Another view of Santa Fe

Music and Vision has a review by Maria Nockin of all of Santa Fe's operas here, providing a different view point (and more pictures).

Interview with Christine Brewer

Whilst in Santa Fe, I interviewed Christine Brewer, who sang the title role in Gluck's Alceste at Santa Fe Opera this summer. The interview is here, on Music and Vision.

Review of Alceste

My review of Alceste from Santa Fe Opera, with Christine Brewer in the title role is here, on MusicWeb International/Seen and Heard.

Santa Fe Opera

We are currently in Santa Fe, attending the opera festival there. The opera house is a striking modern building housing some 2000 seats and situated on a hill outside the town. The opera has been going some 25 years. When first founded the stage was covered but the seating was open to the skies. Now the seating is covered as well, but the sides of the auditorium and the rear of the stage are open. This means that shows start at sunset (currently 8.30pm) and you are able to watch the sunset as the show opens. The whole is rather magical, though it must be borne in mind that the evenings can get rather cold and windy.

The acoustics of the theatre are surprisingly good. The stage has no drop curtain so that all scene changes must happen in view of the audience, which is something of a novelty and rather harks back to the baroque era when such practices were common. The auditorium is surrounded by a complex of buildings including a rehearsal hall and a cantina in which preview buffets are given, enabling audience members to eat whilst hearing a talk about that night's opera. These preview buffets are organised by the various voluntary opera guilds which support the opera house's work and all profits go towards their touring and educational activities.

Repertoire is generally conservative, but casting and production standards are high. This year Natalie Dessay made her debut in La Traviata and Christine Brewer made her debut in Alceste. Each year they do a relatively unknown opera, Alceste being this years. Next year they will be performing a contemporary opera by Lewis Spratlan, Albert Herring with Christine Brewer as Lady Billows and Tales of Hoffman, an opera not performed in Santa Fe before. I have, so far, been unable to determine which edition of the opera they are doing and whether it will be done with spoken dialogue or not.

The only trouble in paradise is that an audience of 2000 people requires some 1000 cars to get to the opera house and so leaving after the opera is rather tedious. My review of The Letter has already appeared and my review of Alceste will do so shortly. Then on Saturday we are seeing La Traviata.

On Monday I interviewed Christine Brewer and this interview will appear shortly, providing PC problems allow!

Review of The letter

My review of Paul Moravec and Terry Teachout's new opera, The Letter, premiered at Santa Fe Opera, is here on MusicWeb/Seen and Heard.

Recent CD Review

My review of EMI's Handel set (Fireworks and Water music) is here.

Fireworks apart, nothing that has not been done better elsewhere ...

Henry Lytton as Bunthorne

A photo of Henry Lytton as Bunthorne (in Patience) wearing a wig and costume which seems to have inspired that worn by Simon Butteriss in the BBC Proms Patience

Prom 35 - Patience

Tuesday's performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience was billed as a semi-staging, directed by Martin Duncan. But what we got was far more than that. Sir Charles Mackerras and the BBC Concert Orchestra were seated at the back of the stage giving a wide but shallow acting area. All of the principals were costumed and sang off the book, the men and women of the chorus did their opening number in staged fashion (off the book) and then retired to the bleachers to sing from scores, whilst still managing to remain involved in proceedings.

Despite the Albert Hall's unhelpful acoustic, Mackerras managed to keep things moving in sparkling fashion, bringing out the Rossinian elements of Sullivan's score. For the faster numbers Mackerras's speeds seemed to be as fast as he dared, given the acoustical problems, and the cast kept up and gave us some brilliant patter.

Duncan treated the plot seriously and essayed no updating or modish devices. Costumes were all traditional and Carl Rosa Opera were top of the costume credits at the back of the programme. This meant that Ladies Angela, Ella and Saphir (Pamela Helen Stephen, Elena Xanthoudakis and Sophie-Louise Dann) were all in long neo-Victorian Liberty print shifts. Lady Jane (the redoubtable Felicity Palmer) was in more muted Victoriana, complete with small train. The military men (Donald Maxwell, Graeme Danby and Bonaventura Bottone) were in pukka Victorian military gear. Patience herself (Rebecca Bottone) was in classic 18th century milkmaid guise and the two poets (Simon Butteriss and Toby Stafford-Allen) were all in floppy velvet. Butteriss as Bunthorne sported an amazing curly wig whilst Stafford-Allen was all floppy hair.

Butteriss was a revelation as Bunthorne. He brought all the right mannerisms to the role, but sang with remarkably depth of tone. It is worth bearing in mind that ENO's last Bunthorne, Derek Hammond Stroud, was known to sing Bunthorne and Alberich on alternate nights. As his fellow poet Grosvenor, Stafford-Allen probably had the lovelier voice. But the two of them formed a neat complement to each other and Butteriss impressed with the way he played the Albert Hall auditorium as if it was a far smaller theatre. When playing scenes together Butteriss and Stafford-Allen develop both rapport and patter in a way which suggested a far longer rehearsal period than this staging could have had.

In fact, the whole cast impressed with the way they seemed to have developed a fine ensemble piece despite tightness of schedules. The three ladies (Stephen, Xanthoudakis and Dann) created three distinct personalities for themselves and indulged in some enjoyable hi-jinks. All three seemed to have a turn for comedy, especially Xanthoudakis. This was just as well, because Felicity Palmer, as Lady Jane, gave a masterclass in comic delivery and timing. Her solo with cello solo (which she really played) was finely delivered. Palmer allowed you to both laugh at Lady Jane and feel sorry for her; partly I think because Sullivan's music modifies Gilbert's rather jaundiced view of the elderly female character.

As the three military men, Maxwell, Danby and Bottone were frankly rather too old for the part. But in compensation they brought a wealth of comic experience and were simply hilarious, whether as stiff necked military men or as cod aesthetes. Veteran tenor Robert Tear made a cameo appearance as Bunthorne's solicitor.

In the title role, Rebecca Bottone impressed with her perky character (Patience is no shy violet) combined with a lovely lyric voice. She spoke the dialogue in a vaguely Northern accent, but sensibly did not try to sing in the same manner. Whilst the opera does not entirely depend on the title role, Rebecca Bottone ensured the ensemble had just the right personality its centre.

The opera's plot seems to have worn pretty well, Gilbert pokes fun mainly at aestheticism and posing, but manages other comic darts along the way. Though some details have aged, the general targets are as current as ever.

Patience is one of the G&S canon that Mackerras has not recorded, on this showing someone should be ushering him and his cast into the studio as soon as possible

Unkindest cut of all

Recent reviews have been covering the new production of Aida from the Bregenz Festival. Played on the floating stage in the lake, Graham Vick's production is inevitably spectacular and receives a lot of comment. Only one review that I came across mentioned the fact that the opera was heavily cut.

