Opera Today

Verdi: Messa da Requiem - Staatskapelle Dresden, Christian Thielemann (Profil)

Adorno would slightly backtrack in his later work, Negative Dialects, where he suggested it might have been wrong to say that after Auschwitz you could no longer write poetry - though he would become even more damning about the colossal existential terror of the guilt and insanity of its horrors. Adorno’s vision for the survivors of events such as the Holocaust is almost Kafkaesque; but, one might equally argue that Paul Celan’s poem Todesfuge says everything that needs to be said about war and its horror.

Composers who lived through the war have tended, like Adorno, and even the Romanian-born poet Celan (who wrote largely in German) to focus on the victims of Nazi oppression: Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw or Nono’s Ricorda cosi ti hanno fatto in Auschwitz are just a couple of notable examples. Where composers have taken a view on allied destruction elsewhere they have particularly centred on Japan and the nuclear cataclysm: Penderecki’sThrenody to the Victims of Hiroshima and Nono’s Canti di vita e d’amore: sul ponte di Hiroshima. Only the openly-pacifist Benjamin Britten in his War Requiem could be said to have taken an entirely universal (though hardly neutral) position on the pointlessness of war. Richard Strauss, who in Metamorphosen, and even the Vier Letze Lieder, wrote music which came closer to elegy, music that looked back into the past through the ruins of the present. Most German composers have rather avoided tackling the subject of the destruction of their own cities altogether, perhaps because the subject is too raw to address.

Dresden was, and remains, one of the clearest examples of a German city ruined in the same way as the cities which drew in Britten, Penderecki and Nono - widely accepted today to have been at least indiscriminate, and probably questionable. Historically, its relationship with music is almost as old as European classical music itself, though after the war, the anniversary of its destruction, remembered on a single day, has been closely defined by an Italian requiem - Verdi’s.

Identification in music for reviewers can be related to the circumstances of our birth as much as it is to the objectivity of the performances before us. Striking that balance can sometimes be problematic, however. Questions of guilt, responsibility - and even Adorno’s premise that one is somehow corroding the very basis of atonement - can make one extremely wary of even approaching such a review in the first place. But with a German ancestry - and connections to Dresden - I wanted to hear and write about Christian Thielemann’s new recording of Verdi’s Requiem from the distance of time - and the commemoration of the destruction of this great city - remembered each year in its annual concert.

Thielemann’s concert of the Requiem is not in itself a one-off performance. Since 1951, starting with Rudolf Kempe, the Dresden Staatskapelle and chorus of the Staatsoper has given a concert of Verdi’s Requiem on the 13^th February every year on Dresden Memorial Day - although in recent years a different work has often been played. (I recall a Missa Solemnis, this year it was Dvořák’sStabat Mater and in 2020 it will be Purcell’s Funeral Music for Queen Mary and Mahler’s Tenth.) It has mostly been the case that these concerts have been played on three nights - two in the Semperoper, and one in the Frauenkirch. The occasion is marked by reconciliation and tolerance, of shared hope and peace. Those first performances under Kempe were played in the shattered Staatstheater - and the destruction of the city, the memories of the apocalypse of the firestorm which had swept through it were still fresh - much as they were for much of mainland Europe and the major cities of Japan and the Far East at the time. The performances then - as they are now - are premised on coexistence and not division, on healing and not the wounds of war. Even when you return to Dresden many decades after the events of the Second World War pockets of the city show scars of its destruction that may never be entirely erased; but that is equally common if you walk the streets of Warsaw or Coventry as well.

Although Christian Thielemann is most closely identified as a conductor from the Germanic tradition, his immersion into Italian repertoire has been convincing (Otello was performed by him at least as far back as 1996, and the Quattro Pezzi Sacri has often been programmed as well). Although this Dresden Verdi Requiem is the earliest one by him I can recall hearing, it is by no means his only one. It’s true that if you’re looking for anything resembling an overtly ‘Romantically’ phrased performance with Italianate warmth you probably need to look elsewhere - though this Dresden Requiem makes considerably more of a statement than one performed a year later at the Salzburg Festival. There is undoubtedly a sense of reverence to it - something which at Easter in Salzburg 2015 had been replaced by something altogether less fragile and certainly less spiritual.

The Dresden Staatskapelle is no stranger to Verdi’s Requiem - Sinopoli, in one of his final performances before his death, gave the Dresden Memorial Concert from the Frauenkirch on 13^th February 2001 - a recording which has only ever been issued on a private label. Christian Thielemann does take a different approach to the work, in part, I suspect, because the sound of the orchestra can be quite markedly darker than Sinopoli brought to it - not that he brings much warmth to the Dresden sound either, especially in the strings which have surprising weight (Sinopoli, however, has a more lightweight quartet of singers than Thielemann mustered for this performance). Additionally, in the past there have been noticeable differences between Profil’s engineering of their CDs versus the actual broadcasts they have used (Sinopoli’s Ein Heldenleben was virtually ruined by Profil) - but that is certainly not the case here. The space allowed around the orchestra is exceptional, the clarity of the playing is crystal clear and there is a detail and depth to the performance which is faithful to the acoustics of the Semperoper. Profil haven’t sought to adjust some of the inherent balance problems between the orchestra and soloists either - if you sometimes strain to hear Krassimira Stoyanova climb above the orchestra and choir that’s because she was slightly overwhelmed by both in the performance. Does this matter? No it doesn’t because although Stoyanova is still audible at those climaxes it’s what she does with her voice that matters and there’s a powerful underlying struggle in her phrasing which is remarkable.

Thielemann’s view of the Requiem is rather similar to Sinopoli’s in one respect in that both take a dramatic - though that is not to say operatic - view of this work. There are spiritual overtones (perhaps undertones would be a better word), but you have to search deeply for them. Sinopoli is slower at the opening of the ‘Dies Irae’ - those massive timpani are like rolling thunder; Thielemann sees them more as a shocking, explosive blast - and it’s rather more terrifying as a result. Some have criticised Sinopoli for smothering this music, almost choking it, so it sounds a little underwhelming - but this is not something I particularly hear in his Dresden Requiem. Thielemann does drive the ‘Dies Irae’ onwards - though, as you might expect from such an experienced Bruckner conductor, that drive is almost entirely shaped by a singular line of thinking. It’s easy to fragment the ‘Dies Irae’ - Thielemann doesn’t do this; the arc in which its span is taken is impressively extended, like a singular breath that never seems to quite come up for air. This can be challenging for his soloists - but whether it’s the dark-hued, solid but monumental ‘Tuba mirum’ of the bass, Georg Zeppenfeld, or the magnificently rich-toned ‘Ingemisco’ of the tenor, Charles Castronovo, it’s a contrast of colour that Thielemann achieves as well as the perfect line that never feels like it’s just stitched together like fragments of the liturgy. The ‘Quid sum miser’ is like a spiral, the mezzo of Marina Prudenskaja such a beautiful foil to Stoyanova’s soaring soprano. Perhaps the chorus in the ‘Lacrymosa’ sound a touch loud, just occluding the soloists - but as I suggested earlier this is a performance which gets its strength from the ambience of its struggle.

There are times you listen to Verdi’s Requiem and everything after the ‘Dies Irae’ can seem like a slow descent into anti-climax. Sinopoli was never one to do this - even in the couple of recordings we have of his which he made outside his Dresden concert - and Thielemann doesn’t either. There is a change in the pace of the work, though it’s possibly even harder to keep a good performance on track. I can’t really fault the way in which Thielemann balances the orchestra and double chorus through the ‘Sanctus’ - the sense of divisi has remarkable clarity. You get this, too, in the ‘Agnus Dei’ where Prudenskaja and Stoyanova are in such perfect harmony with the chorus - the orchestra just weighty and rich enough so it wraps like a shroud around the voices. If many conductors see the ‘Libera me’ as a climax to the Requiem, Thielemann views it as a true coda - not the actual end of it, but the complete summation of everything that has come before it. If you listen to the power - and reverence - behind Thielemann’s ‘Libera me’, in the closing bars you could be listening to the final pages of Bruckner’s Fifth or Eighth Symphonies. This is, in part, what makes this Verdi Requiem rather special and unique.

I think this is one of those performances which can stand alongside some of the great recordings of the past - de Sabata, Cantelli, Giulini - and, perhaps, Sinopoli in Dresden, too. It’s beautifully sung, conducted and recorded - I’m not sure you could ask for much more.

Marc Bridle

Verdi: Requiem

Krassimira Stoyanova (soprano), Marina Prudenskaja (mezzo), Charles Castronovo (tenor), Georg Zeppenfeld (bass), Christian Thielemann (conductor), Staatskapelle Dresden, Dresden State Opera Chorus.

Recorded 13^th February 2014 at Semperoper, Dresden.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Verdi%20Thielemann%20%281%29.jpg image_description= product=yes product_title=Verdi: Requiem: Edition Staatskapelle Dresden - Volume 46, PROFIL PH16075 [43.43 + 37.37] product_by=A review by Marc Bridle

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Ravel’s L’heure espagnole: London Symphony Orchestra conducted by François-Xavier Roth

The work which you might have expected to end the program, Boléro, one of the great orchestral showpieces, didn’t come at the final stretch which may in the end have been just as well; this was a performance which didn’t really do much for me, not that it stopped most of the audience thinking otherwise.

L’heure espagnole - as its title suggests - runs close to an hour in length, though at times Roth seemed close to edging it faster. This is Ravel at his most imaginative, the composer astonishingly vivid in his scoring - in one sense this is an opera that literally vibrates, ticks and tocks, clicks with the pulse of swaying metronomes - quite literally, in fact - and has the rhythm of mechanics running through it. It predates Varèse by decades - and who would turn to science, mechanics and the influence of key thinkers like da Vinci in his aural landscapes - but Ravel’s opera is every bit as inventive, if necessarily more primitive in its thinking.

Ravel described L’heure espagnole as an opéra-bouffe - and the best performances of it draw on high comedy and emphasise the sense of ordinariness of the characters. This may be less obviously easy to do in a concert performance as we had here - but it worked because the cast largely achieved that by entering and leaving at the wings of the stage rather as the libretto demanded. It certainly helped that they weren’t just sat there doing nothing (which would have been a travesty for the role of Torquemada, who is supposed to be out for the ‘hour’ winding the town’s clocks, while his wife, Concepción juggles - without much success - between her clumsy lovers).

In every sense this is an opera about time and timing - the muleteer Ramiro stops by to have his watch fixed, Torquemada has to tend to the town’s clocks (so Ramiro has to wait), Concepción doesn’t even have a clock in her bedroom but wants one there, Gonzalve, a poet more interested in his love for words rather the love of another kind, and is eventually stuffed into a clock he can’t get out of, and the banker Don Iñigo hidden in another clock, are metaphors within a comedy. It requires a better than average cast to bring all this off, especially when they’re largely confined on a stage in front of a conductor. To their credit, the five singers did a very notable job of doing just that.

It helped that the surtitles were very funnily translated - and they were even a touch double-edged in their meaning. It was just as well we had surtitles because I found some of the French being sung extraordinarily difficult to follow, even to the extent I sometimes wondered at times what language I was hearing; I’ve rarely heard this opera sound quite that vocally mangled. But never mind. The comedy ended up being beautifully timed. The acting, although it could have been limited by space, was not just considered, it was a joy to watch and very expressive, comic without feeling forced - soaking up every ounce of farce like a sponge from a libretto that sometimes challenges its singers to do so.

Jean-Paul Fouchécourt’s Torquemada rather left no doubt as to why Isabelle Druet’s Concepción might seek amour elsewhere - but how perfect they were as an imperfect coupling. If Fouchécourt engaged with the female violinists of the LSO, in flirtatious exits and entrances, more than he ever did with his wife, Druet’s Concepción left no doubt why the dynamics of this relationship were always in disarrangement. On the one hand, you had the small, but always superbly well-crafted tenor of Fouchécourt, set beside the powerful, sleekly engineered grandeur of Druet’s soprano. It was perhaps a little more lyrical than one might expect - but it worked like clockwork. An ideal couple who revelled in the comedy of being singularly unideal.

Thomas Dolié’s Ramiro was undeniably strapping - a singer who has the kind of rip-roaring baritone that easily strides over an orchestra. But he clearly understood the role as well bringing a silky pathos when needed and an all-knowing understanding to the sexual double-dealing of Concepción. Gonzalve can sometimes seem difficult to cast - it needs a singer who somehow needs to inhabit two rather indistinct worlds. Edgaras Montvidas effortlessly sang the role with much expression, but he was also able to define the poet who rather seems aloof from reality. His tenor was probably the most shining voice of the evening, the one which came closest to mirroring the precision and beauty that came from the orchestra. In Nicholas Cavallier’s Gomez - the grey-haired banker - one related to his ego, and his failures.

Roth’s conducting - as it had been in the first half of the concert - often seemed on the brisk side, but this was also a beautifully proportioned, often mesmerising performance, exquisitely played, by an LSO that didn’t always seem comfortable in this idiomatic music. Indeed, I had found the opening Rapsodie espagnole - a work which in the wrong hands can often outstay its welcome - come tenuously close to drifting off completely. Roth seemed so intent on contrasting the slow and fast sections of this score that I felt I was on a helter-skelter. The opening prelude took a while to get going - and one never really felt that those languorous passages Ravel went to great effort to highlight shadows and time in the music did anything other than linger. On the other hand, there was a Feria which felt fiery - but it came just a little too late. Boléro, too, didn’t really wow me as some other performances have done. There are some conductors who feel they need to conduct this work, and those who feel the work can just play itself - Roth falls into the first category. Brushing aside the distinctly un-French sound of the LSO, especially in the woodwind here (and which actually didn’t at all seem noticeable during L’heure espagnole), and some uncommonly lazy playing, this was a performance which tended to run on the fast side. Roth knows how to ratchet up the tension and suspense in Boléro - this performance felt like a screw tightening - and the climax felt colossal. But if you were looking for something that strived towards the oriental, or that looked into the deeper mechanical workings of a score where each player seems to play like a welder hammering metal, or a mason carving stone this performance wasn’t it.

Earlier in the evening I had caught a short concert of Ravel’s String Quartet in F major. Given by the Marmen Quartet - as part of the Guildhall Artists series - this was a performance which didn’t necessarily seek enormous depth in a work which looks to Debussy’s Quartet for its inspiration. There was no lack of precision here, nor an unwillingness to highlight the shadowy writing that separates the upper and lower instruments; contrast was a hallmark throughout. There was an impressive sense of taking the music in a single arc during movements, even when the time signature changes - as in the Vif et agité. If a single player grabbed my attention it was the cellist, Steffan Morris. His tone is deep, beguilingly rich - even sumptuous. He added weight to a performance which sometimes seemed to spurn it.

This concert will be broadcast on BBC iPlayer on 30^th April and will be available for 30 days.

Marc Bridle

London Symphony Orchestra - François-Xavier Roth (conductor)

Isabelle Druet (soprano), Jean-Paul Fouchécourt (tenor), Thomas Dolié (baritone), Edgaras Montvidas (tenor), Nicolas Cavallier (bass-baritone)

Marmen Quartet - Johannes Marmen (violin), Ricky Gore (violin), Bryony Gibson-Gore (viola), Steffan Morris (cello)

Barbican Hall, London; 25^th April 2019.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/LSO%20and%20FXR%20by%20Doug%20Peters%20%281%29%20%281%29.jpg image_description= product=yes product_title=Ravel: L’heure espagnole: London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Hall product_by=A review by Marc Bridle product_id=Above: François-Xavier Roth

Photo credit: Doug Peters

Breaking the Habit: Stile Antico at Kings Place

This varied programme, captivatingly sung by the twelve-strong a cappella ensemble, Stile Antico, celebrated such women, exploring diverse issues and domains from monarchs to musicianship, from the court to the convent.

The short, troubled reign of Queen Mary I (1553-58) has long been overshadowed by that of her half-sister Elizabeth, her five years on the throne judged as unsuccessful, bloody and unfruitful. However, her achievement in assuming the throne and becoming England’s first female sovereign is increasingly being reassessed. Moreover, her strict imposition of Catholicism upon her nation may have resulted in the deaths of up to 300 of her Protestant subjects, but the reestablishment of the Catholic services which had been abolished by Edward VI meant that the musicians of the Chapel Royal had to revive and develop the musical liturgy.

The Latin Church music of Thomas Tallis and John Shepherd exemplifies the refreshing of this liturgical tradition. Tallis’s Pentecostal office responsory ‘Loquebantur variis linguis’ is brief but presents rich elaboration around the tenor cantus firmus, and the full complement of twelve voices relished its piquant harmonies, blending mellifluously. Performing without a conductor they seem to communicate by quasi-telepathic means so assured is the ensemble and collective expressivity. John Sheppard’s ‘Gaude, gaude, gaude Maria’, a responsory for Candlemas, is both more obvious in its homage to the monarch, whose namesake it celebrates - “Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice, Virgin Mary!” - and even more majestic. Stile Antico pristinely delineated the counterpoint, used harmonic and cadential nuance to bring significant textual phrases to the fore - “inviolate permansisti” (you remained an undefiled virgin) and grew with sweet strength towards the concluding “Gloria”.

These were unsettled times for English musicians, though, and with the ascension of Elizabeth I it was ‘all-change’ once more. William Byrd’s ‘O Lord make thy servant Elizabeth’ reflects the monarch’s new injunction for textual clarity; here, the ensemble sound was consoling and warm - aptly so, for the Catholic Byrd prays for the well-being of the woman who offers him both patronage and protection from religious persecution. The polyphony was smooth and calm, culminating in a gloriously florid “Amen”. John Taverner had been master of the choir in Cardinal College Oxford (now Christchurch), where he had forty voices at his disposal and the buoyant ‘Christe Jesu, pastor bone’, a votive antiphon to be sung after Compline, reflects the potential offered by the large forces. It was originally composed in honour of St William of York, but later adapted to serve as a prayer for both the monarch and her Church. The concluding request that they both be granted the reward of eternal life was fittingly positive in spirit and glowing in tone.

In 1601 Thomas Morley published a collection of madrigals in honour of Elizabeth, The Triumphs of Oriana, to which John Bennet contributed ‘All creatures now are merry minded’ which was sung with up-lifting lightness and joy. Richard Carlton was vicar of St Stephen's church, Norwich, and a minor canon at Norwich Cathedral; he too contributed to Morley’s publication, and ‘Calm was the air’ which the nine voices brought to a radiant conclusion of shining, rising scales, “Long live fair Oriana!”, grounded by a sonorous low bass.

On the continent, the Netherlands had come under Habsburg control through the marriage in 1477 of Maximilian I to Mary, daughter of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. During the fifteenth century the Burgundian court had emerged as a centre of cultural splendour and musical patronage, and on her appointment as Regent of the Netherlands, Margaret of Austria inherited the Grande chapelle on of the most impressive musical establishments in Europe, rivalling even the Papal chapel. Margaret’s cultural and musical patronage is reflected in the music manuscripts that survive from her regency.

Alexander Agricola (1446-1506) joined the Burgundian court in 1500. His music was described vy one 16^th-century observer as ‘unusual, crazy and strange’, and some scholars have suggested that his it lies in-between vocal and instrumental idioms and has an almost baroque sensibility. Certainly, the motet ‘Dulces exuviae’, a setting of Dido’s lament from Virgil’s Aeneid sung here by eight voices, seemed to combine musical sentiments both sensual and sacred, moving restlessly towards a slightly tentative and inconclusive final cadence. The motet ‘Absalon, fili me’, attributed to Pierre de la Rue, is similarly unpredictable and experimental. It includes a reference to “frater mi Philippe”, suggesting that the text may have been written by Margaret herself in remembrance of her brother who died in 1506. Stile Antico wrung every drop of emotion from the extraordinary, almost painful, harmonic twists and turns as an arpeggio-motif descended despairingly.

Stile Antico celebrated not just female patrons but the producers of music too. Raffaella (also known as Vittoria, her name before she took religious orders) Aleotti (b.1575) was the second daughter of Giovanni Battista Aleotti, a prominent architect at the court of Duke Alonso II d’Esta. A child prodigy, in 1589 she entered the Convent of San Vito in Ferrara which was known for its musical training and performance, and during the following few years seems to have nurtured a growing religious vocation and considerable skill as a composer. During Holy Week in 1593, a Venetian Count visited the convent and was shown some madrigals, setting texts by Guarini, which Aleotti had composed; he published them, and later that year a collection of motets in five, seven, eight and ten voices also appeared, attributed to Aleotti. She subsequently took her vows, but continued to develop her musical skills becoming renowned as an organist and instrumentalist.

Given Aleotti’s young age when she wrote ‘Exaudi, Deus, orationem’, the motet’s harmonic daring and piquancy is striking, and Stile Antico brought forth the very human passion of this plea to the Lord through the varied vocal combinations and interplay. Aleotti was not the first female composer to see her music in print: in 1568 Maddalena Casulana (fl.1566-83), a skilled lutenist and singer, published a collection of madrigals whose dedication to Isabella de’Medici Orsini asserted its intent to ‘show to the world the foolish error of men who so greatly believe themselves to be the masters of high intellectual gifts that these gifts cannot, it seems to then, be equally common among women’. ‘O notte, O ciel, O mar’, sung by four voices here, proves her point through its dynamic response to the text and startling harmonic contortions and Stile Antico also captured the flexibility and sensitivity to the text of ‘Vagh’ amorosi augelli’.

A contemporary of Aleotti, Sulpita Cesis (b.1577) also took holy orders, in the Augustinian convent of San Geminiano in 1593. She published a volume of Mottetti spiritual in 1619, from which we heard ‘Ascendo ad patrem’ - the eight voices, arranged into two choirs, bringing vivacity to the central ‘Alleluia’ and lightness to the closing image of truth and certainty - and the similarly joyful and lively ‘Cantemus Domino’. Reminding us the music of some of these women composers would first have been heard in convent chapels, five ladies from Stile Antico performed two works by Leonora d’Este, (1515-75), the daughter of Duke Alfonso of Ferrara and Lucrezia Borgia who, upon her mother’s death was sent to the Clarissian convent of Corpus Domini. Both ‘Veni sponsa Christi’ and ‘Ego sum panis vitae’ were notable for their melodic fluidity, as the parts interweaved and crossed, and calm devotional air.

Lastly, Stile Antico performed a new work by Joanna Marsh, Dialogo and Quodlibet, which the composer describes as a ‘parody piece based on the conversations found in the Dialogo della Musica of Antonfrancesco Doni [1544] … a sizable volume containing a selection of contemporary pieces that Doni uses as a schema for analysing music and commenting on its performance’. As the six male singers huddled around a volume at the centre-front of the stage it was not hard to imagine the philosophical disputations of academies such as the Florentine Camerata de’ Bardi; or the series of musical polemics during the 16^th century, such as that between Zarlino and Monteverdi following the publication of the latter’s fourth book of madrigals.

Conflict between old and new is not rare in the annals of music history, whether it is a result of changes in musical theory or new voices challenging those of established repute. Certainly, the six female singers at the rear of the platform, with their backs turned on us, were intent on debate and disruption. And, as we alternated between their delivery of fragments from Casulana’s dedication and the men’s dry discussion, the latter presented by Marsh in a rigid contrapuntal idiom which mocked the scholarly theorising, the ladies came to the forestage, declaring proudly: “Our wish is to entertain each other, not to hold school!” - a bold wish which outshone the men’s fading discourse, “A pox upon these clefs; this piece has different words you see; the discourse of a good musician, talk well of music.” Marsh’s composition raised many a chuckle from the Hall One audience and neatly combines insouciance of style with a serious intellectual challenge.

Everything about this concert had been meticulously prepared, from the spoken prefaces, to the re-arrangements of the singers’ semi-circle and resultant entrances-and-exits. But, while the latter were executed with the same flawless professionalism that characterised the singing itself, they did necessitate quite a lot of stage ‘traffic’. I wondered whether Stile Antico might have placed chairs at the rear and sides of the Hall One platform, from which they might rise to take their places as required, thereby facilitating smoother ‘transitions’?

However, the minor distraction in no way marred the glories of the music-making offered here. The male scholars may have ‘talked well of music’, but Stile Antico gave a rich, powerful voice to the women who patronised, produced and published such music and were very much part of the Renaissance.

Claire Seymour

Stile Antico: Breaking the Habit

Raffaella Alleotti - ‘Exaudi Deus orationem mean’; Pierre de la Rue - ‘Absalon fili mi; Anon. - ‘Se joue souspire/Ecce iterum’; Alexander Agricola - ‘Dulces exuviae’; Maddalena Casulana - ‘O notte, o ciel, o mar’; Sulpitia Cesis - ‘Ascendo ad patrem’; Leonora d’Este - ‘Veni sponsa Christi’, ‘Ego sum’; Maddalena Casulana - ‘Vagh’ amorosi augelli’; Thomas Tallis - ‘Loquebantur variis linguis’; John Sheppard - ‘Gaude, gaude, gaude Maria; William Byrd - ‘O Lord, make thy servant Elizabeth’, John Taverner - ‘Christe Jesu, pastor bone’, John Bennet - ‘All creatures now are merry minded’; Richard Carlton - ‘Calm was the air’; Sulpita Cesis - ‘Cantemus Domino’; Rafaella Aleotti - ‘ Angelus ad pastores ait; Joanna Marsh - ‘Dialogo Quodlibet’.

Kings Place, London; Saturday 27^th April 2019.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Stile-Antico030.png image_description=Stile Antico [Photo: Marco Borggreve] product=yes product_title=Breaking the Habit: Stile Antico at Kings Place product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id=Above: Stile Antico

Photo credit: Marco Borggreve

The Secrets of Heaven: The Orlando Consort at Wigmore Hall

And, a good job it was too, or concerts such as this survey of English music spanning some two hundred years, from the closing decades of the thirteenth century to the end of the fifteenth, would not be possible, given the fragmentary nature of English manuscripts - thanks to the reformers of the sixteenth century. Fortunately for singers such as The Orlando Consort, continental manuscripts often ‘fill in the gaps’ of works preserved only partially, or not at all, in England.

However, there are some English sources, such as the Egerton and Ritson MSS and, most significantly, the Old Hall Manuscript - a parchment book compiled mostly in the 1410s which provides us with compositions of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries by some of the musicians mentioned above. The Old Hall was copied for use in the royal chapels, initially in the chapel of King Henry V’s brother, Thomas Duke of Clarence. Later additions were made in the early 1420s by members of the Chapel Royal who served the young King Henry VI. Further additions provide evidence of the way the repertory was continually renewed by new generations.

The Orlando Consort’s performance of this music was immaculate. One could sense the four singers continuously assessing and adjusting the balance between the voices, to ensure that the rhythmic impetus and smooth melodic flow - characteristic of the ‘English school’ that flourished in the 1400s - were maintained, while also bringing features of harmony and rhythmic complexity to the fore. Textures were clear and clean, the expressiveness deriving from the effect of the whole rather than from any individual textual or musical gesture.

The music of John Dunstaple (c.1390-1453) is not included in the main corpus of Old Hall, though there were later additions, but his reputation and royal connections have ensured that his music (how much of his oeuvre, though?) has survived and is well-known today. The Orlando Consort began with one of Dunstaple’s best-known works, the motet Veni Sancte Spiritus/Veni Creator Spiritus, which was composed for performance in 1416 at a thanksgiving service at Canterbury Cathedral, after the Battle of Agincourt. The complexities of this grand motet, with its simultaneous triple texts, were delineated graciously, the voices blending well - first in the introductory duets, the treble line burgeoning melodically around the tenor’s statement of the chant, later as a quartet. Increasingly swelling in amplitude, The Orlando Consort at times suggested a greater number than their own four voices. This enhanced the growing mood of excitement in the text, which is complemented by the diminution of the rhythmic values in the lower voices. Such technical difficulties were negotiated with ease.

At the end of the first half we would hear Dunstaple’s ‘Quam pulchra es’ (ATB), mellifluously sung, and ‘Descendi in ortum meum’ à 4. Alto Matthew Venner exploited the rich expressiveness of the latter’s decorative treble line, and there was strong energy in the positioning of the treble against the lower three voices - first sustained, then imitative - at the close. The Orlando Consort’s attentiveness to the potential for variety in the shaping of phrase-endings was effective.

