In case you live anywhere near Basingstoke and haven’t yet visited the Anvil Concert Hall (opened 1994) let me wave a flag for it. First –class acoustic, comfortable, accessible (car-park handy), nice walk-about, helpful bars, interesting programmes and events, 1350 seats. Basic shoe-box shape but no right angles behind platform (Rudolf Steiner would have approved).
On April 3 I heard a concert given by the Philharmonia Orchestra (regular visitor) conducted by Lorin Maazel, the most fascinating director to watch because his technique must be the surest in the world. He is not always the most enjoyable to hear because sometimes he can pull the music about. I find his rehearsals more rewarding than his concerts, there being no audience to watch him.
On this Hampshire visit, however, Maazel did not play to the gallery and his performance of the main work of the evening, Sibelius Symphony no. 2, was exemplary, every detail cared for, but never at the expense of the trajectory of the music as a whole; amazing to be able to follow a cogent argument in sound, the material laid before our ears, fragments at first which gradually build into an aural and intellectual edifice. The tonal juxtapositions and subsequent resolutions that Sibelius composed are deeply satisfying to heart and mind.
Do you, listener, sometimes wish that the finale’s grand tune would come back a third time? But no doubt there are cogent reasons why Sibelius ended the work the way he did; granite-faced old Finn, he knew what he was doing. And so did Maazel and the orchestra; it was superb.
The evening had begun with Fauré’s touching, tender and apposite incidental music for Maeterlinck’s play Pelléas and Mélisande. After which we were regaled with an example of Lorin Maazel’s third occupation. For he began his career as a child prodigy violinist and nowadays his compositions figure in his programmes. Skuttlebutt has it that he paid Covent Garden a quarter-of-a-million pounds to put on his Orwell Opera 1984 which nobody seemed to enjoy. Perhaps he has a deal with the Philharmonia. At any rate at Basingstoke we had to listen for half-an-hour to his Music for Violoncello and Orchestra. On the positive side this was a good show piece for the orchestra which all departments played consummate skill. The work is not discordant all the time but it seems contrived by a clever mind with no heart. The composer writes that a subtitle could be dreamscape. Hm! My subtitle might echo the title of an old musical: One Damn Thing After Another (ODTAA). The cellist Han-na Chang was faultless, coping with difficulty Maazel had thrown in her way; but for quite long periods her cello was silent while trumpets screamed, strings sounded air-raid warnings, tom-toms tom-tommed, a lady rushed about the platform playing a harpsichord and other keyboard instruments, although we could not hear the sounds she mad, anymore than we could hear a player fingering an accordion.
Now in the Thirties and earlier, an audience might have walked out or made rude noises when music like this was performed but today audiences are more polite (frightened?). At any rate Maazel and his cellist were regaled with applause.
Could your reviewer be wrong? He is mindful of the fact that when Fauré’s gentle and perfectly proportioned Pelléas music was first performed in London (Sarah Bernhardt played Mélisande) the Times reviewer wrote that “its continued absence of tangible form, not to speak of it’s actual ugliness” etc. So, you see times and Times can change.
--- John Amis
Friday, May 01, 2009
Friday, April 17, 2009
A TAKE ON HANDEL’S ALESSANDRO
If that great expert on Handel’s operas, Winton Dean, took three large pages to explain the plot of the Master’s 1726 Alessandro, your scribe hasn’t a hope in hell of reducing it to a paragraph. Presumably Handel chose the story because it contained juicy parts for the two prima donne in the cast, the one long in his company, Cuzzoni, the one he famously threatened to defenestrate if she didn’t mind her ps and qs and the latest Italian import, Faustina Bordoni.
Things were not exactly made clearer by the stage director, William Relton, who updated the action to Oxford in the twenties, dreaming spires but with a touch of blackshirt thuggery from the thirties. The problem of course with Handel operas is the almost complete lack of ensembles and the plethora of arias in that old ABA form. If you don’t do something with them, yawning can set in; and if you spice it up too much, you risk damage to Handel’s beautiful music.
The beginning was not too promising with Alex (for short, kissing Clito in the overture.) And then the first numbers took place in: a) rugger scrums, b) a tea party, c) a sconcing and d) a lavatory. My sense of propriety at this point diminished because the staging was so brilliant, even though, as usual when you start juggling with centuries, the mores, manners and class distinctions go to pot. Once one realised that the producer’s motto was ‘anything goes’ things developed towards the end into a ‘top hat, white tie and tails’ number, one could than relax and let one’s blood pressure alone.
It was all great fun; the singers had good voices and could cope with the coloratura bravura runs, roulades and other vocal devices that Handel composed as well as the wonderful lyrical tunes. Countertenors that sounded musical and the two ladies were excellent. Slim Susanna Hurrell (Roxana) could roll about on the floor and still sing perfectly, and give an exposition of happiness; Sarah-Jane Brandon (Lisaura), more spacious in looks, was wonderfully expressive. Christopher Lowery (Alessandro) had a daffy look but a great commend of his florid countertenor music. James Oldfield (Clito) sounded a beautiful bass voice. But there were also stars in the pit: Laurence Cummings directed the London Handel Orchestra, period instruments of course, purity down below if not up above.
There is probably a halfway house between this foolery and purist straight stuff but until someone with taste, respect and imagination comes along with a better solution this hit-and-miss kind of production will have to do. This one certainly worked, ‘up to a point, Lord Copper.’
- John Amis
Things were not exactly made clearer by the stage director, William Relton, who updated the action to Oxford in the twenties, dreaming spires but with a touch of blackshirt thuggery from the thirties. The problem of course with Handel operas is the almost complete lack of ensembles and the plethora of arias in that old ABA form. If you don’t do something with them, yawning can set in; and if you spice it up too much, you risk damage to Handel’s beautiful music.
The beginning was not too promising with Alex (for short, kissing Clito in the overture.) And then the first numbers took place in: a) rugger scrums, b) a tea party, c) a sconcing and d) a lavatory. My sense of propriety at this point diminished because the staging was so brilliant, even though, as usual when you start juggling with centuries, the mores, manners and class distinctions go to pot. Once one realised that the producer’s motto was ‘anything goes’ things developed towards the end into a ‘top hat, white tie and tails’ number, one could than relax and let one’s blood pressure alone.
