Dido and Aeneas

To the Barbican yesterday to see Les Arts Florissants perform Dido and Aeneas in the Barbican Hall. The performance was based on a staged version, but we saw a reduced but no less impressive version with no sets and a simplified lighting plot.

I was lucky enough to attend the rehearsal before hand, where it was fascinating watching Christie and his performers fitting the performance to the new space. All were impressive both in rehearsal and in performance. It is always amazing to watch the transformation that comes over a cast between rehearsal and performance, the magic of live theatre. For musical director who seems to keep to a minimum what he does in a performance, Christie proved to be highly articulate and keenly aware of all the details which he required, from orchestral articulation through to lighting and the pronunciation of awkward English vowels.

My full review of the performance will appear in the next few days.

Dido, Dido

Off to see Les Arts Florissants doing Dido tonight and getting in to the dress rehearsal this afternoon. So expect further reports.

Oriental music in an orientalist setting

Some time ago I reviewed a fascinating disc which reconstructed the sort of music which was used by the Jesuit Mission in 18th century Peking. This involved fairly traditional 18th French settings of the ordinary of the mass, along with motets and psalms which used Chinese translations for the words and Chinese traditional music.

Now you can hear for yourself, in the Oriental splendour of the music room of the Brighton Pavilion. Because on Nov 7th La Baroque Nomade, director Jean-Christophe Frisch, along with some Chinese musicians, will be presenting an evening of music resulting from the contacts between the Jesuits and the Chinese in 17th and 18th century Peking.

The concert is part of the Brighton Early Music festival. Their brochure is here. It is a positive cornucopia, including performances of Handel's Solomon with Catherine King in the title role, and Emma Kirkby and the London Handel Players with a programme of Purcell, Handel and Haydn

Off to the Barbican on Saturday to see Dido and Aeneas performed by Les Arts Florissants as part of their 30th birthday celebrations. We can expect William Christie to bring out the French influences in Purcell's music, but I will be interested to hear how the cast handle things. Especially given that the Dido, Malena Ernman, is Swedish , the Aeneas, Luca Pisaroni, is Italian and the Sorceress, Judith van Wanroij is Dutch. Still, I should not be chauvinistic there was some superb diction at the ENO's Le Grand Macabre and not all of it came from Anglophone singers. I'm getting to go to the dress rehearsal of Dido as well as the performance which should certainly be illuminating; will report back.

Offenbach's Rheinnixen

The enterprising New Sussex Opera are giving the UK premiere of Offenbach's opera Die Rheinnixen. This was a grand, romantic opera which Offenbach wrote for Vienna. After the premiere in 1864, when it was performed in truncated form, Offenbach withdrew it and re-used some of the music in The Tales of Hoffmann. The opera received its premiere in its original form in 2002. Besides being his first grand opera, the piece is his only operatic setting of a German text. It sounds quite a big piece, with well over 3 hours of music and Offenbach seems to occupy the musical realms of Weber.

It is an important pre-cursor to Hoffmann and we must be grateful to conductor Nicholas Jenkins for giving us the opportunity to hear it. There are performances at Lewes town hall on 21st October, Eastbourne Winter Gardens on 25th October and Cadogan Hall, London, on 27th October.

Recent CD Review

My review of a disc of Moniuszko Masses is here, on MusicWeb International.
Charming performances of music with insufficient interest ...

Review of "Rigoletto"

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

Towards a new Opera (3)

I am now over 60 minutes through and am steadily working my way down the penultimate page of the libretto. The piece is based on a play by Alan Richardson called When a man knows which has a distinguished performance history, so I hope the opera lives up to it. Just to give you an idea of the differences between opera and the stage, the play is estimated to last 35 minutes whereas the opera will last around 70 minutes, despite having the text trimmed down to the bone.

This still leaves me with the worry that the baritone part might be too long. I think that I need to be more radical in my use of the chorus to provide a pause in the long dialogue between the man and the woman. The problem with this is that it means I need some new text, so I will have to think about it. Having got this far with the piece I have started to think about performance and will start making plans to have a workshop/concert performance in the spring of next year.

