April 30, 2020
Schubert 200 : in conversation with Tom Guthrie
So recalled Franz Schubert’s friend, the painter Moritz von Schwind (1804-71) - with, no doubt a liberal dash of nostalgia - when describing to the composer Ferdinand Hiller (1811-85) the convivial evenings during which Schubert’s fellow artists, friends and patrons had gathered to hear the composer and his musical companions perform his new songs and instrumental works. Forty years after Schubert’s death, Schwind began a sepia representation of a grand party of regular ‘Schubertiad’ attendees, writing in 1868 to the poet Eduard Mörike: ‘I have begun to work at something which I feel I owe the intellectual part of Germany - my admirable friend Schubert at the piano, surrounded by his circle of listeners. I know all of the people by heart.’
In this drawing, Schwind and his fellow artists, Wilhelm August Rieder and Leopold Kupelwieser, stand side by side behind the seated ladies. Literary circles are represented by Franz Grillparzer, Johann Senn, Johann Baptist Mayrhofer, Ignaz Castelli and Eduard von Bauernfeld, positioned on the extreme right. The host, Austrian nobleman Joseph von Spaun, is seated to the left of Schubert who, at the piano, accompanies baritone Johann Michael Vogl. The latter, chest somewhat pompously puffed out, extends one hand towards the music. The poet Franz Adolf Friedrich Schober, in the second row on the far right, flirts with Justina von Bruchmann (sister of the poet Franz von Bruchmann). Over-looking all, the portrait of Countess Caroline von Esterházy, the former student for whom Schubert nurtured an unrequited passion, peers down on the lively gathering. [1]
Schwind’s representation is undoubtedly idealised rather than documentary. But, the vivacity of the scene matches that in Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller’s sketch of 1827, which depicts soprano Josephine Fröhlich, Vogl and Schubert engaged in active, social and spontaneous music-making. Both images present performance contexts that are quite different from those familiar today and pose interesting questions. Who are the audience and who the performers? How do the performers and audience relate to each other?
A pencil drawing of soprano Josephine Fröhlich, barítone Johann Vogl and Franz Schubert (1827) by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller.
Such questions are of great interest to director and musician Thomas Guthrie, who will celebrate the 200th anniversary of Schubert’s three great song cycles - Die schöne Müllerin (1823), Winterreise (1827) and Schwanengesang (1828) - with new arrangements of each cycle, using period instruments and puppetry to bring the cycles’ narratives to life:
“I have always thought that the genesis of the songs - and particularly the cycle - came about in a much more creative, spontaneous and relatable storytelling atmosphere than we’ve become used to. The sense you get from contemporary reports and paintings conjures a world where friends dressed up, recited and sang poetry, played different parts, brought different instruments. This Music and Theatre for All project will celebrate this historical approach, take it further, and help these songs to reach a wider audience.”
Vienna, c.1815
Working with the historically informed performance ensemble Barokksolistene, Guthrie will record these new arrangements for Rubicon Classics during 2020 to 2022. Tours will then follow to coincide with the 200th anniversary of each cycle. The Schubert 200 project is supported by Music and Theatre for All , a charity founded by Guthrie in 2013 which aims to connect performers and public through transformative music and theatrical projects.
Discussing the Schubert 200 project with Tom, I ask him about its genesis and what he hopes to achieve. He explains that Schubert’s song cycles, especially Die schöne Müllerin, were works that he encountered and sang as a teenager, and that, as his own work has developed over the years since, so has his understanding of and response to these songs.
Tom first worked with puppets in 2001 when performing in a production of Purcell’s The Indian Queen. Schubert 200 was, in a sense, born three years later when Tom was asked to preparer =and direct a performance of Winterreise for New Kent Opera - for singer, puppet, guitar and piano - with animated drawings by Peter Bailey and puppetry by Mandarava. New Kent Opera’s 2004 Winterreise was presented at the Theatre Royal Margate, a Grade II listed theatre dating from 1787. Since then it has become well-travelled and internationally admired, a recent revival, in a new arrangement, taking place at Princeton in 2017.
Tom Guthrie
Tom suggests that working in new contexts, with attendant practical and budget constraints, can excite the imagination in fresh ways. He also emphasises the opportunities afforded by preview performances which enable one to evaluate what ‘works’ and what doesn’t, and to amend and develop in response to audience reactions. “What do they hold on to? What doesn’t translate?” The notion of involving the audience in the act of creation is clearly an important aspect of Tom’s creative process and storytelling is paramount.
Performing with puppets, he believes, can change a performer’s perception of a piece, encouraging them to find new ways of telling stories and thus forge fresh dialogues with audiences. In 2014, MTFA supported a performance of Die schöne Müllerin at the Spitalfields Festival , arranged for two guitars, percussion, tree branch, double bass, violins and viola, directed by Tom and performed by Barokksolistene and tenor Robert Murray, with a puppet designed and made by Mandarava. At a Q&A session following a performance of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo at the York Early Music Festival last year, Tom was asked why he had added things that ‘got in the way’ of the musicians? An ‘answer’ was provided by a blind audience member who declared that their awareness of new dynamics between the performers onstage - the ‘swish’ of the puppets’ costumes, for example - had made this the most enjoyable performance of Schubert’s cycle that they had experienced. Tom adds, “For puppets to work, the performance must compel the audience to imagine and thereby invite them into the work.”
Monteverdi's Orfeo, at the York Early Music Festival 2019. Photo credit: Ben Pugh.
Just as using puppets can make stories accessible in news ways, so creating new arrangements of these song cycles can create new opportunities for musicians to connect with each other and audiences. The orthodox formality of a singer standing beside a modern grand piano in the concert hall might be challenged in productive ways which facilitate new channels of communication and creativity. Tom describes how the Barokksolistene soloists gather to explore themes and colours, and that improvisation is an important element of the creative process. The forthcoming Rubicon recordings of Schubert’s song cycles will be similarly organic, built layer by layer as the performers respond to each other, and Tom emphasises that the value of working with musicians who are well-versed participants in such musical conversations cannot be overstated. Similarly, although the puppetry will be incorporated in the later stages of the project, Tom explains that the performers’ prior involvement with puppetry, in the context of these cycles, has undoubtedly shaped and changed their perception of the works. Moreover, live performances with workshops are planned as part of the creative process.
I wonder, though, about the problems that might arise when arranging Schubert’s setting of Wilhelm Müller’s Die Winterreise and creating new sounds, sequences and stories. Is our knowledge of, and familiarity with, the musical and psychological narrative of Schubert’s cycle too entrenched to be easily relinquished? Tom reminds me that there is an inherent creative flexibility in Schubert’s settings of Müller’s twenty-four poems one which invites re-consideration and recreation. Indeed, Müller’s Die Winterreise was first published as group of twelve poems in the journal Urania in 1823. Schubert came across and set these twelve poems in 1827, dropping Müller’s ‘Die’ in his Winterreise. Müller subsequently published a longer version, in the second volume of his poetry, interweaving twelve new poems into his original sequence, though the former were not scattered evenly. When he came across these new poems, Schubert was reluctant - presumably for reasons relating to the musical relationships between the songs - to change the order of the songs in his cycle, so his settings of the new texts were simply added onto the original sequence.
Much has been written about the relationship between the song cycle and the poem sequence, not least the altered order of the final songs in Schubert’s Winterreise: Müller’s ‘Die Nebensonnen’ is the twentieth poem and ‘Mut!’ and ‘Der Leiermann’ bring the sequence to a close; Schubert’s final three songs are ‘Mut!’, ‘Die Nebensonnen’, ‘Der Leiermann’ - something that pianist Graham Johnson has argued was ‘one of the greatest examples of necessity being the mother of sublime invention’. Others disagree, but such debates certainly seem to imply inherent tensions and energies which might invite and inspire creative reinterpretation.