It was all great fun; the singers had good voices and could cope with the coloratura bravura runs, roulades and other vocal devices that Handel composed as well as the wonderful lyrical tunes. Countertenors that sounded musical and the two ladies were excellent. Slim Susanna Hurrell (Roxana) could roll about on the floor and still sing perfectly, and give an exposition of happiness; Sarah-Jane Brandon (Lisaura), more spacious in looks, was wonderfully expressive. Christopher Lowery (Alessandro) had a daffy look but a great commend of his florid countertenor music. James Oldfield (Clito) sounded a beautiful bass voice. But there were also stars in the pit: Laurence Cummings directed the London Handel Orchestra, period instruments of course, purity down below if not up above.
There is probably a halfway house between this foolery and purist straight stuff but until someone with taste, respect and imagination comes along with a better solution this hit-and-miss kind of production will have to do. This one certainly worked, ‘up to a point, Lord Copper.’
- John Amis
DIE FEEN IN PARIS
It seems that anything composed by Richard Wagner will draw applauding crowds these days. The Ring is always sold out and just now all performances of the first opera he composed, at the age of twenty, are drawing full houses in a Paris run at that lovely Chatelets theatre. I saw the second performance of Die Feen on March 29.
Wagner, as always wrote his own libretto, taking a story by Carlo Gozzi, a tale about fairies and mortals. Arindal as loved by a fairy, Ada, who has him under a spell. Ada wants to hand in her fairy cards and marry a mortal, a tenor natch. To this end, he has to perform some fiendish tasks and suffer some even more fiendish torments from her. Meanwhile back at the ranch his sister Lora is defending Arindal’s kingdom which is going to ruin. It takes 3 long acts before a happy ending is reached; even with cuts Die Feen lasts three hours.
Now Wagner in his prime can last longer than that but by that time he could beguile you, bedevil you with leading motives, orchestral splendour and even occasionally enchant you with melody. But not at the age of twenty. Mainly he serves up the sort of music he was conducting at that period of his life ‘like Weber not under pressure’ Ernest Newman wrote. There are not many memorable moments in Die Feen although the fledging composer was capable of writing a score, suitably planned, but with more than a share of mauvais quarts d’heures.
What made the performance tolerable was the production and much of singing and playing. The Spanish director Emilio Sagi applies imagination, finesse and charm to the staging, décor and costumes to match by Daniel Blanco and Jésus Ruiz. Ada appears in one scene from a vast rose, another scene has a twenty-five feet high chandelier that must have sent the budget sky-high. Sometimes things get rather camp with male bare-chested fairies wearing diaphanous skirts. There are plenty of girls though and the performance begins and ends in swirling pink. Why the hero Arindal spends two acts in a green frock is not explained. Never mind, it was all good fun and helped to pass the time.
The performance of the evening was by the German singer, Christiana Liber with a voice that was strong, pure, bang in the middle of the note and full of drama. Her mortal lover, Arindal was the American tenor William Joyner, extremely competent but no charm or presence. His sister, Lora, was the Georgina-American Lina Tetruashvili whom we commended at Wexford last Halloween as Miss Bad Girl in Snow Maiden. She’s Miss Good Girl in this and a first rate performer to cherish. Ensemble, chorus and orchestra excellent under Marc-Minkowski, a name we know here from CD’s, good to enjoy his work in the flesh.
Signs and portents? Yes, a phrase here and a modulation there, very occasionally; but on the whole, the music of the future was in the future. But in the story line there were also some familiars; forbidden enquiry, a fairy garden, magic weapons, a touch of redemption and a final transfiguration, all of these were to ring a bell.
I hope that Die Feen (The Fairies) will be performed on rare occasions in future. My motto is; let sleeping fairies lie.
- John Amis
Wagner, as always wrote his own libretto, taking a story by Carlo Gozzi, a tale about fairies and mortals. Arindal as loved by a fairy, Ada, who has him under a spell. Ada wants to hand in her fairy cards and marry a mortal, a tenor natch. To this end, he has to perform some fiendish tasks and suffer some even more fiendish torments from her. Meanwhile back at the ranch his sister Lora is defending Arindal’s kingdom which is going to ruin. It takes 3 long acts before a happy ending is reached; even with cuts Die Feen lasts three hours.
Now Wagner in his prime can last longer than that but by that time he could beguile you, bedevil you with leading motives, orchestral splendour and even occasionally enchant you with melody. But not at the age of twenty. Mainly he serves up the sort of music he was conducting at that period of his life ‘like Weber not under pressure’ Ernest Newman wrote. There are not many memorable moments in Die Feen although the fledging composer was capable of writing a score, suitably planned, but with more than a share of mauvais quarts d’heures.
What made the performance tolerable was the production and much of singing and playing. The Spanish director Emilio Sagi applies imagination, finesse and charm to the staging, décor and costumes to match by Daniel Blanco and Jésus Ruiz. Ada appears in one scene from a vast rose, another scene has a twenty-five feet high chandelier that must have sent the budget sky-high. Sometimes things get rather camp with male bare-chested fairies wearing diaphanous skirts. There are plenty of girls though and the performance begins and ends in swirling pink. Why the hero Arindal spends two acts in a green frock is not explained. Never mind, it was all good fun and helped to pass the time.
The performance of the evening was by the German singer, Christiana Liber with a voice that was strong, pure, bang in the middle of the note and full of drama. Her mortal lover, Arindal was the American tenor William Joyner, extremely competent but no charm or presence. His sister, Lora, was the Georgina-American Lina Tetruashvili whom we commended at Wexford last Halloween as Miss Bad Girl in Snow Maiden. She’s Miss Good Girl in this and a first rate performer to cherish. Ensemble, chorus and orchestra excellent under Marc-Minkowski, a name we know here from CD’s, good to enjoy his work in the flesh.
