Review of A Midsummer Night's Dream at ENO

How to avoid Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream becoming simply cute; that is a problem all directors face. In the play, a director has the freedom of working with adults. Bill Bryden's National Theatre production created fascinating amoral creatures whose presence on stage was ubiquitous; and there is evidence that in Shakespeare's time the Mechanicals may have doubled as Fairies.

But in Britten's opera the director is constrained by the fact that the fairies are, of necessity, young boys. We have all seen productions of the opera where time constraints have meant the fairy chorus did little other than line up in serried ranks. For his new production at the London Coliseum (which I saw at the premiere on Thursday 19th May) Christopher Alden seems to have taken this as his starting point; if the fairies are played by school boys then lets make them school boys. After all Britten is known to have had a series of close, platonic relationships with school boys. And to a certain extent this is valid, the Britten's fairies are not cute and there is certainly a disturbing element underlying the opera.

Alden and his designers, Charles Edwards (sets) and Sue Wilmington (costumes), set the opera in a 1950's school. The single set is a profoundly grim, grey school yard bordered by a 2 storey building, classrooms glimpsed through the corridors. The prevailing look of the opera is grey, with little colour and only during Pyramus and Thisbe do we have any significant colour.

At the opening, in silence, a man wanders round the stage, apparently re-visiting his old school. He finally sits down on the ground and falls asleep. He is joined by a teenage boy (Puck, Jamie Manton) who sits down next to him and echoes his position. Puck seems to be the Stray Man's younger self. But throughout the next two acts the Stray Man remains a silent participant and observer of the action, watching his younger self.

The schoolboy fairies, all in neat school uniform, file into the class-rooms standing at the windows. Oberon appears at one window. Iestyn Davies was ill with a throat/chest infection so he acted the role and William Towers sang it from a side box. Given that much of Oberon's action was limited and he appeared mainly in the classroom at the rear of the set or down-stage left (Alden's favourite position for the teachers to lurk in the school yard), it was a shame some way of having Towers shadow Davies could not have been found. Oberon is in buttoned up 1950's dress and smokes a lot.

Tytania (Anna Christie) appears at another window, she seems to be the music mistress. We are in Alden land so all is severe and the singers actions are stiff and stylised. Tytania is profoundly severe and unsympathetic in looks and this rather spilled over into her vocal delivery. The Changeling Boy (Dominic Williams) is her favourite pupil, one whom Oberon desires. Puck isn't Oberon's henchman, but his previous favourite, sullenly still doing Oberon's bidding but jealous and surly. This Puck never goes anywhere, but lurks in the school yard, observing Oberon's pursuit of the Changeling Boy. Oberon's magic is an apparently never-ending supply of cigarettes laced with wacky-baccy.

The lovers are also school children. We first encounter Lysander (Allan Clayton) and Hermia (Tamara Gura) lurking behind the school dust-bins. They never flee either. Demetrius (Benedict Nelson) is a rugger bugger with co-horts who jeer at Helena's (Kate Valentine) pursuit of him.

Here we hit a problem. Britten saw the three groups (Fairies, Lovers, Mechanicals) as different, belonging to separate worlds and each affected differently by the magic wood. He used musical means to differentiate between them. Alden blurred this, making both the Fairies and the Lovers be school-kids. Further blurring occurs, though some of the Mechanicals are school handymen, some are teachers like Oberon and Tytania.

At the Mechanicals meeting in act 1, Bottom (Willard White) sits on a stool and sews costumes. Alden seems to have made a most determined effort to subvert the usual portrayal of Bottom, but the result is simply glum. In trying to avoid the standard hackneyed portrayal, Alden has produced the most unfunny and laboured mechanicals that I had ever seen. It wasn't helped that Leo Hussain's speeds sometimes seemed on the steady side, with some passages rather over deliberate.

Tytania's bower was simply her luring in the school yard smoking with Oberon. The production as a whole had rather a lot of lurking and over portentous stylised movement.

In Act 2 the waccy-backy starts to take over. After a whiff of it, Bottom starts stripping off. There is no asses head, the horrified reaction of the Mechanicals seems overdone and pointless, surely the sight of Willard White's bare torso isn't that bad. Tytania follows suit, to reveal a very sensible bra, and they start a highly sexual encounter watched by the schoolboys. These are now transformed, all ripped clothing, shades and drinking. Bad boys indeed, we seem to be channelling Lindsay Anderson's film If. Mustard Seed and co. spend rather a lot of time tying the Stray Man up to one of the rubbish bins, whilst Tytania and Bottom's encounter turns sado-masochistic.

When the four lovers appear for the final scenes of Act 2, Alden seems to be channelling Lindsay Kemp as the four flirt rather coyly with polymorphous sexuality; as with much else in the production, Alden produced something which was self-conscious in its daring and rather than edgy, surely he could have followed Lindsay Kemp completely and had the lovers exploring all possible couplings in a more committed fashion. Finally when Oberon sends Puck off to get the four lovers, Puck torches the school.

But these echoes of If chime badly with Britten's score and for the finale of Act 2 Alden is reduced to parading the boys in front of the burning school and having the Stray Man meet a Mystery Woman. All very portentous. But we've looked at the cast list and finally worked out that the Stray Man is in fact Theseus (Paul Whelan) reliving his school days.

Alden's operatic fantasy on If comes to a grinding halt in Act 3, Britten's opera just doesn't go there. The first 2 acts certainly have uncomfortable echoes of man-boy interaction, which deserve exploring. But in being so very literal, Alden leaves himself with a problem. He solves this by having the Lovers and the Mechanicals all lost in a maze on stage, with Oberon and Tytania lurking in their usual position, down-stage left. The reconciliations are done in a dream-like way with large chunks of the nothing happening on-stage. Oberon and Tytania do finally dance off, with the music being provided by the fairies now conducted by the Changeling Boy.

The Lovers re-appear now dressed as young adults and join Theseus and Hippolyta (Catherine Young) in one of the boxes to watch the entertainment.

Pyramus and Thisbe was simply vulgar and crude. Alden's determination to break the mould led him to drop the operatic send-up in the mini-opera and replace it by vulgar farce. Starveling (Simon Butteriss) constantly moons at the stage audience, Snout (Peter van Hulle) is drunk, loses his clothes, pees on stage, Snug (Graeme Danby) is a thug who rapes Flute as Thisbe (Michael Colvin), with Jonathan Veira's Quince trying to keep order. The Bergamasque Dance is done in front of the drop and has them pretending to be a 1950's skiffle band.

For the closing scenes we are back to the opening. As Theseus has stayed behind and lurks during the wondrous closing music. Oberon's final words are sung directly to Theseus, telling him to leave. The balance in the ensemble, Now until the break of day, was distinctly odd, perhaps because the boys, Oberon and Tytania were all so spread out. Having Oberon and Tytania deliver so much of their material up-stage from within the school was a mistake as it left them so far from the audience, and from the conductor.

Leo Hussain seem to encourage some slightly odd moments of balance within the orchestra, particularly with the percussion. But the orchestra played well for him.

I came out of the theatre feeling numb and depressed. Quite a few of the audience left at the interval and when Alden came on stage there was a good mixture of boos and bravos, Alden's smirk seemed to say it all. The production was a success if it stirred things up, no matter how distant from Britten's conception.

All might have been acceptable if Alden had got coruscating performances from the singers. I have seen plenty of productions which I have come to like because the director has achieve such strong performances, even though I disliked the concept. Here, the Lovers sang well enough but I never quite believed them as people, the sight and sound just didn't gell.

And in many ways Alden just didn't go far enough, the production needed real edge and daring. Once you got over the shock of the concept, there was little else; perhaps Alden found himself limited by what you can do if you are working with children on stage.

