An evening of wit, delight and magic: Silent Slapsticks at The Ritzy with Brixton Chamber Orchestra

Matthew O'Keeffe and the Brixton Chamber Orchestra at The Ritzy, Brixton

Film Orchestrated: Silent Slapsticks, Misha Mullov-Abbado, Matthew O'Keeffe; Brixton Chamber Orchestra, Matthew O'Keefe; Ritzy Cinema, Brixton
Reviewed 2 November 2023

Classic silent films from the 19th century through to the 1920s, provided with vividly engaging live soundtracks including some improvisation in an evening of wit, delight and sheer magic.

The Ritzy cinema in Brixton was built in 1911, one of England's first purpose-built cinemas and as such, designed for films to be shown with live music. We are used to modern blockbuster films appearing in the concert hall with live orchestral scores but the era of Thames Silents, with Carl Davis conducting a huge score to accompany a major silent film, seems to be over. The Ritzy's Film Orchestrated series aims to reclaim that. 

For the latest instalment, Silent Slapsticks, the Brixton Chamber Orchestra, music director Matthew O'Keeffe, was on hand to provide accompaniment to a compilation of early shorts, Buster Keaton's The Goat, Charlie Chaplin's Behind the Screen, Douglas Fairbanks' The Mark of Zorro and a surprise addition that brought the programme into the present day. Misha Mullov-Abbado, who played double bass in the orchestra, provided the new soundtracks for the compilation of shorts and for the Chaplin, Matthew O'Keeffe provided the new soundtrack for the Buster Keaton, and the Fairbanks' film had an improvised accompaniment. The comedian Darran Griffiths was compere, providing a lively introduction and link passages, as well as giving an improvised mis-commentary for The Mark of Zorro. But his role was rather increased due to technical problems and he rose to the occasion.

Tosca in an iconic location: Seattle Opera film's Puccini's opera at St James Cathedral, Seattle

Puccini: Tosca - Alexandra LoBianco during filming of Act Three - Seattle Opera at St James Cathedral (Photo Philip Newton)

Puccini Tosca; Alexandra LoBianco, Dominick Chenes, Michael Chioldi, dir: Dan Wallace Miller, cond: Kazem Abdullah; Seattle Opera filmed on location at St James Cathedral, Seattle
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 23 June 2021
A film of Tosca in real locations which also manages to pay tribute to the work's melodramatic side

For all that Victorien Sardou's play La Tosca could be described as a 'shabby little shocker',  Giacomo Puccini exercised great care when writing his opera Tosca based on Sardou's play. And whilst the action is pure melodrama, Puccini's anchors it both with the sophisticated way he writes musically for the characters, and the fact that the work is set in real places. For instance, the opening prelude Act Three with its bells, is based quite closely on the actual sounds of the bells in Rome.

But Puccini plays up the melodramatic element too, the way the action in compressed so that the entire opera lasts well under two hours and the second act imaginatively plays two of Sardou's acts simultaneously (Tosca's singing of the celebratory cantata for the Queen off-stage whilst Scarpia and Cavaradossi are on-stage).

This combination of realism and melodrama can trip productions up on stage; I have only seen one production (directed by Anthony Besch for Scottish Opera in 1980 and still going strong) where the religious procession at the end of Act One is liturgically convincing.

Seattle Opera, for its final opera in its digital season, has created a performance of Puccini's Tosca which is filmed almost entirely at St James Cathedral, Seattle. Directed by Dan Wallace Miller and conducted by Kazem Abdullah, the production featured Alexandra LoBianco as Tosca, Dominick Chenes as Cavaradossi, and Michael Chioldi as Scarpia with Adam Lau as Angelotti, Matthew Burns as the Sacristan, Andrew Stenson as Spoletta, José Rubio as Sciarrone, Ellaina Lewis as the Shepherd boy and Ryan Bede as the jailer.

Puccini: Tosca - Alexandra LoBianco, Michael Chioldi - Seattle Opera at St James Cathedral (Photo Philip Newton)

Liesl Alice Gatcheco's costumes were in correct period (1800) and production designer Christopher Mumaw made very effective use of the cathedral which has a very neo-classical look to it. Act Two took place in a room, dressed very much as you might expect, but Act Three opened in the confined area of Cavaradossi's cell, though we transferred to the outer spaces of the cathedral for an imaginatively filmed ending.

