Review of La Belle Helene

Laurent Pelly’s production of Offenbach’s La Belle Helene has already been seen in Paris (at the Chatelet Theatre) and in Santa Fe, it has also made it to CD and to DVD. Now the production has come to the London Coliseum under the auspices of English National Opera. The problem with much travelled productions is that a degree of coarseness can creep in with each revival. But Laurent Pelly is a fine director who, together with his regular associate director Agathe Melinand, oversees not only the production but the actual edition of the spoken text. For the original Chatelet production of La Belle Helene Agathe Melinand produced her own edition of the dialogue, as she did for her and Pelly’s subsequent collaborations on La Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein (again Chatelet Theatre) and Le Roi Malgre Lui (Lyons Opera). So obviously Melinand and Pelly take careful note of the tone of the spoken word.

Inevitably, whilst listening to Kit Hesketh Harvey’s English translation at ENO last night, this lead to me wonder how good Melinand and Pelly’s English was and how much control they had over the intensely jokey tone of Harvey’s translation. Full of puns and modern references, it rather tipped the production a little too far in the direction of Gilbert and Sullivan, which is not what you want when trying to produce Offenbach in the UK.

But Pelly (and Harvey’s) problem with this operetta is that when originally produced it satirised the moeurs of the court of Napoleon III in terms of classical mythology. It was written for an audience who could be presumed to know classical mythology well. If you take away the Napoleon III satire and have to apply an extremely broad brush to the classical mythology then what you are left with is a romp.

Most of the critics complained that this incarnation of Pelly’s production was too end of the pier, to English romp. But it IS a romp and you can hardly expect ENO to acquire the sort of French chic style which was presumably in evidence at the original production (We did not see La Belle Helene in France but we did see La Grande Duchesse).

It does not help that Pelly seems to be applying three different treatments to the opera rather than one consistent attitude. The overture starts in the Spartan Royal Bedroom and all of Act1 remains there, with Helene and Menelaus in bed for much of the time. Costumes are an endearing mixture of Greek and nightwear. The bed makes an appearance in each act. For Act 2 we still have the bed, after all it is Helene’s boudoir. But we have a selection of ruins which are being conserved by modern archaeologists, cue a ballet for the archaeologists at the opening of the act. The chorus are modern day tourists, complete with tour guide. When Helene addresses her parents she looks at the conserved remains of a mosaic of Leda and the Swan. For the final act everything takes place at the modern Greek seaside and Paris appears from the flies, using the bed as a boat!

Pelly treats each number to its own routine and though there is an overall coherence of tone, there was a sense of a sequence of fascinating production numbers. The dancing sheep during Paris and Helene’s duet were notable, but I also liked the swimming ballet which opened Act 3.

As Helene, Dame Felicity Lott looked fabulous and had a secure feel for the requisite style and delivered her dialogue to the manner born. Unfortunately the role is slightly low for her so she sounded underpowered to the vast cave of the Coliseum. Still, she incarnated the most beautiful woman in the world with consummate ease. As Paris, Toby Spence proved to have a nice line in comedy, treating the role with due seriousness (as is appropriate) and never having to resort to sending himself up. He was generous with giving us views of his well developed, shirtless torso and at one point stripped down to his underpants, to no very good reason but I shan’t complain! His voice was noticeable more powerful than Lott’s but they made a handsome couple and did convince as a pair of lovers.

As Helene’s put upon husband Menelaus, Bonaventura Bottone impressed; it was funny to see him as a middle aged man (complete with his own naturally grey hair and bald patch) rather than a young lover. But he made Menelaus a sympathetic butt for the jokes. Steven Page impressed as Calchas, though he was lumbered with an awful hairy wig.

The 4 Kings similarly suffered so it was tricky to tell them apart. I feel that Pelly the director and Pelly the costume designer could have done more to characterise the 4 of them differently. As it was you felt that singers as talented as David Kempster (Agamemmnon), Leigh Melrose (Achilles) and John Graham-Hall (Ajax I) were a little wasted. Leah Martin Jones made a fine, laddish Orestes constantly with a pair of courtesans on his arms.

The orchestra was relatively small in size and, under Emmanuel Joel’s direction, delivered up a sparkling account of the score. All in all this was an enjoyable evening, and if we did not always appreciate Kit Hesketh Harvey’s jokes, the audience around us did.

Recent CD Review

My review of settings of Elizabethan poetry sung by the Clerks of Christchurch is here on MusicWeb International.

Deserves to be heard for Pantcheff's settings of Elizabethan lyrics; the
accompanying items are attractively done even if you might question
their necessity in the programme. ...

My new PC (just over a year old) is still in at the menders, though they have told me that they have not found anything. Rather worrying, looks as if I'll have to live with a PC which keeps switching itself off at random intervals. I can't face paying yet another person to look at it.

So, currently I'm using my old PC (a venerable Windows 98 machine). This means, of course, that the new pieces I'm doing existing in fragmented form split between the old and the new pc's. So, as and when I manage to get the new one back I will have the delightful task of re-integrating the music.

I've finished the first major draft of the new piece for London Concord Singers 40th anniversary concert in November, 3 lighthearted movements setting secular Latin. I'm rather please with it and can't wait to have it all in one place to try out properly. I've even managed to come up with a half decent tonal scheme for the 3 movements; yes, I've actually managed to write a piece that stays in recognisable keys rather than wandering about and there's no polytonality.

The other piece is a new orchestral piece, something to try just to see if I can. Its a tone poem based on a Sylvia Townsend Warner short story about Welsh fairies, so the piece is currently loosely titled either Fairies and Faith or Of Fairies, Faith and Mountains. I've got the Welsh bit started, using David of the White Rock and have some Tippett-y Midsummer Marriage like bits for the Fairies. I'm just finishing drafting this section and am about to move onto the Faith bit, where St. Patrick gives them a sermon about Faith moving Mountains. I've sketched out a section using the Hymn tune, St. Patrick's Breastplate, though I've yet to work out if I can make sense of my sketches as they are all in manuscript. I've not yet got far enough to see if the thing makes sense, I'll report back.

My new PC (just over a year old) is still in at the menders, though they have told me that they have not found anything. Rather worrying, looks as if I'll have to live with a PC which keeps switching itself off at random intervals. I can't face paying yet another person to look at it.

So, currently I'm using my old PC (a venerable Windows 98 machine). This means, of course, that the new pieces I'm doing existing in fragmented form split between the old and the new pc's. So, as and when I manage to get the new one back I will have the delightful task of re-integrating the music.

I've finished the first major draft of the new piece for London Concord Singers 40th anniversary concert in November, 3 lighthearted movements setting secular Latin. I'm rather please with it and can't wait to have it all in one place to try out properly. I've even managed to come up with a half decent tonal scheme for the 3 movements; yes, I've actually managed to write a piece that stays in recognisable keys rather than wandering about and there's no polytonality.

The other piece is a new orchestral piece, something to try just to see if I can. Its a tone poem based on a Sylvia Townsend Warner short story about Welsh fairies, so the piece is currently loosely titled either Fairies and Faith or Of Fairies, Faith and Mountains. I've got the Welsh bit started, using David of the White Rock and have some Tippett-y Midsummer Marriage like bits for the Fairies. I'm just finishing drafting this section and am about to move onto the Faith bit, where St. Patrick gives them a sermon about Faith moving Mountains. I've sketched out a section using the Hymn tune, St. Patrick's Breastplate, though I've yet to work out if I can make sense of my sketches as they are all in manuscript. I've not yet got far enough to see if the thing makes sense, I'll report back.

My new PC (just over a year old) is still in at the menders, though they have told me that they have not found anything. Rather worrying, looks as if I'll have to live with a PC which keeps switching itself off at random intervals. I can't face paying yet another person to look at it.

So, currently I'm using my old PC (a venerable Windows 98 machine). This means, of course, that the new pieces I'm doing existing in fragmented form split between the old and the new pc's. So, as and when I manage to get the new one back I will have the delightful task of re-integrating the music.

I've finished the first major draft of the new piece for London Concord Singers 40th anniversary concert in November, 3 lighthearted movements setting secular Latin. I'm rather please with it and can't wait to have it all in one place to try out properly. I've even managed to come up with a half decent tonal scheme for the 3 movements; yes, I've actually managed to write a piece that stays in recognisable keys rather than wandering about and there's no polytonality.

The other piece is a new orchestral piece, something to try just to see if I can. Its a tone poem based on a Sylvia Townsend Warner short story about Welsh fairies, so the piece is currently loosely titled either Fairies and Faith or Of Fairies, Faith and Mountains. I've got the Welsh bit started, using David of the White Rock and have some Tippett-y Midsummer Marriage like bits for the Fairies. I'm just finishing drafting this section and am about to move onto the Faith bit, where St. Patrick gives them a sermon about Faith moving Mountains. I've sketched out a section using the Hymn tune, St. Patrick's Breastplate, though I've yet to work out if I can make sense of my sketches as they are all in manuscript. I've not yet got far enough to see if the thing makes sense, I'll report back.

Recent CD review

My review of the recent disc devoted to the choral music of Carl Orff and his contemporaries is here on MusicWeb International.

A fascinating recital that enables us to explore Carl Orff’s world. ...

Solomon again

I have been taken to task, in an anonymous comment added to my posting about my review of Solomon, here. The commentator seems to misunderstand why I brought in comparisons between David Daniels, Andreas Scholl and David Hansen (who sang the title role in the concert). I don't think it is adequate, in a review, to simply write counter-tenor against someone's voice type and leave the reader to work things out further. The counter-tenor voice is so varied that you need to be able to characterise the singer further, just as I would say if someone was a lyric, dramatic soprano etc. So my mentioning of Daniels and Scholl was not intended to be a stick with which to beat Hansen, a singer of fine artistry whose performance stood up for itself; I was merely trying to describe Hansen's voice.