William Towers sang beautifully as Oberon. The role lies rather low for many modern counter-tenors and you often get to hear rather a lot of gear changes. Not with Towers, he produced beautifully even and seamless tone from top to bottom. I would love to hear him to the piece on stage, perhaps not here though. Things might improve dramatically when Iestyn Davies gets his voice back, so that there is more obvious interaction between him and Tytania and Puck. Anna Christe sang Tytania efficiently but without much charm in the voice. I have only profound admiration for Jamie Manton. He is an ex treble who has appeared on the operatic and theatrical stage. His Puck was finely declaimed, and he did everything that Alden required of him.

Ultimately I come back to my thoughts on Terry Gilliam's Damnation of Faust. In that production it seemed simplistically reductive to simply make Hell a Nazi fantasy. In A Midsummer Nights Dream, by making the school connection to realistically definite, Alden seems to have been similarly reductive. Surely there is a more effective way of exploring the disturbing undertones of this opera. I didn't find the production disturbing and, rather worryingly, it seemed in danger of becoming boring.

I am fast coming to the conclusion that A Midsummer Nights Dream does not really work in a theatre this size. Most of my most memorable encounters with the work have been in far smaller theatres (Toby Robertson's Scottish Opera production anyone?).

ENO new season

ENO have announced their 2011/12 season and it is a mixture of delights and disappointments.

Headline news is that Tom Morris will be directing the first UK staging of John Adams The Death of Klinghoffer, thus filling an important and significant gap in UK opera life. Three other contemporary operas will be receiving their premieres and here lies the mixture of delight and an element of disappointment. Benedict Andrews makes a welcome return after his fine Return of Ulysses and will direct Detlev Glanert's Caligula. And Wolfgang Rihm's Jakob Lenz will be directed by Sam Brown at the new Hampstead Theatre. The final contemporary premiere is part of the 2012 Olympic celebration; Rufus Norris will direct Damon Albarn's Doctor Dee.

Now each of the above operas is interesting and in some ways important, it will be good to hear them. But somewhere along the line we seem to have lost the commitment to contemporary British opera. Damon Albarn is perfectly entitled to write an opera and it may well be a fine work, but for ENO's season to select a piece by someone from the pop world and ignore music by most of the toilers at the British operatic coal face seems vastly unfair.

There is one other significant premiere, a 20th century one this time. Miecyslaw Weinberg's The Passenger which makes a welcome appearance in David Poutney's Bregenz production.

The other new productions are, with one exception, renewals of the core repertoire. Fiona Shaw directs The Marriage of Figaro, hurrah! Deborah Warner is in charge of Eugene Onegin, an opera which ENO seems to have been particularly cavalier with new productions. But whose to complain when the cast consists of Amanda Echalaz, Toby Spence and Audun Iversen (who recently was boring Albert in Covent Garden's revival of Werther -I must add that Albert is supposed to be boring).

Richard Jones is having a go at The Tales of Hoffman, something of a grave-yard for directors as it is surprisingly difficult to get right. Jones has a strong cast, Barry Banks, Gerogia Jarman (as the heroines), Clive Bayley (as the villains), Christine Rice as Muse/Nikolauss and Simon Butteriss as the character tenor. There is no word on the ENO web-site about what editions they are using. ENO have a tradition of sticking to the spoken dialogue version and using innovative and up to date musical editions, so here's hoping. But Hoffman is an opera which needs editing, you can't just perform everything the composer wrote as he died before it was finished. The list is completed with David Alden doing Billy Budd and Jonathan Kent The Flying Dutchman. The last is perhaps the most interesting, Rameau's Castor et Pollux directed by Barry Kosky. This represents a rare London's serious staging of a Rameau opera.

There are just 4 revivals, Tosca, Der Rosenkavalier, The Elixir of Love and Madam Butterfly. Der Rosenkavalier is notable for Amanda Roocroft's first Marschallin, something to be certainly looked forward too. I think I would have liked a few more revivals, giving directors the chance to re-work productions. Surely a British dramatic soprano could have been found to take on Turandot? And how about an account of Lucia di Lammermoor which uses a voice as dramatic as Sutherland's rather than Anna Christy's accurate but rather little girl coloratura?

This is in many ways an ambitious season, but if any discernible direction can be detected it seems to represent ENO moving firmly towards a more European position, with it looking less and less like the English National opera. The management seem to be worryingly wedded to the idea of constantly renewing the core repertoire. Yes, The Passenger is a worthy addition but they had a perfectly serviceable Eugene Onegin in Julia Hollander's production so couldn't we have had one of Tchaikovsky's lesser know operas. Having had Lucrezia Borgia this season, then Italian bel canto is back to being restricted to Donizetti comedies. Isn't it about time someone offered Claire Rutter a Norma in a big house, to complement her successful assumption of the role at Grange Park. And in a house responsible for so much lively and innovative staging, isn't it about time that Meyerbeer's sacred monster's were addressed. Covent Garden tried to do it by importing John Dew's production of Les Huguenots in the '90s, with conspicuous lack of success, but someone needs to try again.

But for me, the biggest lack is British opera. Not dim Victoriana and English cow-pat. I'd love to see RVW's The Pilgrim's Progress but realise it is not sufficiently sexy. But how about all those post war operas which have had one outing and never been seen since. Instead of pursuing contemporary German opera, surely ENO would be better employed looking at opera's like Nicholas Maw's The Rising of the Moon, or anything by Maxwell Davies (Taverner, Therese). There are operas by Alexander Goehr which have still not had a UK performance.

So there is much to look forward to, and it is a relief that the roster of directors seems to have settled down to those with more of a track record in the genre.

Review of Werther

My review of Massenet's Werther from Covent Garden, with Rolando Villazon in the title role is here, on Music and Vision (subscription site)

MacMillan Westminster Mass

Today is rather a James MacMillan day at Westminster Cathedral. at 10.30am Mass, MacMillan's wonderful Westminster Mass will be the setting with MacMillan's A New Song as the motet. Then at Solemn Vespers and Benediction at 15.30, we have MacMillan's Christus Vincit along with Lassus's Magnificat Octavi Toni, with MacMillan's Gaudeamus in loci pace as the concluding organ voluntary

Recent CD Reviews

My review of Camilla Nylund's disc of Strauss and Wagner, Transfiguration, is here.

A promising recital rather than a great one.

And my review of an assemblage of Bernstein's music is here. Both reviews are on MusicWeb International.

A good reminder of what an interesting and varied composer Bernstein could be.

O Guiding Night

Tomorrow (14th June) at St. James's Church, Spanish Place, the Sixteen are giving a concert inspired by the Spanish Mystics. There will, of course, be music by Victoria marking the 400th anniversary of his death, but also new music by Ruth Byrchmore, Tarik O'Regan and Roderick Williams

Review of Damnation of Faust

My review of Terry Gilliam's production fo The Damnation of Faust at ENO is here, on Music and Vision (subscription site).

EPSS

The latest English Poetry and Song Society Newsletter contains a copy of my song To His Love (words by Ivor Gurney) for baritone and piano, along with a complete list of my songs and song-cycles. A number of my songs have been placed in EPSS competitions, notably Gurney and Houseman settings.

Ringless

A note in this month's Opera magazine that the new Intendant at Strasbourg has cancelled the David McVicar Ring which has been garnering plaudits. They have performed each opera individually but there are no plans to perform the entire cycle. Let's hope someone else picks the production up. Strasbourg is a lovely place to visit and the theatre delightful, it would have been a fine place to take in what seems to have been an intelligent and theatrical production.

Recent CD Review

My review of the disc of music by Thomas Bloch on Naxos is here,

This disc appealed mainly for Bloch’s interesting use of unusual instruments.

