Metamorphosis - Transformation and wonder through 700 years of Music at the Brighton Early Music Festival

BREMF 2018 - Beauty, Love & Death @ The Old Market, Brighton - Photo Robert Piwko

The Brighton Early Music Festival (BREMF) opens next week with two weeks of events from 25 October to 10 November 2019 under the theme of Metamorphosis - Transformation and wonder through 700 years of Music. For the opening weekend, there is the chance to hear Musica Secreta and Celestial Sirens in Darkness into Light exploring music written by and for nuns with the first performance in modern times of Lamentations by the French Renaissance composer Antoine Brumel (best known for his 12-part Earthquake Mass), and festival artistic director Deborah Roberts conducting the BREMF Consort of Voices (one of three different choirs which BREMF organises) in a programme which explores how composers re-worked and transformed the music of others, ending with a modern arrangement of Thomas Tallis' 40-part Spem in Alium for eleven voices.

There are two striking pieces of music theatre in the festival, Burying the Dead by Clare Norburn (former co-artistic director of the festival) which explores Henry Purcell's life and music, and Her Father's Voice which explores the life and music of the 17th century composer and singer Barbara Strozzi. Dance comes in too as Ensemble Hesperi perform Scottish Baroque music with Highland Dancer Kathleen Gilbert [see my interview with the group]

The support of young artists has been a thread which has always run through BREMF. Via its BREMF Live! the festival provides support and mentoring for groups of young artists. There are a trio of events, a masterclass, a showcase and a club night, which give the chance to hear the current emerging ensembles, the Renaissance vocal ensemble Scaramella, the Renaissance/baroque duo Melismata, and the Baroque groups Ensemble Theodora and Apollo's Cabinet. There are two further clubnights, one with a jazz group improvising on Baroque masters, and the other with BREMF Live! artists inviting others to come along and improvise!

Ovid features heavily during the festival, in a variety of guises, and on the final Saturday of the festival BREMF Singers and Players perform Handel's Ovid-based Apollo and Daphne alongside excerpts from Semele. The final event is an evocation of the Medieval Feast of Fools in which the BREMF Community Choir, BREMF Consort of Voices, Street Funk and children from local primary schools create a modern evocation of the much loved Medieval festival (eventually banned by the church) where society was inverted, the young were empowered and a child crowned Bishop and the noble ass revered!

Full details from the BREMF website.

Royal Welcome Songs for King Charles II, volume II

Henry Purcell Royal Welcome Songs for King Charles II, volume II; The Sixteen, Harry Christophers; CORO
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 2 October 2019 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
A further exploration of Purcell's Odes and Welcome Songs alongside his other music

This is another in Harry Christophers and The Sixteen's valuable series on Coro placing Henry Purcell's Odes and Welcome Songs in the context of his other music. Having already issued discs of Royal Welcome Songs for King James II and Royal Welcome Songs for King Charles II, this disc is a further selection from the time of King Charles II. On this disc we have the Ode to St Cecilia, Welcome to All the Pleasures (from 1683) and the Welcome Song, From Hardy Climes and Dangerous Toils of War (from 1683), along with the anthems Hear my prayer O Lord, Lord how long wilt thou be angry and In thee O Lord do I put my trust, the songs O Solitude and From silent shades, the devotional song Plung'd inthe confines of despair, the Pavan of Four Parts in G minor and a catch, performed by a vocal ensemble of eight, with all singers mixing solo lines with ensemble singing, and an instrumental ensemble of 12 strings, theorbo, harp and organ/harpsichord.

Whilst King Charles II projected a confident, not to say swaggering image, the reality of his regime with its secret subsidies from King Louis XIV was less edifying. But during his lifetime these details were known to few and what Henry Purcell's music projects is the official image of the somewhat cultured and pleasure-loving court. Charles' tastes were formed by his period in exile, the experience of his cousin Louis XIV's court. But, restored to the throne in England, money was far tighter than at the French court, and Charles notoriously always preferred music that he could beat time to!

Hieronymus Janssens, Charles II Dancing at a Ball at Court, c. 1660, oil on canvas : 140 × 214 cm.
London, The Royal Collection, RCIN 00525.

Welcome to All the Pleasures was not in fact a Royal commission but an Ode written for a newly formed Cecilian Society, whilst From Hardy Climes was writiten in praise of Prince George of Denmark on his marriage to the Lady Ann (Charles' niece and the future queen) - in fact the Prince was a rather dull dog and King Charles famously quipped "I have tried him drunk, and I have tried him sober and there is nothing in him".

City Music Foundation has announced its 2019 CMF Artists

CMF Artists 2019

The City Music Foundation has announced its 2019 CMF Artists, six soloists and one ensemble - Anna Cavaliero (soprano), Echéa String Quartet, Iona Fyfe (folksinger), Mingyuan Ruan (accordion), Iyad Sughayer (piano), Giacomo Susani (guitar) and Rosalind Ventris (viola).

• British Hungarian soprano Anna Cavaliero was a Member of the 2018/19 Studio of the Opéra National de Lyon and awarded the 2019 Alvarez Young Artist by Garsington Opera
• The Echéa Quartet formed at the Royal Academy of Music in 2017, they were prizewinners of the International Anton Rubinstein Chamber Music Competition (2018) and Finalists in the Royal Overseas-League Music Competition (2019)
• Scots folk-singer Iona Fyfe was youngest ever winner of Scots Singer of the Year at the MG ALBA Scots Trad Music Awards 2018
• Accordionist Mingyuan Ruan studied at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing (China) and Royal Academy of Music. She is the first classic accordionist to win the 27th IBLA international music competition.
• Jordanian-Palestinian pianist Iyad Sughayer studied in Jordan, at Chetham’s, the Royal Northern College of Music and Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance where he was awarded the Trinity Laban Gold Medal
• Classical guitarist Giacomo Susani recently graduated from the Royal Academy of Music, and his prizes and awards include winning the London International Guitar Competition
• Rosalind Ventris studied at Cambridge and Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and she now pursues a varied international career as a soloist and chamber musician. Rosalind was the viola soloist on my 2017 album Quickening and premiered my Three Pieces from the Book of Common Prayer in 2018

Carolyn Sampson & Joseph Middleton open Lieds Lieder's 2019/20 season with Strauss' Four Last Songs

Leeds Lieder's 2019/20 season starts on Saturday 19 October 2019, with the first of five concerts at The Venue, Leeds College of Music. On Saturday, soprano Carolyn Sampson and pianist Joseph Middleton (artistic director of Leeds Lieder) open the season with a programme including Richard Strauss' Four Last Songs, and music by Haydn, Mahler, Debussy and Koechlin.

