocal role as Liza’s fiancé Prince Yeletsky, a role not present in the original Pushkin tale. And, it should be noted first and foremost that Stoyanov sang the latter role beautifully, injecting dignity and gravity into the surreal and hyper-real bizarreness of the production, and communicating real human feeling in a production where exaggeration, excess and subversion are the norm. But, the perpetual presence of ‘Tchaikovsky’ in scenes which establish the emotional tenor of the situations and relationships in Puskhin’s tale (yes, there is a actually a dramatic ‘narrative’, one that gets rather side-lined here) is a hindrance to dramatic coherence and consistency. In Act 2 Scene 1, when Liza arranges a nocturnal assignation with Hermann in order to give him the key to her grandmother’s room, so that he may access her own, it’s infuriating that the would-be lovers address their remarks to the composer scribbling their melodies rather than to each other; at one point Tchaikovsky seemed to morph into Yeletsky, and I was put in mind of Princess Diana’s quip that there “there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded”. When Liza splutters to Tchaikovsky/Yeletsky, “You, you here?”, I wanted to add, “my thoughts entirely”. Tchaikovsky turns up in every scene. Anna Goryachova’s Paulina massages his shoulders during her sad ballad; when Hermann fears the arrival of the Angel of Death, Tchaikovsky turns up, pointing a pistol.

The design is no more coherent. The majority of the action takes places within Tchaikovsky’s music room, the grand piano omnipresent even as the dramatic locations changes (the populace’s eulogising of the unseasonable sunshine and fears of the storm don’t make much sense when we’re confined indoors), and the panels laden with books and scores swivel and slide into new formations. Which century are we in? Philipp Fürhofer’s sets suggest Tchaikovsky’s own age, but the Act 2 Mozartian pastiche shifts us to the 18 ^th century, for a masked ball which morphs into psychedelic madness. The enormous chandelier swings pendulously, smoke billows, lights flicker and the chorus’s limbs quiver - though one has to admire Bernd Purkrabek’s bristling, buzzing lighting design.

Satyrs-cum-San Sebastian arrive, their modesty protected by loin cloths, their bodies pierced by quills (what else?). The divertissement dives further with the arrival Milovzor (Goryachova) and Prilepa (Jacquelyn Stucker) decked out in imitation of Tchaikovsky’s caged birds. This pseudo Papageno/Papagena pair, resplendent in blue and red plumage, indulge in sexual shenanigans with each other and with Tchaikovsky, and the psychological chaos culminates with a hymn of praise thundered out to Catherine the Great by the chorus, lining the stalls’ aisles - ineffectively trying to get the audience to stand in homage and join in the game - as, on stage, Tchaikovsky leans to kiss the Empress’s hand, only to find that he’s slobbered over the palm of Hermann-in-drag. Distorted glass reflects the auditorium back at the audience. Virginia Woolf essayed a similar essay with shards and fragments at the end of Between the Acts, but on this occasion the general response seemed to be annoyance and alienation rather than discomforting complicity.

Eva-Maria Westbroek as Liza and Anna Goryachova as Paulina Photo credit: Catherine Ashmore.

Such redundant excess left one feeling rather out of breath. So, to turn to ‘important’ matters, what of the singing? John Lungrend’s Count Tomsky delivered an excellent narration of the history of the Countess and the cards - thank goodness that some of Pushkin’s tale survived - and Felicity Palmer, despite the travesties of manner and mode infliction upon her, delivered a wonderfully nuanced and daringly pianissimo reminiscence of her youth in ‘Je crains de lui parler la nuit’, supported by skilfully coloured accompaniment from the ROH Orchestra (some terrific bassoon playing!).

Elsewhere, things were more uneven. The first duet for Goryachova’s be-trousered Paulina and Eva-Maria Westbroek’s Liza skidded off the rails. Both found their feet subsequently, but Westbroek’s voice doesn’t seem to have retained its winning bloom, which further weakens our sympathy for and understanding of the central characters; some of the soprano’s final episodes were quite unyielding and hard.

The biggest disappointment was Aleksandrs Antonenko’s Hermann: there were some moments of vocal beauty, particularly in the middle of his voice, but all too often the tenor sounded ragged and raw. His solution when he couldn’t reach the top was to shout, approximating pitch. Perhaps such ‘roughness’ was designed to convey Hermann’s emotional agonies? But, Hermann came across as not so much unstable as unhinged: certainly the lurches between pitches and vocal hues were as disconcertingly disruptive as Hermann’s staggering between elation and despair. It was difficult to identify with this Hermann - though perhaps this was not solely Antonenko’s fault, given that he was called upon to impersonate a male prostitute and Catherine the Great.

Pappano found bold orchestral colours and strokes - trombones, celli, harp all came effectively to the fore; and the overall sweep was persuasive. The (expanded) ROH Chorus were on fine form, but I got fed up with their taunting toasts to Tchaikovsky, tumblers of chilled water sloshing with impure infection - drink up your cholera!

Pushkin’s narrative is not complemented, enriched, or opened up to potential new meanings by Herheim’s psychoanalytical indulgences; it is just annihilated. There are no cards, no supernatural horror, no real human love. In reply to Madame von Meck’s question as to whether Tchaikovsky had experience ‘non-Platonic love’, the composer replied: ‘If … by asking whether I’ve experienced full happiness in love, then the answer is no, no, and no again!!! … But if you ask me whether I appreciate all the power, all the inevitable force, of this emotion, then I’ll answer yes, yes and yes again, and I would say again that I’ve repeated tired to express lovingly in my music the torments and bliss of love.’

What a pity that Herheim neglects such bliss, such human consolation, in favour of over-blown psychoanalytical blustering.

Claire Seymour

Tchaikovsky: The Queen of Spades

Hermann - Aleksandrs Antonenko, Prince Yeletsky/Tchaikovsky - Vladimir Stoyanov, Liza - Eva-Maria Westbroek, Countess - Felicity Palmer, Count Tomsky - John Lundgren, Chekalinsky - Alexander Kravets, Paulina - Anna Goryachova, Surin - Tigran Martirossian, Governess - Louise Winter, Major-domo - Harry Nicoll, Prilepa - Jacquelyn Stucker, Chaplitsky - Konu Kim, Narumov - Michael Mofidian; Director - Stefan Herheim, Conductor - Antonio Pappano, Designer - Philipp Fürhofer, Lighting designer - Bernd Purkrabek, Dramaturg - Alexander Meier-Dörzenbach, Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House.