But, before this we then took a short detour back to the years of the late-thirteenth and early-fourteenth centuries for three three-part works, their composer’s identities unknown but unmistakably of the English school. ‘Alleluia, Christo iubilemus’ (c.1290) was buoyant and full of joyful vigour, accented phrases providing real rhythmic ‘swing’. The voices often wound quite closely together, the unison ‘Alleluia’ which closed the first and last sections presenting a strong contrast and sense of happy resolution. The gentle homophony of ‘O sponsa Dei electa’ (1300, Worcester Fragments) was easeful and reverential while ‘Kyrie Cuthberte prece’ opened with a flourish of praise and featured striking harmonic twists to illuminate such textual images as “On those who celebrate his honour bound as captives in the flesh, have mercy”. It was rhythmically precise and sung with a lovely ‘open’ sound.

Leonel Power (d.1445) was of the generation preceding Dunstable and his music is well-represented in the Old Hall Manuscript. The ‘Gloria’ heard here (for TTB) indulges in virtuosic mensural complexities and The Orlando Consort generated a strong sense of expanse, excitement and confidence - perhaps a little too much so, as it encouraged the audience at Wigmore Hall, not for the first or sole time during the evening, to leap in with vigorous applause before the concluding cadence had had time to fully settle. The long lines of ‘En Katerine solennia’ (ATB) by Bittering (fl.1410-20) and the triple-time lightness of Roy Henry’s ‘Sanctus’ (ATT) (both contained in Old Hall) were followed by an anonymous Credo from the Second Fountains Abbey Manuscript, a joyous celebration of faith delivered here with sprightly dotted rhythms and textual clarity.

After the interval we continued our time-spanning journey with more works by composers unknown. In a Stella celi from the Trent Codices, the addition of lower tenor and bass to the initial treble and high tenor pairing brought a lovely sense of broadening, complemented by a richly expressive “O gloriosa stella maris” (O glorious Star of the Sea) and increasing propulsion through the plea to Jesus to save them from the plague. A setting of Audivi vocem (1420), from the Egerton Manuscript was compellingly fluent and, unusually for these works, its text had a strong narrative component which was communicated expressively. A Gaude Virgo (c.1450) from the Ritson Manuscript was surprising ‘slippery’ with regard to both harmony and rhythm: the vision of Christ’s ascension was made vivid by the rising brightness of treble and high tenor.

Very little of the music of John Pyamour (fl.c. 1418-26) is known so it was a treat to hear the composer’s Quam pulchra es (TTB) which combined complex overlapping lines, a prevailing low register and textural clarity. The Tota pulchra es by Forest (fl.c. 1415-30) was followed by the beautiful cantilena motet of John Plummer (1410-84), Anna mater matris Christi, which was characterised by the irregularities and quirks of the earlier medieval period. John Trouleffe (fl.1448-1473) was associated with Exeter Cathedral; his Nesciens mater (TTB) is found in Ritson’s Manuscript and was sung here with extraordinarily rich colour, vibrancy and excellent ensemble spirit.

The Eton Choir-book supplied the final item: Stella celi by Walter Lambe (c. 1450/51-1504), a four-part setting which presents a plea from deliverance from illness - a reminder of the precariousness of fifteenth-century life. Lambe’s setting is elaborate and brings the four voices together in sustained imitative fashion - a fitting culmination to a splendid concert.

Poised but relaxed, the Orlando Consort conveyed a sense of respect for the idiom and a true appreciation of style, but also draw forth the ‘human’ quality of the music, connecting us to the musicians of the past.

Claire Seymour

The Secrets of Heaven : Orlando Consort (Matthew Venner - alto, Mark Dobell - tenor, Angus Smith -tenor, Donald Greig -bass)

John Dunstaple - Veni sancte spiritus/Veni creator spiritus; Anon - Alleluia. Christo iubilemus, O sponsa Dei electa, Kyrie-Cuthberte prece; Leonel Power - Gloria; Bittering - En Katerine solennia; Roy Henry - Sanctus; Anon - Second Fountains Abbey Manuscript, Cred; Dunstaple -Quam pulchra es, Descendi in ortum meum; Anon- Trent Codices, Stella celi; John Pyamour -Quam pulcra es; Forest - Tota pulcra es; John Plummer - Anna mater matris Christi; Anon - Egerton Manuscript, Audivi vocem and Ritson Manuscript , Gaude virgo; John Trouluffe - Nesciens mater; Walter Lambe - Stella celi.

Wigmore Hall, London; Thursday 25^th April 2019.

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Carlo Diacono: L’Alpino

Until quite recently and especially during the 18th, 19th and for half of the 20th century, the practice of symphonic music performance was almost non-existent in Malta. Consequently, Maltese composers of those times could never develop their professional activity in the symphonic field.

Since Monteverdi until the end of the 19th century, a composer seeking to establish a name in the profession was practically “obliged” to write opera - the genre par excellence which could show the technical and artistic mastery of composition. Thus, for Carlo Diacono (1876-1942), it must have been an absolute necessity to tackle and master this genre. This would not only enhance his already existing renommé as an exceptional composer, but also be the opportunity to live this artistic experience – the Mount Everest for almost every major composer in European music history over the centuries.

In 1903 Pope Pius X decreed the Motu Proprio regarding sacred music in churches.. This decision was intended to stop the vulgar and profane aesthetic tastes and habits that had slowly infiltrated sacred music through the years. Basically, the Motu Proprio aimed at obliging composers to produce sacred music in a kind of Palestrina style. Despite being maybe a necessary and healthy intention, this “cleansing” of sacred music created a new problem in Malta. As symphonic performance was non-existent in Malta, talented composers could only develop their art either as church composers within the restrictive parameters of the Motu Proprio or in opera, which for a Maltese composer would have been an extremely rare opportunity. One understands the seriousness of this drastic situation when one realizes that the Motu Proprio was declared in the same epoch when European art and music in particular was literally exploding with the creativity of such composers as Debussy, Mahler, Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Ravel, Satie, Sibelius and later of Bartok, Stravinsky, etc.

With L’Alpino, Diacono was finally able to write an extensive work free of the yoke of the Motu Proprio, that is, with all his creative fantasy burning within him. Thus, L’Alpino enables us to have a clearer understanding of Diacono’s authentic artistic and creative talents without the limits of a rather old-fashioned system already “depassé” imposed by the church.

The resulting work speaks for itself. L’Alpino not only demonstrates Diacono’s obvious exceptional talent, but that with this first (and sadly last, since his later projects were left unfinished) attempt at writing an opera, he created a work of quite exceptional quality. We also realize that despite the isolation of Malta from artistic revolutions that were occurring on the continent, Diacono was still able to build on the relatively limited references he had of the genre - those operas that were produced at the Royal Opera House in Valletta. In fact, L’Alpino shows clear relations with the Giovane Scuola/Verism trends as regards both musical language, as well as treatment of certain formal elements - a contemporary theme from actual life, a tragic death of the heroine, an Intermezzo, the choir singing in a Church just before the fatal tragic fall-out on the church piazza...

The vocal writing is obviously very Italian and the work is rich in beautiful melodic moments. A very strong orchestral presence of quite elaborate harmonic development often leads the melodic discourse around the declamations of the singers’ lines. Diacono’s language is predominantly 19th century, but it seems that some more recent influences are incorporated, such as the use of the whole-tone scale as well as more ambiguous and chromatic harmony. It should be remembered that all the composers of the last part the 19th century were in one way or another infused by Wagner’s genius. In his way, Diacono makes use of an intricate system of “leitmotifs” which gives the 3 act opera a strong sense of compactness and unity.

L’Alpino reveals a strong symphonic intuition that elaborates primary material into an organic unified work from the first opening chords, developing towards a conclusion. From the beginning of the opera in the first act, Diacono establishes a number of themes, which constitute the main motifs. The opening Maestoso theme seems to evoke the epic landscape within which evolve the more personal and intimate actions of various characters. Among the other themes one finds Nella’s beautiful lyrical motif singing upon interesting harmonic sequences, also associated her love for Enzo. Another lyrical motif is associated with her mother Anna Rosa while the more negative traits of Franz the foster father and Andrea, the spurned lover are evoked by insidious chromatic motif.

Naturally these motifs are not only heard when characters associated with them, are singing. In fact, the more “arioso” moments often carry new and different material. However these main motifs seem to emerge regularly even in their absence, while other characters or situations are somehow evoking them, or when the composer seems to wish to remind us of some dramatic intention, a memory associated with a character or an event related to them. What is more interesting, however, is the way Diacono treats these motifs symphonically, changing their musical character according to dramatic context. Like characters of a novel or play, that develop and change, throughout the unfolding of the story, so do these musical motifs, meeting with and against each other and developing according to the needs dramatic discourse and situations. It seems to me that the first act is actually a symphonic movement with voices. Though the construction is quite free, one can almost define an exposition, a secondary section (arioso and chorus) a third section where the four themes (among other material) are quite intricately developed building towards a conclusion which reminds us of the first two main themes, this time metamorphosed with quite emphatic pathos.

The second act has a more narrative structure linked with the evolving drama, and the material is less symphonically developed. In spite of this, Diacono still uses thematic development of main motifs to maintain the architectural sense of the whole work. In a moment of high drama (when Franz and Andrea are trying to convince Nella to accept Andrea and threatening her to forget Enzo), Diacono builds the tension of this scene on the first main theme, which from its original initial epic character, here takes a very dramatic turn. Apart from serving as material for this scene, the reappearance of the theme, albeit metamorphosed, creates a new reference point with thematic elements of the first act. Diacono’s efforts towards structure may be further witnessed in the second act as one notices similar reappearances of main motifs (in different variants) after new musical material is presented and significantly, before the increasingly frequent interventions of the choir. As a result, the final tutti ensemble of soloists, choir and full orchestra finishes off the second act with a cathartic sense of deliverance and hope resulting from the preceding dramatic turbulence.

The Intermezzo opening the 3rd seems to have been added at some later. If it was indeed added, one could attribute this inclusion to Cavalleria Rusticana’s strong influence on contemporary opera composers (including Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov!). However, there may have also been technical and artistic requirements for Diacono to write this jewel of Maltese orchestral music. Not only are we presented with motifs and melodies still to come in the third act, but Diacono, here as well, metamorphoses a melodic element from a Nella /Anna Rosa duet in the second act into a dramatic crescendo leading us into an passionate explosion of the first main theme as climax. This Intermezzo takes us into a world of calm and melodic beauty after the maestoso tutti finale of the second act and also acts as a real bridge by reminding us of thematic motifs. It guides our appreciation of the work as a whole unit, which develops organically from the beginning of the first act by the end of opera.

As with the 2nd act, the 3rd act reveals less symphonic development within itself.
New contrasting material is here juxtaposed and interspersed with purely orchestral excerpts accompanying the movement of the crowd, the marriage, the moment of the murdering shot and the confusion after the fatal moment. However, when viewing the opera as a whole work, one notices that Diacono’s regular use of main leitmotifs help us follow the dramatic action, while also creating references in the listener’s memory enhancing the feeling of structured development. Naturally, such structure also depends on the relation of contrasting elements. An interesting example is when Andrea is preparing to fulfill his tragic revenge. We are presented with the theme of the most serene, intimate and somewhat sentimental quality (which we had already heard in Intermezzo) which creates an absolute contrast to the Andrea’s state of mind and ominous words about death. This also offers opportunities to an acting singer to develop Andrea’s complex character more deeply.

The choir’s interventions accompany the development of events in moments of light song, patriotic exclamations and more significantly while singing in sacred style during the marriage in the church. Diacono here seems to remind us somewhat of his profession as Maestro di Cappella, since this specific music scene evokes in many ways, albeit in a free manner, church music according to the Motu Proprio.

After a series of scenes with new musical material, including an attractive song like melody very reminiscent of the epoch’s style accompanying the happy spouses and guests coming out of the church, one notes that the further we move towards the tragic end of the opera, the more frequent do the main motifs that we discovered in the preceding acts reappear. They seem to interact and confront each other with more urgency. One example occurs during the singing religious music in church with the “negative” theme of Franz and Andrea intervening into the sacred chorale as Andrea is seen preparing to murder Enzo. Later, while Nella is dying, the material is almost entirely built on these key motifs, appearing one after the other, decorated in different colours and character. One seems to be replaced by another in an almost liquid manner, thus again creating a continuous musical discourse between themselves.

Here, the composer recalls the love duet of the first act, naturally transformed into the painful moment of Nella’s death. Again, we notice Diacono’s attention to musical structured form throughout the entire work. As the first act closes with the two main motifs of ecstatic character, so does the opera conclude, albeit with a different variant of Nella’s and Enzo’s love motif, this time transformed thanks to the whole tone harmonies into a passionate heart-rending cry. In a certain sense, the conclusion of the work expresses the tragic outcome in a dramatic way through the use of the main motifs that constituted most of the first act.

As its title says, this is indeed a melodramma in the best tradition of Italian opera, on the one hand definitely appertaining to Verismo, while at the same time related with more traditional patriotic evocation of Verdian notions – a work, that although was the composer’s first attempt in the art of opera, testifies not only to his general mastery of composition and dramatic theatrical talent, but also to a powerful symphonic intuition. With this flair, Diacono succeeds on making the listener remain emotionally involved in the teatralo-literary process and also involved in the purely musical development. This he manages to do without major technical breakthroughs and without relying on material effects. Diacono still believes in the potential expressiveness of sound itself, as is manifested by melody, harmony and organic counterpoint. He organizes all this with a creative structural sense, which though free and flexible, still creates a sense of extensive unity. This is why, as in all his works, using very simple and devoid of spectacular superficial means, he manages to convince the listener to follow him and join him in the journey, eager to hear what is to happen till the logical conclusion of the entire musical process.

Brian Schembri La Frette sur Seine 6.05.2018

Published courtesy of the Beland Music Society, Zejtun, Malta.

Click here for additional information regarding L’Alpino and Carlo Diacono.

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Manitoba Opera: The Barber of Seville

The company last presented the 203-year old opera buffa in November 2010, with its newest incarnation stage directed by Montreal’s Alain Gauthier for its three performances held on April 6th, 9th, and 12th. The 185-minute production (including intermission) boasted a strong cast of five principals with Tyrone Paterson leading the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra with his customary finesse.

Based on Cesare Sterbini’s Italian libretto, the production now transplanted from the 1800s to early 20th century Seville is admittedly plot-shy, relying rather on its stable of colourful characters painted in broad brushstrokes to bring its narrative to life.

First up is Figaro, with internationally renowned Canadian lyric baritone Elliot Madore’s dazzling MO debut as the tall, dark and strapping barber exuding conviction and swaggering ease every time he took the stage during the April 6th opening night performance, his booming vocals that filled the hall matched only by his flashing kilowatt smile.

Andrea Hill (Rosina), Elliot Madore (Figaro), and Steven Condy (Dr. Bartolo) [Photo by R. Tinker]

He nearly stopped the show with his Act I entrance aria, “Largo al Factotum”, receiving prolonged applause with cries of bravo for his performance that only gathered momentum until his final, enthralling burst of tongue-twisting patter spat out with razor-sharp precision. It is hoped that the Toronto-born dynamo, who has also graced such illustrious opera houses as Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Zurich Opera House, Glyndebourne Festival Opera and Bavarian State Opera, among others, will return to the MO stage again – and soon.

Canadian mezzo-soprano Andrea Hill (MO debut) reprising her role of Rosina from Calgary Opera’s November 2017 production, also directed by Gauthier, instilled flesh-and-blood nuance into her all-too-human character, her growing exasperation at being shuttered away by Bartolo palpable.

Her opening cavatina “Una voce poca fa” immediately displayed her full palette of tonal colours, including a shimmering upper register and warmly burnished tones in her lower range. It also provided the first taste of her sparkling colouratura, as she nimbly scaled vocal heights with quicksilver runs, later heard as well during duet “Dunque io son...tu non m'inganni?” sung with Figaro.

Like Madore, Hill is also a crackerjack actor, possessing a flawless comedic timing that includes furiously plucking flower petals in rhythm during her colouratura passages, and mugging and mocking Bartolo during the Act II “lesson scene” that elicited open guffaws from the crowd.

American tenor Andrew Owens (MO debut) as Count Almaviva - first appearing as poor student Lindoro – admittedly had a tough act to follow with his own opening cavatina, “Ecco, ridente in cielo” performed in the riptide of Winnipeg baritone David Watson’s servant Fiorello (also doubling as the Notary), with the latter’s earth-shaking vocals always seeming a force of nature.

Nevertheless, despite a few minor intonation issues and balance issues with the orchestra that quickly settled, Owen’s supple voice as a true Rossini leggero tenor proved its expressive best during “Se il mio nome saper voi bramate”, accompanied by Figaro’s mimed guitar accompaniment, and sung with elegant grace.

American baritone Steven Condy (MO debut) created an imperious Dr. Bartolo who bellows orders to his charge, also not afraid to let his own hair down when warbling during his own number in falsetto after taking over from Rosina’s “The Useless Precaution” during her singing lesson. His “A un dottor della mia sorte” that ends with his own crisply executed patter did not disappoint, equally straddling both worlds of hilarity and threatening power that also fascinated.

Canadian bass-baritone Giles Tomkins likewise brought dramatic intensity to his role as Don Basilio, Rosina’s vocal tutor and ostensibly Bartolo’s slimy sidekick. His performance of Act I’s “slander” aria, “La calunnia” with its famous long crescendo in which he advises Bartolo to smear Count Almaviva’s name became an early highlight.

Special mention must be made of Winnipeg soprano Andrea Lett who threw herself into her role as whiskey-swilling, cigarette-puffing maid Berta. Her heart-wrenching Act II aria “Il vecchiotto cerca moglie” in which she reveals her fear of growing old without love became the opera’s poignant underbelly and sober second thought, sung with artful compassion.

Gauthier – who also directed MO”s production of Verdi’s La Traviata in November 2017 – wisely allows his cast to venture off-leash as the show progresses with the well-staged production (albeit a trifle “park ‘n’ bark” at times) eliciting frequent hoots of laughter from the crowd.

One of the comic highlights (naturally) included the lesson scene, with Almaviva, now disguised as mop-topped singing teacher Don Alonso appearing to channel the wacky spirit of Victor Borge complete with “air harpsichord” effects.

The highly stylized Art-Deco flavoured set originally designed by Ken MacDonald for Pacific Opera Victoria, evokes the swoops and angles of Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dali, instilling a dreamlike atmosphere further heightened by Winnipeg lighting designer Bill Williams’s shifting rainbow of pastel hues, with all costumes designed by Dana Osborne, also for POV.

A recurring visual leitmotif of umbrellas held aloft and twirled at strategic points (mostly) by an all-male Manitoba Opera Chorus (prepared by Tadeusz Biernacki) created fascinating counterpoint to the voices. Pure magic also arose during Act I’s final chorus “Mi par d'esser con la testa” when the policemen’s “bayonets” suddenly morph into brollies. However, despite the tightly synchronized choreography, this clever idea began to feel too much of a good thing as overly fussy stage business, pulling focus from the leads also gamely navigating their own rain gear props.

The first Act alone clocks in at 105 minutes, with several scenes, including extended recitatives between characters needing to be tightened further. Still, the production’s palpable joy delivered with gusto by a well-balanced cast made one long for their own well-coiffed Figaro, able to fix all of life’s woes with a swish of his wrist and gleam in his all-knowing, watchful eye.

Holly Harris

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Handel and the Rival Queens

In 1720s London, the ‘nightingales’ at war were Italian prima donnas Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni, represented at this London Handel Festival concert by Mary Bevan and Mhairi Lawson respectively, and supported by Christian Curnyn’s Early Opera Company. The performances of these eighteenth-century queens of the opera stage, at the Royal Academy of Music, led to mutual international renown. And, it was the story of their repute and rivalry which actress Lindsay Duncan recounted with telling dry wit at St John’s Smith Square, through excerpts from letters, diaries and newspaper reports interweaved between the arias which made the singers’ names in London and abroad.

To summarise the tale, Cuzzoni made her London debut in 1723, as Teofane in Handel’s Ottone at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket, a performance which caused a sensation. Many attested to her skill. German flautist-composer Johann Joachim Quantz appreciated her ‘tender and touching’ expression and the grace with which she embellished melodies. Charles Burney recorded that she ‘rendered pathetic whatever she sung’ and that her ability to control and adjust musical phrases with rubato made her a ‘complete mistress of her art.’ The Italian castrato Giovanni Mancini eulogised: ‘This woman possessed all the necessary requisites to be truly great. ... Her high tones were unequalled and perfect; intonation was born in her. She had an original and inventive mind ... and her choice of embellishments was something new. She left aside the usual and common and made her singing rare and wonderful.’

After Margherita Durastanti’s retirement, for two years Cuzzoni shared the London stage with the mezzosoprano castrato Senesino, an unchallenged prima donna. And, when Faustina Bordoni joined the Royal Academy in 1725, the management must have been delighted that her skills and qualities would complement those of Cuzzoni. A mezzo-soprano who excelled in rapid passagework, she was also a fine actress. The feisty roles which Handel would compose for Faustina were characterised by defiance, even aggression. One scholar has described the different attributes of the two singers thus: ‘Cuzzoni’s arias were often the pathetic sicilianos that showcased her expressive, cantabile singing. When in disguise, her characters masqueraded as shepherdesses, whereas Faustina’s characters disguised themselves only as men and warriors. The shepherdess had idyllic girlish qualities: she was innocent, pure, delicate, and coy. She inhabited the pastoral world. Faustina’s characters might angrily chastise male betrayers, but Cuzzoni’s only despaired and mourned in response to betrayal’. [1]

Faustina’s reputation preceded her to the English capital. As early as 30 ^th March 1723, the London Journal reported that ‘as soon as Cuzzoni’s time is out we are to have another over; for we are assured Faustina, the finest songstress at Venice, is invited, whose voice, they say, exceeds what we have already here.’

Quantz gave Burney an account of Faustina’s singing: ‘Faustina had a mezzo-soprano voice that was less dear than penetrating. […] Her execution was articulate and brilliant. She had a fluent tongue for pronouncing words rapidly and distinctly, and a flexible throat for divisions, with so beautiful a trill that she could put it in motion upon short notice just when she would. […] She sang adagios with great passion and expression, but was not equally successful if such deep sorrow were to be impressed on the hearer as might require dragging, sliding, or notes of syncopation and tempo rubato.’ Burney himself added that Faustina ‘invented a new kind of singing by running divisions with a neatness and velocity which astounded all who heard her. She had the art of sustaining a note longer, in the opinion of the public, than any other singer, by taking her breath imperceptibly. Her beats and trills were strong and rapid; her intonation perfect; and her professional perfections were enhanced by a beautiful face, a symmetric figure, though of small stature, and a countenance and gesture on the stage which indicated an entire intelligence of her part.’

The personal rivalry between the singers, stoked by their partisan supporters, was surely not what the Academy intended or desired, as this observation by Pier Francesco Tosi, an Italian castrato who taught in London in the late 1720s, suggests: ‘Their merit is superior to all praise; for with equal strength, though in different styles, they help to keep up the tottering profession from immediately falling into ruin. The one is inimitable for a privileged gift of singing, and enchanting the world with an astonishing felicity in executing difficulties with a brilliancy, I know not whether derived from nature or art, which pleases to excess. The delightful, soothing, cantabile of the other, joined to the sweetness of a fine voice, a perfect intonation, a strictness of time, and the rarest productions of genius in her embellishment, are qualifications as peculiar and uncommon as they are difficult to be imitated. The pathos of the one and the rapidity of the other are distinctly characteristic. What a beautiful mixture it would be, if the excellencies of these two angelic beings could be united in a single individual.’

Mary Bevan. Photo credit: Victoria Cadisch.

The behaviour of the two operatic queens was far from ‘angelic’, however. It’s reported that at Cuzzoni’s first rehearsal with Handel she refused to sing ‘Falsa imagine’ from Ottone, as it had been written for Durastini; whereupon Handel called her a “veritable devil”, picked her up and threatened to throw her out of the window. Opposing camps of influential supporters quickly formed vociferous ranks: on Cuzzoni’s side were Lady Pembroke and Lady Walpole; leading the Faustina camp were Sir Robert Walpole, Lady Cowper, Lady Delaware and the Countess of Burlington. Race-horses were named after them; ‘Cuzzoni’ and ‘Faustina’ ran against each other at Newmarket. Lord John Hervey wrote: ‘In short, the whole world is gone mad upon this dispute. No Cuzzonist will go to a tavern with a Faustinian. And the ladies of one party have scratched those of the other out of their lists of visits.’

The incident most often cited as evidence of the divas’ cattiness is a scandalous hair-pulling fist-fight that erupted during a performance of Bonocini’s Astianatte in 1727. The London Journal reported restrainedly, on 10 June, that ‘A great disturbance happened at the opera, occasioned by the partisans of the two celebrated rival ladies, Cuzzoni and Faustina. The contention at first was only carried on by hissing on one side and clapping on the other, but proceeded at length to the melodious use of cat-calls and other accompaniments, which manifested the zeal and politeness of that illustrious assembly’. Dr John Arbuthnot was more graphic in his account, The devil to pay at St. James’s: ‘But who would have thought the Infection should reach the Hay-Market, and inspire two Singing Ladies to pull each other’s coiffs? ... It is certainly an apparent Shame that two such well bred Ladies should call Bitch and Whore, should scold and fight like any Billingsgate.’ [2]

Duncan told an entertaining tale - and I hope that Opera Today readers will indulge my rather lengthy summary - but the musical illustration of this historical vocal posing and posturing was less engaging. This was in no way a reflection on the undoubted talents and flair of Bevan and Lawson; nor the lively buoyancy of the EOC’s accompaniment and their spirited rendition of overtures from Handel’sOttone, Alessandro and Admeto, and Porpora’s Polifemo. But, the sequence of arias represented the dying days of the Academy, and simply did not offer sufficient contrast, character and inspired creativity to sustain the narrative, no matter how precipitously Curnyn commenced the musical numbers, sometimes almost interrupting Duncan’s spoken text.

Bevan and Lawson had the challenge of summoning characters with immediacy and removed from the dramatic context. When Handel’s music works its magic, as in ‘Che sento? Se pietà’ from Giulio Cesare the drama flowed; here, Bevan’s pianissimo decorative ascents in the da capo were brilliantly executed, and lyricism and theatre were nicely balanced. The first half of the programme focused on Alessandro and the eponymous protagonist’s marital woes, as two wives fought for his love. Lawson’s account of Rossane’s ‘Lusinghe più care’ was countered by Bevan’s lilting rendition of Lisaura’s ‘Che tirannia d’Amor!’, which exploited Cuzzoni’s trademark siciliana silkiness, and showcased Bevan’s range and poise. ‘Brilla nell’alma’ from the same opera was designed to show off Faustina’s coloratura pyrotechnics but while Lawson was light, agile and precise, there was almost too much gracefulness - sparkle but not true fieriness.

Mhairi Lawson. Photo credit: Lloyd Smith Photography.

There were other operatic dramas that might have been more vigorously and viscerally brought to life. In Admeto, the wife and former lover - Alceste (Faustina) and Antigona (Cuzzoni) respectively - fight over the dying King Admetus of Thessaly, but here we had only the overture. In Siroe, re di Persia Handel pitted Emira - the daughter of Asbite, King of Cambaya, and Siroe’s lover (Bordoni) - against Laodice, Cosroe’s mistress and Arasse’s sister (Cuzzoni) (the plot’s the usual seria cat’s- cradle), but here we had only one aria, ‘Torrente cresciuto’ in which Bevan deployed her glossy soprano to full effect and essayed some coloratura panache in the da capo.

We also had arias from Porpora’s Arianna in Nasso (‘Miseri sventurati, poveri affetti miei’/Cuzzoni) and Hasse’s Cleofide (‘Qual tempesta d’affetti … Son qual misera colomba’/Faustina); in the former Bevan’s intonation and security were impressive as the vocal line leapt impetuously; in the latter, the EOC Orchestra supplied welcome dynamism, while Lawson waltzed through the voice-twisters with ease. But, if we haven’t heard such operas often in the past two three hundred years, there’s probably good reason. That said, there were plentiful musical treats, such as the lovely oboe obbligato in Faustina’s ‘Quell’innocente, afflitto core’ from Riccardo Primo, Rè D’Inghilterra.

One couldn’t fault the musicianship and the SJSS audience seemed delighted to have been beguilingly entertained and educated. But, there was a distinct lack of diversity and drama, given the theatrical exuberance of the feted queens whose exploits on and off the stage were here celebrated.