Review of The Tsar's Bride

My review of last Wednesday's performance of Rimsky Korsakov's The Tsar's Bride at Covent Garden is here on Music and Vision (subscription site)

Recent CD Review

My review of a disc of plainchant from the Benedictine Abbey of St. Benoit du Lac is here.

Reflects a community who sing this music every day.

Recent CD Review

My review of a show-case disc for Trondheim Cathedral Choir, Nidaros, is here

A superb showcase. Anyone interested in contemporary choral music should try it.

Feedback

The Gabrieli Consort have posted a comment on my Proms posting confirming that Paul McCreesh will be using soloists in the Octet in Elijah which is very heartening.

And my remarks about the starting time of Pelleas seems to have generated a couple of comments supporting early starting times; oh well.

Another correspondent was enquiring about the performance of Saul and what it actually contained. The High Priest did sing two arias, often cut, as follows:-
Recit: Go on, Illustrious Pair
Aira: While yet thy Tide of Blood runs high
Air: O Lord, whose Providence

The edition, by Antony Hicks, was credited in Lawrence Cummings' introduction to the Festival programme, but not mentioned on the actual Saul pages of the programme. Its worth noting that they will be performing Hicks edition of Comus as well next week

Pelleas et Melisande at the Barbican

Last night, the Barbican gave us Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande given by forces fresh from the Theatre des Champs Elysee in Paris, though unusually the French performances were concert performances as well so on this occasion we weren't missing out. The prime attraction of the performance was to hear a French orchestra, French conductor and primarly Francophone cast. Even in France it seems increasingly rare to hear mainly French singers in French repertoire. Debussy's opera is very much about declamation of text and having Francophone singers is an enormous help. When those singers are of the calibre of Natalie Dessay (Melisande), Laurent Naouri (Golaud) and Alain Vernhes (Arkel), then we are in heaven.

Of the principals the only non-French speaker was Simon Keenlyside, but I'm certainly not complaining. Genevieve was played by Marie-Nicole Lemieux, from Quebec (so Francophone but not French).

In terms of realism, there were things that needed forgiving; after all not all of the principals were anywhere approaching the right age. But what matters is how they suited vocally and here we were seeing a good match. Dessay, though not quite as coloratura as she once was, is still mainly a lyric soprano and has a beautifully fine, focussed tone which conveyed Melisande's youth and beauty. For the first 3 acts she seemed a little too arch, a little too chic, perhaps, but as the drama developed then this mattered less.

Though this was a pure concert performance, all of the singers conveyed much with little. There were entrances and exits, but mainly we relied on the expressiveness of the singers faces. Sometimes this results in a boringly impassive performance, but with 5 fine singing actors in the lead roles then we didn't really need much else. Having overwhelmed with her over the top Orlando (in Vivaldi's Orlando Furioso), Lemieux showed that she can be richly subtle as well, singing Genevieve with dignified melancholy.

Keenlyside was a profoundly moving Pelleas, full of humanity. Yes, he's getting a little old for the role, but who cares when its sung like this. His relations with Dessay's Melisande quivered beautifully with unspoken depths. That is the delight of this opera; the dialogue is matter of fact and natural, but much is implied and requires a sort of restraint from the singers. Something all of them understood, under Langree's capable direction.

For me, the outstanding performance was Naouri's Golaud. Expressive from the very beginning, shading melancholy into madness, but always human. In an evening of rich subtletly, Naouri won the palm with a performance which was complete without any movement, set or costume.

Alain Vernhes was a fine Arkel, rising to the challenge in his final scenes to give a sympathetic performance.

Khatouna Gadelia was a charming Yniold, conveying simplicity without too much archness, which is always tricky with a mature woman singing the role of a boy. Nahuel di Pierro displayed a lovely rich bass voice as the shepherd and the doctor, I look forward to hearing more of him.

The stage was very full, with the Orchestra de Paris in fine form. They no longer sound distinctively French, but their grasp of the music was strong and all Debussy's interludes told strongly in this concert performance without visual distraction.

The opera start at 6.30pm and finished at 9.45pm with 1 interval. Surely someone at the Barbican could have organised things a bit better. 6.30pm is far too early for a week night concert, but is excusable in a long evening. If we had to start at 6.30pm then couldn't we have a second interval. Pelleas et Melisande is a 5 act work and performing the first 3 acts without an interval is a very long sit. Perhaps, as it was her birthday, Dessay had requested an early finish so she and Naouri (her husband in real life) could go out to dinner!

A superb evening. A fine, subtle performance of one of the 20th century's greatest operas, perhaps greatest opera.

Premiere

My Elegy for baritone, piano and strings is to be premiered by the London Schubert Players (Artistic Director: Anda Anastasescu) on August 27th at St. Botolph's Church, Trunch, Norfolk as part of a concert which mixes chamber music from the classic tradition with contemporary works. The concert includes Mozart's String Quintet in G minor along with contemporary music by Sviatlana Rynkova (Belarus), Michael Cretu (Romania). More information here.

The Elegy sets the opening stanzas of Rilke's 2nd Duino Elegy and is a radical re-working of material from the complete setting of the Elegy, for baritone and orchestra, which was premiered in 2006 by David Greiner and the Salomon Orchestra under Adrian Brown.

Proms web site - is it me?

My traditional way of navigating round the proms and choosing what to go to is to go onto the Proms web-site and print-out the whole season. Then the printed page gets covered in all sorts of little symbols and squiggles, indicating desirability (of the concert) and availability (of us, to go said concert). This year, I can't find a printable page which has all the information on it. So I'm going to have to wait for the brochure to be printed - perhaps a cunning plan by the BBC to boost sales of the Proms brochure!

Royal Opera new season

Despite a cut-back in grants the Royal Opera have managed to put together a season which mixes the interesting with the popular. The good news is that David McVicar's new production of Berlioz Les Troyens is happening (in June 2012), with Anna Caterina Antonacci as Cassandre, Eva-Maria Westbroek as Didon and Jonas Kaufmann as Enee, conducted by Antonio Pappano - a strong cast indeed, but one which is hardly Francophone. The Royal Opera have not performed the work complete since 1972, though Scottish Opera brought Tim Albery's production in the 90's (with Kathryn Harries as Didon).

Amazingly, the new production of Dvorak's Rusalka will be Covent Garden's first staging (its only been done in concert so far). The staging, and cast, are being taken from Salzburg where the production premiered in 2008 directed by Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito. Opinion seems to have been divided on the contemporary setting and magic realism of the production, but Camilla Nylund in the title role should be well worth the visit. Yannick Nezet-Seguin makes a welcome Royal Opera debut as the conductor.

Another rarity hoves into sight. Puccini's Il Trittico, the 3 operas not performed together at Covent Garden since 1965 (though a version without Suor Angelica had a longer life). Richard Jones's brilliant Gianni Schicchi is returning and Jones is directing the other two operas. Pappano is at the helm with a cast which includes Lucio Gallo, Anja Harteros and Eva-Maria Westbroek. Again a strong cast, but not ideally Italianate.

The other major standard receiving a new production is Falstaff directed by Robert Carsen and conducted by Daniele Gatti. So far the information seems unclear as to what relation this new production will have to Carsen's existing production of the opera.

The final new production in the main house is the UK premiere of Judith Weir's Miss Fortune with Emma Bell and Jacques Imbrailo, conducted by Paul Daniel. The production is directed by Shi-Zheng Chen and is a co production with Bregenz. Definitely highlight.

ROH2 will be producing Tarik O'Regan's Heart of Darkness which was developed via the ROH2's Opera Genesis programme. The opera is based on the Conrad novel and includes creative input from artist/composer/librettist Tom Phillips.