Further ahead, baritone Christopher Maltman and Joseph Middleton take in the highways and byways of the animal kingdom with songs by Poulenc, Schumann, Ravel, Reger, Chabrier, Wolf, and Flanders & Swann (16/11/2019), whilst soprano Mary Bevan and baritone Julien van Mellaerts join Joseph Middleton for Hugo Wolf's Italienisches Liederbuch (29/11/2019). The Royal Academy of Music Song Circle is celebrating Clara Schumann's 200th anniversary on 11/12/2019, and mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught and Joseph Middleton will be performing Brahms, Mahler, Strauss and Liszt (13/2/2020).

Next year, there is a further sequence of concerts, this time at Leeds University, with tenor Mark Padmore and Joseph Middleton in Britten's Who are these children?, Mahler's Rückert-Lieder and Schumann’s Dichterliebe (10/1/2020), and this is followed by recitals from Fatma Said (27/1/2020), and Nicky Spence (27/1/2020). The main Lieds Lieder Festival will run from 16-19 April 2020.

Full details from the Leeds Lieder website.

A Day of the Dead at the Oxford Lieder Festival

Thomas Oliemans (Photo Marco Borggreve)

Day of the Dead at Oxford Lieder Festival; Ben Johnson, Roger Vignoles, Helen Swift, Doric String Quartet, Thomas Oliemans, Malcolm Martineau
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 15 October 2019
A glorious themed day at the Oxford Lieder Festival which took in song, literature, chamber music and much more

Tuesday 15 October 2019 was the Day of the Dead at Oxford Lieder Festival. Events began with a morning tour of Holywell Cemetery. At lunchtime Ben Johnson and Roger Vignoles moved slightly off theme with two 20th century song cycles which viewed youth from the vantage point of old age and mortality [see my review]. In the afternoon, Helen Swift, Associate Professor of Medieval French at the University of Oxford, presented her lecture Who am I: death and human identity in Medieval French Literature, with the rush hour concert from the Doric String Quartet being Schubert's Death and the Maiden Quartet. In the evening baritone Thomas Oliemans and pianist Malcolm Martineau gave a programme entitled Songs and Dances of Death where Mussorgsky's song-cycle of that name was surrounded by songs on similar themes by Schubert, Brahms, Faure, Saint-Saens and Joseph Kosma. The day was rounded off in the chapel of New College, with a concert from the Carice Singers, In Paradisum.

Doric String Quartet (Photo George Garnier)

At the Holywell Music Room at 5.30pm, the Doric String Quartet (Alex Redington, Ying Xue, Helene Clement, John Myerscough) gave us a dramatic and very personal account of Schubert's String Quartet No. 14 'Death and the Maiden'. Written in 1824, the quartet dates from a period when Schubert was coming to terms with the seriousness of his illness, and he based the second movement of the work on his 1817 song, Death and the Maiden (which was sung by Thomas Oliemans in the evening concert), and in fact all four movements of the quartet are in minor keys. For the quartet's opening, there were two intensely dramatic gestures with intimate questioning responses, the music that followed was crisp, intense and very concentrated. And I was particularly struck by the use of portamento here, particularly from first violin Alex Redington. They created a very distinct character for the music, this was four people responding to each other sometimes with furious intensity and sometimes with great intimacy. And this was a very physical performance, all four performers expressed with their bodies as well. It was completely gripping. The second movement variations on the song felt haunting and haunted. Textures were delicate yet of concentrated intensity and never relaxed, and again moments of furiousness and passages of aetherial beauty.  The third movement Scherzo was short and characterful, full of marked articulations with a serene trio section. There was a concentrated intensity to the finale, it wasn't particularly loud yet felt wound tight, creating a gripping sense of a journey towards the furious conclusion.

Intimations of mortality: A Young Man's Exhortation to Boyhood's End

Ben Johnson (Photo Chris Gloag)

Michael Tippett Boyhood's End, Gerald Finzi A young Man's Exhortation; Ben Johnson, Roger Vignoles; Oxford Lieder Festival at the Holywell Music Room
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 15 October 2019 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
Ecstatic early Tippett and the lyric melancholy of Finzi's Hardy settings contrasted in this lunchtime recital

The theme of this year's Oxford Lieder Festival is Tales of the Beyond and Tuesday was a Day of the Dead. Amidst the other concerts, talk and cemetery visit around that theme, the lunchtime recital featured two 20th century British songs recitals which view boyhood from old age and the mortality to come.

At the Oxford Lieder Festival lunchtime recital on 15 October 2019 at Holywell Music Room, tenor Ben Johnson and pianist Roger Vignoles performed Michael Tippett's 1943 cantata, Boyhood's End and Gerald Finzi's A Young Man's Exhortation.

The two cycles make a fascinating pairing, both set Victorian writers born in the 1840s (Tippett sets William Henry Hudson and Finzi sets Thomas Hardy). Finzi's cycle was composed in 1933 (though started in the late 1920), just ten years before Tippett's cantata, and Tippett was born in 1905 just four years after Finzi. Yet Boyhood's End seems to belong to an entirely different generation to A Young Man's Exhortation. Whilst the two works have a lot in common, Finzi's cycle looks back fondly to the music of Vaughan Williams and Holst whilst Tippett's writing is full of the energetic cross rhythms which suggest Tippett's interest in jazz as well as early English music. And it is to Purcell whom Tippett's turned for the structure of the piece, deliberately turning his back on the English pastoralism of Vaughan Williams and Holst. Finzi would die in 1958, whilst Tippett, a late developer in terms of his compositional career, would only crown his early ecstatic phase of composition with his opera A Midsummer Marriage in 1955, and would remain compositionally active until the 1990s.

Britten and Russia: Snape Maltings Britten Weekend 2019

Rostropovich, Oistrakh, Britten and Shostakovich during the festival of British music in Moscow. March 1963
(Photo  © 2009 Irina Antonovna Shostakovich)

Each year, Snape Maltings holds a Britten Weekend which focuses on a particular aspect of Britten's life and career. This year the weekend (18 -20 October 2019) looks at Britten's relationship with Russia, notably his friendship with three Russian musical giants, the composer Dmitri Shostakovich and the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and his wife, the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya. Politics prevent Britten's planned opera for Vishnevskaya, Anna Karenina, from coming about but his friendships with the three would have far reaching effects on Britten's musical output. For Vishnevskaya he would write the cycle of Pushkin settings, The Poet's Echo and for Rostropovich he would write the Cello Suites and the Cello Symphony. Britten dedicated The Prodigal Son to Shostakovich, whilst Shostakovich dedicated his Symphony No. 14 to Britten, a work which, with its settings of poems dealing with the theme of death, is considered a response to Britten's War Requiem (the soprano part of which was written for Vishnevskaya, but politics prevented her from taking part in the premiere though she was able to record the work with the composer).