Opera on the floating stage in Bregenz needs to start at sunset and, because of limitations in the transport infrastructure, must last a maximum of two hours. There is no interval because getting 7000 people in and out would take too long. So any opera performed must have 2 hours of music at the most. This means that some 40 to 50 minutes of music has been cut from Aida, whereas an opera like Tosca could be done complete.

Perhaps this is fair enough, given the circumstances of production. But the festival Website does not seem to mention the fact. A simple statement that the performance used an edition specially created for Bregenz would have been enough.

But opera houses seem reluctant to give the details of the edition being used when an opera is performed. Sometimes this is because these decisions are only made when the opera goes into production, but even then some indication should surely be given. The Paris Opera are reviving their production of The Tales of Hoffmann in May next year. The web site gives full details of casting etc., but no indication of what a potential customer might expect to hear. Will there be spoken dialogue or sung recitative; will the production be the tradition edition or does the opera house use their own edition. If you look at the plot summary, you find out that the Giulietta act comes last, which is a positive thing. These are points which many potential customers will wish to know. Its no good buying expensive tickets and turning up expecting the full sung version and getting the spoken dialogue, or vice versa.

Another opera to which these strictures apply is Carmen. Like Tales of Hoffmann there is the issue of spoken dialogue v. sung recitative, plus the changes made to create a traditional version. Though in the case of Carmen these changes are rather less. Similarly, conductors can decide to take some of the alternative versions of Mozart's mature operas and such decisions similarly need clear warning.

When it comes to baroque operas I don't think that advance warning is necessarily required, but I certainly do feel that programmes should print exactly what we are and are not hearing. I hate having to do the sort of detective work required when listening to a relatively unfamiliar baroque opera and needing to know which bits have been missed out.

I know that not everyone is bothered by these issues and that some would argue that I should be happy to take the presentation, whatever it is, as a work of art created by the conductor, director and cast. But if decisions have been taken, for whatever valid reasons, to take variant readings of the composers text or to cut it, then this information should be clearly available.

Prom 33

To the Albert Hall for the 2nd (evening) half of the BBC Proms piano teamwork day. My main complaint with the programming of this day is that they contrived 2 programmes of piano teamwork without including any of Percy Grainger's pieces for multiple pianos.

The performers for the evening were the London Sinfonietta, BBC Singers plus an impressive array of 8 pianists, all conducted by Edward Gardner. The concert opened with George Antheil's Ballet mecanique. It was performed in the composers 1953 revision, which dropped the parts for pianolas (shame!) and got rid of some of the jazzier bits (shame!), instead we had 4 pianos, 2 xylophones, glockenspiel and other percussion. The xylophones have the main melodic interest and it was amazing how little real interest there was in the 4 piano parts. Perhaps the piece would have worked better with the accompanying film, or may be in a smaller hall. Though well played, it was a bit underwhelming.

I must confess that I had similar thoughts about the John Adams Grand Piano Music which followed. Here the London Sinfonietta winds seemed to be occasionally ill at ease, almost as if the day's rather grand structure had prevented adequate rehearsal time. Adams textures burbled and pooped along neatly enough, but it lacked the shock value it once had even when the amazing big tune appears in the final movement. But the main problem might have been my ears. This was the first time I'd heard the piece live, all previous encounters having been on disc, notably Adams own recording. Now, the Proms performance did include a limited amount of amplification, but I got the impression that this was mainly confined to the three female singers (the excellent Synergy Vocals), rather than balancing the whole band. Whereas on the recording, you feel everything has been balanced to perfection. Generally I far prefer acoustic performances, but having heard this one I start to wonder whether Adams is right and that his music does need a lot more acoustical intervention.

Things picked up after the interval with a superb performance of Bartok's Sonata for 2 pianos and percussion played by Philip Moore, Simon Crawford-Phillips, Coin Currie and Sam Walton.

Then the evening closed with Stravinsky's Les Noces, with a quartet of soloists (Tatiana Monogarova, Elena Manistina, Vsevolod Grivno, Kostas Smoriginas), 4 pianists, the London Sinfonietta percussion and the BBC Singers. Have 3 Russian native speakers in the soloists (Smoriginas is Lithuanian) was a big advantage. But the soloists confidence and crispness of rhythm was not matched by the BBC Singers who were far too delicate.

Gardner seemed to be impressively in control of all the performances (he did not conduct the Bartok) and relished the unusual timbres. This was an adventurous, typically Proms type programme; more's the pity that it did not quite come off.

Recent CD Review

My review of Mendelssohn's arrangement of Handel's Israel in Egypt is here, on MusicWeb International.

Utterly fascinating as a window on early Handel performance practice ...

Anne Collins

Anne Collins contralto voice was one of the striking voices of my early opera going in the 70's and 80's. I saw her in a number of roles in various operas including The Ring, Iolanthe and Patience. She was one of those singers who seemed a fixture at ENO and helped define its sound and style. Though of course, like many others, she seemed to have dropped off the ENO radar in the later 1980's and '90s. Reading the Guardian's obituary I was struck by a couple of things, firstly she was only 65; to a certain extent her rich contralto voice seemed to fix her permanently in Auntie-dom even though she did sing more dramatic roles. Secondly, the list of performances the Guardian gives does not make it clear where Collins did most of her work once the ENO gigs dried up.

Thomas Beecham: An Obsession with Music

I have just finished reading John Lucas's new biography of Sir Thomas Beecham, Bart. It is highly illuminating in many ways, especially as Sir Thomas fitted so much into his life that there is probably enough material to fill two volumes.

The book is described as An Obessssion with Music and there is very much an emphasis on Sir Thomas's music-making. Lucas is very good on what made Sir Thomas a great conductor and orchestra trainer. He has also done a lot of digging an provides lots of information about areas of Sir Thomas's life which have been less covered recently. In the first part of the book, the interest is very much on his tussles with his father and the way that Sir Joseph Beecham had his wife declared insane and put in an assylum. Thomas and his eldest sister managed to get her out, though this fractured his relationship with his father. The excitement in the next part of the book is firmly on Sir Thomas's love-life, with his messy divorce and various liaisons.

Then finally we get a comprehensive survey of Sir Thomas's activities in the 2nd World War when he worked in Australia and the USA. This absence from England is probably the reason why he was less than central to music making (particularly in opera) in the UK after the war.

What we get is a rattling good yarn, written in an approachable manner. Sir Thomas was something of an adventurer and Lucas seems to bring this out. What I missed though, was a feeling for the man behind the mask. Even after reading the book, I never felt that I undersood Sir Thomas. We don't get many of the subject's own words, probably because these are unreliable. And Lucas is similarly cautious about many of the stories, he even manages to track down the correct versions of some of them. Lucas rightly treats A Mingled Chime cautiously, but it is a shame that the only commentary on the conductor's activities (either personal or musical) comes from contemporary diarists and commentators. You never get Beecham on Beecham, perhaps this doesn't exist. But it left me feeling that the great adventure lacked an emotional heart.