And the reason that I harp on about voice types with the role of Solomon (rather than the entire cast) is that Handel did not write the role for a counter-tenor or a castrato, but for a woman. (And I have actually heard Scholl sing the role live, quite, quite beautifully).

Don Carlos (again)

My discs of Don Carlos have come! This morning, we listened to the first disc of the Opera Rara re-issue of the BBC recording. The sound quality is not superb, because the acoustic of the original recording does leave something to be desired. But the singers all give the piece a wonderful French feel, it certainly does not sound like standard mainstream European Italian Verdi, which is a good thing. More anon. when I've listened to the whole set properly.

My computer is in dock again, despite last week's work it still keeps switching itself off. I get nervous about losing work and have been furiously copying new music to a flash drive. It's rather annoying that I don't have access to Finale as I've been motoring through a new piece for London Concord Singer's 40th anniversary concert in November. I've done settings of 3 light-hearted Latin lyrics and have tried to deliver something which is faster and more up-beat than my usual style; after all it is a celebration! The pieces came out rather quickly and I have got them written out in a mixture of Finale printouts and manuscript. I'm now desperate to finalise the pieces, but I'm going to have to wait aren't I!

Tonight I'm singing at the Maundy Thursday Service at St. Mary's Cadogan Street. Its a fascinating service which starts with the celebrant washing the feet of a dozen men and women; then ending with translation of the consecrated host from the altar to a side altar so that the high altar is empty for Good Friday.

Review of Solomon

My review of Handels' Solomon at the Barbican with Rene Jacobs conducting the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment is here on Music and Vision.

Critical Choice

You go to a concert, which you enjoy greatly and then the next day read the reviews and find that the critics seem to have been at a different concert. Or even worse, you have tickets for the opera and the reviews come out; do you believe the critics and abandon your trip, or risk it.

Quite often, I find myself at odds with one critic or another. It is truly amazing that people can have such a varied response to the same event. It happens, of course, because we all have different bug-bears and this comes out in the reviews. What to one person is a slight annoyance or even a positive virtue, is something horrible to another. My own bug-bear is the question of authenticity and editions, so going to something like Verdi's Don Carlo I can get rather hung up on exactly what we are hearing, and get positively livid if the programme book does not tell you in great detail. Similarly with Handelian Opera Seria the edition used and the attitude to da capo arias is very important. I realise that productions of baroque opera which appeal to me quite often seem unreservedly boring to others. And vice versa, David McVicar's production of Guilio Cesare, which received a degree of critical acclaim, seemed to David and I to be full of awful crowd-pleasing moments which destroyed Handel's drama. So you can't please everyone.

A fascinating example of this was the recent performance of Henry and Daniel Purcell's music for The Indian Queen which Philip Pickett and the New London Consort gave at the South Bank the other day. Richard Morrison's review in the Times caught my eye because his turn of phrase was so memorable; so when I spotted Tim Ashley in the Guardian having exactly the opposite view, then I was transfixed.

Tim Ashley in The Guardian said: The playing was fabulous, the singing faultless, and the whole thing revealed The Indian Queen to be, if not quite a masterpiece, then a work of great brilliance, wit and emotional power..

Richard Morrison in The Times said: I would run barefoot through nettles to hear Purcell’s music, but even I was bored rigid by this interminably dreary presentation of his final theatre score.

The problem seems to be that Pickett chose to link the music with his own adaptation of Dryden's verse, so how you reacted to the project depended on how you liked yards and yards of 17th century verse, not all of good quality.

I'm going to keep my eyes open for further reviews!

Recent CD Review

My review of the new record from Corpus Christ College (Cambridge) Choir is here, on MusicWeb International.

A live snapshot ... the young singers bring freshness and vitality ...

Nymph Errant

On Sunday afternoon we went to see Lost Musicals doing Cole Porter's Nymph Errant at Sadlers Wells Theatre. They do concert/semi-staged performances of unusual musicals, usually with piano accompaniment. Nymph Errant was commissioned by C.B. Cochrane as a vehicle for Gertrude Lawrence, it was premiered in London and tailored to English Taste, as such it never had a Broadway premiere and was not revived after the original run. A recent revival in Chichester substantially re-wrote the book which has as a strong element of non-PC xenophobia.

Lost Musicals produced it in its original version with a cast of 15 playing some 29 named roles. The show concerns the adventures of Evangeline, the Nymph Errant of the title who, after leaving finishing school, tries to sleep her way around Europe but completely fails and returns home after a year still a virgin and promptly falls in love with her aunts gardner. During the course of her travels she bumps into various school friends who have ended up hooking up with a variety of dubious men.

Issy van Randwyck was wonderfully charismatic as Evangeline. She gets the lions share of the songs and Randwyck put them over beautifully. She was perhaps not quite as over the top in The Physician as Gertie Lawrence herself was, but van Randwyck was a pleasure to listen to.

Gay Soper played a number of roles and got 2 songs. One a lovely little number for an ageing cocotte, being put out of business by the modern, racy young women. And as the Chemstry Mistress at the Finishing School she sang Experiment to very great effect. This is one of the show's best known numbers and Soper put it over well.

The original show starred Elisabeth Welch (as a member of the Emir's harem) who sang Solomon during the original run. Even in her 70's Welch retained this number in her repertoire. At Sadlers Wells, Thelma Ruby showed that age (she's over 80 I believe) and experience counted for a lot in putting over a song, even with limited vocal equipment; her account of Solomon quite rightly brought the house down.

The remained of the cast, playing multiple roles and singing the choruses, worked hard and many displayed a wonderful variety of accents (French, German, Italian, American, Greek, Turkish, English etc.). The musical was succinctly and effectively staged, with much amusingly suitable business to go with Cole Porter's underscoring.

Cole Porter and his librettist, Rodney Brent, retained one joke until the last parft of the 2nd Act. They signalled a big romantic number from far off, Evangeline and Ben (a plumber who'd rescued her from the Emir's Harem) alone together in the romantic desert. Cue one of Porter's big tunes and Ben sings a romance to plumbing.

One of the advantages of Lost Musicals presentations is that they are done unamplified, so you are given the chance to hear actors and singers performing directly without the benefit/hindrance of amplification. They are doing Flower Drum Song next, but its probably booked up already!

Sunday was Palm Sunday so it was a busy day at church where the usual sung Latin mass (Byrd's 4-part mass and Vittoria's Pueri Hebraeorum) was prefixed by a procession and blessing of palms. I managed to pull a muscle whilst rushing to get to the opening of proceedings, so had to hobble my way round in a truly undignified manner.

Thursday night was the London Concord Singers concert at St. Michael's Church, Chester Square, London. The programme was interesting, including Lobo's Requiem and music by Gabriel Jackson, Vagn Holmboe and Mary Jane Leach. But, unfortunately, it clashed with the launch party for the Chelsea Festival and FifteenB are performing a programme at the festival, so as their Artistic Director I went along to the Festival Launch. There was quite a bit of interest in our concert which was good news and there was lots of champagne to drink, so a good time was had by all. The remainder of the festival looks interesting, very much something for everyone. We've booked for a concert by the Orlando Consort at Chelsea Old Church, but I'm not sure we'll be able to fit anything else in, because of rehearsals for our concert. Which is annoying.

At the moment we're in the middle of the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, so have been busy seeing films. But last night we managed to fit in Handel's Solomon given by the Orchestral of the Age of Enlightenment at the Barbican. A review will follow in due course. Then tomorrow we're off to see the Lost Musicals doing Nymph Errant which should be fun.

Recent CD Review

My review of Siegfried Wagner's opera Sonnenflamen is here on MusicWeb International.

A committed performance ... anyone interested in Siegfried Wagner’s
music can be certain of hearing a performance which makes as strong a
case as possible for the work. ...

Recent CD Review

My review of Weigl's singspiel, Die Schweizer Familie is here on MusicWeb International.

Opera Magazine - April issue

Opera Magazine's April issue had one or two interesting items.

The on-going controversy surrounding outgoing Chairman Martin Smith, is somewhat reminiscent of the parting of the ways between Vivian Duffield and the Royal Opera House. Both Smith and Duffield were highly involved in the restoration of their chosen venue, giving much of their own money and raising much more. Their efforts were highly successful but neither Smith nor Duffield seems to have been able to develop a working relationship with their company once the restoration was over. It just shows that we have a lot to learn about projects involving lots of private money, the Americans seem to do this sort of thing in rather a more satisfactory way.

There is a rather worrying interview with John Berry, ENO's new artistic director. Nothing in his plans for 2006/07 is worrying per se, but there is nothing about any committment to English opera following on from their performances of Vaughan Williams's Sir John in Love. Let us hope that the many other deserving English operas do not get swept aside again. After all 2008 will be the 50th anniversary of RVW's death.

It is heartening to read that the Conservative Party chairman, Lord Laidlaw, is giving ENO 2 million pounds, for specific productios. These were not specified, but Laidlaw has already sponsored the new Madama Butterfly and La Belle Helene.

On a more worrying note, a school teacher in Colorado has been chided (chidden?) for playing extracts from Faust to primary school children as the subject matter was considered Satanic.

Back to England, I note that Grange Park Opera has appointed a chorus master (Nicholas Jenkins). The chorus standards have sometimes seemed in need of polishing (talent and enthusiasm have never been lacking), so I look forward to hearing the results of Jenkins's efforts in Thais and L'Elisir d'Amore.