At Snape, soprano Julia Sitkovetsky, cellist Alban Gerhardt and pianist Roger Vignoles will be performing Britten's The Poet's Echo, Shostakovich's Hebrew Songs, cellos sonatas by Briten and by Shostakovich, Britten's Cello Suites, Prokofiev's Five Poems of Anna Akhmatova and Rachmaninov  songs. Gerhardt is the soloist in Britten's Cello Symphony with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, condutor Jac van Steen, with Shostakovich's Symphony No 10.

The weekend concludes with a re-creation of the 1960 London concert at which Britten was first introduced to Rostropovich and Shostakovich - van Steen and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales are joined by cellist Laura van der Heijden for Britten's A Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, Shostakovich's Cello Concerto and Rachmaninov's Symphony No. 3.

Full details from the Snape Maltings website.

The German men's choir Sonat Vox & founder conductor Justus Merkel make their London debut on their first International tour

Sonat Vox, Justus Merkel

The German men's choir Sonat Vox was formed in 2015 by the young conductor Justus Merkel, who continues to conduct them. The ensemble of over 20 altos, tenors and basses is made up of former members of the Windsbach Boys Choir (which was founded in 1946 in Windsbach, Bavaria, which is 29 km South-West of Nuremberg), where the young men have received a sound musical education since childhood. And Merkel is also a product of the same choir.

The choir performs a wide range of repertoire from Renaissance to Modern with an emphasis on a cappella music, and having altos as well as tenors and basses, means that they are able to move away from the traditional male voice choir repertoire.

The choir has been making its debut UK tour (and the choir's first international tour) and under Justus Merkel's direction arrives in London this week for two concerts which will combine sacred music with German folk-songs, at St James's Piccadilly (17 October 2019, see EventBrite) and The Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Divine Wisdom (Hagia Sophia) (18 October 2019, see EventBrite).

A work of scholarship and a fine performance: Academy of Ancient Music's new recording of Handel's Brockes Passion

George Frideric Handel Brockes Passion; Elizabeth Watts, Robert Murray, Cody Wuattlebaum, Ruby Hughes, Rachael Lloyd, Tim Mead, Nicky Spence, Gwilym Bowen, Morgan Pearse, Academy of Ancient Music, Richard Egarr; AAM
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 14 October 2019 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★)
A striking combination of scholarship and performance, the Academy of Ancient Music's new recording of Handel's Brockes Passion complements a fine performance with elucidation of the work and the new edition

With period performance, scholarship has always gone hand in hand with singing and playing, performers often researching works and performance styles as part of the process of creating a particular performance. This is often noticeable on recordings which can be the vehicle for presenting new ideas and findings. John Butt and the Dunedin Consort, for instance, have produced a series of recordings of major works by Handel and by JS Bach which explore performance practices in the works, and the Dunedin Consort's recording of Bach's St Matthew Passion includes the possibility of downloading the sermon which came between parts one and parts two, thus giving the listener the opportunity to re-create as close as we can the experience of listening to the work in the Good Friday service in Leipzig.

Richard Egarr and the Academy of Ancient Music's new recording of Handel's Brockes Passion, on its own label, takes this to a rather new level, as the recording [based on performances in 2019, see my review] unveils a significant new edition of the work (created especially for the recording) and the CD set includes an impressive book which explores the new research in fascinating detail. The recording itself is similarly comprehensive, with the complete Brockes Passion in German over two CDs along with a third CD containing alternative versions of four items, and a recording Charles Jennens' unfinished English version of the work.

The recording features an impressive line of up soloists directed by Richard Egarr,  Robert Murray (Evangelist), Cody Quattlebaum (Jesus), Elizabeth Watts (Daughter of Zion), Ruby Hughes (Faithful Soul), Rachael Lloyd, Tim Mead (Judas), Gwilym Bowen (Peter), Nicky Spence (Faithful Soul) and Morgan Pearse, along with the Choir of Academy of Ancient Music.

Handel wrote his setting of the passion by Barthold Heinrich Brockes in 1716 and it was performed in Hamburg in 1719, under the direction of Handel's friend and erstwhile colleague at Hamburg Opera, Johannes Matheson. It proved popular and would have a number of performances in Hamburg, but Handel never kept a copy of the autograph manuscript (this has disappeared) and never performed the work in London. Almost certainly, he sent the manuscript to Matheson and he understood that a performance of the work in England was not possible.

In fact, he included music from a number of London and Italian period works in the piece and in turn would mine the Brockes Passion for music for his early oratorios. The surviving manuscripts of the work include one which was partially copied by J.S.Bach and this version was performed in Leipzig under Bach's direction, Handel's setting seems to have influenced Bach's St John Passion.

So why did Handel write the passion? We can never know for certain, but the uncertainty in England surrounding the 1715 Jacobite uprising and the Old Pretender's attempt to gain the throne must have given Handel cause for concern. His fortunes were firmly linked to the Hanoverian dynasty, and the Brockes Passion may have been something of an insurance policy, a work which would stand him in good stead if he had to return to Germany for work.

Duarte's new edition makes significant changes to the version of the work known (via the last critical edition in the mid-1960s) including adding 63 extra bars! New scholarship has enabled us to revise opinions of the relative merits of the various manuscripts, and Duarte has taken advantage of this. The Academy of Ancient Music used quite a large ensemble for the piece, and the accompanying book includes a fascinating article about the logistical differences between the Hamburg performances and the sort of ensembles Handel was writing for in London at the period, and the one-to-a-part type ethos of Bach in Leipzig. So we have five oboes (lovely) and three bassoons in addition to a significant body of strings (17) and a choir of 20.