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London; Sunday 13^th January 2019.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Vladimir%20Stoyanov%20as%20Yeletsky%20in%20The%20Queen%20of%20Spades%20%28C%29%20ROH%202018.%20Photographed%20by%20Catherine%20Ashmore.jpg image_description= product=yes product_title=The Queen of Spades: Royal Opera House product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id= Above: Vladimir Stoyanov (as Tchaikovsky)

Photo credit: Catherine Ashmore

Venus Unwrapped launches at Kings Place, with ‘Barbara Strozzi: Star of Venice’

Scholar, poet and cardinal Pietro Bembo (1470-1547) may have been a promoter of humanism - and thus a seminal influence in the development of the Italian madrigal in the early sixteenth century - but his words to his daughter reflect the inverse relationship between music-making and female chastity held in his day.

Kings Place’s 2019 festival, Venus Unwrapped , seeks to give those women who have been silenced their musical voice: over the next twelve months, Venus Unwrapped will offer more than sixty opportunities to enjoy diverse music by more than one hundred female composers from the Middle Ages to the modern day - music ‘from Anna Meredith to Florence Price, Rafaella Alleotti to Rebecca Clarke, Barbara Strozzi to Sona Jobarteh, Fanny Mendelssohn to Pan Daijing, Kaija Saariaho to Nikki Yeoh, Cara Dillon to Cate Le Bon’.

The festival launched with a highly expressive performance by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, directed by Christian Curnyn, of music by a ‘star of Venice’, Barbara Strozzi (1619-77) - described by her father, Giulio, as a virtuossisima cantatrice. Strozzi was undoubtedly not the only woman participating in music-making and producing her own compositions during the seventeenth century. Travellers to Italy frequently reported their admiration for the musical accomplishments of the women they met, but there are certainly more references to women such as the daughter of Paduan Domenico Bassano who, so the English traveller John Evelyn wrote in 1649, sang and played nine instruments ‘with that skill and addresse that few master in Italy exceeded her’, and ‘likewise compos’d divers excellent pieces’, than there are extant manuscripts of such ‘excellent pieces’. Excepting the slightly older Francesca Caccini (1589-c1640), Strozzi seems to have been one of very few women of the period who pursued a professional career as a composer.

Conducting some preparatory research before this performance, I was wryly amused to come upon an article by scholar Judith Tick written in 2012, in which she reflected on the publication twenty-five years earlier of Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150-1950, which she edited with Jane Bowers. Tick recalls handing the manuscript to the academic board of the University of California, prompting a tart response from a ‘cranky composer’: “‘The Voice of Barbara Strozzi?’” he scoffed. “Why not ‘The Voice of Barbra Streisand’?”, in reference to a now esteemed article by Ellen Rosand. Tick goes on to relate, ‘I was in France in the summer of 1985 when I saw the cover of the book for the first time. There was bosomy Barbara Strozzi, front and center.’ [1]

So, who was Barbara Strozzi? Born in 1619, in Venice, to poet and opera librettist Giulio Strozzi and his housekeeper, Isabella Garzoni, Strozzi was formally adopted by Giulio in 1628. Her father was one of the most influential Venetian literati of the first half of the seventeenth century. A member of the Accademia degli Incogniti (Academy of the Hidden Ones), he was at the cutting edge of the radical development of new styles and forms of musico-dramatic expression, and worked with many composers, including Monteverdi. Barbara, by the age of sixteen, had attained a reputation as a virtuoso singer: in 1635 and 1636, Nicolo Fontei dedicated two sets of songs to Strozzi whom he said ‘possessed a voice like Orfeo … and a bold and graceful manner of singing’. In 1637, Giulio founded the Accademia degli Unisoni, presumably in order to showcase his daughter’s talents, and thus Barbara became acquainted with the theoretical and intellectual debates of the cultural elite of Venice. In 1638, the same year that Monteverdi published his eight book of madrigals,Madrigali Guerrieri e Amorosi, Giulio Strozzi publishedVeglie de Signori Unisoni - essays which document the Unisoni’s discussions and provide evidence that Barbara, who studied with Cavalli, had composed and performed her own songs by the time she was nineteen.

On October 12, 1644 Barbara published Il Primo de Madrigali a due, tre, quattro e cinque voci, setting texts by her father. This was the first of eight volumes of vocal works - chiefly secular madrigals, arias and cantatas - which she would publish over the next twenty years, and it was largely from this first volume that the OAE drew the items which comprised the first half of their programme.

What struck me most was the variety and adventurousness of the madrigals presented. Strozzi’s appreciation of the power of musical rhetoric, and her melodic invention, were plainly evident, but more than this it was the diversity of texture and style, and the radical disruptiveness of both her text-settings, which often seemed to pull against the natural rhythm of the poetry, and her exploitation of dissonance. In the dedicatory note to her Op.1, Strozzi commented, ‘I must reverently consecrate this first work, which as a woman, I publish all too anxiously, to the Most August Name of Your Highness, so that under an oak of gold it may rest secure against the lightning bolts of slander prepared for it’. If she did not have much optimism about the likely reception of her work in 1644, by 1656 she had achieved renown and acceptance - works by her appear in collection alongside Francesco Cavalli, Horatio Tarditi, Maurizio Cazatti and others - and these madrigals showed why. They were performed with vivid expressiveness by the singers and instrumentalists of the OAE, too; a handsome ensemble sound was formed from strongly characterised individual voices and the carefully observed nuances of instrumental composition and texture made for considerable refinement.

‘L’amante modesto’ (The modest lover) (à 5) made for a vibrant opening, the strongly defined vocal lines bristling with the drama and intensity of the poetic argument, supported by varied instrumental groupings with Elizabeth Kenny’s theorbo elaborations at their heart. Kenny switched to chitarrone for ‘Pace arrabbiata’ (Peace in anger), which danced with vigour as the indignation of the three male singers at the haughty aloofness of a ‘cruel’ woman was captured by the wide expanse between the high tenor line and bass, Nicholas Mulroy agilely and strongly ascending to the peaks of the former.