Revivals include all 3 Mozart/Da Ponte operas with very strong casts; Gerald Finley and Erwin Schrott share the Don, Cosi starts Rosemary Joshua and Thomas Allen, Nozze de Figaro will be conducted by Pappano with Simon Keenlyside, Ildebrando D’Arcangelo, Aleksandra Kurzak and Kate Royal. Sonnambula comes back with the wonderful Eglise Gutierrez in the title role; its not a production I particularly enjoyed but the chance to hear Gutierrez in the role is welcome. La Fille du Regiment returns, again, but this time with Patrizia Ciofi in the title role which will be interesting, she is paired with Colin Lee - nice to see him being given proper air time at last.

La Boheme returns with a double cast almost to die for - Barbara Frittoli/Anja Harteros, Joseph Calleja/Roberto Alagna; I hope the old production is still up to it. Pappano is heading up a revival of Graham Vick's Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg, which has been absent from the ROH stage for far too long.

I can't get too worked up about the revival of Faust even if it does feature Georghiu, Rene Pape and Vittorio Grigolo. Salome is returning with Angela Denoke in the lead again, definitely worth catching if you didn't see her last time. And John Eliot Gardiner is conductor at the revival of Rigoletto - hmm, interesting indeed.

Over at the Royal Ballet, Monica Mason is going out with quite a splash mixing old and new, including a welcome revival of Christopher Weeldon's Alice in Wonderland. But quite high on the list of highlights for me is a revival of Prince of the Pagodas, Kenneth MacMillan's late attempt to make sense of Britten's magical but patchy ballet score. Evidently the Britten estate have finally sanctioned some cuts, so we might expect something a little tighter.

Proms

So we now have the Proms programme for this year. A quick glance over it provides some tempting nuggetts. Antonio Pappano is bringing his other orchestra from Rome to do Rossini's Guillaume Tell on the opening weekend, surely an event to look forward to. Thankfully the performance will be in French and will use substantially the same cast as that in the live Rome performances which were recorded for CD. The following day will see performance of Havergal Brian's Gothic Symphony, its gargantuan forces surely make the work entirely suitable for the Albert Hall.

The following weekend Semyon Bychkov is conducting Verdi's Requiem with a very fine quartet of soloists. One of the late night Proms celebrates Percy Grainger's anniversary year with a concert from the Northern Sinfonia. Later in August, Jiri Belohlavek and BBC forces will be giving Britten's Spring Symphony. And on 15th August Gergiev will be conducting Swan Lake, another unmissable event.

Glyndebourne will make their annual visit bringing their new production of Handel's Rinaldo. Paul McCreesh is conducting Mendelssohn's Elijah, with forces which include a number of youth choirs, though rather worryingly only 4 soloists are credited, which is rather worrying; we may be back to having the octet sung as a semi-chorus, I do hope not. Colin Davis will be in charge of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis and John Eliot Gardiner will direct Weber's Der Freischutz in Berlioz's version with sung recitatives rather than spoken dialogue, originally made for the Paris Opera.

Saul at the London Handel Festival

One of the advantages of going to hear Handel oratorio at London Handel Festival is that they perform the works uncut and in sensible editions. On Tuesday we visited St. George's Hanover Square to hear Lawrence Cummings and the London Handel Festival forces perform Saul. Antony Hicks, a long-time supporter of the festival, died recently and in his memory his edition of the oratorio was used. Saul was Handel's first oratorio with a libretto by Charles Jennens. It is his first dramatic masterpiece in the genre but still doesn't get that many outings. Perhaps the slightly unwieldy cast list is a problem, though another more likely reason is the nature of the title role. Handel and Jennens created a psychologically aposite portrait of Saul, isolated from the rest of the cast and tortured, but the result of course is brilliant but not showy. Saul hardly gets any arias and communicates in recitative and accompagnato. In some performances this results in Saul being understated, but Njal Sparbo took the role with a vengeance. He was credibly commanding and quite fearsome when mad, completely rising above the rather limited playing area provided by St. Georges. The festival runs an annual singing contest and this provides a source for soloists, so Sophie Junker who played Michal was last year's winner. In addition, a few of the other soloists were past winners. Junker made a winning Michal, managing to make the character's goodness seem interesting, along with a nice line in Handelian fioriture. Lucy Crowe played Merab, a character with altogether more to get your teeth into. Crowe was quite brilliant as bad tempered Merab, managing to make the character angry without being quite such a bitch. David was played by Iestyn Davies with a beautiful sense of line, creating sheer beauty with the magic of his voice. Nicholas Mulroy does not have quite such a lovely voice but his Jonathan was suitably passionate. The remaining characters were all cast from members of the chorus, providing a strong array of highly characterised cameos. Most credibly, Richard Rowntree was a suitable evocative Witch of Endor and James Platt a sonorously voiced ghost of Samuel. Under Lawrence Cummings' lively direction, the chorus and orchestra provided dramatic and strong support. The orchestra, one of Handel's largest, included not only the famous carillon and David's harp, but flutes, trombones, trumpets and timpani. St. George's isn't the most comfortable place to hear a concert, but this time we hardly noticed so engrossing and grip was the drama.

London Festival of Contemporary Church Music

The London Festival of Contemporary Church Music at St. Pancras Church is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. The festival runs from 7th to 15th May with a programme which includes a celebration of Cecilia McDowall's choral music, premieres of commissions from Antony Pitts, Andrew Simpson and Gordon Crosse. In addition there are premieres of a wide number of pieces, plus London premieres for pieces by James Macmillan, John McCabe and Geoffrey Burgon. The opening concert on 7th May is gven by the choir of Clare College with a programme which includes Gabriel Jackson's Requiem. On 15th May, Westminster Cathedral Choir will be performing James MacMillan's Westminster Mass as part of Solemn Mass at the Cathedral.

Recent CD Review

My review of the reissue William Christie's recording of Handel's Orlando is here, on MusicWeb International.

A strong performance, beautifully sung and sensitively played.

When a Man Knows - another review

There is a short review of When a Man Knows on the Opera Britannia web-site as part of a longer column here, it takes a rather different view to Classical Iconoclast. I was particularly curious about the comments on the dearth of climaxes.

'I must also add that there were some quite beautiful melodies, which were interrupted by the chorus who had these dreadful vocal lines that were delivered by terrible singers. There was also a complete dearth of climaxes, although when the music finally did reach one, courtesy of a dramatic turn by Zoe South (announcing her reason for kidnapping "The Man"), it was truly stunning, and as an audience member it literally smacked you in the face with its intensity. ' - Opera Britannia

OAE at Kings Place

To Kings Place on Saturday for the concert by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment as part of their 5 day Baroque Contrasted season. The concert was called A Restoration Spectacular, though the only Restoration music was Purcell's The Fairy Queen, the remaineder was from the later Baroque, but who cares when presented with such a lovely string of masterpieces.

First on the agenda was Handel's Concerto Grosso Opus 6 No. 10, in a fine muscular performance led from the violin by Matthew Truscott. There were 16 musicians on stage, just strings, theorbo and harpsichord; rather strikingly of the 16, only 3 were men.

After the Handel we got a long sequence of movements from Purcell's Fairy Queen, the highlights of which was Julia Doyle's exquisite singing of See, even the Nightingale, and I am come to lock all fast and The Plaint. Singing with a fine, pure tone, Doyle's account of these 3 was magical.

The second half opened with Bach's Double Violin Concerto played by Truscott and Alison Bury. This had its beautiful moments, though the outer movements sometimes seemed a little too brisk for their own good. More worryingly the balance between the two violins was less than equal, with Bury playing with a far more muscular, weighty tone. This wasn't some much a question of volume as style and weight and I have to confess that I preferred Bury's approach.