The work is the genre known as a Passion Oratorio, and was designed explicitly for concert use whereas Bach's Passions were designed for church use. The difference is that Bach's Passions use the Biblical narrative for the recitative with added arias whereas Brockes' text resets the entire story in his own, very clotted and emotional, verse. There is still an Evangelist (Robert Murray) and Jesus (Cody Quattlebaum), plus sundry disciples, Peter (Gwilym Bowen), Judas (Tim Mead), James (Cathy Bell) and John (Kate Symonds-Joy), who enact out the passion in direct dialogue and arias. But the largest single role (with a whopping 14 arias plus duets) is the Daughter of Zion (Elizabeth Watts), with another large role being the Faithful Soul (Ruby Hughes, with certain arias given to Nicky Spence and Morgan Pearse).

This results in quite a strange piece, the role of the Daughter of Zion and the Faithful Soul is to comment, to apply the story to our situation and to express feelings about the Crucifixion narrative. It is from these arias that Bach selected his Brockes settings which he used for the arias in his own Passions, but Bach's balance between aria comment and Biblical narrative is completely different to Brockes's own (rather surprisingly Handel set Brockes text in full, without making any changes). In part two, the solo roles drop away and even Jesus falls silent (his last words being delivered as reported speech by the Evangelist!), and instead we have a long meditation from the Daughter of Zion and the Faithful Souls. It turns the work from one of pure narrative into being about our reaction to it, Brockes spends a lot of time telling us what we should be feeling.

Darkness Illuminated: music by Alexei Stanchinsky at St John's Smith Square

Alexei Stanchinsky

The young Uzbek pianist Nafis Umerkulova has released a disc of solo piano music, Darkness Illuminated, on the Ulysses Arts record label, which combines music by Alexander Scriabin with that of his Russian contemporary Alexei Stanchinsky. On Wednesday 16 October 2019, Umerkulova will be launching the disc at a concert at St John's Smith Square with the Purcell School Chamber Orchestra, conductor Paul Hoskins. 

The programme combines solo piano items with orchestra music, with two Scriabin Etudes and Stanchinsky's Sonata in E flat minor, alongside Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings and Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 (with Umerkulova as soloist) including Clara Schumann's cadenza for the concerto (written in 1846).

Alexei Stanchinsky was born in 1888 and studied at Moscow Conservatory. Taught by Taneyev and recognised as a significant talent by Rachmaninov, Scriabin and Medtner, his early death in 1914 has meant that his music has been all but forgotten. You can see Nafis Umerkulova's introduction to the music on the disc on YouTube.

Full details from the St John Smith Square website.

Blackpool's Grand Theatre to develop national Creative Learning programme with Children's Theatre Partnership

One of the workshops the Grand Theatre, Blackpool is putting on for other professionals/theatres in relation to the creative learning programme with the Children's Theatre Partnership

For those of us that associate Blackpool with the seaside, the illuminations and bawdy post cards, it is heartening to know that Blackpool's Grand Theatre is a hive of enlightened educational activities. The theatre's Creative Learning Department led by Celine Wyatt has been developing work for schools and the community for many years, including a partnership with the Royal Shakespeare Company and their Associate Schools Programme.

Now this work has been further recognised, and the Children’s Theatre Partnership (CTP) has commissioned the Grand to develop and lead a national Creative Learning programme linked to new productions of Louis Sachar’s HOLES in 2020, George Orwell’s Animal Farm (2021), and Unexpected Twist by Michael Rosen (2022), working with venues including the Marlowe Theatre (Canterbury), the Theatre Royal (Norwich), the Theatre Royal (Newcastle), and the Belgrade Theatre (Coventry).

Each venue, including Blackpool’s Grand, will be funded to develop and deliver a creative project with schools and young people linked to each show. Over the three years they will develop this locally and work will be shared nationally. All venues on the tour will receive new educational resources produced by Blackpool’s Grand theatre including group work books to support their engagement with the shows.

Support also includes training for the artists, practitioners and teachers from the theatres, the first of these courses took place last week, on the 10 and 11 October 2019. Education Resources will be available online for all theatres on the tour and the resources will include filmed interviews with HOLES director Adam Penford and puppet maker Mathew Forbes as well as members of the creative and production teams. The interviews were conducted in London by two children from St John Vianny RC Primary, Blackpool. It is believed that over 250 children will take part in the project

A barren emotional landscape barely disguised by the production’s kitsch fairy-tale opulence: Turandot, Met Live in HD

Puccini: Turandot - Christina Goerke - Metropolitan Opera (Photo Marty Sohl )

Puccini Turandot; Christina Goerke, Yusif Eyvazov, Eleanora Buratto, James Morris, dir: Franco Zeffirelli, cond: Yannick Nezet Seguin; The Metropolitan Opera Live in HD
Reviewed by Anthony Evans on 12 October 2019 Star rating: 2.5 (★★★½)
A striking production with flashes of visual magic, in a visually diffuse broadcast, which fails to live up to the opera's interpretative challenge

Let me say from the outset, I love Turandot. There, I’ve said it. I’m out. But why not proud? Staring at the computer screen, I’m wondering what on earth to make of the Metropolitan Opera’s monumental Live in HD broadcast this Saturday 12 October (seen at the Barbican Cinema). So, let’s do the easy stuff first. This revival of the production, originally staged in 1987, was dedicated to the memory of Franco Zefferelli. Few artists have had a greater impact on Met. history than Maestro Zeffirelli, who died earlier this year, and his extravagant productions have delighted generations of opera goers. At Saturday’s performance Christine Goerke was the titular princess with Yusif Eyvazov as the self-destructive il principe ignoto. The Met. stalwart James Morris was Timur and Eleonora Buratto the lovelorn Liu. Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducted.

Despite my dogged determination not to give up on Turandot I read, a while back now, a particularly provocative piece by Michael Tanner in The Spectator 'Turandot is a disgusting opera that is beyond redemption'. As a result, a particular type of virulent weed planted itself in my operatic garden. I have been trying to prune it ever since. The failure or unwillingness of a slew of productions to address the difficulties inherent in the piece have fed the nagging doubt that my love for those synthetic chords, that percussive pulsing energy, its tunes from a tinkly rosewood music box wrapped in ritualistic splendour is a chimera devoid of any psychological verisimilitude.