Barokksolistene. Photo credit: Tatjana Dachsel.
I ask Tom if Schwanengesang presents particular problems, given that it is not a ‘cycle’ in a conventional sense, rather a compilation of two different sets of songs - to seven texts by Ludwig Rellstab and six by Heinrich Heine - gathered together by the publisher Tobias Haslinger (who added a further song, ‘Die Taubenpost’, to a text by Johann Gabriel Seidl) three months after Schubert’s death. Did Schubert himself intend to combine these songs and if so, how? The songs don’t tell a story as such, though there are unifying poetic themes - nature and love’s trials being the concern of Rellstab’s poems, loss and despair the focus of those by Heine. Tom relishes the creative potential of the questions posed by Schwanengesang, and notes that if one places Schubert’s Heine settings in the order in which the poems were written, a narrative does emerge. Moreover, it is complemented by a compelling musical narrative, for this re-ordering reveals an extraordinary key sequence formed of semi-tonal shifts between the songs which culminates in ‘Atlas’ with a dramatic harmonic fall of a minor third. I can see that, for Tom, a story is forming! One perhaps founded, he allows, on coincidences; but, such coincidences can enable one to learn new things, see works differently and create new dialogues with audiences.
After my conversation with Tom, I reflect on my own CD collection - seven recordings of Winterreise by different singers, all accompanied by a modern concert grand - or of the countless performances I have enjoyed of Schubert’s songs cycles in the intimacy of Wigmore Hall during the past thirty years. Perhaps it is time to reimagine such modern orthodoxies. There has never been, and there is not, just one way of interpreting and performing ‘canonical’ classical repertory. Listening online to some early 20th-century recordings of Schubert’s lieder - German-born baritone and composer Sir George Henschel (1850-1934) accompanying himself in 1928, Irish baritone Harry Plunket Greene (1865-1936) singing ‘Der Leiermann’ at the age of 69 - I am struck by the way that the informal, conversational tone of these performances makes one feel closer somehow to the 19th-century song traditions of Schubert.
In his book Schubert: A Biographical Study of His Songs (1971), Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau asks, ‘Should one perform Die Winterreise in public at all? Should one offer such an intimate diary of a human soul to an audience whose interests are so varied?’, adding that the songs are ‘not for that section of the audience which expects only a refined, aesthetic experience’ from an evening of lieder. Communicating to and connecting with audiences, involving them in the process of creation and performance, lies at the heart of the Schubert 200 project. And, I remember the words of Ferdinand Hiller describing the time when, at the age of sixteen, he first heard Schubert sing: ‘One song followed another - the donors were tireless, the receivers were tireless. Schubert had little technique, Vogl had little voice, but both had so much life and feeling, were so absorbed in their delivery, that it would have been impossible to perform these wonderful compositions with greater clarity or with greater sincerity. We thought neither of the piano playing, nor of the song: it was as though the music had no need of any material sound, as though the melodies were revealing themselves like visions to ethereal ears.’
Claire Seymour
image=http://www.operatoday.com/Moritz%20von%20Schwind%20%281804-1871%29%2C%201868%20%28c%29%20Bildarchiv%20Preussischer%20Kulturbesitz.jpg image_description= product=yes product_title=Schubert 200: Tom Guthrie and Music Theatre for All celebrate the 200th anniversary of Franz Schubert’s song cycles product_by=An interview by Claire Seymour product_id=Above: 'A Schubertiade' (1868), a drawing by Moritz von Schwind (1804-1871)(c) Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz
April 27, 2020
Purcell’s The Indian Queen from Lille
For me, the crowning discovery so far is the production of the Dryden-Purcell “semi-opera” The Indian Queen by Guy Cassiers and Emmanuelle Haïm. Lille is not the first company to try to find a playable version of the music-drama left incomplete at the death of its composer. Peter Sellars has had a whack at it at the ENO, with predictably arbitrary interventions.
In a way Lille’s show is even farther from tradition than Sellers’. But the result is to turn one of the British Baroque’s less successful innovations into an incantatory evocation of what opera seria at its greatest must have seemed like to its contemporaries: an invocation of the Baroque’s most potent dramatic trope: the conflicting ideals of love and honor.
The means employed at Lille are as familiarly “cutting-edge” as the drama is portentiously stylized: bare stage, spotlight and neon bars, proscenium-filling projections. The spoken text is cut by more than half, the the score pieced out with other Purcell music and supplemented by works of John Blow and other contemporaries. The usual dance episodes are replaced by lengthy dumb-shows.
But for the first time in my experience, a “semi-opera” achieved dramatic coherence and tragic force. Viewers, deprived of synopsis and program notes may at first find the story line difficult to follow and the pace glacial: persist. You will be abundantly rewarded.
In outline: Two empires are at war, Aztec and Inca. At curtain’s’ rise, the Aztecs are down, thanks to Peru’s condottiere Montezuma. When he asks the Inca for the hand of his daughter in reward for his victor, he is coldly rejected. Enraged, he offers his services to the enemy and prevails once more and is once more betrayed. The compulsory lieto fine is achieved through a dizzying series of reverses in which honor-cards trump each other until love and valor at last win over malice and betrayal.
On stage, the drama plays out on two planes: a bare stage upon which black-clad speaking actors and singers enact tableaux presenting the action in abstract outline, while projected behind and above them, the same figures play out scenes garbed like figures of epic myth. On yet more screens, projections of war’s devastation alternate with procenium-filling grisaille close-ups of images of nature fuse with the stately flow of the music in a dense, tense unity.
The actors are uniformly believable in their declamation of Dryden’s extravagant dialogue, the closest thing in Engllsh to the thundering heroic verse of Corneille. If one performer is to be singled out, it is Julie Legrand as the scheming, murderous, lascivious Aztec queen Zampoalla. With Ben Porter as her lover/co-conspiriteo /rival Traxalla, they make Mr and Mrs Macbeth seem an estimable couple.
The singers too are uniformly excellent. Among those stepping out of the chorus to portray accessory characters, Gareth Brynmor John raises genuine Hell as thes orcerer Ismeron, while Anna Dennis as Amexia, the deus ex machina resolving the action, suspends time with her rendition of “So when glitt’ring Queen of Night” from the composer’s Orpheus Brittanicus.
No one will deprecate Haïm’s presentation of the score, and the players and chorus of her Concert d’Astrée ensemble have never played more grandly and trenchantly. But many readers may (as many reviewers did) deprecate Cassiere’s physical production as distracting, inappropriate, or cliched.
For me it provides a deep insight into how other strange musico-dramatic beasts may be brought back to life. Not by unimaginative by-the-numbers presentation (like Glyndebourne’s lumbering, exhausting Fairy Queen) or zany, audience-baiting modernizing (Peter Sellars’ abominably presumptuous Royal Opera Indian Queen). Would-be producers need to recognize and revel in the fundamental doubleness and dichotomy of the form. In such works, the mixture is the message.
Roger Downey
[The Indian Queen, recorded for television on October 8 th, 2019 at l’Opera de Lille, France Nord. Available for free streaming at France.tv through October 11, 2020]
The actors: Christopher Ettridge (L’Inca); Elisabeth Hopper (Orazia); Gareth Brynmor John (Ismeron); Julie Legrand (Zampoalla); James McGregor (Montezuma); Ben Porter (Traxalla); Matthew Romain (Acacis); Anna Dennis (Amexia).
The singers: Zoe Brookshaw (soprano); Anna Dennis (soprano); Rowan Pierce (soprano); Carine Tinney (soprano); Ruairi Bowen (ténor); Hugo Hymas (ténor); Nick Pritchard (ténor); Gareth Brynmor John (baryton); Tristan Hambleton (baryton-basse).