Finally Doyle returned for 3 beautifully turned Handel arias, Ombre pallide from Alcina, Ritorna, o caro from Rodelinda and Da Tempeste from Giulio Cesare. Doyle's slim tones negotiated the passage-work with ease, creating some beautiful and moving moments. She included the recitative which prefixes Ombre pallide which was welcome. I did worry about the lack of wind instruments, though without referring to the scores I am not sure what Handel actually wrote for these arias. Finally we were treated to an encore from Rinaldo. A treat all round.

The Return of Ulysses

To the Young Vic on Wednesday night for Monteverdi's The Return of Ulysses performed by ENO in its annual visit to the small scale theatre. All of the ENO's previous visits had involved a contemporary element to the work, last year we had Henze and the year before was Katie Mitchell's radical re-working of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, with Birtwistle's Punch and Judy the year before that. So it was heartening that the company decided to move to fully baroque music, but the way that the audience dwindled alarmingly after the interval seemed to suggest that many opera goers were conditioned to think of the ENO/Young Vic collaborations as contemporary and that Benedict Andrews' take on Monteverdi just did not hold their attention.

To a certain extent I can understand why. Even if you manage to survive the extremely uncomfortable seats, Andrews' production was a very theatrical event which at times seemed to overlay Monteverdi with extra layers, including pauses, so that Monteverdi's distinctive combination of words and music ceased to be paramount. In fact, I rather found both acts had occasional longeurs, surprising since the singers were apparently reasonably fluent in Monteverdi's style, though the technical detail was a little approximate.

But Andrews did rather throw the kitchen sink at the piece. It all took place in a modern glass house at whose walls people threw an awful lot. When action took place outside, we could still see Pamela Helen Stephen's Penelope, Diana Montague's Ericlea inside with Penelope spending much of her time moping and Ericlea doing ordinary things like tidying up and making Penelope's lunch. See, Andrews did throw the kitchen sink at the piece, complete with tap with running water. This wasn't the only running water, the shower worked as well. After he had killed the suitors, Tom Randle's Ulisse sat pondering and contemplating suicide, then decided not; to show us how he was washing the past away he took a shower (bravely stripping off completely). Of course he then had to quickly get dry (including all those awkward bits) and get dressed in time for the final duet. Luckily no-one tried using the toilet!

The suitors kept appearing and ogling Penelope through the glass and by act 2, it seemed that everyone was on stage all the time, either inside or outside. Brian Galliford's Iro wore a mask for most of the time and lurked around the house for the entire act 2, sponging away.

More problematically, Ruby Hughes's Minerva was attired exactly like Penelope and in act 2 seemed to spend as much time in the house as Penelope, even allowing the suitors to grope her etc. This, like one or two other aspects of the production, rather confused me and I felt that if you did not know the opera, you would have wondered quite what was going on.

When Tom Randle's Ulisse came to take his revenge on the suitors, the result was suitably bloody, completing the devastation.

As if this wasn't enough, there were two large video screens, one on each side of the acting area. The action was videoed and we had the live action accompanied by video montages of it, including moments not properly visible from the auditorium.

Andrews seemed determined to underplay the comedy. At one point in a scene between Melanto (Katherine Manley) and Eurimaco (Thomas Walker), Melanto tells Eurimaco to keep on talking, in fact talking was not what he was doing; I did wonder whether Andrews wanted us to pick up the pun of Eurimaco being a cunning linguist. Then Brian Galliford's Iro seemed to lack the comic pathos in his final scene which singers like Alexander Oliver brought to the role.

The band under Jonathan Cohen were impressive and seemed to mix modern and old instruments rather successfully and with some style.

This was a notable attempt at Monteverdi's opera, with some strong dramatic performances, but somewhere along the way, something of Monteverdi's vitality of line was lost to be replaced by a more generic dramatic bluster. Its a rather old fashioned thing to say, but I can't help wondering if it would have been better for the performance if the conductor had been the strongest personality; if instead of Jonathan Cohen (talented, making his ENO debut), they had engaged one of the finest Monteverdian's in the business. Then we might have seen a little more primacy of music and dramatic musical line.

CLASSICAL ICONOCLAST: Robert Hugill - When a Man Knows review

CLASSICAL ICONOCLAST: Robert Hugill - When a Man Knows review: "Robert Hugill's When a Man Knows needs to transfer to somewhere higher profile, where it can get the exposure it deserves. This is what good..."

When a Man Knows - tech

Last night was the tech rehearsal, when we got to see the piece lit for the first time - quite fabulous. As the show doesn't really have a set (we use the space of the Bridewell Theatre as it is), the lighting makes a bit difference and Matt has certainly worked his magic.

Small scale opera (including us)

Nice article on the Intermezzo blog about various small scale opera productions in London at the moment, including When a Man Knows.

When a Man Knows - into the theatre

We had our first full day in the theatre yesterday, running the show twice. The Bridewell is an amazing space and we able to use a lot of it in the production. The opera may last only an hour and a quarter, but the two lead roles are both large, being on stage all the time. As someone who finds learning music by heart difficult, even (especially) my own, I have great admiration for the way the singers have managed to get whole reams of the stuff into their memories.

So today its the tech rehearsal, our first chance to see what the lighting will be like!

What is happening at the South Bank - 2

Whilst at the South Bank on Friday I picked up a copy of their April brochure, listing all the events. Granted, they are promoting a concert series called Ether which mixes a variety of different contemporary styles (from popular avant garde to London Sinfonietta), but their main classical pages seem to consist entirely of concerts from the resident orchestras. If you take away OAE, LPO and Philharmonia then you are left with some fine chamber/vocal concerts and the Bach Choir, with not that much else. It seems that Classical Music is taking a smaller and smaller role in the general South Bank programming and I really wonder what the 2012 Olympic festival will actually produce.

When a Man Knows - get in

Well, today is get-in day at the theatre, first time we get our hands on the real space.

There's nice preview with extended quotes from me, on the Classical Iconoclast site here

What is happening at the South Bank - 1

We arrive a bit early for last night's concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, which was being presented as part of the SBC's Bach weekend. There was a pre-concert talk, at 6.15, but also live music in the foyer. The live music was presented by a rather talented young jazz ensemble, it was not a little loud and entirely prevented conversation. Obviously for the SBC, having the QEH foyer full at this time of the evening is an entire success. But for concert goers, being prevented from talking and forced to listen to jazz (no matter how good), is not necessarily a good thing. The group started to wind up at 6.45pm but it was not until 7.05 that they finished their last encore, only to be followed by a track from their latest CD, which they were selling.

As I say, all entirely admirable in a way, but NOT what you want just before Bach's Mass in B Minor. If the SBC must have popular style music in the early evening slot, then please could it be less noisy AND finish promptly at 6.45pm, to give concert goers a chance to contemplate the concert in peace.

This isn't the first time we've experienced this, a similar thing happened a few weeks ago and it has started to make me nervous of getting to QEH pleasantly early.

Bach Mass in B Minor

To the Queen Elizabeth Hall last night for a performance of Bach's Mass in B Minor given by the Feinstein Ensemble and I Fagiolini. The 8 singers from I Fagiolini (Anna Crookes, Julia Doyle, Clare Wilkinson, William Purefoy, Simon Wall, Matthew Long, Charles Gibbs and Francis Brett) sang 1 voice to a part and the 19 instrumentalists were similarly one to a part. The result was exactly the sort of light, transparent account of the music which I enjoy. For the 1st 3 movements (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo), where the choral sections are generally 5 part, the singers swapped about giving us different line ups, with Clare Wilkinson singing both alto and 2nd soprano. Then of course, in the Sanctus and Agnus, Bach gets more varied and finally in the Dona Nobis Pacem, all the singers came together doubling parts for the first time.