For anyone familiar with Beecham's post-war reputation with his bon mots and lollipops, the serious music making and trail-blazing of the conductor's younger self is something of a revelation. The book lacks anything like a complete discography, perhaps such a thing would be too voluminous. But Lucas does mention key recordings, notably some of the live ones which shed light on the conductor's methods.

As a narrative of what Tommy did next, the book is superb. But it is less good on why. He seems to have had a long relationship with Lady Cunard, but towards the end of this he took up with others. We never get behind any of his relationship, never really understand them. Dora Labette, who gave up her promising stage career when Beecham stopped their relationship, evidently burned all his letters; though being as he entirely failed to tell her that the relationship was over perhaps indicates that even Beecham's letters might not reveal the real man. This might be the problem, that the material just does not allow us to see the inner Beecham, but Lucas never lets us know.

But there is one point to bear in mind, which might explain Lucas's reticence. In the last years of his life, Sir Thomas married someone over 50 years his junior. Shirley, Lady Beecham has been zealous in her guardianship and championship of Sir Thomas's reputation. The author also seems to have had access to Sir Thomas's sons. So perhaps we cannot expect too much exploration of Sir Thomas's psyche, and that such a book might have to wait.

Antwerp

To Antwerp for the weekend to sing with London Concord Singers. On Sunday evening we performed at St. Andrew's Church, on of the Monumental Churches; a huge and beautiful baroque church. Our programme, which ranged from Lassus and Peter Philips, to Jonathan Dove and Judith Bingham, was well received by a large audience. One of the more unnerving things about singing in such large venues is the worry that the audience will not fill up the space, though in this case they did in a gratifying manner. As with many similar acoustics, the church had a lovely sound quality but was a little difficult to get used to at first.

Sunday morning we sang mass at Antwerp Cathedral. Perched in the organ loft, high above the nave, we had a superb and unusual view of the building. We sang Lassus's Vinum Bonum mass along with motets by Peter Philips (who lived in Antwerp after he fled England).

Finally we sang at another monumental church, St. Paul's, giving another variation on our programme. St. Paul's is a similar large space to St. Andrews, with its own distinctive acoustic. All in all we managed to sing in three stunning baroque interios.

Les voix du plain-chant

I first started singing plainchant regularly around 15 years ago when I joined the Latin Mass choir at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church, Cadogan Street. We sang (and sing) from a Graduals based on the Graduale Romanum issued by the monks of Solesmes Abbey. The chant is highly marked up and the choir had its own way of singing the chant, this changed over time whilst I was there as one of the senior members of the choir sang in a schola directed by Mary Berry and some of this filtered down to us.

Because the Roman Catholic Church has always used chant, I had assumed that the way of singing chant was consistent over the ages. The first real inkling that I had that this was not so was when I read Thomas E. Muir's Roman Catholic Church Music in England, 1791 - 1914: A Handmaid of the Liturgy, which I reviewed for MusicWeb International (my review is here). The book's main preoccupation is the musical repertoire of English Roman Catholic Churches in the 18th and 19th centuries, based on surviving collections of music in a number of major Roman Catholic parishes. But Muir also has to touch on the subject of plainchant.

It was illuminating to realise that one of the themes of the 19th century was the Roman Catholic Church's attempts to centralise both authority and, as a corollary, also the plainchant sung and the way it was sung. The culmination of this was the final adoption of the Solesmes editions of plainchant by the Vatican, from which comes my own experience. But prior to the late 19th century the availability of printed/published matter to churches was many and various. There were many local variants and the church as a whole was highly dependent on the Medicean Graudals which were produced in the 17th century. It is important to realise that much of the chant in these graduals is simpler than that currently sung.

The Solesmes Monks in the 19th century were part of a back-to-basics campaign whereby they researched original medieval manuscripts and produced their chant edition based on these. The music of Palestrina and later, when it refers to plainchant, refers to the slightly simpler Medicean type chant. The other point to bear in mind was that this was generally sung rather slower.

Have you never listened to a performance of a piece of polyphony, which is based on chant, and been disturbed by the fact that when the chant is quoted in the polyphony it is performed in long notes at a noticeably slower speed than the way the chant would be sung on its own. This is sometimes because the composer was thinking of a way of performing chant at a slower, more measured and regular tempo than is used today. Based on the Solesmes medieval re-creation, we nowadays sing chant in a swift, mellifluous way based on the way it was imagined that it was sung.

It is a nice idea to try mixing the slower measured chant with polyphony in concert, but I have never dared to do so. I just don't think that modern audiences would take to it. As it is I am sometimes aware that my own appetite for chant is far greater than many people in the audience.

This awareness of the way that chant singing has changed over the centuries was re-inforced recently when I read Les voix du plain-chant by Marcel Pérèsand Jacques Cheyronnaud (Marcel Pérèsis the founder of that wonderful ensemble, Organum). In this book Pérèsgives a succinct history of plainchant up to the late-middle ages and then Cheyronnaud takes over with a more anthropological view of the succeeding centuries. This made me realise first of all that the 19th century Solesmesisation of the Catholic church music making was not something restricted to England.

A corollary of this Solesmesisation was that chant became a communal thing, the idea was that rather than having a few specialised chanters who were part of the liturgy, the whole choir did it.

I am currently reading another book in the same series, La chant de la memoire by Marcel Pérèsand Xavier Lacavalerie. This is a history of the Ensemble Organum, published in 2002 to celebrate the ensemble's 20th anniversary. But more than this, it is an explanation of how Pérès came to experiment with ways of singing early chant and how his various influences (Byzantine Chant, Corsican traditional polyphony, Sufi chant) were methods of trying to find living traditions whose elements could relate to the early chants. These are chants which have survived rather badly and whose notation relied on a heavy admixture of oral tradition.

Modern notation of chant means that someone who know the notation can come to a new piece and make a decent stab at singing it. Early chant is not like this, the notation is little more than a reminder and you have to find ways of getting behind the chant. Generally, performances of early chant in Western Europe rely on a projection of current vocal methods backwards, to create a smooth mellifluous sound.

Pérèson the other hand is concerned to explore the differentness of medieval music. In his 1997 Gramophone review of Pérèsrecording of Machaut's Messe de Nostre Dame, Fabrice Fitch (FF) a perceptive and highly relevant point:-

'Pérès's reading makes a point that is so often conveniently ignored: we have no idea what Machaut's singers actually sounded like, or how they produced the sound in their throats. Peter Phillips once made that point, envisaging the possibility that we might find the 'authentic' sound unbearable. As I have got used (slowly) to Organum's sound, I have been reminded how far Machaut's world is from our own. This recording questions a fundamental and untestable assumption about medieval polyphony.'