A new film inspired by George Orwell's 1984 has Mihkel Kerem's powerful new orchestral score at its heart

1984 - New European Ensemble, Mihkel Kerem

George Orwell, Mihkel Kerem 1984; Edward Snowden, Joseph Thompson, Willem Stam, New European Ensemble, Mihkel Kerem, Gijs Besseling, Emlyn Stam and Sophie Hunter; Greengage, OnJam TV
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 26 April 2021 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
A powerful new film which uses Mihkel Kerem's dramatic orchestral score to explore themse from Orwell's novel

1984 is a new film directed by Gijs Besseling, Emlyn Stam and Sophie Hunter which debuted on OnJam TV on Friday 23 April 2021. The 65 minute film is inspired by George Orwell's novel, but it not so much a dramatisation of the novel as a cross-arts recreation of themes from Orwell's 1984. The film features just two speaking roles, American National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden has a spoken introduction and the actor Joseph Thompson is a George Orwell-like narrator figure. The main emotional impulse comes from a significant new score by Estonian composer Mihkel Kerem who conducts the New European Ensemble. And the score features a significant cello solo played by Willem Stam. The film was produced by the New European Ensemble in collaboration with Greengage which is part of OnJam TV.

The New European Ensemble has popped up a couple of times on this blog as they perform with the Dutch opera company Opera2Day including their productions of Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet in 2018 [see my review] and Peter Maxwell Davies' Eight Songs for a Mad King [see my article], whilst three players from the New European Ensemble (Emlyn Stam, Willem Stam and Rada Ovcharova) performed in Greengage's film The Goldberg Variations: Meditations on Solitude [see my article].

Edward Snowden's spoken introduction at first felt like something of a stunt and I wondered that his role could not have been taken by Joseph Thomspon. But then I came to realise that this introduction is designed to project the world of Orwell's novel 1984 onto contemporary society and show us that the themes are just as relevant today as ever.

Flight at the museum: Seattle Opera's new film imaginatively re-locates Jonathan Dove's opera

Jonathan Dove: Flight - Damien Geter, Randall Scotting - Seattle Opera (Photo Philip Newton)

Jonathan Dove Flight; Randall Scotting, Sharleen Joynt, Joshua Kohl, Karen Vuong, Margaret Gawrysiak, Sarah Larsen, Joseph Lattanzi, Aubrey Allicock, Karin Mushegain, Damien Gieter, Brian Staufenbiel, Viswa Subbaraman; Seattle Opera
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 20 April 2021 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
Still contemporary and still engaging, this new film of Dove's opera from Seattle neatly relocates the production to The Museum of Flight

Jonathan Dove and April de Angelis' opera Flight might be well on its way to its 25th birthday (it premiered in 1998) but its themes remain those which trouble us today. Most of the stories told in the opera revolve around looking for love and negotiating the complexities of relationships, and for all the dated elements in De Angelis' text, she and Dove brilliantly sketch in the characters, mixing poignancy with comedy. At the centre of all this is the Refugee, living in the airport lounge, trapped in immigration limbo and awaiting a brother who, tragically, will never come.

Since the opera was written, immigration and migration have become political hot potatoes all over the world from boats arriving at Greek islands to migrant camps at Calais to the USA/Mexican border. The new production of Flight from Seattle Opera doesn't labour the point, simply presenting the opera resonates in so many ways. The venue for Seattle's new film also resonates. The Museum of Flight presents a superb stand-in for the airport terminal setting, yet even here there are other resonances because a screen at the opening of the film tells us that the museum was built on the homelands of Native American peoples, so we have another layer of refugees and migration.

Seattle Opera was supposed to be staging Flight, but instead have imaginatively opted to film. Seattle Opera's production of Jonathan Dove's Flight was filmed at The Museum of Flight, directed by Brian Staufenbiel, conducted Viswa Subbaraman, with Randall Scotting, Refugee, Sharleen Joynt, Controller, Joshua Kohl, Bill, Karen Vuong, Tina, Margaret Gawrysiak, Older Woman, Sarah Larsen, Stewardess, Joseph Lattanzi, Steward, Aubrey Allicock Minskman, Karen Mushegain, Minskwoman and Damien Geter, Immigration Officer. With the film directed and edited by Kyle Seago. It is available from 23 to 25 April 2021, with early access for subscribers.