Signs and portents? Yes, a phrase here and a modulation there, very occasionally; but on the whole, the music of the future was in the future. But in the story line there were also some familiars; forbidden enquiry, a fairy garden, magic weapons, a touch of redemption and a final transfiguration, all of these were to ring a bell.
I hope that Die Feen (The Fairies) will be performed on rare occasions in future. My motto is; let sleeping fairies lie.
- John Amis
Saturday, March 28, 2009
PARSIFAL UNSTAGED
Busy Russian at the helm
Asked whether she preferred drama on radio or television, the lady opted for radio. Why? “Because the scenery is better.” Which has a sort of bearing on the question whether opera is better in the opera house or the concert hall. When you consider the disease that besets the majority of opera productions these days when ‘concept productions’ are so prevalent, and when ignorant and unmusical producers are so keen to put their egotistic stamp on their efforts, we can be thankful for concert performances of opera that allow the listener to hear the music and imagine the action.
Of course, a good production is the better of the two options: one that has respect for the opera, one that shows imagination in tune with the work. These thoughts came to mind attending on March 12 a performance of the third act of Parsifal. The London Symphony Orchestra was directed by that busy Russian, Valery Gergiev, the Dapertutto of the conducting world. He is not renowned for his direction of Wagner but although I have heard more inspiring performances this was a clear one, impassioned and technically secure, the players straining at the leash to give of their best. There was a fine sonority to be heard, the strings giving a luxurious sheen to their sound was they bore down on their G Saite (G strings).
The singing of Amfortas and Gurnemanz could scarcely have been bettered: the Russian baritone Evgeny Nikitin tugged at our heartstrings and the Dutchman Robert Holl was a superb Gurnemanz, sympathetic and with a voice as huge as a battleship. The single line that Wagner allotted to Kundry in this act was sung by a member of the LS Chorus. Chorus excellent.
Curious how Debussy and Nietzsche both doted on Wagner, then reneged and became as anti-Wagner as Stravinsky was all the time.
The Parsifal, Russian Sergey Semishkov lacked a true Heldentenor ring but sang his part intelligently (he looked curiously like photographs of an unsmiling Francis Bacon); figuratively I thought of his entrance, immersed in black armour, complete with vizier – as a sort of holy Ned Kelly. I also remembered Ernest Newman quoting Wagner’s comment on contemporary criticism that the text was blasphemous: “the idea of Christ being a tenor … phew!”
Asked whether she preferred drama on radio or television, the lady opted for radio. Why? “Because the scenery is better.” Which has a sort of bearing on the question whether opera is better in the opera house or the concert hall. When you consider the disease that besets the majority of opera productions these days when ‘concept productions’ are so prevalent, and when ignorant and unmusical producers are so keen to put their egotistic stamp on their efforts, we can be thankful for concert performances of opera that allow the listener to hear the music and imagine the action.
Of course, a good production is the better of the two options: one that has respect for the opera, one that shows imagination in tune with the work. These thoughts came to mind attending on March 12 a performance of the third act of Parsifal. The London Symphony Orchestra was directed by that busy Russian, Valery Gergiev, the Dapertutto of the conducting world. He is not renowned for his direction of Wagner but although I have heard more inspiring performances this was a clear one, impassioned and technically secure, the players straining at the leash to give of their best. There was a fine sonority to be heard, the strings giving a luxurious sheen to their sound was they bore down on their G Saite (G strings).
The singing of Amfortas and Gurnemanz could scarcely have been bettered: the Russian baritone Evgeny Nikitin tugged at our heartstrings and the Dutchman Robert Holl was a superb Gurnemanz, sympathetic and with a voice as huge as a battleship. The single line that Wagner allotted to Kundry in this act was sung by a member of the LS Chorus. Chorus excellent.
Curious how Debussy and Nietzsche both doted on Wagner, then reneged and became as anti-Wagner as Stravinsky was all the time.
The Parsifal, Russian Sergey Semishkov lacked a true Heldentenor ring but sang his part intelligently (he looked curiously like photographs of an unsmiling Francis Bacon); figuratively I thought of his entrance, immersed in black armour, complete with vizier – as a sort of holy Ned Kelly. I also remembered Ernest Newman quoting Wagner’s comment on contemporary criticism that the text was blasphemous: “the idea of Christ being a tenor … phew!”
Friday, March 20, 2009
MELBOURNE’S NEW CONCERT HALL
The capital of Victoria has a new music room, a large recital room seating a thousand, no proscenium, just a stage abutting the first row of the audience. All wood: walls, ceiling, floor, even the chair backs. The walls seem to flow, with a two inch indentation looking somewhat like diagrams of ocean charts. A leaflet tells us what to savour – a big bass response. True, a bit too big, supporting horns come at us overbearing. Our old friend Bill Lyne, who ran London’s Wigmore Hall for so long with good taste and success, is quoted as saying; The Elizabeth Murdoch Hall will inspire artists to give their best. Who is Elizabeth Murdoch? the mother of Rupert (but) a much loved lady in these parts, the opening of her hall coincided with her 100th birthday in late January.
In passing: although many are convinced that wood produces the best acoustic, note that our perfect chamber music venue in London, the Wigmore Hall, is not all wood but mostly plaster, combined with wood and marble. My ears tell me that this new Melbourne Hall needs quite a bit of tweeting before it meets the claims made for it. The sound is resonant to the point of crudity, almost bathroom, that is from the circle and from the back stalls, where I sat for two concerts. Only from the third row of the stalls, where I sat for the third concert, did I get a good sound, where the sound flowed naturally. Not only was the bass response too loud but also there seemed to be a favoured octave: A above middle C upwards to top A in the treble clef. Sometimes string sound disappeared.