Reading these books has made me want to go back to Ensemble Organum's discs. I have a couple of them, both of early Roman Chant, but am now keen to hear others especially the Machaut disc which seems to have so divided critics.

We try to understand the past by projecting our own preoccupations and attitudes backwards. But I am beginning to learn that plainchant meant many different things depending on the period it was sung.

Prom 17

On Tuesday we went to the Late Night Prom which featured Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir performing four of Bach's motets - Komm,Jesu, Komm, Fürchte dich nicht, Jesu, meine Freude and Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied.

Now we know very little about the original forces for which these pieces were written. At least two of them seem to date from his Weimar years and current scholarship discounts some of the information that we once took for granted, such as the idea that Jesu, meine Freude was written for the funeral of the widow of the former post-master of Leipzig. One major problem is that few original manuscripts survive; though there is a limited amount of information that on at least one occasion Bach used instruments with the voices. Thus conductors are at liberty to make their own decisions, with even more freedom than usual.

On this occasion Gardiner used a choir of some 38 singers (with a mixture of men and women on the alto part). They were supported by a continuo department consisting of organ, 2 cellos, bassoon and double bass. The bassoon and one of the cellos sometimes alternated, but frankly in the depths of the Albert Hall I could not detect that much change in timbre. To counter the largeness of the ensemble, Gardiner encouraged his singers to sing lightly and fleetly. This was a performance notable for the wonderful lightness and flexibility of the vocal lines. The choir really belied its size and acted light a far smaller group.

This was coupled with a steadiness, almost slowness of speed. Having recently sung in Jesu, meine Freude I was surprised at how slow Gardiner took some of the fast movements. His speeds seemed to be aimed at clarity and expressiveness in the larger space, but what was removed from the performance the sense of virtuoso, bravura singing. The motets are tricky pieces and all have fast passagework sections which would seem to need bringing off with bravura - here they were more understated, as if subdued to the piece's spirituality.

These were wonderful performances of great pieces (in a sense you can never fail with the Bach motets). But my ideal performance would have used far fewer singers, with a far stronger sense of line and a feeling for the dazzling bravura of the pieces.

Susan Graham Prom

To the Cadogan Hall yesterday lunchtime for the second Proms Chamber Music event, a recital of French Song by Susan Graham and Malcolm Martineau. The recital was a revision and distillation of the programme of French song which she presented at the Wigmore Hall in February last year (see my blog entry). Some items were the same, she finished with Poulenc's La Dame de Montecarlo, but given Graham's communicativeness the programme was still a delight.

In fact, at times it was less like a song recital and rather more like a series of mini-operas. Martineau and Graham presented us with a wide variety of perfectly crafted but highly coloured and strongly characterised bon bouches; in the intro on the Proms site it is described as a menu gourmand. And like such a menu in a restaurant, I often long for fewer courses, with more time to savour each one.

Graham's virtues are many, but there were moments when I wondered whether she was communicating by visual acting (facial and other physical gestures) rather then via the words. I could not always follow the songs via the words, her diction was not always quite crisp enough. Graham has a superbly lovely voice and sometimes we rather luxuriated in it.

In the middle, the announcer brought Graham and Martineau on stage to introduce the songs and their partnership (now over 10 years old). It made me think that Graham would be a natural for the lecture recital.

Having heard similar programmes, from the same performers, in the Wigmore Hall and the Cadogan Hall I have to confess that I rather prefer the Cadogan Hall's more open, broader atmosphere. Its shape means that the audience seems to be nearer than in the long shoe-box of the Wigmore Hall though this shoebox perhaps means that Wigmore Hall may have the more perfect acoustic.

Handel returns to the Barber Institute

In the 1960's the Barber Institute in Birmingham created a series of staged performances of Handel's operas, under the Professor of Music Anthony Lewis. These stagings, using singers as distinguished as Janet Baker, were highly influential in the revival of Handelian opera seria in stagings which respected the music's form and the allocation of voice types.

Since 1986 opera performance has played a lesser role in the Barber programme but to celebrate Handel's anniversary and the 50th anniversary of the Institute's founding in 1959, they are staging Handel's Agrippina on 23rd, 25th and 26th September. Clive Timms, the Professor of Music, conducts with Emily van Evera as Agrippina. They are adopting an interesting mixed approach to the language of the piece, singing the recitatives in English and the arias in Italian.

Review of the Fairy Queen

My review of The Fairy Queen from the Proms is here, on Music and Vision,

Recent CD Review

My review of the Virgin Classics boxed set of six Handel operas from Alan Curtis is here, on MusicWeb International.
Never less than interesting, fine, creditable performances and incredible value ...

Review of The Woodward Scale

MusicWeb International has a review of last week's London Concord Singers concert, which included a repeat performance of my Woodward Scale. The review is here.

ETO Handelfest

My article on ETO's autumn Handel celebration, when they will be performing 5 of his operas, is here on Music and Vision.

The nearly man of English opera

John Eccles is one of the great might-have-beens of English musical history. Born in a musical family, he worked with Henry Purcell on a number of his stage works at the Drury Lane and Dorset Garden theatres. When, in 1695, a group of actors broke away and formed their own company at the Lincolns Inn Theatre, Eccles went with them. This split caused a difference of musical style between the two groups. Drury Lane continued to use professional singers in their productions and stuck to the lavish semi-opera format. Whereas at Lincoln's Inn Fields the emphasis was more on plays with music and it was the actors themselves who sang. This means that Eccles music for them could be less elaborate, but he developed a notably flexible style which related to the rhythms of English speech.

In spring 1701 Eccles took part in a competition organised by Lord Halifax whereby four composers wrote through-composed settings of a libretto by Congreve, The Judgement of Paris. After a series of performances, the operas were judged. In the cast of Eccles opera was Ann Bracegirdle, one of the foremost singing actresses of the day. But John Weldon's setting came first, with Eccles second. Eccles opera has now been recorded by Christian Curnyn and his Early Opera Company and it is a notable success. In fact, it is difficult to understand why the opera has been ignored. In the late 1980's, Antony Rooley and the Consort of Music presented the 3 surviving settings of The Judgement of Paris at the Proms and then had their own competition. This time Eccles did win.

The 1701 competition didn't lead to very much, unfortunately. In 1704 Eccles provided music for The British Enchanters which was to prove the last real semi-opera. In 1707 Eccles did set Congreve's masterly libretto Semele (which was later adapted for Handel), with the intention of presenting Ann Bracegirdle in the title role. Congreve's libretto was probably produced with the intention of the opening of a new theatre at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1705, but as Eccles did not deliver until 1707 they seem to have missed the boat. The few other English operas given in London were noticeably weaker than Eccles opera and the first Italian singers started to be presented and Italian opera gained a firm footing.