Jonathan Dove: Flight - Margaret Gawrysiak, Karen Vuong - Seattle Opera (Photo Philip Newton)

This is very much a film, not a filmed stage production, as it opens up the opera and plays with the spaces available at The Museum of Flight. Most stage productions of the opera take place on a single, stylised set but here the opera opens in heightened realism. Yet it is never realistic and for much of Act One I was rather too aware of the vast, empty spaces of the building; if this was an airport, then it was very empty. And this disjunct continued as you noticed the way the characters were safely spaced and distanced, lovers never touched. It was all imaginatively done, but the drama really took off at the moments when realism was abandoned, when clever camerawork and imaginative intercutting and editing did the work of what, in the theatre in normal times, would have been highly physical ensembles.

Cinderella in Leeds: Pauline Viardot's chamber opera in a new film from Northern Opera Group

Pauline Viardot: Cendrillon (Cinderella) - Nicholas Watts - Northern Opera Group

Pauline Viardot Cendrillon (Cinderella); Claire Wild, Rachel Duckett, Naomi Rogers, Louise Wayman, James Cleverton, Nicholas Watts, Robert Anthony Gardiner, dir: Sophie Gilpin, cond: Chris Pelly; Northern Opera Group
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 10 December 2020 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
Viardot's Parisian chamber opera transported to Leeds in an imaginative new film

Pauline Viardot (1821-1910) was the scion of a distinguished vocal dynasty. Her father, Manuel Garcia (tenor, impresario, teacher) took part in the premieres of Rossini’s Elisabetta, Regina d’Inghilterra and Il barbiere di Siviglia and was a notable exponent of the title role of Rossini’s Otello. Her elder sister (by 13 years) was the distinguished soprano Maria Malibran and her brother, Manuel Garcia became a leading vocal pedagogue and invented the laryngoscope. When Viardot was small, the whole family (father, mother, brother, sister) took part in the American premiere of Mozart's Don Giovanni in New York, in the presence of the opera's librettist Lorenzo da Ponte. 

 

Viardot was herself a fine mezzo-soprano who created the title role in Gounod’s opera Sapho, Fidès in Meyerbeer’s Le prophète and for whom Berlioz created the role of Orphée in his influential version of Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice, as well as singing in the first public performance of Brahms’ Alto Rhapsody.

In Paris in retirement, she presided over a salon and had a close relationship with the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev, with whom she wrote a number of small-scale operas for her pupils to perform at her salon. Most of Viardot’s compositions were written for pupils, and in 1904 at the age of 83, she premiered her final opera Cendrillon, a re-telling of the story of Cinderella for a cast of seven, small chorus and piano. The date of composition of the work is unclear, but it is presumed to date from after 1883 when Turgenev died as he did not write the libretto. Whilst Viardot’s first four operas still somewhat languish, her songs (which include vocal adaptations of Chopin’s piano music) and Cendrillon are receiving something of a revival.

The Northern Opera Group (NOG), artistic director David Ward, is a Leeds-based group dedicated to reviving forgotten operas and their previous productions have included Thomas Arne’s Thomas and Sally (performed in the open-air this Summer) and Alfred, and Charles Villiers Stanford’s Much Ado About Nothing. For its Christmas production, Northern Opera Group has chosen Pauline Viardot’s Cendrillon creating a film project produced under social distancing. Directed by Sophie Gilpin, conducted by Chris Pelly and sung in Rachel M Harris’ English translation, Cinderella features Claire Wild as Cinderella, Rachel Duckett as the Fairy Godmother, Naomi Rogers and Louise Wayman as Cinderella’s step-sisters Armelinde and Maguelonne, James Cleverton as Cinderella's father, Baron de Pictordu, Nicholas Watts as the Prince, and      as Barigoule, the Prince’s valet. The pianist is Jenny Martins.

Back to its origins: Grange Park Opera returns Britten's television opera, Owen Wingrave, to its film roots in this darkly comic modern version

Britten: Owen Wingrave - Ross Ramgobin, Kitty Whately, James Way, Janis Kelly, Madeleine Pierard, Susan Bullock, Richard Berkeley Steele, William Dazeley - Grange Park Opera (video screen grab)

Britten Owen Wingrave; Ross Ramgobin, Richard Berkeley Steele, William Dazeley, Janis Kelly, James Way, Susan Bullock, Madeleine Pierard, Kitty Whately, dir:Stephen Medcalf, cond; James Henshaw; Grange Park Opera
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 9 December 2020 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
Grange Park Opera returns Britten's penultimate opera to the television medium for which it was written, in a striking, blackly comic modern version.