Another link with the past has gone, Eric Shilling died in February aged 85. I remember seeing him in such things as Orpheus in the Underworld and Iolanthe. It was intersting to read in the obituary that he was a conscientious objector during the War, was a Quaker and a keen supporter of War on Want and Amnesty.

Crash bang wallop,again

I came home from our weekend away to find my PC making strange noises and after letting me back things up (luckily!), it promptly switched itself off. The PC engineer came today muttering about corrupted hard drives and the PC failed to boot properly. So I'm now without a PC for a few days and must resort to pencil and paper to write with. I've started on my new orchestral piece and so have been busy working out the details of the Tippett-like welsh fairies. It's probably good for me to do things manually once in a while. I now need to bring St. Patrick into the picture, to give the fairies a sermon on Faith moving Mountains; I think I need to dig of the hymn tune St. Patrick's Breast Plate.

Hampton Court

We spent the weekend staying in Hampton Court Palace thanks to the wonderful Landmark Trust who make available an appartment in the building, just off Fish Court in the Kitchens complex. So we availed ourselves of the facilities and attended 2 services in the chapel on Sunday morning. The choir of the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court is directed by Carl Jackson, who played organ solos for me at a Chelsea Festival concert in 2000 (we interspersed my Requiem Mass with early English organ music).

For both the Sunday morning choral Eucharist and the afternoon Evensong we were lucky enough to be able to sit in the choir stalls, thus getting a good view of the service. The morning service was boys voices only, the mass setting was by Arthur Wills and was not a piece that I had come across before but proved rather effective in its use of the combination of boys and organ. It was accessible but with some rather interesting moments.

In the evening the men of the choir were joined by 4 women and sang Byrd's canticles, from his second service, plus the Tomkins responses. Wonderful music making in a venue which could have heard the music when it was new. The anthem was the stunning Blow Salvator Mundi, so contemporary in its dissonances and angular vocal line.

Recent CD Review

My review of the new recording of Handel's Fireworks and Water Musics is Here, on MusicWeb International.

Having made a start on my new mass, Kyrie drafted out and Agnus Dei started, I began to realise that I'm in danger of repeating myself. The music written so far is rather close to the motets that I've been writing recently. So I have stirred my stumps and started sketching out a new orchestral work.

For years, I have been thinking about a piece based on a Sylvia Townsend Warner short story from The Kingdoms of Elfin, the one about the Welsh fairies who use faith to move mountains. Instead of an extended choral piece, I'm doing it for orchestra; quite a challenge. So far there are just a dozen bars and I'm struggling with the music for the fairies; I can hear the shapes and texture of the music but am having trouble getting the actual notes right. This is a problem I sometimes have; I hear a texture or a shape rather than detailed melody and harmony, so I have to experiment to try and re-create the particular texture. The fairies are coming out rather Tippett-like (think Midsummer Marriage, but I'm not going to look at the score of that work or I'll end up writing real pastiche.

I have also acquire some rather neat PDF creating software so that I can now produce PDF's out of Finale, my music writing programme. The result looks rather handsome on the web, there's a sample here.

New season at Covent Garden

Covent Garden has announced its plans for the 2006/2007 season. Not surprisingly Wagner is not on the agenda as the 2007/08 season will open with the new Ring, the shame seems to be that having decided to miss of Wagner, Covent Garden have missed off most other German composers as well. Still the season includes some gems, with a good scattering of young talent being exposed as well as welcome returns of old faces.

The emphasis of the season is in French opera. There is a revival of David McVicar’s Faust, still with Angela Gheorghiu as Marguerite but with a mainly new cast that includes Christine Rice (who is appearing 3 times this season). More of a novelty is a pair of concert performances of Halevy’s La Juive with Dennis O’Neill as Eleazar and Alastair Miles as Cardinal Brogni, The much anticipated new Carmen is directed by Francesca Zamballo, so expect colour and efficiency rather than deep insight - Covent Garden will be looking for a production that they can roll out regularly. There are 2 casts with Pappano and Philippe Auguin sharing the conducting honours. Anna Caterina Antonacci and Marina Domashenko share the title role; I’m rooting for Antonacci and can’t wait to see her. Ildebrando D’arcangelo and Laurent Naouri are sharing Escamillo; its good to see Naouri making appearances in the UK, usually we have to go and see him in France. Don Jose is shared between Jonas Kaufmann (German) and Marco Berti (Italian). As you can see, not many native French language speakers. And that brings me to another point. What edition are they doing? The press release doesn’t say; we don’t even get a hint as to whether they are using dialogue or recitative.

A rather more exciting new prospect (already seen at the Met, in New York), is Donizetti’s La Fille du Regiment (in French) with Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Florez, with Bruno Campanella conducting. Laurent Pelly directs; having done nothing in London in years he now has 2 productions within a year (his La Belle Helene is at the Coliseum later this year). Florez is probably one of the few tenors around willing to do the tricky tenor role in the French version.

A nod in the direction of the Mozart Centenary is given with a new production of La Finta Giardiniera with Sir John Eliot Gardiner making a welcome return to the Covent Garden podium. The strong cast includes Camilla Tilling, Kurt Streit and Sophie Koch. Wonderful resources for what is, I find, a rather trivial piece.

Richard Jones’s wonderful production of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk is coming back (no I haven’t seen it, but it sounds as if it was fabulous and we hope to get to see it this time). Pappano is conducting and John Daszak is singing Zinovy Ismailov; Daszak seems to be gradually making it up the slippery ladder. Also of note, Gwynne Howell is singing the Old Convict; he made is Covent Garden debut in 1970.

Also coming back is Francesca Zamballos’s Queen of Spades. Not quite such a successful production, but we get to see Katarina Dalayman as Lisa and Gerald Finley as Prince Yeletsky with Semyon Bychkov conducting, so the evening will definitely be worth listening to.

Surprisingly, Handel’s Orlando is coming back in Francisco Negrin’s production. It was unloved by some critics, but we liked it. With any luck the rather daft choreography has gone. Bejun Mehta is in the title role; he sang Medoro in the original run but had to stand in for Alice Coote when she was ill. Rosemary Joshua is Angelica and Camilla Tilling is Dorinda; Charles Mackerras conducts. Definitely a date to be put in the diary.

Thomas Ades’s Tempest is coming back, we might go and see it if only to see if he has revised the work and to see how it shapes up again. Ades was quite close to the deadline in finishing it, so I hope he has taken the opportunity to take a step back and re-think some things. The original cast are, by and large, returning.

Another new production is a rather curious double bill of L’Heure Espagnol and Gianni Schicchi with Christine Rice (in the Ravel) and Bryn Terfel (in the Puccini), all produced by Richard Jones. Might be good, might be awful! The Ravel cast includes Bonaventura Bottone, Yann Beuron, Christopher Maltman and Andrew Shore, so its definitely well cast. In the Puccini, Joan Rodgers makes a welcome appearance, along with Marie McLaughlin and Robert Lloyd.

More new productions include Simon Rattle conducting the Salzburg Easter Festival production of Pelleas et Melisande with Simon Keenlyside, Angelika Kirchschlager and Gerald Finley. The cast makes my mouth water even if the opera doesn’t really. Karita Mattila is singing the title role in Fidelio in Jurgen Flimm’s production from the New York Met with Pappano conducting.

Erwin Schrott, who made such a hit in the new Marriage of Figaro returns in the title role of Don Giovanni; let’s hope he takes his shirt off like Simon Keenlyside did! Jonathan Lemalu is Leporello and Anna Netrebko is Donna Anna.

Other revivals include an interesting young cast in La Boheme, Elijah Moshinsky’s unsubtle Il Trovatore with Nicola Luisotti conducting, he’s new to Covent Garden; Marcelo Alvarez, Stephanie Blyth and Anthony Michaels-Moore star in a cast which almost makes me want to see the production again – I can always close my eyes. Verdi’s Stiffelio comes back in Elijah Moshinsky’s production with Mark Elder conducting, Jose Cura and Sondra Radvanovsky singing. Violeta Urmana is donning Tosca’s red frock in a revival of Jonathan Kent’s new production. Rigoletto and Cosi van Tutte also come back, the latter with Colin Davis.

A final notable revival. Charles Mackerras is conducting Katya Kabanova with Janice Watson in the title role and Felicity Palmer as her mother-in-law. Kurt Streit, Chris Merrit and Toby Spence are also in the cast – a trio of very fine tenors!

Another item to look forward to is a concert performance of Massenet’s Thais conducted by Andrew Davis with Renee Fleming, Thomas Hampson and Joseph Calleja. Fleming seems to be doing something of a Thais tour as she is singing the role in concert at the Chatelet Theatre in Paris, but with Gerald Finley.

The season at the Linbury theatre includes the premiere of Dominque Le Gendre’s Bird of the Night and a small scale production of Owen Wingrave

The Royal Ballet’s new season includes 4 new ballet’s for the main auditorium. These include Will Tuckett’s new version of Kurt Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins, should be fun.

Tosca

On Saturday we went to see English Touring Opera's new production of Tosca at the Cambridge Arts Theatre. My review is here on MusicWeb.

Tosca is one of those operas that can be difficult to get the tone of the production right, especially on a small scale. Its Grand Guignol gestures can easily degenerate into ham; I remember my mother going to see a very small scale production (with piano I think) in our home town of Grimsby. I'd warned her in advance that it might not be convincing. She reported back that she'd enjoyed the singing but that the staging was a little over-done; Cavaradossi appearing in Act 2 covered in obviously fake stage blood, etc.

But even in larger houses, where the bigger scale of the theatre suits large scale gestures an effects there are pit-falls, notably at the ending. English National Opera revived Jonathan Miller's fascist era production with Jane Eaglen in the title role. At the end Eaglen was called upon to run up a long, long ramp before throwing herself out of a window. A woman of Eaglen's size looks ungainly running and it completely destroyed the moment. Here, and in one or two other smaller places, I'd wished the staff producers had had the confidence to re-work the production to suit Eaglen's physique more.