If you are interested in hearing this earlier version of Semele then there is a recording on Regis Records from the University of Florida, directed by Antony Rooley. Their account of the work is entirely creditably and until one of our early music groups takes up the works, Florida's account enables us to find out a little more about this nearly ran

The period 1701 to 1707 is one of those fascinating crux points. Eccles seems to be one of the few composers with the dramatic talents to produce viable English operas and you can't help feeling that if he and Congreve had produced Semele just that bit earlier, there might have been an English opera tradition to run alongside the Italian.

Prom 4

Last night (Sunday 19th July), the Danish Opera brought their production of Handel's Partenope. The cast were mainly Danish, spiced by two foreign counter-tenors (Andreas Scholl and Christoph Dumaux as Arsace and Armindo respectively), and accompanied by the period instrument group Concerto Copenhagen, conducted from the harpsichord by Lars Ulrik Mortensen. The only thing that they did not bring with them from Copenhagen was the production, this was a concert performance, albeit a rather lively one. As the original production was a modern dress one, it might be that we got the better deal.

Playing baroque music in the Albert Hall is tricky and requires special handling, playing baroque opera seria even more so. Many British conductors have had experienced the hall and most are able to make the necessary corrections so that the music sounds as good as it is able. But quite often, when listening to the Proms, you get the impression that the listeners to BBC Radio 3 rather get the better deal.

No-one seems to have explained to Lars Ulrik Mortensen that playing the Albert Hall is not like playing an ordinary venue. He launched into an account of the overture which went at a cracking pace. For the whole evening his tempi were on the brisk side and the whole opera finished some 20 minutes early. As far as the overture was concerned, all we could do was admire the brilliance of the playing of Concerto Cophenhagen. But when Inger Dam-Jensen launched into Partenope's first aria, I couldn't help but feel sorry for her. Dam-Jensen duly sparkled and twinkled as Partenope and I think that she has a fine technique. But given at such a rapid speed, her fast passage-work barely registered.

This was a problem for the whole evening. As the opera progressed, the cast seemed to more of a hang of the tricky acoustic and by the end they had succeeded in involving us in the performance. But much went by the way-side, evaporating into the aether before it reached us. Only Andreas Scholl managed to make each of his arias tell, and that is mainly because Arsace is such a drip that Handel gives him a succession of slow-ish arias. In his really fast number, even Scholl could not make his passage-work really tell, the faster notes did not make it past the heads of the promenaders.

This was a shame, because there was much to enjoy in the production. As I have said, Dam-Jensen was a sparkling Partenope. She is more soubrette, than diva (in Ariodante she would make a better Dalinda than Ginevra) but summoned up sufficient diva-ishness for the role, though a slightly bigger more dramatic voice would have been equally welcome. She charmed as well and made you understand why the men in the cast all find her so fascinating - Partenope is seriously hampered if the leading lady is not seriously sexy.

Though not strictly a production and done on the book, the cast all emoted and reacted to each other. This was useful as it helped to bring out the comedy. In this work, the comedy is all in the situation. Handel's lighter pieces are difficult to bring off properly as it is all too easy to send things up good and proper. Here the cast made the most of the rather ludicrous plot, all engendered because Arsace has run off to pursue Partenope whilst still engaged to Rosmira (Tuva Semmingsen), who in turn pursues and torments him whilst disguised as a man. Arsace's problems occur because he is an honorable man, except when it comes to love. So he honours a promise to Rosmira not to give her away, even though this would get him out of his problems. So the engine of the comedy becomes the problems that occur.

The cast made the most of the dialogues of confusion, whilst making sure that we sympathised with the characters; we were never in doubt that the emotion was real.

For Handel's audience, there would have been other aspects to the comedy, the sex role thing. The heroine, a woman, becomes general of her own army. One leading man (Arsace) was played by a castrato, the other leading man (Armindo) was played by a woman with another woman playing a female character (Rosmira) who spends most of the opera dressed as a man! We lost some of this. Scholl is a counter-tenor rather than a sexually challenged castrato and Armindo was played by another counter-tenor rather than a woman, which was a shame.

Scholl was his usual wonderful self, perhaps sending up his generally po-faced persona a little as an Arsace who just can't make up his mind and wants to have his cake and eat it. It helps that he can spin the most wonderful line, and make it heard. Christoph Dumaux seems to have a higher, slightly sharper edged line, but is still supple and has a rather more feminine quality to his voice than Scholl. This helped with the character who is almost as much of a drip as Arsace, and it takes until the middle of Act 2 before he dares tell Partenope that he loves her!

Her third lover, the war-like Emilio, was tenor Bo Kristian Jensen. Jensen sang the role finely, though he rather underprojected the more war-like bits. I had a suspicion that the role lay a little low for Jensen's high lyric voice. At ENO, John Mark Ainsley gave us a slightly more dramatic account of the role.

Tuva Semmingsen was musical but rather light voiced as Rosmira. The role is almost as big as Partenope's and she has some strong, passionate arias. Merighi, the original Rosmira, was a fine actress who specialised in men. As Handel already had a woman specialising in trouser roles, he seems to have written the plum part of Rosmira as a consolation prize for Merighi, something for her to get her teeth into.

Semmingsen is a fine Handelian, but you never felt she was going to split blood. She was appealing rather than appalling, and Rosmira must appall at times. Only at the end, when Arsace says they must duel bare-chested, does she finally collapse.

Palle Knudsen made a strong Ormonte.

At the end, instead of giving us Partenope's final aria as written by Handel, we got a duet for Partenope and Armindo (from Sosarme I think). This was lovely, and beautifully performed, but wasn't what Handel wrote and the programme book didn't even tell us of the change.

Proms Widget

I have just started reading John Lucas's biography of Sir Thomas Beecham and it has set me off thinking about concert programmes.

When Sir Thomas Beecham made his debut conducting the Halle Orchestra, it was at a gala concert arranged to celebrate his father's elevation to Mayor of St. Helens. Beecham was a last minute stand-in and the orchestra played works which they had previously played at a concert with their conductor Hans Richter. The programme was as follows:-

Prelude and Introduction to Act 3 of Die Meistersinger
Overture to Tannhauser
Beethoven's 5th Symphony
3rd movement of Tchaikovsky's Pathetique Symphony
Prelude to Act 3 of Lohengrin
Berlioz's Hungarian March
Plus opera arias by Gounod, Delibes and Verdi.

