Alternative views of Carmen - tales of cross dressing

Having seen a relatively small scale Carmen on Sunday has set me thinking. I began wonder whether the modern generation of counter-tenors could take on the role. There would be no point in having Carmen played by a man in drag in a traditional production. But what if Carmen became one of the transvestite hookers who worked the Bois de Boulogne in Paris (perhaps they still do). I think the story updating could make a lot of sense, with the smugglers being turned into a gang of thieves or perhaps drug dealers. This would give a chance for some extra tension between the man, the woman and the man/woman.

A few years ago Stephen Wallace gave us the Queen of the Fairies in Iolanthe (no, I know its not very close to Carmen) but the production seemed to make nothing of the fact that we had a man playing a woman, definitely a lost opportunity.

I have been listening to a boxed set of 6 Handel operas for a review and a few of them had roles for soprano castratos. Handel's use of this voice type was relatively rare, he tended to use altos. So that altos and mezzo-sopranos are used to playing men in the operas. But when sopranos do so, at least on record, the result is not always convincing. They still sound like women, do we need to start exploring how a soprano might sing a castrato role and at least give some indication that she is a man?

Badly behaved audiences

An interesting piece by Mark Shenton on his blog on TheStage.Com here. Its about straight theatre rather than opera, but much chimes in. I remember a story about Jon Vickers berating the audience in Act 3 of Tristan about their coughing! And a few years ago, having tret ourselves to seats in the stalls at Covent Garden for a performance of Der Rosenkavalier, someone's phone rang and they actually answered it.

We are just back from Paris where we went to see Adrian Noble's new production of Carmen at the Opera Comique, where the work was premiered in 1875 (though the present theatre dates from 1898). It was very much a British production, Adrian Noble directed, Mark Thompson designed, Sir John Eliot Gardiner conducted and they used Richard Langham Smith's new edition. Carmen was Anna Caterina Antonacci. A full review will appear in due course.

Whilst in Paris we went to the Church of St. Eugene et Ste. Cecile, near the Conservatoire, where they offer sung Tridentine Mass every Sunday morning at 11.00am. The mass is sung by the Schole Ste Cecile, and they provided beautifully sung plainchant for the propers and the ordinary along with a couple of motets. As someone who sings at Latin Mass and in the occasional Tridentine Mass, it was interesting to hear some of the plainchant using women as cantors rather than men. And the occasional use of organum and drones was lovely. The service lasted nearly two hours and was extremely full.

Recent CD Review

My review of Rameau's Anacreon is here, on MusicWeb International.

A strong and affordable place from which to start your Rameau quest ...

Gerald Finley at Wigmore Hall

To the Wigmore Hall on Monday to see Gerald Finley and Julius Drake doing a recital of English song, finishing with RVW's Songs of Travel. They opened with seven songs from Butterworth's A Shropshire Lad, followed by Finzi's Earth and Air and Rain. The Butterworth group contained songs that I knew, but I had never heard them sung as a group before. Despite the beauty of Loveliest of Trees, I still found the last 2 in the set the most moving; The Lads in their Hundreds because of its evocation of the casual losses of war and the remarkable pre-echo of the losses of WW1, and Is my team ploughing, for similar reasons plus, of course, the rather unconscious homo-erotic elements in the last verses.

Finley has one of the most beautiful baritone voices around, but his performances were never about sheer beauty. His diction was such that you didn't need the words, even sitting at the back of the hall. And he was responsive to word and mood, sometimes his performance veered towards the over dramatic but he was never fully operatic, which was right for the mood.

The Finzi cycle sets Hardy poems, all rather understated and slightly gloomy in mood. Written between the wars, these were the most sophisticated songs of the evening, particularly in the accompaniments (finely played by Julius Drake). I can't say that Hardy is my favourite poet, but Finley made a wonderful case for these songs.

The second half contained RVW's four Fredegond Shove poems and The Songs of Travel. The Shove songs were beautifully done, but the words seem slight and to verge on sentimental. Finley worked hard but I don't think that the Watermill suits the baritone voice as much as a higher one. On the other hand the Songs of Travel were superbly done. I only wish that we had such a cycle from much later in RVW's career, after all a baritone would probably not do the four last songs. He encored one of the Finzi songs, and manage to hilariously get the words wrong. Then finally did Silent Noon. Julius Drake, in a spoken intro to this, mentioned that Finley had learned most of the programme especially for the recital - though you couldn't tell. They did not seem to be recording it for a Wigmore Hall Live CD, which is a shame.

Recent CD Review

My review of the BIS boxed set of Emma Kirkby recordings is here, on MusicWeb International.
Essential listening for all lovers of vocal music ...

Edington Festival 2009

The programme for the 2009 Edington Festival has appeared in my in-tray, and though we won't be at the festival, it looks as though we will be missing some interesting items.

The more Romantic side of contemporary music is represented by Morten Lauridsen's O Nata Lux and Pierre Villette's Salve Regina. The festival commission is an anthem from Francis Jackson.

Kenneth Leighton makes a welcome appearance with his Second Service and the motet Drop, drop slow tears plus there are motets from Graham Ross, Francis Poulenc and Deodat de Severac.

Purcell, of course, features in three services, with Hear my prayer, Remember no, Lord, our offences and the Evening Service in G minor. And of the other birthday boys, Mendelssohn, is remembered with his motets Frohlocket ihr Volker and Jauchzet dem Herrn; Haydn with his motet Insanae et vanae curae. Handel is represented by his distant cousin (!) Jacob Handl.

Howells is heavily featured, including his Requiem performed as part of a Solemn Requiem Mass, with the remaining music being plainchant.

The festival runs from Sunday 23rd August to Sunday 30th August at the Priory Church in Edington, Wiltshire

The Woodward Scale rides again

My setting of Anthony Woodward's re-write of The Beaufort Scale (originally used for measuring wind speed) is being performed by London Concord Singers, conductor Malcolm Cottle, at St. Michael's Church, Chester Square, London, SW1W 9HH. Woodward's amusing text originally appeared in Country Life in 2002. The choir are performing the work alongside Aulis Sallinen's setting of the original Beaufort Scale text. Also in the concert is music by Judith Bingham, Luigi Dallapiccola, De Monte, Byrd, Lassus and Peter Philips. Further details, and on-line ticket sales, are available via oclassical.com.

Parthenogenesis

James MacMillan's Parthenogenesis has an interesting background. It came into being after MacMillan, the poet Michael Symmons Roberts and Rowan Williams (then Archbishop of Wales) worked together on a Theology through the Arts programme. This led to the creation of Parthenogenesis in 2000. It was premiered at the Corn Exchange in Cambridge that year. I am unclear as to what Rowan Williams's involvement was as he does not appear in the work's credits; the libretto is by Michael Symmons Roberts.

Boosey and Hawkes website describes Parthenogenesis as a scena for soprano, baritone, actress and chamber ensemble. In an interview on the same web-site, Macmillan says that he can imagine the work being given in concert form, in a simple stylised staging or in a more fully staged context.

For their staging at the Linbury Theatre, the Royal Opera House opted for the latter option with a full staging by Katie Mitchell, with designs by Vicki Mortimer.

In the original piece, we hear the voice of Anna (spoken by an actress) as the child-to be. The work opens with an electronic heart beat. The summary on Boosey's web site suggests that we are hearing the voice of the unborn child. This has all changed in Mitchell's staging, where Anna is now an old dying woman. We simultaneously see her dying (centre stage) whilst either side of her we see her mother and Bruno, the fallen angel, in their meeting.

Mitchell's staging is extremely realistic and detailed. Anna (Charlotte Roach) is in the last throes of ovarian cancer and tended by a nurse (Sian Clifford). Either side of her bed is the flat of her mother, Kristel (Amy Freston). As Kristel dresses for an engagement, Bruno (Stephan Loges) appears and they proceed to have their awkward, embarrassed but passionate and necessary encounter.

I have nothing but praise for the passion and realism of Mitchell's staging and the performances of the singers and actresses. Unfortunately it all seemed a little redundant, unnecessary. Parthenogenesis is not a realistic piece and much of the drama is in the music, a detailed staging seemed to add nothing. I longed for a simpler, more stylised, expressionist version.

MacMillan's music is stunning and was beautifully performed with the composer conducting the Britten Sinfonia. There was little trace of the ensemble covering the voices as had been reported in the early reviews of the piece and balance seemed idea. Roberts libretto contains some complex ideas and whilst the singers diction was admirable I would love to have been able to look at a printed libretto or even perhaps, perish the though, have some surtitles.

Both Loges and Freston completely minimised the difficulty of Macmillan's music and created moments of extreme beauty. The piece has the admirable virtue of brevity, it lasts only 50 minutes - would that more composers could be as brief. Roberts and Macmillan manage to compress a great deal into the piece.

Afterwards the audience seemed disinclined to go home and the bar of the Linbury Theatre was buzzing with people (including the composer), all hopefully discussing what they had just seen.

To Jacques Samuel Pianos last night for a lecture recital on Mussorgsky's Pictures at an exhibition. It was given by pianist Bobby Chen and artist Geraldine van Heemstra. Geraldine van Heemstra traced the history of the work and illustrated the story with reproductions of surviving Victor Hartman drawing. As remarkably few of these survive (there were some 400 in the commemorative exhibition which inspired Mussorgsky's piano piece), Geraldine van Heemstra used illustrations from other artists including some talented young ones. Finally she and Bobby Chen took the piece apart demonstrated its structure. Before Bobby Chen gave us an exciting performance of the complete work. As the recital room was quite small, this meant that the sound was very vivid and exciting.