Recent CD Review

My review of David Stanhope's latest piano recital is here on Music Web International.

A well planned recital well executed with dazzling playing. But don’t go
rushing out to buy this disc especially for the Rachmaninov Preludes ...

Castrati Ho

The press is currently full of articles about castrati, as the Handel House has a fascinating new exhibition on the subject. The only known recording of a castrato is that of Alessandro Moreschi, who worked in the Papal choir during the early 20th century. The problem with this recording is the Moreschi is relatively elderly and his technique involves the rather bizarre attacking of notes via grace notes as far as a 10th away from the destination note. This gives his vocal line a peculiar gulping, swooping quality.

This was discussed at length in a fascinating BBC Radio 3 programme, some years ago. During that programme, someone made the point that judging from the recording you could almost imagine that Moreschi wasn't a castrato at all, but using falsetto. It was postulated that he might have masqueraded as a castrato to further his career. This is an interesting point, and one that probably is never going to be resolved. But it leaves us with an even bigger question over the Moreschi recordings.

Don Carlos

Building a Library on BBC Radio 3 this morning covered all the available versions of Verdi's Don Carlos, Italian and French, 4 Act and 5 Act. The reviewer's ultimate conclusion was impeccable, he chose the Pappano recording which is the only adequate studio recording in French. Whilst navigating the different versions of the opera, there was an essential point that he neglected to make, probably through time. The BBC recording conducted by John Matheson (just released on Opera Rara) is not just the fist recording in French, it is a recording of the Original score as performed in Paris, with some of the cuts opened up. Whereas the Pappano version is basically Verdi's revision from the 1880's, but sung in French and with some of the cuts opened up. Where Verdi revised a passage from the 1867 version for the 1882/84 version, this latter revision is the one performed by Pappano. Matheson performs the 1867 score.

This variance of the opera has allowed conductors to play fast and loose with the edition of Don Carlos. This should not be the case, if you want to perform Verdi's final thoughts then do the 5-act Modena version in French. Otherwise do the 1867 Paris version in French. Don't to the 5-act Moden version, and then intercut bits of earlier Verdi. This is something which, to me, is essential and I feel should have been made clear in the radio broadcast.

More on Luc Arbogast

Someone has posted further information on Luc Arbogast. The comments here include a links to French web sites with further information about him.

Consummatum est

Well, last night's concert at St. James's Church, Piccadilly, went off in fine style. The Salomon Orchestra were in fine fettle and the programme came out just right. Conductor Adrian Brown proved an excellent mid-wife for my 2 new pieces. The Elegy for Baritone and Orchestra is a substantial, rather dense work which sets Rilke's long poem in its entirety, making it a big sing for the baritone soloist. Baritone, David Greiner, was brilliant and his diction was superb so you could follow the text throughout. I was rather worried about the effect of the piece on the audience, whether they'd be put of by the sheer density of the text and the setting but that proved to be the opposite and it was extremely well received.

In the Barbarian's Camp came off very well, with all the tricky poly-rhythmic passages falling into place. For the second time in a week I found myself having a conversation about how my music was trickier than it looked, that what you saw on the page was deceptive. There were a couple of moments in the final fanfares (re-workings of the brass piece, The Barbarian's are Coming) where I realised that I could improve the balance of the orchestration, but I was on the whole very, very pleased at the way the 8-part brass texture had been expanded to a full orchestral work. The closing quiet string chords, appearing from under the loud brass and wind, had a wonderfully Unanswered Question-ish feel.

There was a recording made. Gil Limor again worked his magic and I look forward to hearing the results.

Cometh the Day

We here it is at last, the day of the Salomon Orchestra concert at St. James's Church, Piccadilly. We had an excellent rehearsal on Tuesday and I look forward to the concert immensely. The listing in Time Out magazine looks good, and is at the head of the events for today, so here's hoping that we get an audience. We have had some advanced ticket sales, but I'm still worried about numbers; I don't want another concert where the orchestra out numbers the audience, no matter how enthusiastic the audience might be. Here's hoping.

David, the baritone soloist, rang yesterday to say that he thought I'd missed out a line of the poem. Looks as if I'll have to re-visit the setting. I've already been thinking of doing so - after the rehearsal on Sunday, when I heard the piece with orchestra for the first time, I was aware that there were places which could be improved. D. joked that I didn't have time to change them before the concert.

What is curious is the presence of small, Mahlerian touches in the orchestration; something of which I was not consciously aware, but I have always loved Mahler's orchestral songs. The 2 pieces at tonight's concert have in common that they were both explicitly orchestrated. I usually write in full score or at least short score, but both Barbarians and Elegy were written for unspecified forces and then orchestrated late.

Rite of Spring

The other night, we finally caught up with the BBC Television dramatisation of the events behind the premiere of The Rite of Spring, mixing drama with a complete performance of the ballet (danced by Finnish National Ballet). As drama, it worked pretty well but I thought that the script was guilty of trying to encapsulate Diaghilev and Nijinsky's entire relationship in the 45 minute drama (the programme lasted 90 minutes of which 45 were devoted to the performance of the ballet). I was particularly worried about the way the drama of creating the new ballet played out against the backdrop of Nijinsky falling in love with Romola. I'd have to go back to Richard Buckle's biography to check the facts, it all felt a little too pat.

What was a revelation was the ballet itself, performed whilst the audience actually did catcall and boo. The revelation was that it seemed so contrived and dated, hardly revolutionary at all and not terribly interesting. It is perhaps significant that when Diaghilev came to revive The Rite of Spring in a subsequent season, no-one could remember any of the steps (and Nijinsky was too ill by this time), so that Massine choreographed an entirely new score.

One piece of history was not re-enacted; the moment when Nijinsky gets so annoyed with the dancer playing the Chosen Maiden that he demonstrates the choreography himself. The result was to startling that everyone agreed that it was a shame that Nijinsky did not create a role for himself in the ballet. The dancer playing the Chosen Virgin was in fact chosen because she was the tallest in the company, not the most gifted.

The ballet classes and rehearsals had an interesting element of realism, the 'dancers ' did not all have the perfect bodies that we anticipate nowadays!

On a final, picky note, I was worried that Marie Rambert was referred to as Marie Rambert, I suspect that she was still called Miriam Ramberg at that time, though again I'd have to consult the biographies to check.

What next?

Having completed a clutch of motets for Tempus per Annum I'm trying to work out what to work on next. I am currently sketching out a new mass, mainly because I don't have a recent, uptodate, ordinary 4-part mass; hopefully something with a bit of substance. I'm experimenting with the technique used by renaissance and baroque composers, where the incipit for each movement is the same - but I'm not really very good at sticking to rules like this.

But I have various other ideas which are circling round, none having settled yet. There's a 1-act play which is a modern version of a Jacobean revenge tragedy - its ideal in length but has only 2 characters which is tricky, if I do another opera then I'd like a few more characters, its less taxing for me and for the singers. There's another play based on the case of a Winchester school-boy who was dying and who was fought over by Catholics and Protestants; the play uses a lot of dialogue so, though I like the subject matters there's work to be done in creating a libretto. Then of course, there's the on-going idea to create an oratorio on the subject of Cranmer. But this requires reading of his biography again and the gathering of suitable episodes and texts. Not to mention the vexed problem of trying to estimate how long a libretto you need, I have a terrible tendency to over-write the text and this leads to length problems later.

Besides all this, there is the eternal desire to write more songs, if only I could find some poems that appealed to me; not to mention the on-going problem that if you set a contemporary poet you get into copyright problems. Not even contemporary poets, I've just discovered that Lord Alfred Douglas is in copyright until 2015.

And perhaps I should write another orchestral work, I've got an idea using a solo cello but not sure what shape the work will take.

Knowing me, I'll probably continue writing the mass and more motets until something else really hits me over the head.

Saturday morning found me, briefly, at Jaques Samuels Pianos in the Edgware Road where baritone, David Greiner, was rehearsing for Thursday's concert. We then drove to Oxford to put up poster boards around the University Church to advertise the Cranmer concert that evening. The wind rather foiled us and David had to keep going back to sort the boards out.

The afternoon rehearsal was something of a public dress rehearsal. The University Church gets lots of visitors and of course they sat down and watched the choir singing. We gave out leaflets for the concert, but I don't know if this generated any extra audience, most visitors probably just regarded the singing as a lovely extra element of ambience in the church.

The concert itself went very well. We got a good audience, to my great relief, with a number of people coming specially because of the Cranmer connection; one lady came all the way from the USA for the concert! All items sounded good, but it was profoundly moving to hear my setting of Cranmer's final speech in the exact location where it had been spoken. The loveliest moment, for me, was not so much the concert as the rehearsal as by the time the choir came to rehearse The Testament of Dr. Cranmer the church was locked and it was just me listening alone in that lovely building. Quite magical.

Then Sunday morning we had the first orchestra rehearsal for the Salomon Concert, Getting up a bit earlier than we would have liked. It is always a wonderful relief to hear pieces for the first time and discover that they do sound as you intended. This is particularly true of orchestral works where the orchestration can make such a big effect. Even the poly-rhythmical passages are sounding right, and you're never sure about those until you actually hear them. There is no easy way for having the 4/4 and 6/8 played simultaneously (where the quaver is constant) and notated easily, so I've ended up with some passaged which are really in 4/4 but are notated in 6/8 so the players can follow the beat. Making this sound right is tricky, but its one of the limitations of Western notation.

