Opera Review - Sir John in Love

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

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

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

Xenakis

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

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

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

Recent CD Review

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

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

MusicWebLog

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

Watch my Lips

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

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

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

Recent CD Review

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

The Ring again

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

Ring in a Day

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

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

Recent CD Reviews

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

Tickets, Tickets, Tickets

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

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

Concert progress

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

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

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

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

Review of Macbeth

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

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

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

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

RVW's Operas

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

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

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

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

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

Macbeth and the missing version

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

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

Opera Tickets

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

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

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

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

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

Macbeth at the Royal Opera House

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

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

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

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

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

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

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