As Pictures at an Exhibition is a work I've always known mainly from the orchestral incarnation, it was illuminating to learn more of its background and hear the original piano version.

Review of "Threepenny Opera"

My review of Saturday's performance of Brecht and Weill's Threepenny Opera, with a cast including Ian Bostridge, is here on Music and Vision.

Guirne Creith

I must confess that until I got the notice about the performance of her violin concerto on July 4th, I'd never heard of Guirne Creith. She was a composer born in 1907, the same year as Elizabeth Maconchy and Imogen Holst. Talented and moderately prolific between the wars, her career as a pianist stopped in 1952 with a bad accident to her hand. She seems to have become indifferent to the fate of her works and did not keep scores. The manuscript of the violin concerto only came to light after her death in 1996. It has been recorded on the Dutton Label and is being performed on July 4th at St. James's Church, Wilton Place, London SW1X 8SH by violinist Tamsin Waley-Cohen with the West London Sinfonia conducted by Philip Hesketh. The concert also includes music by Berlioz and Vaughan Williams.

Recent CD review

My review of Frances Bourne's The Truth about Love is here.

Stylish and enjoyable ...

Review of "Simon Boccanegra"

My review of the Chelsea Opera Group's performance of Verdi's original version of Simon Boccanegra is here.

What to programme with Beethoven's 9th Symphony!

Cambridge University Musical Society (CUMS) is performing Beethoven's 9th Symphony on Saturday 13th June, in King's College Chapel, conducted by Stephen Cleobury.

Regarding the vexed question of what you programme with the work, CUMS have commissioned a new piece The Sorceror's Mirror from Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. The commission celebrates the university's 800th anniversary. The libretto for the new work is written by Andrew Motion, the Poet Laureate and Maxwell Davies has written a piece for chorus and orchestra.

Cosi van Tutte at ENO

I must confess that I rather have a love/hate relationship with Cosi van Tutte. On a bad day, in an indifferent production, I rather find the plot annoying and a little pointless; even more so when producers try to correct the ending. But on a good day, in a production which makes you really feel the character's pain, it can be profoundly moving.

Prior to seeing the opera on Saturday at the London Coliseum, the last time we'd seen it was Glyndebourne on Tour in Norwich, when they performed the Nicholas Hynter production. This production had a lot in common with ENO's new production which was directed at Aix en Provence by Abbas Kiarostami and revived at the Coliseum by Elaine Tyler Hall. Both Kiarostami and Hytner used traditional sets and costumes, allowing the plot to proceed unencumbered by overmuch directorial baggage. But whereas Hyntner's production laid bare the pain, emotional distress and conflict within Kiarostami seems to have been content to let things just flow along.

Now, in neither case can I comment on the original production. I was not at Glyndebourne when Hyntner's production was new, we saw the Touring version as revived with a different cast by a staff producer. And the same thing happened at the London Coliseum, mainly because of Kiarostami's visa process.

I think that the prime weakness of the production at the Coliseum was in the casting. The two male lovers, Liam Bonner and Thomas Glenn, were young and promising but neither yet seems to have the ability to dig deeply into a role. They simply sang the notes nicely and went through the actions; too much of it seemed play acting rather than real life. Maybe in a smaller theatre they would have made more of an effect, the tenor particularly seem rather taxed by the size of the Coliseum.
Mezzo Fiona Murphy was a little stronger as Dorabella, but she was rather monochrome and far too equable for my taste, this Dorabella was neither headstrong nor giddy, she seemed to take everything in her stride. It was left to Susan Gritton to make the emotional effect and you got the feeling that Gritton had to do most of the work herself. Neither of her arias were technically flawless but they were both profoundly moving.

Whether you like a producers ideas or not, it is always a sign of a good production if the producer gets a strong performance from the cast. This was true of the recent ENO Peter Grimes where I did not really like David Alden's concept but cannot deny the corrosive performances he achieved with his cast. A similar thing applied to the famous Richard Jones Ring at Covent Garden where Jones's ideas rather grated, but his singers were sometimes transformed.

Nothing like that happened here and I'm afraid that part of the way through Act 2, annoyance with the plot and boredom crept in. Luckily conductor Stefan Kilingele kept things moving and, using a relatively small orchestra, gave us a fast and incisive account of the score with the ENO orchestra playing well for him. The other highlights were the performances from Stphen Page as Don Alfonso and Sophie Bevan as Despina. Page was fatally likeable and believable as Don Alfonso, rather more pleasant than in some productions, but this meant that we got a much needed blast of warmth whenever he came on stage. And Bevan came close to stealing the show. Usually I prefer older singers as Despina, but Bevan convinced me that having a young Despina was equally viable.

I rather suspect that the casting for this opera was fatally flawed by a search for youth. Both the young male lovers were slim and personable and visually the 4 lovers made a handsome group. But opera is about more than figure, a singer needs a voice and an ability to use it properly. Maybe this cast would have worked if they had had a long rehearsal period with an experienced opera producer. But this didn't happen hear.

Kiarostami is a film director so not surprisingly his production made use of film. For the opening we had a backdrop of a cafe with the inhabitants unashamedly gawping at the three men. Then for the rest of the opera we had a glorious view of the bay of Naples, filmed real time, so that we saw the boat leaving with the men going off to war, boats coming and going with the singers for the fete champetre etc. All very charming, but though the weather varied a little I would have liked darker storm clouds assembling as the mood got darker. For the finale we had a film of the orchestra (not done real time). This was a good joke, but the quality of the film was a little too fuzzy and it really said nothing about the action on stage. You could not help feeling that this was another lost opportunity and that a more experienced director might have been a little more daring.

All is not lost with the production. What it needs is for ENO to re-cast it with a strong, well balanced cast and lose their obsession with youth and beautiful bodies; then they could show us what this opera is really made of.

On Sunday we went to the Queen Elizabeth Hall for Chelsea Opera Group's concert performance of the 1857 version of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, a review of which will appear in due course.

The programme book had, on its back page, an advert for the group's 2009/10 season - Gluck's Alceste at Cadogan Hall on 28/11/2009, Verdi's La Traviata at QEH on 21/2/2010 and Rossini's Guillaume Tell at QEH on 23/5/2010. At the bottom of the advert there was a note that tickets for all these concerts were now on sale. Now this isn't COG's fault, generally booking periods are controlled by the venues. But increasingly we find ourselves booking at extremely long range in order to get the seats we want. That is what we've done here, but it rather grates having to buy tickets a year in advance. And I wonder who benefits? Do the Chelsea Opera Group get ticket proceeds early from the South Bank Centre, or does SBC hang on to our money until the concert date!

Die Rheinnixen

New Sussex Opera under conductor Nicholas Jenkins are planning to give us a serious treat in October, they are reviving Offenbach's grand opera Die Rheinnixen. They translate the title as The Rhine Fairies but I rather feel that The Rhine Nixies is far more fun, even if no-one nowadays probably knows what Nixies are!

The opera was first performed 10 years before The Tales of Hoffmann at the Vienna Opera but does not seem to have been a success and Offenbach withdrew it. A new critical edition was produced recently and the opera was given its first complete performance at Montpellier in 2002. Offenbach went on to re-use some of the material in The Tales of Hoffmann. It is Offenbach's only other Grand Opera and though the libretto is somewhat creaky, seems to be something of a revelation.

New Sussex Opera have assembled a strong cast including Kate Valentine, Anne-Marie Owens, David Curry, Quentin Hayes and Ganiel Grice. Performances are at Lewes Town Hall (21 October), Winter Gardens Eastbourne (25th October) and Cadogan Hall, London (27th October). Put the date in your diaries now!

Review of "Norma"

My review of Norma from Grange Park Opera is here, on Music and Vision.

Grange Park Opera 2010

Grange Park Opera have announced their programme for 2010. Claire Rutter (their current Norma) is returning as Tosca with Robert Poulton as Scarpia. They continue their exploration of the Russian repertoire with Prokofiev's Love of Three Oranges with Jeffery Lloyd Roberts at the Prince. And Susan Gritton is playing Countess Madeleine in Richard Strauss's Capriccio, with Roderick Williams and Andrew Kennedy as her love interest and Sara Fulgoni as Clairon. Can hardly wait!

To Grange Park Opera yesterday for the premiere of their new production of Norma, with Claire Rutter making her debut in the title role.

Norma is one of those operas which is much beloved of opera lovers, but which does not crop up that regularly on our operatic stages. Partly it is a result of the difficulties of the title role, but also the rather awkward setting (Druids, Gauls and Romans) contribute. It is nowadays difficult to convincingly present groups of Druids doing rituals on the operatic stage and even harder perhaps to persuade audiences that this is drama.

The first Norma that I ever saw was on television, from La Scala with Montserrat Caballe in the title role. My abiding memory is of Caballe, swathed in yards of blue (or was it purple) material, emoting away in what looked like a 1970's brutalist concrete multistory car-park.