First Contact

Last night we had the first rehearsal for my setting of the 2nd Duino Elegy which is being premiered on Thursday. The piece involves a baritone and full orchestra but last night it was just the baritone, David Greiner, conductor, Adrian Brown, and a pianist. Even with these reduced forces it was wonderful hearing the work for the first time.

I'm always a nervous when encountering a work in performance for the first time; it's the same at the first choir rehearsal of a work. The worry is about whether it will work, but also what the effect on the performers will be. This latter is particularly true when working with amateurs who are my friends as they let me know what they think; which is what friends are for! As ever, the work went well last night and it does work. I can't wait for the first orchestral rehearsal, on Sunday, to hear it with the orchestra.

And so, back to choral mode today as we go off to Oxford for the Cranmer memorial concert.

ENO's new Season

ENO have announced their plans for the 2006/07 season. There has been much muttering about how unready the company was and how the previous regime had not made sufficient plans. I'm not sure how much of this is really true; what probably matters more is that Berry and Tomasi have had to come up with a season which will attract ENO's traditional audience back and also balance the books.

This means that the season has a somewhat lighter feel, they are bringing back On the Town and doing a new production of Kismet. Additionally, there's a new production of The Gondoliers.

The other aspect of the season which is designed to satisfy their traditional punters is the return of a number of ENO favourites from the past; like the present season casting seems rather stronger than of late and sees the welcome return of some favourites.

Emma Bell is doing her first La Traviata with Rhys Meirion, a former company principal, as Alfredo. Its a new production, by Conal Morrison from Dublin's Abbey Theatre and for some reason, re-sets the opera in 19th century Dublin? Rather a curious idea, but worth suffering just to hear/see Bell's Violetta.

Another strong return is Amanda Roocroft singing the title role in a new production of Jenufa. The production was first seen in 2004 at Houston Grand Opera. This is Roocroft's first ENO role since singing Ginevra in Ariodante in 1993, an appalling gap. In what is probably something of a coup, Kostelnicka is being sung by Catherine Malfitano. With Paul Charles Clarke making his ENO stage debut (something he should have surely done years ago).

The new production of Marriage of Figaro has 2 distinct casts which highlight current talent including Lisa Milne (Countess), Susan Gritton (Countess), Jonathan Lemalu (Figaro), Sarah Tynan (Susanna) Jonathan Veira (Dr. Bartolo), plus stalwarts such as Diana Montague , Stuart Kale, Yvonne Howard. The production is by Olivia Fuchs, which means it should be rather interesting; perhaps interesting enough for me to go and see it (there again perhaps not).
The new Gondoliers has more returning old faces; the Duchess of Plaza Toro is Anne Murray and Don Alhambra is DOnald Maxwell. The delectable Sarah Tynan re-appears as Gianetta, Martin Duncan produces; definitely one for the diary.

Handel's Agrippina is being done in the production originally seen in Brussels, directed by David McVicar. Agrippina is often seen as one of Handel's lighter, more satirical operas and this is used as an excuse for doing rather jokey productions. Given McVicar's track record (a mixed Alcina at ENO and the terrible Bollywood Julius Caesar for Glyndebourne), I won't hold my breath about the production. But the casting is just top notch; Sarah Connolly as Agrippina, Christine Rice as Nero, Rebecca Evans as Poppea (one of Handel's sex-kitten roles) plus Stephen Wallace and Lawrence Zazzo.

Mary Plazas returns in a revival of Stephen Pimlott's 1993 La Boheme. A more unconventional choice is Philip Glass's Satyagraha directed by first time opera director Phelim McDermott (founders of the theatre company Improbable, responsible for Shock Headed Peter). There is also a new production of Death in Venice directed by Deborah Warner, conducted by Kwame Ryan and with Ian Bostridge in the main role. This is going to be one of the hot tickets of the season, I just hope Bostridge has the stamina to actually do the performances.

Finally a revival of La Clemenza di Tito with Alice Coote making her role debut as Sesto. Emma Bell and Paul Nilon return to the production and its being conducted by ENO's new musical director Edward Gardner.

The company have already announce that they are dropping Sean Doran's designation of Britten as house composer, but have promised more Britten operas. It remains to be seen whether they will extend their committment to English opera. This season includes G&S and Handel but to make a true committment we need a further foray into more distant waters. With all the push to renew core repertoire, I have a horrible feeling that any expectations of opera by Delius, Rutland Boughton or Ethel Smyth are going to be disappointed.

The full season preview is on the ENO site here.

Latin Curiosity

The Journal of the Prayer Book Society has just arrived through my letter box. They are a group devoted to the use of the traditional Book of Common Prayer in Anglican Church services, so there is an ad for my Oxford Cranmer concert in this edition of the journal. Also in the journal is an article about the use of the Book of Common Prayer in Oxford and Cambridge colleges, which includes a fascinating piece of trivia.

The founders of the Church of England were insistent that services be conducted in English so that the congregation could fully comprehend what was going on. But it was assumed that congregations in the centres of learning, Cambridge, Oxford, Eton and Winchester, would all know enough Latin to follow a church service in that language. So during the reign of Elizabeth 1st, services in Latin were allowed in these places. A Latin version of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer was produced in 1670 and it is still allowed to be used in Cambridge, Oxford, Eton and Winchester. At the University Church, Oxford on the Thursday before the start of term, there is always a service using the Latin Book of Common Prayer from 1670. It sounds fascinating.

Preparations

Last night we had the last rehearsal in London for the Oxford Cranmer memorial concert on Saturday. Logistics meant that I had to rehearse some of my own pieces, which was a great novelty. I have not conducted much recently, and on reflection I think I still prefer sitting listening to someone else shaping my music. I have never really had a strong urge to go out and conduct/perform my pieces, I much prefer the role of arranging/fixing performances.

Tomorrow, the baritone soloist for the Salomon concert on Thursday flies in and we start rehearsals with him.

The dining room table at home is starting to acquire a series of piles of paper; music to take, lists of things to remember, instructions from the on-line box offices we're using (TicketsOxford in Oxford and TicketWeb in London). There are still some last minute details to sort out and the vexed question of locating a set of stands for the singers to use. Not to mention the rather nail-biting issue of watching the progress of ticket sales on-line!

Irreverent thoughts

The disc I'm reviewing at the moment includes a performance of Gorecki's lovely motet Totus Tuus. I performed in last year with London Concord Singers and its a piece that calls for discipline and control. But whilst rehearsing the endlessly repeated Maria, Maria, I had the irreverent desire to do an arrangement of it which, at the most unsuitable moments, broke into snatches of Maria from West Side Story and How do you solve a problem like Maria? from The Sound of Music. Impossible of course, you'd never solve the copyright issues, but somehow each time I hear Totus Tuus now, I hear these other songs bouncing away in the background.

Review of Attila

My review of Saturday's Attila, performed by the Chelsea Opera Group is now on-line here, at Music and Vision.

Thais (again)

Massenet's opera Thais seems to be rather in the air at the moment; Grange Park Opera are doing it in June (yes, we're going). Now the Chatelet Theatre in Paris have sent out details of their 2006/2007 season and it includes a series of performances of the opera, with Renee Fleming in the title role and Gerald Finley in the rather intractable role of Athanael (he has to spend rather a lot of time being good, which is always rather difficult in opera and can end up coming over as unsufferably priggish).

Now I've just been reading obituaries for the soprano Anna Moffo who, in my mind, is associated with the opera. This is because in the late '70s when we saw performances of Thais at the Royal Northern College of music, the only available recording had Moffo in the title role. It wasn't ideal (she sang the part using a rather annoying sexy vibrato). But then when Beverley Sills recorded the role, one critic commented that Sills sounded like a barmaid!

Recent CD Reviews

Two more reviews on MusicWeb-International.

My review of Portsmouth Cathedral's recording of music from Nelson's funeral is here

Not a disc to be dipped into, but listened to carefully it will transport you to
an earlier era. ...

And my review of songs by English Women composers is here

Will appeal to many simply by the composers represented and that
song-cycle by Ivor Gurney. Wonderfully communicative performances but
listen first to see how you feel about Colwell’s voice. ...

Yesterday was rather schizophrenic as I was simultaneously working on arrangements for 3 different concerts. For next Saturday's Cranmer concert, in Oxford, this involved making lists and printing the programmes. We've had one rehearsal for this and there's another one next week, so things are progressing nicely. For the orchestral concert, at St. James's Piccadilly on March 23rd, I have been finding Studio space for the baritone soloist, David Greiner, to rehearse. He's flying in on Friday, having spent the week rehearsing an operatic triple bill in Germany.

Then at the same time, I'm finalising the music for the concert at the Chelsea Festival in June, so the dining table is currently covered with the necessary scores so that I can get a set to Paul Ayres, the conductor. Of course, with my own pieces, especially the new one, I keep tinkering with them and must come to a cut off point and decide that no more work can be done before the concert.

One feature of the concert, which is themed on music dedicated to the virgin mary, is a sequence which I hope will alternate plainchant and organ music based on chant; I've currently got some organ volumes out of the Library, some lovely 17th century organ Magnificats by Titelouze; all I need now are the plainchant magnificats and tracking those down seems to be rather a trial.

Last night we went see Chelsea Opera Group at the Cadogan Hall in Chelsea, the first time we've been to the hall since the opening celebrations. It is a fine venue, though the forces needed for Verdi's Attila stretched the platform to its limits. As ever with concert halls, the anciliary spaces are not always ideal; the access to the stairs leading up to the auditorium are a bit cramped when the hall is full, as are the toilets. These are areas it is difficult to get right, after all the Coliseum rebuild has left it with brand new Gents toilets which are larger than the old ones but are remarkably awkwardly designed with a built in bottle neck.

