New George Benjamin and Martin Crimp opera

Great news indeed. Following on from the success of George Benjamin's opera Written on Skin the Royal Opera has commissioned a new opera from Benjamin and librettist Martin Crimp for the main stage at Covent Garden. The bad news is that we will have to wait until Spring 2018. Their superb opera Written on Skin was a co-commission between a group of European opera houses including the Aix-en-Provence Festival and the Royal Opera House, the work was premiered at Aix-en-Provence last year and received its UK premiere at Covent Garden earlier this year. Its is anticipated that the new work will also be a co-commission but the Royal Opera House has said that it will receive its premiere at Covent Garden. (see my interview with George Benjamin and my review of Written on Skin at Covent Garden)

Sparkle and charm: Grieg piano music from Sandra Mogensen

Sandra Mogensen is a Canadian pianist of Latvian and Danish heritage who has made something of a speciality of the music of Grieg and this is the third of her discs of Grieg's piano music. She has not recorded the pieces in opus number order, but has made her own selections. The discs mix well known and rare pieces which she has programmed so that the pieces flow from one to another. Over the three discs she has recorded the complete Opus 41, Opus 52, From Holberg's Time Opus 40, the Lyric Pieces Opus 52 and Opus 62. This disc seems to very much the dance disc, with the waltz and other movements in 3/4 time predominating.

Terrence Malick's To The Wonder

Terrence Malick's latest film To The Wonder has a remarkable sound track, not only using a large amount of classical music but contemporary pieces as well. I was alerted to this by the latest issue of the Nordic Highlights magazine produced by Fennica Gehrman who publish the music of Einojuhani Rautavaara. That composer's Cantus Arcticus, Op. 61, ‘Concerto for Birds and Orchestra’ (his 1972 orchestral work which incorporates taped birdsong) features at a key moment in the film, notably the third movement Joutsenet Muuttavat (Swans Migrating). The work is performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

Remarkable variety - interview with Stephen Gadd

The baritone Stephen Gadd is currently appearing at Opera Holland Park in Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci before going on to sing Mr Redburn in Glyndebourne's revival of Billy Budd later this summer. Gadd has become something of a welcome presence at summer opera festivals in the UK, turning in a remarkable series of performances including last year's Sharpless in Madama Butterfly at Grange Park (opposite his wife Claire Rutter in the title role) and Robert Storch in Intermezzo at Buxton. I caught up with Stephen just before one of his performances at Opera Holland Park recently to talk about his career.

Remarkably, he admitted that he has no grand plan regarding his career and seems to simply view himself as a jobbing singer, fitting in performances alongside other activities and family life. He talks about the fact that for him, performing only comes alive when he is finally on stage, when he can begin to create a character. He is charmingly depreciating when talking about himself and his work, saying that he has never had the luxury of plan and has always taken what comes.

Summer temptations - 2014 and onwards with Grange Park Opera

Currently in the midst of their 2013 summer season, Grange Park Opera, has announced its plans for 2014 and 2015, with some very tempting offerings. As ever the casting offers some strong singers, many returning to Grange Park. Repertoire includes a mix of the well known and the unusual, with Massenet's Don Quichotte getting a rare outing, a production of Saint-Saens Samson et Dalila in the offing as well as Bryn Terfel in a musical.

Claire Rutter, who is currently a fabulous Elvira in this summer's I Puritani, returns next year for Verdi's La Traviata. Rutter has shown herself able to span the range from bel canto through Verdi and Puccini to Wagner, so that it will be fascinating to hear her as Violetta. Alfredo will be played by Marco Panuccio and Giorgio Germont by Damiano Salerno. Panuccio appeared opposite Rutter last year in Grange Park's Madama Butterfly and also impressed as the Duke in the company's Rigoletto alongside Salerno in the title role. Salerno is also currently appearing with Rutter in I Puritani.

Guildhall Wigmore Recital Prize

Martin Häßler

On Friday 21 June 2013, baritone Martin Häßler will be giving a recital at the Wigmore Hall as the recipient of the annual Guildhall Wigmore Recital Prize. The prize annually awards an exceptionally talented Guildhall School musician with a Wigmore Hall recital. On Friday 21 June Häßler will be accompanied by Marek Ruszczynski in a remarkably wide ranging programme which includes Schubert songs (Des Sängers Habe D832, Der Wanderer an den Mond D870, Der Wanderer D493, Bei dir allein D866), Wolf's Mörike Lieder, Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death and Finzi's Let us Garlands bring.

Vermeer and music - sight and sound

Music seems to be important in Vermeer's paintings and the National Gallery's forthcoming exhibition Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure examines this. But they have taken things a little further than just showing us pictures of people playing music, accompanied by learned discussions. They have teamed up with the Academy of Ancient Music and AAM musicians will give performances every hour, on the hour, three days a week during the exhibition, which runs 26 June to 8 September.