Benjamin Britten's penultimate opera, Owen Wingrave is a strange and tricksy piece. Written for television in 1971, Britten intended it both for that medium and the stage. But following a small flurry of performances in the early 1970s, the work lay fallow until Glyndebourne's performance in the late 1990s (first on tour, with William Dazeley as Owen, and then on the main stage where the title role was taken by Gerald Finley). This production demonstrated that Britten's 'lame duck' opera could work, and productions multiplied in the 21st century, partly thanks to a reduced orchestration from David Matthews. Recent London productions have included two [British Youth Opera, see my review, and Guildhall School of Music and Drama, see my review] where the young men in the opera were played by singers of the correct age which is a nice idea, but Britten's quite substantial orchestration can require a mature baritone to carry the role.

The opera, however, remains awkward. The characters are generally unlikeable, whilst Owen can too often seem a prig. And then there is the ghost story aspect; Britten simply shies away from that. We never see what happens in the room, and the power of the ghosts in The Turn of the Screw is entirely absent (both operas are based on stories by Henry James). Dramaturgically, I have always felt that the opera would work better if librettist Myfanwy Piper had replaced the ghost episode with a more down to earth dare-devil stunt.

There have been television production since that 1971 production, there was one in Germany in 2005 again with Gerald Finley [available from Amazon]. But it remains a brave decision for Grange Park Opera, faced with no live opera in 2020, to create a new televised version of Britten's Owen Wingrave. Stephen Medcalf directs [see my 2018 interview with Stephen Medcalf], with Ross Ramgobin as Owen, Susan Bullock as Miss Wingrave, Richard Berkeley Steele as Sir Philip Wingrave, William Dazeley as Mr Coyle, Janis Kelly as Mrs Coyle, James Way as Letchmere, Madeleine Pierard as Mrs Julian, and Kitty Whately as Kate with Richard Berkeley Steele singing the ballad singer/narrator. The conductor was James Henshaw, with accompaniment from Chris Hopkins (piano) and Craig Apps (percussion), plus trumpet for Act Two.

Britten: Owen Wingrave - Ross Ramgobin - Grange Park Opera

Medcalf sets the work in the near present day (press coverage in advance of the premiere of the film refers to it as being set just after the Afghanistan war in 2001). It is largely shot in black and white (there were touches of colour such as the blood-red wine glasses in the terrible dinner scene which concludes Act One). He makes it very much a film, there is a lot of intercutting of close-ups. The women's ensemble which precedes Owen's entry into the house is done with each at her own window, creating a real sense of three intertwining monologues. Other ensembles are similar, and Medcalf successfully banishes any real sense of the stage. 

The Soldier's Return: Opera Sunderland's powerful film premiere of Marcos Fernandez-Barrero's new opera

Marcos Fernandez-Barrero: The Soldier's Return - Ian Priestley, Austin Gunn - Opera Sunderland
(Photo Mark Savage)

Marcos Fernandez-Barrero The Soldier's Return; Ian Priestley, Katherine Aitken, Austin Gunn, Andri Björn Róbertsson, Marco Romano, Annie Rigby; Opera Sunderland on film
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 12 November 2020 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
A new community opera becomes a powerful short film about the real-life experience of veterans when they return home from war

Opera Sunderland was due to premiere Marcos Fernandez-Barrero's opera The Soldier's Return this year with a 40-strong community chorus, lockdown meant a change of plan. Instead, it was created as a film, the chorus and the musicians recorded in isolation and the soloists in a socially distanced production in the studio, and the result released on Remembrance Sunday. Directed by Annie Rigby (artistic director of Newcastle-based Unfolding Theatre), The Soldier's Return features music by Marcos Fernandez-Barrero, text by Jacob Polley, with Ian Priestley as the man, Katherine Aitken as the woman, Austin Gunn as voice 1 and Andri Björn Róbertsson as voice 2, with the orchestra and 23-strong community chorus of Opera Sunderland conducted by Marco Romano, filmed by Meerkat Films.

Opera Sunderland was founded in 2006 as Music in the Minster to give a fully staged performance of Britten's Noyes Fludded. In 2015, it presented its first commission MIRACLE! with words by David Almond (a writer from the North-East) and music by Marcos Fernandez-Barrero. MIRACLE! was Marcos-Barrero's first opera. He is a Spanish composer who trained at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and the Royal College of Music and was based in the UK before returning to Spain where he teaches at the conservatoire in Barcelona.