My review of the opera performance will appear in Music and Vision in due course.

Recent CD Review

My review of Elisabeth Speiser's Carissimi disc (including the Mary Stuart Lament) is here on MusicWeb-International.

Much to admire ... wonderfully vivid. If you can live with Speiser’s vibrato
then I can recommend the disc. ...

I heard today that my song, The Sleep was premiered on Saturday 4th March. David Robertson organised and evening at the King's School in Worcester which explored the life of the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning in words and music. My song sets Barrett Browning's poem of that name.

It was written when I was having one of my periodic trawls of out-of-copyright poets; this was the only poem of Barrett Browning's that appealed to me, I'm afraid to say. The remainder were either too famous or a little too Victorian. The song was written as a present for a singer with whom I was working in 2001.

Last night we had the first rehearsal for the Cranmer concert on March 18th; the first run through of the music with the choir and conductor Paul Brough. It was the first time I'd worked with Paul so it was all very exciting.

Opera Review - Sir John in Love

My review of Sir John in Love is now online at Music and Vision, here.

First Sunday in Lent today, so we stop using the organ at church and change from plainchant Credo III to plainchant Credo I. I particularly love Credo I, it dates from the 11th century whereas Credo III is 17th century.

Last night's Sir John in Love at the Coliseum was wonderfully entertaining and a review will appear in due course. Mistress Page was played by Marie McLaughlin who I remember first singing Musetta (in La Boheme) in Scottish Opera in the late 70's .

Xenakis

The Ancient Monuments Society Newsletter has just arrived; not the most obvious of music-related things. But one of the things they note is the arrival of a new biography of Xenakis, but Nouritza Matossian(from www.centralbooks.co.uk). Xenakis trained as an engineer and worked with Le Courbusier; the mathematics he used on Le Corbusier's Le Tourette fed into Xenakis's first orchestral work Metastaseis. It would be rather fun to try and link up performances of Xenakis's music with Le Corbusier buildings. A fascinatingly different take on gesamkunstwerk.

I'm continuing to make progress with my series of motets, Tempus per Annum; the motets for Easter Sunday and the Sunday after Easter came off the press with remarkable ease. Surprisingly they've both turned out rather contemplative rather then shouting with joy, which is rather fun. The current motet, for the 2nd Sunday after Easter is another Jubilate Deo ominis terra, for the English version I'm ringing the changes and using the text Shout with joy to God, a little happy-clappy perhaps but it makes a change.

The Psalm in the middle is rather curious, I still don't quite know what to make of the text Say unto God, How terrible are thy works, O Lord! in the multitude of thy strength thy enemies shall lie to thee. . There's a lovely irony about the phrase, 'Say unto God, How terrible are thy works', because terrible, like awful, has rather changed its meaning in current parlance; so nowadays the phrase makes you think of Kevin McCloud on Grand Designs excoriating the shoddy work of a builder. But as for 'in the multitude of thy strength thy enemies shall lie to thee.', why do we (or God for that matter) need to worry about God's enemies lying to him. Its moments like that that I wish my Latin were better (but as the Latin is a translation anyway we're not much closer, perhaps I should learn Hebrew).

Recent CD Review

My review of the Oxford Camerata's disc of choral music by Gombert is here on MusicWeb.

A fine programme, beautifully performed and I hope that it enables us to
hear much more of the music of this underrated composer....

MusicWebLog

I keep a separate WebLog of the discs I review and it is published from time to time on MusicWeb International, the latest version is here. So if you've every wondered what I think about when reviewing....

Watch my Lips

We finally caught up last night with Stephen Poliakoff's latest offering on BBC1 Gideon's Daughter. Nothing much of note musically except for one scene. Gideon (Bill Nighy) and Stella (Miranda Richardson) are watching a rehearsal of a choir in an otherwise empty church. The choristers are all very ordinary and chatter amongst themselves, eat food messily etc. and then they start singing, gloriously. In fact they start somewhere in the middle of Tallis's Spem in Alium. I think that Poliakoff's point is something about the transforming nature of music, but the point was blunted (if not wasted) because the choristers hardly looked as if they were singing at all and certainly were not working hard enough to produce sounds as ravishing as came out of the speakers of our TV.

This is a point that directors frequently neglect; singing is hard work and if an actor is to look successful miming then they must be working hard. Glenn Close took singing lessons before recording her film in which she played an opera singer; I've not seen it so I can't comment about how successful she was. In an Inspector Morse episode, Frances Barber played an opera singer and made a complete hash of trying to pretend she was singing an aria (from Tosca I think). Whereas in the TV adaption of one of Jilly Cooper's novels, they employed Rosalind Plowright to play an opera singer with spectacularly successful results (the series also had Alison Moyet playing a pop diva).

I know this seems a small point, but each time I see someone on Film or TV purportedly singing, but actually completely failing, I get annoyed; given the amounts of money these things cost, surely they can get a little thing like singing right.

Recent CD Review

My review of Dennis O'Neill's recital of Verdi songs is here on MusicWeb International.

The Ring again

Thoughts of spending an entire day listening to the Ring on the radio started me thinking about my ideal way to hear the Ring in the opera house. The last few times that I've heard a complete cycle (the most recent a few years ago at the Hungarian State Opera in Budapest) its been spread over a week and each opera is scheduled to finish at 10.30/11.00 pm, with the later ones starting at around 4.30pm/5.30pm/ Now that's all well and good, but I'd like something a little more relaxed. How about doing the operas split over the whole day, starting late morning with generously long intervals, with the whole thing over by mid to late evening so you could follow it with a decent dinner! I know it makes me sound old, but I'd like to enjoy the Ring in relaxed comfort and not squashed hugger-mugger into the operatic timetable. This is something a festival could do, though I'm not aware of anyone currently trying to present the Ring this way. And another thing, could we please have a short interval after the Prologue to Götterdämmerung, I can't be the only one for whom the heavenly length of the Prologue and Act 1 combined is just a little too much for my bladder, my knees and my concentration.

Ring in a Day

Do BBC Radio 3 is to play the whole of Wagner's Ring in a single day (reported here on the BBC Website). They are going to devote their Easter Monday schedule to broadcasting Daniel Barenboim's Bayreuth recording made in the 1990's. It will be a remarkable challenge, to listen to the whole of the Ring at once sitting, but it makes a great deal of sense of the medium of Radio. We lack the stamina to listen to the entire Ring in the theatre in one day (to say nothing of the stamina that would be required from the musicians), but listening at home we stand something of a chance. And the ability to hear the whole music drama build continuously is not to be sneezed at.

The recording being used is the one that I reviewed for Music and Vision and it stood up rather well to being listened to continuously by me on my headphones. Besides Barenboim's wonderful way with the Bayreuth Orchestra it includes a remarkable collection of Anglophone singers; John Tomlinson, Graham Clark (in 2 roles), Linda Finnie, Anne Evans. My review is here.

Recent CD Reviews

A whole clutch of reviews to report. An interesting selection of Dunstable's music from Tonus Pelegrinus here,
a CD of Clytus Gottwald's stunning choral arrangements here and a rather disappointing disc of music by Jack Gottlieb from the Milken Archive here. All on Music-Web International.

Tickets, Tickets, Tickets

Yet more tickets have arrived (my credit card will be groaning). We're going to the 35 degrees East performance; its part of the season to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the Royal Ballet. This performance celebrates Dame Ninette de Valois' links with ballet in Turkey. She was involved in the founding of the Turkish State Ballet and its associated school. It should be fascinating to see their new work.

We've also got our latest clutch of ENO tickets. There's the new production of Makropoulos Case with Cheryl Barker (a production which has all the hall-marks of being recorded for Chandos's Opera in English series); a delectable revival of Ariodante with Alice Coote (someone whose career we've followed with fascination ever since seeing her in her early days in Radamisto at Opera North); Nixon in China, which we were cheated of when the re-opening of the Coliseum was delayed; and Mark Morris's staging of Purcell's King Arthur, a curiosity that we could not miss.

Concert progress

Well our Cranmer Concert is in the March edition of the BBC Music Magazine. It took some finding, as the concert is not included in the Events listings at the back of the mag. (neither of our March concerts is listed), but early on in Magazine they have a This week in numbers column and of course the concert celebrates the 450th anniversary of Cranmer's execution, so it fits.

Its been a week for organising details for both March concerts. What with sourcing music for the Salomon Orchestra (they're playing Haydn and Elgar in addition to my pieces) and digging out the choir copies we used for the July 2005 Cranmer concert. There have also been rehearsal details to sort out; I'm sure that with 2 concerts within a week, there is something that I've missed but I hope not.

For the Cranmer concert in Oxford on March 18th, I'm having posters and leaflets distributed by a firm there who specialise in that sort of thing. For the Salomon concert at St. James's Piccadilly on March 23rd I'm trying a different tack. I'm distributing leaflets to the venue and important places like Westminster Music library but in addition I'm having someone do some email and fax marketing. They use one of these lists that people sign up for, so I'm hoping we'll be preaching to the converted. We'll see.

I've also started to sort out the music for the FifteenB concert at the Chelsea Festival. At the moment the concert seems miles away but it will soon be time to send the music to Paul Ayres, the conductor for marking up before sending it out. It's alarming the way things creep up on you, one minute a concert's 6 months away and the next deadlines are closing in and you're scrabbling to get things organised. I've now got to set-to and transpose the Byrd Regina Coeli motet down a tone so that we can do it with the whole choir (currently its for SAT, but down a tone we think we can manage to split the whole choir and to it S+A1/A2+T1/T2+B).

Review of Macbeth

My review of Macbeth at Covent Garden is on-line at Mvdaily.com here.