Not long afterwards I saw the opera at Covent Garden in a revival of an old production. I was supposed to see Caballe but in fact saw Grace Bumbry in the title role with Josephine Veasey as Adalgisa. The production was stylised historical, but no-one seemed to be taking it very seriously and it was difficult to take as drama. It didn't help that Bumbry seemed to think that she was singing Abigaille rather than Norma.

The second time I saw the production at Covent Garden it was John Cox's new production for Margaret Price. In theory this was a decent production, but it's stylised historicism did not quite gell. Price's costumes were a mistake and obviously designed for a far slimmer personage. Completely unsatisfactory, but curiously compelling for all the wrong reasons, were the leather costumes for the male druids in the chorus, these had a bondage type theme with much flesh revealed (as I said, compelling for all the wrong reasons).

Covent Garden's third attempt was a concert performance with Nelly Miriocioiou in the title role. Some attempt at drama was made by projecting designs from a past production onto a screen at the back of the stage. But this was effectively scuppered by Nelly's decision to perform in a huge ice-cream pink frock confection.

I missed Holland Park's notable attempt on the opera, again with Nelly, which was pretty traditional in style but did not really garner critical praise.

The only production that I remember with real warmth is Ian Judge's one for Scottish Opera which had Jane Eaglen in the title role. This was a real dramatic triumph, with the young Eaglen showing wonderful metal as Norma. And Judge's staging, as I remember it, created drama and used the chorus v. effectively. One notable moment was Casta Diva where the chorus prostrate themselves in front of the priestess. This was both a credible dramatic reaction and also a neat solution as to how to give Eaglen (who is not tall) dramatic prominence on a busy stage.

Recent CD review

My review of a CD of Vivaldi's http://www.mvdaily.com/articles/2009/06/seasons.htmFour Seasons and Piazolla's Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, recorded by Lara St. John and the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra is here, on Music and Vision.

Norma at Grange Park

We're off to Grange Park Opera on Wednesday for the first night of Norma with Claire Rutter in the title role.

Bellini wrote the opera for two sopranos, Giuditta Pasta and Giulia Grisi. Grisi sang Adalgisa, but went on to sing Norma herself. Because Norma and Adalgisa sing quite a few duets, a tradition sprang up of casting Adalgisa as a mezzo-soprano, something which Grange Park is doing (the role will be sung by Sara Fulgoni). But one interesting musical feature of Claire Rutter's performance will be Casta Diva. Bellini wrote the aria in G, but seems to have transposed it down a tone to F at Pasta's request. Nowadays it is usually sung in F or even E.

We look forward to the performance with interest.

Gleanings from this month's Opera magazine

Rather later than usual, here are my gleanings from the May edition of Opera magazine.

The interview is with Christopher Purves, who is currently singing Falstaff at Glyndebourne. He comments that he finds sight-reading easy but difficult to learn music - its gratifying to learn that better singers than me have such problems. Purves still sings Bach, Purcell and Handel and comments that they are a colossal challenge and few other operatic roles approach them.

Various eminent musicians and writers were asked to name their favourite Haydn opera. I rather liked Rupert Christiansen's comment 'Haydn. I stared hard at the Editor's email requesting a paragraph about my favourite Haydn opera with disbelief. Haydn? Surely a misprint for Handel.'

There is an obituary for Christopher Raeburn, the record producer who did so many of Decca's post-war operatic recordings.

Deborah Warner's ENO production of Death in Venice popped up in Brussels with John Graham Hall doing some of the performances. So why didn't we get the chance to hear him in the role in London? And Death in Venice amazingly received its first Czech performance in January at the State Opera in Prague. Even more impressively, the title role was sung in English (good English as well evidently) by Jiri Hajek.

Massenet's Werther had received 1389 performances at the Opera Comique in Paris by the 1970's but took until 1984 to reach the Palais Garnier.

And Long Beach Opera in California gave what were only the 3rd and 4th performances of The Cunning Little Vixen in Southern California.

Handel's Partenope seems to be popping up all over, probably because it is one of his few lighter operas. Pierre Audi has just done it in Vienna, at the Theater an der Wien. But he has fudged the ending and Rosmira goes off with Emilio rather than Arsace. Hmmm.

Philippe Boesmann's new opera, Yvonne, princesse de Bourgogne, has just appeared in Paris. Evidently it has tunes, a story, a structure that works etc. So many new operas don't, lets hope that it travels.

The Met in New York celebrated its 125th birthday with a gala which included 26 different operatic excerpts, many presented in stagings evoking the original stagings. Juan Diego Florez performed La donna e mobile wearing a copy of the costume Caruso wore (needless to say Florez's costume was far smaller than Caruso's). And Natalie Dessay gave a taster for her complete Violetta in Santa Fe this summer (which we'll be seeing I'm delighted to say).

The Met have also unveiled a new production of La Sonnambula, its first new production of the opera for 36 years amazingly.

Over in the Lincoln Centre, the revamped Alice Tully Hall was the site of a rare revival of Kurt Weill's The Firebrand of Florence.

In Andrew Clark's review of Scottish Opera's latest Five:15 offering, he comments that too often 'composers and libettists are encouraged to behave like opera virgins; they think their job is to reinvent the wheel'. Quite so! I wish more people thought like that in opera admin, and we might get a few more well crafted new operas. It seems that Five:15 did offer this, Clark described Stuart MacRae's Remembrance Day as a full fledged operatic miniature; heartening given that MacRae's first opera, The Assassin Tree was disappointing. His librettist in the new piece is the novelist Louise Welch (someone whose novels I love) and she seems to have come up with a good economical text. Hurrah. Lets hope they do more.

The DVD of the 1983 performance of Strauss's Intermezzo from Glyndebourne has turned up. I remember being there at one of the performances and finding the opera enchanting, with Felicity Lott superb as Pauline.

From the We hear that... column.

Emma Bell is doing Eva (Die Meistersinger) at Covent Garden in 2011, conducted by Pappano. So presumably she is finally saying good by to her Handel roles.

Martin Duncan is directing Rossini's Armida at Garsington next year. That's the one with the trio for three tenors (an ensemble never sung by The Three Tenors, not surprisingly). Almost worth braving the weather for.

Barbara Frittoli is doing her first Adriana Lecouvreur at the Liceu in 2012, now that is worth travelling to Barcelona for.

John Graham-Hall will be singing in Peter Grimes at La Scala in 2012, in the role of Bob Boles.

Janis Kelly makes her much overdue Covent Garden debut in October in Gianni Schicchi.

And Charles Mackerras will be conducting The Cunning Little Vixen at the Garden in 2010 with Emmas Matthews and Bell!

All in all, lots to look forward to.

How did I miss it!

One of my correspondents pointed out to me that the London Handel Festival production of Handel's Alessandro at the Britten Theatre, was intended to all be Alessandro's dream. During the overture he has an argument with his boyfriend, hits his head and then dreams the opera where he has become butch and heterosexual. I must confess that I missed all this and took the opening and closing tableau to be pointless flash-backs, meant to indicate that Alessandro was bisexual (like the real Alexander). I'm not sure that understanding this mis en scene would have helped me enjoy the opera more, probably not; in fact I rather think it might have annoyed me even more.

Catch up - Manon at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow

We've been away on holiday, hence the pause in posting. On Saturday we caught Massenet's Manon given by Scottish Opera at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow. Reading the reviews was interesting as it was obvious that one or two reviewers rather wished that Massenet's Manon wasn't Massenet's Manon but something grittier. It might, I suppose, be possible to give a gritty version of Manon but Renaud Doucet and Andre Barbe didn't try to. One of their rationales was that Scottish Opera had never, ever performed the work so that they had a duty to give it relatively straight, something which doesn't always apply when you let producers loose on a work.

Most of the money seems to have gone on the costumes, lots (and lots) of elegant 18th century ones. The production used a large chorus and the big scenes, particularly the opening, seemed to indicate a slight lack of rehearsal time, the chorus were sometimes faulty in ensemble and the opening scene did not quite register as well as it could. For the set, we had a selection of props but the main 'set' was a group of huge, fragment-shaped mirrors. The rationale behind these was all to do with reflection on society etc. But in effect they mirrored the costumes and gave us a glittering stage image without having to resort to expensive sets or tawdry pseudo-glittering ones. The lighting was superb and changed from moment to moment. It was amazing how the lighting designer managed to change the entire mood from scene to scene. The Saint Sulpice scene was particularly notable for the eerie quality of its light.

Anne Sophie Duprels does not quite have the girlishly fragile tones needed for the opening scene, but then again her repertoire does stretch from Massenet to Janacek (by way of Dvorak's Rusalka). Instead, in the first scene she created the perfect picture of the young naive. This developed as the opera went on and Manon's development was mirrored in Duprels deportment and body language. By the end she managed to imbue the final scene with a moving power which is not really in the music.

As her lover, Des Grieux, Paul Charles Clarke displayed the sort of narrow focused heroic tones which have effectively disappeared from this repertoire, but which were routinely used by French tenors in the pre-war period. His is not a perfectly elegant singer and there were moments, when his voice was under pressure, when his voice seemed to be trying to escape. But he did not simply belt the role out in an open Italianate way, it sounded as if he was singing a French opera. For that we must be grateful. During the opening scene, I thought that the relationship between Manon and Des Grieux rather lacked a sexual charge, but this developed and you firmly believe in their relationship by the final act.