Claire Seymour

Handel and the Rival Queens : Early Opera Company

Mhairi Lawson (Faustina Bordoni), Mary Bevan (Francesca Cuzzoni), Lindsay Duncan (Narrator), Christian Curnyn (Director)

Handel - Overture to Ottone HWV15, ‘Spietati, io vi giurai ( Rodelinda HWV19), ‘Che sento? … Se pietà’ (Giulio Cesare HWV17), Overture to Alessandro HWV21, ‘Lusinghe più care … Che tirannia d’Amor!’ (Alessandro), ‘Brilla nell’alma ( Alessandro), Overture to Admeto HWV22, ‘Torrente cresciuto (Siroe, re di Persia HWV24), ‘Quell’innocente, afflitto core (Riccardo primo, re d’Inghilterra HWV23); Porpora - Overture to Polifemo, ‘Miseri sventurati, poveri affetti miei ( Arianna in Nasso); Hasse - ‘Qual tempest d’affetti … Son qual misera colomba’ (Cleofide)’; Handel - ‘Placa l’alma, quieta il petto!’ (Alessandro).

St John’s Smith Square, London; 24^th April 2019.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/double-portrait-of-francesca-cuzzoni-1696-1778-and-faustina-bordoni-1697-1781_u-l-pujodz0.jpg image_description= product=yes product_title=Handel and the Rival Queens: London Handel Festival - Early Opera Company at St John’s Smith Square product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id=Above: Double portrait of Francesca Cuzzoni (1696-1778) and Faustina Bordoni (1697-1781) (engraving), Seeman, Enoch (1694-1744) (after) / Private Collection / Bridgeman Images

Britten's Billy Budd at the Royal Opera House

Director Deborah Warner, whose production of Billy Budd (a co-production with Madrid’s Teatro Real and Rome Opera) is the first for twenty years to grace the stage of the Royal Opera House, seems to be in accord with the views that Benjamin Britten expressed in a 1960 radio interview. For, it is Vere’s moral dilemma which dominates her interpretation. She makes no attempt to, as Britten’s librettist E.M. Forster put it in The Griffin in 1951, ‘tidy up Vere’: ‘We (Eric Crozier and I) have, you see, plumped for Billy as a hero and for Claggart as naturally depraved, and we have ventured to tidy up Vere’. In Warner’s production, Toby Spence’s Vere is undoubtedly “lost on the infinite sea”.

Michael Levine’s quasi-abstract design and Jean Kalman’s atmospheric lighting emphasise this. The sea is metaphoric. Forster had written to Britten, with striking prescience, ‘I will not recall you to the sea. Much as I love it, I believe that you ought to postpone it until you can create an old-man’s sea. Anyhow much later in your career’. [1] Here, platforms rise and fall (presumably intermittently obstructing the view of those seated in the upper ‘decks’ of the House) and the sea is evoked only by a trough of water across the centre of the stage (again, presumably not visible to patrons in the stalls) through which shipmen stomp and splash, to little evident purpose - Alasdair Elliott’s Squeak seems particularly partial to a paddle. Although there are nautical emblems, and we climb up to the mizzen-top and down into the ship’s underbelly, Levine and Warner make us imagine the expanse of ocean on which The Indomitable drifts and we sail instead through the mists and tidal surges of a psychological seascape. As Britten’s designer, John Piper, had urged, ‘We must never forget that the whole thing is taking place in Vere’s mind, and is being recalled by him”. [2]

The criss-cross of ropes, rigging and ladders that pattern the ROH stage suggest not just the regimented discipline of naval life but the net which entraps Vere, Claggart and Budd - even the Novice, who laments, “Oh, why was I ever born? Why? It’s fate, it’s fate. I’ve no choice. Everything’s fate.” And, Vere might plead, “O for the light, the clear light of Heaven”, but Kalman’s hazy, grey hinterland offers no illumination. We are adrift. The costumes, too, blur and confuse: if the design evokes a late eighteenth-century frigate, then Chloé Obolensky’s naval uniforms refer to the Second World War, and I’m not sure what is gained by simultaneously intimating ‘modern’ times and post-Revolutionary France.

Jacques Imbrailo (Billy Budd). Photo credit: Catherine Ashmore.

Moreover, although Kim Brandstrup deftly choreographs the crew’s work and leisure - the ROH Chorus, who sang with stirring passion, are supplemented a thirty-strong group of actors - there is little sense of actual ‘movement’. In the opening moments, the sailors’ work-cry, “O heave! O heave away”, sees them on their knees, scouring the deck with holystones rather than tugging the ropes and rigging. They remain unmoved by Billy’s rallying summons, “Sway!”, and there is no sense of the integrative force that binds the men and which later erupts during the pursuit of the French frigate - here, despite the surging violence in the score, an episode which fails to evoke vigorous anticipation of victory - and after Billy’s hanging, when the crew reprise his unintentionally seditious farewell to his former ship, The Rights O’ Man, the ‘heave’ motif returning as a mutinous, threatening undercurrent. Kalman’s lighting emphasises the motionlessness, confining Vere to his cabin and the men to their hammocks in the hull.

Toby Spence (Captain Vere), Thomas Oliemans (Mr Redburn) Photo credit: Catherine Ashmore.

The homoerotic sub-currents of both Melville’s novella and Forster’s libretto remain submerged in Warner’s production, and it is the opera’s religious allegory which is brought to the fore. There’s no doubting the answer to Vere’s desperate questions in the Prologue: “Who has blessed me? Who has saved me?” Just as Warner, in interview, described Claggart as a “fallen angel”, so this Billy is unambiguously seraph-like. Forster noted (in The Griffin) that some critics had surmised that Billy’s ‘almost feminine beauty’ and ‘the absence of sexual convulsion at his hanging’ indicate that Melville intended him as a ‘priest-like saviour’, but while he professed to have striven to emphasise Billy’s masculinity and ‘adolescent roughness’, Forster couldn’t resist portraying Billy’s hanging as a Christ-like sacrifice. And, Warner follows his lead, most strikingly during the ‘hidden’ interview between Vere and Billy before the sentencing. For, though Britten and Forster followed Melville - ‘Beyond the communication of the sentence, what took place at this interview was never known.’ - in this production the interview does not take place behind locked doors. As the orchestral ‘interview chords’ unfold, Billy moves to the rear of Vere’s private quarters; when he is sent down into the hold by the conscience-wracked Vere, Billy places a palm on his Captain’s forehead - an unequivocal gesture of compassion and clemency. But, while scholars have essayed various affirmative interpretations of the chords’ exposition of the opera’s essential conflicts, their ‘meaning’ inevitably remains obscure, just as the secrets of the locked room surely must remain undisclosed. The power of the chords is emotional, not rational. As Vere himself says, “I must not too closely consider these mysteries. As mysteries let them remain.”

Clive Bailey (Dansker), Jacques Imbrailo (Billy Budd). Photo credit: Catherine Ashmore.

Toby Spence may look rather too youthful to embody the “old man who has experienced much” who presents himself before us in the Prologue - here an ‘aged’ double sat stage-left, scouring the deck, perhaps in an attempt to erase past ‘sins’ - but he captured Vere’s dreamy self-absorption and lack of self-knowledge, shaping phrases and text with care and insight. This Vere retreats from the realities of life aboard a war-ship to read philosophy in his bath-tub, hosts his officers in his cabin while attired in his dressing-gown, and rolls up the carpet to lie down so that he can enjoy the sound of his men singing in their hammocks below: “Where there is happiness there cannot be harm,” he declares, evading his crew’s discontent through self-delusion. Warner’s direction frequently pushed Spence to the rear of the stage, and his light tenor did not always carry with sufficient weight, though Britten’s scoring helped him in the more declamatory outbursts.

Indeed, this ‘Starry Vere’ seemed remarkably remote from his men. It’s hard to imagine that he would inspire loyalty and love of the intensity which drives Billy to vow, “I’ll look after you my best. I’d die for you - so would they all.” Introspection characterises Spence’s Vere; I was not convinced that he was, as Forster and Melville emphasise, ever aware of his duties as a ‘King’ aboard the Indomitable, the upholder of God’s laws, charged with maintaining cohesion and stability. Such professional responsibilities influence Vere’s actions during the trial scene, but Warner emphasises instead the personal dimension: the three officers - Flint (David Soar), Redburn (Thomas Oliemans) and Ratcliffe (Peter Kellner) seem both shocked and disappointed by Vere’s refusal to save Billy, and thus it is his personal anguish which is foregrounded, and separated from the pressures and tensions of life on-board a ‘floating prison’.

Jacques Imbrailo’s Billy Budd has become well-known to us now, since he first sung the role at Glyndebourne in 2010. Imbrailo, as always, performed with physical and vocal muscularity, hauling himself up a rope with impressive strength to bid goodbye to his former ship, effortlessly flooring Squeak in a vicious cabin scuffle, lashing out impulsively at Claggart. If initially his baritone lacked a little of the golden gleam that shines from Billy, then the slight ruggedness of tone was put to excellent effect during Billy’s reflections ‘in the Darbies’; this was a beautifully modulated and deeply moving expression of understanding, forgiveness and vision.

Brindley Sherratt (Claggart). Photo credit: Catherine Ashmore.

Brindley Sherratt’s portrait of Claggart was nuanced and chilling. His Credo was a high-point: one could feel the forces struggling for control of Claggart’s psyche. As Forster said, ‘Claggart gets no kick out of evil as Iago did’, and Claggart tempered menace with melancholy, violence with vulnerability. Claggart’s wretchedness - “O beauty, O handsomeness, goodness! would that I had never seen you” - is deepened by the staging which places the master-at-arms on an upper deck with the slumbering figure of Billy huddled in a hammock below, illuminated by a shaft of light which penetrates Claggart’s shield of darkness, exposing what Meville describes as the master-at-arm’s ‘natural depravity’.

Jacques Imbrailo (Billy Budd). Photo credit: Catherine Ashmore.

The cast was uniformly strong. Duncan Rock’s Donald made a strong impression; Clive Bayley was a surly old sea-dog but revealed Dansker’s true heart in Billy’s time of need. Sam Furness made much of the Novice’s role, working hard with the text and communicating the young lad’s ignorance and innocence. Furness sang the Novice’s Dirge with honest feeling, as, encouraged by his caring friend (Dominic Sedgwick), he dragged himself the full length of the deck, unable to walk or stand after his flogging. Thomas Oliemans’ Mr Redburn was an authoritative figure, matched for vocal sureness by David Soar’s Mr Flint and Alan Ewing’s sonorous Bosun.

Conducted by Ivor Bolton, the ROH Orchestra were powerful in the climactic passages of Britten’s score, but there was occasional discrepancy between stage and pit.

In the Epilogue, Vere torments himself with accusations and questions - “I could have saved him. […] O what have I done?” - but takes comfort from Billy’s absolution: “He has saved me, and blessed me, and the love that passes understanding has come to me.” Britten’s music, though, is characteristically more equivocal. Vere professes to have sighted the “far-shining sail” and to have “seen where she’s bound for”, but the strength of Warner’s production lies in its ability to show us that the light from heaven for which Vere longs will not separate good from evil; that as Vere acknowledges “the good has never been perfect”; that, though Vere has gained self-knowledge, the certainly of salvation remains elusive.

Claire Seymour

Billy Budd - Jacques Imbrailo, Captain Vere - Toby Spence, John Claggart - Brindley Sherratt, Mr Flint - David Soar, Mr Redburn - Thomas Oliemans, Lieutenant Ratcliffe - Peter Kellner, Red Whiskers - Christopher Gillett, Novice - Sam Furness, Squeak - Alasdair Elliott, Dansker - Clive Bayley, Arthur Jones - Thomas Barnard, Bosun - Alan Ewing, First Mate - Ross Ramgobin, Second Mate - Simon Wilding, Maintop - Konu Kim, Novice’s Friend - Dominic Sedgwick; Director - Deborah Warner, Conductor - Ivor Bolton, Designer -Michael Levine, Lighting Designer - Jean Kalman, Costume Designer - Chloé Obolensky, Choreographer - Kim Brandstrup, Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House.

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London; Tuesday 23^rd April 2019.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/BB%20production%20image.jpg image_description= product=yes product_title=Billy Budd, directed by Deborah Warner, at the Royal Opera House product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id=Above: Billy Budd at the Royal Opera House

Photo credit: Catherine Ashmore

Cool beauty in Dutch National Opera’s Madama Butterfly

For her, Dutch National Opera has revived Robert Wilson’s ultra-minimalistic Madama Butterfly, first unveiled in 1993 at the Paris Opera, and presented many times since at various houses. The severe beauty of the production has not aged a bit. Yet, despite the satisfaction they give to the senses, both Wilson’s images and Stikhina’s singing leave one wanting more.

Bearing all the Wilson hallmarks, this Butterfly is choreographed in precise, stylized movement inspired by Japanese Noh theatre and Butoh dance. The demands on the singers are great. They must do things like sustain legato while rising slowly from a kneeling position, and move fluidly across the rough graveled surface delineating Butterfly’s garden, which surrounds the wooden floor representing her house. The absence of an actual set is offset by a lit backdrop that changes from cerulean blue to blood red to a rose-and-peach dawn. Extreme minimalism also means hardly any props. Blossoms are completely absent from the Flower Duet between Cio-Cio-San, the disposable bride of U.S. naval officer F.B. Pinkerton, and her maid Suzuki. Cio-Cio-San’s possessions, such as her mirror and fan, are conjured up by hand gestures, as is the knife with which she ultimately kills herself. When the letter from Pinkerton that seals her fate appears in a real envelope its material presence is almost shocking.

 

Naturally, Cio-Cio-San’s death is blood-free. She quivers and falls lifeless in slow motion, like the pinned butterfly she prophetically describes on her wedding night. At the other extreme, Puccini’s score is hyperdescriptive, teeming with birdsong and gongs, imitating winded gaits and graceful steps. Whether the contrast between the spare visuals and the score results in heightened drama or an unnerving emotional dissonance depends on to what extent one accepts Wilson’s aesthetic. It is certain, however, that for the first to happen, the singers need to provide the feelings that animate the formalized beauty of their surroundings. How do you move with mathematically plotted grace and move hearts at the same time? Projecting great warmth and tenderness, the luxurious mezzo-soprano Enkelejda Shkosa as Suzuki proved it can be done.

Baritone Brian Mulligan as the American consul Sharpless seemed less comfortable in his choreographic straitjacket, but sang sonorously, his generous sound exercising a kindly authority. Character tenor Saverio Fiore was appropriately irritating as the marriage broker Goro, soon finding his feet after a vocally shaky beginning. Among the minor roles, there were strong contributions from Anneleen Bijnen as Kate Pinkerton, Martin Mkhize as the Imperial Commissioner and Carlo Cigni as a forbidding Uncle Bonze. Sergio Escobar’s trumpeted top notes, with fearlessly open Italian vowels, embodied Pinkerton’s odious sense of entitlement. His tenor was less appealing at mezza voce, but Pinkerton is an arrogant sensualist and does not necessarily require great vocal subtlety.

Elena Stikhina as Cio-Cio-San and Brian Mulligan as Sharpless

Soprano Elena Stikhina has a truly special voice, satiny and evenly produced. Initially, she held her high notes only briefly, skipping the elective high D flat at Cio-Cio-San’s entrance, but in Acts Two and Three, where they really matter, her top notes cleaved the air dazzlingly. The rest of the voice is so gorgeous, you never went her to stop singing. And yet, her portrayal was too even-keeled to fully encompass Butterfly’s tragedy. A certain equanimity in Act One could be explained by Butterfly tentatively trying on her new role as an American Navy wife. Wilson’s direction, especially in the mannered love duet, certainly lends itself to this interpretation. But, as her world fell apart, Stikhina only skimmed the surface of Butterfly’s deep dejection. Hope, disappointment, shame and terror all sounded golden, but very similar to each other. Perhaps in a more conventional stetting her characterization would have been more detailed. On opening night, however, Stikhina’s Butterfly, like Wilson’s staging, came wrapped in loveliness but lacked a throbbing heart.

In the pit, the Residentie Orkest did not have the greatest start. The bustle of the wedding preparations sounded bumbling rather than energized. Gradually, the musicians caught up with conductor Jader Bignamini, but the overall impression was of an ensemble that had progressed little beyond technical mastery of the score. Bignamini tried all night to stir up the broad sweep essential for Puccinian drama, to no avail. The orchestra responded mostly by playing loudly, with little dynamic purpose or refinement of expression. Something went wrong between a conductor with an audibly clear sense of direction and this usually highly competent orchestra. On the other hand, each brief appearance of the Dutch National Opera Chorus lifted the performance to its expected level. As Cio-Cio-San’s family, they were also a sight to behold in Frida Parmeggiani’s handsomely sculpted costumes. With so many pluses, this run of Madama Butterfly has the potential to simmer into something more potent than was brewed at the premiere.

Jenny Camilleri

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Cast and production information:

Elena Stikhina, Madama Butterfly (Cio-Cio-San); Enkelejda Shkosa,Suzuki; Sergio Escobar, F.B. Pinkerton; Brian Mulligan,Sharpless; Saverio Fiore, Goro; Tim Kuypers,Prince Yamadori; Carlo Cigni, The Bonze; Harry Teeuwen, Yakusidé; Martin Mkhize, The Imperial Commissioner; John van Halteren, The Official Registrar; Marieke Reuten, Cio-Cio-San’s Mother; Anneleen Bijnen, Kate Pinkerton; Tomoko Makuuchi, Aunt; Dana Ilia, Cousin; Orso Stamet/Fernando Stouraitis, Dolore. Robert Wilson,Direction, Set and Lighting Design; Frida Parmeggiani, Costumes; A.J. Weissband, Lighting Design. Jader Bignamini, Conductor. Dutch National Opera Chorus. Residentie Orkest. Seen at Dutch National Opera & Ballet, Amsterdam on Tuesday, the 23^rd of April, 2019.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/De%20Nationale%20Opera%20-%20Madama%20Butterfly%20credits%20BAUS%20DSC_1845.png image_description=Sergio Escobar as Pinkerton and Elena Stikhina as Cio-Cio-San [Photo © BAUS] product=yes product_title=Cool beauty in Dutch National Opera’s Madama Butterfly product_by=A review by Jenny Camilleri product_id=Above: Sergio Escobar as Pinkerton and Elena Stikhina as Cio-Cio-San

Photos © BAUS

Kurt Weill’s Street Scene

An ambitious work for any theater, Street Scene is especially challenging for younger singers because it encompasses such a variety of styles, from blues to jazz, to popular dance idioms of the 1940s, to Puccini-esque arias and complex ensemble numbers, let alone the many intervening moments of spoken dialogue. Maestro Craig Kier, the orchestra comprised of the University of Maryland (UMD) School of Music students, and the cast sparkled in their energetic opening performance, not completely devoid of stumbles, but entirely entertaining. The production is a part of the Kurt Weill Festival, funded partially by the Kurt Weill Foundation, hosted by the UMD School of Music, and spearheaded by the MOS director Kier. This year-long celebration of Kurt Weill is also a component of the UMD’s Year of Immigration initiative.

Kurt Weill considered opera his “real field of activity,” and throughout his career wrote extensively for the stage. Yet, in America as in Berlin, he was constantly trying to circumvent the well-trodden tropes of established classical opera and define his own place within the operatic tradition. In this pursuit, the composer used popular culture as a foundation for his innovative musical ideas. In 1946, Weill decided to use the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Street Scene by Elmer Price for his new opera, designed to be uniquely American and intended for a premiere on Broadway. Weill knew Rice personally, had seen the play, and saw potential in the raw realism of its subject and characters. It was to be an American urban folk tale, set in one of the storied tenements of New York City. Weill engaged the celebrated African-American poet Langston Hughes as lyricist, to adapt Rice’s text to song, but also kept many passages of spoken dialogue intact. The composer brilliantly combines text and music, using the orchestra to underscore and comment on the action, as well as set up and accompany vocal numbers. As you hear and see a blending of the Broadway song and dance style with traditional operatic arias, it may not be quite so apparent how enormous the challenge is to the conductor and orchestra to navigate and prepare for suc stylistic shifts. Maestro Kier deftly navigated these hurdles, as the UMD orchestra valiantly (mostly) followed.

The hotbed of musical ingenuity and stylistic medley that is Street Scene may not be for everyone, and neither is its dark, troubling plot. Set over the course of a single day on the street in front of a tenement building, the first act begins with the neighbors complaining about the oppressive heat, and focuses on Anna Muerrant (Helena Crothers), a mother and wife, who desperately wishes to believes that there might be more to her lonely and unfulfilling existence. Only a few minutes into the show, the barely disguised hints and gossip from her nosey neighbors reveal that she is carrying on an affair with the sleazy milkman. Crothers brought a melancholy strength to Mrs. Muerrant’s soaring arias. When Mrs. Muerrant’s teenage son stumbles onstage, having been in a rough fight defending her reputation, we begin to understand that the neighborhood gossip is taking hold. Soon it reaches Mrs. Meurrant’s eldest child, beautiful Rose (Shafali Jalota). As Rose navigates her mother’s protestations, her father’s thinly veiled anger, abuse, and neglect, while fending off unwanted attention from a variety of men, she finds solace in Sam Kaplan (Samual Keeler), her quiet, nerdy neighbor and friend. Jalota and Keeler shone in their innocently staged duet at the close of the act, as the two sit together on the front steps of the building, dreaming of leaving it together.

Another highlight of the first act and a special moment of true hilarity was the famous Ice-Cream Sextet, a dramatic ode to the magnificence of ice-cream on a hot day. The star of the sextet and other lighthearted interludes was Dallas Gray, who electrified the audience with his energy and comedic timing as one of the building’s denizens, Italian musician Lippo Fiorentino.

Dramatically much faster-paced and more difficult to follow, the second act begins with a new life, as a birth is celebrated in the building, transitions through a double-murder by Mr. Muerrant of his wife and her lover, and closes with a departure, as Rose leaves the tenement and Sam to face an unknown future alone. Meanwhile, Park Avenue nannies ogle the infamous murder scene, prospective tenants view the Muerrant’s now-vacant apartment, while the remaining neighbors again complain of the heat, as the curtain falls.

One of this production’s great strengths lies in its remarkable set (Ryan Fox) and lighting design (Peter Leibold IV). The exquisitely crafted, looming tenement building, reaching up to the rafters, provides stability to the complex drama, while each of the six windows of the house brings clarity but also circumscribes the less central storylines taking place in individual apartments, not allowing them to overshadow the opera’s dominant themes of oppression, poverty, and desperate loneliness. The lighting follows the changing time of day in the story with the subtle shifts of color and shadows.

Another pleasant surprise was the strength of acting demonstrated by some of the cast, although, in that, many disparities are to be expected. Crothers in particular brought an inner strength to Mrs. Muerrant, who might otherwise have been seen as a weak and superficial character. Keeler also was up to the challenge of elevating Sam to hold his own opposite Rose/Jalota’s stunning vocal technique and poised stage presence.

Although the political undertone of this opera – a new look at the success, failure, and reality of the American dream – was not particularly highlighted in this production, it did bring to the fore the distinctly different (if brashly accented) ethnicities of families and individuals inhabiting the tenement. And, as a part of the Year of Immigration, the MOS production of Street Scene lends a folkloric quality to this vitally contemporary topic by its picturesque depiction of the quirky locals and immigrants coexisting within the squalid but undeniably lively New York City slum. How much more American could it be?

Ruth Bright
School of Music
University of Maryland

image=http://www.operatoday.com/MOS.Street%20Scene%203.png image_description= product=yes product_title=Kurt Weill: Street Scene product_by=A review by Ruth Bright product_id=Photos courtesy of Maryland Opera Studio

Handel's Brockes-Passion: The Academy of Ancient Music at the Barbican Hall

But, the meditative, poetic, sacred drama on the Passion story -known as the Brockes-Passion, though its full title is Der für die Sünden der Welt gemarterte und sterbende Jesus aus den vier Evangelisten in gebundener Rede vorgestellt (Jesus who was martyred and died for the sins of the world, presented in verse out of the four Evangelists) - which the Hamburg writer and politician published in 1712 was set almost as many times as some of the Caesarean Poet’s opera seria libretti.

Brockes’ ripe and raw imagery was still hot off the press when it was set by Reinhard Keiser in 1712; Georg Philipp Telemann offered his efforts in 1716. Round about that time (the exact date is unverified), Georg Frideric Handel, then resident in London but a friend of Brockes from their time as students at the University of Halle, composed his Brockes-Passion. Johann Mattheson added to the tally in 1718, and further interpretations by Johann Friedrich Fasch (1723) and Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel (1725) followed; there were at least five other settings.

The question is - as Dr Ruth Smith asks in her learned, eloquent programme article - what prompted Handel to compose this work, specifically for performance in Hamburg where it was first heard on Good Friday, 3 ^rd April 1719, 300 years before this performance at the Barbican Hall by the Academy of Ancient Music? Smith essays a few possibilities: the performance tradition which required German Kapellmeisters to produce Passion music each year for Holy Week services did not exist in England; such a work was unsuitable for London’s secular theatres, then Handel’s predominant performance venue; London audiences would have found both the German text and Brockes’ blend of the metaphysical and vividly pictorial similarly distasteful; political unrest in England may have made Handel anxious to keep in with the potential employers in his homeland, should need arise.

We shall probably never know for sure. There is no extant autograph and the various surviving copies - one of which was begun c.1746 by J.S. Bach, who performed Handel’s Brockes-Passion in Leipzig on Good Friday that year, and completed in 1748 by colleagues - disagree in diverse ways. For this AAM performance, Leo Duarte, working with a team of scholars and musicologists, has produced a new edition which takes into account new sources that have come to light since the last critical edition of 1965.

Brockes’ narrative combines elements of the Passion story selected from all four gospels, and two striking aspects of the text are its dramatic immediacy and its very human dimension. The Evangelist plays a minimal narrative role and events are largely presented as experienced in the present tense by the protagonists of the drama - Jesus, Peter, Mary, Judas, Pilate, the Disciples, a Centurion and others - in a chain of arias, ariosos, recitatives, choruses and chorales (the latter kept to a minimum). The 104 (in this edition) separate numbers form a strikingly innovative musico-dramatic sequence.

Robert Murray (Evangelist). Photo credit: The Academy of Ancient Music/Robert Workman.

Thus, the opening Chorus of Faithful Souls, which director/harpsichordist Richard Egarr ensured was hushed and reverential, sing: “To cure me from the festering sores of vice/he allows himself to be wounded./To cover up the stains of my sins,/he must dye them with his own blood. Yes, to grant me everlasting life,/even life itself wishes to die.” Christ’s Passion is corporeal, but his sacrifice is an act of redemption and our liberation is eternal. And, as Smith pointed out in a pre-concert talk, the first word of the text is ‘Mich’ - Christ suffered “To free me from the bonds of my sins,” the Faithful Souls whisper.

Certainly, Brockes ensures the corporeality of Christ’s suffering is viscerally vivid and brutal. Translator Moritz Grimm has retained the astonishingly graphic, often quasi-erotic, conceits of Brockes’ text which abounds with explicit imagery. The Evangelist describes the “terrible convulsions” of Christ’s agony: “he could hardly gasp for pain;/One saw his frail limbs tremble,/his dry mouth barely breathing”; and of his Crucifixion, when the soldiers “scourged his tender back with lashes full of nails”. The Daughter of Zion’s heart dissolves “into tears” at the sight of Jesus’ “pitiful groans”, his “whimpering, sighing, longing”, and imagines his bloodied body with graphic intensity: “the rose itself begins to sweat rubies” and as the “thorns’ inflexible claws so wretchedly [press]” into Jesus’ head, his “delicate temples are perforated and pierced/right through to the bone.” No wonder the contemporary authorities were not very keen on allowing it to be used in liturgical contexts.

Handel, not surprisingly, responds richly, with imagination and concentration, to the intense human emotions to which Brockes’ text gives life, and the AAM soloists - most of whom were seated along a strip of red carpet at the front of the stage - and instrumentalists communicated the musical drama and feeling with compelling commitment and power.

The Daughter of Zion bears much of the burden of reflection on man’s foolishness, cruelty, torment and salvation, and Elizabeth Watts sang with tremendous poise and presence. Her foreboding address to those who “squander God’s grace” - “Know that punishment is already coming/As the fruit of your sins ripens!” - was beautiful and terrifying in equal measure; the piquant harmony of the repetition of the final phrase, the fortissimo weight of the full complement of wind, and the long-bowed chords in the strings seemed to throb with pain and portentousness.