Bringing a rarity alive: Verdi's Un giorno di regno from Chelsea Opera Group

Verdi: Un giorno di regno - Paula Sides, Luis Gomes, Sarah-Jane Lewis, Tom Seligman, Lindsay Bramley (chorus director), George von Bergen, Nicholas Folwell, John Savournin, Aaron Godfrey-Mayes - Chelsea Opera Group

Verdi Un giorno di regno; George von Bergen, John Savournin, Sarah-Jane Lewis, Paula Sides, Luis Gomes, Nicholas Folwell, Chelsea Opera Group, Tom Seligman; Cadogan Hall
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 12 October 2019 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
A strong cast brings Verdi's rare early comedy alive at Chelsea Opera Group

Verdi's second opera, Un giorno di regno remains a relative rarity in the UK, Covent Garden did it in concert in 1999 and the Buxton Festival staged it in 2001. Now the opera seems set for another flurry of performances, perhaps spurred on by a critical edition of the work from Francesco Izzo.  Garsington will be staging it in 2020, directed by Christopher Alden and conducted by Tobias Ringborg. As something of a taster to this, Chelsea Opera Group gave a concert performance of Verdi's Un giorno di regno at the Cadogan Hall on Saturday 12 October 2019 conducted by Tom Seligman with George von Bergen as Belfiore, John Savournin as Kelbar, Sarah-Jane Lewis as La Marchesa del Poggio, Paula Sides as Giulietta, Luis Gomes as Edoardo, and Nicholas Folwell as La Rocca.

Verdi's early comedy is often compared, unfairly, to his only other essay in the comic genre, Falstaff, a masterpiece which he created some 50 years after Un giorno di regno, a period in which opera had changed radically (partly thanks to Verdi's own efforts). When the young Verdi produced his comedy for Milan in 1840, the dominant voice in opera buffa was still Rossini with elaborate solo arias and long sequences of secco recitative. Donizetti's Don Pasquale, which debuted in Paris three years after Un giorno di regno would go some way to breaking the mould and use orchestral accompaniment throughout, but then we don't get another major Italian comic opera until Falstaff!

So Un giorno di regno represents a road not travelled, in it Verdi is looking back to Rossini and the work responds to the lightness which you might bring to a Rossini opera. But also mixed in are fascinating pre-echoes of the Verdi to come. An important point is that we must listen to it with early Verdi ears, and not try to make it into Il trovatore and Rigoletto.

Whilst the piece is not a riot, it is definitely fun. There is a plot, of sorts, but the double wedding at Baron Kelbar's castle co-inciding with a visit from the future King of Poland, on his way to claim his throne, results in an awkward series of encounters and pairings, both romantic and comic. That Verdi and Temistocle Solera (with whom Verdi wrote Oberto and Nabucco) reshaped the libretto by cutting, only served to emphasise this, and the piece can sometimes seem like a semi-random series of arias and ensembles. The essential point of the piece is unclear, is it just fun or is the emphasis on money  significant? Kelbar's daughter Giulietta is to marry La Rocca who is elderly and rich, she doesn't want to and throughout the opera Kelbar and La Rocca argue furiously about money, honour and more, never worrying about what Giulietta actually wants.

Chelsea Opera Group had drawn together a strong cast, and from the opening notes of the overture it was clear that conductor Tom Seligman has a deep understand and love of the piece.

Voices in the Wilderness: cellist Raphael Wallfisch on his series of cello concertos by exiled Jewish composers

Raphael Wallfisch (Photo Benjamin Ealovega)

When we meet up, cellist Raphael Wallfisch is in the middle of a very busy week, with the start of his Trio Shaham Erez Wallfisch's residency at the Wigmore Hall (beginning their cycle Beethoven piano trios as part of the hall's Beethoven 250 celebrations) and performances of his programme which explores the music of Rebecca Clarke and Ernest Bloch. Whilst I am there to talk about another project, his cycle of recordings of neglected Jewish composers on the German record label cpo, of which four CDs have been issued and a fifth, devoted to the music of Mieczysław Weinberg, is due out later this year. Whilst these fascinating works are the focus of our conversation, though we also touch on Raphael's Rebecca Clarke / Ernest Bloch programme, the influence of Raphael's teacher the great Gregor Piatigorsky, and Raphael's own family.

Under the title Voices in the Wilderness: Cello Concertos by Exiled Jewish Composers, the cpo discs involve works by nine composers, all of whom fled the persecution of the Nazis in the 1930s:

• Paul Ben-Haim (1897-1984, German born, emigrated to Israel)
• Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957, Austrian born, moved to the USA)
• Ernest Bloch (1880-1959, Swiss born, emigrated to USA)
• Mario Castelnuovo Tedesco (1895-1968, Italian-born, emigrated to USA)
• Hans Gal (1890-1987, Austrian-born, emigrated to UK)
• Karl Weigl (1881-1949, Austrian-born, emigrated to USA)
• Berthold Goldschmidt (1903-1996, German-born, emigrated to UK)
• Franz Reizenstein (1911-1968, German born, emigrated to UK)
• Mieczysław Weinberg (1919-1996, Polish born, emigrated to USSR)   

It is a remarkable project, recording a variety of works, many unknown, by composers who are not well known. In fact, Raphael dreamed it up in his bathroom and was lucky that everything just work. It has involved him in a huge amount of research, unearthing manuscripts and then editing them for performance.
The record company, cpo is based in Osnabrück in Germany and once when Raphael was playing there he visited a Osnabrück, The Felix Nussbaum House, which houses a collection of pictures by Felix Nussbaum. Raphael was struck by the paintings and they have been able to use them on the covers of all of the discs. Felix Nussbaum (1904-1944) was a German-Jewish surrealist painter, and he died in Auschwitz, whilst the composers on the disc are all ones who got out and survived.

The theatre at Nevill Holt, home to Nevill Holt Opera, wins the 2019 Stirling Prize People's Vote

Nevill Holt Theatre, photo Robert Workman

The only theatre ever to be shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling Prize, the theatre at Nevill Holt has won the 2019 Stirling Prize People’s Vote with an incredible 28.8%. This online poll has been open to the public since July when the Stirling Prize nominations were first announced.

Completed last year, the new theatre at Nevill Holt within the historic stables (replacing a temporary structure) is the home of Nevill Holt Opera, and the new building has transformed the potential of the young opera company [see my interview with Nicholas Chalmers, artistic director of Nevill Holt Opera, and my review of the production of Mozart's Cosi fan tutte there this year].

The new theatre was designed by Stirling Prize winning architects Witherford Watson Mann and theatre designers Sound Space Vision, built by Messenger BCR and supported by the David Ross Foundation.

Nicholas Chalmers and Rosenna East (managing director of Nevill Holt Opera) commented 'We are thrilled to win the popular vote for the Stirling Prize 2019. Our new theatre by Witherford Watson Mann has enabled us to provide uplifting and inspiring musical experiences to thousands of audience and young people this year alone. While bringing new life to a historic building, the new facility has had real impact on all of the students, artists and audiences for whom it was designed.'