Manon's cousin Lescaut was played more as an amiable buffoon than a venal gambler by Benjamin Bevan. Bevan sang the role beautifully, but I did rather want something nastier. Adrian Powter made a strong impression as the cool, controlled De Bretigny and was suitably nasty as Guillaume de Morfontaine.

This was the first time that I had seen the opera since it was done at the London Coliseum as a vehicle for Valerie Masterson. This performance was not quite up on that one's level of perfection, but it was a damn good evening. The orchestra under their new chief conductor Francesco Corti, played Massenet as if they'd been doing it all their lives.

It would be possible to imagine darker interpretations of the piece, but it is pointless wishing that Massenet's opera is something that it is not. The virtue of Doucet and Barbe's production was that it took the opera at something like face value and did so within Scottish Opera's budgetary constraints.

Recent CD Reviews

My review of Hans-Peter Türk's Siebenburgischen Passion, which sets a traditional Transylvanian German text, is here.

Fascinating … interesting, approachable and highly recommendable ...

And my review of a compilation of soprano Patrizia Ciofi's live recordings is here. Both reviews are on MusicWeb International.

Impressive - a highly communicative singer ...

Recent CD Review

My review of EMI's 4 CD boxed set of opera arias sung by Montserrat Caballe is here, on MusicWeb International.
A finely digested overview of the soprano’s art ...

Scottish Opera new season

Scottish Opera's 2009/10 continues what seems to be the company's revival. They start with a revival of Giles Havergal's 1994 production fo The Elixir of Love with Elena Xanthoudakis and Edgaras Montvidas as Adina and Nemorino.

Then a new production of Rossini's Italian Girl in Algiers with Karen Kargill as Isabella, Thomas Walker as Lindoro and Tiziano Bracci (his UK Debut) as Mustafa. The production is conducted by Scottish Opera's new musical director Francesco Corti and directed by Colin McColl. Francesco Corti is also conducting the revival of Stewart Lang's 2004 production of La Boheme.

Then the new production of The Adventures of Mr. Broucek makes its appearance, in a co-production with Opera North. Cast and conductor are the same as for the Opera North performances of the production. The inclusion of this opera is interesting as I don't think it appeared in Scottish Opera's Janacek cycle in the 1970's and 1980's. They are also touring a small scale production of Katya Kabanova

They are finishing of with a further group of new commissions in Five:15 - Opera Made in Scotland. This is the 3rd time that they have done this and I do hope that one of the smaller operas will be leading to a full scale commission.

This is not the most exciting season on earth, but within their chosen economic confines Scottish Opera have managed to put together a group of operas which mix the tried and tested with the more unusual.

Opera North new season

Opera North's 2009/10 season has been announced, and there are some gems in it.

Tom Cairns is directing a new production of Massenet's Werther with Alice Coote as Charlotte, which makes it unmissable. Paul Nilon is in the title role, which should be interesting as this intelligent artist does not have the typical type of tenor voice used in the role. Richard Farnes conducts. Also new in the autumn is Janacek's The Adventures of Mr. Broucek, one of the rarest of Janacek's mature operas. John Graham-Hall is in the title role, with a strong cast including Anne-Sophie Duprels, Jeffrey Lloyd Roberts, Frances McCafferty, Donald Maxwell and Jonathan Best. John Fulljames directs. Also during the Autumn they are touring a small scale production of a new opera by Jonathan Dove and Alasdair Middleton called Swanhunter. It will premiere in the new Howard Assembly Room at the Grand Theatre in Leeds before touring to smaller venues.

Then in Winter 2010 we are getting a new production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore directed by Jo Davies; no cast details yet. Finally in Spring 2010 the highlight of the season, for me, Sarah Connolly in the title role of Donizetti's Maria Stuarda. Antonia Cifrone is Elizabeth and Turkish tenor Bulent Bezduz is Leicester. Bezduz was seen most recently on the South Bank as Pilade in Opera Rara's Ermione. The production is directed and designed by Antony McDonald.

For the revivals there is Cosi van Tutte with Victoria Simmonds as Dorabella, Phyllida Lloyd's 1993 production of La Boheme with Anne-Sophie Duprels and Bulent Bezduz and Rusalka with Giselle Allen in the title role.

Review of "Peter Grimes"

My review of the new ENO production of Peter Grimes is here, on Music and Vision.

Step In

This version should work.

Review of Endymion's 30th birthday concert

The chamber ensemble Endymion started its birthday celebrations in style with a concert at the Temple church; my review his here, on Music and Vision.

Recent CD Review

My review of a disc of Handel cantatas and trio sonatas from Musica Alta Ripa is here, on MusicWeb International.

Brings out the freshness Handel’s invention ...

Review of "King Arthur"

Hervé Niquet and Le Concert Spirituel have already given a run of staged performances of Purcell's King Arthur in Montpelier. Wednesday's night's appearance in the Barbican concert hall marked the beginning of a concert tour of King Arthur. But this time they are performing just the musical portions of the piece and sensibly Niquet has opted for an Anglophone cast (with one Swede).

This year's Handel and Purcell anniversaries rather cause a problem for many French and Italian groups, as singing in English is not necessarily one of their strong points; whereas German, Dutch and Scandinavian singers and ensembles tend to be more comfortable in English. Niquet's cast (Susan Gritton, Deborah York, Anders J. Dahlin, James Gilchrist and Andrew Foster-Williams) ensured that the solos were given in impeccable English and his choir sang the choruses with admirable credibility and clarity and only the occasionally dodgy vowel.

Rather impressively, the only people using music were the orchestral players. Niquet, his choristers and soloists were all singing from memory; though Deborah York discreetly consulted a vocal score when not singing and Dahlin had one unfortunate lapse). As is becoming the norm, Niquet performed the work with high tenors rather than altos.

Niquet's speeds were noticeably brisk. Not that he sounded in a hurry but he ensured that everything sped past at quite a lively pace. There were some moments when I wished that he would linger rather. Rhythms were always sprung and the results were a delight to listen to whatever the speed, Niquet's background in the French baroque ensuring that Purcell's French influences came to the fore, even in a work as quintessentially English as this.

Having the singers performing off the book meant that they could be far more communicative than usual. Though no director was credited, this was more than a concert performance. The singers walked on and off and these entrances and exits were made part of the show. Each piece, or group of pieces was carefully placed in terms of blocking and the relationships between the singers. The results were enormously communicative and in an amorphous work like King Arthur (performed sans spoken text) this ensured that we understood what was being sung from a comprehension and emotional point of view. For the famous Frost scene, the staging went a little further with Andrew Foster-Williams and the chorus all wrapped up in shawls, hats and scarves. The only time this 'demi-semi staging' went too far was in the Comus 'harvest home' section of the last act when both singers and choir had to put on Mummerset accents (with variable results) and the choristers had to act drunk. Luckily this did not last long and was succeeded by Susan Gritton singing 'Fairest Isle' with glorious directness and simplicity. Mezzo-soprano Melodie Ruvio stepped up from the chorus to form a confident third Nymph in trio with Gritton and York.

Most of the singers have extensive experience of both period and non-period performance and this seems to have aided their ability to project a character and shape the music. Niquet took no prisoners however and all the singers had to dash off ornaments often at an alarming pace; the results were brilliant and wonderfully creditable.

Gritton and York have different voices and stage demeanours but they complemented each other perfectly and made a delicious pair of nymphs trying to tempt King Arthur. York was a charming Cupid in the Frost Scene and, as mentioned, Gritton was perfect in Fairest Isle.

Dahlin provided the high tenor parts. His stage demeanour is a little mannered but he sings these high tenor parts to perfection and even managed a good approximation of a Mummerset accent. James Gilchrist sang the remaining tenor roles, showing that despite his burgeoning career in 19th and 20th century music, he is still difficult to beat in this repertoire as well.

Similarly Andrew Foster-Williams was nicely communicative whilst displaying some fine, focussed tone and lovely low notes.

This is a work where choir and orchestra matter as much as the soloists and here Le Concert Spirituel responded to Niquet's lively and imaginative direction. The ensemble used two harpsichords and three theorbos so we got a very rich sound. There were some nice instrumental solos from various members of the ensemble. The hard working choir were equally communicative. All seemed enthusiastic and communicated their enthusiasm. In fact this sense of joy came from all the performers, and infected the audience sending us delightfully home

Mendelssohn - Evensong from the Temple

The Temple Church was the scene of Ernest Lough's famous recording of Mendelssohn's Oh for the wings of a dove, which he made as a treble in 1927 with George Thalben-Ball at the organ. So it was entirely appropriate that the BBC should be broadcasting Evensong from there on Wednesday 7th May in the run up to their Mendelssohn celebrations. I went along to hear the service live.

Under their musical director James Vivian the choir of Temple Church made a good showing, fielding 15 trebles and 14 singing men (altos, tenors and basses). The programme, alas, did not include Mendelssohn's own Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis (some of the last choral music which he wrote, and music written with the English service of Evensong in mind). But they opened with the motet Richte mich Gott. Written for 8-part choir, Mendelssohn alternates the upper and lower voices, the choir created a severe majesty particularly as the upper sections were sung by counter-tenors and trebles rather than women. The tone blossomed nicely at the words 'Sende dein Licht', the point where Mendelssohn lets himself go. The motet is rather long to be used as an introit, but on such a special occasion it was well worth hearing in this position, especially in a performance which showed Mendelssohn at his most Brahmsian.

The Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis were Walmisley in D minor; Thomas Atwood Walmisly (1814 - 1856) was a distinguished Victorian organist who had Thomas Atwood as his godfather and he was taught by both his father and Atwood (Atwood, of course, was one of Mozart's favorite pupils). His Mag and Nunc are standard Anglican fare, relying on the alternation of upper and lower voices, along with passages in unison, over a strong organ part. Only in the final 'Glory be to the Father' do we get 4 part polyphony. Whilst I could have wished for a more interesting setting of the Canticles, the choir gave the pieces a strong and musical performance.

The closing anthem was the first choral movement from Mendelssohn's Lobesgesang, along with an organ prelude taken from the instrumental movements of the piece. This is music written for large scale forces and you can hear it in full at the Proms this year (Prom 19 on 30th July). The choir and organ did a superb job at conveying the breadth of the piece.

The service concluded with a fine account of Mendelssohn's Prelude and Fugue in C minor.

The Mendelssohn jubilation commences in earnest on Friday with a live broadcast from Birmingham Town Hall which re-creates the premiere of Elijah. This performance uses 9 soloists (as opposed to the regular 4), which means that Mendelssohn's writing for vocal ensemble (including the wonderful octet) can be performed correctly (as opposed to by semi-chorus).

Recent CD Review

My review of Salmow Kernewek, a disc of contemporary choral music from Cornwall, is here on MusicWeb International.

Well-made and useful music ...

Review of Don Carlos

I enjoyed Tim Albery's production of Don Carlos, with sets by Hildegard Bechtler, when Opera North first performed it in 1993 and welcomed its latest revival which we saw in Leeds on Saturday 2nd May. Bechtler's sets were stylishly stripped and pared down, with a limited tonal palette, imaginatively lit by Charles Edwards. The result was one of the most visually satisfying productions of the opera that I have seen - knocking Covent Garden's 2 most recent productions of the opera into a cocked hat (Luc Bondy's 'Habitat' production and Nicholas Hyntner's visually confused one).

Unfortunately this all came at a price. Each scene required a scene change and each scene change lasted an unconscionably long time (some up to 5 minutes). The first half had 3 scene changes and the second half 2, so we were sat staring at the drop curtain for a significant amount of time. These hiatuses impeded the dramatic impetus that Richard Farnes and the Opera North Orchestra created, and nullified Verdi's revision which were aimed at creating a swifter, more compact version of the opera.

It is a shame that, for this revival, Bechtler could not have been asked to provide a slimmed down version of the set which would have needed fewer, shorter scene changes.

Opera North performed the 4-act Milan version in which, by extensive cutting and rewriting, Verdi created a sleeker, more incisive, less discursive opera. Opera North performed in English, neatly side stepping the French/Italian dilemma. Verdi wrote this revision (as with all his versions of the opera) in French but the 4-act version was premiered in Milan in Italian translation and companies have been notoriously reluctant to perform the Milan version in French. The cast are going to record the opera for Chandos in June, which is great news.

Don Carlos was played by Julian Gavin. Gavin is not the most dramatically detailed of actors. But he sang with frank, open tone and was generous and tireless with his voice. He showed that he was well able to pace himself and stayed in impressive vocal form right through to the final duet. Gavin succeeded in making the character of Carlos rather less annoying than usual, developing our sympathy rather than our annoyance (as can sometimes happen).

In this he was able supported by the distinguished and subtle Rodrigue, Marquis de Posa, from William Dazeley. Dazeley's voice is still a half-size too small for the role, but he used it musically and intelligently. Most importantly the role was beautifully sung with no feeling of forcing.

Most productions of the opera shy away from any suggestion of the homo-erotic elements in Carlos and Posa's relationship, elements which seem embedded in the music that Verdi wrote for them. Albery, Gavin and Dazeley seemed to come closest in acknowledging this and as a result developed a strong bond between the two characters. Though frankly, I think there is scope for a version of the opera which acknowledges this bond more directly; by making Pose more 'in love' with Carlos you develop proper love triangle rather than one based on both politics and love.

The role of Elisabeth suffers a bit in the 4-act version. Whilst Carlos gets his Fontainebleau Act aria rewritten and moved to the new 1st act, Elisabeth loses hers. This means that her two solo utterances are the aria sung to console the Countess of Aremberg and the great aria in the final act. Apart from this we see Elisabeth mainly in ensemble with others, almost as if we see her through others eyes. Janice Watson took a little time to warm up. I doubt that she is a real Verdi soprano, but there again who is at the moment. It is pointless listening to Watson and complaining that she doesn't sound like Caballe!. Watson's voice is warm with a strong, but pleasant vibrato. In the opening acts she seemed to have to work hard to establish a good sense of line, particularly in the quieter moments. Also, the high tessitura seemed to give her pause. But by the time we came to Act 4 everything was in place and Watson delivered the sort of fully rounded dramatic performance that we might expect of her. This might have something to do with the fact that it is only here that Verdi gives Elisabeth some real meat.

Princesse Eboli was played by American mezzo-soprano Jane Dutton, recently seen as Santuzza at the London Coliseum. Dutton has a dark, low mezzo voice with a rich (strong) vibrato - ideal for Santuzza and Amneris. I am not quite as convinced that she was as suited to Eboli and frankly I would have preferred a voice which was more used to Rossini (as with Covent Garden's most recent casting of the role). Still, Dutton gave the role her all and did not shirk the high notes, which she sang in a full, frank manner. Her voice is not perfect for the coloratura as her vibrato is slow-ish, but she moved relatively cleanly and evenly.

Brindley Sherratt made a severe, distinguished and slightly elderly Philippe. Sherratt has a dry-ish voice, in fact he reminded me rather of Norman Bailey. And though he might never make a traditional sounding Philippe, he made a very notable one. He was severe rather than the monstrous tyrant. When Robert Lloyd first sang the role, in French, at Covent Garden (in the last days of the Visconti production) he said that he found the role far less tyrannical than he had expected and put this down to the differences in the language; that the role in Italian was more tyrannical. Perhaps something of this has rubbed off on Sherratt.

Bechtler and costume designer Nicky Gillibrand conspired to give us a closed in world, where love was mainly absent. Within this framework the singers worked well, but I wonder whether the personenregie had been more detailed, had more depth when I first saw the production.

The smaller, but still important, roles were well played. Julia Sporsen made a lively and believable Thibault, contributing strongly to the Veil Song. Clive Bayley was an impressive Grand Inquisitor; it was wonderful to have the role sung by a singer still with a full bass voice. This gave his scene with Philippe a balance of voices and an edge which it doesn't always get.

The chorus made a strong showing, as always, and managed the awkward blocking in the Auto De Fe scene so that it looked convincing. The orchestra were on similarly strong form giving a big boned version of the score. Sometimes too big boned as their enthusiasm got the better of them at times and the orchestral sound rather dominated the singers.

Richard Farnes kept the drama flowing, it was only a shame that the scene changes impeded him. Still, we have the recording to look forward to.

Mendelssohn Week (1)

The BBC are in full Mendelssohn mode at the moment, gearing up for their Mendelssohn weekend. On Wednesday Evensong is being broadcast live at 4pm from the Temple Church when the choir will be performing Mendelssohn's Richte mich Gott and the first choral movement from the Lobesgesang. The voluntary is the Prelude and Fugue in C minor, Opus 37 no. 1.

Richte mich Gott is from Mendelssohn's Opus 78 motets. These wonderful, Bach inspired pieces were written in 1843 and first performed that year though they weren't published until after Mendelssohn's death. Richte mich Gott uses 8-part choir, but unlike Bach, Mendelssohn does not divide his forces into two equal choirs, instead he tends to work with the choir split into upper and lower voices.

Mendelssohn's 2nd Symphony, 'Lobesgesang' was written in 1840 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the invention of printing. There are 9 choral movements, setting texts from the bible and the first choral movement uses text from Psalms 150, 33, 145 and 103.

Mendelssohn's sacred choral music tends to be a bit under appreciated and there is a tendency, if you are going for a 19th century admirer of Bach to go for Brahms's motets instead. But Mendelssohn wrote some superbly powerful pieces and this service will be a welcome opportunity to hear his sacred music in a liturgical situation.

The evensong uses Walmisley in D minor for the Canticles and Smith for the Responses. I'm planning to be there for the recording, so will have more about the service on Thursday.

Chelsea (Arts) Festival

So the Chelsea Festival has been re-born as the Chelsea Arts Festival, with the same administrator and festival director but apparently without the support of the Cadogan Estate. The programme looks moderately similar to Stewart Collins' previous Chelsea Festivals. In terms of classical music the programme is a little disappointing. The higher profile events seem to be concerts which could also be seen else-where. The opening concert of the festival is a concert featuring Rick Wakeman and the closing concert is Willard White giving his Paul Robson concert.

Tasmin Little's The Naked Violin, a mixture of concert, demonstration and audience interaction in which Little aims to help people listen to the violin.

Another instalment of Alec Roth and Vikram Seth's collaboration, this one is called Seven Elements, performers include James Gilchrist, Philippe Honore and Rustem Hayroudinoff. This is a co-commission with the Salisbury and Lichfield Festivals - probably the only way a small festival like Chelsea could afford such a high profile commission.