Elizabeth Watts (Daughter of Zion). Photo credit: The Academy of Ancient Music/Robert Workman.

Tenor Gwilym Bowen was a superb Peter, capturing the diverse and contradictory emotions experienced by the troubled disciple in an extended sequence in the first part of the Passion. Anger at Judas’ betrayal of Jesus blazed through the running lines of “Poison and fire, lightning and flood”, accompanied by agile unison strings; his avowal that he would not forsake Christ, “Take me with you, cowardly crowd” was sincere and soft, the fine, unwavering line complemented by Sarah McMahon’s eloquent cello obbligato.

The singers in more minor roles each delved to the core of their character’s emotional response. Nicky Spence’s Faithful Soul (tenor) bristled with rage, the lovely warmth of his tenor winning empathy for his indignation; Spence’s rhetorical rise and fermata at the start of the da capo repeat - “Consider”, he commanded the “nest of vipers” - was as transfixing as the softness of his head voice at the close.

Gwilym Bowen (Peter). Photo credit: The Academy of Ancient Music/Robert Workman.

Judas’ recitative and aria of self-castigation, “Do not leave this deed unavenged,/tear apart my flesh, crush my bones”, was superbly sung by countertenor Tim Mead, the cello’s gravelly tremolos and the harpsichord’s stabbing chords underlying the anguish of his appeal, “open for me the dark path to Hell!” As Pilate, Caiaphas and the Centurion, Morgan Pearse sang with firmness and resonance.

In the second part of the Passion, the female voices are given more prominence and here Ruby Hughes’ fresh, strong soprano and clarity of line conveyed the passionate faith of the Faithful Soul (soprano), while the exchanges between Rachel Lloyd’s Mary and Cody Quattlebaum’s Jesus were persuasively sincere and human.

Da capo arias are less common than usual, and here the repeated A sections were infrequently decorated, which made those expressive elaborations that were offered more affecting. The pathos of the Daughter of Zion’s reprised pain as Jesus’ body dissolves into blood was sharpened by a sudden ascent in pitch and dynamic, against the delicate silkiness of violins; the bitterness of her anger at the Soldier who accuses Jesus of heresy - expressed through the angularity of the violins’ short motifs, the racing scales of the vocal line and the acerbic harmonic twist of a cadential figure - was made more raw by an extravagant final vocal leap.

Duartes’ edition adds four oboes and two bassoons to a seventeen-strong body of strings, supported by theorbo, harpsichord and organ, and though these forces might seem quite limited in timbral range, Handel exploits every potential for colour and texture. The combined violins and oboes enhanced the sweetness of the assurance of grace expressed in Watts’ first aria, while her angry rebuke to the Sinners, “behold with fear and apprehension/the monster of your sins” was coloured by the darker hues of cello, oboe and organ. Duartes’ plangent oboe deepened the pity of Peter’s anguish, so affectingly communicated by Bowen, while leader Bojan Čičić’s obbligato heightened the colour and intensity of the soprano Faithful Soul’s vision of Christ’s lacerated back, brightly hued and resembling “the sky/adorned with countless rainbows”.

Cody Quattlebaum (Jesus). Photo credit: The Academy of Ancient Music/Robert Workman.

Between the solo numbers, short choral interjections broaden the perspective of the drama. In a jaunty chorale, the collective voice of The Christian Church buoyantly anticipated being “united with God, through God!” Later the Disciples, seeing Christ bound with ropes and chains, cried agitatedly, “Come, let us flee and save ourselves!”, the repetitions emphasising their panic and cowardice. Then, in reply to Pilate’s imperious question, “What then shall I do with your so-called king”, the populace’s violent demands were chillingly vigorous: “Away with him!/Let him be crucified!”

I was not wholly convinced by the decision to place Robert Murray’s Evangelist and Cody Quattlebaum’s Jesus at the rear, stage right and left respectively, between orchestra and choir. My impression may have been influenced by my position in the Hall, but it seemed to me that Murray fared best: his tenor, strong and direct, projected cleanly, and he was ever-sensitive to text and situation. Following Pilate’s urgent command to Christ, “And will you say nothing to defend yourself”, the softness of the Evangelist’s simple statement, “And he said nothing more”, was deeply moving. In contrast, Murray’s restatement of Christ’s cries, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthan!”, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” rang through the Hall with real anguish, the feeling deepened by the dark, crushing resonance of the organ. The response from Spence’s Faithful Soul and the strings was an almost apocalyptic fury, conveyed through volcanic rhythmic disruptions and unyielding unisons.

Quattlebaum was nestled behind the organ, cellos and double bass, obscured from my view not only by these instrumentalists but also by his own leonine mane, just as his lovely tender bass seemed sometimes absorbed into the lower instruments colour and timbre. Nor did the positioning aid the drama: Peter’s denial was delivered from the front of the stage, to the audience, with Bowen occasionally glancing over his shoulder to Jesus far behind him. That said, Quattlebaum conveyed both Jesus’ agony and spiritual calm with real conviction: lines such as, “It is certain, for thus has it been written” and “It is accomplished” were replete with composure and assurance. And, the bass’s long, even lyrical lines were beautifully shaped; his attention to the text in ‘My Father, my Father!’ was wonderfully expressive.

The performance began with great vivacity but in the second part Egarr was challenged to sustain the dramatic momentum through the long sequence of somewhat sanctimonious contributions from the Daughter of Zion, with additional reflective commentary from sundry Faithful Souls. Despite Watts’ unceasingly thoughtfulness, care and vocal skill, and the variety of instrumental complements employed - first organ and harpsichord alone, then cello obbligato and lute, for her harsh castigations and violent tirades; and, a soothing balm of woodwind and organ for her address to Christ whose “loving heart melts for love” - it is surely difficult for modern-day audiences to respond to such extended, impassioned reflections with the devout piety that they were intended to arouse in the hearts and minds of liturgical audiences in Handel’s time?

However, at the close, a simplicity returned. Watts’ final command, “Wipe away your bitter tears,/be at peace now, blessed soul!”, was first sung unaccompanied, then intertwined with the benedictions of the oboe, before The Christian Church’s closing chorale delivered unadorned and unquestionable consolation: “You have gained eternal life for me/through your death.”

In autumn 2019, the AAM will release a new recording of Handel’s Brockes-Passion: see https://www.aam.co.uk/brockes/ for further details .

Claire Seymour

Handel: Brockes-Passion HWV 48 (171)

The Academy of Ancient Music - Richard Egarr, director/harpsichord

Evangelist - Robert Murray, Jesus - Cody Quattlebaum, Daughter of Zion - Elizabeth Watts, Faithful Soul (soprano)/Maid 1 - Ruby Hughes, Mary/Faithful Soul (mezzo-soprano)/Maid 2/A Soldier - Rachel Lloyd, Judas - Tim Mead, Peter - Gwilym Bowen, Faithful Soul (tenor) - Nicky Spence, Pilate/Centurion/Faithful Soul (bass)/Caiaphas - Morgan Pearse, Maid 3 - Philippa Hyde, James - Cathy Bell, John - Kate Symonds-Joy, Orchestra and Choir of the AAM.

Barbican Hall, London; 19^th April 2019.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/AAM%20soloists%20and%20ensemble.jpg image_description= product=yes product_title=The Academy of Ancient Music: Handel’s Brockes-Passion at the Barbican Hall product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id=Above: AAM Soloists and Ensemble

Photo credit: The Academy of Ancient Music/Robert Workman

POP Butterfly: Oooh, Cho-Cho San!

The audience rose as one to vociferously cheer her stunning assumption of the taxing part, which she lavished throughout with poised, shining tone; rock solid technique; and fiery dramatic commitment. Ms. Todd, petite and lovely, was not only believable as the tentative, naive 15-year old geisha of Act I, but rose to the ranks of great tragediennes as her fate is subsequently sealed. Her ravishing instrument caresses Puccini’s lush phrases with a radiant luster, and her plush, ample lyric soprano rides the orchestra with ease. Her total accomplishment is all the more remarkable for the fact that she is singing the role in Japanese translation.

To underscore the disparity of cultures, director Josh Shaw and conductor Eiki Isomura have conspired to create a text that has the native characters singing in Japanese and the Americans singing in English (with Cio-Cio San transliterated). It is a concept with considerable merit, and is cleverly deployed. Goro becomes more than marriage broker, also serving as translator. Consul Sharpless speaks a fair share of Japanese, most especially in the long scene with Cho-Cho San in Act II. Occasional bursts of English from Butterfly are charming attempts to connect outside her cultural and linguistic restraints.

The success of this approach resulted in some stunning moments in even the simplest ways, for example, Suzuki having to mutter Yes as Hai instead of Si. The alternate text in no way interfered with the composition, and while the words might have Japanese or English resonance, the musical gesture remained rooted in
Puccini’s veristic Italian style.

Maestro Isomura elicited vividly distinctive playing from his orchestra. While string sections for Puccini undertakings are often three times this in number, the reduced ensemble played with stylish assurance. The brass and winds added all the colorful touches the score requires, and the percussion, even with a smaller arsenal, ably underscored the action. Isomura’s assured baton masterfully partnered with the singers, phrasing with the elasticity the composition requires, but always keeping the drama moving inexorably forward. The large chorus sang with commitment and skill, as effectively prepared by chorus master Naoko Suga.

Peter Lake was a commendable B.F. Pinkerton, his caddish intentions offset by a pleasing, poised tenor that beautifully complemented and intertwined with Ms. Todd’s vocalizing in the Act I duet. Thanks to Mr. Lake’s reliable technique, the role holds no terrors for him, although in the beginning pages his high notes seemed just a bit veiled compared to his ringing middle and upper middle phrases. Nonetheless his impersonation of the opportunistic sailor was redeemed by his believable remorse at his actions.

Sharpless was a perfect fit for Kenneth Stavert, his burnished, powerful baritone a thing of power and beauty. If at times he seemed a mite uncomfortable in his own skin on stage, Mr. Stavert used it to his advantage in his awkward mission in Act II, trying and failing to dissuade Cho-Cho San from futile waiting for Pinkerton’s return. His was as polished a musical rendition of this role as I have heard, and his natural way with the Japanese text was assured and impressive.

As Suzuki, Kimberly Sogioka’s diminutive stature could not have prepared us for the size and power of her vibrant mezzo. Ms. Sogioka could be winningly pitiable one minute, and ferociously defensive the next. Her limpid singing with Cho-Cho San in the Flower Duet was one of the show’s joyful highlights. All the smaller roles were cast from strength.

Eiji Miura was an engaging Goro, his slender, attractive tenor falling easily on the ear, but when he was upstage it was occasionally difficult to hear him. Hisato Masuyama was memorably a truly frightening presence as the Bonze, hurling his accusations with biting tone and posturing in a stylized Asian manner. Steve Moritsugu was a wonderfully oily Yamidori, as he deployed a gentle, pliable tenor.

Chelsea Obermeier sang attractively and offered a conflicted Kate Pinkerton, who first sees Cho-Cho San as a curiosity but comes to appreciate her sacrifice. Norge Yip and Takuya Matsumoto did all that was required as they dispatched solid portrayals of the Imperial Commissioner and Registrar, respectively. Young, blond Jussi Sjöwall fidgeted adorably as Sorrow.

Josh Shaw the set designer gave Josh Shaw the director a lovely playing space in which to move his actors about. The dominating structure of the house stage right was complemented by terraced walkways and porches that skirted the edifice. I especially like the elevated upper terrace down left, from which characters could dominate a scene, and/or simply observe. It is from here that Butterfly inscrutably scans the horizon with her telescope at the end of Act II.

There are many finely detailed touches in the direction and design. A flag makes for an amusing revelation, then becomes a tragic prop. The strewing of the flowers morphs into a surprising coup de theatre of visual delight. I won’t spoil the final moment except to say the sequencing of actions and resulting tableau is perhaps the most affecting impression I have yet encountered for this well-known climax.

Adding to the success of the physical production, costume designer Sueko Oshimoto has devised an array of the most colorful, eye-popping kimonos I have ever seen. Throughout, the attire established and reinforced the characters and their stations. Bo Tindell also provided splashes of color in a well-realized lighting design with a significant number of area specials and effects. On occasion the cuing seemed a bit abrupt such as the night to dawn transition between Acts II and III, but that is a small quibble in otherwise well-considered illumination.

Director Shaw created very inventive, well-motivated blocking which used every bit of the space to good advantage. He also nurtured character relationships that seemed spontaneous and believable, all the while simmering with subtext and background. If I had one wish it would be that the wedding scene could evolve into more varied, shifting stage pictures that find the cast interacting less generically and more specifically.

That said, this was another remarkable achievement for POP, not only artistically but also commercially. The shows sold out thanks to an aggressive outreach to the Japanese and Asian community, with the performances in Japantown’s Aratani theatre. That the demographic responded well was evidenced by the large Asian presence in the SRO audience.

As a co-production with Houston’s Opera in the Heights, this version of Madama Butterfly will also perform there this season. Texans, you might want to score your tickets before it sells out.

James Sohre

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Cast and production information:

Cho-Cho San: Janet Todd; B.F. Pinkerton: Peter Lake; Sharpless: Kenneth Stavert; Suzuki: Kimberly Sogioka; Goro: Eiji Miura; The Bonze: Hisato Masuyama; Prince Yamadori: Steve Moritsugu; Kate Pinkerton: Chelsea Obermeier; Imperial Commissioner: Norge Yip; Registrar: Takuya Matsumoto; Sorrow: Jussi Sjöwall; Conductor: Eiki Isomura; Director and Set Designer: Josh Shaw; Costume Designer: Sueko Oshimoto; Lighting Designer: Bo Tindell.

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image_description=Photo by Martha Benedict

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product_title=POP Butterfly: Oooh, Cho-Cho San!
product_by=A review by James Sohre
product_id=Above photo by Martha Benedict. All other photos by Mike Tomasulo.

The Maryland Opera Studio Defies Genre with Fascinating Double-Bill

Although known for his stage works such as Lost in the Stars and Die Dreigroschenoper, the latter a part of his groundbreaking collaboration with the theater innovator Bertolt Brecht (who also authored the text of Mahagonny-Songspiel), Kurt Weill often slips through the cracks of music history, proving too Broadway for the Met and too Met for Broadway. At the University of Maryland, however, the composer is being recognized and celebrated through a year-long Kurt Weill festival of courses, concerts, and staged productions, funded by the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music and featuring, among other things, this unique double-bill, quite an unusual choice for an opera studio. Why these pieces?

Zaubernacht and Mahagonny-Songspiel are two relatively early works of Kurt Weill’s career, and showcase a dramatic evolution in his compositional style. Zaubernacht, created in 1922 and originally billed as a children’s “ballet-pantomime,” is an hour-long danced drama, bookended by two soprano arias. Recently re-discovered and rarely performed since, at least partially due to its confusing genre, Zaubernacht was written while Weill was still a student, and although fascinating, contains few of his later artistic innovations. Mahagonny-Songspiel, composed a mere five years later, is a collection of loosely related songs that would eventually be expanded into a full-length Brecht/Weill opera, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. This much shorter version (about 25 minutes) was commissioned for a prestigious festival of modernist mini-operas in Baden-Baden, where its edgiest element proved to be, ironically, its use of functional tonality and popular song. This embrace of the vernacular would come to define Weill’s music in later years, but even this early example made such a lasting impact on cultural imagination that its most recognizable number, “The Alabama Song,” would be covered by such diverse artists as The Doors (1967) and David Bowie (1980).

Scene from Mahagonny-Songspiel

Yet despite the popularity of “The Alabama Song,” Mahagonny-Songspiel is rarely staged. The challenge is the almost complete absence of recognizable elements of storytelling. There is no clear plot; although there are characters (seemingly randomly named Charlie, Billy, Bobby, Jimmy, Jessie, and Bessie), there is no character history or development. Nor is there a clear setting, apart from the oft-referenced “City of Mahagonny,” which, as we later learn, is a “made-up place.” The staging is, therefore, very much up to an individual director’s interpretation, and the piece is, in fact, more often performed in a concert setting. The pairing of Zaubernacht and Mahagonny-Songspiel into a single evening of staged performances allows not only for an exciting juxtaposition of Weill’s two distinct compositional manners, but also offers an extraordinary display of the composer’s early experiments with staged musical genres.

Few institutions are set up to produce such an unusual double-bill, but The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, housing as it does the School of Music (home to the MOS), School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies, as well as multiple state-of-the-art performance venues, was clearly up to the challenge. According to Maestro Craig Kier, artistic director of the MOS and conductor of Mahagonny-Songspiel, this was the studio’s first production to make use of the facility’s black box theatre, the Kogod, rather than the more traditionally “operatic” proscenium theater, the Kay, where they usually perform. Within the Kogod’s unique space, the floor was able to be properly prepared, with a full Marley dance floor installed forZaubernacht, then replaced by a theatrical painted floor for Mahagonny-Songspiel during intermission. Guest director David Lefkowich and the graduate-student design team also made full use of the black-box space by situating the audience along two opposite walls on either side of the action, while the orchestra was set up between them along the third wall, effectively framing the stage on three sides for a very intimate, immersive theatrical experience. This unusual set-up proved the perfect match for the two equally unusual pieces.

Zaubernacht was choreographed by UMD Dance Professor Adriane Fang (with the assistance of Sarah Beth Oppenheim, Amber Chabus, and Nicole Smeed) and performed by the undergraduate dance students. Although featuring a contemporary dance language, the plot of Zaubernacht was kept close to what was originally intended: after a child goes to sleep in her room (the original scenario involved two siblings), a Toy Fairy (shimmering soprano Shafali Jalota) brings her toys to life, facilitating a night of adventure. As the sun begins to rise the fairy returns to sing the toys back into their inanimate state. This loose scenario is the basis for nearly a full hour of lively characterizations and vivid pantomime choreographed by Ms. Fang—the words “character” and “pantomime” surprising but fitting words to describe an otherwise thoroughly 21 ^st-century dance work! The musicality of the dancers, working with a live orchestra (admirably conducted by Tiffany Lu), was exquisite, and the movement signatures of each character were fully developed and engaging. Although the movement itself was strong enough to carry the performance (an impressive feat for undergraduates!), the design team (most notably costume designer B. Benjamin Weigel) really brought the characters to life through imaginative “recycled” costuming that referenced both traditionally child-bedroom fabrics, textures, and patterns, as well as classic children’s toys, such as the “rock-em-sock-em” robots (with oven-mitt gloves), plastic soldiers (whose uniforms had a real plastic veneer), and even a stuffed glow worm (a goggle-wearing dancer wrapped in a sleeping bag).

Scene from Zaubernacht

If the “children’s pantomime” aspirations of the young Kurt Weill seem ill-suited to a university audience, a small twist to the original naïve scenario matures the plot significantly. For what has happened to the second child in the story? Under Lefkowich’s direction, the brother of the protagonist has succumbed to an early and tragic death, and is represented only by a simple green sports jersey. Initially shown drowning her grief in her smartphone and TV, the child (danced by Eileen Cover) learns to process her loss through the help of her magically awakened toys. The surprisingly vivid acting, along with the movement and design, elevates a simple children’s piece to a richer psychological and artistic plane.

The “technological” theme, represented by Zaubernacht ’s cell phone, is carried over into the second half of the evening, where technology structures both the set and storyline of David Lefkowich’s Mahagonny-Songspiel. The performance space is transformed into a 1927 film set. Supernumeraries in drab colors actively work the set, operating cameras, moving props, and adjusting makeup, while the characters, reimagined as popular-culture stars Babe Ruth (Mike Hogue), Charlie Chaplin (Dallas Gray), Nat King Cole (Justin Harrison), James Dean (Jeremy Harr), Josephine Baker (Zyda Culpepper), and Marlene Dietrich (Amanda Staub), flounce around between acts, drinking, flirting, or criticizing each other’s dramatic acumen. Each song is brilliantly presented as a movie scene, shot live by the camera crew and projected onto large screens covering three of the theater walls. As the Songspiel progresses, the boundaries between stage and screen begin to disintegrate. The camera crew disappears, and the distinction between on-screen and off-screen acting gradually fades, until the audience, situated, as it is, so close to the action, can no longer tell whether the characters are still playing inmates of the “Mahagonny” asylum or are actually living in one. The work ends rather abruptly, in darkness, with only the sound of a man (Babe Ruth/Mike Hogue) sobbing on the floor. This complex dramatic journey was certainly a lot to accomplish in a mere 25-minute chamber opera, but Lefkowich’s brilliant staging (albeit sometimes overshadowed by the giant screens) clearly and quickly communicated the nuances of the plot and characters. The vocalists did a beautiful job, and were supported in numerous ways, large and small, by Maestro Kier and his ensemble, as the audience enjoyed the catchy tunes that had scandalized audiences from Baden-Baden to David Bowie’s record label.

In the 1920s, Kurt Weill (along with his collaborator Bertolt Brecht) were uncomfortable with the growing distance between classical and popular music. They believed that art needed to reach the masses. The evening-long trip from Zaubernacht to Mahagonny-Songspiel chronicles the early trajectory in Weill’s creative journey towards a more accessible musical style. For today’s audiences, the genre confusion of an operatic ballet and a plotless chamber opera placed together into an experimental theater space offers an artistic playground that is exciting, innovative, and engaging. But if you are looking for a completely different Weill experience, the MOS premieres the composer’s late American opera, Street Scene (1946) at the Kay Theater next week.

Heidi McFall
School of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies
University of Maryland

image=http://www.operatoday.com/MOS.Mahagonny%203.png image_description=Scene from Mahagonny-Songspiel [Photo courtesy of Maryland Opera Studio] product=yes product_title=Kurt Weill: Zaubernacht and Mahagonny-Songspiel product_by=A review by Heidi McFall product_id=Above: Scene from Mahagonny-Songspiel

Photos courtesy of Maryland Opera Studio

Daniel Kramer to step down as English National Opera’s Artistic Director

He will continue to work with ENO until the end of 2019, as Artistic Consultant, to oversee the Orpheus series of four operas.

Stuart Murphy, CEO, ENO said: “I have loved working with Daniel as Artistic Director from day one. His continual desire to push for distinctive creative is hugely admirable, and his energy, sense of humour and passion for bringing new stories to life and nurturing new talent has been completely contagious.

“His seasons have been marked by a huge mix, from the Olivier nominated Turn of the Screw at Regent’s Park and Paul Bunyan at Wilton’s Music Hall, the Olivier Award winning Porgy and Bess, to Salome, Iolanthe, and The Merry Widow, to the world premiere of Jack the Ripper: The Women of Whitechapel. Daniel’s War Requiem was a beautiful and stately reflection on the horrors of war, and deserves all of the accolades that it has received to date.

“He leaves with the very best wishes from everyone at ENO.”

Harry Brunjes, Chair, ENO said: “Over the course of his three years in the role, Daniel Kramer’s focus on creative artistic output is the underlying reason why our most recent season was both thought provoking and entertaining, as well as commercially successful.

“On behalf of the board I would like to personally thank him for all of his hard work and dedication to ENO. We are so pleased that he will continue to work with us on the Orpheus series and look forward to welcoming Daniel back at the London Coliseum. We wish him the best of luck as he pursues fantastic opportunities around the world.”

Martyn Brabbins, Music Director, ENO said: “Collaborating with Daniel has been an enormously rewarding and fruitful experience. I wish him all the good luck for the future and look forward to working with him again in the autumn on Harrison Birtwistle’s The Mask of Orpheus - a project that we are both passionate about.

“The season ahead has a huge breadth and depth of work, and I continue to be excited for the next chapter for ENO.”

Daniel Kramer said: “I am proud to leave ENO after a season that has broken box office records, innovated and challenged, while delivering commercial success. We have recruited thousands of new, diverse and young audience members, and over-achieved our year box office target, delivering on our promise to provide “Opera for All” and reflect the diversity of our culture. I am particularly proud that the work we initiated outside the Coliseum has been such an equally resounding success with numerous 4 and 5 star reviews, awards and nominations.

“I am looking forward to continuing my relationship with ENO, overseeing the Orpheus series I commissioned, as well as directing Birtwistle’s The Mask of Orpheus. Stepping back will allow me to focus full-time on my 2019/20 freelance directing commitments of La boheme and Nixon in China in Europe, and War Requiem in Taiwan. Never has an experience been more fruitful, more demanding, nor more clarifying to my beliefs as an artist. I thank everyone who crossed my path at ENO and wish Stuart, Martyn, the Board and everyone at ENO the absolute best in this new chapter.”

In order to ensure a seamless transition for the rest of the 2019/20 season, and as ENO plan up to the 2021/22 season, Bob Holland in his role as Associate Artistic Director will continue to work closely with Martyn as well as with the rest of the artistic team to deliver plans beyond those that ENO are committed to already.

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Wexford Festival Opera's award-winning Il bravo to be streamed on ARTE.tv

The opera was live streamed internationally last October on RTE’s digital culture platform RTÉ.ie/Culture. This collaboration between RTÉ and ARTE (www.arte.tv/opera) to give audiences another chance to enjoy this outstanding production is part of a pan-European public-service initiative which sets out to promote European culture by offering European cultural content and events on-demand and free-of-charge to audiences worldwide on the digital platforms of partner broadcasters.

Saverio Mercadante was one of the composers to heavily inspire a then unknown young Giuseppe Verdi. Il bravo (The Assassin) is an old tale set in 16th-century Venice about a man who had long ago killed his wife in a fit of jealousy. Unjustly accused of plotting against the state, he has been forced by the Council of Ten to become their secret hired assassin.

The production ( Il bravo) features the vocal talents of Ekaterina Bakanova, Alessandro Luciano, Rubens Pelizzari, Yasko Sato, Gustavo Castillo and Simon Mechlinksi among others. The opera was directed and designed by the duo of Barbe & Doucet. Jonathan Brandani conducts the Wexford Festival Orchestra.

From the outset, Wexford Festival Opera has set itself apart with a bold and unique vision: to introduce audiences to the 'Hidden Gems' of the opera-world by staging rarely performed operas to the highest artistic quality. Named ‘Best Festival’ at the 2017 International Opera Awards, it is a vision to which the Festival has held fast for 68 years and one that continues to give Wexford Festival Opera its distinctive character.

Tickets for this year’s Festival are now on sale and can be purchased online 24/7 at www.wexfordopera.com.

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Nash Ensemble at Wigmore Hall: Focus on Sir Harrison Birtwistle

Subtlety and intangibility - an almost precarious delicacy - characterised Birtwistle’s Three Songs from The Holy Forest, settings of texts, ‘moth poems’, by the American poet Robin Blaser. Soprano Claire Booth gave the British premiere of the work at the Aldeburgh Festival in 2018, a performance that was conducted by the late Oliver Knussen to whom the final song, and indeed the whole concert, was dedicated. In this first London performance, Booth and the Nash ensemble captured the ‘real-but-not-real’ evasiveness and of both the poetry and music. Blaser’s long sequence of ‘moth poems’ began when, one day in 1962, he heard an eerie sound emanating from the baby grand piano in his apartment, as if the instrument was playing itself. Lifting the lid, he discovered the source of the sound - a moth trapped in the piano strings. The first poem is entitled ‘The Literalist’, alluding to the ‘reality’ of the event that inspired the poem:

the moth in the piano
will play on
frightened wings
brush the wired interior
of that machine

But, as the moth’s frightened wings do play on, in the poet’s words and in Birtwistle’s music, the tangible becomes diffused, then dissolved: something from the mundane world is transformed into the magical, transcending time and place. Listening to Birtwistle’s fragile, wispy, ghostly music the words of William Carlos Williams came to mind: ‘Only the imagination is real.’

As Booth’s smooth but dusky soprano interweaved with Philippa Davies’ alto flute meanderings, it was hard to tell where voice ended and instrument began. Instrumental and vocal swoops, slides, chimes and low rustlings beautifully conjured the mysterious music of an air ringing with hammered sound. The precise, sensitive economy of Stefan Asbury’s conducting and Booth’s own unwavering poise ensured that shadowy world had a strange presence, though the music scarcely rose above a half-whisper. Paradoxically, as we were invited to enter a private world, so too were we offered a sense of nature’s infinite expansiveness.