Conductor: Emmanuelle Haïm; stage director: Guy Cassieres; set and costumes: Tim Van Steenbergen; video: Frederik Jassogne; imagery: Narciso Contreras; lighting: Fabiana Piccioli; dramaturgy: Erwin Jans; chorusmaster: Benoît Hartoin.
image=http://www.operatoday.com/Indian%20Queen%20Lille.png image_description=Actors Ben Porter, Christopher Ettridge, Elisabeth Hopper, Julie Legrand, James McGregor [Photo by Frédéric Iovino] product=yes product_title=Purcell’s The Indian Queen from Lille product_by=A review by Roger Downey product_id=Above: Actors Ben Porter, Christopher Ettridge, Elisabeth Hopper, Julie Legrand, James McGregor [Photo by Frédéric Iovino]April 22, 2020
Wexford Festival Opera on RTÉ Player: Stanford's The Veiled Prophet available to view online
The project presented at last year’s Wexford Festival Opera in association with Heritage Music Productions, founded and produced by international pianist and broadcaster Una Hunt, was a momentous milestone in the quest to recover Irish opera from oblivion and was thus supported by a major grant from the Arts Council of Ireland. The opera was recorded live by RTÉ lyric fm for radio broadcast and was included as part of the European Broadcasting Union Premium Opera Series which is heard by millions of listeners across the globe. This is the first complete presentation to take place in more than 125 years, making it a ‘must-see’ for newcomers to opera and connoisseurs alike.
www.rte.ie/player/movie/
The opera has other Irish connections in addition to the composer as it is based on part of the enormously successful oriental romance, Lalla Rookh, by Irish poet and national songwriter, Thomas Moore. The production, conducted by David Brophy, was performed by a predominantly Irish cast including soprano Sinéad Campbell-Wallace, tenor Gavan Ring, mezzo-soprano Mairéad Buicke, and bass/baritone John Molloy. The title role is sung by the young Polish baritone, Simon Mechliński and the superb Wexford Festival Chorus is augmented by the Chorus from TU Dublin Conservatoire.
The NYC based Opera News Magazine hailed the opera: “Stanford’s sense of structure and his ear for orchestration are very strong.”
Producer Una Hunt said, “The reawakening of The Veiled Prophet after an absence of more than a century fulfills a personal dream in seeing this magnificent opera spring back to life. Its launch on the RTÉ Player means it can now be appreciated and enjoyed by audiences around the world.”
Aodán Ó Dubhghaill, Managing Director, RTÉ lyric fm, Orchestras, Quartet & Choirs, commented, “As well as being a versatile pianist who has performed concertos with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and the Ulster Orchestra, Una Hunt is a leading authority in the field of historic Irish music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. RTÉ lyric fm has worked closely with Una on many projects, across many platforms including radio broadcasts, CDs, books, documentaries and features, to create awareness of the wonderful music-making that took place on the island of Ireland during those centuries. We were delighted when Una approached us to get involved in her latest project, the first-ever performance in English of The Veiled Prophet by Dublin-born composer, Charles Villiers Stanford in performance at last year’s Wexford Festival Opera and we have no doubt that you will enjoy the fruits of her work for many years to come.
David McLoughlin, CEO of Wexford Festival Opera added, “Wexford Festival Opera is built on the artistic foundations of presenting rare and unjustly neglected opera works to national and international audiences, illustrated by it previously winning the award for Best Rediscovered Work at the International Opera Awards. In recent years it has also pioneered, in association with RTÉ, the wider dissemination of opera performances by way of live streaming and web download. Wexford was therefore honoured to have been the location for the staging of this rediscovered opera work of great Irish and international significance. We are equally pleased that one of the highlights of last year’s Festival will be available to view and enjoy by audiences around the world on the RTÉ Player, similar to some of Wexford’s other recent stagings.”
Very few professional performances have been given of Charles Villiers Stanford’s operas in the last century, and many other parts of his musical outlook remain neglected. Mostly remembered these days for his late-Victorian church music, the Anglo-Irish composer enjoyed a full and varied career. Indeed, there is much more to the Dublin-born Stanford (1852-1924) than most modern listeners realise, and in particular, his symphonies, concertos and Irish Rhapsodies are a joy to discover. Stanford was also a prolific opera composer, but recognising the hopelessness of pursuing an operatic career at home, he turned to Germany and it was in Hanover that the first of his ten operas, The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, was premiered in 1881.
Sarah Ryder, Assistant Commissioning Editor, Documentary & Arts at RTÉ also commented, “It’s a real honour for RTÉ to partner with Una Hunt and the brilliant people at Wexford Festival Opera to bring another very special WFO production to audiences in Ireland and overseas on the RTÉ Player. More than ever, in these worrying times, we are seeing how music and the arts are bringing joy and solace to people, and we hope that this gorgeous production of The Veiled Prophet will bring much-needed pleasure and inspiration to many, many households in the weeks and months ahead.”
There are two other WFO productions still available to view on the RTÉ Player, Il bravo by Saverio Mercadante (2018) (https://www.rte.ie/player/find?q=il%20bravo) and Dorilla in Tempe by Antonio Vivaldi (2019) (https://www.rte.ie/player/find?q=dorilla).
Select scenes are also available on the Festival’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/WexfordFestivalOpera
image=http://www.operatoday.com/wexford%20logo.jpgApril 14, 2020
The Met announces plans to live-stream an all-star At-Home Gala
Hosted by General Manager Peter Gelb in New York City and Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin in Montreal, the program will be streamed for free on the Met’s website. “While the Met is famous for its high-definition transmissions into cinemas, this will be a great artistic but low-tech operation,” said Mr. Gelb, noting that the performances will be relayed in real time from the singers’ laptops and transmitted via Skype in what will nonetheless be a complicated exercise in logistics and time zones. “We will be providing operatic uplift to our audiences, as well as for our singers, who are eager to connect with their fans.” While Mr. Gelb will be producing the event from his apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Mr. Nézet-Séguin will be co-hosting from his apartment in Montreal. Mr. Nézet-Séguin will also be participating in the gala as a pianist.
“I can’t tell you how happy it makes me for all these tremendous artists to be able to come together and perform in this way during this time of crisis,” said Mr. Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer Music Director. “While we cannot wait to get back to the Met stage, for the moment, this is the next best thing.”
The gala will start at 1pm EDT/6pm BST, the regularly scheduled time for the Met’s Saturday matinee performances, and will be available via the Met’s website at metopera.org. After the live showing, the program will continue to be available on demand on the Met website until 6:30pm EDT/11:30pm BST the following day. The complete program will be announced shortly.
The At-Home Gala builds on the success of the company’s Nightly Met Opera Streams, a series of encore presentations of Live in HD performances, made available each day on the Met website for free. Since the nightly streams launched on March 16, they have attracted more than 4 million viewers around the world, representing more than 200 million minutes of viewing time.
The At-Home Gala is part of the Met’s urgent “The Voice Must Be Heard” fundraising campaign to support the company and protect its future. This gala is generously sponsored by Mercedes T. Bass and Rolex.
image=http://www.operatoday.com/Logo%20Met.jpgApril 11, 2020
Ethel Smyth: Songs and Ballads - a new recording from SOMM
She immediately set about trying to publish some of her early songs. On 7 th April 1878 Smyth wrote a letter to her mother (which she later quoted in her 1919 memoir, Impressions That Remained):
‘I went to Breitkopf and Härtel - the music publishers par excellence in the world. The nephew, who conducts the business, Dr. Hase, I know very well and he is quite one of the most charming men I ever met. ... Well, he began by telling me that songs had as a rule a bad sale—but that no composeress had ever succeeded, barring Frau [Clara] Schumann and Fräulein [Fanny] Mendelssohn, whose songs had been published together with those of their husband and brother respectively. He told me that a certain Frau [Josephine] Lang had written some really very good songs, but they had no sale. I played him mine … and he expressed himself very willing to take the risk and print them. But would you believe it, having listened to all he said about women composers, and considering how difficult it is to bargain with an acquaintance, I asked no fee!’