There will be three major works by Vermeer on display, each of which portrays a female musician, the National Gallery's A Young Woman standing at a Virginal and A Young Woman seated at a Virginal will be joined by Vermeer’s The Guitar Player, which is on loan from Kenwood House. Vermeer’s The Music Lesson will also be on show, on loan from Her Majesty the Queen.

Ariadne auf Naxos at Glyndebourne

Kate Lindsey (Composer) in Ariadne auf Naxos
by Richard Strauss at Glyndebourne. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

Katharina Thoma's new production of Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos at Glyndebourne was the first new production of the opera there for a long time and, as such, highly anticipated. Thoma is a young German director making both her UK debut and her debut directing Richard Strauss. She, her set designer Julia Muer and costume designer Irina Bartels set the prologue in an English country house during World War 2, with a nod to Glyndebourne's own history. (Seen Sunday 18 June) The prologue concluded with a bomb dropping on the house. The opera proper in the second half was ditched, instead we were back in the same country house which was now a hospital. Amongst the wounded soldiers there was also the composer and Ariadne. The naiad, dryad and echo were nurses, Zerbinetta and her troupe returned as ENSA entertainers and Bacchus was a returning, wounded airman. There were strong performances from the cast with Soile Isokoski as Ariadne, Kate Lindsey as the composer, Ulyana Aleksyuk as Zerbinetta, Sergey Skorokhodov as Bacchus, Thomas Allen as the music master, Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke as the dancing master and Dmitri Vargin as Harlequin with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vladimir Jurowski.

Appear and Inspire - Edington Festival 2014

The 2014 Edington Festival of Music within the Liturgy runs from 18 August to 25 August this year. The festival offers four services per day at Edington Priory Church in Wiltshire sung by three choirs, an all male schola cantorum, a mixed voice consort and a choir of boys and men, directed by Peter Stevens, Matthew Martin, Jeremy Summerly and Paul Brough with Benjamin Nicholas as the festival director. The theme of the festival is inspired by the female saints, Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, Teresa of Calcutta, St Cecilia and Teresa of Lisieux. 

More unwrapping at Kings Place

Kings Place has run a series of year long themes in which a single composer is Unwrapped (we are currently in the middle of 2013's Bach Unwrapped). For 2014 they have decided to go for something different, Chamber Classics Unwrapped, a series of concerts presenting the top 50 chamber works. The works were chosen with the help of an online vote at BBC Music Magazine, but the results include all the works that you might expect.  The advantage of the series is that artists have been given carte-blanche in the programming so that Beethoven is paired with John Adams or Bernard Hermann, Elga with Falla and Brahms, Ravel with Birtwistle, with composers like Ligeti, Panufnik, Turina, Berio, Reicha, and Webern also cropping up. The range of artists is impressive, with old faces like the Dante Quartet, Endymion and the Schubert Ensemble, plus resident ensembles like the Brodsky Quartet, the Aurora Orchestra, the London Sinfonietta and the OAE. Individual artists will include James Ehnes, Jack Liebeck and Sarah Connolly.

Christine Collins Young Artists - Madama Butterfly at Opera Holland Park

Anne Sophie Duprels
(pciture Fritz Curzon)

The Christine Collins Young Artists scheme at Opera Holland Park was introduced last year, and this year 14 young singers performed Puccini's Madama Butterfly on Friday 14 June 2013, in the production by Paul Higgins (which debuted on June 8) joined by Anne Sophie Duprels in the title role from the main cast. The performance was conducted by associate conductor Natalie Murray conducted. A feature of Opera Holland Park's young artists scheme is that the young singers are rehearsed for the full rehearsal period in parallel to the main performers, this year they were directed by associate director Emma Rivlin. The cast included Luis Gomes as Pinkerton, Maria Fiselier as Suzuki, Ben McAteer as Sharpless, Peter Davoren as Goro and Katie Slater as Kate Pinkerton.

Paul Higgins and designer Neil Irish have created a very traditional Butterfly. Irish's fixed set, with its paper thin walls, was placed high on a platform masking the facade of Holland House and reducing the main acting area whilst providing walkways for subsidiary action. One distinctive feature of the production was the use of movement. French-Japanese movement director Namiko Gahier-Ogawa has created stylised oriental-style movement for the Japanese characters and this became the basic expressive vocabulary for Anne Sophie Duprels.