The young vocal ensemble echo invites us to meet them in the maze again

echo

The fourteen singers of the vocal ensemble echo first presented their programme Meet Me in the Maze at the IKON Gallery in Birmingham in response to an exhibition by New York-based artist Polly Apfelbaum, and they are now repeating Meet Me in the Maze at the church of St Michael the Archangel, Southampton (Saturday 12 October) and at The Music Room, London (the afternoon of Sunday 13 October).

Meet Me in the Maze takes in nine centuries of music from Hildegard of Bingen to JS Bach to James Blake, Machaut to Meredith Month, exploring mazes, puzzles and the navigation of the unknown. Hildegard’s antiphon praising 'Wisdom' that 'circles all things' and Bach's setting of Paul Thymich’s poem describing Jesus as the 'right path, the truth and the life' sit alongside the playful music of Machaut, quasi improvisatory work from Meredith Monk, pieces from Kerry Andrew and Alec Roth, and an arrangement of James Blake's Meet You in the Maze

The singers of echo first performed together when they were on Genesis Sixteen, the young artists programme run by Harry Christophers and The Sixteen.

Full details from the echo ensemble website.

The Song of Love: songs & duets by Vaughan Williams from Kitty Whately, Roderick Williams, William Vann

Ralph Vaughan Williams The House of Life, songs and duets; Kitty Whately, Roderick Williams, William Vann; Albion Records
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 5 July 2019 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
The first modern recording of RVW's song cycle with a female voice, alongside first recordings of a selection of songs and arrangements all lovingly performed

I have to confess that, familiar though I am with RVW's song Silent Noon, the song cycle from which it comes, The House of Life, is far less familiar. This new disc from Albion Records presents us with The House of Life alongside a selection of RVW's songs and duets which have hitherto escaped being recorded. For the disc, pianist William Vann is joined by mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately and baritone Roderick Williams.

RVW wrote The House of Life in 1903-04 (when he was in his early 30s) selecting the poems from Dante Gabriel Rosetti's 1881 collection of sonnets, The House of Life. The intriguing thing is that the cycle has been hitherto known on CD in versions for male voice (tenor and baritone), and admitedly two songs do address themselves to a female beloved, but RVW premiered it with a female singer (Edith Clegg accompanied by Hamilton Harty). In fact there is no case to be made for either version, the cycle works equally well, and is mesmerising here in Kitty Whately's superb performance. She has a wonderfully speaking tone, which is both sympathetic to the words and profoundly engaging. A very centred performance, beautifully accompanied by William Vann. I cannot imagine needing many other versions of the cycle.

Concerto, symphony, ballets, film music and more: the 14th Malcolm Arnold Festival

Sir Malcolm Arnold in 1958

The 14th Malcolm Arnold Festival is next weekend (12-13 October 2019) in the composer's birthplace, Northampton, presenting a lively selection of live music, films and talks exploring the work of this multi-faceted composer. The theme of this year's festival is partnerships so that the performance at the opening concert of Shostakovich's Age of Gold Suite and Piano Concerto No. 2 by the BBC Concert Orchestra, conductor Barry Wordsworth, soloist Rose McLachlan, highlights the links between the two composers. And another composer friend is Ruth Gipps and the Northampton Symphony Orchestra, conductor John Gibbons, will be performing Arnold's Variations on a theme of Ruth Gipps, whilst Alice Pinto will give a talk on Arnold's relationship with her.

But the festival is, of course, a prime chance to hear Arnold's music and there will be a suite from his 1953 ballet Homage to the Queen, Symphony No. 2, Savile Club Fanfare, second Sinfonietta, Clarinet Concerto and the world premiere of Arnold's 1963 one-act ballet score Electra plus music from the films Stolen Face, and Trapeze. 

Full details from the Royal and Derngate website.

Will put a smile on your face: Vivaldi's L'estro armonico in new versions from Armoniosa

Antonio Vivaldi L'estro armonico, arr. Michele Marchi; Armoniosa; Reddress
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 2 October 2019
Star rating: 3.0 (★★★)
Lively and engaging new versions of Vivaldi's concertos re-worked for the Armoniosa ensemble

Antonio Vivaldi's L'estro armonico [The harmonic inspiration] is a set of 12 concertos for stringed instruments which Vivaldi published as his Opus 3 in 1711. His previous two publications, Opus 1, and 2, had been collections of sonatas which Vivaldi had published in Venice but for this new set, his first set of concertos to be published, he used an international publisher, Estienne Roger in Amsterdam. The result was to bring Vivaldi's concertos to the attention of a wider international readership. The popularity of the concertos meant that they spawned a wide variety of arrangements and transcriptions, notably those by JS Bach who made harpsichord versions of six of them whilst he was employed in Weimar (Bach would have been 26 when the set was published).

In the spirit of the tradition of transcribing and arranging Vivaldi's L'estro armonico, the Italian ensemble Armoniosa recorded all of them (on the Reddress label, distributed by Sony) in transcriptions by Michele Barchi made for Armoniosa's line up, Michele Barchi (harpsichord), Daniele Ferretti (organ), Francesco Cerrato (violin), Stefano Cerrato (five-string cello), Marco Demaria (cello).  One intriguing feature is that the ensemble play period instruments, at historic pitch (415 Hz, unequal temperament) and so give us a delightful taste of the sort of transcription and arrangement that Vivaldi's contemporaries might have done.

Beyond the Night Sky - A Choral Cosmos

The chamber choir Londinium and conductor Andrew Griffiths are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo landing on the moon with a programme of music inspired by the cosmos at St John's Church, Waterloo Road, London SE1 8TY on Friday 11 October 2019. An eclectic mix of pieces takes us from Victoria and Michael East through Schumann to contemporary pieces including the UK premiere of Steven Stucky's Winter Stars. Also in the mix is Cheryl Frances-Hoad's tribute to the late Stephen Hawking, Beyond the Night Sky, and music by Ben Parry, James MacMillan, Barnaby Martin, American composer Kirke Mechem, Latvian composer Ēriks Ešenvalds, and the late Steve Martland.

Full details from the Londinium website.