It’s worth noting that the said ‘Dr. Hase’ advised that the reason that songs by Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann had been published was that they had been included in volumes of songs by the celebrated male composers to whom they were related, as sister and wife respectively. It was not to be until 1886 that Smyth succeeded in persuading a music publisher, C.F. Peters of Leipzig, to publish her songs. This SOMM disc presents her Op.3 and Op.4 sets, published that year but composed long before, theFour Songs for Chamber Orchestra (1908) and the Three Songs (1913).
One of the interesting suggestions made by Chris Wiley and Lucy Stevens in their liner notes is that the song collections are ‘cycles’, a slippery term which in her Grove article Susan Youens defines as ‘A group of individually complete songs designed as a unit […] for solo or ensemble voices with or without instrumental accompaniment’. Youens goes on to explain that: ‘The coherence regarded as a necessary attribute of song cycles may derive from the text (a single poet; a story line; a central theme or topic such as love or nature; a unifying mood; poetic form or genre, as in a sonnet or ballad cycle) or from musical procedures (tonal schemes; recurring motifs, passages or entire songs; formal structures); these features may appear singly or in combination.’
So, it is suggested that the Op.3 Songs and Ballads are infused with imagery of the natural world; that the Op.4 Lieder, dedicated to Smyth’s mother, feature ‘motherhood [as] as recurring theme; that the 1913 Three Songs are informed by Smyth’s suffragette activity, and ‘have the theme of freedom, both personal and political’. Wiley and Stevens also cites scholar Cornelia Bartsch’s observation: ‘When publishing her songs, Smyth seemed to acknowledge the notion of unification. In terms of poetic imagery as well as musically her songs from a unit: they may even be understood as a cycle, reflecting a self-narrative similar to that convey in her memoirs more than twenty years later’. [1]
I’m not so sure. It’s hard to pin down a unified ‘voice’ in these songs. There’s more a sense of exploration, adaptation, pragmatism, perhaps opportunism. The French texts (three by Henri de Régnier and one by Leconte di Lisle) of the four instrumental songs that open the disc, in which the voice is accompanied by flute, string trio, harp and percussion, seem to have inspired a certain ‘impressionistic quality’ - oscillating harps and ‘oriental’ flute gestures combined with neoclassical composure from the strings, and with an added dash of Spanish flair in the ‘Anacreontic Ode’ - that perhaps led Debussy to describe them as ‘tout à fait remarquables’.
Indeed, as Debussy suggests, there is much to enjoy here, and in this recording Smyth’s music makes a direct and sincere impact. The Op.3 Lieder und Balladen are dedicated to Livia Frege - friend, interpreter and dedicatee of the Schumanns and Mendelssohns - and are recorded here for the first time. The choice of texts - a folksong, three poems by Joseph von Eichendorff and one by Eduard Mörike - and the imagery (drawn from the natural world) and emotional contexts (essentially, lost love), place the songs firmly within the German lied tradition.
I’ve not heard either contralto Lucy Stevens or pianist Elizabeth Marcus perform before, live or on recording. Stevens, the notes inform me, studied voice with Gerald Wragg at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, after acting studies at rose Bruford College; Marcus is a Fellow at the Guildhall School of Music. Together they convey a responsiveness to Smyth’s musico-poetic sensibility.
Stevens has a pleasing, easeful and well-centred middle and lower range but can sound a little tense, and sometimes thin, when she ventures higher. I’d also like more pristine diction, though it’s good that texts and translations are provided. The tenderness and folk-like simplicity of the first of the Op.3 songs, ‘On the Hill’, is occasionally marred by a slightly fraught and wide vibrato when the vocal line rises. Marcus, a prize-winning harpsichordist, shapes the left-hand in ‘The Lost Hunter’ most sensitively, whether in octaves with the vocal line or representing the speaker’s heart as it rumbles “full of woe”, or the trees as they rustle and the upwelling of the poet-speaker’s emotion: “What awe does swell my breast!” The accompaniment forms a winning narrative and repeatedly Marcus draws forth the details of Smyth’s responses to literary expression and imagery most perceptively. Stevens finds the more introspective and gentle emotional terrain of songs such as ‘Near the Linden Tree’ and the rather contemplative and sombre ‘It changes what we’re seeing’ more comfortable. The more complex narrative of the longer song, ‘Fair Rohtraut’, is thoughtfully shaped, though the dynamism and exhilaration of the hunt, enhanced by the closeness of hunter and beloved, and by the use of direct speech, is not fully exploited.
The Op.4 Lieder begin with ‘Tanzlied’ (Dance Song), a setting of text drawn from Georg Büchner’s political satire Leonce und Lena, in which Rosetta, Prince Leonce’s mistress, addresses the fragmented parts of her own body: “O my poor tired feet, you have to dance/In multi-coloured shoes”, “O my hot cheeks you have to glow/From wild caresses.” Marcus captures the rather brittle and sparse quality of the ‘waltz’, though one feels that both piano and voice might more emphatically convey the strange disorientation created by both the textual imagery and rhythmic asymmetry. The plummet in the piano postlude at the close feels as if it should be darker and more disturbing than it is here.
‘Schlummerlied’ (Lullaby) has a lovely Brahmsian lilt and bitter-sweetness, with both chromatic nuances in the vocal line and harmonic wanderings discerningly emphasised. The abstract wondering of ‘Mittagsruh’ (Midday Rest) seems to demand greater intensity than the performers inject here. Two settings of Klaus Groth complete the set: ‘Nachtreiter’ (The Night Rider) again requires greater vocal weight, intensity and range of colour than Stevens can summon, but in ‘Nachtgedanken’ (Night Thoughts) there is a fitting restlessness which builds to the central image: “Es wird mein Bette/ Dem Kampf zur Wiege,/ Dem Kriege,/ Dem bösen Kriege/ Zur friedlosen Stätte.” (My bed is becoming/ The cradle of struggle, The peaceless site of war/ Of evil war.) Again, Marcus’ contribution to the dramatic narrative is considerable.
The Op.13 songs were among many of Smyth’s works from the 1910-14 that contained autobiographical and/or political elements. ‘Possession’ was dedicated to Emmeline Pankhurst, ‘On the Road: A Marching Tune’ to Christabel Pankhurst, Emmeline’s eldest daughter; the latter contains several transposed fragments from Smyth’s earlier Women’s Social and Political Union anthem, ‘March of the Women’, and I feel that this song requires more fervour and energy than we have here. However, there’s a harmonic, phrasal and textural unpredictability about ‘Possession’ which the duo exploit to convey the unsettling tension in the text; and, voice and piano pull against each other, or simply meander in their own fashion, in ways which suggest an innate uncertainty.
Smyth wrote of the mesmerising quality of Emmeline Pankhurst’s voice, in Female Pipings in Eden (1933), recalling: ‘a voice the deep pitying inflexion of which I shall be able to make ring in the ears of memory till my dying day. […] ‘a voice that, like a stringed instrument in the hand of a great artist, put us in possession of every movement of her spirit - also of the great underlying passion from which sprang all the scorn, all the wrath, all the tenderness in the world.’ Such imagery resonates during this performance. However, the strange opening song, ‘The Clown’, which also develops the theme of ‘freedom’, has an acerbic Weimar-ish quality, which Stevens and Marcus don’t quite tap with sufficient piquancy or satirical sharpness.
De la Martinez - whose direction of Retrospect Opera’s recent release of Smyth’s Fête Galante I admired - conducts the Berkeley Ensemble in the Four Songs for voice and chamber orchestra which opens this disc, and the enlarged timbral canvas significantly enhances the emotional range and impact of these songs: there is a vivacity, diversity and mercurialness which is beguiling. ‘Chrysilla’, in particular, highlights the sensitivity and nuance of Stevens’ tone and phrasing.