Review of Ligeti's "Le Grand Macabre"

I first saw Ligeti's opera Le Grand Macabre when ENO first performed it in the 1980's in a rather 'po faced' production by Elijah Moshinsky which seemed to be set in and around the Hammersmith Flyover.

Now the opera is back, in a new production by the Catalan group La Fura del Baus. Since the 1982 Coliseum performance Ligeti has made revisions to the piece, dropping much of the spoken text and setting the remainder to music, thinning and simplifying the orchestration. Though there are still spoken moments, the result is that the piece is more thorough-going operatic than it was.

The concept of La Fura del Baus production was that the entire action took place in and around the huge body of a woman, with the cast make entrances and exits through her orifices. During the prelude, played on car horns, we saw a film of the woman apparently eating herself to death. The huge model was manipulated around the stage in fantastic manner and the use of projection was quite stunning, so that the body could be transformed in a moment from a skeleton to a writhing mass of burning people.

As a piece of theatre the result was stunning and made for a gripping 2 hours in the theatre. But Ligeti evidently had a very precise view of how the opera should look and had dislike most of the productions that he saw during his lifetime. It is a moot point whether he would have liked this one. I could not help feeling that setting the action in a more realistic setting would have helped emphasise the surreal nature of the plot, whereas putting a surreal play into a setting which is equally mad, seemed to de-nature it somewhat. Watching the production, I could not help thinking of Joe Orton's early novel, Head to Toe which all takes place in and around the body of a giant woman, and wondered whether the Catalan directors had read it too.

The cast were impressive. Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke delivered a tour-de-force performance as Piet the Pot, with impressive English diction, it must be one of the few roles where the tenor's stomach has to make a starring role. Pavlo Hunka (UK born despite his name) was Nekrotzar and was impressive but perhaps just a little too personable and lacked the feeling that he was capable of random violence. Frances Bourne and Rebecca Bottone were the lovers, Amando and Amanda, dressed in what appeared to be flayed flesh. Norwegian Frode Olsen (also with impressive diction) was Astradamors, bravely spending the entire evening wearing a pink camisole. Susan Bickley had a whale of a time as his wife Mescalina.

Susan Andersson was truly impressive in the two spectacular coloratura roles, Venus and Gepopo the chief of Secret Police. Daniel Norman and Simon Butteriss formed a neat double act the the two ministers, with Butteriss got up Black and White minstrel fashion as the Black minister. Andrew Watts was Prince Gepopo, proving that the role works well if sung by the right counter-tenor (Ligeti preferred a woman or a boy). The whole was beautifully orchestrated by conductor Baldur Bronnimann.

The end result was a delightful night in the theatre, but it still left me thinking what is it for? Ligeti intended his piece as a sort of anti-opera, or perhaps and anti-anti-opera and took part of his inspiration from the Venetian baroque where the operas consisted of a stream of often barely related scenes.

It is over 25 years since I saw the work and I'm afraid that the new ENO production did not convince me that there was any reason why I shouldn't wait another 25 years before seeing it again.

Preview review of Einaudi's Nightbook

Ludovico Einaudi trained in composition at the Milan conservatory and studied with Luciano Berio. Since then his compositional style has moved somewhat; he composes music which mixes ambient, minimalism and contemporary pop. His new album, Nightbook, is based around his own piano playing though the disc also features the cello playing of Marco Decimo and the viola of Antonio Leofreddi.

I previewed a copy of the album, reviewing 5 tracks on download from Decca (Lady Labyrinth, Nightbook, Indaco, Eros, Reverie). Though his music is billed as being ambient and meditative, there is something rather strongly dynamic about the music on these tracks. Though he uses the techniques of minimalism, so that the musical figures are repetitive and the musical argument often circular, they are combined with a muscularity of utterance which belies the ambient background.

Lady Labyrinth is quite piano heavy, being both rhythmic and dramatic, though drifting away towards the end. Nightbook starts in the same vein but has a gentler middle section and Indaco features the cello developing a melody. Eros is, rather surprisingly given the title, rather more nagging and buzzing, building to a strong climax and finally Reverie is a gentle piece with a long held cello line.