The programmes that I went to, February 6 -13 were mixed, sometimes orchestral first half, chamber music after the interval. First night we had the Vaughan Williams Serenade to Music but the beautiful score did not jell in performance, despite good singing from local soloists (though the “Elsie Suddaby” soprano fluffed her two climactic top notes). And the final scene of Don Giovanni was not properly coherent and in the Trout Quintet Schubert’s winning music winningly played by Piers Lane with the Goldner Quartet, the string sound often faded away. Another evening the excellent no-vibrato-period-instrumented-Brandenburg Orchestra in toothsome Mozart movements (the slow ones from the Clarinet Concerto and the Elvira Madigan C Major Piano Concerto K. 467) there were the same deficiencies. Only the crystal clear stratospheric Queen of the Night was satisfactory, wonderfully sung by American soprano, Cynthia Siedel (look out for her, she’s the tops). Sitting close to the stage came enchantment in sound and performance: Gidon Kremer and his Baltic Ensemble in a programme called After Bach Adagio and Fugue/Mozart followed by the Bach Chaconne.
At 62 Kremer is still the mature master; knees bent, rather horse-faced (handsome horse mind you) and no kow-towing, he is superior in many respects to the amazing Kennedy, Mutter, Perlman and the gorgeous young girlies. Gubaidolina’s Improvisations on a Bach motive for string quartet were diverting and so were some choice Piazolla numbers. Three of Bach’s Inventions were magically played on a vibraphone by Istvan Petenko. The encore, played by all hands, ragged Eleanor Rigby to rousing effect.
So …. if in Melbourne’s new recital room, try and sit almost on the performers’ laps, or else wait for further tweetings.
Coda: I also attended one late night recital in the adjacent small Salon, a programme given by superb flautist Geoffrey Collins with old friend Roger Woodward, still in the fine fettle, piano bashing as is his wont and as required too often by avant garde composers. No doubt the performers were scrupulously accurate in works by Ann Boyd, Takemitsu and Richard Meale. Not my tasse de thé, to my ears more like stale ship’s biscuits; and really! fluting into the strings of the piano, isn’t that old hat by now?
Audiences: none of these events was more than two-thirds full.
In passing: although many are convinced that wood produces the best acoustic, note that our perfect chamber music venue in London, the Wigmore Hall, is not all wood but mostly plaster, combined with wood and marble. My ears tell me that this new Melbourne Hall needs quite a bit of tweeting before it meets the claims made for it. The sound is resonant to the point of crudity, almost bathroom, that is from the circle and from the back stalls, where I sat for two concerts. Only from the third row of the stalls, where I sat for the third concert, did I get a good sound, where the sound flowed naturally. Not only was the bass response too loud but also there seemed to be a favoured octave: A above middle C upwards to top A in the treble clef. Sometimes string sound disappeared.
The programmes that I went to, February 6 -13 were mixed, sometimes orchestral first half, chamber music after the interval. First night we had the Vaughan Williams Serenade to Music but the beautiful score did not jell in performance, despite good singing from local soloists (though the “Elsie Suddaby” soprano fluffed her two climactic top notes). And the final scene of Don Giovanni was not properly coherent and in the Trout Quintet Schubert’s winning music winningly played by Piers Lane with the Goldner Quartet, the string sound often faded away. Another evening the excellent no-vibrato-period-instrumented-Brandenburg Orchestra in toothsome Mozart movements (the slow ones from the Clarinet Concerto and the Elvira Madigan C Major Piano Concerto K. 467) there were the same deficiencies. Only the crystal clear stratospheric Queen of the Night was satisfactory, wonderfully sung by American soprano, Cynthia Siedel (look out for her, she’s the tops). Sitting close to the stage came enchantment in sound and performance: Gidon Kremer and his Baltic Ensemble in a programme called After Bach Adagio and Fugue/Mozart followed by the Bach Chaconne.
At 62 Kremer is still the mature master; knees bent, rather horse-faced (handsome horse mind you) and no kow-towing, he is superior in many respects to the amazing Kennedy, Mutter, Perlman and the gorgeous young girlies. Gubaidolina’s Improvisations on a Bach motive for string quartet were diverting and so were some choice Piazolla numbers. Three of Bach’s Inventions were magically played on a vibraphone by Istvan Petenko. The encore, played by all hands, ragged Eleanor Rigby to rousing effect.
So …. if in Melbourne’s new recital room, try and sit almost on the performers’ laps, or else wait for further tweetings.
Coda: I also attended one late night recital in the adjacent small Salon, a programme given by superb flautist Geoffrey Collins with old friend Roger Woodward, still in the fine fettle, piano bashing as is his wont and as required too often by avant garde composers. No doubt the performers were scrupulously accurate in works by Ann Boyd, Takemitsu and Richard Meale. Not my tasse de thé, to my ears more like stale ship’s biscuits; and really! fluting into the strings of the piano, isn’t that old hat by now?
Audiences: none of these events was more than two-thirds full.
THE VIRTUOSO
Sonya Orchard, Harper-Collins
The Virtuoso is a remarkable book by a young Australian musician turned novelist – rave reviews before and since the launch last month in Melbourne and Sydney. The unusual format is a sort of biography within a fiction, about a young boy student who falls in love with Noël Mewton-Wood a gifted Melbourner who debuted with Beecham, had a good career, made over a dozen first-class records of concertos, played at Proms, Wigmore Hall and Aldeburgh, great friend of Tippett, Britten and was part of the London Musical scene. He was a depressive and tragically, committed suicide in 1953, aged only 31. The author’s name is Sonia Orchard and she lives in Melbourne with her husband James and their two baby daughters.
Why did Noël commit suicide? His lover-partner, Bill, non-musician, sometime British Council rep in Germany, died of a ruptured appendix and Noël felt guilty. Also he considered, mistakenly, that his career was in decline. He was a remarkable musician with a sure technique, rather in the Clifford Curzon mould, although with more leanings towards contemporary music. Lately critics have praised the recent two-set Decca CDs of his recordings of concertos; Beethoven 4, Tchaikovsky 2, the Shostakovich with trumpet, and Schumann’s solo Kinderszenen, etc. Later this year his complete oeuvre will be issued by Decca, including Tchaikovsky 1, Chopin1, Bliss etc. The slow movement of the Chopin is the best version I know and the Bliss equals Solomon’s. Noël was at his best in the recording studio. He recorded the Busoni on EMI with Beecham conducting. It was with Beecham that he made his debut in London and the old conductor conceded at rehearsal that Noël was right when the cherubic seventeen year old corrected him; “out of the mouths of babes and sucklings” he responded.