Singing Bach 1 voice to a part is quite an achievement and I Fagiolini gave a finely musical performance which seemed remarkably without stress. I must confess that I could have wished for a greater element of bravura in the singing at times, particularly in the solos, but this must be contrasted with the fine feeling of ensemble, consort singing. That is not to say the the singers were overly blended, and the different lines were nicely characterful.

The accompaniments from the Feinstein ensemble were similarly fine grained, with some notable solo playing and some superb high trumpet playing. Though there one or two moments of uncertain ensemble when I felt that a stronger musical direction might have been called for. Director Michael Feinstein played flute and seemed content to generally let things happen, when he could have been more dynamically directive.

A fine evening.

Cambrdige Handel Opera

Cambridge Handel Opera are presenting Handel's Agrippina at the West Road Concert Hall in Cambridge on 3rd, 4th, 6th 7th May. The company present a Handel opera every other year and in the past have produced some very interesting and exciting productions. This year the opera will be directed by Christine Botes who has sung the title roles in a number of CHOG previous productions. The opera will be conducted by Dr. Andrew Jones and is sung in English. And on Saturday 7th May there's a study day as well!

When a Man Knows - previews

There's a nice preview of When a Man Knows on the IndieLondon site, here.
And another preview at Music and Vision.

When a Man knows - TIL.com

There's a nice write-up about When a Man Knows in This is London magazine.

Recent CD Reviews

My review of Oxford Liedertafel's first disc is here

Oxford Liedertafel is a talented group of singers and this disc will undoubtedly appeal to all their admirers.

And my review of Handel's pasticcio Oreste is here. Both reviews on MusicWeb International.

A strong cast in a creditable performance of what is actually rather a good Handel opera.

All things wear silence

Tomorrow (24th March), the JAM's season kicks off with a concert at St. Bride's Church, Fleet Street at 7.30pm. The Chapel Choir of Selwyn College, Cambridge, Onyx Brass, Daniel Cook (organ) and Nicholas Cleobury (conductor) will premiere Philip Cashian's All Things Wear Silence, and give the London premiere of Paul Mealor's Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal.

JAM are assiduous in commissioning and promoting new choral music, so not surprisingly the programme is complete with works by Tarik O'Regan, Stuart MacRea, Elizabeth Winters, Phillip Cook and Peter Nickol. O'Regan's piece, The Night's Untruth was JAM's 2010 commission.

Your chance to hear some pretty powerful music

When a Man Knows - 2 weeks to go

Would you believe it. We have just had the first week's rehearsals for the opera and quite eventful they were too. One of the singers has had flu and missed rehearsals and then our pianist had a bad accident leaving the first rehearsal and ended up in hospital. This left us with your composer playing the orchestral piano part, this is generally within my abilities but I am afraid there were passages that are beyond me. We start stage rehearsals next week.

Much electronic ink has been spilled in organising the suitable chains and shackles for the man, who needs to be handcuffed and chained by his legs, but in a way which is not too onerous on our baritone Dario. Some of the useful sites which we have been using have been fetish web-sites! In fact, if I'd been a bit more organised I ought to have approached them and got some sponsorship!.

Review of La Clemenza di Tito

My review of ETO's new production of La Clemenza di Tito is here, on Music and Vision (subscription site).

Under 3 weeks to go

We now have a stage manager on board, Fernando Pinho, and start rehearsals this week. We are trying to get to grips with the logistics of having the man chained up on stage, so that it looks good but isn't too onerous on the singer. Besides the usual theatrical sources for gear, we have been looking at fetish sites (!) one called uberkinky has provided some interesting ideas and might still end up being the source of some of the gear. I am now thinking that I should have thought of this earlier and perhaps tried to get sponsorship, though that would rather give the wrong message about the opera!

Review of Trojans at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Last weekend we were in Berlin, my review of David Pountney's production of The Trojans at the Deustsche Oper in Berlin is here on Music and Vision (subscription site).

Tempus per Annum - Dominus iluminatio mea

The 10th and 11th motets in Volume 3 of Tempus per Annum have turned into a single 2-part motet in the manner of many large-scale renaissance motets. The idea for this came about because the verse text for the introit for the 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time is the same as the opening text for the 10th Sunday, the rather evocative Dominus illuminatio mea. Each part can be performed separately or together as a more substantial work.

The Lord is my light and my Salvation: whom shall I fear? The Lord is the protector of my life: of whom shall I be afraid? My enemies that trouble me have themselves been weakend and have fallen.
If armies in camp should stand together against me,
my heart shall not fear.
Hear, O Lord, my voice which I have cried to Thee: be Thou my helper, forsake me not, nor do Thou despise me, O God, my Saviour.
The Lord is my light, and my salvation, whom shall I fear? Psalm 26

Carmelites at the Barbican

On Wednesday we went to the final performance of Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmelites at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Stephen Barlow's production was quite traditional, with period costumes (designer David Farley). The action all took place on a single raised platform (which could be rotated) and which was dressed with salient details (fireplace for the Marquis's study, kitchen table for the Convent work-room). The whole was framed by an abstract design representing shattered glass and the opera opened with the mob shattering the window of a carriage. The result was a rather effective use of the limited stage and meant that there were not awkward pauses between scenes.

We were seeing the 2nd performance by the 2nd cast, though 2nd cast certainly does not imply 2nd class, quite the opposite. Natalya Romaniw (singing Blanche) represented Wales at last year's Cardiff Singer of the World and Gary Griffiths (singing the Marquis) won the Guildhall School Gold Medal in 2009.

Romaniw was perhaps a little too self-possessed for Blanche in the early stages of the opera, you felt that she was stronger than that. But Romaniw grew into the role and gave a strong and affecting performance. She was ably supported by Sophie Junker's perfectly contrasting Constance.

Older roles are always tricky in student performances but here two of the older characters provided some of the most remarkable performances of the evening. Catia Moreso was mesmerising as the old Prioress, dramatically intense in her death scene. And Amy J Payne gave a truly remarkable performance as Mere Marie. Payne conveyed a strength and depth of experience in her performance which is rare, she gave Mere Marie a real feeling of solidity.

Sky Ingram's new Prioress didn't quite manage the simple goodness that this character required. Ingram's performance was intelligent and well crafted, but a little too artful perhaps and she didn't seem quite comfortable with the tessitura.

The men don't really get to display themselves in this opera. Curievici was wonderfully intense was Le Chevalier and Griffiths made the Marquis as dignified and as pompous as he could without resorting to caricature. Matthew Stiff gave a moving performance as the nun's chaplain.

For the final scene we had the mob and the guillotine at the back of the stage, with the nuns ranged along the front in a line. As each one died, a light came on transforming her into radiance. A brilliant idea which kept the scene from being too fussy.

Clive Timms conducted with a strong feeling for Poulenc's dramaturgy but also with a sympathetic ear on his young charges.

The result was an impressive achievement which in many parts reached levels achieved in professional houses.

Recent CD Reviews

My review of a disc of Jewish sacred music by Yehudi Wyner is here.

The performances are not perfect, but under the composer’s own direction they have a significant authority and illuminate the different pathways of Jewish sacred music.

And my review of the Classical Opera Company's remarkable reconstruction and revivification of Arne's Artaxerxes is here. Both reviews are on MusicWeb International.

A remarkable discovery. Arne had a winning combination of dramatic flair, virtuoso verve and a nicely gallant style. The opera isn’t perfect but it repays repeated listening.

Recent CD Reviews

My review of a disc of sacred music by Hasse is here.

This isn't great music, but it is well crafted and attractive and is presented in persuasive performances.

And a review of a recital of baroque songs and arias sung by counter-tenor Franco Fagioli is here.