The ladies had their own trio, ‘Le Tre Gratie a Venere’ (The Three Graces to Venus), in which Miriam Allen, Zoe Brookshaw and Helen Charlston blended with sweetness and sensuousness, supported by rich harmonies, with Joy Smith’s harp to the fore. The flexibility and the fluency of the vocal lines was admirable here and in ‘Canto di bella bocca’ (Song from a beautiful mouth) in which the voices of Allen and Mulroy swayed towards and then pulled against each other in exquisite rhetorical design, enhanced by Kenny’s musicianship and Strozzi’s heart-twisting suspensions. The dissonance of the final line embodied the pleasure-pain paradoxes of the text, only partially eased by Kenny’s gentle closing tierce de Picardie.

Mary Bevan and members of the OAE. Photo credit: Viktor Erik Emanuel.

Mary Bevan’s two solo items represented the apex of Strozzi’s musico-rhetorical majesty. In ‘Lagrime mie’ (My tears) from Diporte di Euterpe the harmonic piquancy and rapidly changing timbral contrasts of the accompanying ensemble (theorbo, lirone (Emilia Benjamin) and two violins (Rodolfo Richter and Jane Gordon) complemented the declamatory distress of the vocal line, the angularity and expressive fioritura of which Bevan imbued with dramatic colour, though the soprano’s diction wanted for clarity - which was a pity because the way in which Strozzi fractures the text in order to emphasise Lidia’s pain at her father’s cruelty is a powerful element of the rhetorical impact. In ‘È pazzo il mio core’ (My heart is crazy), Bevan flew lightly through the melismatic excursions and injected real anger into her tone at the close, anguishing at the foolishness of a heart that ‘torments itself in a cruel flame’ (E come tal si cruccia in fiero ardore).

The closing item of the first half, Silentio novice (Noisome silence) brought together Zoe Brookshaw, Martha McLorinan, John Bowen and Jonathan Brown and gently lulled us with its ‘songs of our loving hearts’ (le parole affettuose e I canti).

Monteverdi’s eighth book of madrigals, published during his Venetian years when the composer was seventy-one years of age, drew on two decades of composition and is essentially a summary of the development of the madrigal. Each of the Book’s two halves, Canti guerrieri (Songs of War) and Canti amorosi (Songs of Love), ends with a ballo , composed for a specific occasion: ‘Volgendo il ciel’ was written in 1637 in honour of the Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand III of Hapsburg, and Il ballo delle ingrate, first heard in 1608 at the wedding festivities of Francesco Gonzago, was rewritten for Vienna in 1628 and finally published in 1638.

In ‘Volgendo il ciel’ Nicholas Mulroy was a compelling and commanding ‘Poet’, complemented by a voluminous choral ensemble and instrumentalists whom the Poet addressed directly on occasion. The full ensemble, including two violas (Jan Schlapp and Annette Isserlis), cello (Andrew Skidmore) and violone (Cecelia Bruggemeyer) gathered for Il ballo delle ingrate, which upholds a long-lived tradition of exemplifying what will happen to women who don’t behave as they should. Venus, troubled because Cupid is failing to hit the target, travels to the Underworld to urge Pluto to make an example of those ungrateful women who reject male desire, and so the latter are led through a flaming bocca d’inferno in order that the female members of Monteverdi’s contemporary audience might gain of the glimpse of the punishment that will await them should they deny their men-folk their due satisfaction. Federico Follino, a court chronicler in Mantua in 1608, wrote that the singer performing the role of Pluto moved ‘with great gravity towards the princesses who were in view facing the stage; once he had approached them, full of horrid majesty, he began to sing’. Clearly, he wanted to make sure they’d got the message! However, one ingrate, defying Pluto’s order compelling passive silence and submission, sings a lament which inspires her fellow ‘cruel Beauties’ to plead for pity.

Follino’s account of the Mantuan performance attests to its vivid theatricality: ‘In the middle of the stage one saw the large mouth of a wide and deep cavern … surrounded within and around by burning fire and in its darkest depths, in a part very deep and distant from its mouth, one saw a great abyss behind which there rotated balls of flames burning most brightly and within which there were countless monsters of the inferno so horrible and frightening that many did not have the courage to look upon it.’

There were no flames or monsters at Kings Place but there was drama aplenty. The contrast between brightness of Zoe Brookshaw’s Cupid and the darker hues of Helen Charlston’s Venus, supported by the grainy warmth of the instrumental ensemble made for an engaging opening duet, and Venus’s anger at feminine betrayal - the women have scorned Cupid’s arrows and their own men’s heroism and honour - was strongly and richly delivered: ‘Udite, donne, udite i saggi detti di celeste parlar nel cor serbate’ (Listen, ladies, listen, keep the wise sayings of heavenly speech in your heart). David Shipley was a grave Pluto, supported by Curnyn’s sensitive organ accompaniment, sustaining the god’s dignity and lyricism throughout his long arioso moralising.

Mary Bevan’s delivery of the final lament recalled the dissonant intensity of Arianne’s threnody and there was stirring defiance as this solo ingrate interrupted the silent progress of the suffering women, rejecting Pluto’s order to return to hell and weep.

‘Loquacity cannot be sufficiently reproached in women, as many very learned and wise men have stated, nor can silence be sufficiently applauded.’ So wrote Francesco Barbaro, in his 1555 treatise on wifely decorum and duty, which was composed for the wedding of Lorenzo de Medici. But, at Kings Place, a side door opened, and four off-stage ingrates echoed Bevan’s lament in gratingly dissonant fashion: ‘Apprendate pietà, donne e donzelle’ (Learn pity, ladies and girls).

So, Monteverdi gave the women the last word.