17th century Playlist: from toe-tapping to plangently melancholy, Ed Lyon & Theatre of the Ayre

17th Century Playlist - Francesco Cavalli, Stefano Landi, Pierre Guedron, Nicholas Lanier, Etienne Moulinie, Giovanni Battista Fontana, Michel Lambert, Antoine Boesset, Sebastien Le Camus, and John Dowland; Ed Lyon, Theatre of the Ayre; DELPHIAN
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 9 October 2019 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★)
A mixtape of 17th century ear-worms, from the toe-tapping to the plangently melancholy, in highly engaging performances

Tenor Ed Lyon is one of those performers who seem to pop up in a wide variety of music from 17th century opera [Cavalli's L'Ormindo at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, see my review] to contemporary [Thomas Adès' The Exterminating Angel at the Royal Opera House, see my review], Mozart singspiel [Die Entführung aus dem Serail at The Grange Festival, see my review] to Broadway musical [Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady, with the full Robert Russell Bennett orchestrations, at the Chatelet Theatre, see my review], and Britten [Turn of the Screw at Garsington this Summer] and he is currently Orpheus in Offenbach's operetta Orpheus in the Underworld at English National Opera [see my review]. Always musical and always interesting, he is a versatile performer always worth listening to.

Judging by this new disc, 17th Century Playlist on the Delphian label, it is in the earlier repertoire that his heart really lies. Along with Elizabeth Kenny's Theatre of the Ayre, Ed Lyon has devised a recital of 17th century song, Italian, French and English, which engages and delights, small scale pieces which are big on personality and style, by Francesco Cavalli, Stefano Landi, Pierre Guedron, Nicholas Lanier, Etienne Moulinie, Giovanni Battista Fontana, Michel Lambert, Antoine Boesset, Sebastien Le Camus, and John Dowland.

Despite the rather modish title, what we have here is an exploration of an art relatively under represented on disc, the intimate 17th century song. Most of these pieces were written for particular patrons, Kings, Cardinals and more, to be performed in saloons and chambers by a small group of musicians. The works represent personal taste, the taste of the patron, and it is not surprising that Lyon and Kenny have been able to put together such a toe tapping selection.

The thread running through these pieces is that most are 'ear worms', whether fast or slow they are based on motifs which holds us by the ears (to use a 17th century phrase which Elizabeth Kenny's lively and informative CD booklet essay elucidates for us). Nothing is sexed up or re-orchestrated for modern taste, it doesn't need to be.

Wimbledon Piano Classics

Anna Huntley

A new festival, Wimbledon Piano Classics, which runs at Trinity United Reform Church, Wimbledon from 10 to 12 October 2019, is a collaboration between Blüthner pianos and the Royal College of Music, featuring piano recitals, a song recital and a masterclass all played on a Blüthner. The festival opens with Russian pianist Sovya Gulyak in a programme which begins with the Bach/Busoni Chaconne and ends with Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No. 7, and features Rachmaninov, Chopin and Brahms in the middle.

The Royal College of Music's head of keyboard, Professor Vanessa Latarche will be giving a masterclass, with an exciting insight into life at the college as well as giving practical advice on auditions, funding and career opportunities. Mezzo-soprano Anna Huntley and pianist Simon Lepper's song recital features women in love, ranging from Schubert's Dido and Schumann's Mary Queen of Scots, to Rossini's Joan of Arc, Kurt Weill's Jenny and Flanders & Swan's Warthog!

The festival concludes with a joint recital by Martin James Bartlett and George Harliono, with Bartlett performing Mozart, Schumann transcribed by Liszt, Ginastera, Dvorak and Gershwin, and Harliono performing Chopin, Liszt, Stravinsky, Piazzolla and Grieg.

Full details from the Blüthner website.

Magic realism, politics and terrific songs: Weill and Kaiser's Winter's Fairy Tale in an imaginative production from English Touring Opera

Weill: The Silver Lake -  Ronald Samm, David Webb - English Touring Opera (photo Richard Hubert Smith)

Kurt Weill & Georg Kaiser Der Silbersee (The Silver Lake) ; David Webb, Ronald Samm, Clarissa Meek, Luci Briginshaw, James Kryshak, Bernadetta Iglich, dir: James Conway, cond: James Holmes; English Touring Opera at the Hackney Empire
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 7 October 2019 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
Daringly re-thought version of Weill and Kaiser's play with music which makes this a real Winter's Fairy Tale for our modern times

Weill: The Silver Lake -  Ronald Samm
English Touring Opera (photo Richard Hubert Smith)

Whilst Kurt Weill's collaboration with Bertolt Brecht gets star billing, that with the German playwright Georg Kaiser tends to be less well known. Yet, Weill and Kaiser would create three major works together, the operas Der Protagonist (1926) and Der Zar lässt sich photographieren (1928) and Der Silbersee: ein Wintermärchen (The Silver Lake: a Winter's Fairy Tale) (1933). This latter is a play with music and would be Weill's last major piece written in Germany. It premiered on 18 February 1933 simultaneously in Leipzig, Erfurt and Magdeburg, just three weeks after the Nazi Party's Machtergreifung on 30 January 1933. Kurt Weill, fled Nazi Germany in March 1933, and fragments of the music from Der Silbersee would find their way into his second symphony, written for the Princesse Edmond de Polignac (Wineretta Singer) in Paris.

Despite having some superb music, and terrific songs, Der Silbersee is rarely performed because the full version lasts around three hours with equal quantities of music and spoken drama, it requires singers who can act, and actors who can sing.

English Touring Opera (ETO) braved the conundrum, and staged Kurt Weill and Georg Kaiser's Der Silbersee: ein Wintermärchen (The Silver Lake: a Winter's Fairy Tale) at the Hackney Empire (seen Monday 7 October 2019) as part of their Autumn tour. A modern German singspiel to complement Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail [see my review]. James Conway directed, with designs by Adam Wiltshire, lighting by David W Kidd and choreography by Bernadette Iglich. James Holmes conducted. David Webb was Severin, Ronald Samm was Olim, Clarissa Meek was Frau von Luber, Luci Briginshaw was Fennimore, James Kryshak was the Lottery Agent and Baron von Laur, and Bernadette iglich was the narrator. ETO's ensemble of nine singers (representing shopgirls, gravediggers and youths) was joined by a choir from the London hub of Streetwise Opera. At further performances in other towns and cities, ETO will be collaborating with other local choirs, including the Nottingham and Newcastle hubs of Streetwise Opera.

Weill: The Silver Lake -  David Horton, Jan Capinski, David Webb, Maciek O'Shea, Andrew Tipple
English Touring Opera (photo Richard Hubert Smith)

Der Silbersee is a magical work, and by its sheer rarity every performance is an occasion, even though each company needs to make some sort of adaptation to cope with its distinctive performing requirements. Broomhill Opera performed it in 1999 at Wilton's Music Hall, in a translation by Rory Bremner, the first musical theatre event there in the modern era. But my abiding memory is of the performances given at the old Camden Festival in 1987, with a company of actors and singers in a production by, I think, David Pountney with Nigel Robson as Severin. This was perhaps the closest I am every likely to come to seeing the work as its creators intended.