The novel story is told by an I, a young male student pianist in love with Noël who has an affair with him. Orchard writes graphically, flowingly, poetically at times and evokes quite remarkably the London musical scene. She tells a good yarn, making many interesting musical points on the way. I think, in fact I am sure, that even those who don’t know his name, will find it a book to cherish and perhaps shed a few tears over. None more than myself to whom Noël left his concert grand piano. The night before he took cyanide he talked to me for an hour on the telephone with not a word about dying.
A link to an Australian site selling the book, http://www.readings.com.au/interview/sonia-orchard
The Virtuoso is a remarkable book by a young Australian musician turned novelist – rave reviews before and since the launch last month in Melbourne and Sydney. The unusual format is a sort of biography within a fiction, about a young boy student who falls in love with Noël Mewton-Wood a gifted Melbourner who debuted with Beecham, had a good career, made over a dozen first-class records of concertos, played at Proms, Wigmore Hall and Aldeburgh, great friend of Tippett, Britten and was part of the London Musical scene. He was a depressive and tragically, committed suicide in 1953, aged only 31. The author’s name is Sonia Orchard and she lives in Melbourne with her husband James and their two baby daughters.
Why did Noël commit suicide? His lover-partner, Bill, non-musician, sometime British Council rep in Germany, died of a ruptured appendix and Noël felt guilty. Also he considered, mistakenly, that his career was in decline. He was a remarkable musician with a sure technique, rather in the Clifford Curzon mould, although with more leanings towards contemporary music. Lately critics have praised the recent two-set Decca CDs of his recordings of concertos; Beethoven 4, Tchaikovsky 2, the Shostakovich with trumpet, and Schumann’s solo Kinderszenen, etc. Later this year his complete oeuvre will be issued by Decca, including Tchaikovsky 1, Chopin1, Bliss etc. The slow movement of the Chopin is the best version I know and the Bliss equals Solomon’s. Noël was at his best in the recording studio. He recorded the Busoni on EMI with Beecham conducting. It was with Beecham that he made his debut in London and the old conductor conceded at rehearsal that Noël was right when the cherubic seventeen year old corrected him; “out of the mouths of babes and sucklings” he responded.
The novel story is told by an I, a young male student pianist in love with Noël who has an affair with him. Orchard writes graphically, flowingly, poetically at times and evokes quite remarkably the London musical scene. She tells a good yarn, making many interesting musical points on the way. I think, in fact I am sure, that even those who don’t know his name, will find it a book to cherish and perhaps shed a few tears over. None more than myself to whom Noël left his concert grand piano. The night before he took cyanide he talked to me for an hour on the telephone with not a word about dying.
A link to an Australian site selling the book, http://www.readings.com.au/interview/sonia-orchard
MUSIC IN THE OMAN
A quarter of a century ago the Sultan of Oman decreed a visit to his capital Muscat of the London Symphony Orchestra; I went as a scribe and hanger-on. Especially for the visit he had also decreed that a large hotel be built with a concert hall in the middle of it. And lo! It came to pass, Al Bustan Hotel, nestling between limestone crags that look naked because there is no soil, therefore no trees so that they look almost unreal, like fibre glass. The LSO was somewhat apprehensive about the visit as it feared that in Arabia there might be liquid but without alcohol in it. But when we arrived off our flight at four in the morning we were greeted in the hotel atrium with the sounds of the harp, the splashing of fountains and the popping of champagne corks. Moreover when the lads and lasses retired to their rooms, they found a bottle of Johnny Walker beside each bed. The week was to be more enjoyable than anticipated! The atrium, by the way, is 115 feet high, the dome hoisting huge chandeliers, the whole hotel de luxe, the cuisine likewise.
The Concert Hall was well designed, spacious, an 800-seater, well upholstered, main colour dark plum with goodish acoustics that have been improved subsequently. The conductor was the former LSO leader, John Georgiadis and before the first of the two concerts he was instructed to stand to await the arrival of the Sultan. He stood for some forty-five minutes. Before the second concert he sat down on a chair to await the equally late arrival of the monarch. The Sultan was not best pleased with the apparent incivility. The Sultan has ruled the state absolutely since 1970. And successfully, his subjects respect him. To quote only one statistic, in 1970 there were three schools in Oman, now there are over a thousand. And by law, buildings have to have national characteristics, such as crenellations, they are mostly white and do not scrape the sky, having a slightly toytown appearance, pleasing.
The Sultan was pleased with the LSO visit but had sensibly decided that Oman must have its own orchestra. So some thirty or so boys were selected to form an orchestra in the future, now called the Royal Oman Symphony Orchestra. Instruments to the tune of a quarter of a million pounds were ordered from Boosey and Hawkes, tutors engaged, mostly from the U.K.
So I was keen to hear the result 25 years later; to find what progress had been made. The first thing I noticed was that quite a few of the boys were by now bald. Also that there was nearly a score of girls in the band, looking in their uniforms of headdresses, shawls and draperies of red with green tunics, the colours of the Omani flag, like so many Red Riding Hoods. The programme of the concert I attended on March 2 was quite demanding: the prelude to Verdi’s Nabucco, a suite of Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances, not the usual one we hear for strings only but one with full orchestra and harpsichord, and the First Symphony of Sibelius. The conductor was Simon Wright, brother of that Wright who Rogers BBC music and the Proms. He obviously commands the respect of the orchestra and it played proficiently for him, with great enthusiasm; the first tutti in the Verdi nearly knocked the audience out of its plush seats. The first oboe and the bassoons were first class, the strings occasionally dodgy but this was a real orchestra and will improve if it continues to have good visiting conductors, who get on well with the players. Sir Colin Davis was here a little time ago but sadly did not hit it off too well with the band, so that a repeat of his concert in London’s Barbican on March 5 was scrubbed.
I cannot pretend that this orchestra is of international standard yet but I can say that the concert I went to was a pleasurable experience that I would willingly repeat. Simon Wright, conductor of the Leeds Choral Society for many years, did an excellent job; maybe his brother should give him a London concert.