The Soldier's Return is based on a libretto by poet and novelist Jacob Polley, who was born in Cumbria but currently lives in the North-East and teaches at Newcastle University. The text is based on interviews with local people involved in past, recent and ongoing combat situations.

Songs of our Times: Jessica Walker and Joe Atkins in cabaret for the Lichfield Festival

Songs for our Times - Jessica Walker and Joseph Atkins (capture from film by Leon Lopez)

Songs of our times; Jessica Walker, Joe Atkins, Leon Lopez; Lichfield Festival
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 21 July 2020 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
Contemporary cabaret reflecting on our current times, turned into a stylish yet thought-provoking filme

Songs for our Times is a new film, commissioned by the Lichfield Festival and broadcast by them on Sunday 19 July 2020 (available on the festival's Facebook and YouTube pages). A cabaret filmed at Blackheath Halls by film-maker Leon Lopez, the work features singer Jessica Walker and pianist Joe Atkins in songs the two have written during lockdown alongside material by the Belgian songwriter and chansonier Jacques Brel (1929-1978) and by the French singer-songwriter Barbara (1930-1997.

Walker and Atkins have collaborated before, and their 2019 musical Not Such Quiet Girls, for Opera North and the Leeds Playhouse, told the story of stories of three women on the front line during World War I, using three actors and the chorus of Opera North.

The style of Lopez' film is stylish yet dark, with Walker all in black against a largely black background only offset by lighting and the occasional effect. There is a stage, but this is only used occasionally, and the camera often closes in on Walker's face, with her highly expressive eyes. This isn't cabaret as seduction, but statement and confession, and it is mesmerising and intense. The mood is, unsurprisingly, downbeat but also rather political and the songs move from the personal to the public and back, in the best possible way.

Housman and the Greeks at the Oxford Lieder Festival

A.E. Housman by William Rothenstein
sanguine and black chalk, 1906 NPG 3873
© National Portrait Gallery, London

Housman's Myth Making, RVW: On Wenlock Edge, Music of Ancient Greece; Jennifer Ingleheart, Daniel Norman, the Brodsky Quartet, Sholto Kynoch, Armand D'Angour; Oxford Lieder Festival at St John's College, Oxford
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 20 October 2019 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
A new film to accompany live performance of RVW's Housman song-cycle, along with talks on Housman and on music in Ancient Greece

The afternoon events at the Oxford Lieder Festival on Sunday 20 October 2019 centred around A.E. Housman and the Ancient Greeks. At St John's College, Oxford, Housman's old college, we heard Jennifer Ingleheart, professor of Latin at Durham University, talking about Housman's Myth Making. Then tenor Daniel Norman, the Brodsky Quartet and pianist Sholto Kynoch performed Ralph Vaughan Williams' A.E. Housman setting On Wenlock Edge, with a new film by Jeremy Hamway-Bidgood. Then Armand D'Angour, Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Jesus College, Oxford, talked about Music in Ancient Greece.

Jennifer Ingleheart's talk centred on the use of Classical myth in Housman's poetry. Central to this was the relationship between Housman the Professor of Latin at Cambridge and Housman the poet, two personas that Housman sought to persuade people were separate, but which Ingleheart argued overlapped. She presented examples of what she termed Housman's self-mythologising in trying to convince people that the poet and the professor did not overlap. She then proceeded to provide fascinating examples of Housman's use of myth in his poetry, often subtle and very specific references.

Prior to the performance of RVW's On Wenlock Edge, Daniel Norman, the Brodsky Quartet and Sholto Kynoch performed a number of pieces to lead into it. The first group illustrated RVW's influential forbears with a poignant account of William Cornysh's Ah Robin, performed by Norman with just viola and cello accompaniment, a string quartet version of Thomas Tallis' Third Tune for Archbishop Parker's Psalter (the tune on which RVW's Tallis Fantasia is based) and Orlando Gibbons' madrigal The Silver Swan in a very effective ersion for Daniel Norman's high tenor and quartet.