Though Einaudi's music, as heard here, is hypnotic there is something rather dramatic here which veers away from pure ambient; at times he reminded me of Keith Jarrett in more meditative mode.

Autumn premieres

Rather excitingly I've got two premières coming up in London this autumn. An introit motet, Thou, O Christ will be premiered at 6pm Evensong on Monday 12th October at the church of St. Botolph without Bishopsgate, Bishopsgate, London EC2M 3TL. The motet will be sung by the choir of St. Botolph’s church, conductor Timothy Storey. Thou, O Christ is a setting of an English translation prayer by St. Symeon the New Theologian, a saint of the Eastern Orthodox Church who lived in the 10 th century. I was commissioned to specifically write a setting by St. Symeon for the choir of St. Botolph's Church.

On Saturday 19th December, the Latin motet Videte Miraculum will be premiered by Chapelle du Roi, conductor Alistair Dixon, at St. John’s Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA. The performance forms part of their concert, New Lamps for Old which takes place as part of St. John’s Smith Square’s 24 th Annual Christmas Festival. The motet uses the same text and structure as Thomas Tallis's Respond of the same name, which will also be included in the concert.

Further details from the press release here.

Buxton Festival 2010

An interesting trio of works are being planned as the festival's own productions in Buxton in 2010. Stephen Medcalf will be directing Verdi's Luisa Miller, Alessandro Talevi will direct Cornelius's The Barber of Baghdad, plus Richard Strauss's arrangement of Mozart's Idomeneo.

Peter Cornelius was friendly with Liszt and Wagner and his comic opera The Barber of Baghdad was written whilst he was staying in Weimar, where Liszt conducted the première (which was a failure). The opera is unusual for a German comic opera in that it is through composed, rather than using spoken dialogue.

Review of "Don Carlo"

My review of the recent revival of Don Carlo at the Royal Opera House is here, on Music and Vision.

Don Carlo

To the Royal Opera House on Sunday for a Matinee performance of Verdi's Don Carlo. This seems and eminently sensible way to perform such operas as the evening lasted from 3pm to 7.25pm. We have attended many such matinees in Paris but so far, London has failed to follow suit; thank goodness the Royal Opera have twigged. As might be expected, the performance was popular with older people with the Amphitheatre seemingly full of elderly opera lovers. The only cloud on the horizon was the absence of Jonas Kaufman due to illness (full review will follow in due course).

We will be following this up with a visit to the matinee of the new production of Tristan und Isolde in a few weeks time.

Music Theatre Wales are premiering a new opera this week, a co-commission with the Royal Opera House. Eleanor Alberga and Donald Sturrock's opera Letters of a Love Betrayed receives its premiere at the Royal Opera House on Friday 2nd October and after 3 more performances there goes on tour to Oxford, Cardiff, Manchester, Huddersfield, Mold, Edinburgh and Aberystwyth; a total of 10 performances being admirable exposure for a new opera. It seems to be Alberga's first opera, though her period as Music Director of London Contemporary Dance Theatre will have given her the sort of experience necessary.

The piece is based on a short story by Isabel Allende, adapted by librettist Donald Sturrock. Sturrock is Artistic Director of the Roald Dahl Foundation, which perhaps seems a strange qualification for a librettist. But Sturrock is trying to accumulate a library of orchestral pieces and operas for children based on Dahl's stories and he and Alberga have already worked together on a previous piece. So the augury's seem pretty good for this new piece

Not just for porn?

A new web-site has been launched, ClassicalTV.com which allows you to stream videos of Opera direct to your PC. In a market where streaming video seems to be dominated by fluff, let us hope that ClassicalTV manages to make find its niche. The site is pay per view, and generally reasonable. A quick glance at their offerings suggests a reliance on the broadcasts from the Met, but this does mean that anyone who is curious about Anthony Minghella's Madama Butterfly, which had its origins at the London Coliseum, could easily find out what the production was like. There's also Jonathan Miller's new La Boheme from the London Coliseum, Gluck's Orfee and Offenbach's La Belle Helene from the Chatelet.