The Concert Hall was well designed, spacious, an 800-seater, well upholstered, main colour dark plum with goodish acoustics that have been improved subsequently. The conductor was the former LSO leader, John Georgiadis and before the first of the two concerts he was instructed to stand to await the arrival of the Sultan. He stood for some forty-five minutes. Before the second concert he sat down on a chair to await the equally late arrival of the monarch. The Sultan was not best pleased with the apparent incivility. The Sultan has ruled the state absolutely since 1970. And successfully, his subjects respect him. To quote only one statistic, in 1970 there were three schools in Oman, now there are over a thousand. And by law, buildings have to have national characteristics, such as crenellations, they are mostly white and do not scrape the sky, having a slightly toytown appearance, pleasing.
The Sultan was pleased with the LSO visit but had sensibly decided that Oman must have its own orchestra. So some thirty or so boys were selected to form an orchestra in the future, now called the Royal Oman Symphony Orchestra. Instruments to the tune of a quarter of a million pounds were ordered from Boosey and Hawkes, tutors engaged, mostly from the U.K.
So I was keen to hear the result 25 years later; to find what progress had been made. The first thing I noticed was that quite a few of the boys were by now bald. Also that there was nearly a score of girls in the band, looking in their uniforms of headdresses, shawls and draperies of red with green tunics, the colours of the Omani flag, like so many Red Riding Hoods. The programme of the concert I attended on March 2 was quite demanding: the prelude to Verdi’s Nabucco, a suite of Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances, not the usual one we hear for strings only but one with full orchestra and harpsichord, and the First Symphony of Sibelius. The conductor was Simon Wright, brother of that Wright who Rogers BBC music and the Proms. He obviously commands the respect of the orchestra and it played proficiently for him, with great enthusiasm; the first tutti in the Verdi nearly knocked the audience out of its plush seats. The first oboe and the bassoons were first class, the strings occasionally dodgy but this was a real orchestra and will improve if it continues to have good visiting conductors, who get on well with the players. Sir Colin Davis was here a little time ago but sadly did not hit it off too well with the band, so that a repeat of his concert in London’s Barbican on March 5 was scrubbed.
I cannot pretend that this orchestra is of international standard yet but I can say that the concert I went to was a pleasurable experience that I would willingly repeat. Simon Wright, conductor of the Leeds Choral Society for many years, did an excellent job; maybe his brother should give him a London concert.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Prokofiev: A life of Music
Wednesday 18 March 2009
Prokofiev: A life of Music
John Amis and Tait Memorial Trust Awardees
John Amis together with Mary Jean O’Doherty, James Homann, Amir Farid and Claire Howard present an evening on Prokofiev. Works to include Diabolique Opus 4, Toccata Opus 11, War and Peace arias, The Love of 3 Oranges and Songs Without Words. Tickets £23
7 for 7.30pm in Chelsea, London
For tickets and full details please visit www.taitmemorialtrust.org or email info@taitmemorialtrust.org.
Prokofiev: A life of Music
John Amis and Tait Memorial Trust Awardees
John Amis together with Mary Jean O’Doherty, James Homann, Amir Farid and Claire Howard present an evening on Prokofiev. Works to include Diabolique Opus 4, Toccata Opus 11, War and Peace arias, The Love of 3 Oranges and Songs Without Words. Tickets £23
7 for 7.30pm in Chelsea, London
For tickets and full details please visit www.taitmemorialtrust.org or email info@taitmemorialtrust.org.
DIE TOTE STADT TRIUMPHS
Interest in Korngold grows apace. His superb film scores (2 Oscars) have made people keen about Erich Wolfgang, 1897 – 1957. His middle name was lived up to, for he was one of the most precocious composers ever. He had a triumphant childhood, adolescence and young manhood in Vienna but was hounded out of Germany and Austria by the Nazis, moved to America where he became a star cinema composer in Hollywood. Mahler, Strauss, Furtwängler, Šibelius and Puccini proclaimed his exceptional qualities, he had a ballet produced at the Vienna Opera when he was still in short pants, Schnabel played a Piano Sonata K had composed when he was thirteen, he was made a professor at the Vienna State Academy and his operas were performed all over the German speaking countries and beyond. In 1920 Die Tote Stadt was premiered simultaneously in Cologne and Hamburg, in Vienna a month later. It was about time that Covent Garden let us see and hear that opera and the British première arrived on January 27.
I prepared for that premiere by listening three times to a CD of the work and I confess to being underwhelmed. The music is, to my taste, unfocused, brilliantly written for the orchestra but altogether too loud too much of the time and with vocal writing that keeps the singers straining at the top of their range, Korngold continually makes Straussian gestures but they lack the melodic potency of the older master and they do not show the same love that Strauss had for the human voice. But on the stage, in an exceptionally fine production, the story is told with the stage know-how of a master.
The story is very much of its time, a time when Europe was still lamenting the mass killing of millions of men so that remembrance of the dead was in many people’s mind (Conan Doyle and all that cult). Die Tote Stadt is about Paul still grieving obsessively for his wife Marie, conserving her memory with portraits of her, even a plaid of her hair. One day, however in the dead city of Bruges (get the connection?) he sees a (dead) ringer of that wife. She is called Marietta, a dancer who might perhaps be cast as Odile; is she immoral because she wants to enslave every man or is she a child of nature? Paul’s grief gives way to infatuation. Paul’s best friend is Frank but he becomes a rival, for he seems also to be having it off with Marietta, she casting sexual favours to all-comers, including a certain Count/Pierrot of a harlequinade (shades of Ariadne auf Naxos). Paul alternates between having his cake and going hungry with grief. All this with the back ground of Bruges and it’s religious processions. Eventually Marietta goes too far in taunting Paul and desecrating the shrine he has created, he strangles her with Marie’s plaid of hair. All a bit sick really. And no catharsis in the music when the whole thing turns out to be a dream. Frank and Paul are friends again and plan to leave the dead city. And Marietta pops in to collect her brolly and some roses she left behind. Quiet ending.