For ETO, James Conway had come up with a relatively compact version of the work, suitable for touring.

London Mozart Players revives the Mozart Memorial Prize

In the 1960s, the London Mozart Players’ Mozart Memorial Prize launched the careers of many talented young musicians including Imogen Cooper, Stephen Kovacevich and Benjamin Frith. The prize stopped being awarded in 1982, but in its 70th anniversary year London Mozart Players has revived and revitalised the prize, including a major new partnership with Kent International Piano Courses.

This year's prize winner is pianist Jinah Shim, who will join with the London Mozart Players at the prize-winners concert on Friday 1 November 2019 at the EM Forster Theatre in Tonbridge. As part of an all-Mozart programme Shim will play Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 (better known as the Elvira Madigan theme), alongside Eine kleine Nachtmusik and the Jupiter Symphony.

The Mozart Memorial Prize winner will be chosen annually from participants in the Kent International Piano Courses, which have been running for 30 years. Every prize winner will enjoy a year’s relationship with the LMP. This will involve mentoring from pianist and LMP Conductor Laureate Howard Shelley OBE, as well as lessons, guidance and career and repertoire advice from him, and invitations to concerts with Howard and LMP at venues around the UK. A presentation skills coaching session is also included in the prize package to help with delivery of performance and audience relationship skills. The centrepiece of the prize is the opportunity to perform a piano concerto with the orchestra at a professional concert, and the young winner will enjoy the title of ‘Pianist in association’ for the duration of their winning year.

Full details from the London Mozart Players' website.

A Suitcase Full of Songs

The King's Singers

On 10 October 2019 in Solihull and 11 October 2019 at Warwick Arts Centre, The King's Singers will be giving the premiere performances of Toby Young's A Suitcase Full of Songs. The song cycle, with a text by Jennifer Thorp, is dedicated to refugees and migrant communities everywhere. For the performances the King's Singers will be joined by 300 young singers from Armonico Consort’s in-school and after school AC Academy choirs and Voice Squad workplace choirs from Coventry City Council and University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire.

Toby Young is Armonico Consort’s composer-in-residence and A Suitcase Full of Songs was written especially for The King’s Singers and AC Academy choirs. Young and Thorp's work is about immigration, it follows a community through excitement, anxiety and homesickness before being welcomed into the local culture and, in turn, enriching it with their own traditions and customs.

The King’s Singers, featuring AC Academy & Voice Squad Choirs, is at Bushell Hall, Solihull (Thurs 10 October) and Warwick Arts Centre (Fri 11 October, 7pm). For details visit the Armonico Consort website.

Orpheus goes to Hell: Emma Rice's lively new production somewhat misses the point of Offenbach

Offenbach: Orpheus in the Underworld - Mary Bevan, Alan Oke - English National Opera 2019 (Photo Clive Barda)

Jacques Offenbach Orpheus in the Underworld; Mary Bevan, Ed Lyon, Lucia Lucas, Alex Otterburn, dir: Emma Rice, cond: Sian Edwards; English National Opera at the London Coliseum
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 5 October 2019 Star rating: 3.0 (★★★)
Whilst musically full of good things, this heavy-handed re-working of Offenbach's operetta lacks the wit and pacing of the original

Offenbach: Orpheus in the Underworld
Alex Otterburn, Keel Watson
English National Opera 2019 (Photo Clive Barda)

English National Opera debuted the second of its Orpheus-themed operas at the London Coliseum on Saturday 5 October 2019, with Emma Rice making her operatic debut directing Jacques Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld (Orphée aux enfers), with Mary Bevan as Eurydice, Ed Lyon as Orpheus,  Lucia Lucas as Public Opinion, Willard White as Jupiter, Anne-Marie Owens as Juno, Ellie Laugharne as Cupid, Idunnu Munch as Diana, Judith Howarth as Venus, Keel Watson as Mars, Alan Oke as John Styx and Alex Otterburn as Pluto. Set design was by Lizzie Clachan, with costumes by Lez Brotherston, lighting by Malcolm Rippeth and choreography by Etta Murfitt. Sian Edwards conducted.

Offenbach wrote Orpheus in the Underworld in 1858. It was his first full length operetta, and written for his tiny Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens. The theatre had around 900 seats, and whilst Offenbach did expand the operetta in 1874, it is the original which works best and in a small theatre. As English National Opera has found before, the London Coliseum is rather too large a space to perform operetta easily. Emma Rice's highly theatrical style of direction would have seemed an apt choice for this operetta. At the work's previous incarnation in St Martin's Lane, the scabrous designs were by Gerald Scarfe and Public Opinion was got up like Margaret Thatcher.

The operetta satirises Gluck's Orpheus opera and the general tendency to treat mythological subjects seriously, by having the gods behaving badly and by asking the question what happens if Orpheus and Eurydice can't stand each other? What if Orpheus does not want his wife back, and Eurydice finds Hell rather fun? Offenbach and his librettists satirise this with wit and gaiety, sending up the terrible behaviour in delightful ways.

Unfortunately, Emma Rice seems to have missed the point that operetta needs to be fun, and that in Offenbach the music and drama have to satirise and make fun of something. Perhaps it would be difficult to bring off the 1858 operetta with its original book, but Rice's solution was to take the plot seriously. She removes the twist. In her version, Orpheus and Eurydice are a nice couple in love who lose a baby (during the truncated overture), he does want her back, Hell is hell, in fact it is a rather dirty peep show and Jupiter and Pluto's treatment of Eurydice is simply horrible. When do we laugh please?

Offenbach: Orpheus in the Underworld - Mount Olympus - English National Opera 2019 (Photo Clive Barda)

It doesn't help that the pacing of the piece is terribly slow. Emma Rice has re-written the English book whilst Tom Morris has produced some witty, if overly contemporary sounding, lyrics. But it does not help if the dialogue is leadenly delivered; Act One seemed endless despite some musical delights. The Gods themselves are sometimes fun, and their opening scene (they are living on a what seems to be a celestial cruise ship) was full of good moments. But the second half goes badly awry, as Rice's polemical plot and Offenbach's music increasingly diverge.

Eurydice is being sexually assaulted by a series of older men, can-can anyone?