I doubt that today Mark Elder and the Halle would ever consider assembling such programme, even for a one off gala. This sort of goodie bag assemblage was typical of the programming of the day. Beecham's debut as conductor, with his own orchestra in St. Helens - a largely amateur group. The programme contained Mendelssohn's Ruy Blas overture, Rossini's William Tell overture, Grieg's 1st Peer Gynt Suite, Elgar's Spanish Serenade, Samuel Coleridge Taylor's Four Characteristic Waltzes , a group of piano solos and Mendelssohn's 1st Piano concerto!

This sort of programming was not unusual, the Proms under Sir Henry Wood consisted of rather distinct halves, with a serious first half and a series of novelty items in the the second, the whole lasting some 3 hours.

What this leads me to wonder is, when did concert programmes become so serious? I'm not saying that we should entirely go back to cornet solos and novelty songs, but with commentators constantly wondering how to attract young people, perhaps concert promoters should look at how the basic concert programme is constructed. Nowadays we have an overture, a concerto and a symphony, and if not this, something like it. No-one would ever consider scheduling a single movement of a symphony and certainly would not mix things up in the way early programmes did.

We seem to have lost something, serious classical music has become a little too po-faced. Yes, you do still get concerts full of popular mixtures, such as the Victor Hochhauser spectaculars at the Albert Hall (do they still exist?). But whereas a conductor like Beecham or Wood would consider mixing such programming with serious works, including contemporary works, no-one nowadays would do so.

I'm not sure how Sir Harrison Birtwistle would feel if one of his works was programmed in a concert which finished with Leroy Anderson's Bugler's Holiday. But surely when the LSO and the LPO are assembling programmes they could be a little more varied and imaginative. Less worried at being seen as frivolous.

Something of this can happen in early music concerts, where the nature of the material means that conductors have to be imaginative in the way they mix items. I Fagiolini did a programme at the Cadogan Hall which was themed on music from the Carnival period, mixing joyful staged Carnival japes with the more serious Lenten music. Our fore-father would completely understood. Isn't it about time that we considered this in ordinary programming

Partenope

We're going to Handel's Partenope at the Proms on Sunday (our first Prom of the year). The performance comes from Royal Danish Opera with Inger Dam-Jensen and Andreas Scholl. I can think of Handel operas I would rather see, especially as Partenope does crop up rather more than most. Not only has there been an ENO outing recently, but Opera Theatre Company did it at the Linbury not so long ago. And further in the past, there were productions by the Handel Society (with Paul Esswood) and Midsummer Opera. It crops up, I think, because whilst not quite a comedy it is a satirical look at the conventions of opera seria (something the ENO production seemed to miss rather). A big plus point of the Proms performance is that it is being done properly, with 2 intervals. Too often, we've found concert performances of Handel's 3 act operas and oratorios shoehorned into a single interval format, which inevitably makes for a long sit as well as not giving the work the structure that Handel intended.

Edward Downes

Edward Downes was a conductor whose presence on the podium at the Royal Opera House was always an impetus to attend, particularly in Verdi. His performances always seemed to engender a very special atmosphere in the orchestra and he was one of those conductors who never seemed to be trying to convert the composer's vision into something their own; Downes's Verdi was very much the real Verdi.

I had always understood that his lack of progress to the top at the Royal Opera House had been partly to do with his political views, but this has not surfaced in the recent obituaries so I must put it down to urban myth.

Woodward Scale tonight

This week has been busy with rehearsals for tonight's London Concord Singers concert, at St. Michael's Church, Chester Square, Victoria. We are giving the second performance of my piece The Woodward Scale along with music by Dallapiccola, Judith Bingham, Howard Helvey, Lassus, Peter Philips, Byrd and De Monte. This will be THe Woodward Scale's second outing, but its first performance in central London, as the premiere took place in Uxbridge.

Review of L'Amour de loin

Kaija Saariaho's L'Amour du loin received its UK premiere at a concert at the Barbican, and the ENO bravely decided to give the work its first UK staging. The work was directed by Daniele Finzi Pasca, who has previously directed for Cirque du Soleil. We saw the final performance on Saturday 11th July.

The piece has only 3 solo roles, Clemence (Joan Rogers), Jaufre (Roderick Williams) and Faith Sherman (The Pilgrim). In the opera Clemence lives in Tripoli and Jaufre, a troubador, lives in France. The Pilgrim acts as a go between and the opera ends with Jaufre journeying to Tripoli, falls ill on the journey and dies in Clemence's arms. There is over 2 hours of music, so the opera is quite static and more like an oratorio.

The decision to use Pasca as director seems to have been motivated by a desire to bring in someone who could articulate this rather intractably static piece. Pasca brought magic and flair to the proceedings and gave us a series of ravishing stage pictures. He doubled each of the singers with 2 dancers and each scene was preceded by a shadow theatre performance whose performers almost became part of the main action, in a rather annoying way.

The Coliseum does not have the most sophisticated stage machinery, but using light, swathes of fabric and flying people Pasca created magic. A visual interpretation of the music. The problem with this was that it almost became a dance piece. Though all three singers are accomplished stage actors, Pasca rather under used them. The moments when they were integrated into the action, such as when Williams's Jaufre danced off the stage, made it clear what the staging could have been. But too often Williams and Rogers were danced around, surrounded by loveliness, but never quite participated. I began to wonder whether Pasca had ever directed singers before, whether he trusted them.

That said, the musical performance was impressive. Rogers floated her long lines beautifully and emoted stunningly. Williams was similarly impressive and engaging as Jaufre. Sherman, dressed in the strangest way almost like an alien. The programme referred to the role as being androgynous but in fact the result just looked wierd. Sherman was good in the role. She is a talented young singer based in Houston, but as often recently in ENO productions you do wonder whether they couldn't have cast the role closer to home.

The chorus was off stage for all but the end and I think the staging would have been stronger if they had been on stage, able to interact with the other performancers.

Saariaho's music has lovely textures and transparencies, which were well brought out by Edward Gardner and the ENO orchestra. But I did not find the same interest in the vocal lines. Granted they are melodic and singable, but ultimately they seemed rather unmemorable. Taking the music and the staging separately, I am not sure whether they would have held my attention, but combined the result was a form a magic.

I have not heard Saariaho's work in the original French, but having heard it in English I would like to. I felt that I would like to do so, perhaps the vocal lines would seem more melodic, more liquid. Richard Stokes's translation was serviceable, but you could not help feeling that the French would work better.

The evening was a magical and impressive triumph for ENO. But I was still left with niggling doubts.

Review of Eliogabalo (2)

So how did David Fielding's production at Grange Park Opera do? We saw it on Sunday 5th July, which was its last night so it would certainly have been well run in.

Fielding (who both directed and designed) chose to update the opera to Italy in the 1980's giving it a Euro-trash sort of look. But then, the only other production of the opera that I read about, the one from Brussels, also updated the location to something near the present. Frankly, it would be an interesting novelty to see the opera done in a style approaching that of the 17th century.