Still going strong - Ida Haendel in London

The amazing Ida Haendel will be back in London later this month. Now over 80, she was born in Poland in 1928 and trained with Carl Flesch in London and Georges Enescu in Paris.  Her recording career dates back to 1940, she made her London debut in 1937 and has appeared at the Proms some 68 times. On Sunday 30 June 2013 she is the guest of honour at a concert at the Wigmore Hall being given by musicians from the Royal College of Music, then on Wednesday 3 July she will be giving a masterclass at the Royal College of Music's Britten Theatre finally on 5 July she and Rob Cowan will be at the Cadogan Hall where she will talk about her career and play some of the pieces associated with her. You can view the complete 54 minute documentary on her (originally published in 2004) on YouTube.

Wishes, Lies and Dreams in Peckham

Composer Kate Whitley is back with another one of her pop-up events in Peckham. Wishes, Lies and Dreams is a new work by Kate Whitley for children's choir and orchestra. It will be performed by a choir of 160 primary school children (from John Donne, Bellenden, Peckham Park and Kender schools) and John Donne Community Choir conducted by Christopher Stark in Peckham Rye multi-storey car-park on Saturday 6 July at 7.30pm. 

Britten-Pears Archive Opens today

The new Britten-Pears Archive, designed by Stanton William (photo Philip Vile)

The £4.7 million Britten-Pears Archive is opened today by Dame Janet Baker, the singer for whom Britten wrote one of his last major works, Phaedra. The archive is the first such purpose-built composer archive in the UK. The Britten archive is the the most comprehensive collection of any composer in the world. It tells the story of Britten’s creative and personal life in extraordinary depth and breadth, including manuscripts for over 700 pieces of music (including the vast majority of Britten's original manuscripts), diaries, 80,000 letters, countless photographs, recordings, films, costumes, set models, art, books and much more.

Singing the Changes

Thirty year's ago this month, I agreed to stand in as musical director of a fledgling choir, the Pink Singers, the first lesbian and gay choir in London. The choir had been founded a few months earlier, inspired by the recent visit to London by the New York City Gay Mens Chorus. I was with the Pink Singers for five years and, amazingly, thirty years later the choir is still going strong. In January they had a concert to celebrate their birthday (see my article on this blog) and now they have put together an exhibition, Singing the Changes, which looks at the 30 years of their existence in the context of the changes to lesbian and gay life in the last thirty years. The social landscape was very different in 1983 and the exhibition seeks to capture this, and show how it was reflected in the Pink Singers history.

The exhibition is part oral history, with touch screens enabling you to see and hear interviews with current and former members of the choir, including Mark Bunyan (the founder musical director), one other of the founder members of the choir, myself and two further musical directors. (The choir has had just 6 musical directors in its existence and five of them were at the opening of the exhibition last night). The exhibition has been put together entirely by members of the Pink Singers, including recording and editing the video interviews.

The Ring summarised in verse

When I was a student I was introduced to the music of Wagner and one of the ways that I got to know about the Ring was through Anna Russell's The Ring of the Nibelungs (An Analysis) in which she narrated the story in her own inimitable manner, including singing excerpts. The point about this was that it was both funny and apposite, bits of her descriptions stayed with me and in fact some of the points she made managed to be both hilarious and profound. These points occurred to me when reading Richard Morris's delightful little book, The Nibelung Ballad - The Story from Wagner's Ring, which confirmed that introductions to the Ring cycle don't have to be portentously po-faced.

In just 22 short pages, Morris narrates the story of the entire Ring in verse, capturing the essence of the narrative as well as the back story and something of the stage directions. There are also 13 full page illustrations by his daughter Hetty Morris.  There are 84 verses, a total of just 365 lines. Morris uses a basic rhymed four-line structure which has a limerick-like rhythm to it, but he varies things by altering the number of lines in a verse and not always rhyming the way he should. The results are both appealing and clear, you get a strong sense of the Ring's narrative as well as enjoying the verse.

JAM - onwards and upwards

The last year has been something of a rollercoaster for JAM (John Armitage Memorial). The failure to secure a grant for their 2012 season in Scotland last year put the concerts in jeopardy, made a rather significant hole in the organisation's budgets and made it unlikely that the organisation will, in the short term, return to Scotland. But they have bounced back renewed this year with a season of concerts in London and in Wales, along with concerts and education projects in Kent, all aimed at promoting contemporary music as a living, vibrant part of life. I met up with Ed Armitage of JAM to talk about the charity's recent concerts and future plans.

Innovation seems to be one of JAM's keyword's this year. So that their education project, A Sporting Chance, which involves five schools in the Romney Marsh area will take an inventive approach to the problem of transport. Needing to get pupils from the various schools to Hythe for the event, JAM has involved the area's most distinctive transport system, the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway which will be transporting both children and parents to the event. More than 500 school children will work with Onyx Brass on the concert, which involves a performance of Bob Chilcott's A Sporting Chance. But around 2000 children in total will experience the work, as the introductory sessions involve the whole school, including year one who are able to experience a taster, whetting their appetite for further involvement in future projects.