According to a recent article in the LA Times, the site features some 20% of their content at anyone time. So it sounds worth giving it a go.

Dove Birthday celebrations in Cambridge

Jonathan Dove is 50 this year and as part of the celebrations, the Cambridge Music Festival is performing one of his recent works. On 17th November, in King's College Chapel, his 2003 Far Theatricals of Day of 2003 will be performed by three Cambridge choirs and Onyx Brass, conducted by Christopher Robinson. The work was commissioned by the estimable John Armitage Memorial Trust, who are co-sponsors of this performance. For those unable to get to Cambridge, the work is being repeated at St. Margaret's Church, Westminster on 18th November. The work sets verses by Emily Dickinson and the title comes from a line from one of her poems, the work represents the gradual unfolding of a day.

(Looking further ahead London Concord Singers performance of Dove's I am the day on Dec 17th at the Grosvenor Chapel forms a further little celebration).

Towards a new opera (2)

Reached the 50 minute mark in the new opera and got over the hurdle of the first really big emotional moment. Currently wrestling with whether quarter tones are acceptable or not; whether they will make the piece a bit too fearsome. Do violinists routinely play quarter tones? What about singers?

Here I have a confession to make, I'm actually not entirely sure how to notate them and definitely have no idea how to make my music writing program play quarter tones back to me. I know that it all OUGHT to be in my head, but I do find it useful to play stuff back repeatedly and this helps generate the new ideas. In the old days this required a great deal of bashing on the piano (luckily I have usually had tolerant neighbours).

My problem at the moment is that I am torn between giving the dialogue the weight it needs which means delaying the flow of the piece, or keeping the momentum going. In a dramatic confrontation, you feel that it ought to just keep going on, but opera is not a realistic medium and sometimes there is the need to pause and consider things.

Of course, only having two characters doesn't help. For the big emotional moments I have entirely failed to work out how to include the chorus, so that it is just my two protagonists going at it together. Which is really what it should be.

I still have got quite a chunk of the libretto to get through, so we are not out of the woods yet. I am also starting to print out a fair copy of the music so far, so that I can start the next phase of work. Revising and correcting - which does require me to endlessly bash the stuff out at the piano.

Dido and Aeneas Ticket Give-away

As part of their 30th anniversary celebrations, Les Arts Florissants will be performing Purcell's Dido and Aeneas at the Barbican on Saturday 10th October with performances at 7pm and 9pm. As might be expected from this group the casting is imaginative with Malena Ernman as Dido, Luca Pisaroni as Aeneas and Hilary Summers as the Sorceress.

To celebrate the event I have been provided with two tickets for the 7pm performance to give away. All you have to do is answer the following question:-

In 1700 the opera was incorporated into an adaptation of a Shakespeare play given by Thomas Betterton's troupe at the Lincolns Inn Fields Theatre. What was the play?

Email your answer to competition@hugill.demon.co.uk
Answers must be received by 7am UK time, Wednesday 30th September 2009
The winner will be selected at random from the correct entries.

[The Small Print: Blog editors decision is final, no cash alternative, tickets to be collected on the day]

CD Review - Land of Hope and Glory

Decca have issued another one of those hopeful compilations which is intended to try and capture something of the essence of the Last Night of the Proms. The disc is a two CD set, the backbone of which are a series of recordings by Barry Wordsworth with the BBC Concert Orchestra and the Royal Choral Society. The full CD includes a generous 27 tracks in all and has items by artists such as Dame Janet Baker (O had I Jubal's lyre from Joshua), Sir Thomas Allen (Drake's Drum), Bryn Terfel (Danny Boy). As can be seen the selection wanders from the Last Night of the Proms into more an evocation of Englishness.