The big virtue of Fielding's production was that, whatever was happening on stage, you always knew who everyone was. The three mistresses (or potential mistresses) Eritrea(Claire Booth), Gemmira (Sinead Campbell-Wallace) and Atilia (Yvette Bonner) wore blue, green and red dresses respectively. Giiuliano (James Laing) was always in his army fatigues, Alessandro (Julia Riley) was dressed as Eligabalo's head of security, with shades, a pony tail, dark jacket, white shirt, string tie and huge belt buckle. Riley was a revelation as not only did she look masculine, but she behaved so. She is tall with a slim physique, which of course helps. But she also neatly conveyed the body language; it never felt like a stunt, merely part of the character.

Of the more comic characters Lenia was dressed glamorously with a short white dress and high-heels like some porn fantasy nurse; the big surprise was how brilliantly sexy Tim Walker looked in the role (and he had good legs). I was unclear whether Walker's character was meant to be a transvestite or not, but it didn't matter. My only complaint was that Cavalli intended Lenia to be a comic older woman. Nerbulone (Joao Fernandes) came on wearing the full Village People leather-man gear, complete with a huge moustache. He certainly looked the part, though Fernandes body movements sometimes gave him away as when relaxed he tended to revert to rather too camp a manner. Nerbulone as gay leatherman did not make much sense of the plot, but it certainly made for a striking entrance as Nerbulone arrived on motorcycle (of which more later). Zotico (Ashley Catling) was your typical peroxided gay boy, though Catling did not quite have the figure for it so that he looked less than perfect in pink hot pants. The other drawback with this character was that the historical Eliogabalo was fond of real men, not boys. The Roman's had no problem with an emperor who liked younger men, but if he did so he had to take the active role; it was unseemly (and more) for the Emperor to take the passive role to an older man (bear in mind that Eliogabalo was only 18 when he died).

So far, so good. But Fielding seems to have let the setting rather go to his head. Eliogabalo and Eritrea made their first appearance in a sports car (which seemed to be a fully functioning electric one). This car made a second appearance at the end, draped with the dead bodies! And, as mentioned, Nerbulone made his first entrance on a motorcycle. Two different people commented to me that this was one of the most camp productions that they had seen in a long time. At one point selections of sex toys appear; Fielding seems to have been constantly trying to find new, startling things for Lenia and Zotico to do. These two act as co-conspirators and henchmen in the plotting so they get lots of comic scenes to do together.

Still, Fielding kept the capers well away from the serious characters. To his credit, you never felt that he was trying to find things to keep us amused when the serious plot was going on. He always took these characters seriously and allowed the singers to convey the real pain that was felt. There were lots of laughs in the production, but Fielding could keep things quiet when he needed to.

I think that the main miscalculation was in the staging of the female senate scene at the end of Act 1. The idea of this is as a cover to allow Eliogabalo to seduce Gemmira. Presumably on the basis that Gemmira was too high minded to fall for anything else. Fielding chose to stage it as some sort of Bunny Girl pole dancing competition. Though the scene was funny, it did not make complete dramatic sense and added to the feeling of unnecessary camp which Fielding brought to the production.

The other area where the updating did note help the logic of the drama was in the way Eritrea's plight came out. Eritrea loves Giuliano, but she is desperate for Eliogabalo to marry her because he has stained her reputation by kissing her in public. So even though Eliogabalo has dropped her, she spends the remainder of the opera chasing him, trying to get him to marry her despite loving Giuliano. This might have made sense to a 17th century audience, though I wonder. But moving the plot to the 20th century means that this made no sense to a modern audience.

That said, the set piece at the end of Act 2 (the meal at which Eliogabalo intends to poison Alessandro and seduce Gemmira) descends into complete farce apparently according to Cavalli's intentions. Nerbulone (who is acting as waiter) drinks all of the love potion and falls asleep thus failing to go and get Alessandro. And the meal is abandoned because owls appear (a bad omen evidently). Fielding's handling of this scene was adept, building the tension as the farce developed. Similarly the gladiator fight was well done, if a little over the top. But quite how you stage a gladiator fight without it being over the top, I am not sure. The set here though, added to this impact as it involved a huge statue of a woman with multiple breasts, a sort of anthropomorphic version of the she wolf who suckled Romulus and Remus. Logical though this may have been, it was one of those over the top touches which I think should have been toned down.

All this might have worked, if the title role had been filled with something like the charisma and terror which Eliogabalo needs to inspire. Renata Pokupic sang beautifully and captured something of Elogabalo's bad boy image. But she had nothing of Julia Riley's ability to convey Eliogabalo's masculinity and nothing of the real intensity which the character should have. In the opening scenes she was costumed in a way which was obviously intended to convey rock star glam, but really only came over as looking like Lulu on a bad day. The subsequent acts were better, but Pokupic's quasi masculine posturing too often seemed put on.

This would not have mattered if Pokupic could created a character that it was credible that others would be frightened of. This just didn't happen. Like that other despot of uncertain temperament, Tamerlano, Eliogabalo needs to have us believe that he can and will do anything, including cowing grown men. No matter how beautifully Pokupic sang we didn't believe this. And it was telling that Pokupic seemed far more comfortable in female guise at the end of Act 1.

Claire Booth was a moving Eritrea, desperately torn between Giuliano and Eliogabalo. And Sinead Campbell was profoundly moving as Gemmira, the woman who does not want to be loved by Eliogabalo. Similarly as their respective lovers, both James Laing and Julia Riley were admirable. Each pair of lovers was given the chance to be a little gut wrenching, and there were so admirably whilst staying within the confines of Cavalli's musical style. Yvette Bonner's Atilia did not, I think, quite manage the tricky divide of style that she has, hovering between serious and comic, it didn't help that she had a couple of lapses in tuning.

The bevy of comic parts were also well sung, though Fielding's direction meant we were more often laughing at antics rather than listening to the singing.

Christian Curnyn was in the pit conducting a period band. They accompanied well and filled Grange Park Opera's small theatre quite vividly. Along the way there was some fine solo playing.

At the end of the opera, Cavalli cops out and unlike Handel, who daringly has Bajazet commit suicide on stage at the end of Tamerlano, Cavalli dispatches Eliogabalo, Lenia and Zotica off stage. We learn of it just in a narration. But Fielding obviously felt that this was not enough, so that the narrations were accompanied by a great deal of gore and the dead bodies of the three, draped across the sports car (this time driven by Atilia). Quite a coup, but the music just did not seem to chime with the visual images.

This mismatch between visuals and audio was something that at least three different people mentioned to me about the production. Whilst I had no problem hearing an authentically performed and sung 17th century Venetian opera whilst looking at a modern farce/gore-fest, others seem to have found the discrepancy too much. There was more than one comment that they could look at the stage or listen to the music, but not both.