Your chance to sing Venetian Vespers

The Academy of St Cecilia is running a one-day workshop, tutored by Robert King, on Venetian poly-choral music on Saturday 13 July at St. George's Metropolitan Cathedral, Westminster Bridge Road, Southwark, SE1 7HY. There will be rehearsals morning and afternoon, concluding with Vespers at 5.00pm accompanied by the Doge's Players led by Jeremy West. The repertoire is highly enticing, Giovanni Gabrieli's Magnificat a 14 and Laudate Pueri a 12 plus Giovanni Rovetta's De Profundis. All the editions being used are Clifford Bartlett and are included in the cost of the day. The cost is £20, with reductions for members of the Early Music Forum or the Academy of St. Cecilia. Your chance to sing under Robert King, founder of the King's Consort. What are you waiting for? Further information from the Academy of St Cecilia website.

Troy Story

The Orchestra of the Swan in collaboration with Talking Birds and six Birmingham Schools have come up with Troy Story an 'intergalactic opera'. A community opera which sets the story of Odysseus in the year 3000! Music is by Derek Nisbet who is joint artistic director with conductor David Curtis, with Nick Walker as writer. The schools involved are Brays School,St Patrick's and St Edmund's RC Primary School in Birmingham and Welcombe Hills, Thomas Jolyffe and Wilmcote Primary Schools in Stratford-upon-Avon.  

The opera will be performed at Birmingham Town Hall on 9 July, see their website for further details. They have a lovely preview of the event on YouTube, and you can see it after the break.

Brahms music for cello and piano

Brahms' first Cello Sonata dates from the early 1860's and reflects the young composer's lyrical passion. This new disc on Somm from cellist James Barralet and pianist Simon Callaghan pairs the work with Barralet's own transcriptions of Brahms' 21 Hungarian Dances. The disc is promised as volume one in a series of Brahms' cello works.

Brahms moved to Vienna in 1863 and struck up a friendship with amateur cellist Joseph Gansbacher and the two would play chamber music together in Brahms' flat. Brahms dedicated his Cello Sonata in E minor to Gansbacher. The work may have been inspired by the fact that Edmund Lalo had just published a cello sonata, but earlier works in the genre by Chopin, Mendelssohn and Beethoven would have been known to the two. Also, the current final movement pays tribute both in its form (a fugue) and its fugue subject to the work of Bach, reflecting Brahms' interest in baroque music.

Rosenblatt on TV

Four of the 2012/13 Rosenblatt Recitals at the Wigmore Hall were recorded for video for Sky Arts. Dates have now been announced for the transmission of the recitals. So if you missed them live and have access to the Sky Arts channel then American tenor Lawrence Brownlee's recital (see my review) appears on Monday 15th July, 8pm, followed each consecutive Monday by Spanish tenor Joel Prieto (see my review), on 22 July, Greek soprano Dimitra Theodossiou (see my review) on 29 July and Sicilian tenor Antonino Siragusa (see my review) on 5 August. The recitals will be introduced by Suzy Klein, who will also be interviewing the artists. The Rosenblatt Recitals 2013/14 season opens on September 16 at Wigmore Hall with a recital by tenor Celso Abelo. Further information from the Rosenblatt Recitals website.

Poulenc's Carmelites at Grange Park Opera.

Francis Poulenc the first Blanche in  Carmelites

Francis Poulenc's Carmelites is a remarkable opera. A long work from a composer renowned for his smaller scale pieces, an intensely serious piece from a man whose previous opera was a surrealist farce, and a tonal work written at a time when atonality was becoming the dominant force in contemporary music. It is not an opera that you expect to encounter at country house opera, but then Grange Park Opera is never typical with its repertoire choices. We attended the opening night of John Doyle's production, on 12 June 2013, and I have to declare a little bit of interest in the event as we made a small contribution to the support of the production.

John Doyle and designer Liz Ashcroft's production highlighted the meditative calm of the cloister, the ritual of a religious life and the sheer strength which appertains to it. Ashcroft's set consisted of a single trapezoidal room with a single slot for an entrance. Colours were all muted creams and taupes, including the nuns' habits.  Paul Keogan's lighting captured the amazing beauty of the set, and brought out a myriad of colours. It was here that the entire opera took place, in this enclosed world.

These New Puritans - Field of Reeds

When I was sent this disc, I have to confess that my heart rather sank when I read of it being classically influenced. I have listened to too much music which exists in that awkward zone between classical, rock and pop but only succeeds in being bland. Thankfully, when I popped Field of Reeds into the player, I was immediately greeted with the distinctive tones of an indie rock band. Music which had a clear integrity and toughness about it, but also some interesting hints of other influences.