The evening was a triumph of artistry. The production by Willy Decker (from Salzburg and Vienna) was perfect, completely non-concept, entirely at the service of and with respect for the work, imaginative and mind-blowing, totally satisfying, a great evening in the opera-house. Equally commendable was the singing and acting all round. It is Paul’s show and the American tenor, Stephen Gould, was a star, coping with the high tessitura and its jagged line, also living the part. As did also the German singer, Nadja Michael as an utterly convincing Marietta (occasionally doubling as the shade of Marie), delighting in the 1920 costumes and revealing a personality and allure that was captivating. The only quality that would have lifted enjoyment even higher would have been the sort of vocal charisma that earlier singers had, like Maria Jeritza and Richard Tauber in the Twenties. Crowning the evening was the debut in the Royal Opera House of the conductor Ingo Metzmacher; no praise is too high for his handling of the score and our orchestra.
The story was originally a novel called Bruges-la-morte by Georges Rodenbach and the opera libretto was by the composer himself, with the helping hand – only revealed in 1975 – of his father, Julius who, as a feared Viennese music critic, sensibly wished to remain anonymous, fearing that his reputation might harm his son’s. When Die Tote Stadt had its premiere Korngold was twenty three years of age.
Max Reinhardt got Korngold to Hollywood to write extra music for his film ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ (Mickey Rooney the best Puck ever) and the composer was able to stay on. The Sea Hawk, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex and Robin Hood (Errol Flynn at his best) brought forth wonderful scores from Korngold. He also produced concert works; in 1945 the luscious, high sugar content Violin Concerto (Heifetz’ recording is tops) and the 1951 Symphony in F sharp minor, which I consider a great work, worthy to be spoken of as a successor to Mahler’s Tenth.
I prepared for that premiere by listening three times to a CD of the work and I confess to being underwhelmed. The music is, to my taste, unfocused, brilliantly written for the orchestra but altogether too loud too much of the time and with vocal writing that keeps the singers straining at the top of their range, Korngold continually makes Straussian gestures but they lack the melodic potency of the older master and they do not show the same love that Strauss had for the human voice. But on the stage, in an exceptionally fine production, the story is told with the stage know-how of a master.
The story is very much of its time, a time when Europe was still lamenting the mass killing of millions of men so that remembrance of the dead was in many people’s mind (Conan Doyle and all that cult). Die Tote Stadt is about Paul still grieving obsessively for his wife Marie, conserving her memory with portraits of her, even a plaid of her hair. One day, however in the dead city of Bruges (get the connection?) he sees a (dead) ringer of that wife. She is called Marietta, a dancer who might perhaps be cast as Odile; is she immoral because she wants to enslave every man or is she a child of nature? Paul’s grief gives way to infatuation. Paul’s best friend is Frank but he becomes a rival, for he seems also to be having it off with Marietta, she casting sexual favours to all-comers, including a certain Count/Pierrot of a harlequinade (shades of Ariadne auf Naxos). Paul alternates between having his cake and going hungry with grief. All this with the back ground of Bruges and it’s religious processions. Eventually Marietta goes too far in taunting Paul and desecrating the shrine he has created, he strangles her with Marie’s plaid of hair. All a bit sick really. And no catharsis in the music when the whole thing turns out to be a dream. Frank and Paul are friends again and plan to leave the dead city. And Marietta pops in to collect her brolly and some roses she left behind. Quiet ending.
The evening was a triumph of artistry. The production by Willy Decker (from Salzburg and Vienna) was perfect, completely non-concept, entirely at the service of and with respect for the work, imaginative and mind-blowing, totally satisfying, a great evening in the opera-house. Equally commendable was the singing and acting all round. It is Paul’s show and the American tenor, Stephen Gould, was a star, coping with the high tessitura and its jagged line, also living the part. As did also the German singer, Nadja Michael as an utterly convincing Marietta (occasionally doubling as the shade of Marie), delighting in the 1920 costumes and revealing a personality and allure that was captivating. The only quality that would have lifted enjoyment even higher would have been the sort of vocal charisma that earlier singers had, like Maria Jeritza and Richard Tauber in the Twenties. Crowning the evening was the debut in the Royal Opera House of the conductor Ingo Metzmacher; no praise is too high for his handling of the score and our orchestra.
The story was originally a novel called Bruges-la-morte by Georges Rodenbach and the opera libretto was by the composer himself, with the helping hand – only revealed in 1975 – of his father, Julius who, as a feared Viennese music critic, sensibly wished to remain anonymous, fearing that his reputation might harm his son’s. When Die Tote Stadt had its premiere Korngold was twenty three years of age.
Max Reinhardt got Korngold to Hollywood to write extra music for his film ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ (Mickey Rooney the best Puck ever) and the composer was able to stay on. The Sea Hawk, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex and Robin Hood (Errol Flynn at his best) brought forth wonderful scores from Korngold. He also produced concert works; in 1945 the luscious, high sugar content Violin Concerto (Heifetz’ recording is tops) and the 1951 Symphony in F sharp minor, which I consider a great work, worthy to be spoken of as a successor to Mahler’s Tenth.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
MATILDE DI SHABRAN
Rossini’s Runt?
The background to this opera is readworthy: Rossini composed most of Matilde di Shabran (where dat ? probably Iraq) in 1822 when he was 28 but already famous for his Tancredi, L’Italiana in Algieri, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, La Cenerentola and over a couple of dozen others. The libretto arrived late and Rossini had to call in his mate Pacini to help him finish the score ready in time for the Naples premiere – which was a flop, not helped by the conductor having an apoplectic fit on the day of the dress rehearsal. Rossini could not face going to the second performance but somehow the opera survived and was given eleven productions in Europe and beyond within ten years. So it was not an absolute fiasco (Rossini drew one on a card he sent his mother). Paganini liked it so much he offered to conduct some performances of it, which he did; and he even played in one of them. The horn player did not turn up play his all-important obbligato part in act so Paganini played the notes on his viola. He and Rossinni larked about one evening in carnival time dressing in drag and going a-begging in the streets, quite successfully, not surprisingly since Rossini was quite clever on guitar and Paganini was not a bad fiddler. The composer was presumably glad to receive a few pence since the impresario had refused to pay him for an opera that was not completed. Mind you Rossini did later write in the Pacini bits and they are played at Covent Garden. But somehow as the twentieth century loomed Matilde became neglected.