Claire Seymour

Barbara Strozzi: Star of Venus
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Christian Curnyn (director/harpsichord/organ), Mary Bevan (soprano)

Strozzi - ‘L’Amante modesto’, ‘Pace arrabbiata’, ‘Lagrime mei’, ‘Canto di belle bocca’, ‘È pazzo il mio core’, ‘Le tre Grazie à Venere’, ‘Silentio nocivo’; Monteverdi - Ballo: ‘Volgendo il ciel’, Il ballo delle Ingrate

Kings Place, London; Thursday 10^th January 2019.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Viktor%20Erik%20Emanuel%20VU%202.jpg image_description= product=yes product_title=Venus Unwrapped: Barbara Strozzi: Star of Venice product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id= Above: members of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, directed by Christian Curnyn

Photo credit: Viktor Erik Emanuel

Gottfried von Einem’s The Visit of the Old Lady Now on CD

Of his nine operas, three became relatively well known, including Dantons Tod (Danton’s Death, 1947, after Georg Büchner) and Der Prozess (The Trial, 1953, after Franz Kafka). Critics hailed both for their dramatic effectiveness and, not least, for the way von Einem’s music lets the vocal lines come through clearly.

Now we get a CD re-release of the third and last of von Einem’s best-known operas: Der Besuch der alten Dame (The Visit of the Old Lady, 1971). This one is in three tight acts and is based on a world-famous play with the same title by Swiss playwright Friedrich Dürrenmatt. The play (first seen in 1956) has been adapted numerous times, with its title usually shortened in English to The Visit. Notable versions include a film with Ingrid Bergman and, more recently, a musical with Chita Rivera.

Von Einem’s opera, using a libretto adapted jointly by the composer and the playwright, is a powerful statement, thanks in large part to the vivid reading of the title role given in this recording of the premiere performance (May 23, 1971) by one of the greatest singers and operatic performers of the second half of the twentieth century: mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig.

The plot is simple and ingenious. A poor woman, Klara, leaves her hometown, pregnant and in near-despair. The child dies, and Klara marries a series of nine husbands, becoming in the process a multi-millionaire and changing her first name to Claire. She returns to the town with several of those husbands in tow, some servants whom she has blinded or castrated (several very large servants carry her around on a litter), and an empty coffin (waiting to be filled—with whose body?). The town has become impoverished through Claire’s clandestine, vengeful business dealings. Claire offers the townspeople a vast sum of money if they will put to death Alfred Ill, the man who got her pregnant.

Much of the play involves the gradual revelation (to the townspeople and its leaders—the latter are all male of course, like Claire’s large retinue) of the events and intentions that I just mentioned. The ending of the play and opera—though apparently not of the film—is straightforward: Alfred Ill is put to death. Claire and her small army of males leave with the coffin (now presumably filled), and the opera ends with a jubilant chorus. Play and opera drip with irony and social criticism, like much Brecht; they are also often uncomfortably comical, again like Brecht. I couldn’t help but think, as I listened, how relevant the opera’s messages remain: about power and greed, individual cruelty and cowardly group-think.

Von Einem’s music here is immensely varied, reminding me at times of Mahler, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, or Orff. The vocal lines vary between angular and declamatory, rarely becoming as lyrical as in, say, Britten. The orchestra is deployed cagily, allowing us to hear the sung lines clearly. (Some present-day opera composers could learn a lesson or two here.) In compensation, the orchestra is given a prelude to each of the three acts, plus seven interludes between scenes. These orchestral passages are mainly dominated by percussion, with much darkly mysterious (primitivistic?) pounding. The result is a disturbing series of reminders of the grimness, vindictiveness, and violence that—as portrayed by the dramatist and composer—underlie so many human interactions. The preludes and interludes could possibly make an interesting concert work in themselves.

In 1971, Christa Ludwig was at her peak effectiveness, the voice covering a wide range with total solidity and turning on a dime from silky to snarly. We hear the same astounding singer who, in the years around that time, made classic recordings of such roles as Dalila, Waltraute, and (in German—and I strongly recommend that you seek the recording out!) Carmen. With her then-husband Walter Berry she made marvelous recordings of Mahler’s Wunderhorn songs, marvelously conducted by Leonard Bernstein, and of excerpts from Richard Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten. I will never forget hearing Ludwig in the summer of 1971 at Tanglewood (a few months after the von Einem premiere), singing the fourth movement, “Urlicht,” mesmerizingly, in the Mahler Second under (again) an inspired Bernstein. (I was singing in the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and thus seated far behind Ludwig, but that luminous voice poured out: forward, backward, and to all sides, conveying the sentiment of the words without ever breaking the musical line.)

Ludwig’s gorgeous, articulate monster is joined (and castigated, etc.) by singers of similar renown: Eberhard Wächter (who was the title character in Giulini’s acclaimed Don Giovanni recording and John the Baptist in Solti’s equally potent Salome), Hans Hotter (Wotan in the legendary Solti Ring), Heinz Zednik (whose Mime was one of the many gems of the Met’s late-1980s Ring CDs and video), and Manfred Jungwirth (Ochs in the Carlos Kleiber Rosenkavalier). Hotter and Jungwirth are sometimes wobbly, as is Hans Beirer in the role of the town’s mayor. But all three certainly put their roles across. Wächter is steady and clear, conveying through understatement the bafflement and agony of Claire’s chosen victim. Zednik is perfect as Claire’s officious Butler. The many smaller roles are performed with great panache by artists from the roster of the Vienna State Opera (e.g., the much-recorded light soprano Emmy Loose). The orchestra plays with vigor or delicacy, as required, and conductor Horst Stein cuts short the grateful applause after each scene in order to get the music and drama going again.

The recording conveys all the thrust and sardonic glint of a live performance. I hope it will spur opera companies to mount this amazing, insightful work. In the work’s early years there were a few stagings in such places as Berlin, London, and San Francisco, the latter directed by the filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola. Maybe another such wave of productions is starting: the opera was performed in Vienna during the 2017-18 season, at the Theater an der Wien. The marvelous singers Katarina Karnéus and Russell Braun portrayed the multimillionaire and her former lover.

Despite the wonders on display in the opening-night performance captured on these two CDs, we could also use a state-of-the-art studio recording, in which purely musical and vocal values were emphasized more in certain roles and in which artful microphone placement would catch various subtleties and nuances from the orchestra. That (hypothetical) new recording should include a libretto. Here we get only an essay, some insightful reminiscences from Christa Ludwig, and a detailed synopsis. All of this is translated and copyedited a bit roughly, e.g., “improve” instead of “improvise.” I was particularly grateful for the synopsis, but got a more precise sense once I located a copy of the published score, which contains numerous helpful and even revelatory stage directions and other performance indications.