These New Puritans was formed by twins Jack and George Barnett and their friend Thomas Hein. Their debut disc Beat Pyramid came out in 2008, with their second Hidden following. During 2010 and 2011 they recreated Hidden in a series of shows which involved the Britten Sinfonia and a childrens choir, and represented their first collaboration with conductor Andre de Ridder. For Hidden Jack Barnett had taught himself to arrange and notate the brass, woodwind and percussion parts.

Around Ariadne

Die schlafende Ariadne auf Naxos (The Sleeping Ariadne in Naxos),
by John Vanderlyn.

Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Ariadne auf Naxos persistently presents directors with a variety of challenges when it comes to staging. The work originated in a re-working of Moliere's play Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, which Hofmannsthal translated into German with Strauss providing incidental music plus the musical entertainment at the end. This entertainment consisted of the combination of the opera with a commedia dell'arte troupe. This original version of Ariadne auf Naxos proved to be too long and to have too intransigent a combination of spoken play and opera. Strauss and von Hofmannsthal re-worked the play and Strauss provided it with a simpler entertainment much closer to Moliere's original. The operatic combination of Ariadne and Zerbinetta's commedia dell'arte troupe they felt was worth saving. So a prologue was added and the opera that we know today created.

The piece came about as a sort of thank-you present. The director Max Reinhardt (who worked at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin) had come to Strauss and Hofmannsthal's rescue when rehearsals for the premiere of Der Rosenkavalier had gone badly in Dresden. Reinhardt had worked anonymously so they cooked up the idea of writing him a short operatic work to be performed as an intermezzo during a Moliere play which Hofmannsthal would adapt. The whole to be performed at Reinhardt's Berlin theatre. After batting about ideas, Le Bourgeois genthilhomme was fixed on, with the opera not as an intermezzo but to replace the grand ballet which was in the original.

ETO Autumn Season

Jake Arditti & Paula Sides in
ETO's 2011 Flavio
®Richard Hubert Smith

English Touring Opera's Autumn 2013 season starts on 28 September at the Britten Theatre in the Royal College of Music, where ETO are performing James Conway's production of Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppea (originally seen at the Royal College of Music). The season includes three baroque operas, all of them written for Venice, with Monteverdi's late masterpiece being complemented by Cavalli's Jason and Handel's Agrippina. Cavalli was a younger contemporary of Monteverdi's and Jason was one of the most popular operas in the 17th century. All three operas use the Venetian style of mixing comic and serious characters. Agrippina uses the same characters as Monteverdi's opera, and is regarded as Handel's first major opera, and shows the composer in lively and comic mode.

ETO are working with the Old Street Band who will be accompanying all the operas. All three operas are designed by Samal Blak, with Jason being directed by Ted Huffman and James Conway directing Agrippina. All three operas are being sung in English.

Eugene Onegin at Grange Park Opera

Brett Polegato as Onegin in act 3
of Grange Park Opera' s Eugene Onegin

Stephen Medcalf's attractive and intelligently traditional production of Eugene Onegin was originally seen at Grange Park Opera last year, performed by the Grange Park Opera rising stars (see my review). The production returned this year with Susan Gritton singing her first Tatyana, Brett Polegato as Onegin, Frances Bourne as Olga, Robert Anthony Gardiner as Lensky, Anne-Marie Owens as Madam Larina, Kathleen Wilkinson as Filipyevna and Clive Bayley as Prince Gremin. Martyn Brabbins conducted the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

Designer Francis O'Connor's two-tier set made good use of the stage, with the upper level allowing Madame Larina and her family to look down on the peasants dancing, and provided a way of making scenes like the ball scene look opulent without being crowded on the relatively small Grange Park Opera stage. Medcalf also used the upper level to isolate his characters, so that Polegato's Onegin was alone up there at the end of the dance at Madame Larina's.

Nimrod Borenstein premieres

The Philharmonia Orchestra and conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy will be giving the premiere of If you will it, it is no dream, by the Tel Aviv-born London-based composer Nimrod Borenstein.  The work, which was commissioned by the Philharmonia Orchestra, will be the opening work in a concert at the Royal Festival Hall on 13 June 2013. The programme also includes Elgar's Violin Concerto with James Ehnes as the soloists, as well as Walton's Symphony No. 1. Borenstein's The Big Bang and the Creation of the Universe was performed by Ashkenazy and the Philharmonia Orchestra in Leicester earlier this year. Borenstein is having a busy time at the moment, at the beginning of July his Concerto for Violoncello and String Orchestra receives its premiere in Belgrade, further information from Nimrod Borenstein's website. Further information on Thursday's concert from the South Bank Centre website.