I am not convinced that Eliogabalo is one of Cavalli's finest operas. And despite the fact that David Fielding was keen to direct it at Grange Park, you get the feeling that he chose it more for the outrageous possibilities the plot gave him than for any intrinsic merit. To often Fielding seemed to be hurrying us along, making sure we didn't stop too long and get bored.

For me the best bit was at the end, where the two pair of surviving lovers have a glorious duet. Cavalli at his best.

Review of Cunning Little Vixen

My review of The Cunning Little Vixen at Grange Park Opera is here, on Music and Vision.

Review of Eliogabalo (1)

Handel had a penchant for basing his operas on librettos from Venice in the late 17th century, though of course these needed some tweaking to make them suitable. Handel's Serse is based on the libretto for Cavalli's opera of the same name. Handel's libretto, though, loses all but one of the comic characters and expands the arias for the principal characters.

Why, you may ask, begin a review of Cavalli's Eliogabalo with a discussion of Handel's Serse? Well, most people have heard at lease something from Serse and few have even heard of Eliogabalo.

Cavalli's (and Handel's) Serse deals with a rather imperious and slightly demented king interfering in the love life of his brother by commandeering his brother's fiancee. This fiancee has a sister who is desperate for a man. The actions are complicated by the actions of an array of comic servants. At the end, Serse sees reason and all ends happily.

In Eliogabalo an imperious and demented king interferes in the love life of two of his generals, commandeering their fiancees (one at a time). There is a third heroine who is desperate for a man. The actions are complicated by an array of comic servants. At the end Eliogabalo is killed by his soldiers whilst trying to rape his general's fiancee, but the good triumph.

Eliogabalo is rather like Serse on acid. It contains all the elements of a Cavalli plot from the period, but threaded round a lead character who is based on an historical character known to be mad and sexually voracious (and bisexual).

Much was made in the press of Eliogabalo's bisexuality but I am unclear of how much of this was actually in the libretto. At Grange Park Opera, director and designer David Fielding described the character Zotico as Eliogabalo's pimp and boy-friend. But in fact the character fits one of Cavalli's standard comic servant stereotypes (if you drop the gay sex).

It seems that Eliogabalo was meant to be decadent, but quite how much this would have been reflected on stage I am unclear. Simply portraying him as an extreme sexual predator would be more than enough to make people think.

If you get beyond the frou-frou and the tendency for modern directors to give the work some sort of outrageous contemporary slant, then what we have is typical Venetian opera. Half-sex comedy, half serious testing of relationships.

In the comic corner there is the usual elderly woman, Lenia (sung by a man) who is still desperate for sex. There are young page boy/valets (Zotico and Nerbulone) who are keen to help their betters in their intrigues, one of whom (Nerbulone) is quite prepared to pretend to like the old lady. They are generally comic, but have serious moments.

In the serious corner there are two couples, (Alessandro and Eritrea, Giuliano and Gemmira) desperately in love with each other, but whose love is seriously undermined, tested and generally interfered with by Eliogabalo, the imperious king who is impervious to reasonable behaviour. The two couples are always serious and never comic, Cavalli makes sure that we take their plight very seriously. There is also a third heroine (Atilia) who takes things far more lightly and is permanently on the look out for a man. Cavalli takes her seriously, but makes it clear that she takes love far lighter and where she can.

Sitting between these two groups is Eliogabalo. He is not strictly a comic character, but his actions are so outrageous and they are facilitated the comic characters Lenia and Zotico. But Eliogabalo can't be completely comic, we must believe that he is dangerous enough for both Giuliano and Alessandro to not dare to confront him about his stealing their loved ones.

The opera opens with Eliogabalo getting tired of Eritrea and looking round for another woman. He then makes three attempts to get Gemmira into his bed. At the end of Act 1 he disguises himself as woman and holds and all female senate. At the end of Act 2 he has Alessandro and Gemmira to dinner and tries to poison Alessandro and give Gemmira and love potion. In Act 3 he holds a gladiatorial games, attended by Alessandro and Giuliano, whilst he attempts Gemmira's virtue. In each case he fails, and fails in a way which is comic, almost farcical. Cavalli is playing with us, mixing comedy and tragedy, as did most of the Venetian operas of the period.

This is something which can be difficult to bring off. There is A LOT of plot, crammed into over two and a half hours of music. Also there are a lot of characters. Cavalli keeps things moving, recitative and arioso lead into short arias, always the music is flexibly on the move. A problem, for me, was that Cavalli's music was not always completely interesting. If you have ever been to a moderately uncut version of Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione di Poppea then you will get the idea of what the plot and the music is like, except that Monteverdi is a master at turning out wondrous little arias which ravish the soul. In Eliogabalo Cavalli only manages this once at the end.

In part 2 of this article I will consider how David Fielding's production at Grange Park Opera managed to get over all these hurdles.

Buxton Festival

The Buxton Festival starts next week and is, as usual, full of goodies. Stephen Medcalf is directing Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia with Mary Plazas in the title role and a cast which includes Donal Maxwell and Jonathan Best. The production is conducted by Festival Director Andrew Greenwood. Plazas is one of those singers who successfully manages to combine singing in bel canto with a wider repertoire (future plans include a new opera by Eleanor Alberga)

And Giles Havergal is directing Messager's Veronique. Messager's stage works are still not often come across. Grange Park did Fortunio 9 or 10 years ago (and the Opera Comique is doing Fortunio next season); so it is all the more welcome that Buxton are giving this lovely comic opera an airing. Victoria Joyce sings the title role with a cast including Yvonne Howard , Mark Stone and Donald Maxwell, conducted by Wyn Davies.

There is a concert performance of Mendelssohn's comic opera Camacho's Wedding, with Donald Maxwell, Jonathan Best, Yvonne Howard and Victoria Joyce.

As well as the festival's own productions, there are a number of exciting visitors. The Classical Opera Company are bringing their production of Mozart's Mitridate Re di Ponto. The Opera Theatre Company are bringing Annilese Miskimmon's production of Handel's Orlando, with William Towers as Orlando and Jonathan Best as Zoroastro, conducted by Christian Curnyn. And Psappha perform Maxwell Davies The Lighthouse with James Oxley, Jonathan Best and Damian Thantrey (who created the title role in my opera Garrett).

Concerts include Voces8 in the newly reopened theatre at Chatsworth, the Sofia Orthodox Choir, the Academy of Ancient Music in an all Haydn Symphony programme, Mary Plazas and Ann Taylor in a programme of bel canto arias and a recital from Jonathan Lemalu.

The festival has grown considerably since its early days. There are now 6 operas on offer, over 40 concerts, a literary series and festival walks.

Review of "Carmen"

My review of Carmen from the Opera Comique in Paris is now on-line here, at Music and Vision.

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.