The words of Sir Thomas Beecham seem apposite: ‘She was a stubborn, indomitable, unconquerable, creature. Nothing could tame her, nothing could daunt her, and to her last day she preserved these remarkable qualities. And when I think of her, I think of her as a grand person, a great character.’ Stevens and Marcus certainly reveal this ‘character’, untameable and indomitable perhaps, but also intriguing and thought-provoking.
Claire Seymour
[1] Cornelia Bartsch, ‘Cyclic Organisation, Narrative and Self-Construction in Ethel Smyth’s Lieder und Balladen, Op.3 and Lieder, Op.4’, in edd. Aisling Kenny and Susan Wollenberg, Women and the Nineteenth-Century Lied (Ashgate, 2015), pp.177-216.
Wagner: Excerpts from Der Ring des Niebelungen, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Paavo Järvi, RCA-Sony
Indeed, many aspects of it are jaw-dropping: ravishing detail, exquisite artistry and, above all, an orchestra that just takes the breath away. It feels like one of those Wagner recordings which defines the decade in which it was made just as a very few Wagner recordings, from the 1960s onwards, defined their own.
Paavo Järvi is not particularly noted as an interpreter of Wagner - I believe this may be the first time he has turned his attention to this composer - although the orchestra he conducts is certainly not unfamiliar with him. Today, it is not just in Japan that Wagner’s “bleeding chunks of butcher’s meat” - as Tovey luridly described it - are less played than they once were; it seems to be a phenomenon you get from Tokyo via Berlin and London. That was not the case in the 1960s and 1970s; indeed, the two colossal recordings from each of those decades, the first from Otto Klemperer, and the second from Herbert von Karajan, are the two which come closest to this new recording. This is an orchestra, however, which during those dominant Philharmonia and Berlin periods played Wagner under some of the greatest of the composer’s conductors - the Bayreuth factory of Horst Stein, Otmar Suitner and Wolfgang Sawallisch is but one school which has found its way onto their CDs. But their Wagner also comes from conductors such as Lovro von Matačić. In concerts, the reach has been even wider.
The NHK Symphony orchestra is particularly honed in this repertoire; but also, too, in Richard Strauss and Anton Bruckner. Theirs is the most European sound of Japanese orchestras, especially in the warmth of their strings. But, like many of that country’s orchestras in the 1960s, and for ten or so years later, the brass could swamp everything else in performances; many recordings are notable for exactly that imbalance. Today, there is a profound luxury to this orchestra’s sound, a tempered distribution of equilibrium in the horns and trumpets, a complexion to its woodwind which is entirely driven by individual expressivity - and a string sound of such depth it carries everything on its weighty shoulders. If great orchestras are measured by whether you can identify their sound the NHK Symphony Orchestra is one of those, and this Wagner disc is an example that.
If you’re looking for any particular sequential narrative to Järvi’s journey through Wagner’s Ring you won’t find it on this disc. Siegfried goes on his Rhine Journey after his funeral, and the Gods enter Valhalla right at the end - though given the richness of the sound, and sheer drama of the playing it’s a climax that is better placed to end a disc rather than to begin one. It’s almost a unique approach, though not entirely - Tennstedt does this, Solti begins this way then falls into line very quickly, Ormandy places Das Rheingold after Siegfried. The arrangements stick to those by Humperdinck, Hutschenruyter and Stasny though the sheer opulence and textures we get from the orchestra - rather emphasised by the thrilling and very wide dynamic range of the recording - can sometimes more than recall the rich palette and doublings we get with Stokowski’s reworkings. Järvi has clearly divided his violin desks antiphonally, much more common in Wagner than one thinks. And although Wagner composes for larger orchestral forces (six harps might be considered excessive for many), Järvi is a conductor who can sometimes seem as if he has gone further than some composers want - his recording of Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen sounds uncommonly rich, so much so one wonders if he has gone beyond the twenty-three strings Strauss asks for.
Although the sound and weight Järvi gets from the NHKSO on this disc is massive his fluid tempi - a very common trait of this conductor - more than compensates for the beautiful clarity he gets from individual instruments in the orchestra. It is precisely this which gives this purely orchestral disc a sublime vocal quality. Take for example Siegfried’s ‘Trauermarsch’- possibly the single finest track on this recording. The pulse of the opening timpani (so light to the touch) is like a heartbeat, but the way the pianissimo is done is just exquisite - a beat which falls entirely imperceptibly. It is never a given in this music, either, that you will get the solo oboe, clarinet, or English Horn to play at the marked ausdruscksvol, nor that the poco crescendo will quite be distinctive - nor that the playing will quite have the sheer beauty of phrasing we have here. What we also get are the two spaced harp glissandi (marked ff) punching through like a mini chorus against the much larger choral forces of the ff brass. What is, however, utterly unique about this performance is how bleakly Järvi demands his orchestra takes the closing bars. The weight he draws from the cellos is phenomenally rich - and yet it is deeply unsettling. In a complete reversal, those heartbeats, which were so light on the ear, and which opened this music, are now like a final mark of death. Rarely will you hear double basses and cellos play pianissimos with both the depth and power the NHKSO bring to these closing bars and yet hear this music as it probably should sound.
These are much the same qualities you hear at the opening of the ‘Morgendammerung’. It is darker than one is used to, but the sigh and cantabile which you get from the expressive playing of this cello section is exceptional. You hear harps beautifully emerging from within the orchestra (any moment around 4’53), or a distant calling of the horn so beautifully phrased, at first like an off-stage voice in the wings and then appearing in the centre of it during Siegfried’s ‘Rhinefahrt’. The track of Siegfried’s ‘Waldweben’ may be the one which most defines the dichotomy of this recording. The bassoon playing is so lustrous, so velvety in tone - with a gorgeous mezzoish colour to it - that you almost forget it is an instrument which may be the one reason when listening to this music one finds oneself becoming distracted from much else that is happening. Do you miss those strings hovering beneath it? I think you do. It’s rather the same with the eloquent phrasing of the cellos which tends to hide the solo horn above them - it’s rather difficult to focus on this music as a whole. In a rather characterless performance of this music this rarely matters, but the range of the NHKSO’s expressivity creates that same diaphanous opening of vocal colours you might hear in a Mozartian operatic quartet or sextet.
The track which sounds the least operatic on this disc is ironically the one which should - ‘Walkürenritt’. This is a considerably more energised account than the Simon Rattle/BRSO performance from his complete Die Walküre. There is much fire and brimstone to the playing here - and some well controlled brass playing - though other than that it is neither more exceptional nor weaker than many other recordings of the piece.
‘The Entry of the Gods into Valhalla’ is quite another matter, however. This is such a tour de force of a performance it would have been almost counterproductive to have begun the disc with it. Although it is the end of a prelude to this vast operatic journey, it is in another way also the beginning and end of this orchestra’s instrumental revelation. What we hear are the summing up of careful balances - and this piece is especially notable for its harp writing weaving through the orchestra, or the undulating rhythms of the woodwind phrasing. But there is also a sweeping drama to how the NHKSO play this particular music as if it is being taken in one single vast ten-minute crescendo. Perhaps the volume of the orchestra at full tilt does stretch the limits of the recording in the final bars but in the end it is as meaningful an ending as any.