Summer Music Academy at the Royal Military School

The Royal Military Academy at Kneller Hall, Twickenham is again holding a Summer Music Academy this year. Running from 4 to 10 August 2013, the event is free to attend and the Royal Military Academy are looking for young people between the ages of 16 to 24, brass and woodwind players and percussionists (though other instrumentalists will be considered) with grade 7+ in their primary instrument. Last year 150 people applied for 60 places and there will be 60 places available this year. The idea is to offer a specialized musical education of the highest calibre combined with an insight to a career in military music. So the academy offers rehearsals with the band and individual lessons with professional musicians alongside a visit to an Army training regiment to learn more about careers in the army, an introduction to physical training (though nothing difficult is promised), career presentations and opportunities to hear the band perform and talk to musicians. There are 22 Army bands across the UK, involving string, wind, brass and percussion players. Army musicians are encouraged to further their musical training by studying for degrees and diplomas, and to play in a wide variety of ensembles.  Further information from the Summer Music Academy website.

I Puritani at Grange Park Opera

Jesus Leon in act 1 of I Puritani at Grange Park Opera

I Puritani was Bellini's final opera, written in Paris in 1835. Working with an Italian exile in Paris, Count Carlo Pepoli, rather than his usual librettist Felice Romani, Bellini was attracted by the poetry of Pepoli's lyrics. But this was allied to a plot of extreme fragility. Forget the librettist's tenuous hold on English and Scottish geography and history, the basic mechanics of the plot are risible even by Italian bel canto standards. But these are allied to music of great beauty and finely drawn lead roles.

Grange Park Opera's new staging of the work directed by Stephen Langridge, is the first one in the UK for many years. We caught it on Saturday 8 June 2013. A strong cast included Claire Rutter as Elvira, Jesus Leon as Arturo, Damiano Salerno as Riccardo and Christphoros Stamboglis as Giorgio, with Gianluca Marciano conducting the English Chamber Orchestra.

Langridge and his designer, Conor Murphy, clearly felt that the thinness of the plot needed some sort of supplement. Langridge chose to start the work off in a Victorian mad-house with doctors examining a female inmate. Taking his cue from Elvira's mad scene, Langridge seemed to be trying to examine the appalling Victorian attitudes to female mental illness and the way women who did not conform to the norm were locked up. This sort of multi-layered approach can work well and prove highly illuminating (for example, David Pountney's ENO production of Dvorak's Rusalka set in a Victorian nursery). But unfortunately there seemed to be little or no traction between the plot mechanics of I Puritani and Langridge's madhouse setting. The results, as the opera progressed, seemed to be that Langridge and Murphy threw ideas at the piece in apparent desperation, creating a confused mess rather than an illumination of the opera.

The frustrating thing was that Langridge and conductor Gianluca Marciano ellicited performances of great style, brilliance and intensity so that the staging was thrillingly gripping even if you had not the slightest idea what was going on.

Owen Wingrave at Guildhall School

Owen Wingrave was Benjamin Britten's penultimate opera, written in 1970 and receiving its first performance in a TV broadcast in 1971, going on to have its stage premiere in 1973. Something about the work's TV origins seems to have hung over the work and it only came back into prominence after Glyndebourne's performances (in 1995 by the touring opera and in 1997 at the main festival with Gerald Finley in the title role) proved it could work on stage. For the 2007 performances at the Covent Garden, David Matthews made a reduced orchestration, and it was this version which the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (GSMD) performed for their summer opera. We caught the second performance, on Friday 7 June, the first performance with the alternative cast. Kelly Robinson's production, designed by Madeleine Boyd is a co production with The Banff Centre in Canada. Dominic Wheeler, GSMD's Head of Opera Studies, conducted.

London A Cappella International Summer School

To Kings Place yesterday for the launch of the London A Cappella International Summer School. A number of interested parties from journalists to arts professionals and performers came together to learn about the plans to expand the London A Cappella Festival. The festival has become a regular fixture in our diaries in January. Curated by the Swingle Singers, the event is proving an eclectic and essential mix of all types of a cappella singing. Now the festival is expanding and 1-4 August 2014 will see the first London A Cappella International Summer School at Kings Place. The idea is to provide a platform for performance and coaching for groups and individuals. 

Olivier Latry - Trois Siecles d'Orgue at Notre-dame de Paris

On 12 December 2012, after 10 months' restoration work and silence, the great organ of Notre Dame de Paris – the largest in France, with five keyboards, 115 stops and nearly 8,000 pipes – opened the festivities for the cathedral's 850th anniversary. This disc, recorded in the cathedral in January 2013, seems to have been designed to celebrate this fact though in fact the disc keeps the fact of organ's restoration well hidden. Olivier Latry, one of the current organists at Notre Dame de Paris, has assembled an attractive programme of music written by his predecessors. Many of the names are little known, Nicolas Sejean, Guillaume Antoine Calviere, Louis-Claude Daquin, Claude Balbaster, Jean-Jacques Beauvarlet-Charpentier, Alexandre Guilmant, Louis Vierne, Jean-Pierre Leguay, Pierre Cochereau and Olivier Latry himself. The number of names is quite high partly because in the 18th century the cathedral operated a rota system with four organists doing three months duty each.