Birtwistle wrote his own texts for Songs by Myself (1984). The oxymoronic tensions of the brief first fragment, ‘O light set a flame in amber, and freeze/the rose’s pulse’, were embodied by the way percussive chimes challenged the soothing calm established initially by the strings. There is a disturbing ‘hidden’ energy in both text and music, which occasionally bursts forth, and Booth’s soprano was laser-precise as it leapt and turned. This latent force pushes the songs forward, despite the frequent imagery of coldness and listlessness, and as she sang of ‘the fretting pulse of yesterday’s tomorrow’, the open vocal sound seemed to carry into the fourth song, whose fragmented visions were evoked by the oboe’s fantastical dancing above and around a low ostinato pedal. As in the Three Songs from The Holy Forest, Birtwistle often treats the voice as another ‘instrument’ and I found myself having to listen in a new way - not seeking significance or specificity in a correspondence between word and vocal gesture, but submitting to the aural glossiness of Booth’s mellifluous vocal line which glided almost neutrally through chains of words. At other times, however, Birtwistle does ‘paint’ individual words, often supporting such gestures with strongly characterised instrumental motifs, and the lucidity of the Nash Ensemble’s playing was enchanting.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle. Photo credit: Simon Harsent.

A third vocal work by Birtwistle, similarly enigmatic and opulent, closed the programme. The Woman and the Hare (1999) sets a poem by David Harsent - the librettist of Birtwistle’s operas, Gawain, The Minotaur, The Cure and The Corridor. In mythology and folklore, the hare is a protean symbol - a trickster, witch’s familiar, messenger, goddess among other manifestations - associated with the moon, fertility, sacrifice by fire, and the very elixir of life. Harsent’s poem tells of a ritualistic chase, and is replete with natural imagery, sensuous and sensual. The text is shared between soprano and speaker, and as recitative and aria overlap, accompanied by Birtwistle’s preciously crafted instrumental graphics, which at times erupt with surprising violence, we move again into a world beyond verbal articulation. I confess that I began to find the unrelieved ‘glassiness’ of the vocal line and the sheer elusiveness of the whole almost overwhelming, my senses overload with impressions and intimations. This is music of, in equal measure, visceral power and moonshine mystery to which the listener must submit, and I found myself resisting!

Fortunately, the remainder of the programme provided the diversity I desired. Birtwistle’s Fantasia upon on all the notes (2011) and Elliot Carter’s Mosaic (2004) are gloriously intricate explorations of musical patterns and possibilities, and the Nash Ensemble opened up their inner workings to their audience conjuring a spirit of revelation and excitement in Fantasia, and painting with coloristic precision in Mosaic. Knussen’s Study for ‘Metamorphosis’ for solo bassoon (1972, rev. 2018) - preparation for a larger, uncompleted Kafka-related project - was played with terrific agility and gloriously rich tone by Ursula Leveaux. Best of all was a new work by Birtwistle, the Duet for Eight Strings for viola and cello, whose searching lines and exploratory textures and harmonies were exquisitely delineated by Lawrence Power and Adrian Brendel. In conversation with Tom Service, Birtwistle described the work as “a string quartet for two players”, placing his hands together in a steeple and indicating the intertwining of musical ideas, before brusquely brushing his arms aside, impatient with words when it is the music itself which does the talking. The players engaged in careful conversations and reflections at the start, feeling their way through the double-stopped chords, seeking out new sounds and harmonies. Then, the interplay changed character, in what Birtwistle describes as ‘“hocket” passages of rhythmically interlocking interchanges’ (the hocket being a medieval musical practice whereby a single melody is shared between two voices which alternate and fill in the gaps in each other’s lines). The gradual intensification erupted with surging drama before disappearing into a stratospheric nothingness at the close.

Claire Seymour

Nash Inventions : Focus on Sir Harrison Birtwistle

Nash Ensemble: Stefan Asbury (conductor), Claire Booth (soprano), Simone Leona Hueber (reciter), Ian Brown (piano/celeste), Benjamin Nabarro/Michael Gurevich (violin), Lawrence Power/Scott Dickinson (viola), Adrian Brendel (cello), Tom Goodman (double bass), Philippa Davies/Sarah Newbold (flute), Gareth Hulse (oboe), Richard Hosford (clarinet), Ursula Leveaux (bassoon), Lucy Wakeford (harp), Richard Benjafield (percussion).

Sir Harrison Birtwistle - Fantasia upon all the notes for flute, clarinet, harp and string quartet; Elliott Carter - Mosaic for harp, flute, oboe, clarinet, string trio and double bass; Birtwistle - Three Songs from The Holy Forest for soprano and ensemble (London premiere), Songs by Myself for soprano and ensemble, Duet for Eight Strings for viola and cello (word premiere); Oliver Knussen - Study for ‘Metamorphosis’ for solo bassoon (UK premiere); Birtwistle - The Woman and the Hare for soprano, reciter and ensemble.

Wigmore Hall, London; Friday 12^th April 2019.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Booth%20Sven%20Arnstein.jpg image_description= product=yes product_title=Nash Inventions: Focus on Sir Harrison Birtwistle product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id=Above: Claire Booth

Photo credit: Sven Arnstein

Bampton Classical Opera 2019: Stephen Storace - Bride & Gloom (Gli sposi malcontenti)

In summer 2019 Bampton Classical Opera will present Stephen Storace’s lively two-act comedy of marital manners Gli sposi malcontenti (1785), under the title Bride & Gloom. The company has already staged Storace’s other Viennese opera Gli equivoci (The Comedy of Errors) with great success in 2000-1. The production will be designed and directed by Jeremy Gray, conducted by Anthony Kraus, and will be sung in English.

A year before Gli equivoci, in 1785, Stephen was commissioned by Emperor Joseph II to produce his first opera, Gli sposi malcontenti. The commission undoubtedly stemmed from the Emperor’s infatuation with Stephen’s sister, Nancy Storace, then engaged as prima donna in the imperial Viennese Italian opera. Despite little experience as a composer, Stephen had absorbed many of the latest musical trends through his recent travels in Italy with his sister, and in Vienna through his close friendship, and perhaps study, with Mozart. Although the first performance of Sposi was hardly smooth - Nancy lost her voice during the first act and retired from the stage for several months - it nevertheless entered the repertory of the Burgtheater and was subsequently well-received in Prague, Leipzig, Vienna and Paris.

As with Salieri’s La scuola de’ gelosi and La grotta di Trofonio, both performed by Bampton in recent years, Gli sposi malcontenti was one of a web of rival operas which had their direct effect on Mozart and Da Ponte in the creation of Figaro and Così fan tutte - a frenetic quintet involving hiding on and behind a sofa and a whirlwind finale of mistaken identities in the garden suggest that Storace’s librettist Gaetano Brunati knew Beaumarchais’ then-banned play Le mariage de Figaro.

The plot concerns an unhappy and listless marriage between Casimiro and Eginia, and the unsettling presence of past lovers and would-be rivals. Brunati’s libretto is sharp and the pacing dramatic and varied. Storace’s operatic music is characterised by a keen understanding of ensemble, often piling in the voices in ever-changing textures, orchestration and tempi. It is in fact a refined and luscious Viennese concoction, more Sachertorte mit Schlag than steak-and-kidney pudding.

Gli sposi malcontenti was never performed in England in the 18^th or 19^th centuries, although Storace reused much of its music in his varied English-language operas in London. The English premiere was given by Opera Viva at King’s College in London in 1985, but it has not been performed since.

Bampton Classical Opera is delighted that Gavan Ring will be joining the company for Bride & Gloom, having previously performed for Bampton in Mozart’s La finta semplice. These will be among Gavan’s first performances as a tenor, having already enjoyed a highly successful career as a baritone, including appearances with Glyndebourne, Garsington and Wexford. The talented team of singers assembled includes both company debuts and some familiar faces.

Cast:
Eginia - Jenny Stafford (soprano)
Bettina - Caroline Kennedy (soprano)
Enrichetta - Aoife O’Sullivan(soprano)
Casimiro - Gavan Ring (tenor)
Valente - Adam Tunnicliffe (tenor)
Artidoro - Arthur Bruce (baritone)
Rosmondo - Robert Davies (baritone)

Director/Designer - Jeremy Gray
Associate Director - Alicia Frost
Conductor: Anthony Kraus
Orchestra of Bampton Classical Opera (Bampton, Westonbirt)
CHROMA (St John’s Smith Square)
Répétiteur - Hannah Quinn

Libretto: Gaetano Brunati
English translation: Brian Trowell

Performances, with free pre-performance talks:
The Deanery Garden, Bampton, Oxfordshire OX18 2LL
7.00pm, Friday 19 and Saturday 20 July

The Orangery Theatre, Westonbirt School, Gloucestershire GL8 8QG
5.00pm, Monday 26 August

St John’s Smith Square, London SW1P 3HA
7.00pm, Tuesday 17 September

www.bamptonopera.org image=http://www.operatoday.com/Bampton-Opera-logo.png

McVicar's Faust returns to the ROH

The pre-curtain announcement was not auspicious. With Diana Damrau having already withdrawn from the production, suffering from a slipped disc, her replacement Irina Lungu was now afflicted with a throat infection and fever. One can imagine the frantic telephone calls and taxi rides that ensued, as German soprano Mandy Fredrich was diverted from her planned journey to Bonn - where she was scheduled to perform in Theater Bonn’s Elektra - to London City airport, where her plane touched down just a couple of hours before curtain-up. With no time for rehearsal, Fredrich was going to have to rely on the guidance offered during the ensuing dash to Bow Street by the creative team who met her plane, and her own experience of singing the role in Stuttgart and at the Wiener Staatsoper.

We should not have worried. Fredrich negotiated the role with a calm assurance, even though David McVicar’s 2004 production - now widely travelled and here being revived for the fifth time (see 2014 review ) - throws up plenty of surprises, not least the fact that this Marguerite, having been entrusted to the care of the young, adoring Siébel by her brother Valentin, on the latter’s departure for war, finds herself working as a hostess in the Cabaret L’Enfer. One might be tempted to ask what a nice girl like this is doing in a place like that, as Mephistophélès’ acolytes scuttle about like crabs, turning sudden somersaults, during the rambunctious revelries and burlesque excess.

For McVicar, updating the action to Second Empire Paris and the Franco-Prussian war, relishes the almost schizophrenic quality of Gounod’s sumptuous opera - which cannot seem to decide if it wants to be grand opera or opera comique, as extravagant ballet collides with demi-caractère roles such as Marthe and Mehistophélès (the original production at the Théâtre Lyrique in 1859 employed spoken dialogue).

McVicar draws on the dual aspirations of its composer who found himself torn between the theatre and the church, and Charles Edwards’ designs spell out the schism boldly. Stage right we have a replica of a luxurious box from the Paris Opéra; stage left the organ loft of Notre Dame. There’s a prevailing Gothic mien but the palette switches back and forth from eerie black and grey to camp crimson and gold, as McVicar whisks us from cathedral to cabaret club, from sanctimonious ritual to saturnalian riot.

Michael Fabiano as Faust. Photo credit: Tristram Kenton.

And, it works a treat in an opera in which the protagonist has been stripped of the noble ambition bestowed on him by Goethe to ‘behold the warp and the woof of the world’s inmost fabric’, albeit by questionable means, and is obsessed not with the search for knowledge, experience and truth but solely with desire to satisfying his lustful cravings. McVicar seems to evoke the illusions which give both theatre and church their power when he has his master magician, Mephistophélès, transform the aging Faust into a debonair youth in front of a scuffed mirror in a backstage dressing-room, and tap wine from Christ’s stigmata.

In the title role, Michael Fabiano did not really convince as the decrepit scholar in Act 1, but the young seducer’s evening dress fitted him perfectly, and he conveyed the complexity of Faust’s character, his voice switching from tenorial sweetness to an almost baritonal darkness with mercurial ease, just as a natty twirl of his red cane belied his surprisingly timid courting of Marguerite. Fabiano held something in reserve in the first two Acts, but his Act 3 cavatina, ‘Salut! demeure chaste et pure’, sailed strongly and was beautifully phrased - although the extended use of the head voice at the close was surely not idiomatic, the top C disappearing into the ether rather than floating strong and true.

Fabiano’s Faust and Erwin Schrott’s Mephistophélès were a convincing duo, equally debonair and dastardly. Looking more like Don Giovanni than the Devil, Schrott stylishly donned his colourful personae - from matador to master-of-ceremonies, from elegant man-about-town to tiara-wearing transvestite - his plump, smooth bass-baritone oozing supreme nonchalance. He sailed down to the lower reaches with the ease that Mephistophélès slides through a trapdoor back to Hadean realms at the close. And, the fiend’s menace was not born of cartoonish ‘evil’ or vocal ominousness but in his very seductiveness. This Mephistophélès communed so companionably among the folk that the stark flashes of the demonic took one by surprise. No wonder that his disdainful dismissal of Valentin’s Crucifix-aping crossed swords - they made a perfect mirror for the self-admiring Satan - resulted in the collapse of the statue of Christ. Schrott’s cool indifference and cackling delight were equally chilling.

Erwin Schrott as Méphistophélès. Photo credit: Tristram Kenton.

Fredrich betrayed no hint of nerves, warming up with a pure and gentle ‘Il était un Roi de Thulé’ - sung not in her garden but beneath the garret where she would be seduced - and following it with a confident, sparkling Jewel Song. Her soprano is not the largest, but it is true and tidy. Fredrich did far more than just ‘save the show’. Had no announcement been made, few would have realised that she was literally learning the production on the hoof.

Stéphane Degout was a valiant Valentin. ‘Avant de quitter ces lieux’ was ardent and beautifully phrased, and the audience showed their appreciation at curtain call. British-Spanish mezzo-soprano Marta Fontanals-Simmons (replacing the originally announced Varduhi Abrahamyan) captured Siébel’s adolescent gaucheness and frustration, her soprano offering a welcome freshness amid the dark goings-on. Carole Wilson’s Marthe was a lusty absinth-drinking partner for Mephistophélès and Jette Parker Young Artist Germán E. Alcántara was strong as Wagner.

Conductor Dan Ettinger found the dark inkiness of the score - the clarinets and bassoons of the ROH Orchestra excelled - but retained a winning transparency, balancing dynamism with delicacy. The Chorus were on terrific form.

Gounod’s Faust was the most commonly performed repertory opera in Paris from its premiere in 1859 into the early twentieth century, seen 306 times at the Theatre-Lyrique from 1859 to 1868, and 500 times at the Paris Opera between 1869 and 1887. Just 75 years after its premiere, it notched up its 2000^th outing in Paris. But, it is ‘of its time’: part Christian melodrama, part dance-hall extravaganza, reflecting the dichotomies of its age and its bourgeois audience. McVicar’s achievement is to both accept and relish this.

Indeed, as Mephistophélès watched the Walpurgisnacht ballet descend from a parody of Delibes’ Giselle into a bacchanalian orgy of rape and ruin - his diamante glinting, his fan fluttering ever-more frantically as the degradation increased and the bodies of dead Franco-Prussian soldiers piled up - it seemed as if it was not so much the fantasies of the now opium-addicted Faust that had come to life, but his darkest nightmares. Given that the illustrations which the Irish stained-glass artist and book illustrator, Harry Clarke, supplied for a 1926 edition of Goethe’s Faust are said to have inspired the psychedelic imagery of the 1960s, perhaps one day a director might dare to stage a truly mind-blowing, mood-bending Faust? In the meantime, McVicar’s production is a fantastical and full-filling box of delights.

Claire Seymour

Gounod: Faust

Faust - Michael Fabiano, Méphistophélès - Erwin Schrott, Marguerite - Mandy Fredrich, Valentin - Stéphane Degout, Siébel - Marta Fontanals-Simmons, Marthe Schwertlein - Carole Wilson, Wagner - Germán E. Alcántara; Director - David McVicar, Conductor - Dan Ettinger, Set designs - Charles Edwards, Costume designs - Brigitte Reiffenstuel, Lighting design - Paule Constable, Choreography - Michael Keegan-Dolan, Revival Director - Bruno Ravella, Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House.

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London; Thursday 11^th April 2019.

Claire Seymour

Gounod: Faust

Faust - Michael Fabiano, Méphistophélès - Erwin Schrott, Marguerite - Mandy Fredrich, Valentin - Stéphane Degout, Siébel - Marta Fontanals-Simmons, Marthe Schwertlein - Carole Wilson, Wagner - Germán E. Alcántara; Director - David McVicar, Conductor - Dan Ettinger, Set designs - Charles Edwards, Costume designs - Brigitte Reiffenstuel, Lighting design - Paule Constable, Choreography - Michael Keegan-Dolan, Revival Director - Bruno Ravella, Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House.

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London; Thursday 11^th April 2019.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Faust%20Production%20image.jpg image_description= product=yes product_title=Gounod: Faust: Royal Opera House, Covent Garden product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id=Above: Faust at the ROH

Photo credit: Tristram Kenton

The Nibelungen-Myth. As Sketch for a Drama

The pure and noble Rhine-gold Alberich seized, divorced it from the waters' depth, and wrought there from with cunning art a ring that lent him rulership of all his race, the Nibelungen: so he became their master, forced them to work for him alone, and amassed the priceless Nibelungen-Hoard, whose greatest treasure is the Tarnhelm, conferring power to take on any shape at will, a work that Alberich compelled his own brother Reigin (Mime = Eugel) to weld for him. Thus armoured, Alberich made for mastery of the world and all that it contains.

The race of Giants, boastful, violent, ur-begotten, is troubled in its savage ease: their monstrous strength, their simple mother-wit, no longer are a match for Alberich's crafty plans of conquest: alarmed they see the Nibelungen forging wondrous weapons, that one day in the hands of human heroes shall cause the Giants' downfall.—This strife is taken advantage of by the race of Gods, now waxing to supremacy. Wotan bargains with the Giants to build the Gods a Burg from whence to rule the world in peace and order; their building finished, the Giants ask the Nibelungen-Hoard in payment. The utmost cunning of the Gods succeeds in trapping Alberich; he must ransom his life with the Hoard; the Ring alone he strives to keep:—the Gods, well knowing that in it resides the secret of all Alberich's power, extort from him the Ring as well: then he curses it; it shall be the ruin of all who possess it. Wotan delivers the Hoard to the Giants, but means to keep the Ring as warrant of his sovereignty: the Giants [302] defy him, and Wotan yields to the counsel of the three Fates (Norns), who warn him of the downfall of the Gods themselves.

Now the Giants have the Hoard and Ring safe-kept by a monstrous Worm in the Gnita- (Neid-) Haide [the Grove of Grudge]. Through the Ring the Nibelungs remain in thraldom, Alberich and all. But the Giants do not understand to use their might; their dullard minds are satisfied with having bound the Nibelungen. So the Worm lies on the Hoard since untold ages, in inert dreadfulness: before the lustre of the new race of Gods the Giants' race fades down and stiffens into impotence; wretched and tricksy, the Nibelungen go their way of fruitless labour. Alberich broods without cease on the means of gaining back the Ring.

In high emprise the Gods have planned the world, bound down the elements by prudent laws, and devoted themselves to most careful nurture of the Human race. Their strength stands over all. Yet the peace by which they have arrived at mastery does not repose on reconcilement: by violence and cunning was it wrought. The object of their higher ordering of the world is moral consciousness: but the wrong they fight attaches to themselves. From the depths of Nibelheim the conscience of their guilt cries up to them: for the bondage of the Nibelungen is not broken; merely the lordship has been reft from Alberich, and not for any higher end, but the soul, the freedom of the Nibelungen lies buried uselessly beneath the belly of an idle Worm: Alberich thus has justice in his plaints against the Gods. Wotan himself, however, cannot undo the wrong without committing yet another: only a free Will, independent of the Gods themselves, and able to assume and expiate itself the burden of all guilt, can loose the spell; and in Man the Gods perceive the faculty of such free-will. In Man they therefore seek to plant their own divinity, to raise his strength so high that, in full knowledge of that strength, he may rid him of the Gods' protection, to do of his free will what his own mind inspires. [303] So the Gods bring up Man for this high destiny, to be the canceller of their own guilt; and their aim would be attained even if in this human creation they should perforce annul themselves, that is, must part with their immediate influence through freedom of man's conscience. Stout human races, fruited by the seed divine, already flourish: in strife and fight they steel their strength; Wotan's Wish-maids shelter them as Shield-maids, as Walküren lead the slain-in-fight to Walhall, where the heroes live again a glorious life of jousts in Wotan's company. But not yet is the rightful hero born, in whom his self-reliant strength shall reach full consciousness, enabling him with the free-willed penalty of death before his eyes to call his boldest deed his own. In the race of the Wälsungen this hero at last shall come to birth: a barren union is fertilised by Wotan through one of Holda's apples, which he gives the wedded pair to eat: twins, Siegmund and Sieglinde (brother and sister), spring from the marriage. Siegmund takes a wife, Sieglinde weds a man (Hunding); but both their marriages prove sterile: to beget a genuine Wälsung, brother and sister wed each other. Hunding, Sieglinde's husband, learns of the crime, casts off his wife, and goes out to fight with Siegmund. Brünnhild, the Walküre, shields Siegmund counter to Wotan's commands, who had doomed him to fall in expiation of the crime; already Siegmund, under Brünnhild's shield, is drawing sword for the death-blow at Hunding—the sword that Wotan himself once had given him—when the god receives the blow upon his spear, which breaks the weapon in two pieces. Siegmund falls. Brünnhild is punished by Wotan for her disobedience: he strikes her from the roll of the Walküren, and banishes her to a rock, where the divine virgin is to wed the man who finds and wakes her from the sleep in which Wotan plunges her; she pleads for mercy, that Wotan will ring the rock with terrors of fire, and so ensure that none save the bravest of heroes may win her.—After long gestation the outcast Sieglinde gives birth in the forest to [304] Siegfried (he who brings Peace through Victory): Reigin (Mime), Alberich's brother, upon hearing her cries, has issued from a cleft and aided her: after the travail Sieglinde dies, first telling Reigin of her fate and committing the babe to his care. Reigin brings up Siegfried, teaches him smithery, and brings him the two pieces of the broken sword, from which, under Mime's directions, Siegfried forges the sword Balmung. Then Mime prompts the lad to slay the Worm, in proof of his gratitude. Siegfried first wishes to avenge his father's murder: he fares out, falls upon Hunding, and kills him: only thereafter does he execute the wish of Mime, attacks and slays the Giant-worm. His fingers burning from the Worm's hot blood, he puts them to his mouth to cool them; involuntarily he tastes the blood, and understands at once the language of the woodbirds singing round him. They praise Siegfried for his glorious deed, direct him to the Nibelungenhoard in the cave of the Worm, and warn him against Mime, who has merely used him as an instrument to gain the Hoard, and therefore seeks his life. Siegfried thereon slays Mime, and takes the Ring and Tarnhelm from the Hoard: he hears the birds again, who counsel him to win the crown of women, Brünnhild. So Siegfried sets forth, reaches Brünnhild's mountain, pierces the billowing flames, and wakes her; in Siegfried she joyfully acclaims the highest hero of the Wälsung-stem, and gives herself to him: he marries her with Alberich's ring, which he places on her finger. When the longing spurs him to new deeds, she gives him lessons in her secret lore, warns him of the dangers of deceit and treachery: they swear each other vows, and Siegfried speeds forth.

A second hero-stem, sprung likewise from the Gods, is that of the Gibichungen on the Rhine: there now bloom Gunther and Gudrun, his sister. Their mother, Grimhild, was once overpowered by Alberich, and bore him an unlawful son, Hagen. As the hopes and wishes of the Gods repose on Siegfried, so Alberich sets his hope of gaining back the Ring on his hero-offspring Hagen. Hagen is [305] sallow, glum and serious; his features are prematurely hardened; he looks older than he is. Already in his childhood Alberich had taught him mystic lore and knowledge of his father's fate, inciting him to struggle for the Ring: he is strong and masterful; yet to Alberich he seems not strong enough to slay the Giant-worm. Since Alberich has lost his power, he could not stop his brother Mime when the latter sought to gain the Hoard through Siegfried: but Hagen shall compass Siegfried's ruin, and win the Ring from his dead body. Toward Gunther and Gudrun Hagen is reticent,—they fear him, but prize his foresight and experience: the secret of some marvellous descent of Hagen's, and that he is not his lawful brother, is known to Gunther: he calls him once an Elf-son.

Gunther is being apprised by Hagen that Brünnhild is the woman most worth desire, and excited to long for her possession, when Siegfried speeds along the Rhine to the seat of the Gibichungs. Gudrun, inflamed to love by the praises he has showered on Siegfried, at Hagen's bidding welcomes Siegfried with a drink prepared by Hagen's art, of such potence that it makes Siegfried forget his adventure with Brünnhild and marriage to her. Siegfried desires Gudrun for wife: Gunther consents, on condition that he helps him win Brünnhild. Siegfried agrees: they strike blood-brothership and swear each other oaths, from which Hagen holds aloof.—Siegfried and Gunther set out, and arrive at Brünnhild's rocky fastness: Gunther remains behind in the boat; Siegfried for the first and only time exerts his power as Ruler of the Nibelungen, by putting on the Tarnhelm and thereby taking Gunther's form and look; thus masked, he passes through the flames to Brünnhild. Already robbed by Siegfried of her maidhood, she has lost alike her superhuman strength, and all her runecraft has she made away to Siegfried—who does not use it; she is powerless as any mortal woman, and can only offer lame resistance to the new, audacious wooer; he tears from her the Ring—by which she is now to be wedded to Gunther—, and forces her into the cavern, [306] where he sleeps the night with her, though to her astonishment he lays his sword between them. On the morrow he brings her to the boat, where he lets the real Gunther take his place unnoticed by her side, and transports himself in a trice to the Gibichenburg through power of the Tarnhelm. Gunther reaches his home along the Rhine, with Brünnhild following him in downcast silence: Siegfried, at Gudrun's side, and Hagen receive the voyagers.—Brünnhild is aghast when she beholds Siegfried as Gudrun's husband: his cold civility to her amazes her; as he motions her back to Gunther, she recognises the Ring on his finger: she suspects the imposture played upon her, and demands the ring, for it belongs not to him, but to Gunther who received it from her: he refuses it. She bids Gunther claim the ring from Siegfried: Guimther is confused, and hesitates. Brünnhild: So it was Siegfried that had the ring from her? Siegfried, recognising the Ring: "From no woman I had it; my right arm won it from the Giant-worm; through it am I the Nibehungen's lord, and to none will I cede its might." Hagen steps between them, and asks Brünnhild if she is certain about the Ring? If it be hers, then Siegfried gained it by deceit, and it can belong to no one but her husband, Gunther. Brünnhild loudly denounces the trick played on her; the most dreadful thirst for vengeance upon Siegfried fills her. She cries to Gunther that he has been duped by Siegfried: "Not to thee—to this man am I wed; he won my favour."—Siegfried charges her with shamelessness: Faithful had he been to his blood-brothership,—his sword he laid between Brünnhilde and himself:—he calls on her to bear him witness.—Purposely, and thinking only of his ruin, she will not understand him.—The clansmen and Gudrun conjure Siegfried to clear himself of the accusation, if he can. Siegfried swears solemn oaths in confirmation of his word. Brünnhild taxes him with perjury: All the oaths he swore to her and Gunther, has he broken: now he forswears himself, to lend corroboration to a lie. Everyone is in the utmost commotion. Siegfried calls Gunther to [307] stop his wife from shamefully slandering her own and husband's honour: he withdraws with Gudrun to the inner hall.—Gunther, in deepest shame and terrible dejection, has seated himself at the side, with hidden face: Brünnhild, racked by the horrors of an inner storm, is approached by Hagen. He offers himself as venger of her honour: she mocks him, as powerless to cope with Siegfried: One look from his glittering eye, which shone upon her even through that mask, would scatter Hagen's courage. Hagen: He well knows Siegfried's awful strength, but she will tell him how he may be vanquished? So she who once had hallowed Siegfried, and armed him by mysterious spells against all wounding, now counsels Hagen to attack him from behind; for, knowing that the hero ne'er would turn his back upon the foe, she had left it from the blessing.—Gunther must be made a party to the plot. They call upon him to avenge his honour: Brünnhild covers him with reproaches for his cowardice and trickery; Gunther admits his fault, and the necessity of ending his shame by Siegfried's death; but he shrinks from committing a breach of blood-brotherhood. Brünnhild bitterly taunts him: What crimes have not been wreaked on her? Hagen inflames him by the prospect of gaining the Nibelung's Ring, which Siegfried certainly will never part with until death. Gunther consents; Hagen proposes a hunt for the morrow, when Siegfried shall be set upon, and perhaps his murder even concealed from Gudrun; for Gunther was concerned for her sake: Brünnhilde's lust-of-vengeance is sharpened by her jealousy of Gudrun. So Siegfried's murder is decided by the three.—Siegfried and Gudrun, festally attired, appear in the hall, and bid them to the sacrificial rites and wedding ceremony. The conspirators feigningly obey: Siegfried and Gudrun rejoice at the show of peace restored.