The qualities of this recording are very unusual. Even by the standards of conductors like Klemperer and Karajan, Järvi has taken an approach to Der Ring des Niebelungen which is operatic rather than purely symphonic. The NHKSO is not necessarily more unique than some of the great European orchestras - but there is unquestionably a quality to this particular recording which is simply in a class of its own. You will not find a ‘Trauermarsch’ quite as black as this one - and none that even comes close to matching the final five bars, let alone equalling them. I’m not sure you listen to instruments playing in an orchestra and you think of great Wagnerian singers - this recording stretches the imagination to think like that simply because the solo phrasing from the orchestra is so beautifully defined to make you think that way. Some might not get that impression at all; others might entirely immerse themselves in that sound world. What is without question, in my view, is that this is one of the great Wagner recordings.
Marc Bridle
image=http://www.operatoday.com/Jarvi%20Ring%20NHK.jpg image_description=Sony G010004171085T product=yes product_title=Orchestral Selections from Der Ring des Nibelungen product_by=NHK Symphony Orchestra, Paavo Järvi (conductor) product_id=Sony G010004171085T [Digital Download] price=$10.00 product_url=https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/8733424--orchestral-selections-from-der-ring-des-nibelungenApril 10, 2020
Wagner: Die Walküre, Symphonieorchester Des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Simon Rattle, BR Klassik
But, a lack of complexity doesn’t imply that Rattle is uninteresting as a
conductor - although in some repertoire he never quite catches fire. His
Wagner is where these two conditions often meet - and have done for decades
- and this most recent recording of Die Walküre is as divisive as
any of his finest recordings of recent years.
And, I think this is generally a very fine performance; but it is also one,
which in parts, really makes one ask why Rattle made the choices he did.
Two reviews from February 2019, only serve to illustrate the divergent
views on this very same concert performance from the Herkluessaal: for
Opernmagazin its perfection was something which could only be heard outside
Bayreuth at the Bavarian State Opera. For Abendzeitung, however, the
Bavarian State Opera was again analogous but not in the same way - Kirill
Petrenko (its music director) could develop this opera into an event;
Rattle spent his time stumbling through it - “Die Impulse dazu gehen
wohlgemerkt nicht vom Diregenten aus.” (“The impulses do not come from the
conductor”). I think I fall somewhere in the middle of these two views,
although depart significantly from Michael Bastian Weiß in Abendzeitung who
thought the Symphonieorchester Des Bayerischen Rundfunks were shaky and
imprecise, with a light tone and unimpressive brass. The superb engineering
on this recording probably helps - and listening to it in Hi-Res almost
certainly does - but the orchestral sound is the complete antithesis of how
Weiß describes it.
I assume what Weiß means by Rattle’s “stumbling” into scenes - especially
into Act’s I and III - though he barely has the space to expand on this, is
this conductor’s propensity for shaping the music by sudden, and often
dramatic, tempo changes. This works in some composers where Rattle does
this - Stravinsky, for example - but it is less convincing in Wagner. What
might also be true is that Rattle doesn’t always seem to care about
unifying both the orchestral and vocal lines and this is why one gets a
disparity between the tension generated. The prelude to Act I, for example,
is simply stunning - quite possibly one of the most exciting on record. But
as soon as you listen to it one realises that no conductor - least of all
Rattle - is going to be able to sustain that level of energy through the
act (though perhaps you wouldn’t want that). On the other hand, the
beginning of Act III Scene 1, even before the entry of the Valkyries, is
just lugubrious. But contradictions abound: why would chords have such
razor shape precision from the orchestra, and yet the climax of Act’s I and
II be the opposite? Leonard Bernstein, in his concert recording of Tristan und Isolde, with this same orchestra, brought such huge
power and incisiveness to the ending of acts, but Rattle elides them into
closure? It’s these paradoxes which suggest not so much a lack of
interpretation but an indifference to how it is done.
The singing and the orchestra do raise this performance above the ordinary.
James Rutherford’s Wotan - a short notice replacement for Michael Volle -
amply demonstrates that there is no shortage of fine British Wagnerian
bass-baritones (although given the intelligence, clarity and shine he
brings to his singing perhaps these descriptors should be reversed). But
this is not a light-voiced Wotan - there is considerable heft to the tone,
and he is perhaps rather better than some more noteworthy singers in
conveying the discord of the shattered world of the Gods. He is domineering
but seems oddly vulnerable - the power behind Rutherford’s vocal command
perhaps revealing that no matter how towering this figure maybe his
isolation is like an island cast into an ocean.
The Australian Stuart Skelton also gives a standout performance as
Siegmund. Here is another singer who has the gift of clarity - what is it
about English speaking Wagnerian tenors and bass-baritones which makes
their diction so clear? The voice is almost ideal for Siegmund - powerful,
in full range of the part, and most importantly has the breadth and depth.
I suppose Heldentenors in Die Walküre are for better or worse
almost defined by the great ‘Wälse! Wo ist dein Schwert!’. Rattle’s entry
into it is spacious, and if Skelton’s voice is almost identical in timbre
to James King’s it is probably unsurprising that they approach ‘Wälse…’ in
almost identical ways. It is one of the most thrilling moments on this
recording.
As his sister, Sieglinde, Eva Maria Westbroek is never less than involving.
That Westbroek and Skelton are able to scale heights of such intensity -
especially given this is a concert performance - is quite an achievement.
Their casting is like looking at the relief on a Grecian frieze: two voices
that are beautifully matched in their velvety tone, a balance of heaviness
and lightness to both which works like the symmetrical movement of scales
but neither is there a lack of underlying sexual tension between them, even
if this is never particularly replicated in Rattle’s conducting.
The problem I have with Iréne Theorins as Brünnhilde is that the voice is
uneven in quality. At times I struggle to understand her German and there
is a disconcerting edge to her upper chest register which tends to grate on
the ear. But if she is uncomfortable at the top the delicacy which she
brings to less strained sections of the score shows the voice to be in
better shape. Eric Halfvarsung’s Hunding is a potent instrument - snarling
and gruff, granular yet with a roaring power which seems to overwhelm
Theorins’ Brünnhilde.
Rattle does get superlative playing from his Bavarian players. Perhaps what
is most striking is the depth of that orchestral sound - this is a very
string centred performance, and the terror of that sound is often very
thrilling to hear. Clarity is perhaps not as crystalline as one would wish
for - I think at times one barely notices woodwind at all in this
performance - but the sheer wash of paint that overwhelms this
interpretation of the score is beyond impressionistic. These heavy textures
may not appeal to everyone - especially those who prefer their Wagner to be
more lucid; this is a performance which utterly eschews lyricism. I think
Rattle gets a very different kind of playing from the Bavarian orchestra
than he usually got from the Berliner Philharmoniker - this is Wagner that
plays very much to this orchestra’s tonal strengths - I’m not sure the BPO
would ever have produced a string sound quite as sonically sepulchral or
saturnine as we hear in Act II Scene 2 during ‘Lass’ ich’s verlauten’. The
lack of definition Rattle doesn’t get in the score can be troubling - and
quite why this happens is equally perplexing. Petrenko and the Bavarian
State Opera, or even Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, give
significantly more revealing accounts of this score than Rattle manages -
although I don’t think either quite manage one quite as terrifying or
powerful.
This is a recording which I particularly enjoyed for Rutherford’s Wotan and
Skelton’s Siegmund. Simon Rattle’s interpretation of Die Walküre
is, I think, a distinctively individualistic one - and not for everyone.
Who it is clearly for are Wagnerians who love hearing a great orchestra at
full tilt with a superb recorded sound to match.
Marc Bridle
image=http://www.operatoday.com/Rattle%20Walkure.jpg image_description=BR Klassik 900177 product=yes product_title=Richard Wagner: Die Walküre product_by= Stuart Skelton (Siegmund), Eric Halfvarson (Hunding), James Rutherford (Wotan), Eva-Maria Westbroek (Sieglinde), Iréne Theorin (Brünnhilde), Elisabeth Kulman (Fricka), Symphonie-Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Sir Simon Rattle product_id=BR Klassik 900177 [4CDs] price=$49.99 product_url=https://amzn.to/2RBrvS7April 9, 2020
English Touring Opera to broadcast St John Passion on Easter Sunday
As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, the company took the decision to end the tour, cancelling the remaining 52 performances of its Spring season. ETO made a commitment to its artists and audiences, honouring the entire company’s fees for the tour and developing new ways to keep music in the lives of the communities it serves.