Herve Desarbre is giving an organ recital at Holy Trinity, Sloane Street, but including works by composers such as Nino Rota and Shostakovich.

The State Apartments in the Royal Hospital are the venue for concerts by soprano Laura Mitchell, by Young-Choon Park and by the Brodowski Quartet. The Brodowski's Quartet's programme includes Haydn's Opus 20 and Mendelssohn's Opus 80. Pianist Young-Choon Park is performing music by Haydn, Schubert, Scarlatti, Beethoven and Mendelssohn. The apartments are also being used for an Australian music showcase featuring 3 young Australians - Amir Farid (piano), Jacob Cordova (guitar), Duncan Rock (baritone)

Recent CD Reviews

My review of Romuald Twardowsky's fascinating Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom is here.
If you enjoy choral music then buy this disc ...

And my review of Carmina Luxembourgiana, a disc celebrating links between Luxemburg and the Czech republic, is here. Both reviews are on MusicWeb International.
Unusual and striking ...

Review of "Norma"

My review of English Touring Opera's concert performance of Norma is here, on Music and Vision.

Endymion at 30

The Endymion Ensemble are celebrating their 30th birthday. Not only do they have a celebratory concert at the Temple Church on 7th May, when Mendelssohn and Haydn are on offer, but they have an entire mini-festival at Kings Place from 3rd to 6th London.

At Kings Place they will be performing a huge range of works. Brahms Horn Trio, Poulenc's Sextet and Mendelssohn's String Quintet No. 1 are there. But more interestingly, Endymion are including large number of contemporary works, by composers including Simon Holt, Simon Bainbridge, Edward Cowie, Maxwell Davies, Bayan Northcott, Philip Cashian, Brian Elias and Anthony Payne. Some are commissions from Endymion and the concerts will also include new music by London teenagers. If you like late night concerts then you have the chance to hear Birtwistle's Orpheus Elegies, Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time and Morton Feldman's Crippled Symmetry

The festival will be premiering some 20 new works! And they'll be recording things for a commemorative CD. A fine way to celebrate your birthday.

Recent CD Review

My review of Ave Maria, a disc of 17th century sacred music dedicated to the Virgin, performed by Nuria Rial and Bell'Arte Salzburg, is here on MusicWeb International.

Entrancing ...

Syllabicity

Now, some years ago I submitted a piece to a competition and the comment came back that my word setting was too syllabic; i.e. 1 note per syllable, rather than setting a syllable across a number of notes. I must confess that at the time I didn't really think about it, but last year a writer I was working with commented on the same thing. They suggested that, my having set their text, they would go back and remove some words/syllables so that the setting was had more than one note per syllable. I experimented with this in some songs and made a determined effort to write in a rather more melismatic manner. The result was successful, in that one of the songs won a competition. But the mechanism for doing this feels wrong, I have to struggle against my instincts each time I'm setting a text.

Currently I'm working on a short opera/oratorio which has long sections of recitative. Again the syllable thing came up and I have made a conscious effort to increase the number of notes. Often I've being doing this by repeating so that the words get the setting I want and are then repeated more melodically. This is something I'm going to have to continue to experiment with. Its obvious that people don't see/hear the relation between text and music in the same way that I do. I could, of course, ignore this but each time I set a line of text I start worrying that it comes over as too syllabic. In some ways, maybe, this is a good thing as it makes me thing again about the relationship between text and music.

Recent CD Review

My review of an historic recording of Haydn's Stabat Mater, Symphony 44 and Concerto for Violin and Harpsichord is here, on MusicWeb International.
Too many problems ...

Independent Opera's production of Pelleas et Melisande, with Andrew Foster-Williams' powerful performance as Golaud, is on the short list for the Royal Philharmonic Society's awards. The list is here. The list also includes the ENO and the ROH's production of Harrison Birtwistle's The Minotaur.

The production of Pelleas et Melisandeis also going to make an appearance at the Buxton Festival next year, which is more good news.

Recent CD Review

My review of Red Priest's Priest on the Run is here, on MusicWeb International.

The suspicion of an adolescent desire to shock ...

Gleanings from this month's Opera magazine

A clutch of obits for sadly young musicians. David-Alexandre Borloz, a Swiss baritone who we saw at Grange Park was only 32. Australian soprano Deborah Riedel was only 50. Phyllida Ritter, who I first knew of as the Covent Garden Friends Administrator, was 49. Richard Salter, a British baritone hardly known in this country, was 65.

In Argentina they revived an opera sacra (!) by Monsignor Licino Refice based on the life of St. Cecilia; it was premiered in Rome in 1934 with Claudia Muzio, no less, in the title role. In Mexico they've just premiered an opera by Jose Maria Vitier with a libretto by the writer Carlos Fuentes. The opera, Santa Anna, was part of Fuentes 80th birthday celebrations.

In her review of Handel's Orlando from Melbourne, the reviewer suggests that Handel's treatment of Orlando is a subtle and ironic form of humour - the incongruity of a great warrior worrying about affairs of the heart. Interesting, I'd need to think about that one, but it makes you realise that Handel's original audience would have come to the opera with an entirely different set of mental baggage to us.

And over in Dresden history of a different sort came up. Evidently Boris Godunov may not have killed the Tsarevich after all and the new production at the Semper Opera used this fact.

In the review of Palestrina from Munich, the opera is described as a gloomy re-write of Die Meistersinger, another idea to go away and cogitate on.

In Rome, they've just had their first production of Verdi's Otello since 1968 and their first Der Rosenkavalier for 45 years.

In Pamplona you could hear Bellini's I Puritani in the 900 seater theatre - bliss.

Stockholm saw a new opera based on Torgny Lindgren's novel Batseba. As usual, it sounds as if the transformation of the novel to operatic stage was problematic. Novels usually have so much material in them that you end up having to jettison far too much material for comfort.

In Zurich, a new production of Tristan und Isolde set in the Villa Wesendonck, dealing with Wagner's affair with Mathilde Wesendonck - fascinating idea, and it sounds as if they production worked well.

The Haydn and Handel Society of Boston (USA) gave the first American performance of Haydn's The Creation 190 years ago.
Seattle saw Rosalind Plowright's Kytemnestra (in Elektra) - now, when can we hear it please!

Some more dates. Covent Garden's 1897 staging of La Boheme was not replaced until 1967 and the 1900 Tosca lasted until 1966!

Sylvia

To the Coliseum on Friday to see David Bintley's new version of Sylvia. I have always found Delibes' score to be delightful, the horn melody for the first appearance of the nymphs is one of the great ballet music moments. And there are more. Though Delibes is content to give us bonnes bouches and neither develops nor digs as deep as Tchaikovsky.

I had not seen Bintley's original 1993 version of the ballet, so don't know how much it differs from the new version. Bintley prefaces the classical myth with a prologue (danced the the overture and scene one) set in an Italian villa with badly behaved count and countess, nanny, valet, children and sundry guests. The gardener is Eros, in retirement and he presents the story of Sylvia as an instructive moral tale for the Count and his family. At the end they reappear, suitably chastened and each with their correct partner. This works surprisingly well and for the opening gives us one of the longest sequences of classical ballet I've seen where the women are all wearing stilleto heels!

The main telling of the tale uses Delibes music slightly differently to Ashton, the role of Diana (the Countess) is far bigger, there are no peasants and in Act 3 there are a hilarious group of pirates along with Eros pretending to be a one legged pirate, complete with peg leg. The classical dance is lovely and serijavascript:void(0)ous, but Bintley keeps the comic moments moving so that the result is charming and entertaining.

Brumel's Earthquake Mass

On Saturday I joined a group of singers in Cambridge to give a scratch performance of Antoine Brumel's Earthquake Mass. It sounds an unlikely event, given that the mass is a substantial work in 12 parts, but having spent the day rehearsing we managed a very creditable performance of the work.

The piece gets its name because Brumel uses the plainchant Antiphon from Lauds for Easter which includes the bit from St. Matthew's Gospel about the veil of the temple being rent and the earth quaking. Brumel uses a lot of canonic effects so that the work sound tremendous. Rather curiously, the majority of parts lie in the tenor range. The soprano parts are low. The counter-tenor and tenor parts are all pretty much in the same range and the bass parts, for the most part, lie high. So instead of using 12 parts to cover a wide vocal range, Brumel uses 12 parts to create an amazing wodge of sound in the middle of the choral range.

Royal Opera new season

New Productions
The first new production of the season is Tristan und Isolde with Nina Stemme and Ben Heppner, conducted by Antonio Pappano. Unfortunately the production is in the hands of Christoph Loy, so we will be firmly in concept land. Pappano conducts.

Opera Genesis are presenting a new opera by Eleanor Alberga in the Linbury. Their track record so far has been patchy, but it is entirely laudable that they continue to try out new operas. Also in the Linbury is a rare outing for Arne's Artaxerxes with Christopher Ainslie in the title role. Conducted by the Ian Page and in association with his Classical Opera Company - make a date in the diary now.

Also, new, also in the Linbury is a revival of Jonathan Dove's perfectly wonderful The Enchanted Pig. We loved it at the Old Vic and look forward to seeing it again.

Tchaikovsky's Cherevichki is arriving in a new production by Francesca Zamballo with a mainly Russian speaking cast. I have happy memories of the ENO version of this with a memorable appearance of the Tsarina, or rather just her giant shoes. Except of course, that was Rimsky Korsakov's telling of the same tale!