Next morning Siegfried strays into a lonely gully by the Rhine, in pursuit of quarry. Three mermaids dart up from the stream: they are soothsaying Daughters of the waters' bed, whence Alberich once had snatched the gleaming [308] Rhine-gold to smite from it the fateful Ring: the curse and power of that Ring would be destroyed, were it regiven to the waters, and thus resolved into its pure original element. The Daughters hanker for the Ring, and beg it of Siegfried, who refuses it. (Guiltless, he has taken the guilt of the Gods upon him, and atones their wrong through his defiance, his self-dependence.) They prophesy evil, and tell him of the curse attaching to the ring: Let him cast it in the river, or he must die to-day. Siegfried: "Ye glibtongued women shall not cheat me of my might: the curse and your threats I count not worth a hair. What my courage bids me, is my being's law; and what I do of mine own mind, so is it set for me to do: call ye this curse or blessing, it I obey and strive not counter to my strength." The three Daughters: "Wouldst thou outvie the Gods?" Siegfried: "Shew me the chance of mastering the Gods, and I must work my main to vanquish them. I know three wiser women than you three; they wot where once the Gods will strive in bitter fearing. Well for the Gods, if they take heed that then I battle with them. So laugh I at your threats: the ring stays mine, and thus I cast my life behind me." (He lifts a clod of earth, and hurls it backwards over his head.)—The Daughters scoff at Siegfried, who weens himself as strong and wise as he is blind and bond-slave. "Oaths has he broken, and knows it not: a boon far higher than the Ring he's lost, and knows it not: runes and spells were taught to him, and he's forgot them. Fare thee well, Siegfried! A lordly wife we know; e'en to-day will she possess the Ring, when thou art slaughtered. To her! She'll lend us better hearing."—Siegfried, laughing, gazes after them as they move away singing. He shouts: "To Gudrun were I not true, one of you three had ensnared me!" He hears his hunting-comrades drawing nearer, and winds his horn: the huntsmen—Gunther and Hagen at their head—assemble round Siegfried. The midday meal is eaten: Siegfried, in the highest spirits, mocks at his own unfruitful chase: But water-game had come his way, for whose capture he was [309] not equipped, alack! or he'd have brought his comrades three wild water-birds that told him he must die to-day. Hagen takes up the jest, as they drink: Does he really know the song and speech of birds, then?—Gunther is sad and silent Siegfried seeks to enliven him, and sings him songs about his youth: his adventure with Mime, the slaying of the Worm, and how he came to understand bird-language. The train of recollection brings him back the counsel of the birds to seek Brünnhilde, who was fated for him; how he stormed the flaming rock and wakened Brünnhild. Remembrance rises more and more distinct. Two ravens suddenly fly past his head. Hagen interrupts him: "What do these ravens tell thee?" Siegfried springs to his feet. Hagen: "I rede them; they haste to herald thee to Wotan." He hurls his spear at Siegfried's back. Gunther, guessing from Siegfried's tale the true connection of the inexplicable scene with Brünnhilde, and suddenly divining Siegfried's innocence, had thrown himself on Hagen's arm to rescue Siegfried, but without being able to stay the blow. Siegfried raises his shield, to crush Hagen with it; his strength fails him, and he falls of a heap. Hagen has departed; Gunther and the clansmen stand round Siegfried, in sympathetic awe; he lifts his shining eyes once more: "Brünnhild, Brünnhild! Radiant child of Wotan! How dazzling bright I see thee nearing me! With holy smile thou saddlest thy horse, that paces through the air dew-dripping: to me thou steer'st its course; here is there Lot to choose (Wal zu küren)! Happy me thou chos'st for husband, now lead me to Walhall, that in honour of all heroes I may drink All-father's mead, pledged me by thee, thou shining Wish-maid! Brünnhild, Brünnhild! Greeting!" He dies. The men uplift the corpse upon his shield, and solemnly bear it over the rocky heights, Gunther in front.

In the Hall of the Gibichungs, whose forecourt extends at the back to the bank of the Rhine, the corpse is set down: Hagen has called out Gudrun; with strident tones he tells her that a savage boar had gored her husband.—Gudrun [310] falls horrified on Siegfried's body: she rates her brother with the murder; Gunther points to Hagen: He was the savage boar, the murderer of Siegfried. Hagen: "So be it; an I have slain him, whom no other dared to, whatso was his is my fair booty. The ring is mine!" Gunther confronts him: "Shameless Elf-son, the ring is mine, assigned to me by Brünnhild: ye all, ye heard it."—Hagen and Gunther fight: Gunther falls. Hagen tries to wrench the Ring from the body,—it lifts its hand aloft in menace; Hagen staggers back, aghast; Gudrun cries aloud in her sorrow;—then Brünnhild enters solemnly: "Cease your laments, your idle rage! Here stands his wife, whom ye all betrayed. My right I claim, for what must be is done!"—Gudrun: "Ah, wicked one! 'Twas thou who brought us ruin." Brünnhild: "Poor soul, have peace! Wert but his wanton: his wife am I, to whom he swore or e'er he saw thee." Gudrun: "Woe's me! Accursed Hagen, what badest thou me, with the drink that filched her husband to me? For now I know that only through the drink did he forget Brünnhilde." Brünnhild: "O he was pure! Ne'er oaths were more loyally held, than by him. No, Hagen has not slain him; for Wotan has he marked him out, to whom I thus conduct him. And I, too, have atoned; pure and free am I: for he, the glorious one alone, o'erpowered me." She directs a pile of logs to be erected on the shore, to burn Siegfried's corpse to ashes: no horse, no vassal shall be sacrificed with him; she alone will give her body in his honour to the Gods. First she takes possession of her heritage; the Tarnhelm shall be burnt with her: the Ring she puts upon her finger. "Thou froward hero, how thou held'st me banned! All my rune-lore I bewrayed to thee, a mortal, and so went widowed of my wisdom; thou usedst it not, thou trustedst in thyself alone: but now that thou must yield it up through death, my knowledge comes to me again, and this Ring's runes I rede. The ur-law's runes, too, know I now, the Norns' old saying! Hear then, ye mighty Gods, your guilt is quit: thank him, the hero, who took your guilt upon him! To mine own hand he gave [311] to end his work: loosed be the Nibelungs' thraldom, the Ring no more shall bind them. Not Alberich shall receive it; no more shall he enslave you, but he himself be free as ye. For to you I make this Ring away, wise sisters of the waters' deep; the fire that burns me, let it cleanse the evil toy; and ye shall melt and keep it harmless, the Rhinegold robbed from you to weld to ill and bondage. One only shall rule, All-father thou in thy glory! As pledge of thine eternal might, this man I bring thee: good welcome give him; he is worth it!"—Midst solemn chants Brünnhilde mounts the pyre to Siegfried's body. Gudrun, broken down with grief, remains bowed over the corpse of Gunther in the foreground. The flames meet across Brünnhild and Siegfried:—suddenly a dazzling light is seen: above the margin of a leaden cloud the light streams up, shewing Brünnhild, armed as Walküre on horse, leading Siegfried by the hand from hence. At like time the waters of the Rhine invade the entrance to the Hall: on their waves the three Water-maids bear away the Ring and Helmet. Hagen dashes after them, to snatch the treasure, as if demented,—the Daughters seize and drag him with them to the deep.

Richard Wagner (1848), as translated by William Ashton Ellis [Richard Wagner's Prose Works, Volume VII, 301–311 (1898)]

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Transylvanian-born mezzo-soprano Eszter Balogh wins the 2019 Handel Singing Competition

Eszter Balogh won first prize - supported by The Carne Trust - winning £5000, and the second prize of £2000, supported by London Handel Festival audiences, was awarded to countertenor Patrick Terry. The Audience Prize, supported by Angela Hyde-Courtney, was presented to William Thomas, and the Selma D and Leon Fishbach Memorial Awards went to William Thomas and David de Winter. The adjudicators for this year were Catherine Denley, Michael George, Rosemary Joshua and Ian Partridge, who were chaired by Jane Glover. The four finalists presented all-Handel programmes accompanied by the London Handel Orchestra, conducted by Laurence Cummings.

In addition to the cash prizes, the Competition supports the continuing professional development of the Finalists by offering them guaranteed performance opportunities. All four of the 2019 Finalists will be invited to give a lunchtime recital in the 2020 London Handel Festival in addition to a showcase concert with Laurence Cummings on 19 September this year. As the winner, Eszter Balogh will be invited to give a recital for the City Music Society in October, and also to be a soloist in the Messiah for the Huddersfield Choral Society in December with Jane Glover and the Orchestra of Opera North. Eszter Balogh and Patrick Terry, as first and second prize winners, will also be invited to give a lunchtime recital in the Halle Handel Festival in Germany next year. This year’s London Handel Festival features over 20 past Finalists.

Eszter Balogh. Photo credit: Chris Christodoulou.

Samir Savant , Festival Director, says: "Congratulations to both Eszter and Patrick for winning the first and second prizes in the Handel Singing Competition, a wonderful achievement. I have been impressed with the very high standard this year, and I look forward to working with all four Finalists in future years."

Laurence Cummings , Musical Director, says: “ We had a fantastic Final on Saturday. Four remarkable singers with phenomenal voices and such dramatic range. Bravo to everyone! I am thrilled that we will get to work with Ezster, Patrick, William and David again.”

The Handel Singing Competition launched in 2002 and has since become an integral part of the London Handel Festival. The competition this year received over 170 applications from 25 countries, including Argentina, Australia, Israel and the US. Previous finalists include Iestyn Davies, Lucy Crowe, Grace Davidson, Tim Mead, Christopher Ainslie, Rupert Charlesworth and Ruby Hughes. The Handel Singing Competition is generously sponsored by Prof. Schumann GmbH.

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English National Opera announces 2019/20 Season

The season celebrates the rise of the feminine, following last season’s focus on the notion of the patriarch and toxic masculinity. Following aspects of powerful women and the men they inspire, the season explores how opera can move beyond its traditional status as a place for doomed and punished women. For the first time more than half of the new productions are directed by women.

Also for the first time, a single story will form the basis for four of the new productions. The autumn of 2019 will see four different versions of the Orpheus myth as envisioned by very different composers and very different theatrical styles, showing how a single theme of loss, mourning and music can be turned by opera into a kaleidoscope of ideas and responses. Designer Lizzie Clachan provides the linking thread, with her magical, transforming set providing the basis for all four productions.

Artistic Director of ENO Daniel Kramer said: “I am delighted to present ENO’s 2019/20 artistic season, the second that Music Director Martyn Brabbins and I have curated together. The ten operas we are going to present on our main stage will touch on something very relevant today: the rise of the feminine in the world around us and within ourselves. What is a healthy balance of feminine and masculine energy in our society, our systems and, above all else, within ourselves? If last season questioned what aspects of ourselves and our society we might choose to lay to rest, this season asks what aspects we choose to carry forward together.

Our very exciting Orpheus project shows that a single idea can be imparted in a vast array of different forms. It is difficult to imagine a quartet of directors more different in background than myself, Netia, Wayne and Emma, but we will all be looking at this one tale of Orpheus and his quest to reclaim that which he lost. It’s one of the most universal stories there is and I hope audiences will come to see each one of the four to find something new in each opera, seeing and hearing how these master composers, reflecting our own lives, all share in the human struggle to hold onto that which we hold dear - love.

It is so important that ENO continues to push the boundaries of what is possible on the operatic stage and at the same time keep bringing in new audiences who may not have considered us before. Whether you’re a theatre-lover or a Philip Glass fan, a dance addict or maybe just want a rollicking night out, there’s going to be something for everybody.”

ENO Music Director Martyn Brabbins said: “Our musical forces are as impressive as they ever have been: it is excellent to see the Chorus be nominated for another Olivier Award only three years after winning their last one with the Orchestra. It is extremely important to me that we continue to nurture the talents we have: our Mackerras Fellow Valentina Peleggi will be conducting her first full run with Carmen this season as well as performances of Orpheus in the Underworld alongside my predecessor Sian Edwards. Our brilliant Harewood Artists will sing in no fewer than 23 roles this season, and I am delighted that Nardus Williams and Idunnu Münch will join the programme, singing in Orpheus in the Underworld, Carmen and Rusalka.

I myself will be doing something both familiar, revisiting my friend Harrison Birtwistle’s The Mask of Orpheus , which is one of ENO’s great gifts to the world, and stretching my legs a bit with a Puccini. As ever, the company remains extraordinarily diverse in what it can offer.”

Chief Executive Stuart Murphy said: “ Hopefully people can see that ENO has its mojo back, once again curating seasons that are as eclectic as they are risk taking, against a backdrop of financial stability and behind-the-scenes focus. This forthcoming season feels just what ENO should be doing, so huge thanks to Daniel, Martyn and their artistic and musical teams for all their hard work and flair in putting it together.

Embracing new audiences is key to our future, so we are delighted that our initial short-run experiment to give free tickets to Under 18’s in the balcony on Saturdays was met with such enthusiasm, allowing us to give away over 1000 tickets to young people. In 19/20 we will make this initiative a permanent fixture throughout the Coliseum part of our ENO season, and will dramatically increase access by extending Free Tickets for Under 18’s to the balcony for every Friday performance and every Opening Night. We will also reduce our lowest price ticket to ten pounds, with lots of “Tickets for a Tenner” available for every performance, and have kept our top price ticket frozen at £125 where it has stayed for the past four years.

We will be offering more choice at ENO, so will have one “Surtitle Free” night per opera, as well as an “Early Night” performance per opera that will never finish later than 10pm. This is in addition to our first ever “Relaxed Performance”, so that people with learning disabilities and physical impairments can come and see a production, as well as more signed performances than last season.

My first year at ENO has been busy but extremely rewarding. It’s a hugely inspiring place to work, and I want to thank everyone in the organisation for pulling together behind our singular vision to change lives through opera”

New productions at the London Coliseum

Orpheus and Eurydice
The Orpheus series and the 2019/20 Season begins with Wayne McGregor’s dance-infused account of Gluck’s great 18^th- century masterpiece, in Hector Berlioz’s version. The bridging point between the baroque and the new vivid dramatic works of the classical period, Gluck’s extraordinary melodies helped secure the Orpheus myth as one of the cornerstones of opera for centuries to come.

Double Olivier Award-winner Wayne McGregor CBE makes his ENO directorial debut following one of the most outstanding careers in contemporary international dance, working with collaborators from The White Stripes to The Royal Ballet, where he is Resident Choreographer. His previous work includes choreographing Salome for ENO in 2005. His cutting-edge multi-disciplinary work has stood testament to his ceaseless curiosity and innovation, with this production an exploration of grief and loss in the human body. 16 dancers from Company Wayne McGregor join the three singers.

Legend of British opera Dame Sarah Connolly returns to ENO for the first time since 2016’s Lulu to sing her first Orpheus in London, while ENO favourite Sarah Tynan sings Eurydice. ENO Harewood Artist Soraya Mafi sings Love, continuing her career as one of Britain’s most exciting young sopranos. Harry Bicket, Artistic Director of the English Concert and Music Director of Santa Fe Opera, conducts, returning to where he began his career on the ENO music staff. Noted for his classical and baroque work, he brings a fine period sensibility to this piece. Lizzie Clachan, one of UK theatre’s most acclaimed designers, provides the transformative setsfor all four Orpheus productions. Costume design is by fashion designer Louise Gray, and lighting design is by Jon Clark.

Orpheus in the Underworld
Former Globe Theatre Artistic Director Emma Rice makes her ENO directorial debut with a raucous, joyful production of Offenbach’s great operetta, often considered the first of its kind. Known for her wildly popular direction of Kneehigh Theatre, Rice is one of the most distinctive theatrical practitioners at work today, combining wit, humanity and romance with a childlike wonder. She is the Artistic Director of the new company Wise Children.

A multi-talented ensemble cast portray the figures of Greek mythology as they are mercilessly satirised in this comic take on the tragic myth. Ed Lyon and Claudia Boyle sing Orpheus and Eurydice, joined by one of the UK’s most distinguished baritones Sir Willard White as Jupiter. Established ENO stars Alan Oke and Mary Bevan sing John Styx and Diana, while one of the first openly transgender opera singers, female baritone Lucia Lucas, sings Public Opinion. Harewood Artists Idunnu Münch and Alex Otterburn sing Pluto and Venus. Sian Edwards, former ENO Music Director, returns to conduct, while Mackerras Fellow Valentina Peleggi conducts three performances. Multi-award winning designer Lez Brotherston, famed for his work on Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake, provides the costumes. The new English adaptation of the French original text is by Rice and Tom Morris, who collaborated to adapt Kneehigh hits like Nights at the Circus and A Matter of Life and Death.

The Mask of Orpheus
‘The finest British opera of the last half-century’ (The Guardian) receives only its second major staging, having premiered at ENO in 1986. Harrison Birtwistle’s masterpiece is performed to mark his 85^th birthday, with its unique orchestra led by ENO Music Director Martyn Brabbins. Noted for his definitive recording of the piece with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, this forms something of a signature piece for this contemporary music specialist.

Joining him in their third collaboration after War Requiem and Jack the Ripper: The Women of Whitechapel is ENO Artistic Director Daniel Kramer. Kramer returns to the composer who launched his career with ENO a decade ago: his Punch and Judy in 2008 won the South Bank Show Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera, and this production promises to continue that ‘total theatre’ approach to Birtwistle’s work. The rich, complex structure and enormously varied music of joy and grief will be accompanied by the costume designs of ‘England’s most eccentric dresser’ (Vogue) Daniel Lismore. After many exhibitions internationally of his work, this is his first opera.

Peter Hoare sings Orpheus the Man while Daniel Norman sings Orpheus the Myth; Marta Fontanals-Simmons makes her ENO debut as Eurydice the Woman while ENO audience favourite Susan Bickley sings Eurydice the Myth. The cast of contemporary music specialists also includes James Cleverton and Robert Hayward.

Orphée
ENO’s record as the ‘House of Glass’ receives a new addition with its first performance of Philip Glass’s Orphée. Based on Jean Cocteau’s cinematic retelling of the Orpheus myth, Netia Jones, ‘the most imaginative director of opera working in Britain today’ (The Observer) will provide one of the most extraordinary multi-media experiences available on the opera stage. Some of Glass’s most melodic music helps tell this timeless setting of the Orpheus myth as a dreamlike meditation on art and the artist. A show that fuses cinema and opera, projected extracts of Cocteau’s film and a set in constant motion will accompany the live action. This is in the ENO tradition of staging Glass’s operas as all-encompassing theatrical extravaganzas in the vein of Akhnaten and Satyagraha.

Sarah Tynan sings Eurydice in her second take on the role in the season. Jennifer France, ‘living jewel in opera’s crown’ (WhatsOnStage) and winner of the 2018 Emerging Talent Award from the Critics Circle, makes her ENO debut as the Princess. Nicholas Lester sings his first leading role with the company as Orphée, while former ENO Harewood Artists Nicky Spence and Anthony Gregory sing Heurtebise and Cégeste. Contemporary specialist Geoffrey Paterson conducts in his ENO debut.

Luisa Miller
Czech director Barbora Horáková Joly makes her UK directorial debut with a new production of Verdi’s great familial tragedy. Winner of the 2018 International Opera Award for Best Newcomer, her contemporary staging will focus on the psychological aspects of the piece, with an examination of how parental expectations can pass on pain across generations. This marks the first time the company has staged this central work of Verdi’s middle period.

In the title role former ENO Harewood Artist Elizabeth Llewellyn returns to the London Coliseum stage, where she debuted as Mimi in La bohème in 2010. She has since sung leading roles across Europe. Leading mezzo-soprano Christine Rice sings Federica in her first role with ENO since 2016’s Elvira in Don Giovanni. Olafur Sigurdarson makes his ENO debut as Miller while James Creswell sings Count Walter. Harewood Artist Nadine Benjamin, acclaimed for her roles in the previous season’s Porgy and Bess and La bohème, sings Laura. Alexander Joel also returns from a successful run of La bohème in the 2018/19 season to conduct.

The Marriage of Figaro
One of London’s most daring directors, Joe Hill-Gibbins makes his ENO main stage debut with an electrically charged new production of Mozart’s great comedy. Acclaimed for his uncompromising and surprising takes on classics like Richard II at the Almeida Theatre, he returns to opera after a much-praised 2017 production of Turnage’s Greek at the Edinburgh Festival. Previously for ENO he directed Powder Her Face in 2014.

Multi-award winning former Harewood Artist Sophie Bevan sings her first Countess in an anticipated role debut, while winner of the 2017 Young Singer International Opera Award Louise Alder sings Susanna in her ENO debut. Johnathan McCullough sings the Count and Harewood Artist Božidar Smiljanić marks his third role with the company as Figaro. Hanna Hipp sings Cherubino and Susan Bickley sings Marcellina, while ENO legend Andrew Shore brings his finest buffo to sing Bartolo. Chief Conductor of the Munich Symphony Orchestra Kevin John Edusei makes his ENO debut in the pit. After successful Mozartian conducting at the Komische Oper Berlin, this marks his UK operatic debut. He has previosuly performed at the Proms conducting the all-BAME Chineke! Orchestra.

Rusalka
Dvořák's greatest opera receives its first new ENO staging in 20 years in German director Tatjana Gürbaca’s company debut. Touching on themes of alienation and the separation between worlds, this profoundly humanistic fairy tale gives us a water nymph in many ways more human than the people she aspires to be among.

Corinne Winters makes her role debut as Rusalka. Having shot to fame with her ‘tour de force’ (Bachtrack) Violetta in ENO’s La traviata in 2013, she has since garnered an impressive international following. She is joined by David Butt Philip as the Prince. Jointly nominated for an Olivier Award for his performance in 2018’s War Requiem, his is one of the fastest-rising careers of any tenor in the UK. Endlessly versatile mezzo-soprano Patricia Bardon sings Ježibaba. Noted for her performances in Partenope and The Gospel According to the Other Mary for ENO, she will also sing the role at Glyndebourne in summer 2019. Claire Rutter sings the Foreign Princess and David Soar sings the Water Spirit. Dutch conductor Antony Hermus, Principal Guest Conductor of the North Netherlands Orchestra, makes his ENO debut.

Revivals

Three much-loved productions return for revivals in the 2019/20 season.

The Mikado , in Jonathan Miller’s classic seaside town farce, returns having run for more than thirty years at the London Coliseum. The Marx Brothers-inspired Gilbert and Sullivan tomfoolery continues to delight audiences young and old. Harewood Artist Elgan Llŷr Thomas, ‘the latest discovery in a golden age of British tenors’ (Bachtrack) sings Nanki-Poo in his first main stage lead role for the company after twice singing Johnny Inkslinger in Paul Bunyan. Fellow Harewood Artist Soraya Mafi sings Yum-Yum, following her 2017 Mabel in The Pirates of Penzance. Richard Suart once again sings Ko-Ko and Andrew Shore sings Pooh-Bah, with Sir John Tomlinson appearing as the Mikado in his fiftieth production with the company. Ben McAteer and Yvonne Howard, beloved in 2018’s Iolanthe , also star. The opening night will be a Gala performance in aid of the new Sir John Tomlinson Fellowship.

Calixto Bieito’s sensual production of Carmen set in the dying days of Franco’s Spain has been admired across Europe and now returns to ENO, with Justina Gringytė reprising her title role from 2015: (‘superb’ - The Guardian). Sean Panikkar makes his ENO debut as Don Jose, as does new Harewood Artist Nardus Williams as Micaëla, while in the supporting cast are many ENO returning faces including Ashley Riches, Samantha Price, Matthew Durkan, Keel Watson, Elgan Lŷr Thomas and Alex Otterburn. Mackerras Fellow Valentina Peleggi conducts her first full set of Coliseum performances.

Madam Butterfly sees the return of Anthony Minghella’s ‘breathtakingly beautiful’ ( WhatsOnStage) 2006 staging, winner of that year’s Olivier Award for Best New Opera Production. Now in its seventh revival, the extraordinary puppetry of Blind Summit and the sumptuous visuals promise once again to entrance audiences along with Puccini’s heartbreaking score. Natalya Romaniw sings the lead role after ‘touching the heights’ ( The Guardian) with her Mimì in La bohème in 2018. Dimitri Pittas sings Pinkerton and Roderick Williams sings Sharpless following his Olivier nomination for War Requiem with ENO. Music Director Martyn Brabbins conducts.

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A superb Semele from the English Concert at the Barbican Hall

Enamoured of Jupiter, she craves to transcend her home among mere mortal and forge new heavenly alliances. Held back by practicalities, she refuses to compromise, preferring to push those close to her to the brink. When her wish is finally granted, the result is apocalyptic: she is consumed by thunderbolts, brusquely despatched to a galactic hinterland, and instantly regrets her own self-serving naivety and foolishness.

This tale of leaving, loving and losing may sound all too familiar, given the current political context. Certainly, William Congreve’s libretto - which was originally intended for a production which never took place, in the Queen’s Theatre some forty years previously, with music by John Eccles - reflected contemporary political anxieties, not least in its portrayal of a failed royal marriage. By the time an anonymous author adapted Congreve’s text for Handel’s 1743 Semele the political context had changed, but the rival London theatres were engaged in a political cut-and-thrust of their own, and Handel had already begun to look to the English oratorio as a form that might save his own financial bacon.

Semele was originally heard in a concert performance at Covent Garden in February 1744, presented ‘after the manner of an oratorio’. But, that didn’t fool anyone: Charles Jennens, librettist of Messiah among other Handel oratorios described Semele as a ‘bawdy opera’ while John Mainwaring, Handel’s first biographer, wrote in 1760 that ‘Semele is an English opera but called an oratorio, and performed as such’.

Concert, semi-staged, staged … none of these terms seem apt for this performance by The English Concert under their director Harry Bicket at the Barbican Hall. It was quite a simply an evening of delightfully and unwaveringly engaging theatre and a terrific musical treat. Un-costumed, and with gesture and movement left to the singers’ discretion, its dramatic impact derived solely from what we heard - from the superb team of soloists, instrumentalists and chorus - and from the manner of delivery as guided by Bicket and entrusted to the soloists’ own persuasive instincts, with several of the cast singing from memory and others almost entirely off-score.

And what a team of soloists it was: a genuine cross-Atlantic collaboration, with three singers hailing from the US and three from the UK. It was also satisfying to be given a chance to hear again singers who have recently impressed, as well as to hear new voices for the first time. The title role was taken by Brenda Rae whose Wigmore Hall debut at the end of 2018 made a striking impact. Recently, at the Royal Academy , Olivia Fuchs fashioned Semele into a celebrity YouTuber, worshipped by a crowd of social media obsessives; and, the theme of the 2019 London Handel Festival is Handel’s Divas. But, Rae’s Semele was no egotistical prima donna, strutting, stomping and sulking until she got her own way. Indeed, in Act 1 Rae was surprising restrained, holding back her silvery soprano and slightly concealing its shine, though even at its most tender and restrained Rae’s vocal line floated above or through the accompaniment with focus and presence. The first sign of mischief came with the act-ending ‘Endless Pleasures, endless love), Rae’s eye’s glinting with a hint of the vocal sparkle that would later erupt.

Elizabeth DeShong (Juno/Ino), Soloman Howard (Somnus/Cadmus), Brenda Rae (Semele), Christopher Lowrey (Athamas). Photo credit: Robert Workman.

This was a gentler Semele than we are sometimes presented with, and Rae’s affecting shapeliness of phrase in Semele’s Act 2 arias, ‘O sleep, why does thou leave me?’ and ‘With fond desiring’, made her dilemma and doubts more poignant than is sometimes the case. In Act 3, though, urged on by Juno, Semele’s solipsism erupted in a glistening display of self-love: ‘Myself I shall adore’ was a glory of rib-tickling coyness, and now the strength of Rae’s soprano was unleashed, the jewel-like spark lit. The coloratura was so smooth and clean it seemed almost too easy. And, luminosity marked Semele’s repentance of her destructive ambition, suggesting less regret than acceptance.