Dare one hope that the 1972 Coppola staging was videotaped? Interestingly, 1972 was the same year that Coppola’s film The Godfather —another ugly story of power—was released. Der Besuch is an opera made to be seen as well as heard.

Even without visuals, though, this recording of a little-known but major work is something to treasure. More generally, it reminds us that the musical world would do well to remember and revive the many marvelous twentieth-century works that were at least partly rooted in triadic tonality and that won, at the time, the loyalty and affection of performers and audiences alike. For two other largely forgotten works of that sort, both of them fairy-tale-like in nature, see my reviews here of Laci Boldemann’s Black Is White, Says the Emperor (1965) and Otakar Ostrčil’s Jack’s Kingdom (1934). The former is in Swedish, the latter in Czech, but good singing translations would make them work wonderfully in the English-speaking world as well.

Ralph P. Locke

---

The above review is a lightly revised version of one that first appeared in American Record Guide. It appears here by kind permission of ARG.

Ralph P. Locke is emeritus professor of musicology at the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music. Six of his articles have won the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for excellence in writing about music. His most recent two books are Musical Exoticism: Images and Reflections and Music and the Exotic from the Renaissance to Mozart (both Cambridge University Press). Both are now available in paperback, and the second is also available as an e-book. His reviews appear in various online magazines, including The Arts Fuse, NewYorkArts, and The Boston Musical Intelligencer.

      

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Besuch.png image_description=Orfeo 9301821 product=yes product_title=Gottfried von Einem: Der Besuch der alten Dame (The Visit of the Old Lady) product_by=Christa Ludwig (Claire Zachanassian), Hans Beirer (Mayor), Heinz Zednik (Butler), Eberhard Wächter (Alfred Ill), Hans Hotter (Teacher), Manfred Jungwirth (Preacher). Vienna State Opera Chorus and Orchestra, conducted by Horst Stein. product_id=Orfeo 9301821 [2 CDs] price=$24.99 product_url=https://amzn.to/2SMd24k

Britten: Hymn to St Cecilia – RIAS Kammerchor

This new release extends RIAS Kammerchor's engagement with British repertoire, established when they recorded Britten's Sacred and Profane together with songs by Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Charles Stanford, with former Chief Marcus Creed in 2013. This new collection is particularly valuable because it focuses on works Britten wrote at a formative period in his career which even now is relatively unexplored.
Britten's Hymn to St Cecilia op 27 is one of the classics of modern choral repertoire. It's not an "easy sing", lines and parts interwoven in intricate patterns. This hymn had great personal significance for Britten, who was born on St. Cecilia's Day. It is relevant that this was while he lived abroad: its connections to English polyphonic tradition show where his heart truly remained. St Cecilia was a singer who was martyred for her faith, hence the symbolism implicit in the text, by W.H. Auden.

"Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions/
To all musicians, appear and inspire/
Translated Daughter, come down and startle/
Composing mortals with immortal fire."

This refrain repeats through the three sections of the piece, and are sung in unison, underlining its meaning. Auden extends the imagery to include Aphrodite, rising full-formed from the sea, and a more obscure reference (possibly from Dante), "around the wicked in Hell's abysses/The huge flame flickered and eased their pain." Britten picks up on this for the scherzo section, where bright, short phrases flicker, like flames, in quick succession. The hymn is as much for all artists in times of persecution as it is for the saint, given that Britten was acutely aware of the impact of Nazism on composers and others in the Europe he'd thought he'd left behind. The final section is characterized by "o" sounds and vowels, which resonate, like bells, an aural image emphasized by the sudden descent into solo parts, evoking sacred form. The RIAS Kammerchor perform Britten's Hymn to St Cecilia so it flows fluidly, the parts so well balanced that they blend without losing clarity.

Britten wrote his Hymn to the Virgin at the age of sixteen, revising it in his early years at the Royal College of Music. Nonetheless it is not juvenalia, but a sophisticated use of double chorus, one singing in English, the other responding in Latin, creating an echo effect as if the past were resurfacing in the present. In the final verse, the parts divide, singing the text together.

This recording is also valuable because it features the Choral Dances from Britten's Gloriana. The opera is sadly still misunderstood, and the dances in the Second Act come in for criticism, so hearing them on their own as a sequence shows their merits. This also demonstrates their role in the opera, which is not to further the obvious drama between Elizabeth and Essex but to focus on the Queen and her subjects, and the national interests that made her give up Essex for England. The good folk of Norwich are a symbol of the nation, and their loyalty is genuine. This fits in, too, with Britten's core beliefs in the value of local community: at Aldeburgh, he did more for community music theatre than anyone since the Renaissance. In contrast, the courtiers who surround the Queen are sycophants and hypocrites. The courtiers may sneer at the peasants, but the Queen recognizes sincerity. Presumably the new Queen Elizabeth got the message. She was personally fond of Britten and gave him her support, much to the chagrin of those who thought him an outsider.

In the opera, the Choral Dances also underline the fundamental role of English tradition in Britten's music. This structure is reminiscent of earlier form, and shows Britten's understanding of style. The first three dances are a masque within a masque. "Time", "Concord" and "Time and Concord", moving from liveliness to serenity to joy. The women's voices of the RIA Kammerchor sing "The Country Girls", while the men sing "Rustics and Fishermen", and come together again for the "Final Dance of Homage", here beautifully parted.

Britten's Five Flower Songs op 47 (1950) sets poems by Robert Herrick, George Crabbe, John Clare and an anonymous folk song. Britten creates a bouquet, bringing together colours in varied combinations. "To Daffodils" is swift, for daffodils don't linger, while "The Ballad of Green Broom" alternates doughty rhythms with longer, lighter lines, men's voices for the wood, women's for leaves, so to speak, the song ending with a witty flourish. In "The Succession of the Four Sweet Months" (Herrick) the parts define each month. The parts combine in "Marsh Flowers", strong colours spread along lines that end in a sudden upbeat, and in "The Evening Primrose" stretch the lines so they descend slowly into slumber.