English Touring Opera’s debut broadcast creatively weaves together footage of the live performance at the Hackney Empire, with 90 individual video contributions made by choir members in isolation from Cumbria to Cornwall who were due to participate in performances across the country.
Conductor, Jonathan Peter Kenny, and English Touring Opera’s Artistic Director, James Conway, are encouraging audiences to experience the St John Passion in a communal way this Easter Sunday, with many thousands of us sitting down to listen to one of the great masterpieces of Western civilisation together, connecting with one another through Bach’s music, whilst in physical isolation.
English Touring Opera’s production of Bach’s St John Passion will be broadcast from their YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/user/ETO5254 - at 4pm on Sunday 12 April and will be available to stream for one week. Use the hashtag #ETOStJohn to share your listening experience and connect with other audience members.
English Touring Opera are set to release other digital content in the coming weeks including other performances; interactive insight talks; signing lessons for children and adults; and music projects for people with special educational needs and disabilities. Follow their YouTube and other social media channels, or join their mailing list at www.englishtouringopera.co.uk to find out more.
image=http://www.operatoday.com/Andreas-Grieger.jpg image_description= product=yes product_title=English Touring Opera broadcasts St John Passion on Easter Sunday product_by= product_id=Above: Jonathan Peter Kenny conducts ETO soloists, The Old Street Band, and local choirs at Hackney Empire in Bach’s St John Passion (Spring 2020).Photo credit: Andreas Grieger
April 8, 2020
Verdi – Il Trovatore (La Scala 1930)
Music composed by Giuseppe Verdi 1813-1901). Libretto by Salvadore Cammarano after El trovador by Antonio García Gutiérrez.
First Performance: 19 January 1853, Teatro Apollo, Rome
| Principal Characters: | |
| Count di Luna, a young nobleman of Aragon | Baritone |
| Leonora, a lady-in-waiting to the Princess of Aragon | Soprano |
| Azucena, a gypsy | Mezzo-Soprano |
| Manrico, an officer in the army of Prince Urgel, and the supposed son of Azucena | Tenor |
| Ferrando, a captain in the Count's army | Bass |
| Ines, Leonora's confidante | Soprano |
| Ruiz, a soldier in Manrico's service | Tenor |
| An Old Gypsy | Bass |
| A Messenger | Tenor |
Setting: Biscay and Aragon, 1409
Synopsis:
Act I
Scene 1:
The guard room in the castle of Luna (The Palace of Aljaferia, Zaragoza, Spain). Fernando, the captain of the guards, orders the guards to keep watch while Count Luna wanders restlessly beneath the windows of Leonora, lady-in-waiting to the Princess, whom he loves. Luna's heart is torn with jealousy against his fortunate rival, the troubadour Manrico. In order to keep the guards awake, Fernando narrates the history of the count to the guard. (Fernando: "Once upon a time a father of two sons lived happily.") It appears that a Gypsy of dreadful aspect had once exercised her magic arts upon the little brother of the count, making the child weak and ill, and for this had been burnt alive as a witch. Dying, she had commanded her daughter Azucena to avenge her, which vengeance had been partially accomplished by the carrying off of the younger son. Although no news had been heard of him, the father refused to believe in his son's death, and dying, commanded his son, Count Luna, to seek for the Gypsy.
Scene 2:
Garden in the palace of the princess. Leonora confesses her love for Manrico to her confidante, Inez. ("The story of love.") When they have gone, Count Luna hears the voice of his rival. (Manrico, behind the scenes: "Alone and forsaken am I.") Leonora in the darkness mistakes the count for her lover, when Manrico himself enters the garden, and she rushes to his arms. The count recognises Manrico as his enemy, who has been condemned to death, and compels him to fight. Leonora tries to intervene but cannot stop them from fighting. Manrico could have killed the count but, as he explains later to his mother, he mysteriously restrains himself, and escapes.
Act II
Scene 1:
Camp of the gypsies. The gypsies sing the famous "Anvil Chorus". Manrico at the bedside of his mother, Azucena (Chorus: "See the clouds in heaven's vault."), the daughter of the Gypsy burnt by the count. She is old, but still nurses her vengeance. (Aria: "Flames rise to heaven.") The gypsies break up camp while Azucena confesses to Manrico that after stealing him she had intended to burn the count's little son, but had thrown her own child into the flames instead. Manrico realises that he is not the son of Azucena, but loves her as if she were indeed his mother, as she has always been faithful and loving to him. A messenger arrives and reports that Leonora, who believes Manrico dead, is about to take the veil. Manrico rushes away to prevent her from following out this purpose.
Scene 2: In front of the convent. Luna and his attendants intend to abduct Leonora. (Aria: "Her enlightening smile.") Leonora and the nuns appear in procession, but Manrico prevents Luna from carrying out his plans and instead, joins Leonora and proposes matrimony.
Act III
Scene 1:
Luna's camp. (Chorus: "In the midst of conflict.") Fernando brings in the captured Azucena. She is recognised by Luna and sentenced to be burnt.
Scene 2:
Chamber in the castle, which is besieged by Manrico. Leonora and Manrico live only for each other. (Aria, Manrico: "Yes, I am yours forever.") Ruiz, Manrico's comrade, reports that Azucena is to be burned at the stake. Manrico flies to her aid. (Stretta: "Of the funeral pyre.") Leonora faints.
Act IV
Scene 1:
Before the dungeon keep. Leonora attempts to free Manrico, who has been captured by Luna. (Miserere of the prisoners and aria of Manrico in the turret: "Born on rosette wings.") Leonora begs Luna for mercy and offers herself in place of her lover. She promises to give herself to the count, but intends to take poison before the marriage.
Scene 2:
In the dungeon. Manrico and Azucena are awaiting their execution. Manrico attempts to soothe Azucena, whose mind wanders. (Duet: "Home to our mountains.") At last the gypsy slumbers. Leonora comes to Manrico and tells him that he is saved, begs him to escape. When he discovers she cannot accompany him, he refuses to leave his prison. He believes Leonora has betrayed him until he realizes that she has taken poison to remain true to him. As she dies in agony in Manrico's arms she confesses that she prefers to die with him than to marry another. The count enters to find Leonora dead on his rival's arms and orders Manrico to be led to execution. Azucena arises from her couch and when Luna, dragging her to a window, shows her the dying Manrico, she cries in triumph: "He was your brother. Now my mother really is avenged!" and falls dead at his feet. The opera ends with the count screaming in despair.
Click here for the complete libretto.
image=http://www.operatoday.com/Up_from_the_highest_tower_%2816079304178%29.png image_description=View of Zaragoza and the Ebro [Source: Wikipedia] audio=yes first_audio_name=Giuseppe Verdi: Il Trovatore first_audio_link=http://www.operatoday.com/Trovatore1.m3u product=yes product_title=Giuseppe Verdi: Il Trovatore product_by=Aureliano Pertile (Manrico), Maria Carena (Leonora), Apollo Granforte (Il Conte di Luna), Irene Minghini-Cattaneo (Azucena), Bruno Carmassi (Ferrando), Orchestra e Coro del Teatro alla Scala di Milano, Carlo Sabajno (cond.)Recorded 1930. product_id=Above: View of Zaragoza and the Ebro [Source: Wikipedia]
April 3, 2020
Strauss – Ariadne auf Naxos (Salzburg 1954)
As initially conceived, the work was in two parts—the first being an adaptation of Le Bourgeois gentilhomme with incidental music composed by Strauss and the second being a collision of an opera seria based on the legend of Ariadne with commedia dell’arte, which would replace the Turkish ceremony with which Molière’s play ends. The work was completed in April 1912 and premiered in Stuttgart the following October. As Charles Osborne notes:
The first night, on October 25, was something of a disaster. Though the press reports were in general favourable, the audience received the Molière-Hofmannsthal-Strauss mélange without enthusiasm. Those who had come to enjoy Molière were bored by the opera which was tacked on at the end of the comedy, while the opera-goers who had come to hear Strauss’s latest opera were vexed at having first to sit through a play by Molière.