Two recent appearances in the role of Butterfly’s maid, Suzuki, by mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong - at the ROH in 2017 and at Glyndebourne last year - whetted the appetite for her doubling up here as Ino/Juno, and we were not disappointed. Despite a spangly silver shawl, it wasn’t always clear where Ino ended and Juno began, but that was of no import. Like Handel’s genre, DeShong’s voice seems to elude definition: soprano, mezzo, contralto, it encompasses and assimilates elements of them all. The top notes tingled, and the lower inky expanses mesmerised. What wonderful layers and textures, too: plummy, honeyed, smoky, gleaming. DeShong’s range seems limitless, rising and falling, and it’s a voice that feels free but is meticulously focused. The legato phrases of ‘Turn hopeless lover’, in which Ino first expresses her unrequited love, were exquisitely sculpted but replete with burning, repressed passion. The self-congratulatory extravagances of Ino’s moment of self-determination, ‘Hence, Iris, hence away’, were bulls-eye-precise and lyrically appealing - no hint of hootiness, though vigorously accented.

Ailish Tynan (Iris) and Elizabeth DeShong (Ino). Photo credit: Robert Workman.

Benjamin Hulett was a dashing and, paradoxically, very ‘human’ Jupiter, evincing real flesh-and-blood ardency and compassion. In Act 2 Jupiter has three very different arias in close succession and Hulett was master of them all. The long, long line he crafted in ‘Lay your doubts and fears aside’ attested to both courage and an excellent breathing technique, while ‘I must with speed amuse her’ was agile and accurate. ‘Where’er you walk’ resonated with genuine feeling. If some of Hulett’s ornamentations of the da capo repeats were elegant but decorative rather than expressive then who could complain.

I have not heard American bass Soloman Howard before, but I’d very much like to hear him again soon. His Cadmus, King of Thebes, was authoritative but truly melodious - a quite spiritual and reverential father, rather than a bullying patriarch. Howard expressed Somnus’s sleepy displeasure, in ‘Leave me, loathsome light’, in a wearily distanced tone and, at the mention of the nymph Pasithea, his sudden perky transformation into agile virility in the ensuing ‘More sweet is that name’ was classic comic understatement.

Ailish Tynan’s Iris was a fizzing bundle of fun-loving pragmatism; she had no time for Ino’s moping, resourcefully supplying her with a road-map of the planetary spheres, and when her practical efforts were spurned, kicking the map aside and tormenting her mistress with an Okay magazine centrefold of the soon-to-be-weds, then flouncing off to indulge in the gossip. Iris’s report that Jove has installed Semele in a palace atop a mountain, ‘There, from mortal cares retiring’, shone brightly and gave Tynan the opportunity to display her terrific trill.

Christopher Lowrey was an agile-voiced Athamas, and his countertenor carried easily with no hint of strain. The roles of the Priest (Act 1) and Apollo (Act 3) were taken confidently by Joseph Beutel and Brian Giebler respectively, members of the fabulous Clarion Choir whose intonation and diction were immaculate and who showed they could sing a fugue with light vigour as readily as they could conjure an expressive expanse of sustained and sensitive sound. There was so much drama, too, in the playing of the English Concert. Nadja Zwiener worked tirelessly and, paradoxically, her labours resulted in a wonderful lightness: the violins’ bows were tremendously buoyant, almost breathlessly so. Some might have found the string textures too ‘short and spiky’, but warmth derived from the full complement of players - even if the woodwind did not always manage to come to the fore - and Joseph Crouch’s cello obbligatos were highlights of a stellar evening.

With the London Handel Festival in full swing and the ROH’s Berenice playing in the Linbury there are no shortage of Handelian treats currently available in London at this time. But, this Semele was a special performance. And, Brenda Rae saved the best until last: as Jupiter appeared in god-like form, thus sealing her fate, “Ah me! Too late I now repent” was her own heavenly response. Self-adoring she may have been, but at that moment she was simply awe-inspiring and adorable.

Claire Seymour

Handel: Semele
The English Concert/Harry Bicket (director, harpsichord)

Semele - Brenda Rae, Juno/Ino - Elizabeth DeShong, Somnus/Cadmus - Soloman Howard, Jupiter - Benjamin Hulett, Iris - Ailish Tynan, Athamas - Christopher Lowrey, Apollo - Brian Giebler, Priest - Joseph Beutel, Clarion Choir (Artistic Director - Steven Fox)

Barbican Hall, London; Friday 5^th April 2019.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Brenda%20Rae%20Semele%20Benjamin%20Hulett%20Jupiter.jpg image_description= product=yes product_title=Handel’s Semele: The English Concert directed by Harry Bicket at the Barbican Hall product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id=Above Brenda Rae (Semele) and Benjamin Hulett (Jupiter)

Photo credit: Robert Workman

A performance of Vivaldi's La Senna festeggiante by Arcangelo

The work performed was almost certainly Vivaldi's serenata La Senna festeggiante RV693 (The Seine rejoicing), an occasional work for three soloists and orchestra which remains a relatively lesser known piece in Vivaldi's oeuvre.

Jonathan Cohen and Arcangelo gave Vivaldi's La Senna festeggiante a rare London outing at the Wigmore Hall on Friday 5 April 2019 with soloists Emőke Baráth (soprano), Anna Reinhold (mezzo-soprano) and Callum Thorpe (bass). The piece sets a libretto by Domenico Lalli, a Venetian poet who had supplied the librettos for some of Vivaldi's operas, and it takes the personifications of L'Eta dell'Oro (the Golden Age), Virtu (manly valour) and the Seine. They moan about the state of the world today, are entertained by the singing and dancing of woodland deities and then, in the shorter second half, pay homage to 'the greatest star which is the light of Gaul', i.e. the 16 year old Louis.

Vivaldi seems to have supplied music which prized entertainment value above all, much of the piece is positively toe tapping with strong vibrant rhythms, and some fine showy arias. It is not the deepest of works, and you certainly do not have to look at the libretto. But in a performance as finely engaging as the one from Jonathan Cohen and Arcangelo, there is much enjoyable charm in the music and moments of fine virtuosity. Whilst clearly Italian in style, Vivaldi paid nods to his hosts with elements of French music, most notably the way he uses orchestral accompanied recitatives (something common in French opera) rather than continuo accompanied ones, and the whole work ends with a grand Coro which is a Chaconne, a movement beloved of French composers, though the keen eared will detect links to a movement of Vivaldi's Gloria too, and indeed the whole work has a great element of re-use of material, but part of the charm is the way Vivaldi works it into a finely attractive whole.

We started with a crisp and bouncy Sinfonia, with a jolly bass part for the bassoon, something Vivaldi repeated in other movements, and a middle Andante with graceful flutes. Much of the music had the same delightfully perky bounce to it, with the musicians of Arcangelo taking great delight in making Vivaldi's writing vividly engaging.

As L'Eta dell'Oro, soprano Emőke Baráth had a lovely rich, focused soprano voice and a winning way with her, charming us with each entry and dashing of the ornamental passages with ease. She made the music seem delightful. Anna Reinhold as Virtu was a more sober performer, with a lovely well modulated dark-toned voice that we first heard in concert with graceful flutes. In the second half she had a striking aria where the elaborate vocal line was accompanied by a 'bass line' of just violins and harpsichord. Throughout, I was struck by the imagination which Vivaldi brought to the scoring.

As the embodiment of the river Seine, Callum Thorpe was suitably resonant and dark voiced, impressing with the sheer gravity of his sound yet also complementing the perky bounce of the accompaniment with a beautiful resonance.

The three singers came together for the Coro movements, particularly the delightful dance-inspired ending of part one and the chaconne at the end of the work where all concerned were clearly having great fun. So much so, that we were treated to an encore of the movement!

There was a great deal going on in London on 5 April 2019, not least of which was the performance of Semele by Vivaldi's great contemporary Handel at the Barbican. But for those interested in exploring some of the byways of the Baroque world, Jonathan Cohen, Arcangelo and the team gave us wonderful engaging account of a work which, whilst neither deep nor philosophical, certainly delighted and charmed.

Robert Hugill

Vivaldi: La Senna festeggiante RV693

Emőke Baráth (soprano), Anna Reinhold (mezzo-soprano), Callum Thorpe (bass), Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen

Wigmore Hall, London; 5^th April 2019

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Emoeke-Barath-c-Zsofi-Raffay.jpg image_description= product=yes product_title=Jonathan Cohen and Arcangelo at Wigmore Hall product_by=A review by Robert Hugill product_id=Above: Emőke Baráth

Photo credit: Zsofi Raffay

Matthew Rose and Tom Poster at Wigmore Hall

We began on familiar ground, with a sequence of five lied by Franz Schubert. Seated on a stool, nestled in the piano’s curve, with his music stand at a comfortable height, Matthew Rose cut a relaxed figure in his black velvet jacket. But, while the bass’s production of sound was characteristically fluent, and his demeanour easy, it took Rose a while to settle securely in terms of both pitch and focus. In both ‘Strophe aus “Die Götter Griechenlands”’ (Verse from ‘The gods of Greece’) and ‘Fahrt zum Hades (Journey to Hades), Tom Poster was a discrete, restrained accompanist, the light touch of his triplet quavers in the latter song paradoxically emphasising the menace latent in the vocal line, with Rose pertinently attentive to the text. I found ‘Lied eines Schiffers an die Dioskuren’ (Seafarer’s song to the Dioscuri) a little on the hasty side; it has a reverential, prayer-like quality - enhanced by the stanzaic structure - that wasn’t quite captured here, though the piano’s dark ripples were atmospheric. Similarly, the decorative turns in ‘Im Abendrot’ were gracefully articulated, doing much to establish the expressive mood. ‘Wandrers Nachtlied II’ was beautifully hushed, and Rose conveyed the paradoxical union of simplicity and profundity in Goethe’s poem.

Schubert’s Impromptu in Eb D899 No.2 followed segue, and there was a strong sense of release and freedom in Poster’s playing: technical discipline underpinned a mesmerising journey from the gentle fluidity of the opening triplets, effortlessly fingered and accompanied by a quietly nudging left-hand, to a more assertive dance in a distant minor tonality, with strong left-hand accents propelling things forward, to a statuesque coda of confidence and brilliance. It was followed by the tender reverie of Franz Liszt’s Impromptu (Nocturne) S191, in which Poster’s soft, warm tone did not preclude clear, legato articulation of the lower line and conveyed an introspective quality that was never sombre.

Rose’s relished the rich complexity of the ensuing sequence of Liszt songs which grew in dramatic fervour. A brief but powerful swell to make us feel the breath of wind on the mountain-top, a telling repetition to emphasise that soon we would be at peace, and the surging strength of ‘Ruhest’ at the close of ‘Über allen Gipfeln is Ruh’ (Over every mountain-top lies peace) typified Rose’s attention to detail and communicative directness. ‘Gebet’ (Prayer) further heightened the intensity while Rose swaggered imperiously in ‘Gastibelza’, Liszt’s colourful setting of Victor Hugo’s account of the eponymous Spaniard’s mad ravings for his lost wife, Sabine, who ran off with a wealthy count, though I thought, here, that he might have chosen to stand to sing this final song of the first half of the recital. Poster matched Rose for theatrical flair, mimicking the strumming guitar and swaying through an off-kilter bolero and generally making light work of Liszt’s pianistic virtuosity.

Tom Poster. Photo credit: Jason Joyce.

It was in Musorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death, though, that Rose’s voice really came into its own. The piano’s winding unison at the start of ‘Kolybel’naja’ (Lullaby) set a melancholy tone but Rose used the text to introduce variety of pace, mood and colour, injecting energy, for example, when the “gentle knock of Death” is heard at the door, or fading resignedly as the close as the mother futilely tries to still her anxious child. Strength and sensitivity were allied in ‘Serenada’, Poster’s pianissimo rocking sweetly supporting the well-sculpted vocal line which grew in generosity and vigour towards the surging octave leap of the commanding declaration, “Slushaj! … molchi! … Ty moja!” (Be silent! You are mine!) Poster’s low, quiet tremolandos were an ominous night-time blizzard in ‘Trepak’, and as both the wind and the man’s drunken whirling grew stormier, a spilling over into wild abandonment seemed imminent but was ever resisted. The real fury was reserved for ‘Polkovodec’ (Field marshal) in which the sturdy majesty of Rose’s bass evoked the rage of the battlefield, while its inky darkness wonderfully captured the soberness of the close: “then lay down your bones in the earth,/ and rest sweetly rest, life’s labours down!” The songs date from the mid-1870s and after their dramatic vitality, the decorative arabesques of Musorgsky’s Impromptu passionné (1859) came as quite a shock, as if Poster was cleansing away the brooding, burning darkness and taking us back to the songfulness of Schubert and the intricacy of Liszt.

The Schumannesque miniature was beautifully played by Poster and followed by the first performance of one of the pianist’s own compositions, The Turning Year, which was commissioned by Wigmore Hall and sets texts by Jem Poster, the pianist’s father, taking us through the four seasons and emphasising their contrasts: ‘birdsong and new beginnings in spring; the oppressive heat of summer; autumn’s blustery winds and the warmth of the fireside; the icy stillness of winter - are reflected particularly through variation of the piano textures and figurations, while the vocal line, taking its cue from the natural imagery of the poems, is essentially lyrical throughout’, explains Poster. Rose crested smoothly through the arioso at the start supported by inventive piano textures suggestive of the twists and turns of sleeping man’s dreams, and of the birdsong and creaking branches outside his window. Pedal notes in the inner voices of the piano part and a steady rhythmic pulse conveyed the grip of the summer heat, as the voice roved more freely, but with the coming of autumn the piano became a swirling wind and Rose carved the vocal line with care. The drawing of the curtains brought rest, anticipating the white motionlessness of winter. This final episode was texturally delicate, the Bergian harmonies here, and throughout, expressively rich. It’s always difficult to judge from a single, first hearing, but The Turning Year undoubtedly communicates the lyricism of the poetic details.

Songs by Charles Ives closed the recital, but they were prefaced by the composer’s Three Improvisations, which were transcribed in the 1980s by Gail and James Dapogny from a recording made by Ives in 1938. Etching clear textures, Poster effectively shaped the continuing transformation of the material and, given the improvisatory nature of so much of Ives’ music, it seemed apt that the first song, ‘Ilmenau’, followed segue, and returned us to Schubert, offering another setting of Goethe’s ‘Wandrers Nachtlied’ in which the piano’s gentle lilt evoked the simplicity and ease of the poem’s peaceful vision. Rose’s open, warm sound and unmannered directness communicated the engaging artlessness of these Ives songs, and in ‘The Children’s Hour’ Poster’s hand-crossing chimes flowed effortlessly. In ‘Down East’ and ‘At the River’ Rose was a relaxed balladeer, and the ‘The Circus Band’ marched quirkily, dancing with the child’s excitement at the vibrant and varied parade.

At the close I had just one misgiving. Rose’s decision to stay seated throughout the performance did enhance the inherent intimacy of Wigmore Hall, but Rose was rather wedded to the score and when he did look up at his audience, his gaze somewhat low. Given the communicativeness of his bass, it was a pity that at times this led to a sense of distance between singer and Hall. That said, this diverse recital wore its technique prowess and musical intellect lightly.

Claire Seymour

Matthew Rose (bass), Tom Poster (piano)
Schubert - ‘Strophe aus Die Götter Griechenlands’ D677, ‘Fahrt zum Hades’ D526, ‘Lied eines Schiffers an die Dioskuren’ D360, Im Abendrot’ D799, ‘Wandrers Nachtlied II’ D768, Impromptu in E flat D899 No.2; Liszt - Impromptu (Nocturne) S191, ‘Über allen gipfeln ist Ruh’ S306/2, ‘Gebet’ S331, ‘Gastibelza’ S540; Musorgsky - Songs and Dances of Death, Impromptu passionné; Tom Poster - The Turning Year (world première); Ives - 3 Improvisations, ‘Ilmenau’, ‘The Children's Hour’, ‘Down East’, ‘At the River’, ‘ The Circus Band’.
Wigmore Hall, London; Thursday 4^th April 2019

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Matthew-Rose-%C2%A9Lena-Kern-2.jpg image_description= product=yes product_title= Matthew Rose and Tom Poster at Wigmore Hall product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id=Above: Matthew Rose

Photo credit: Lena Kern

Ekaterina Semenchuk sings Glinka and Tchaikovsky

Anna Netrebko and her husband, Yusif Eyvazov, were amongst the enthusiastic audience for songs by Glinka and Tchaikovsky, with a series of encores that unleashed operatic tendencies never much veiled, Offenbach’s ‘Ah! quel diner je viens de faire’ (La périchole) and Carmen’s Habanera both revealing excellent French (also heard recently in Paris’s new Troyens ), a soulful rendition of one of Dvořák’s Gypsy Songs in between.

That this was to be a recital in the grand manner was apparent from the very first of the twelve songs that make up Glinka’s collection, A Farewell to St Petersburg, ‘Romance from David Riccioi’ . Semenchuk’s performance smiled without fashionable lightness, not so far from Verdi - though I find this unpretentious salon music considerably more to my taste. There was stage delivery too, the assumption if not of character than of persona. Skigin conveyed well the dance rhythms of songs such as ‘Bolero’ and ‘Barcarole’, leaving the way clear for Semenchuk’s star quality to engage beyond that. In the former, there were some splendidly darkened colours in her lower range, indicative of what might be achieved on a larger stage, without merely being of it here. A simple yet touching ‘Cavatina’ likewise hinted at that other musical world, whilst the contrasting stanzas of ‘Lullaby’ made almost for a scena in themselves; likewise, in different yet related fashion, the high drama of the ‘Fantasia’. The motoric humour of the preceding ‘Travelling song’ (‘Poputnaya pesnya’) even went so far as to receive an encore. Three songs in succession, ‘A knight’s song’, ‘The lark’, and ‘To Molly’, seemed almost to summarise the collection as a whole: respectively, aptly martial, and on a grand scale; delicate, yet spotlit; and beautifully shaped, with touching sincerity. The final ‘Song of farewell’ rounded things off with a resolve as un-Mahlerian as could be imagined: ‘Der Abschied’ this is not - and was not. This may not be ‘great’ music, but Semenchuk more than held our attention, drawing out of it more than one might ever have expected, without turning it into something that it was not.

‘A tear trembles’, the fourth song from Tchaikovsky’s op.6 collection, registered a different compositional voice entirely - which yet had roots in what had gone before. Semenchuk’s change of gown during the interval suggested something graver, less of the salon - and that is what we heard, her velvet tone and legato just the ticket. A richly wistful ‘To forget so soon’ offered both continuation and individuality, at times once again hinting at the operatic world of Eugene Onegin. The succeeding song, ‘The fires in the rooms were already out’, offered a fine example of building from hushed tones to climax, whilst the well-known ‘None but the lonely heart’, again from Tchaikovsky’s op.6, was relished as if an old favourite brought out by popular demand from the piano stool. (From the stool, though, certainly not off the peg.) ‘It was in early spring’ sounded duly vernal, ‘The fearful moment’ another fine example of opening in the salon and broadening out. Each of these songs brought something different to an enjoyable and revealing reictal, ‘Whether the day reigns’, op.47 no.6, an exultant, even grandiloquent finale.

Mark Berry

Glinka: A Farewell to St Petersburg; Tchaikovsky:A tear trembles; To forget so soon;The fires in the rooms were already out;None but the lonely heart; It was in early spring;The fearful moment; Frenzied nights; Death; We sat together; Whether the day reigns.

Wigmore Hall, London, Monday 1 April

image=http://www.operatoday.com/EK%20%C2%A9%20Alexey%20Kostromin.png image_description= product=yes product_title= Ekaterina Semenchuk and Semyon Skigin at Wigmore Hall product_by=A review by Mark Berry product_id=Above: Ekaterina Semenchuk

Photo credit: Alexey Kostromin

Hubert Parry's Judith at the Royal Festival Hall

In contrast, the Florentine artist Cristofano Allori interpreted the biblical tale autobiographically (1613): the decapitated head of Holofernes is a self-portrait, while the Assyrian’s slayer is the artist’s lover Mazzafirra, her exquisitely luxurious clothing a direct tribute to the city's thriving textile industry, her manner sure, proud and confident.

These are the images with which Crouch End Festival Chorus illustrated the programme booklet for their Royal Festival Hall performance of Hubert Parry’s oratorio Judith - the first for 130 years - which was supported by the London English Song Festival. They could have chosen from many artistic representations which emphasise Judith’s daring and Holofernes’ blood-thirsty end. Parry himself, though, took a rather different approach to the biblical story of Judith, the young Jew from Bethulia who freed the people of Israel from the siege by Nebuchadnezzar’s army by infiltrating the enemy encampment, feigning a wish to forge an alliance and seducing the Assyrian general with her beauty, leading to an invitation to attend a lavish banquet in his tent after which the inebriated general was easy prey to the deadly blow of her scimitar.

While Judith’s story is one of trickery, seduction and beheading, the text which Parry wrote for his oratorio eschews all but a hint of sex and violence, in favour of a more decorous approach, and Manasseh, the ruler of the Kingdom of Judah, relates the blood-thirsty climax thus: “Judith, the daughter of Merari,/ Weakened him by the beauty of her countenance./ She put off the garments of her widowhood … Her beauty took his mind prisoner./ The falchion passed through his neck.” Indeed, in his own 1887 preface to the score, Parry expressed his own reservations: ‘It was not my original intention to call the work by her name; for though her heroism is most admirable, the sanguinary catastrophe of the story is neither artistically attractive nor suitable for introduction into a work in the Oratorio form.’

In fact, Parry struggles to create a ‘drama’ at all. Few will be familiar with trials and tribulations of the historical personnel, Manesseh and his wife Meshullemeth, which dominate the text (the work is subtitled ‘The Regeneration of Manesseh’), though the command of their false god, Moloch, that devotees must sacrifice their children by fire makes for a stirring opening to Act 1 as the Chorus of Worshippers beg for mercy and the High Priest bellows the god’s demand for the children “Within whose veins flow the blood of your King”. It also provides an opportunity for the obligatory inclusion of a children’s chorus and inspired Parry to compose a ballad for Meshullemeth, ‘Long since in Egypt’s plenteous land’ in which the Queen relates the early history of Israel to her children.

The melody of this ballad is now familiar to us as the hymn tune REPTON which in 1924 George Gilbert Stocks, director of music at Repton School, set to ‘Dear Lord and Father of mankind’. And, this seems fitting given that Parry, a baronet and bastion of upper-crust Britishness, was a product of the public-school system which so dominated and influenced public life, and still does. Thomas Gambier Parry, the owner of Highnam Court in Gloucester sent his son to a preparatory school in Bournemouth, where he came under the influence of Samuel Wesley, and he progressed to Eton and then on to Exeter College Oxford. J.A. Fuller-Maitland wrote in 1919, following Parry’s death in October the previous year, ‘In birth, breeding, education and musical training, Charles Hubert Hastings Parry was an example of the best that England can produce’. [1] And, the confidence of the striding walking basses, the security of the long pedals, the cycles of fifths and harmonic sequences, and the grandeur of the quasi-Handelian imitative choral writing which characterise the score of Judith - which is both devotional and celebratory - might indeed be imagined to embody the values, vigour and victories of Victorian England which Fuller-Maitland infers.

That said, at the time of its composition Judith seems to have met with a fairly lukewarm response. It was composed for the Birmingham Festival in 1888 where it was performed on 29^th August, conducted by Hans Richter, and subsequently taken up by choral societies around the country including in Edinburgh, Cambridge, Bristol and Gloucester. But, not all were impressed. In A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" , Thomas Anderton sums up the accounts of the Birmingham Festival Committee: ‘To sum up very briefly the Festivals since 1885 - the year that Richter succeeded Costa - the meeting of 1888 was remarkable for nothing that made any permanent notch in the record of the Festivals. Parry’s oratorio “Judith” was the chief novelty, but, in spite of its masterly merit as a work of musical art, it was hardly received with the favour it deserved.’ Others were more blunt, George Bernard Shaw commenting with characteristically causticity: ‘it is impossible to work up any interest in emasculated Handel and watered Mendelssohn.’

The Observer reported on 9^th December 1888 that the pre-Christmas Crystal Palace Saturday Concerts would include ‘Dr. Parry’s oratorio Judith under the direction of Dr. A.C. Mackenzie’ who conducted the Novello Choir, and it was heard again in the capital on 4^th May the following year, in St James Hall under the baton of Charles Villiers Stanford. That was the last performance of Judith in London and by 1919 Fuller-Maitland was lamenting the unlikelihood of the English nation rediscovery the glories of Parry’s larger oratorios Judith (1888), Job (1892) and King Saul (1894).

Sarah Fox (soprano).

So, Crouch End Festival Chorus and their Artistic Director William Vann have does us a great service in presenting the first performance of Parry’s oratorio for 130 years - and a terrifically committed and impassioned performance at that. Vann had clearly done his homework: his direction of the Chorus and London Mozart Players was unwaveringly encouraging, vigorous and detailed, and he demonstrated impressive stamina and the ability to sweep the music onwards even when Parry’s walking bass lines threatened to plod. The orchestral prelude, however, is rhythmically alert, a call to attention and to arms which here was softened by a sweet-toned horn solo, before the prelude segued into the darker resonances of the low horns and timpani heralding the Worshippers’ despairing cry, “Hail, Moloch! Hail, awful god/ Before whose frown the nations tremble. And, throughout there is much imaginative scoring, some especially lovely writing for the woodwind, and colourful displays from the two trumpets, three trombones and tuba.

The playing of the London Mozart Players was energised and robust, but there were problems of internal balance with the small string section often overpowered by wind and brass, despite the sterling efforts of leader Ruth Rogers. Even within the strings, eight first violins did not seem sufficient to balance four cellos and two double basses. The result was that we missed the luscious of soaring strings in the triumphant choruses, not least because Crouch End Festival Chorus were in glorious voice, as Worshippers and Watchmen, Priests and Assyrian Soldiers. Moreover, every word of text was pristinely enunciated.

A strong team of soloists had been assembled. Tenor Toby Spence was a rather angry Manasseh at the start, crescendoing through the King’s declarations, “No other sacrifice!/ O bitter doom!”, and pushing his voice to its peak. This was sometimes at the expense of lyricism, as when Manasseh urges, “Fear not, my people”, as they prepare for the sacrifice, but elsewhere Spence’s oratory was noble and Manasseh’s declaration of repentance at the start of the second Act was sensitive and moving.

Meshullemeth’s ballad sits most comfortably in the contralto range, and mezzo-soprano Kathryn Rudge, though singing with fine focus, was not always able to find the necessary strength at the lower end, though her phrasing was dignified, and her bearing poised. The King’s Children to whom she sang were excellent, singing their lines with confidence and clear tone, led by superb soprano soloist Lydia South. As the High Priest of Moloch and Holofernes’ Messenger, Henry Waddington sang imperiously, his bass-baritone mobile and rich.

Sarah Fox gleamed in the title role, her crystalline soprano capturing both Judith’s goodness and her strength. It was not surprising that the potency and rapture of her confrontational challenge to the people, “Call to your Moloch!/ Hurl in your children!/ Cut yourselves and howl/ He shall not hear!”, stirred the Crouch End Festival Chorus to reply with the resounding fervour of a football crowd: “Cast her in the furnace!/ She hath defied great Moloch!” Fox’s beautiful, consistent tone and spot-on intonation in Judith’s Act 2 prayer conveyed her fortitude and faith, and her closing Psalm inspired an outpouring of confidence and conviction in the closing chorus, embodied in the Handelian counterpoint, striving bass lines, thunderous organ pedal and unison tremolando strings, topped with three glistening gong strokes: “And He shall lead Israel with joy in the light of His glory,/ With mercy and righteousness that cometh from Him.”

The tremendous excitement of the close drew cheers from the Royal Festival Hall audience, and Vann and his singers and musicians deserved the vigorous praise.

Claire Seymour

Parry: Judith

Sarah Fox (soprano), Kathryn Rudge (mezzo-soprano), Toby Spence (tenor), Henry Waddington (bass-baritone), William Vann (conductor), Crouch End Festival Chorus, London Mozart Players.