With Ad majorem Dei gloriam (AMDG) we return to Britten from roughly the same period as Ballad of Heroes op 14, the Violin Concerto op 14 and Young Apollo op15, all of which did not receive much attention until later years. In the case of the Violin Concerto, now regarded by many as a masterpiece, the reason may be that it expressed despair so intense that Britten could not yet process. The reason for the suppression of AMDG may have more to do with the fact that the solo SATB version can't achieve the colour a larger ensemble can bring to it. But there are deeper undercurrents here, too. The texts are by Gerald Manley Hopkins. What drew Britten to these poems of extreme mystical devotion? Since Catholic Emancipation wasn't achieved until 1829, and the order itself was suppressed until around that same time, Jesuit principles of intellect and independence threatened more conservative minds. Furthermore, Hopkins' poetry was not published until after his death, a sign of humility before God. Hopkins may have been, for Britten, the quintessential artist as outsider, who endured suppression for the greater glory of his Art.

These songs are difficult to perform, but RIAS Kammerchor carry them off extremely well. Again, the fine balance between voices creates a lustrous sheen which enhances a mystical sense of rapture. In "Prayer I" ("Jesu that dost in Mary dwell") the voices unite for the last line "To the greater glory of Thy Son : Amen", the last word extended, like a prayer. Even more beautiful is "Rosa Mystica", where the male voices chant, as if at Mass, the women's voices dancing above the steady pulse of prayer. The women's voices take up the chant with greater elaboration. Britten sets "God's Grandeur" with brisk pulsating rthyhms from which outbursts of energy emerge, like shouts of joy. With "Prayer II", a hushed, contemplative mood returns, the flow of the lines illustrating the image of a fountain linking God and Man. When the men sing "I repent of what I did", the line stands out, emphasizing humility. "O Deus, ego amo te" is a tender love song ; for Hopkins, the object being God, for Britten, perhaps someone human, The word Amen stresses the first syllable so it explodes like a shout. The Jesuit order was founded by soldiers, and organized on quasi-military lines. Hopkins writes unorthodox marching rhythms into his poem "The Soldier", which Britten respects, starting with the ejaculatory "YES!" (in capitals in the original poem) For Hopkins, the poem is a celebration of vigour in imitation of Christ. But Britten, and readers of A E Housman, may read other connotations in the lines "séeing somewhére some mán do all that man can do,/ For love he leans forth, needs his neck must fall on, kiss,/ And cry ‘O Christ-done deed!'

If man is the image of God, kissing a man cannot be a sin. In this context, the final song "Heaven-haven" may be a love song, too, and to someone quite specific. The text is simple and direct, Britten's setting calm, with no fear of the "Love that dare not speak its name" in the words of Lord Alfred Douglas. Imagine the rage of homophobes and those jealous of Britten and Pears in an era when homosexuality was illegal. Britten may not have published the songs, but he didn't destroy them, aware that some day they would be understood as a testament.

Anne Ozorio

      

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Britten%20RIAS.jpg
image_description=Harmonia Mundi HMM902285 [CD]

product=yes
product_title=Benjamin Britten: Hymn to St. Cecilia and other choral works
product_by=RIAS Kammerchor, Justin Doyle, director
product_id=Harmonia Mundi HMM902285 [CD]
price=$19.98
product_url=https://amzn.to/2C7mdVR

Si vous vouliez un jour – William Christie: Airs Sérieux et à boire vol 2

"Si vous vouliez un jour..." brings together airs de cour by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Étienne Moulinié, Michel Lambert and Sébastien Le Camus, "Having displaced the polyphony of the Renaissance chanson in the musical landscape of the day, the air de cour, with its clear melodic lines, simple form, and expressive possibilities, soon became an indispensable component of aristocratic entertainment and served as a musical platform for much of the poetry of the day, which ranged from courtly songs (air galant) covering the gamut of amorous states, to air de ballet (often framed as formal expressions of praise), by way of drinking songs (air à boire), devotional songs (air spirituel), and so on." writes Thomas Leconte in his programme notes. The air de cour thus contributed to the rise of a sophisticated socio-literary culture which prized the musical equivalent of the art of conversation (bien dire), seen at its apogée during the reign of Louis XIII. With its vivid expressiveness, the genre was an important link in the chain of events leading up to the creation of French-language opera,. "The first attempts at setting French plays integrally to music" he continues,"- be they of courtly or pastoral inspiration, such as Les Amours d’Apollon et Daphné by Charles Dassoucy (1650), Le Triomphe de l’Amour by Marin de La Guerre (1654), and La Pastorale d’Issy by Pierre Perrin (1659) - consisted chiefly of juxtaposing several airs, loosely connected together by what would, in the skilful hands of Lully, become the recitative".

This collection begins with the Petite pastorale H. 479 by Charpentier from around 1676, which is partly created by assembling pre-existing musical fragments, notably those taken from the prologue to Molière's Le Malade imaginaire (1673), interspersed with airs sérieux, and extended by instrumental ritornellos. In this Petite pastorale, Alcidon and Lysander, (Reinaud Van Mechelen and Cyril Auvity) joust by exquisite singing, accompanied by harpsichord (William Christie). Hardly the weapons of "real" shepherds ! Pan (Lisandro Abadie) - the god of merriment - unites them and they sing in unison "Laissez, laissez là sa gloire ! Ne songez qu’à ses plaisirs !" Also included in this collection are all five scenes from his pastoraletta Amor vince ogni cosa, H. 492 for five voices which shows the impact of Italian cantata.