Laika in Lambeth

Pupils rehearsing for Laika in Lambeth.
Production by Reay Primary School and English Touring Opera,
music by Russell Hepplewhite, design by Catherine Ryan,
original Laika puppet design by Jude Munden.
Photo by Sarah Botchway

In January I went to see Laika the Spacedog, English Touring Opera's opera for young people which debuted at the Science Museum (see my review). Now ETO is collaborating with pupils from Lambeth schools on the opera's sequel, Laika in Lambeth. The new piece follows Laika's adventures when she returns to Earth (having been the first dog in space) and lands in Lambeth! Pupils at Reay Primary School have been working with ETO on the piece, which premieres in the Grand Hall at Battersea Arts Centre on Tuesday 11 June. The production will be performed by 175 children with children from St Stephen's, Wyvil and Vauxhall Primary Schools being involved along with the pupils from Reay Primary School.

Music is again by Russell Hepplewhite and Laika herself is played by the puppets, made by Jude Munden, from ETO's production of Laika the Spacedog. The whole of Reay Primary School has been involved in creating and producing Laika in Lambeth. Sarah Botchway, producer of Laika in Lambeth and Principal at Reay Primary School, commented that 'The children are really engaged in the workshops composing the music as well as designing and constructing the set'.  Reay Primary School has a history of working with professional arts organisations, in 2011 they worked with the National Theatre to perform an original nativity play. The school is at the Oval, Lambeth and is ethnically diverse with 75% of students from minority ethnic groups and 50% of students speaking English as an additional language

Laika in Lambeth is being performed on Tuesday 11 June 2013 at the Grand Hall, Battersea Arts Centre, at 2pm for groups of school children and teachers, at 7pm for parents and the general public..

May on Planet Hugill - Silent lakes, rare Wagner and a great Handelian tenor

May on Planet Hugill was holiday month as we spent nearly two weeks walking in Montenegro to help set us up for what is proving to be a very busy June.

We started the month visiting Cambridge to see Handel's Atalanta performed by Cambridge Handel Opera, the performances being the group's swansong in their present form. And we finished by popping upstairs to the Cock Tavern in Covent Garden for Pop Up Opera's uproarious take on Donizetti's Don Pasquale.

Having heard Handel's L'Allegro, il penseroso ed il moderato at the London Handel Festival, it was fascinating to encounter Handel's setting of Milton again at the opening of this year's Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music, performed by Paul McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort and Players. The Tallis Scholars celebrated both their 40th anniversary and Gesualdo's 400th anniversary with the final concert in this season's Choral at Cadogan.

Tutti Verdi - complete songs at the London Song Festival

Verdi caricatured in 1860 by Delfico,
the dedicatee of Sgombra, o gentil

Having given us the complete Wagner songs (see my review), Nigel Foster and the London Song Festival also performed the same service for Giuseppe Verdi (1813 - 1901). On Wednesday 5 June 2013 at St. Paul's Covent Garden, soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn and tenor Nicholas Ransley, with bass-baritone Bozidar Smiljanic, accompanied by Nigel Foster performed all 26 of Verdi's songs.

Verdi wrote songs throughout his life, but the core of his output are the sets of songs he published in 1838 and 1845. After 1845 his output diminished, the songs being occasional single items often quite short. The joy of this recital was that Foster had tracked down all the songs including one which Verdi wrote on 1894. The puzzling thing seems to be that, despite all the advances in scholarship, there is not a single simple Verdi edition of all 26 songs. Some are tiny, occasional pieces written as thank-you presents, but all are worthwhile and many have interesting relations to the operas.


Verdi's Sei Romanze (Six Songs) of 1838 was his first published work, composed in 1836 before any of the operas. The songs don't form a cycle simply a set of songs on the themes of death and loss with piano parts which are rather simplistically basic.

Ransley gave a vibrant and dramatic performance of Non t'accostar all'urna ('Do not approach the urn'). It is not a complex song, but very expressive and dramatic.  Llewellyn captured the sad melancholy of More, Elisa, lo stanco poeta ('Here dies, Elisa, the tired poet') with its very Verdian cast to the melody.