Royal Festival Hall, London; Wednesday 3^rd April 2019.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Caravaggio%20Judith.jpg image_description= product=yes product_title=Hubert Parry: Judith: Crouch End Festival Chorus and the London Mozart Players at the Royal Festival Hall product_by=A review by Claire Seymour product_id=Above: Caravaggio, ‘Judith Beheading Holofernes’ (1598-99); Location: Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica at Palazzo Barberini, Rome

La Pietà in Rome

Composer Piovani’s La Pietà is subtitled a "Stabat Mater" per due voci femminili, voce recitante e orchestra. The work makes use of the 13th century poem/prayer “Stabat Mater Dolorosa,” probably by Jacopone da Todi, known to literary scholars not only as a poet who explored primitive vernacular Italian but also as a visionary of medieval liturgical theater.

Mr. Piovani’s Stabat Mater is theater only in so much as it is made of words and needs the immediacy of live performance to take flight. Mr. Piovani’s Pietà is opera only in so much as it uses voice with music (melodramma) and song (arias and duets). Maybe it can be called opera theater because there is are threads of narrative that unfold, and a conclusion is reached — the maternal contemplation of the fact of her child’s death.

The single performance, March 20, did take place in the Teatro Costanzi (Rome’s opera house) thus adding default spectacle. A performance platform sat in front of the covered proscenium (hiding the current Gluck Orfeo ed Euridice installation). Thrusting well into the audience this stage instilled a welcomed urgency into the performance.

Composer/conductor Nicola Piovani, Actor Giogi Proietti [all photos courtesy of the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma

Mr. Piovani composed this work in 1998 to verses by his friend Vincenzo Cerami (deceased in 2013), the screenwriter for Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful, the film for which both Mr. Pioveni and Mr. Cerami received Oscars. Originally scored for 14 instruments at its premiere that same year the spoken role was taken by Mr. Piovani’s friend, actor Gigi Proietti, then 58 years old.

At the Teatro Costanzi just now 78 year-old Mr. Proietti was again the voce recitante. Mr. Proietti and Mr Piovani are now very well known and very respected figures in Italian film and theater thus Teatro Costanzi was filled to capacity with an enthusiastic and supportive audience.

To say that composer 72 year-old Piovani is prolific is an understatement. He has created the musical scores for 148 films and 49 plays and as well as has created 17 theater works (voices with music) plus a number of interesting chamber and orchestral works. Fortunately Nicola Piovani is a also very good composer.

For this performance of La Pietà Mr. Piovani expanded his chamber ensemble to symphonic proportions (the Rome Opera orchestra) — double winds with a full string complement (12/10/8/6/4), harp, two keyboards, expanded percussion plus a saxophone and batterie. The composer conducted.

Amii Stewart, soul singer, and Maria Rita Combattelli, soprano

The six movements of La Pietà / Stabat Mater interspersed orchestral intermezzi with spoken excerpts from Jacopone da Todi’s prayer (both translated and in medieval Latin), alternating with the histories, spoken and sung, of the lives of two young men. One was from an affluent Europe, the other from third world Africa. The European mother was sung by Maria Rita Combattelli, a high (stratospheric) soprano, amplified only because all voices were amplified, the African mother was sung by African soul singer Amil Stewart. Gigi Proietti brought expected high style theatrical delivery of the text.

Mr. Piovani is a master of descriptive music, and he is very adept at diverse styles ranging from soul and pop to symphonic styles ranging from easy listening to avant-garde minimalist structures. All the styles were beautifully expanded to symphonic proportions. The art of the evening was not in the workmanlike creation of these musical styles as much as it was in the lively juxtaposition of the styles in service to a complex, emotional text.

It was a beautifully performed and presented evening, greatly appreciated by its audience.

Michael Milenski

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Matthias Goerne: Schumann – Liederkreis, op 24 & Kernerlieder

This is a good companion piece to Goerne’s Schumann Lieder with Markus Hinterhäuser, also from Harmonia Mundi, with settings of Lenau, Eichendorff and more esoteric poets (Please read more about that HERE). Goerne has been singing Schumann since his youth. He sang Schumann and Schubert in his earliest performaces at the Wigmore Hall, London. The art of Lieder is so personal that it’s not surprising that an artist’s priorities might be performance rather than recording, so this is a good chance to capture Goerne’s art on disc His recording of Dichterliebe with Vladimir Ashkenazy, released in 1998, remains a favourite. I’m also very fond of his Schumann with Eric Schneider, with whom he recorded his groundbreaking Schubert Die schöne Müllerin.

Heinrich Heine’s subtle ironies inspired in Schumann settings of great quality: like Dichterliebe op 48, Schumann’s Liederkreis op 24 is a masterpiece. With “Morgens steh’ ich auf und frage” it begins on a note of hope, the piano line bubbling busily, expressing hope and impatience. There are advantages to hearing this with Goerne’s dark timbre. Lighter voices sometimes sound too innocent: the depth in Goerne’s voice reminds us that not all dreams come true. Thus to the resolute firmness of “Es triebt mich hin und estreibt mich her” where Andsnes shapes the piano line with greater tension, and Goerne alternates confidence with tenderness, as if the poet is forcing himself to be cheerful. This highlights the pathos of “Ich wandelte unter den Bäumen”. the birds understand sorrow. Thus the piano line where lyricism is overcome by penitential stillness. In “Lieb’ Liebchen” Heine connects the lover’s heartbeat to the sound of a carpenter pounding nails into a coffin : a macabre image, hardly a promise of joy. Again the haunted quality in Goerne’s voice brings out inner meaning. The piano line in “Schöne Wiege meiner Leide”, lilts like a cursed lullaby, but the vocal line surges upwards, as if buoyed up by the same resolution that informed the start of his journey. The tenderness with which Goerne sings “Lebewohl, Lebewohl” suggests resignation.

But yet again, this might be a mask. The forcefulness of Andsnes’s playing and the magnificence of Goerne’s phrasing indicate much greater turbulence. With “Warte, warte, wilder Schiffman”, this is a masterful interpretatiom. We cannot hear the lovely “Burg und Bergen schaun herunter” without remebering what came before. The steady pace of “Ich wandelte unter den Bäumen” now returns, intensified, as if the coffin the carpenter prepared in “Lieb’ Liebchen” is now being used in solemn procession. “Mit Myrthen und Rosen” evokes images of flowers, symbols of Spring and of Love, but also of death. Goerne’s voice becomes gentle, as if purified. If in life the poet hasn’t found love, his art will live on.

Justinus Kerner (1785-1852) was a Swabian medical doctor, interested in the wilder shores of therapy in his time, when ideas like magnetism, mesmerism and the occult weren’t excluded. Imagine how he and his contemporaries would have embraced psychology! Schumann’s Kernerlieder op 35 (1840 is a true cycle, more than a random collection of songs, and in recent years has come to be appreciated as equal to the other works of Schumann’s Liederjahr. The cycle begins with the violent “Lust der Strumnacht”, invoking storm, winds and heavy rain, through which a mysterious traveller makes his way. Listen to the savage “s” sibilants whipping the song forward to its adamant one-chord conclusion. Somewhere trapped inside the second strophe is the image of lovers snatching a golden moment - indoors - who want the storm never to end. “Bäumt euch, Wälder, braus, o Welle, Mich umfängt des Himmels Helle!” Already Schumann creates the almost schizoid extremes of mood that characterise the cycle.

This turbulence gives way to “Stirb’ Lieb’ und Freud” in which a man observes a woman transfixed by religious ecstasy. She’s young but wants to renounce the world, to become one with the Virgin Mary. Beautiful as the image is, it’s unnatural to the man, who now can never speak of his love. The tessitura suddenly peaks so high that some singers scrape into falsetto, which is why the Kernerlieder are more safely performed by tenors who can do the sudden tour de force transition with relative ease. Peter Schreier mixes purity with ardent protest - wonderful. It’s more of a strain for baritones. Fischer-Dieskau recorded it only once, as did Hermann Prey. However, when Matthias Goerne, with an even lower timbre, sings it he shows how the contrast between dark and light is integral to meaning. The high pitch isn’t merely a way of imitating the young girl’s voice, but a cry of pain from a man in the shadows, seeing the girl illuminated by rays from a Heaven he can never attain. As the last notes fade, Schumann throws us back into the maelstrom..

In “Wanderlied”, the protagonist enjoys golden wine (a recurring symbol in this cycle) but this moment of rest is soon blown away by the dynamic opening line, “Wohlauf! noch getrunken den funkelnden Wein!” Wherever he might find himself, he doesn’t belong. Again, the minor key of ‘Du junges Grün, du frisches Gras!’ throws us out of kilter. The protagonist admires fresh shoot of grass, but he’d rather be under them than alive. The lyricism in the piano part is deceptive. Similarly, the rolling, circular figures in ‘Wär’ ich nie aus euch gegangen’ belie the intense regret in the text. These two songs function like a prelude to the magnificent “Auf das Trinkglas eines verstorbenes Freundes”. The canon-like melody has a grandeur that raises it above a mere drinking song. It has an elegaic quality, suggesting an organ in a cathedral - linking back again to the mood of “Stirb’ Lieb’ und Freud”. Its long lines demand exceptional skill in phrasing, for it ponders the mystery of the relationship between the living and the dead, and along the way reflects the composer’s love of “Gold der deutschen Reben!”- at these lines there is a touching modulation which is sustained through the grandeur of “Auf diesen Glauben, Glas so hold!” A spider has wound its web round the long-dead man’s wineglass. Again, Schumann forces the singer’s voice way up his register. suggesting heights and distances the living cannot reach. The very spookiness in this song elevates it to another plane. This song doesn’t come at mid point in the cycle for nothing.

For a moment, Schumann retreats into the relatively conventional “Wanderung”, and the delicacy of “Stille Liebe”, but notice how the soft, rolling figures from “Wär’ ich nie aus euch gegangen” should keep us from being lulled. Thus, “Frage” emerges like a prayer: a miniature whose quiet tone disguises its key position in the cycle. The protagonist is now the one who is mediating on the stillness which the young nun and the departed friend have achieved. With “Noch” the pace slows deliberately, so the last phrase “in arger Zeit ein Herz mit Lust?” shines upwards.

The final “movement” in Kernerlieder begins with “Stille Tränen”. It’s not unlike “Stille Liebe”, but much richer and more assertive. Goerne’s voice opens out, the piano part is firm and resonant. The sleeper has woken from a night of tears, to a morning of heavenly blue skies. Is the protagonist starting to wonder “Dass du so krank geworden?”. The final song is, to me, one of the finest in the repertoire. It is marked “noch langsamer und leiser” (than the previous song)., rising barely above a mellifluous, perfectly controlled half-voice, so one has to pay attention to every syllable. The poet rejects the comfort offered by nature, and affirms that only death will release him “…aus dem Traum, dem bangen, Weckt mich ein Engel nur.” The quiet lines, with the lovely slight pressure on “Engel”suggesting a caress. The invisible wings of an angel? Whatever the source of this mystery it offers kindness and the hope of ultimate release. Has the protagonist at last found that elusive inner repose Listen to the contemplative pace of the piano, each note separated by silence, like a heartbeat. What a contrast with the turbulent “Lust der Strumnacht”! The cycle has come round full cycle.

Anne Ozorio

      

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Orfeo ed Euridice in Rome

In Rome there was but an excavated grave.

It was Canadian stage director Robert Carsen’s 2006 Lyric Opera of Chicago take on the ancient Orpheus legend as told by Virgil in his Georgics and then reimagined in 1762 Vienna by Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck — these days simply called Gluck — as a one and one half hour azione teatrale.

Mr. Carsen revived his production of Gluck’s azione teatrale last November (2018) in Paris with famed French counter-tenor Philippe Jaroussky and French soprano Patricia Petibon, and just now (March 21) he staged it again in Rome with an all-Italian cast and conductor. Note that when Gluck refashioned his opera in French for 1774 Paris it became a full-blown drame héroique, Orphée was now a non-controversial haute-contre (a naturally high tenor voice) rather than a contralto castrato (a voice once disliked by the French), and of course Gluck added airs, choruses and dances to make a lengthier evening.

Carlo Vistoli as Orfeo with Act I mourners

Back in 1762 Vienna there were two brief dances in the drama — one by the infernal spirits, another by the Elysian spirits — and now in Rome (as well as Paris!) there were none. Robert Carsen’s stage was but a bed of pebbles, an excavated grave, a hand held bowl of fire and a sky. The black silhouettes of mourners bemoaning the death of Eurydice transformed themselves into barely visible, supine, white covered infernal spirits who slowly transformed themselves into black silhouetted blessed spirits, movement that sufficed to prolongate Gluck’s drama.

If there was actual dance in the Carsen Orfeo ed Euridice it was in the duet of Euridice’s escape from hell. Euridice, beautifully sung by Mariangela Sicilia, repeatedly implored Orfeo to place his loving gaze upon her, when he did not she turned away in dismay. Orfeo then faced the back of her head to beg her repeatedly to wait. She would not.

The emotional stillness of director Carsen’s bleak choral landscape was initially shattered by Orfeo’s thrice repeated,“Euridice” in a spine chilling cry by Italian counter-tenor Carlo Vistoli. Mr. Vistoli is the perfect swain — young, handsome, masculine, immaculately groomed musically, endowed with a beautiful contralto voice. Though Gluck’s arias for Orfeo were much simplified from the highly ornamented singing of the Baroque, Mr. Vistoli did not eschew adding the occasional appoggiatura. These chokes and sobs rendered his laments heart wrenching.

If conductor Gianluca Capuano normally conducts period instrument orchestras, in Rome he revelled in exploiting the resources of a modern symphonic ensemble (the Rome Opera orchestra) to create an immediacy that did not falter through the intermission-less duration. It was a close reading of Gluck’s score that left no emotive phrase unremarked, taking us to an emotional level that in fact betrayed Gluck’s intention to purge Baroque opera of its excesses.

The great tension of Baroque opera is love vs. duty. It is indeed this same tension that pervades Gluck’s reform opera. It is Orfeo’s duty to not look at Euridice, and finally it is his love for Euridice that forces him to forsake his pledge, his passion overwhelming the art that had so moved the infernal spirits.

By the time we arrived, with Orfeo, to his “Che faro senza Euridice” we were all in a state of utter despair, Gluck’s azione teatrale having become an expressionistic nightmare.

Fortunately Gluck’s Amore, sung by Hungarian born, Italian formed soprano Emöke Baráth, saved the day reuniting Orfeo and Eurydice through the power of love, thus averting Orfeo's suicide, indeed the mass suicide of all of us who, with Orfeo, had endured the tragedy of this splendid evening.

Michael Milenski

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Cast and production information:

Orfeo: Carlo Vistoli; Euridice: Mariangela Sicilia; Amore: Emöke Baráth. Orchestra and chorus of the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. Conductor: Gianluca Capuano; Production: Robert Carsen; Sets and Costumes: Tobias Hoheisel; Lights: Robert Carsen and Peter Van Praet. Teatro dell'Opera, Rome, Italy, March 21, 2019.

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product_id=Above: Carlo Vistoli as Orfeo, Mariangela Sicilia as Eurydice [all photos courtesy of the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma]

Jack the Ripper: The Women of Whitechapel - a world premiere at English National Opera

Jack has made his way into opera before - in Berg’s Lulu and Phyllis Tate’s The Lodger but Bell and his librettist, Emma Jenkins, have decided to tell the story from the point of view of the women he murdered, and in doing so given us an opera with a strong moral bent - rather closer to social commentary. Opera it may have been - with Jenkins providing a beautifully poetic libretto, full of startling images which was often at odds with the poverty and bleakness of the staging. But it also felt as if it was a libretto which had been founded on the sociological writing of the great French academic Emile Durkheim.

Problems surface quite early in this opera, and it primarily has to do with Emma Jenkins' essay in the program which sets out her views on womanhood in Victorian London and what then actually happens in the opera. I found the two often to be inconsistent. There is no Gothic horror - principally because Jack the Ripper is a ghost, a presence only in name (or, is he?) - but what is so surprising is that you don’t need Jack because the women themselves are the perpetrators of their own violence. When Polly attempts to steal from the sleeping women (in bare coffins laid out like cradles) a fight breaks out - but it is Jenkins’s libretto, rather than the action on stage, which seems to tell the story more effectively. Threats to ‘break ragged teeth’ and a ‘raddled nose’ are brutal and matter-of-fact. Woken at 4am by Maud, the owner of the doss house, the women are sent out to sell their bodies - while Maud attends to the small matter of an abortion in a back-room. Maud’s ‘little parcel’ is the child Magpie, to be pimped out to a corrupt police commissioner (the real Sir Charles Warren would have been horrified by that indictment). But it’s the opera’s very lack of a protagonist in Jack the Ripper which shifts the balance between male oppression and violence to that of the women themselves which is the weakness here.

And that oddly is where the opera begins to crawl. The narrative of Jack’s murders are heard second-hand - either from the police telling us of them, or from the forensic evidence describing it. You never see blood on stage, but the libretto is so littered with the word ‘blood’ it might just as well be drenched and soaked in red letters. A corpse on a pathologist’s table is simply after the event (and why it’s charred I don’t know), and when the women are heading towards their gruesome fate they leave their carpet bags on a bare table, emptied out, as if they’re left-luggage. A broken, half-shattered mirror becomes a kind of talisman. Shadowy, top-hatted figures dressed in funereal black, like a Greek chorus, cart the dead women off - rather like undertakers. These scenes perhaps lack sophistication because they self-evidently work better in a medium other than opera; and the formulaic narrative of the pathologist’s inquest is a backbone which proved to have little spine.

Alan Opie. Photo credit: Alastair Muir.

When the libretto shifts from what we know to be the coolness of fact to the women challenging their vulnerability the opera often became compelling. A problem with socialising the very subject matter of this work - in the sense of placing it in the very context of a wider cultural, economic and moral nexus - is that it often obscured the women at its centre. Give them moments of tenderness and power and suddenly they become much more human. Liz Stride’s monologue in Act II, for example, is defiant: she sings of refusing to be gutted, of being strung up and swilled empty like wine. You don’t entirely forget the image of the Hogarthian, gin-swilling women propped drunkenly against walls, under street lights, or slumped in street gutters - but it gives the impression of empowering women if, ultimately, they become victims to the implied male violence.

Daniel Kramer’s direction of this opera is hugely claustrophobic, and it’s almost suffocating to look at for long stretches. I think from what we know of Whitechapel from the late nineteenth century this is probably an accurate reflection - though the doss house feels rather more like a Dickensian work house from Little Dorrit. A lot is left to the imagination, which for some of us probably runs in opposing directions to what was intended. In a sense the imagination is all one has because Soutra Gilmour’s design is extraordinarily one-dimensional. It’s not so much stripped bare as completely gutted - the shallow dugouts the women sleep in more like graves - all that’s missing are the tombstones. The women watch an autopsy on the first of Jack’s victims behind a glass pane - disconnected, two worlds living within view of each other but emotionally from very different perspectives.

I found huge chunks of the opera - and the production generally - to derive much from operas elsewhere. Britten’s Peter Grimes hovers over The Women of Whitechapel like an unwelcome ghost. Squibby - mistaken for Jack the Ripper because of his blood-soaked apron - and falsely accused by a baying mob - ‘We want blood’ - comes straight out of Grimes; Bell’s violent, crushing music which comes to symbolise the Ripper’s murders owes much to the music in Britten’s opera and Maud is some monstrous hybrid borne out of Mrs Sedley and Strauss’s Clytemnestra. There is an interesting “Letter Scene” in Act II, a device that goes back to Offenbach and Mozart, but which here is sung as a duet, juxtaposing the letter of Jack the Ripper’s cannibalism, his ‘From Hell’ letter, and one being written to Queen Victoria pleading for her to do something about the slums and the condition of the women who live on the streets. The contrast between despair and hope couldn’t be more striking.

The casting of this production is absolutely first rate and redeems a production which splinters too often. It is, of course, dominated by women and it would be hard to imagine the roles of Jack’s victims - and that of the capricious Maud - being better sung. In a sense, these are roles which are ripe for some fleshing out - and mostly that is what we get. Janis Kelly’s Polly is strongly sung, but you detect just the right amount of grit in the voice as she is taken to her death. That perfect balance in the voice is self-evident in Marie McLaughlin’s Annie Chapman as well - taken too soon, perhaps. Lesley Garrett (Catherine Eddowes) and Susan Bullock (Liz Stride) are magnificent in a comedy duet, swaggering, and loosened with flasks of gin, before being Jack the Ripper’s double-kill. Bullock is utterly memorable at the opening of Act II - reminiscing about her lover, a fireman, and wearing his helmet, she not only looks like an East End Brünnhilde but has the depth and range of voice to match. She can slump against a wall, soaked to the gills with booze, and still somehow muster the strength to sing of never being forced against the stable door against her will by Jack. The Welsh soprano Natalya Romaniw is a dramatic and wonderfully rich-toned Mary Kelly - the projection absolutely razor-sharp. Perhaps of all the women Mary is the one with the most depth, and the one requiring a soprano most able to look within her soul. Romaniw brings a compassionate edge to her early scene where she reads of the Minotaur to her daughter - but her most memorable singing (at least from a technical point of view) is reserved for her final monologue at the end of the opera. One might argue - indeed, one probably should - that the scene delivered from a coffin on a hearse is simply prosaic and self-indulgent - but the quality of Romaniw’s singing was extraordinarily fine.

Dame Josephine Barstow. Photo credit: Alastair Muir.

Josephine Barstow’s Maud is such an unlikeable figure - a depraved, vice-ridden woman without any sense of moral worth - that it requires a great singer to bring her off. She is as sinister as she is grotesque, a Victorian abortionist so soaked in blood she is like the regicidal Queen of Mycenae. Barstow’s voice has really lost none of its power at the top of the register - and she easily strode over of the orchestra, like a great albatross taking flight, in the final scene - and no matter how purely disgusting the role may have been hers was an impressive achievement. If the voice feels just a little compressed in the middle, the power behind it remains formidable. By contrast, the much smaller male roles are almost the very definition of compassion - there is a slightly perverse quality to James Cleverton’s Photographer, a voyeur into exploitation undoubtedly, but it’s a role that’s defined by a confusion of facts: what seems to be an acknowledgement of guilt in photographs modelled on the Ripper’s violence is actually the reverse, whereas Alex Otterburn’s beautifully sung and gently characterised Squibby is harassed and attacked and implicated in the murders because his apron is covered in blood when the opposite is the case.

The choruses are excellent - the male chorus as onlookers peering into the doss house, or with hands sliding through opened slats as if to grasp at female body parts in a kind of anonymous sexual fumbling. The fact they look identical is perhaps a mistake if you are looking to suggest all men treat women this way; on the other hand, one could equally look at this chorus as the very definition of Jack the Ripper himself in that it was this very anonymity which made him the unidentified killer he was. He was everyman, and no man. The female chorus are the Victorian women who are the title of the opera - whether known because they were victims of Jack the Ripper or victims because they weren’t. The ENO Orchestra under Martyn Brabbins give an extraordinarily assured performance of a score which if not exactly challenging on the ear, isn’t objectionable either.

The Women of Whitechapel is an opera that can seem heavy on morality - no more so than at the end which I found grating. It concludes as you might a fable - though Jenkins really looks through frosted glass to see solutions to problems that the opera only half confronts. The cast go far - and beyond - to such an extent that I imagine any revival, or future production, of this opera will be difficult to stage with different singers. It’s certainly flawed as an opera, but the conviction of all involved made it an artistic, and musical, achievement of a very high order.

Marc Bridle

Mary Kelly - Natalya Romaniw, Maud - Josephine Barstow, Polly Nichols -Janis Kelly, Annie Chapman - Marie McLaughlin, Elizabeth Stride - Susan Bullock, Catherine Eddowes - Lesley Garrett, Squibby - Alex Otterburn, The Pathologist - Alan Opie, Commissioner of Police - Robert Hayward, The Photographer - James Cleverton, Sergeant Johnny Strong - Nicky Spence, The Writer - William Morgan; Director - Daniel Kramer, Conductor - Martyn Brabbins, Designer - Soutra Gilmour, Lighting Designer - Paul Anderson, Chorus and Orchestra of English National Opera.

English National Opera, London; 30^th March 2019.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/ENO%20Jack%20the%20Ripper%20The%20Women%20of%20Whitechapel%202019%2C%20Susan%20Bullock%20and%20Lesley%20Garrett%2C%20%C2%A9%20Alastair%20Muir%20%282%29%20%281%29.jpg image_description= product=yes product_title=Jack the Ripper: the Women of Whitechapel: a new opera by Iain Bell at ENO product_by=A review by Marc Bridle product_id=Above: Susan Bullock and Lesley Garrett

Photo credit: Alastair Muir

Tosca at the Met

David McVicar and his designer John MacFarlane created a timeless Tosca — the Napoleonic wars alive in Michelangelo’s Farnese Palace, in the 17th century basilica Sant’Andrea della Valle, and even in Hadrian’s 2000 year-old tomb (now Castel Sant'Angelo). Tosca is Rome. 


It is a not-too-subtle Rome. The massive stage opening of the Met was filled with architecture that exaggerated the Baroque massiveness of St. Andrea della Valle. This masculine world of the church became as well an expanse for the boundless desire of Rome’s chief-of-police, Scarpia. We did not see the details that illustrate the story (the painting, the picnic basket, etc.). But we did feel the threat of this space that rendered the diva Floria Tosca very vulnerable.

The Te Deum


The Farnese Palace was present in its spirit, not its architecture. Its famed fresco “The Loves of the Gods” extended in exaggerated perspective along one wall. A huge fireplace, votive candles and candle chandeliers spread through the huge dark space created a massive chiaroscuro where Tosca’s anima exploded. 


The massiveness of Sant Angelo on the other hand was greatly diminished. A small terrace was its only architectural feature and only a small, morning sky floated in the now massive blackness of the Met stage house. The smallness of the space provided context for Tosca and Cavaradossi’s discussion of intimacies of the bloody murder. Tosca’s leap was but a small step into this void, an intimate, spectacular slide into nothingness. 

The leap

David McVicar’s Rome was not mere background for Puccini’s intense reading of Sardou’s play. Rome was the dominant player in this drama of release that has become the most famous of all operatic rituals, that has created a cult of Tosca followers. And that’s all of us — the entire corpus of the opera audience who need Puccini’s Rome to embody the world from which we must (and will ultimately) escape.


The powerful Rome that this Tosca set creates demands powerful singers to inhabit its vastness. This was fulfilled in the four spring performances conducted by Carlo Rizzo who aided and abetted the three principals to create personages of impressive magnitude. American soprano Jennifer Rowley embodied a Tosca flooded by a huge spectrum of emotions, from the playfulness of diva attitudes in the first act to her murderess fury in the second act and finally the complexities of the third act. Mme. Rowley’s voice has a fast flutter that served to create an exaggerated singerly presence for Tosca. She has a surcharge of vocal heft to ride above the climaxes, and artistry that made her “Vissi d’arte” a show stopper.


German bass-baritone Wolfgang Koch created a unique Scarpia, one who seemed to almost speak his words in Puccini’s threatening vocal lines, his massively powerful physical size added to the menace of his character. Mr. Koch’s Scarpia is not a subtle creature, he is the ultimate predator, and Puccini provides him ample of opportunity to brag about it.

Tenor Joseph Calleja more naturally plays the role of a tenor rather than he played the painter Cavaradossi. Fortunately he is a good tenor so his instinct to turn to face the audience when he has a high note, and to hold it long enough to be doubly sure that we know he has powerful, secure high notes, was not as annoying as it might have been. 


Mr. Calleja is the Cavaradossi this coming July at the Aix-en-Provence festival in a mise en scène of Tosca by French director Christophe Honoré. This director set his Aix Cosi fan tutte in Ethiopia, his Lyon Don Carlo amidst theater drapes on an otherwise empty stage. Thus we nervously await the Rome (if Rome) he will conjure for this Aix Tosca, into which he must slip tenor Calleja. It may be worth the trip just to find out.

Michael Milenski

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Cast and production information:

Floria Tosca: Jennifer Rowley; Cavaradossi: Joseph Calleja; Baron Scarpia: Wolfgang Koch; Sacristan: Philip Cokorinos; Spoletta: Tony Stevenson; Sciarroe: Bradley Garvin. Chorus and orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera. Conductor: Carlo Rizzi; Production: David McVicar; Set and Costume Design: John MacFarlane; Lighting Designer: David Finn; Revival Stage Director: Jonathon Loy. Metropolitan Opera, New York, March 29, 2019.

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product_title=Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera
product_by=A review by Michael Milenski
product_id=Above: Jennifer Rowley as Tosca, Wolfgang Koch as Scarpia [All photos copyright Ken Howard / Met Opera]