Étienne Moulinié (1599-1676) was an early master of the courtly air, inheriting older traditions, as evidenced by two airs de boire, Amis, enivrons-nous du vin d'Espagne en France, a cheerful part song for male and female voices and Guillot est mon ami (1639) where polyphonic style is adapted for decidedly non-religious purposes. It ends with gleeful laughter, a nod to its folk song origins. Moulinié's Enfin la beauté que j'adore, (1624) is an air de cour reflecting troubadour style. By the mid 17th century, the genre developed in different directions. The air galant became more personal, morphing into the air sérieux, the art song of literary salons, where, as Leconte notes, "the art of conversation was practised according to the new codes of behaviour and courteousness which appealed both to the heart and the mind". The air sérieux favoured simple, strophic structure, almost ballad form, but much more refined and elegant : songs of love, longing and emotional poise. Vos mépris chaque jour me causent mille alarmes, by Michel Lambert (1610-1696) epitomises the style. A tender accompaniment (violins, viola da gamba and theorbo) cradles the singer, the counter tenor Cyril Auvity) who sings expressively but without excess. Sans murmurer from 1689, is a part song for three male voices, while Amour, je me suis plaint cent fois and J’aimerais mieux souffrir la mort also include the female singers Emmanuelle Negri and Anna Reinhold, demonstrating the flexibility of the form. Laissez durer la nuit, impatiente aurore, (Anna Reinhold) and Oh ! que vous êtes heureux (Emmanuelle Negri) are airs by Sébastien Le Camus (c. 1610-1677), proving that, in 17th century artistic circles, lighter female voices filled a worthy role.

Anne Ozorio

      

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Si%20vous%20vouliez%20Arts%20Florissants.jpg
image_description=Harmonia Mundi HAF8905306 [CD]

product=yes
product_title='Si vous vouliez un jour': Airs Sérieux et à boire vol 2
product_by= William Christie, Les Arts Florissantes
product_id=Harmonia Mundi HAF8905306 [CD]
price=$16.99
product_url=https://amzn.to/2RH9jYs

Burying the Dead: Ceruleo offer 'Baroque at the Edge'

Well, we were the audience at LSO St Luke’s and we were being taken back to 1695 and permitted into a ‘theatre of the mind’. That is, into the feverish dreams and dramas, hallucinations and hauntings of one Henry Purcell who, with the shadow of death falling over his tousled bed, revisited the past and conjured his former self from the archives of memory and nostalgia: son and father, singer and composer, bon vivant and bereaved child and parent.

Clare Norburn’s latest concert-drama, Burying the Dead, was first seen at last year’s Buxton International Festival and has since toured the UK, arriving finally in London for the three-day festival, Baroque at the Edge. What is most impressive about Norburn’s conception is the way that the various strata and elements combine and cohere so effortlessly. Past and present, truth and fantasy, real and imagined come together in a tightly knit and intimate drama. The personal narrative is embedded neatly within historical, cultural and political contexts. At LSO St Luke’s, Niall Ashdown’s Henry Purcell, somewhat dishevelled in night-gown and breeches, took us through an account of his life - his losses and loves, career and carousing - and so created not just a portrait of the ‘matchless man’ (to recall the words of John Blow in his elegiac ode), but also a landscape of seventeenth-century London and a vision of the age.

Niall Ashdown.

Ashdown captured the restless energy, wit and self-awareness of the creative genius, snatching up the manuscript paper strewn upon the bedroom floor when his Muse stirred, frustratedly shaking his quill when the ink stalled, the mechanics of transcription failing to keep up with the flow of invention as the music - beautifully played by the three musicians (harpsichordist Satoko Doi-Luck, viola da gamba player Kate Conway and theorbist Toby Carr) seated either side of the composer’s bed - raced ahead of the hand. Expressive of gesture, Ashdown used irony and self-irony with judiciousness, as when recalling the young composer’s growing success and pride in having his music performed at the soirees held by violinist-composer John Banister in his home. These were the first “concerts” given in London: “I’m sure you’re familiar with the term. Concerts. They are rather like this, but with less speaking,” Ashdown wryly observed.

We had tales of derring do, as when Purcell and the other choristers ran from Westminster to the church of St Dunstan to save it from being consumed by the flames of the Great Fire; and, of disaster, in the form of a pacy account of the origins of the conflagration and its passage through the city, supplemented by asides from the onlookers - “It was started by the French!”, “No, by the Dutch” - and by the crackles and pops of rustled paper bags and hand-claps from the musicians. Desire was not absent, Ashdown joining in tuneful duet with Emily Owen as Purcell courted his wife Frances. And, various of the singers and actresses, such as Letitia Cross, with whom Purcell had amorous liaisons passed through his bedchamber, engaging in ribald banter.

Jenni Harper and Emily Owen.

Ashdown shifted swiftly and persuasively between moods, and alongside droll humour there was also deep sadness: the bewilderment of the five-year-old boy at the death of his father; the loneliness of the young man whose beloved Jane disappeared one day from the family home after a change of personal circumstances; the bereaved father, mourning the deaths of four of his six children. The ode that he composed upon the death of Queen Mary was in fact, so Purcell confessed, an elegy not for the monarch but for his own small babes. Such personal triumphs and tragedies were framed by the broader context of the political age, as Purcell reflected upon upheavals and uncertainties of his day, as the culturally rich age of Charles II was succeeded by the religious unrest of James II’s reign which in turn led to the Glorious Revolution of 1688 around the crowning of the Dutch William and English Queen Mary.

Interwoven into Clare Norburn’s text are assorted instrumental and vocal compositions by Purcell: bawdy theatre ballads; slow airs such as ‘The Virtuous wife, or Good luck at last’; joyful celebrations of love such as ‘She loves and she confesses too’; the mad song, ‘From silent shades’, in which ‘Bess of Bedlam’ mourns in love-sick melancholy; and numbers from the semi-operas, such as ‘Two daughters of this aged stream’ in which two sirens, naked to the waist, emerge from a silver stream and beg King Arthur to lay aside his sword and join them. Emily Owen and Jenni Harper sang with fine focus and strong dramatic presence, characterising their various impersonation vividly. And, the three musicians were not left out of the dramatic action, occasionally putting aside their instruments to participate in the unfolding narrative.

Director Tom Guthrie has imaginatively and skilfully integrated these various elements with the simplest of dramatic means and the whole achieved a directness worthy of Purcell himself. With the audience so close to the stage, and at times drawn into the action - handed a tankard, strewn with red petals - the immediacy of the drama was captivating. Indeed, the integration of drama and song seemed almost to re-create the theatre of Purcell’s day, to place his songs back within their original context. As the lights slowly diminished upon the dying phrases of Dido’s lament, we had been gifted a magical vision of the man behind the music, the very human soul behind the creative genius.