An intelligently planned and well performed recital.

Finally Alex Klein's disc of Vivaldi oboe concertos is here. All 3 are on MusicWeb International.

Klein’s technique and sound are entrancing. His beautifully toned account of the virtuosic solo parts contributes to a highly seductive whole.

Covent Garden's Opera Shots

As part of their ROH2 strand to develop new opera, the Royal Opera House are presenting OperaShots from 8th to 15th April, an evening of two short operas by composers new to the genre. Both composers are well established in other fields.

Anne Dudley is an award winning film composer and has been composer in association with the BBC Concert Orchestra. Her first opera, The Doctor's Tale is written to a libretto by Terry Jones (of Monty Python fame). Terry Jones will also direct the piece, which is a Gogol-esque tale of a successful Doctor who is a dog and is put in the dog pound.

Stuart Copeland is a founder member of The Police. He is writing both words and music for The Tell-Tale Heart based on Edgar Allen Poe's story. He has written a number of ballets and has previous operas under his belt.

It is always interesting when artists from one genre move over into another. I am not entirely certain whether the way forward in contemporary opera is to look to composers well known in other forms. But opera is a broad church and there should be room for everyone, providing the pieces stand up dramatically. Certainly the composers fame in other musical genres should help attract the sort of lively and mixed audience which the ROH seems to be hoping for.

ETO

The ever enterprising English Touring Opera start their new season on Friday with a double bill of Puccini's Il Tabrro and Gianni Schicchi at the Hackney Empire. Interestingly they are using two different directors. Liam Steel directs the comedy and James Conway the tragedy, both in Neil Irish's designs. Conway will also be directing Mozart's Clemenza di Tito, performed in English. Making up the seasons will be Tobias Picker's Roald Dahl based opera, The Fantastic Mr Fox

A pair of extremely contrasting musical theatre events this weekend. On Saturday to Covent Garden to see a performance of Mark Antony Turnage's new opera Anna Nicole. Then on Sunday we saw Pimlico Opera performing Jule Styne's musical Sugar at HMP Send, with a mixed cast of professionals and inmates.

There is no doubt that Anna Nicole is a terrific show, but I'm not sure whether its a terrific opera. A full review will appear in due course.

Sugar was amazing. Sugar (Victoria Ward), Jerry (Duncan Patrick), Joe (Rob Gildon) and dancers Philippe Reynolds and Adam Scown were the only professionals in the cast with the remaining roles and chorus all being taken by a group of hard working inmates. Being a womens prison of course, this meant that the women played everything, from flappers and floozies, to gangsters and lascivious old men, with remarkable success.

No, the performance wasn't perfect, but the energy and vivacity of the cast were infectious and the gangster were pretty scarily effective.

Michael Moody's production (in Kate Guinness's set) was ingenious, with audience on opposite sides of a rectangle, the beach at one end, the train and the band at the other. The draw back was that sight lines were not perfect and with a mixed ability cast, having the conductor off stage visible only via TV monitor was not ideal. Perhaps Moody felt that the occasional moment of rhythmic instability in the chorus was a small price to pay for such a brilliant use of space.

Toby Purser was the hard working, behind the scenes conductor. Designs were by Kate Guinness and Tania Spooner.

It is a strange experience, going to the theatre in a prison. But the energy, exuberance and sheer enthusiasm of the cast were infectious. I only hope that something of this rubs off when the circus leaves and life gets back to normal routine.

From this month's Opera

I see from this month's Opera magazine, that Julian Anderson is writing an opera for ENO, to be premiered in 2013 directed by Pierre Audi. Now that's a combination which certainly sounds interesting and it is great that ENO have secured a production from Audi at long last.It seems to be Anderson's first opera, but he has already demonstrated that he can write sympathetically for voice. The piece is to be based on Sophocles Theban plays, so expect a nice cheerful evening!

Still in a new opera vein, Bejun Mehta is singing the leading role in George Benjamin's new opera for Covent Garden to be premiered in February 2013. His first opera was such a hit that inevitably it will be a hard act to follow, so seeing that Benjamin does in the 'big house' will be fascinating. I can't wait.

And Neil Bartlett, whom I still remember fondly from his days working on the gay fringes of theatre, is directing a new Queen of Spades for Opera North next season, with Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts, Orla Boylan, Jonathan Summers and Josephine Barstow. Quite a cast!

Covent Garden as celebrating the Wagner centenary with a new Parsifal (though I must confess to a sneaking fondness for Bill Bryden's unpopular production). And still on the subject of Wagner, Wim Wenders is cutting his operatic teeth on a new Ring at Bayreuth for 2013, nothing like starting small.

When a Man Knows - Poster

5 weeks to go

Well, its just 5 weeks to go before the first night of When a Man Knows, so we are in the midst of final planning. I have a meeting at the theatre tomorrow with the lighting designer and we're well on the way to sorting out the costumes. We commissioned this mono-print from the artist Geraldine van Heemstra and this is now gracing the posters and will appear on the front of the programmes.

I've just about got the basics of the programme book sorted out, but as it includes the libretto it runs to 16 pages! I now have to start work on producing the instrumental parts. I have already sat down with Finale and extracted the parts and laid them out, though inevitably it seems impossible to find practicable turns for all pages.

And this weekend commences the next batch of publicity.

Oh, and I have started the search for ushers and programme sellers. The list is endless!

Old Theatre programmes

Charlotte Higgins has an interesting post on the Guardian site about what to do with old theatre programmes. Some of mine have been in the attic for 30 years (first my parents attic and now mine). In a fit of enthusiasm I have sorted them into boxes by year and type and am now in the process of cataloguing the opera ones.

This has thrown up some interesting information, casting my eye over the cast lists of the operas we saw at the RNCM when students in the 70's I find that I heard such people as John Rawnsley, Richard Berkeley Steele and Robin Leggate. But there were shocks to, realising that we hadn't seen Norman Bailey as Wotan in The Valkyrie in 1975 (which means of course that though I associated Bailey with the role I never did see him in it).

Free-form (1)

I have never been able to improvise, somehow I missed out on this in my early musical training. This despite that fact that one of my uncles played the piano by ear and another cousin played in a band. Perhaps it was that youthful struggles with exams left little room for free-form pianism; this plus that fact that relatively early on I started writing music as well.

My music was fully notated and has always remained so, though it must be confessed that nowadays I sometimes struggle to make our western european notation do exactly what I want to. But I am still rather wedded to the sort of control-freakery that likes to have everything down pat and leaves no note to chance. Of course, this isn't what happens.

I am sufficiently experienced as a performer of both instrumental and vocal music to know that there is a significant gap between notation and experience. A gap which must be filled by the performer. The composer's trick is to notate sufficiently so that what is played or sung matches expectations. My experiences in the last year or so turning my opera into a performed work have been illuminating in this respect.

In September I sat down with David, the musical director of the opera, to go through possible revisions and improvements to the score. One area that we considered in detail was the notation, not the notes but all the other bits and pieces which help to influence how an instrumentalist will play a score.

To a certain extent, it is easier with singers as they will usually react to the words. So that all you need is to take a little extra care with the phrasing. But instrumentalists don't have the words, you must guide them. And this means you have to sit down at the computer and go through the parts, bar by bar, thinking what exactly do I want and how do I achieve this. There are conventions to be taken into account; players of different instruments will react to signs differently, partly by convention and partly through the different physical nature of their instrument.

A superb example of someone who included everything in the score is Elgar. It is fascinating going through his orchestral scores, noting what he has written and working out why. Compare this to the music of Bach and Handel, where dynamics and other notations are rare. This was because Bach and Handel were working within a culture which had very particular ways of playing things so that the barest of notations could be used. That and the fact that both composers tended to direct their own music.