An artist obscured by his own mythos: Ron Howard's documentary 'Pavarotti'

Pavarotti; directed: Ron Howard, with Bono, Herbert Breslin, Jose Carreras, Placido Domingo, Harvey Goldsmith, Andrea Griminelli, Angela Gheorghiu, Nicolette Mantovani, Zubin Mehta, Anne Midgette, Cristina Pavarotti, Guiliana Pavarotti, Lorenza Pavarotti, Madelyn Renee, Adua Veroni; Release date 15 July 2019
Reviewed by Anthony Evans on 11 June 2019 Star rating: 3.0 (★★★)
Ron Howard's straight forward documentary about Luciano Pavarotti feels like something of a lost opportunity

Whatever your views on the soubriquet “King of the high C’s”, the phenomenon that was Pavarotti bestrode the worlds of classical and pop music like a colossus. The son of a baker with a penchant for scarves, his "voice of platinum” and his infectious charm propelled him ever upward in the musical firmament until he succumbed to pancreatic cancer at the age of 70. Ron Howard’s documentary Pavarotti salutes the man and his talent.

Ron Howard takes a straight forward chronological approach, using talking heads, archive footage and photographs to retell the story of his life and career and it is good, as far as it goes. Some of the received wisdom about Pavarotti’s life stretches credulity so it seems perfectly legitimate, even laudable, to take a fastidiously balanced approach to these things especially when there is so much ordure disseminated on the interweb. That said, I wondered what sort of audience this was being pitched at? I didn’t care which but I’d rather it had been settled upon.

With a running time of 115 minutes I’d imagined the "definitive story" would be a work of some heft, a dissection of, if not the man, his art. The potted synopses of some of the most popular operas in the repertoire told another story. What could have been a sparkling, witty even poignant reflection on his life became a dry retelling of his career, more notable for what was left unsaid.

Most of the participants including his family and other notables offered insights that felt scripted rather than improvised and amidst the occasional moments of toe-curling pretention there seemed no space for the nicely turned anecdotes that would have brought the thing to life. Whilst his sometimes-challenging behaviour and peccadillos were briefly alluded to, everyone was on their relentless best and dullest behaviour.

What made this simple man, this self-confessed "peasant "who did not know how to write a cheque" tick?

Die Walküre - Royal Opera House Live

Wagner: Die Walküre, The Royal Opera ©2018 ROH. Photograph by Bill Cooper

Wagner Die Walküre; Nina Stemme, John Lundgren, Emily Magee, Stuart Skelton, Sarah Connolly, dir: Keith Warner, cond: Antonio Pappano; Royal Opera House live broadcast at Barbican Cinema  
Reviewed by Anthony Evans on 28 October 2018 Star rating: 3.5 (★★★½)
A poetic Walküre with a towering performance from Stuart Skelton.

Stuart Skelton - The Royal Opera
©2018 ROH. Photograph by Bill Cooper

On Sunday 28 October 2018, Barbican’s Cinema 2 saw the broadcast of Keith Warner’s Royal Opera production of the first day of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, Die Walküre. In this revival the ill-fated twins Siegmund and Sieglinde were sung by Stuart Skelton and Emily Magee. Sieglinde’s Neiding husband, Hunding, was Ain Anger. Mr. and Mrs. God, Wotan and Fricka, were John Lundgren and Sarah Connolly. Brünnhilde, Wotan’s favourite daughter, was Nina Stemme. Her sister Valkyries were Alwyn Mellor, Lise Davidsen, Kai Rüütel, Claudia Huckle, Maida Hundeling, Catherine Carby, Monika-Evelin Liiv and Emma Carrington; and I haven’t heard them better sung. Antonio Pappano conducted.

I am not so down on Keith Warner’s production as some have been. OK, its imagery is at times frustratingly opaque and its symbolic complexity cluttered, naff even; but, the conflicts of love and power are played out with utter conviction. It is, dare I say, Ibsenesque in approach, the dissection of the characters’ relationships line by line was as precise as its visuals were symbolic detritus. It felt as if every musical effect was rendered in the emotional landscape. The action was swept along by rivers of sound from the pit. The music breathlessly ebbed and flowed in Pappano’s fluid and elegant reading. This was immersive stuff.

There were a few hiccups – it is a long evening after all. Emily Magee’s Sieglinde seemed to lapse into histrionics like some femme fatale and at times didn’t sound vocally comfortable. Ain Anger as her husband was more a brooding introvert than a menace.

The good the bad and the ugly: Susan Froemke's The Opera House

Susan Froemke The Opera House at Barbican Cinema  
Reviewed by Anthony Evans on 1 July 2018 Star rating: 3.5 (★★★½)
Susan Froemke's film marking the 50th anniversary of the Metropolitan Opera at the Lincoln Center

This Sunday afternoon, 1 July 2018, Barbican Cinema 3 showed a new film by award winning documentary filmmaker Susan Froemke, The Opera House. The film marks the 50th anniversary of The Metropolitan Opera’s tenure at the Lincoln Centre in New York, and it’s well worth a couple of hours of any opera buffs time.