Claire Seymour

Ceruleo: Burying the Dead, by Clare Norburn

Thomas Guthrie - director, Niall Ashdown - actor, Emily Owen and Jenni Harper - sopranos, Satoko Doi-Luck - harpsichord, Kate Conway - viola da gamba, Toby Carr - theorbo; Lighting - Pitch black lighting, Costume - Hannah Pearson.

LSO St Luke’s, London; Saturday 5th January 2019.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Ceruleo%20title%20image.jpg image_description= product=yes product_title=Burying the Dead: Ceruleo (Baroque at the Edge) product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id= Above: Emily Owen, Niall Ashdown and Jenni Harper

All photographs by Robert Piwko

'Sound the trumpet': countertenor duets at Wigmore Hall

The programme largely reproduced that presented by James Bowman and Michael Chance on the disc of countertenor duets by Henry Purcell and John Blow that they recorded with The King’s Consort in 1987. Perhaps we experience recorded and live performances differently, or expect and anticipate different things from them, but on this occasion the works performed - which were supplemented by detailed explanatory notes by Robert King - did not seem to me to offer sufficient variety of mood and affekt, and those opportunities that did exist for contrast and diversity were not always exploited to the full. At times I found myself wishing for more dramatic engagement with the musical rhetoric, such as would not only communicate sense and emotion, but would also - as seventeenth-century audiences would have so desired - arouse passions.

One could not complain about the technical standards and tonal beauty, however. Davies and Hall have contrasting voices - Davies’ has variety of colour, dramatic nuance and projects strongly; Hall’s voice is lighter, and agile and fresh at the top - but they formed an ear-pleasing blend. And, as immediately demonstrated by the vocal roulades of the opening ‘Sound the trumpet’ (from the last of Purcell’s birthday odes for Queen Mary, Come ye Sons of Art) they matched each other, and their fellow instrumentalists, for unassuming and assured virtuosity.

The singers’ appeal for trumpets is not answered until later in the ode, and in this recital the singers were partnered by two recorders, played with grace and facility by Rebecca Miles and Ian Wilson, and a continuo group of harpsichord or chamber organ (King), bass viol (Reiko Ichise) and theorbo (Lynda Sayce). As one would expect from such experienced and accomplished musicians, the accompaniments were unfailingly stylish and discerning (though at times, from my seat at the rear of the Hall, I found the organ a little too loud).

Miles and Wilson worked hard to charm and inspire “Wanton heat and loose desire” in ‘In vain the am’rous flute’ (from Purcell’s ode for St Cecilia’s Day) and strongly defined bass and theorbo parts enhanced the vocal tenderness in the theatre ayre ‘No, resistance is but vain’. In the latter, the voices wound around each other lithely and sweetly, but I missed the quasi-operatic drama of the song in which the lover scolds the reluctant beloved whose resistance proves futile when assailed by the ‘tyrant’, Love. Another theatre song, ‘Sing, sing ye druids’, proved one of the highpoints of the evening, the prefatory instrumental ritornello invigored by agile bass viol playing, complemented by airy theorbo textures.

James Hall (Photo courtesy of Athole Still Artists).

We had a chance to hear the singers in solo items too. Hall displayed a clean, fresh tone in a song from Dioclesian, ‘Since from my dear Astrea’s sight’, rising confidently and easily to the melodic peaks, though he might have made more of the word-painting and rhetoric, finding deeper emotive resonance in the falling minor sixths of “mourn”, the troubled quick ascents of “alas” and the winding motif of “weeping”. Davies’ reading of ‘O Solitude’ was a masterclass in dramatic singing. The contrasting elements - of register, between simple declamation and searching melisma - perfectly embodied the song’s paradoxical blend of pain and desire, and Davies’ appreciation of the expressive architecture of the song - articulated through the declamatory phrasing and piquant harmonic twists and false relations - was utterly compelling.

The first half of the concert ended with the intimacy and sombreness of Purcell’s ode ‘O dive custos Auriacae’, which sets a Latin elegy by Henry Parker, and this grave mood resumed after the interval, with John Blow’s setting of Psalm 107, ‘Paratum cor meum’. Hall aptly exploited what one might term an ‘English cathedral tradition’ style in Pelham Humfrey’s devotional song, ‘Lord I have sinned’, negotiating the strange harmonic shifts persuasively and expressively, and drawing touching pathos from the closing image of the “one drop of balsom” which will suffice to ease the sinner’s suffering. John Donne’s words made a strong impact in Davies’ rendition of Purcell’s ‘A hymn to God the Father’, the pleas and questions of the opening stanza driven by the speaker’s conflicting emotions of doubt and devotion, and this anxiety and turmoil growing in the last stanza where Davies, pushing forward and phrasing with considerable character, captured all of the speaker’s fears and, ultimately, faith.

Though Davies communicated strongly in the central, solo episode of Blow’s ‘Ode on the death of Mr Henry Purcell’, the varied elements of this expansive setting of Dryden’s elegy did not quite come together with structural cohesiveness and logic. Perhaps so much earnest solemnity had taken its toll on this listener’s powers of focus. Fortunately, the encore alleviated the sober mood, ‘Hark how the songsters of the grove’ rebounding charmingly from the panelled walls of Wigmore Hall.

Claire Seymour

Iestyn Davies (countertenor), James Hall (countertenor), The King's Consort

Henry Purcell - ‘Sound the trumpet’, ‘In vain the am’rous flute’, ‘O solitude, my sweetest choice’, ‘No, resistance is but vain’, Chaconne from Dioclesian; John Blow - ‘Ah heav’n! what is’t I hear’; Purcell - ‘Sing, sing ye Druids’, ‘Since from my dear Astrea’s sight’, ‘O dive custos Auriacae domus’ (Ode on the death of Queen Mary), Blow - ‘Paratum cor meum’, Pelham Humfrey - ‘Lord, I have sinned’, ‘A Hymn to God the Father’, William Williams - Sonata in imitation of birds, Blow - An Ode on the Death of Mr Henry Purcell

Wigmore Hall, London; Friday 4^th January 2019.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Davies%20%28c%29%20Ben%20Ealovega.jpg product=yes product_title='Sound the trumpet': Iestyn Davies and James Hall (countertenors) with The King's Consort at Wigmore Hall product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id=Above: Iestyn Davies

Photo credit: Ben Ealovega