Bach Concertos - Viktoria Mullova & Ottavio Dantone

Transcription is central to Bach's orchestral music. Many of his keyboard concertos are transcriptions of other works and the well known concerto for violin and oboe is in fact the reconstruction of a lost original based on the concerto for two harpsichords BWV1060. The concerto for harpsichord BWV 1053 has a similar history, it may have been originally intended for oboe d'amore and Bach re-used the music elsewhere as well. Bach was a great re-user of things, many of the standard works in the canon include music from other works.

On this new disc from Viktoria Mullova, Ottavio Dantone and Accademia Bizantina, they pair Bach's surviving violin concertos with two new transcriptions. The concerto for harpsichord BWV 1053 is here given in a version for violin, and the concerto for two harpsichords BWV 1060 is given as a concerto for violin and harpsichord, essentially combining elements from the concerto's two different versions.

Mullova's playing in this style of music is well known. She plays with an admirable sense of line, purity and integrity of tone. There are some lovely dark colours underpinning her essentially strong, almost wiry, tone alongside and easy fluency in the music. To my ear, her playing sounds completely admirable with a lack of bulges on notes and other tics.

Slightly mad but rather brilliant

Yamaha have released a new video promoting their Silent Piano. Yes, its a promo video, but it has the pianist HJ Lim floating down the Regent's Park Canal playing extracts from Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto no 2.  It looks completely magical, as for the sound well I'll leave you to decide. The video is available on YouTube or you can see it below, after the break.

Anglo-Japanese fusion

400 years ago the first British ship, The Clove, reached Japan. This event is being celebrated on 11 June with an evening which combines words and music, in the church of All Saints, Fulham which is where the leader of the expedition is buried. The music will mix both Japanese and Western music, classical and folk, and there will be readings of poems inspired by the sea and from the ship's log. Performers will include the ensemble Okeanos, who play on a combination of Japanese and Western instruments, the pianist Noriko Ogawa, soprano Kyoko Murai and the baritone Lt Cdr Peter Nicholson of the Royal Navy, plus UK based Japanese folk musicians, a vocal quartet created by Jason James of the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation. Things start at 6.30pm with the traditional opening of a sake barrel! With the performance following at 7.30pm. The event is just one of many being promoted as part of the Japan 400 celebrations, further information from the Japan 400 website.

'Cav and Pag' restored

'Cav and Pag', the combination of Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo's Pagliacci used to be a relatively common sight, a powerful evening of verismo opera. But opera companies nowadays seem to rather fight shy of the pairing, perhaps finding the combination of stylised passion and local colour a rather difficult mix. Certainly the two operas are not equal in the strength of their invention and Mascagni's opera can seem to have rather to much instrumental back-drop to local colour and be rather low on plot. Pagliacci by contrast is almost more worthy of the epithet 'shabby little shocker'. The two operas need careful handling and need to be taken completely seriously. Both work best if left in their original Southern Italian environment. Both are more visceral than sophisticated, what 'Cav and Pag' offers is an evening of unashamed blood and thunder with some rattlingly good tunes.

For their new production, Opera Holland Park mounted the pairing with all seriousness. Stephen Barlow's production (designed by Yannis Thavoris) kept the Sicilian setting but moved Cavalleria Rusticana to the 50's and Pagliacci to the 60's. A strong cast featured Peter Auty singing both tenor roles, Turiddu in Cavalleria Rusticana and Canio in Pagliacci with Stephen Gadd singing both baritone roles, Alfio and Tonio, with Gweneth-Ann Jeffers as Santuzza and Julia Sporsen as Nedda. Conducted by Stuart Stratford with the City of London Sinfonia in the pit.

The Perfect American at the ENO

The Perfect American 
Zachary James, Christopher Purves & Improbable
(c) Richard Hubert Smith

In collaboration with the English National Opera, Teatro Real Madrid, and the dance company Improbable, the music of Phillip Glass (1937 -) provides a film-score background to Rudy Wurlitzer’s semi-biographical look at the last few months in the life of Walt Disney. The Perfect American is a delightfully whimsical – yet, despite the humour, it does not shy away from taking a good look at the arrogant, complex man who used people to make his dreams, and that of the cartoon loving world, come true. 

Ripping apart the idea of a ‘perfect American’ someone who is following the American dream, Wurlitzer based his libretto on a book by Peter Stephan Jungk. This novel about Disney uses imaginary dialogue, events and protagonists to illustrate the man and his life. For example, everything that came out of Disney’s studio was credited under the name Walt Disney. Here Jungk invents the character Dantine, a disgruntled ex-animator who, because he wants to receive credit for his work, sets up a union and is fired. Dantine returns several times to haunt Disney – each time Disney responds with violence, evidently struggling between believing that the name ‘Walt Disney’ is necessary for his vision to succeed and that he has lost his own name to a corporation.