Elgar directed his own music too (and his recordings can be illuminating), but he was writing large scale scores for performance by others when he might not be present. But this late Romantic tendency to notate everything couldn't go one of course, it would make music far too complex. And of course, composers like Lutoslawski decided that allowing an element of chance in the exact notes was perfectly acceptable. Post-war composers have had to make decisions about quite what they want to notate and what not. It is remarkable what can be achieved with a minimum of notation, where the composer is accepting that the performers are co-creators rather than interpreters.

I'm not entirely certain I could go down that route. My background is in Mathematics and I like things neatly prescribed, I want to control the notes that are played. In fact, I would often be happy to dispense with detailed dynamics. But western notation doesn't really faciliate this, there is no easy way of presenting vague, user-selected dynamics; to do so is usually to simply abrogate responsibility and end up making work for the conductor who will have to arrange for parts to be suitably marked up. When it comes to some choral writing, I have often wished that we had a way of specifying not how loud a line was, but which line was dominant and which accompanying so that you could dictate which parts predominated. Quite often my dynamics are simply one solution to the problem, there are others where the relative values remain constant but the absolute ones change (e.g. you could have a loud version and a soft version).

I am aware that sometimes, you end up having to be rather fussy in your use of notation to get what you want. And of course, if there are too many extra markings the performer might get tired and lazy and not apply them all.

So I am still looking for the perfect notation.

Critic as Composer

A few years ago I attended a group of performances of contemporary opera, where over two days I saw 6 short pieces, some fully staged and others just work in progress. My companion at the performances was a librettist with whom I was planning new opera. After the operas, though we had seen much interesting, innovative and lively work, we felt that little of it was opera as we defined it. Instead we saw a variety of dramatised monologues, music theatre pieces and plays with music (dialogue pieces where the musical accompaniment is of more interest than the vocal lines).

My composing background is vocal and choral music though I have worked in cabaret, written musicals and staged one opera. But as a writer and listener, I am intensely interested in opera, its production, historical development and how the genre is developing in the contemporary world. The problem with being both a critic and a composer is that when you have a critical view of a performed work, it is difficult for this not to spill over and for the composer to wonder whether they could do better. Or conversely, when the critic admires a new work, then it can be difficult for the composer not to feel a little jealous. This is a faulty position to take as each composer is different and the process of creating an opera doesn’t occur in vacuo, it arises as complex sequence of events which involve a number of different participants. Very rarely does a composer simply sit down to create an opera and write exactly what sits in their head.

In the past, opera composers were often part of a system. Opera companies routinely produced new work and young composers had access to professional librettists and a variety of potential outlets for their work. The big effect of this was that the composer could learn from failure and go on. This ability to fail has, largely, been lost. Even Wagner, who notoriously tried to control as much as possible during the creation of his operas, had his journeyman period when he worked in opera houses and produced operas which didn’t work first time.

New operas are now rather more major events. Much more hangs off them, putting great pressure on composers to get things right first time. The opera commissioning and producing process is complex and difficult to stop. So there is real danger of work reaching the stage which ought to have been radically altered at birth. I’m sure that we have all attended new operas where we have felt that the work ought to have been performed in a radically different form, the feeling that within an uninspiring longer work, lies a fine short one. Though sometimes the converse can be true, having heard the original and revised versions of Birtwistle’s Gawain, I felt that the piece was stronger in the original and that in the desire for concision something had been lost.

In order to help combat this, the workshop system has developed, so new operas are tried out before full production. Whilst this is laudable in theory, I have attended some contemporary pieces which seem to have been work-shopped to death; the workshop process having gone from enabling a composer to hear their work, to stifling the innovative and dramatic instincts. Composing by committee only really works if the composer has a strong enough personality to dominate the process.

This isn’t something new of course. An opera house like the Paris Opera was a positive machine for producing opera; any composer dealing with it was in danger of losing control. Berlioz remained true to his genius and got his fingers burned with ‘Benvenuto Cellini’ as a result, only composers with strong personalities (or genius which transcended restrictions) such as Rossini and Verdi, produced worthwhile work in this environment.

One problem for the contemporary composer is the lack of professional librettists. With the drop in the number of new operas being produced at major houses, there are few people who specialise in writing opera libretti and have the experience to construct a good libretto. In a recent programme note for George Benjamin’s ‘Into the Little Hill’ it was stated that a successful libretto should feel incomplete, something lacking; the missing element being, of course, the music. Too often modern librettos are all too self sufficient, leaving little room for the composer at all, with a result that the music is merely illustrative. Music in opera should be essential; it isn’t like film music which is just there to heighten emotion.

Post-war opera has been heavily play based, with stage drama being a strong influence on the operatic form. But few composers and librettists are entirely talented at turning a play into a good libretto. Britten and Pears re-construction of Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Nights Dream’ is a paragon in this respect. But what often comes out nowadays is what I call the play with music. Vocal lines are cast as continuous arioso and the orchestra comments on and colours the line. Interest is too often in the orchestra and vocal lines seem to chug along, rather than developing memorable dramatics. This isn’t just a case of tonality versus modernity. Composers of both casts have been responsible for producing uninteresting works. In recent years Harrison Birtwistle, Thomas Ades and George Benjamin have all shown that dramatic operatic work is possible, without talking down to the audience.

What we have lost is the feeling for opera as a distinctive, known form. In the past young composers worked in an environment where it was clear what opera was. This gave them something to match themselves against; and, if they were iconoclasts, something to struggle against. But in the current environment, composers have to invent the form for themselves. To go back to the operas I mentioned at the beginning, there were examples there of composer/librettist pairings attempting to re-invent the form for themselves. But lacking historical insight and perspective, they simply came up with something jejeune. But composers should be allowed to fail and I hope that the composers in question were encouraged to try again, but better.

Two composers whose career path has approached those of opera composers in the past are the late Stephen Oliver and Jonathan Dove. Both of whom have produced a large body of variety work, developing their craft over a period of time. Dove’s opera ‘Flight’ is successful partly because the form used is historically informed, aware of what operatic form has been in the past. And Michael Berkeley’s operas written with David Malouf have been notable for the deft way Malouf’s librettos leave plenty of room for the music.

These thoughts have been very much in my mind because I spent a lot of last two years writing and revising my new opera ‘When a man knows’. Here the critic has to defer to the composer, and is affected by the complexities of the development of opera. Whilst I know that working with an experienced librettist is an ideal, exigencies have meant that I have set my own libretto based on an existing play. In June 2010 we gave a concert performance of the opera as a form of workshop to try out the work before a full production. This generated sufficient enthusiasm for us to repeat the experiment in August 2010 when a director, Ian Caddy, was present. Afterwards I sat down with both Ian Caddy and with musical director David Roblou to talk about changes to the opera before we staged it in March 2011. This was a fairly painful process as it entailed cuts for dramatic purposes. All composers are subject to the desire to keep music because they are fond of it, rather than because it is essential to the opera. In fact we lost only around 5 minutes of music, and I did manage to keep some dear old friends, but the resulting opera is tighter and more dramatic. You’ll be able to find out when we stage the piece at the Bridewell Theatre on March 31^st.

So the critic as composer finds himself breaking his own rules. The most that the composer can hope for is that the new work will have a dramatic life of its own, that it will move audiences to laugh and cry in the right places.

Recent CD Review

My review of the Naxos CD of Giles Swayne's choral music is here, on MusicWeb International.

This is contemporary choral music at its best, and it is available at super-budget price.

Review of Belisario from Chelsea Opera Group

My review of Chelsea Opera Group's performance of Donizetti's Belisario, conducted by Richard Bonynge, is here on Music and Vision (subscription site).