[Charles Osborne, The Complete Operas of Strauss, London: Grange Books, 1992]
Eventually, the work was revised with the first part being entirely rewritten as a prologue to the opera. The location was changed from Paris to Vienna, all dance scenes were eliminated and the plot bears but scant resemblance to Molière’s play. The incidental music that Strauss had composed would reappear later as Le Bourgeois gentilhomme Suite (1920).
As revised, Ariadne auf Naxos premiered at the Hofoper in Vienna on 4 October 1916.
Synopsis
Prologue
In the house of the richest man in Vienna, where a sumptuous banquet is to be held in the evening, two theatrical groups are busy preparing their entertainments. The Music Master protests to the Major-domo about the decision to follow his pupil's opera seria, Ariadne auf Naxos, with 'vulgar buffoonery'. The Major-domo makes it plain that he who pays the piper calls the tune and that the fireworks display will begin at nine o'clock. The Composer wants a last-minute rehearsal with the violinists, but they are playing during dinner. The soprano who is to sing Ariadne is not available to go through her aria; the tenor cast as Vacchus objects to his wig. There is typical backstage chaos. Seeing the attractive Zerbinetta and inquiring who she is, the composer is told by the Music Master that she is leader of the commedia dell'arte group which is to perform after the opera. Outraged, the Composer's wrath is turned aside when a new melody occurs to him. The Major-domo returns to announce that his master now requires both entertainments to be performed simultaneously and still to end at nine o'clock sharp. More uproar, during which the Dancing Master suggests that the Composer should cut his opera to accommodate the harlequinade's dances.
The plot of Ariadne is explained to Zerbinetta, who mocks the idea of 'languishing in passionate longing and praying for death'. To her, another lover is the answer. Zerbinetta and the Composer find they have something in common when Zerbinetta tells him 'A moment is nothing - a glance is much'. 'Who can say that my heart is in the part I play?' Heartened, the Composer sings of music's power. But when he sees the comedians scampering about, he cries, 'I should not have allowed it.'
Opera
On the island of Naxos, where Ariadne has been abandoned by Theseus, who took her with him from Crete after she had helped him to kill the Minotaur. Ariadne is asleep, watched over by three nymphs, Naiad, Dryad and Echo. They describe her perpetual inconsolable weeping. Ariadne wakes. She can think of nothing except her betrayal by Theseus and she wants death to end her suffering. Zerbinetta and the comedians cannot believe in her desperation and Harlequin vainly tries to cheer her with a song about the joys of life. She sings of the purity of the kingdom of death and longs for Hermes to lead her there. The comedians again try to cheer her up with singing and dancing, but to no avail. Zerbinetta sends them away and tries on her own, with her long coloratura aria, the gist of which is that there are plenty of other men besides Theseus. In the middle of the aria, Ariadne goes into her cave. Zerbinetta and her troupe then enact their entertainment in which the four comedians court her.
The three nymphs excitedly announce the arrival of the young god Bacchus, who has just escaped from the sorceress Circe. At first he mistakes Ariadne for another Circe, while she mistakes him for Theseus and then Hermes. But in the duet that follows, reality takes over and Ariadne's longing for death becomes a longing for love as Bacchus becomes aware of his divinity. As passion enfolds them, Zerbinetta comments that she was right all along: 'Off with the old, on with the new.'
Click here for the full text of the libretto.
image=http://www.operatoday.com/John_Vanderlyn_001.png
image_description=The Sleeping Ariadne in Naxos by John Vanderlyn [Source: Wikipedia]
audio=yes
first_audio_name=Ariadne auf Naxos
first_audio_link=http://www.operatoday.com/Ariadne1.m3u
product=yes
product_title=Richard Strauss: Ariadne auf Naxos
product_by=Lisa Della Casa (Primadonna/Ariadne), Hilde Güden (Zerbinetta), Irmgard Seeried (Komponist), Rudolf Schock (Tenor/Bacchus), Paul Schöffler(Musiklehrer); Wiener Philharmoniker, Karl Böhm (cond.). Live from Salzburger Festspiel, 7 August 1954.
product_id=Above: The Sleeping Ariadne in Naxos by John Vanderlyn [Source: Wikipedia]
MOZART: Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Berlin 1949)
First Performance: 16 July 1782, Burgtheater, Vienna.
| Principal Characters: | |
| Selim, Pasha | Nonsinging role |
| Constanze, a Spanish lady and Belmonte's bethrothed | Soprano |
| Blonde, Constanze's English maid | Soprano |
| Belmonte, a Spanish nobleman | Tenor |
| Pedrillo, Belmonte's servant and now supervisor of the Pasha's gardens | Tenor |
| Osmin, overseer of the Pasha's country palace | Bass |
| Klaas, a sailor | Nonsinging role |
| Mute, Osmin's servant | Nonsinging role |
Setting: The country palace of Pasha Selim.
Synopsis:
Background to the story
This is the tale of Constanze and Belmonte, two young Spaniards of noble birth. Constanze, her English maid, Blonde, and Pedrillo, Belmonte’s servant, fell into the hands of pirates who attacked their ship. The pirates sold their captives at a slave market to Pasha Selim. After month of searching for them in despair, tormented by not knowing what had become of his beloved Constanze and the two servants, Belmonte sets out to find them.
Act One
Belmonte has arrived on the distant Turkish shore and approaches the high wall surrounding the seraglio. Here he encounters Osmin, the Pasha’s right-hand man, and questions him about the people he is seeking. Osmin, however, has not the slightest intention of giving this stranger any information whatsoever and sends him on his way.
Belmonte continues to look for a way to get into the seraglio.Through a prison window, he manages to catch a glimpse of Pedrillo. This confirms that Constanze and Blonde are also being held prisoner in the harem.
Pasha Selim has chosen Constanze to be the object of his affections. He visits the harem every day and does everything in his power to persuade her into accepting his suit. Constanze remains steadfast in adamantly refusing to succumb. She has no idea yet that her beloved Belmonte is so near.
Meanwhile, Belmonte has disguised himself as an architect an enters the First Courtyard of the seraglio. He teams up with Pedrillo and together they try to get past Osmin into the Second Courtyard.
Act Two
Osmin has taken a fancy to Blonde, but his persistent advances are met with resistance by the young English woman. The two of them are involved in constant battles of wit, which Osmin just can’t win.
Constanze makes it increasingly difficult for the Pasha to approach her and he finally loses patience. He threatens to punish her if she does not soon accept his suit.
Blonde learns about the plan for their escape from Pedrillo. Before they can put the plan into action, however, they first have to outwit Osmin. Pedrillo manages to persuade Osmin to help him empty a bottle of wine and the latter then falls into a deep sleep. The two couples are able to meet and plan their escape.
Act Three
Belmonte, still disguised as an architect, smuggles Pedrillo out of the Seraglio and they head for Belmonte’s ship. There they wait for night to fall.
At midnight, Belmonte and Pedrillo row round the coast to the foot of the harem. Pedrillo serenades his Blonde as a signal. Osmin discovers them in the boat and sends a fleet of ships out to capture them again.
The death penalty awaits them, but Pasha Selim decides to forgo revenge and sets the captives free.
[Synopsis Source: Bayerische Staatsoper]
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