Also in this month's Opera magazine, a review of San Francisco Opera's new Norma, using a production borrowed from the Canadian Opera Company. The review refers to Druid's falling to the floor during Casta Diva and Oroveso's warriors, in semi-darkness, painting each other's buttocks during the Guerra chorus. Now the latter I would just love to have seen.

Regarding the amazing falling Druids, its not as stupid as it might seem. In his production for Scottish Opera with Jane Eaglen, Ian Judge had the chorus falling down flat during Casta Diva, the result was effective in that it gave Judge a credible way of highlighting Eaglen, who is not the tallest of people. Incidentally, having a large Norma at least gives credibility to her having had 2 babies without detection. Over-weight women often can be pregnant without detection.

The last Covent Garden Norma was a semi-concert performance, but the last full production included some wonderfully kinky leather costumes for Oroveso's warriors with lots and lots of bare flesh showing through the cut outs. Very entertaining indeed!

RVW's Operas

In the latest issue of Opera that Michael Kennedy in his article about Vaughan Williams's Sir John in Love (soon to be given a new production by Ian Judge at the Coliseum) looks forward to the 50th anniversary of RVW's death in the hope that his other operas might be performed. I had 2 reactions to this, the first was surprise at it only being 50 years since RVW died; musical life is so radically different to what it was in his lifetime it is difficult not to imagine far more time has passed.

Regarding RVW's other operas, I'm not going to hold my breath. I have still not seen a professional production of Riders to the Sea and have never seen Hugh the Drover. I'm not sure about the latter, it has some lovely music but I have a horrifying feeling that it will seem rather dated in that curious English way. We happily put up with opera companies dredging up items from the fringes of consciousness and we don't get too worked up that the libretto is rather lacking. But perform a rarely done opera with an English libretto and everyone gets highly critical.

We desperately need someone to bring Riders to the Sea back into regular performance. It is RVW's undisputed masterpiece, but at a bare 45 minutes long it is rather difficult to programme especially it is rather dark in subject matter (it sets a Synge play about a family in the West of Ireland where the men tend to work on the sea and die there. RVW was working on another Synge opera when he died (based on The Tinker's Wedding, I think). If he'd finished it, it would have made an ideal pairing. As it is we're casting around for a balance programme.

The other operas are less likely to appear. The Pilgrims Progress requires a large cast and resources. It was given a fine semi-staged production at the Barbican when the Royal Opera House was in exile, so I can't see there being a stampede to stage it. It has also been troubled by accusations of lack of drama and being an oratorio in disguise. But having seen it twice (once in the ROH staging and once in a tremendous full staging by the Royal Northern College of Music) I can't agree and would love to see it again.

Over the Poisoned Kiss we'll draw a veil and solace ourselves with Richard Hickox's disc of highlights which hides the work's terrible libretto. (Not just English embarassing, but really awful).

Macbeth and the missing version

Saturday's performance of Macbeth at Covent Garden was superb except for one small point; we heard the ordinary 1865 version. Quite a disappointment but mitigated by the superb quality of the cast. A full review will appear in time.

Rather interestingly, even though opera companies insist on adhering to Verdi's final, 1865, wishes they usually miss out the 1865 ballet music for the Witches (as do Covent Garden). So its a case of adhering to the composers final thoughts, except when it is inconvenient to our preconceptions.

Opera Tickets

Yesterday was one of those days when all our advanced bookings seemed to arrive. Our tickets for the next batch of the Royal Opera House season include a revival of their Duke Bluebeard and Erwartung double bill. We've not seen it before so we're going along, just in case....

Also at the ROH, we're going to see the new production of Sleeping Beauty which is going to use Oliver Messel's designs for the production of the ballet which re-opened the Opera House after the war. This production is iconic in the history of the Royal Ballet but is also iconic in my own history as my mother saw the production with Moira Shearer in the early 1950's and it had a profound effect on her. She never failed to enjoy recounting her delight both at the dancing and at the spectacular staging. Her stories helped inculcate my interest in ballet. So I will be fascinated to see a recreation of the production, but such returns to memory lane rarely work.

Also in the post, tickets to Grange Park Opera. Wasfi Kani's company never fails to offer an interesting mix of the familiar and unfamiliar. This year the unfamiliar is Massenet's Thais, an opera that I saw as a student in Manchester in a lovely production at the Royal Northern College of Music in 1977. Both the staging and the singing had a profound effect on me and help fuel my love of opera. Of the singers in that production the Thais was outstanding but I am not aware of ever hearing her again. The Nicias was a talented young tenor called Robin Leggate whose career has proved rather more enduring.

Since then I've come across the opera on record, but missed the ENO concert performance. So I'm looking forward to the performance immensely. The title role is being sung by Anne-Sophie Duprels who was Teresa in Benvenuto Cellin in Strasbourg recently.

Also on the Grange Park agenda is a revival of their 1950's L'Elisir d'Amore. Nemorino is Colin Lee who has done some rather good things at ENO recently. We are also going to the recital being given by Bruce Ford; a singer who I've heard in opera but never in recital.

Macbeth at the Royal Opera House

We're off to Macbeth at the Royal Opera House tomorrow. Rather excitingly they're doing the first version of the opera. This was the version that I first got to know, thank's to a BBC broadcast from the Proms (now on Opera Rara) which we taped (mainly because Lady Macbeth was played by Rita Hunter, a great heroine of mine). I can still remember the thrill of hearing Hunter's voice resounding round the Royal Albert Hall, remarkably agile in the fioriture and undoubtedly thrilling. This earlier version has the advantage that it finishes with Macbeth's death (a wonderful aria which is often grafted onto the later version) and omits the rather trivial chorus that Verdi wrote to finish the later incarnation of the opera.

I see that the Met. has announced it's forthcoming seasons at a press conference (reported here in the Gramophone). In fact it was the first time in 9 years that they've done this sort of press conference. And after all the worrying over what effect Peter Gelb's taking of the help of the old lady of the Lincoln Center would have, the new seasons sound rather promising.

Granted, there are a clutch of cross genre collaborations but the intention seems to be to try and develop new musical theatre of all varieties. Their heart seems to be in the right place, lets hope the results aren't too cringe-making.

On the more regular opera scene, there are new productions of Strauss's Aegytische Helena which might be worth crossing the Atlantic for; plus Tan Dun's new opera, The First Emperor. Further ahead there is a new Attila and From the House of the Dead. Not earthshattering but interesting nonetheless.

Every new opera-house director seems to want to make their mark by scheduling the Ring. Gelb seems to be no different. He is planning a new Ring in 2010-2011 directed by Robert LePage, inspired by Viking myths and Icelandic landscapes. Might be interesting, but non-operatic directors do have a tendency to fall by the wayside when it comes to the Ring. Lets see what happens here.

Gelb seems to be continuing the Met's recent forays into contemporary opera. Besides the Tan Dun, they are reviving John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles. This latter I saw some years ago and it seemed rather a sprawling mess, redeemed only by Marilyn Horne's superb turn as a houri! Adams's Dr. Atomic is coming as is a new opera from Osvaldo Golijov, who seems to be turning into the current flavour of the month.

I can't say that there is anything in this list which has me desperate to return to New York, but you never know.

The Grumlins are coming

Well, having managed to miss the Month off a whole pile of concert leaflets, you think I'd learn! But we were visiting friends on Saturday and I learned that I'd managed to introduce a spelling mistake into the leaflets for the Salomon Orchestra concert on March 23rd. Instead of In the Barbarian's Camp it had come out as In the Barbican's Camp, the spellchecker being helpful again. Luckily its not disastrous and I've not yet printed the hundreds of leaflets for distribution in London, thank goodness!

To sing joyfulLY or to sing JOYfully

I've been working on the English version of the 11th motet in my Lent and Passiontide sequence from Tempus Per Annum an ongoing collection of motets for the whole church's year. This is the motet for the Easter Saturday evening mass; its not actually an introit as the mass is structured slightly differently but instead I'm setting an antiphon text, Jubilate deo with an English version of sing joyfully to God all ye Lands. This works perfectly in the opening phrase (which was written to fit the English), but later on in the motet I've been havering over exactly how to set the word joyfully. Having a long note on the final syllable, even an unstressed on, seems to be clumsy some-how. So just before finishing this morning I went through the motet and changed all the phrases where I had stretched sing joyfully out and uses sing joyfully to God instead. I'll probably haver some more and change things again.

Domus - part 2

I did some more searching, and the title of Luc arbogast's disc Fjall d'Yr Vinur produced some results, there is a review here on the www.musique-chroniques.ch site.

According to Luc Arbogast's posting on this page, the instrument that he most commonly plays is a bouzouki, but an Irish rather than Greek model (if I read his French correctly). And evidently they have another disc in the offing - more power to their elbow.

Domus - Luc Arbogast

We've been listening to the disc Domus from Luc Arbogast, the singer/lutenist who we came across busking in Strasbourg. Having read the CD's booklet, I must confess that I am not much the wiser; the song texts are printed but I'm not sure what language it is! Though composition is credited to Luc Arbogast they sound very like troubadour songs. But there are no explanations of the inspiration behind the songs; a shame, as I'd love to know more.

Live, he sang to his own accompaniment but on the disc Melusine Arbogast contributes flute and voice; Luc plays a variety of lute/guitar like instruments and sings. His voice is a high counter-tenor (generally F above middle C to the F an octave above that), a voice type which is very tricky to record. The disc manages very well, the results are highly affecting and do reflect what Luc sounded like live, but there are hints of acidity which weren't there live - almost certainly the result of a tricky recording process. Still, the resulting songs are highly attractive and make superb late night listening. I can highly recommend the disc but have no idea where you'd get it from, so I quote the contact details from the disc.