Next new production is Prokofiev's The Gambler, being done In English! With John Tomlinson as the General, Susan Bickley as Babulenka, Roberto Sacca as Alexei and Angela Denoke as Polina. Richard Jones directs, with Antonio Pappano conducting.

For me, the potential highlight is the new production of Handel's Tamerlano. Except of course the production is not new and has travelled a bit. The guide has a rather ominous picture of the stage set with a giant purple elephant. Tamerlano is NOT a comedy. So fingers crossed. Ivor Bolton conducts a cast which includes Christianna Stotijn, Sara Mingardo, Christina Schafer and Renata Pokupic. But the name everyone will be following is Placido Domingo as Bajazet. Luckily the role is double cast so those of us who prefer to avoid Domingo can catch Kurt Streit who has proved himself a decent Handelian in the past.

A not so exciting new production. David McVicar's Aida; the opera is typically the elephant's graveyard at the Royal Opera so it will be interesting if McVicar can create something worthwhile (cue lots of dancing girls perhaps).


Laurent Pelly is directing the new Manon, with Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazon (so we're not holding our breath too hard for the casting to stay in place).

Revivals

The premium revival must be Don Carlo, still in Italian alas. But now boasting Jonas Kaufmann as Don Caro. The remainder of the cast are pretty much as before (Marina Poplavskaya, Simon Keenlyside, Ferrucio Furlanetto, Sonia Ganassi, Robert Lloyd) with John Tomlinson as the Grand Inquisitor.

Prime Revival no. 2 is Der Rosenkavalier with Soile Isokoski, Sophie Koch and Lucy Crowe. I keep telling myself that I don't need to see the production again but then we get these fabulous casts!

Another good revival is Sir Charles Mackerras conducting Bill Bryden's wonderful production of The Cunning Little Vixen, this time with Emma Matthews and Christopher Maltman as the Gamekeeper. Emma Bell is luxury casting as the Fox and all the smaller roles are very strongly cast.

Carmen comes back with Elina Garanca, who made a memorable Romeo; she might make the production worth seeing. L'heure Espagnole and Gianni Schicchi are coming back with the same casts, another example of the terrible modern tendency to cast revivals with the same cast as the premiere.

Turco in Italia makes a welcome return (with a different cast!). Aleksandra Kurzak, who impressed in Mathilde di Shabran is Fiorella and Colin Lee, finally getting a decent run of something, as Don Narciso.

La Fille du Regiment comes back, but with Florez and Natalie Dessay again, though this time Colin Lee gets 3 performances rather than 1. Dawn French is off the menu as the Duchess and I suppose that we can't hope for Caballe who was the Duchess in Vienna.

Robert Lepage's dreary, pointless but realistic 1950's The Rakes Progress is coming back. It has Toby Spence in the title role and I think I might almost get over my dislike of the production just to hear him in the role. His Anne Trulove is Kate Royal.

There is a strong double-cast revival of McVicar's eminently intelligent Le Nozze di Figaro, with Erwin Schrott and Camilla Tilling as Figaro and his inamorata. Soile Isokoski does some performances of the Countess.

Salome is coming back with Angela Denoke in the title role. I think Denoke is a real soprano not a converted mezzo, so I look forward to her account.

Review of "Jephtha"

My review of Jephtha from the London Handel Festival is here, on Music and Vision.

Recent CD Review

My review of Pirates of the Baroque from Red Priest is here.
Exciting and invigorating ...

Over the Easter weekend we travelled to Norfolk and spent a few days touring, staying in a hotel in North Walsham. As the church (St. Nicholas's) is listed in Simon Jenkin's book of churches we decided to go to a service, Evensong on Sunday 12th.

It was a sung, solemn evensong with a choir, but the delightful surprise was that St. Nicholas still maintains a choir of men and boys. North Walsham is not a huge town and it is heartening to find that, in this modern age, the church still manages to maintain a lively boys choir.

The choir were notably hard working at the Solemn Evensong we attended. With just 7 men and 6 boys they gave us a Mag and Nunc, plus a Te Deum and the requisite Psalms along with hymns (including a processional one). The service concluded with a dashing French showpiece on the organ from the young organist.

Handel's own parish church, St. George's Church, Hanover Square, London, was the only place to be last night, the 250th anniversary of the composer's death. St. George's is one of the few performing interiors left in London which are associated with the composer and, as such, is the venue for the London Handel Festival. Last night the festival celebrated the end of the 2009 festival and the composer's anniversary with a tremendous performance of Jephtha with John Mark Ainsley in the title role. A full review will appear shortly

Recent CD Review

My review of a disc of Domenico Scarlatti's choral music from the choir of King's College, Cambridge, is here, on MusicWeb International.
A programme worth investigating ...

Review of "Dido and Aeneas" and "Acis and Galatea"

Frankly, last night's double bill of Acis and Galatea and Dido and Aeneas at the Royal Opera House was something of a disappointment.

Dido looked stunning in Hildegard Bechtler's spare designs and the singers were all kitted out in slightly Japanese-esque long costumes (men and women) by Fontini Dimou. Wayne McGregor's view of Dido predominantly sombre which worked well with Sarah Connolly's superb Dido. But McGregor is also a choreographer and Dido included a group of dancers from the Royal Ballet, and of course the ballet includes dance music.

I think it was Ian Caddy who once said of the role of Aeneas, that it had never made sense to him until he had realised that Josiah Priest was a dancing master and that if he had taken Aeneas, dancing would have been as important as singing. But McGregor seems to have decided to take a 'divide and rule' option. The dancers danced and the singers sang and rarely did the two meet. In fact, apart from a little tentative movement, the singers were pretty static.

The dancers, wearing costumes which looked like stylish gym kit, appeared danced and went away again, rarely relating to the singers. Also their dance was all aerobic gymnastics, which did not seem to relate to the court atmosphere which McGregor needed to be creating. Perhaps some of this can put attributed to whatever the requirements and working conditions were in Milan where the production originated.

But all in all this was a Dido where the pleasures were mainly musical. In addition to Connolly's Dido there as Lucy Crowe's superb Belinda, bright, clear and brilliant. Lucas Meachem's Aeneas looked that part but seemed a little stiff, though neither Purcell nor McGregor really gave him much to do. Sara Fulgoni made a genuinely creepy sorceress, rather than a guyed one and Iestyn Davies was luxury casting as the Spirit.

After the interval the look change as Bechtler produced a series of translucent drops, evoking the pastoral beauties of the landscape lived in by Acis and Galatea. The opening chorus was danced with the singers invisible off stage, always an annoying event. I like to see the singers even if they are not required to act. The dancers all wore customised all-in-one leotards making them look unclothed and emphasising the fine lines of many of the bodies. Even if you didn't like Handel, this was a good evening provided you liked pert bottoms.

I must confess that Danielle de Niese and I have got off to a bad start. I first saw her live in David McVicar's Giulio Cesare for Glyndebourne (though we saw it at the Proms). I hated on sight the Bollywoodisation of Cleopatra's arias; I felt, and still feel, that this does not work emotionally and that we never really take Cleopatra seriously. That said, you can't fault de Niese for her ability to sing coloratura and dance. (Though Lisa Milne did similar when she played Morgana in the McVicar Alcina at ENO).

So Acis and Galatea was another opportunity to reassess de Niese. She came on wearing an ugly blond wig with a plait (one reviewer said it looked as if she was channelling Heidi). Not only was the wig ugly, but its flaxen blond colour was just not flattering to de Niese's complexion.

De Niese has a noticeable vibrato which gives her voice a rich, luxurious feel; you can understand why she plays sexy parts. She can do the complicated passagework, but it does not have the pinprick sharpness that I think it requires in this role. Many reviewers have compliments about her performance, but for me it seemed lacking. I longed to hear someone like Lucy Crowe in the role, she has the sort of bright, crisp delivery that I like (AND she can do sexy, just look at her Poppea in the ENO Agrippina).

Each singer got an attendant dancer to shadow them, so that even though de Niese trained as a dancer she was required, mostly, to be stationary whilst her shadow partner moved. This left one wondering where to look.

Acis was played by Charles Workman who looked the part. I found myself, however, less in tune with his voice. He sang with admirable firmness, but there was a quality in the voice which made it seem as if his voice was about to crack. I felt that his vocal quality would be ideal in later music, notably 19th century, but that he was not ideal in Handel.

Costumes were modern, as if the cast came in their street clothes. But this meant that Paul Agnew's Damon looked as if he had wandered of the set off Last of the Summer Wine. Agnew seemed luxury casting as Damon.

Matthew Rose has largeness of physique to play Polyphemus and he has the largeness of personality as well. Add to this a fine Handelian technique and I found that it was Rose's performance which I enjoyed the most. You felt profoundly sorry for the monster as he set his few treasures out only for Galatea to dismiss them.

There was another problem with the staging - its sheer busyness. We had both singers and dancers on stage all the time. And though McGregor's choreography was more plastic than in Dido, the results were sometimes overly busy. He seemed to need to fill every moment, and didn't trust Handel's music or really give it space.

Acis and Galatea is a masque, so its not the most dramatic of piece. Staged in such a hyperactive way, there were moments in the middle when the tempo simply sagged and you wished that McGregor had staged it in a more austere, less decoratorly fashion.