I listened to highlights made available via their on-line downloading system. This opened with Land of Hope and Glory arranged from the Elgar Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1. For this arrangement to work, the chorus have to sing with passion and commitment, something that the Royal Choral Society fail to do. Their rather flat delivery contrasts markedly with the brisk, up-beat account from Wordsworth and the BBC Concert Orchestra. If you are going to do this choral arrangement (rather than the composer's original) then it surely has to be convincingly flag-waving for it to work.

Handel's Zadok the Priest, given by such rather large-scale forces evokes not only pomp and circumstance but also recordings from an earlier age. The chorus work hard to match Wordsworth's crisp and brisk tempi, and they make a decent fist of the runs. But the spine-tingling magic of the piece just escapes Wordsworth. Parry's Jerusalem is a different matter, here both chorus and conductor manage to give us the sort of commitment missing from the earlier pieces.

They are joined by Della Jones for Rule Britanna, a slightly blowsy choral sound contrasts with the more focused tone from Jones, who contributes some rather amazing ornaments in the later verses.

Wordsworth starts Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No. 4 in a rather brisk fashion, though it is impressively played by the BBC Concert Orchestra. This mood seems to continue though and the nobilmente sections never seem to achieve the mood required.

In I vow to thee my Country, based on an arrangement from Holst's Planets, the Royal Choral Society again turn in a fatally routine performance, but the whole is lifted by the solo contribution from Della Jones at the end.

Henry Wood's Fantasia on British Sea Songs is given a delightful performance which captures the charm and humour of the piece and the BBC Concert Orchestra contribute some lovely solo moments.

The next track was the Academy of St. Martin in Fields account of RVW's Greensleeves, under Sir Neville Marriner. A well known version of the piece, which is simply beautiful.

Back to Barry Wordsworth and the BBC Concert Orchestra for a brilliantly crisp and rhythmically incisive account of Walton's Crown Imperial. Granted, Wordsworth is rather too brisk in the Elgarian nobilmente middle section, but he brings it all to a wonderfully exciting close.

The Scots Dragoon Guards contribute a version of Amazing Grace which suffers badly from over-production; I longed for the backing chorus and orchestra to disappear and leave the pipers to get on with doing what they do best.

Finally a perky account of Eric Coates Knightsbridge March from his London Suite.

This 2CD set is pretty good value and has some very attractive tracks on it, especially the older recordings. If the choral performances by the Royal Choral Society had been a bit more inspiring I think I could have given it a more wholehearted review. As it is, this Land of Hope and Glory just lacks the commitment needed.

Full CD Listing:-
LAND OF HOPE AND GLORY
The Ultimate Classical Celebration

CD1
1. Elgar: Pomp & Circumstance, March No. 1 (“Land of Hope and Glory”)
2. Handel: Zadok the Priest
3. Parry: Jerusalem
4. Arne: Rule Britannia
5. Elgar: Pomp & Circumstance, March No. 4
6. Holst: I Vow To Thee My Country
7. Elgar: “Nimrod” from Enigma Variations
8. Coates: The Dam Busters March
9. Alford: The Bridge on the River Kwai (“Colonel Bogey”)
10. Walton: The Battle of Agincourt
11. Grainger: Shepherd's Hey
12. Handel: O Had I Jubal's Lyre
13. Stanford: Drake's Drum
14. Parry: I Was Glad



CD2
1. Wood: Fantasia on British Sea Songs
2. Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on Greensleeves
3. Walton: Crown Imperial (Coronation March)
4. Clarke: Trumpet Voluntary (The Prince of Denmark's March)
5. Walton: Orb and Sceptre
6. Coates: The Three Elizabeths - Halcyon Days
7. Scottish Medley (feat. “Flower of Scotland”)
8. Danny Boy
9. Land of My Fathers
10. Elgar: Chanson de Matin
11. Amazing Grace
12. Coates: London Suite - Knightsbridge March
13. The National Anthem (arr. Gordon Jacob)

Performers include:
Bryn Terfel
The Philip Jones Ensemble
The Sixteen / Harry Christophers
The Royal Choral Society
The Fron Male Voice Choir
The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards
London Festival Orchestra
English Chamber Orchestra
The BBC Concert Orchestra / Barry Wordsworth