DOMUS: 06 21 24 06 88

domus.atelier@laposte.net

I've just spent a busy 2 days doing all sorts of odds and ends related to my 2 March concerts. We now have a piano rehearsal booked so I was just checking the vocal score of my Elegy for Baritone and piano when I discovered a rather fun mistake, I'd entered part of the 2nd clarinet part into the score with transposing switched on, so the part was a tone out, consistently a 7th above the voice - a rather interesting effect that I think we can do without. So anyway, a tidied up version is off to the pianist for the rehearsal. David Greiner, the singer, is performing in Milhaud triple bill in Munster so has to try and fit his Munster and London schedules together, not an easy task.

I was in Oxford on Thursday delivering leaflets for the Cranmer concert, including a large batch for distribution (reprinted after correcting the date). I've also done most of my publicity mailing as well, so the living room is looking a lot tidier.

I have only just noticed that I have passed the 200 mark in my posts to this blog (this is post number 202) and the first anniversary is not far off.

I'm still busy doing the publicity for my 2 March concerts (18th in Oxford and 23rd in London). Tomorrow I'm delivering the posters and leaflets for distribution in Oxford. I happened to slip one of them into some music that I was sending out and luckily the recipient had sharper eyes than we do. I'd managed to omit the month from the leaflet and unfortunately both March 18th and February 18th are Saturdays. This means that I've had to pay to have the flyers re-done and will have to scrap around 1700. Just shows you that you never can be too careful in your proof-reading.

Salomon Orchestra concert

Last night we went to St. John's Smith Square to hear the Salomon Orchestra, conducted by Tom Seligman. The programme consisted of Bartok's Two Pictures, Mahler's Rückert Lieder and Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances. The orchestra were on their usual superb form and the conclusion to the Rachmaninov was shattering. The soloist in the Mahler was Damian Thantrey, who sang the title role in the premiere of my opera Garrett. He was brilliant in the Mahler songs and my two favourites, Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommon and Um Mitternacht were stunning. The interesting point was how little I knew the other 3 songs in the cycle.

This element of familiarity and unfamiliarity applied to the Rachmaninov as well as I found that I knew the first 2 movements quite well, but seemed to have forgotten the third; so the concert gave me a good opportunity to get re-acquainted.

They had a near capacity audience who were very enthusiastic. In case you don't know, the orchestra's next gig is on March 23rd when they are doing a concert at St. James's Church, Piccadilly in which Adrian Brown conducts them in a programme which includes 2 of my pieces.

Recent CD Review

My review of Akathistos Fragments, a fascinating re-working of traditional Byzantine chant is here on MusicWeb.

Anyone who loves chant should be interested in this disc, though it should come with a health warning for purists.

More Rodelinda

Nico comments on my Rodelinda review that I omitted to say anything about the orchestra, for which I must apologise. I suppose that my comments wonderfully crisp, rhythmic and sprightly apply as much to the orchestra as to the conductor. For the reviewer there is always that danger to concentrate on one aspect of a performance (in my case the singers) and omit to properly comment on the rest, unless something goes wrong; this was a trap that I fell into in the review. Next time I'll try to be more balanced.

Recent CD Review

My review of the Monks of Beuron Abbey singing the plainchant Requiem mass is here, on MusicWeb. Besides buying discs, Pristine Audio also allow you to buy and download mp3 files, very neat.

I can highly recommend this atmospheric disc and Pristine Audio’s
distinctive delivery mechanism means that it comes at a highly affordable
price.

Recent CD Review

My review of the new Mozart Requiem on Naxos is here on Music Web.

Opera Review - Rodelinda

I imagine Alan Curtis and Il Complesso Barocco’s performance of Handel’s Rodelinda at the Barbican on Wednesday was planned partly as a celebration/promotion of their new recording of the opera, though as it turns out 3 of the planned cast did not sing. So instead of Simone Kermes (a Curtis regular) we had Emma Bell and Grimoaldo was played by Filippo Adamo, a very last minute replacement – his name wasn’t even in the printed programme.

Curtis is another American harpsichordist who works extensively in Europe. Whereas with William Christie I always get the feeling that even in Handel, the notes inegals of the French Baroque are never far away, Curtis’s Handel has a more traditional feel to it; wonderfully crisp, rhythmic and sprightly, even if there was the odd hint of untidiness in the orchestra.

The advantage of the cast we actually heard was that 4 of the 6 singers were native Italian speakers. (Sonia Prina as Bertarido, Filippo Adami as Grimoaldo, Romina Basso as Eduige and Vito Priante as Garibaldo) This had two effects, firstly the recitatives were particularly vivid and cantered along in a very lively manner without ever seeming gabbled. They also felt as if they really meant something, you could almost follow the opera without ever looking at the surtitles. The second advantage was in the sheer vividness of the performances. There was no hint of Northern coolness which can often beset concert performances. All the singers, including the 2 English ones (Hilary Summers as Unolfo and Emma Bell as Rodelinda), emoted in a very dramatic fashion and reacted to each other. Though a concert performance, with the singers using scores, this was no static spectacle, all projected the drama in a very credible fashion. You hardly missed a stage presentation, especially one like Glyndebourne’s which often seems to get in the way of the drama.

Emma Bell was superb in the title role; her voice has developed more richness and depth but she has preserved her virtuosity in Handel’s fioriture and she used the music in a superbly expressive way. Rodelinda is a role which has accompanied Bell since her sensational debut at Glyndebourne whilst still at college. You sometimes wonder whether she might be getting bored with it, but on this showing she certainly isn’t. Being so close to the singers we were able to appreciate that she has a very nice line in sneering.

But Bell is quite a known quantity; as her husband Sonia Prina was a revelation. A lively and dramatic singer, it was almost as if she couldn’t keep still whilst singing. I am used to the slightly cool interpretation of Bertarido in Glyndebourne’s production, developed with the counter-tenor Andreas Scholl in mind; Prina’s Bertarido was a complete contrast, her delivery more lively and vivid, she projected Bertarido’s emotions on a larger scale, this was a man who lived on the edge of his nerves. She and Bell developed a credible and touching relationship.

As Bertarido’s sister Eduige, Romina Basso was no less vivid and she managed to make the character’s twists and turns believable; her was a passionate woman who acted before she thought. Though both Prina and Basso have strong, rich mezzo/alto voices, they were remarkably differentiated. One of the nice things about the casting (with 3 low female voices) was the way that each woman had a rich voice but all 3 voices were strikingly different. The third of the trio was Hilary Summers as Unolfo. Unolfo’s arias can often seem superfluous to the drama, but in Summer’s hands they were as gripping as the rest of the opera.

With such a strong female cast, the 2 men had their work cut out. Vito Priante in the role of the evil Garibaldo, managed to combine the necessary Handelian virtuosity with a nice line in sneering and sheer evil. No mean feat indeed. As his weak cohort Grimoaldo, Filippo Adami created a believably weak character and projected the drama well. I will not comment on his musical performance as he was such a last minute replacement. He is a very young tenor (born 1980) so I suspect he will not be singing Handel for long as his voice develops.

The performance included a final duet for Rodelinda and Bertarido which has been less often done. Curtis’s direction was perhaps a little stiff at times, but the performances were so entrancing that it hardly mattered.

Coming to a CD player near you

On Wednesday we went to see Alan Curtis and Il Complesso Barocco performing Handel's Rodelina (a review of which I plan to post soon). In the Barbican shop they were selling the group's recent recording of the opera, so I realised that the concert was not a one-off event but the concert of the recording. This sort of tie-in is inevitable I suppose and we must be thankful that such linkages at least enable us to hear some fine performances. And no, though I considered it I did not buy the recording, partly because cast on the disc was substantially different to that at the concert. In particular, at the Barbican we heard the divine Emma Bell whereas on the recording it was Simone Kermes who had dropped out of the concert.

Besides concerts given to promote recordings, there are other areas where tie-ins occur. Sometimes performances are set up with a view to doing a live recording (Opera Rara do this rather creatively) and then some performances happen simply so that the performers can perform the work prior to recording. At other times the linkage is less obvious until the recording appears. A number of recent ENO performances (a revival of Verdi's Ernani, the new Madame Butterfly) have had the finger print of the Chandos Opera in English in the casting and the conductor so it came as no surprise when it was confirmed that recordings would indeed be made. As long as this is transparent, then this is enterprising; the recent revival of Lulu at the Coliseum gave rise to a recording for Chandos. But if it means that the opera company has to compromise on cast and conductor, then I'm not so sure.

Sometimes you go to a performance and enjoy it so much that you hope that it pressages a recording. A year or so ago we heard the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment doing the Verdi Requiem with Christine Brewer as the soprano solo. A fabulous performance I kept hoping a recording was in the offing; sadly it wasn't.

For New Year's eve 2004 we went to the Wigmore Hall to hear Robert King and the King's Consort doing Rossini's Petite Messe Solonnelle with just 8 singers; a performance far closer to Rossini's intentions than the larger scale choral performances that are common. One of the singers in this lovely performance was Hilary Summers. She was Unolfo in Rodelinda at Wednesday's Barbican performance and her biography in the programme referred to the King's Consort's forthcoming recording of the Rossini; so at least this time I have a recording to look forward to besides memories of that New Year's eve concert. I can't wait!

Recent CD Review

My review of Water Settings, a disc of new percussion music played by the Australian percussion duo Match is here on MusicWeb.

A percussion duo to watch. They display admirable virtuosity. The
selected works say much of their musicianship ... they do not try to
dazzle us just for virtuosity's sake

Review of Benvenuto Cellini

My review of Benvenuto Cellini is now on-line here, at Music and Vision. The article includes 5 handsome photos from the production.