Musically things were in the safe hands of Christopher Hogwood with the Orchestra of the Age of Englightenment, though I did wonder whether a few more instrumentalists might have made a richer sound in Covent Garden's cavernous acoustics.

So, all in all, not an ideal evening. But one that piqued one's interest; I would be happy to give a revised version of the show another go.

Chelsea Opera Group new season

Chelsea Opera Group have announced their 2009/2010 season. On 28/11/2009 they are performing Gluck's Alceste in the French version, conducted by Nicholas Collon. This will be a welcome chance to hear the opera in London as I don't think it has had a proper outing since the production for Janet Baker at the Royal Opera House.

Then on 21st February 2010 they are celebrating 10 years of their association with the soprano Nelly Miricioiu and presenting her in La Traviata. Finally, on 23 May 2010 we have Rossini's Guillaume Tell with Majella Cullagh as Mathilde, conducted by Dominic Wheeler. A mammoth undertaking but one which will be well worth it as this wonderful opera deserves to be performed more. Both these 2010 concerts are at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

COG's next concert is on 7th June 2009 when they are doing Verdi's original version of Simon Boccanegra at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

Recent CD Review

My review of a disc of Hildegard of Bingen's music given a new dressing up by percussionist Christoph Haas is here on MusicWeb International.

Hildegard’s music in dialogue with contemporary percussion ...

St. Matthew Passion from the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra

To the Barbican on Sunday to hear Bach's St. Matthew Passion performed by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Riccardo Chailly. Generally I prefer small forces in this work, particularly when it comes to singers. My preferred recording is Paul McCreesh's account with 1 voice to a part; we heard McCreesh and his forces perform the work at St. Johns Smith Square and were bowled over. The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment are currently touring their own St. Matthew Passion, again with just 8-singers but unfortunately we are going to miss the performance at the South Bank on Thursday, though seeing it performed with just 8 singers in the vast cavern of the Royal Festival Hall is not ideal.

So why, do you ask, were we at the Barbican on Sunday to hear the work sung by 90 singers and an orchestra of some 90 players. Well, I've never been completely dogmatic on the issue and my main response is 'convince me'. The a notable large scale version of the work that I saw was a performance at the Edinburgh Festival in the 1970's which had Jessye Norman singing the alto solos and this was, in many ways, profoundly moving.

Also, the Leipzig players have a special connection with Bach. Not only do the come from Leipzig where Bach spent his final great period of his life, but the orchestra was founded not long after he died. They are still involved in performing Bach cantatas at the St. Thomas Church.

One aspect of the performance that I had not anticipated was one which, frankly, made it most special. The two choirs were made up of boys from the St. Thomas Church and the Tölz Boys Choir, though in the case of the latter you had to stretch the word boy a little when it came to their tenors and basses. This meant that not only were the organisers arranging a tour for some 180 singers and musicians, but half of these were boys and some 60 were pre-pubertal boys. This was one of the biggest choir of boys that I have seen for a long time.

Would they be up to it? The answer was a resounding yes. St Thomas's provided Choir 1 with the Tölz Boys Choir making up choir 2. The choral sound was bright, clear, flexible and firm. They were responsive to Riccardo Chailly's shaping of the music, could spin long lines where necessary and had a brilliant attack in the turbae. All in all, I have never heard a performance quite like it.

The choir was beautifully counter-balanced by the Leipzig Orchestra. They provided some superb solo playing in the various arias and accompanied finely. Under Chailly's direction this was a highly shaped performance. Not for Chailly the emulation of period performance practice, he shaped the music as he would any later piece in the repertoire. And you have to respect him for it, this is a genuine performance style and if I have to have symphonic Bach, then I want it as good as this. As with Sir Colin Davis's Messiah with the LSO, the sheer quality of the music making and the superb way the singers and players responded to Chailly's vision made the whole thing worth while.

My only problem with this style performance is the nature of the extreme contrasts which it engenders. The Evangelist (Johannes Chum) sings accompanied by a few continuo instruments and then the chorus come blasting in with one of the turbae. You can't change it, if you want symphonic Bach then you get these extremes of contrast.

If I have left the soloists till last it is because they provided a well integrated, but not showy, ensemble which meshed in with Chailly's vision. You never felt that any of them were chafing under his direction and all shaped their musical lines accordingly, resulting in some moments of great beauty. Soprano Sibylla Rubens was a last minute replacement, but she still produced some beautifully refined tone. Mezzo Marie-Claude Chappuis was similarly refined. I did not feel that her performance reached the depth of expression that someone like Janet Baker brought to the role, but you sensed that refinement, stillness and great beauty were the keynotes of this performance. Tenor Maximillian Schmitt was a good equal to these. Extremely noteable was the bass soloist, Thomas Quasthoff, who contributed some of the finest singing of the evening, though his tendency to croon the quieter passages may not have been to everyone's taste (I'm in two minds about it myself!).

Johannes Chum contributed a vivid Evangelist, but stillness and beauty were still the watchwords and he never got over-wrought as some Evangelists can. I sensed that the part might lie a little high for him, there was a feeling that the top notes were carefully shaded off. But he never sounded strained and maintained his musical elegance to the end. Hanno Muller-Brachman was a Christus of noble demeanor with a voice which resembled the young John Tomlinson.

The same forces will be going into the studio to record the work and I can't wait to hear the results. Whilst symphonic Bach will remain something of a speciality for me, when performed like this who can resist.

ENO new Season

ENO have announced their 2009/10 season and, such is the way of these things, Autumn 2009 is already open for booking for Patrons.

Overall its a bit of a mixed bag, plenty of new stuff but rather too much mixture as before as well.

Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre in a production by the Catalan group La Fura del Baus arrives in the UK in September, having already had an outing on the Continent. Its a co-production, so comes with a polyglot cast, which might not be ideal. Still it will be interesting to see the work. Edward Gardner conducts.

Also keenly anticipated is Turandot in a production by theatre director Richard Goold. The title role is being sung by the German soprano Kirsten Blanck in what is also her role debut. Blanck has been gradually moving into heavier territory and I will be interested to hear her in the role. Her Calaf is Gwyn Hughes Jones, with Amanda Echalaz as Liu. Edward Gardner conducts. I have not yet been able to learn which edition they are using. It is too much to hope that they will use the uncut Alfano ending, which has not received a proper staging in the UK yet.

New in the autumn also is a double bill of Bluebeards Castle directed by Daniel Kramer, with The Rite of Spring, in a production by Michael Keegan Dolan and his Fabulous Beast company. Edward Gardner conducts. Curious combination, but then Bluebeard is always difficult to place.

Finally the Christmas offering is Messiah in a production by Deborah Warner. The only comment on this one can be why? When Handel has so many amazing theatre works which remain unperformed at the Coliseum, why try to perform on of his non-theatre works, and one which isn't even built around a dramatic narrative. Oh, well, at least it has a fine cast, Sophie Bevan, Catherine Wyn Rogeors, John Mark Ainsley and Brindley Sherratt conducted by Laurence Cummings.

After Christmas Jonathan Miller's L'Elisir d'Amore comes from New York City Opera. Set in 1950's America, I'm not sure why we need the new production when the previous one worked adequately. Still get get to hear Sarah Tynan, John Tessier and Andrew Shore in the leads.

Having done so well with Jenufa, David Alden is being let loose on Katya Kabanova, with Patricia Racette in the title role and Susan Bickley as the mother-in-law from hell.

More excitingly Fiona Shaw is directing Henze's Elegy for Young Lovers.

Another new Tosca hoves into sight, this time a production by Catherine Malfitano with Amanda Echalaz repeating her Opera Holland Park triumph, along with Julian Gavin and Anthony Michaels Moore. Edward Gardner conducts. Certainly a cast to look forward to.

Penny Woolcock is directing The Pearl Fishers, though its no longer the rarity that ENO think it is. No word yet on which edition they are using, but I do hope that they use Brad Cohen's edition which re-creates Bizet's original last Act rather then the confection generally used. Rory Macdonald conducts.

The final new production is Mozart's Idomeneo, directed by Katie Mitchell with Paul Nilon, Emma Bell and Sarah Tynan. Edward Gardner conducts. For this one we do know which edition they are using, they have chosen Mozart's Vienna version, which turns Idamante into a tenor and makes the casting rather too tenor heavy.

Actually there is one more new production, but this is going to be a site specific piece done in collaboration with Punchdrunk.

Revivals: Anthony Michaels Moore in Rigoletto. Turn of the Screw is back with the same 4 principals as when it was new, but with Sir Charles Mackerras conducting. Lucia di Lammermoor is back, again with Barry Banks and Anna Christy.

So we have two new productions (Tosca, L'Elisir d'Amore) which replace apparently viable existing ones. At least two revivals with near identical casts to the work's first outing. The only English operas are Turn of the Screw and Handel's Messiah.

There is enough in the season to generate interest, but the season includes no Strauss, no Wagner and no Verdi apart from Rigoletto. The management seem to have an unhealthy interest in Puccini. There is lots of interest in this season, but the overall shape is odd.

Review of "Alessandro"

My review of Handel's Alessandro from the London Handel Festival is here.

Recent CD Review

My review of Jake Heggie's opera Three Decembers is here.

Tuneful and accessible but would have benefited from a little more grit ...