As it sashayed from one subject to another it sometimes felt a bit of a mish-mash, trying to be all things to all people. The ponderous examinations of the minutiae of the architecture palled, killing a perfectly good anecdote about the happenstance design of the stunning Austrian crystal chandelier. Notwithstanding, it managed to be an absorbing and illuminating dissection of an artistic vision and the renaissance of the Metropolitan Opera company.

Rebels on Pointe: an affectionate tribute to Les Ballets Trockadero de Montecarlo

Chase Johnsey and Giovanni Goffredo, as Yekaterina Verbosovich and Sergey Legupski, in Paquita.
© Dave Morgan

In February 2017, the Dancing Times Award for Best Male Dancer at the 2016 National Dance Awards at the Lilian Bayliss Studio at Sadlers' Wells Theatre went to the American dancer Chase Johnsey. What was unusual about the award was that Johnsey dances with Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo and his winning performance was as his alter-ego Yekaterina Verbosovich dancing the female role in the classic pas-de-deux from Petipa's Paquita. Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo (usually known simply as The Trocks) were also nominated for Best Company in the same awards.

The company recently celebrated its 40th anniversary, and an affectionate film tribute Rebels on Pointe was shown at the BFI Flare LGBT film festival at BFI Southbank (we caught it on 30 March 2018). Directed by Bobbi Jo Hart, the film followed the company for a period of three years, intercutting modern footage with archive material, as well as some spectacular dance sequences.

For those that don't know them The Trocks dance a largely classical repertoire, with some modern ballets, but use men in the female roles. The combination of men in tutus on point, technically brilliant dancing and high comedy is the company's trademark.

Turandot - Metropolitan Opera HD Live at the Chelsea Cinema

Puccini Turandot closing scene - Metropolitan Opera New York

Puccini Turandot; Nina Stemme, Marco Berti, Anita Hartig, dir: Franco Zeffirelli, cond: Paolo Carignani; The Metropolitan Opera HD Live at the Chelsea Cinema
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Jan 30 2016
Star rating: 3.5
Zefferelli's over the top Chinese extravaganza live in HD from the Met

Franco Zeffirelli's 1987 production of Puccini's Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, is the sort of highly detailed, large scale production for which a film can give the viewer a better sense of the detail than someone sitting in the vast expanse of the Metropolitan Opera itself. It is not a production that I have seen live (though I have seen other Zeffirelli productions including La Traviata at the Metropolitan Opera), so the Met HD Live broadcast was a good opportunity to experience the production in the comfort of the Chelsea Cinema, and was made particularly tempting by the presence of Nina Stemme as Turandot. (This revival of the production has run since September 2015 and the role of Turandot was shared between four sopranos.)

Nina Stemme

The opera was conducted by Paolo Carignani, with Marco Berti as Calaf, Anita Hartig as Liu, Alexander Tsymbalyuk as Timur, and Ronald Naldi as Altoum, Ping, Pong and Pang were Dwayne Croft, Tony Stevenson and Eduardo Valdes. A curiosity of the Met programming and billing is that the names of the singers performing Ping, Pong and Pang were not listed either in the printed handbill given us or in the pre-opera credits. (In the UK these roles tend to get equal billing with the rest of the cast).

The production was originally directed by Franco Zefferelli, who designed the sets, with costumes by Anna Anni and Dada Saligeri, choreography by Chiang Ching and the stage director was David Kneuss and the film director was Barbara Willis Sweete. It is a huge production, not just in the number of performers and the elaboration of the sets but in the way each set (one different for each act) is built out of myriad pieces (part of the film programme included footage of the stage hands striking and building the sets and I would have happily watched this for the whole interval).

The Metropolitan Opera - Les Contes d'Hoffmann - HD Live

Les Contes d'Hoffmann - act one
Metropolitan Opera, New York

Offenbach Les Contes d'Hoffmann; Vittorio Grigolo, Thomas Hampson, Kate Lindsey cond: Yves Abel, dir: Bartlett Sher; HD Live broadcast from Metropolitan Opera, New York
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Jan 31 2015
Star rating: 4.0
Fine singing and spectacular if unfocussed staging, seen in the cinema

We went along to the Curzon Chelsea Cinema on Saturday 31 January 2015 to see the Metropolitan Opera's High-Definition Broadcast of their production of Jacques Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann. Bartlett Sher's production was new in 2009, and this time round featured Vittorio Grigolo as Hoffmann, Kate Lindsey as The Muse/Nicklausse, Thomas Hampson as the four villains, Erin Morley as Olympia, Hibla Gerzmava as Antonia and Stella, Christine Rice as Giulietta, Tony Stevenson as the four servants, plus David Pittsinger, David Crawford, Dennis Petersen and Olesya Petrova. Yves Abel conducted, set designs were by Michael Yeargan, costumes by Catherine Zuber, lighting by James F Ingalls, and choreography by Dou Dou Huang. The stage director was Gina Lapinski and the broadcast was Barbara Willis Sweete.

Sher's production was large scale, spectacular and deliberately used an element of theatricality in the stage action itself. The stage was divided into two areas, fore stage and rear stage with the latter being hidden and with flats opening to reveal the each tableau. The prologue and epilogue featured all of the cast looking on at Hoffmann, whose writing desk and typewriter (on the fore stage) were present throughout. In addition to the chorus there was a dance troupe, whose presence was a little too ubiquitous except for the Antonia act. There were a number of pensees, whose origin was unclear, notably the presence of multiple Olympias and, at one point, multiple Olympias wooed by multiple Hoffmanns.

Kate Lindsey's spectacularly fine Nicklausse/Muse was clearly the eminence grise of events and she seemed to be controlling Thomas Hampson's villains. The two exchanged all sorts of glances, probably not very noticeable to the theatrical audience.

Benjamin Britten - Peace and Conflict

Tony Britten's Benjamin Britten - Peace and Conflict is a new film which takes a somewhat sidelong-view of Britten's life. Comprised of scenes re-enacted by actors, sections narrated by John Hurt, talking heads and performances of Britten's music, Tony Britten takes as his starting point Britten's schooldays at Gresham's. It was here, in a highly liberal atmosphere, that the origin of many of his adult attitudes can be detected. A most potent symbol of this is the fact that a fellow school-mate of Britten's was Donald Maclean, the communist spy.

The backbone of the film is a series of re-enactments of Britten's school days at Gresham's, with young actors including Alex Lawther as the young Britten. These are presumably speculative, but informed not only by Britten's letters but also by the school magazine to which the boys contributed. The school had a very liberal atmosphere in which the boys were encouraged to think for themselves. Britten developed a number of relationships which had strong influences on his later attitudes. Whilst a number of contemporaries such as Maclean became communists, these attitudes came out in Britten in his strong commitment to the peace movement.

Covent Garden launches 2013/14 live cinema season

Lise Lindstrom as Turandot
photo Tristram Kenton 2013

Last night the first of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden's cinema transmissions was relayed to cinemas all over the world, launching the 2013/14 cinema season with a live performance of Puccini's Turandot with Lise Lindstrom, Marco Berti and Eri Nakamura conducted by Henrik Nanasi (see my review of last week's first night). The Royal Opera House's cinema transmission has grown from three titles broadcast to 200 sites, to ten titles in 1000 cinemas in 40 countries. Talking at the press launch at the Mayfair Hotel, Antonio Pappano, the Royal Opera's music director, spoke about how he felt that it was right that the Royal Opera share performances to as wide an audience as possible and that there was real appetite and interest for the Royal Opera House's work.

The figures are quite impressive. On 13 December 2012, over 32,000 people watched The Nutcracker broadcast live in the UK, it was the UK's second highest grossing film that night, sitting between The Hobbit and Skyfall in the UK Box Office chart. Almost 40,000 people in the UK watched the single screening of Christopher Wheeldon's ballet Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Over 33,000 watched La Boheme on 13/1/2013 making the film the second highest grossing film that night (between Les Miserables and Gangster Squad).

Juan: Film review

I have to confess that I have generally been rather dismissive of filmed opera (as opposed to filming of live opera events), finding the results often a little stagey and the playback rather unsuccessful. But I was immensely curious about Kasper Holten's new film Juan, which is based on Mozart's Don Giovanni. First of all it was clearly billed as an adaptation rather than simple transcription, and secondly it featured Christopher Maltman in a nude shower scene, so there was really no question. We went along to the first UK public screening on Wednesday 9 January at the Royal College of Music. The event was followed by an informative Q & A with Kasper Holten.