Francis Toye in his splendid biography of 1935 is dismissive of the opera writing that we need not spend much time on it, although there are some good bits in it, particularly the lighter moments. But there are heavier bits in it. The plot is one of the sillier ones ever hodge-podged together. It concerns Corradino a powerful nobleman who is a misogynist of the direst order who has to take care of Matilde; he nearly kills her but ends up bamboozled and seduced by her, little bossyboots that she is.
The score has a curious feature; a number may start off as a solo but then one character, maybe two, three, four or five, will start chipping in. In other words it is mainly an ensemble piece and as Toye remarked, the lighter moments are the best. Most of it is not first-class Rossini, to stand together with Ory, Centerentola or the Barber but second-class Rossini is surely worth hearing any evening of the week. And here at Covent Garden (I saw it on Armistice night) it holds the attention and delights, enthusiastically conducted by Carlo Rizzi. Juan Diego Florez is a famous tenor these days; he has made several highly acclaimed CDs and he sang wonderfully fluently, articulating every coloratura device that Rossini hurls at him. But on this evening these was not much bloom in the voice; mostly it was a dry sound, papery, not warm or ingratiating. I am told by a musician friend who loves the music of the otto cento that he was seeing M di S for the fourth time in the present run, that Florez played it straight on the first night but that by now he was sending it up, so that the misogynist was ever more ridiculous – but funny, very funny, physically as well as vocally agile.
The singer of the title-role was also wonderfully articulate, able to accept the trump cards Rossini dealt her and to play them with brio. Matilda is not the most sympatric of parts; she reminds me of John Donne’s phrase “self-tickling proud” but Aleksandra Kurzak fitted the bill with spot-on singing and great charm. Sub-plots included a travesty-role prisoner Vessilina Kasarova who sang lustily and a comic poet Isidoro who may, for all I could tell have delivered most of his part in Neapolatan dialect – good voice, Alfonso Antoniozzi. Sergio Tramonti’s single set included two Escher – like staircases which looked beautiful and waltzed about on several turntables. Male chorus at the beginning, women admitted at half time. Thoroughly good, entertaining show. Its sub-title is Bellezza, é cour di ferro – Beauty and (Corradino) Ironheart.
By John Amis
17 November 2008
The background to this opera is readworthy: Rossini composed most of Matilde di Shabran (where dat ? probably Iraq) in 1822 when he was 28 but already famous for his Tancredi, L’Italiana in Algieri, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, La Cenerentola and over a couple of dozen others. The libretto arrived late and Rossini had to call in his mate Pacini to help him finish the score ready in time for the Naples premiere – which was a flop, not helped by the conductor having an apoplectic fit on the day of the dress rehearsal. Rossini could not face going to the second performance but somehow the opera survived and was given eleven productions in Europe and beyond within ten years. So it was not an absolute fiasco (Rossini drew one on a card he sent his mother). Paganini liked it so much he offered to conduct some performances of it, which he did; and he even played in one of them. The horn player did not turn up play his all-important obbligato part in act so Paganini played the notes on his viola. He and Rossinni larked about one evening in carnival time dressing in drag and going a-begging in the streets, quite successfully, not surprisingly since Rossini was quite clever on guitar and Paganini was not a bad fiddler. The composer was presumably glad to receive a few pence since the impresario had refused to pay him for an opera that was not completed. Mind you Rossini did later write in the Pacini bits and they are played at Covent Garden. But somehow as the twentieth century loomed Matilde became neglected.
Francis Toye in his splendid biography of 1935 is dismissive of the opera writing that we need not spend much time on it, although there are some good bits in it, particularly the lighter moments. But there are heavier bits in it. The plot is one of the sillier ones ever hodge-podged together. It concerns Corradino a powerful nobleman who is a misogynist of the direst order who has to take care of Matilde; he nearly kills her but ends up bamboozled and seduced by her, little bossyboots that she is.
The score has a curious feature; a number may start off as a solo but then one character, maybe two, three, four or five, will start chipping in. In other words it is mainly an ensemble piece and as Toye remarked, the lighter moments are the best. Most of it is not first-class Rossini, to stand together with Ory, Centerentola or the Barber but second-class Rossini is surely worth hearing any evening of the week. And here at Covent Garden (I saw it on Armistice night) it holds the attention and delights, enthusiastically conducted by Carlo Rizzi. Juan Diego Florez is a famous tenor these days; he has made several highly acclaimed CDs and he sang wonderfully fluently, articulating every coloratura device that Rossini hurls at him. But on this evening these was not much bloom in the voice; mostly it was a dry sound, papery, not warm or ingratiating. I am told by a musician friend who loves the music of the otto cento that he was seeing M di S for the fourth time in the present run, that Florez played it straight on the first night but that by now he was sending it up, so that the misogynist was ever more ridiculous – but funny, very funny, physically as well as vocally agile.
The singer of the title-role was also wonderfully articulate, able to accept the trump cards Rossini dealt her and to play them with brio. Matilda is not the most sympatric of parts; she reminds me of John Donne’s phrase “self-tickling proud” but Aleksandra Kurzak fitted the bill with spot-on singing and great charm. Sub-plots included a travesty-role prisoner Vessilina Kasarova who sang lustily and a comic poet Isidoro who may, for all I could tell have delivered most of his part in Neapolatan dialect – good voice, Alfonso Antoniozzi. Sergio Tramonti’s single set included two Escher – like staircases which looked beautiful and waltzed about on several turntables. Male chorus at the beginning, women admitted at half time. Thoroughly good, entertaining show. Its sub-title is Bellezza, é cour di ferro – Beauty and (Corradino) Ironheart.
By John Amis
17 November 2008
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
NEW OPERA HOUSE IN WEXFORD
Glory be! Wexford has a fine new opera house, sprung Phoenix-like on the site of the old Georgian house, standing tucked away in a little street in this funny old town (pop. circa 120,000) in the bottom right hand corner of the Irish Republic. They didn’t manage to get it up and going as quickly as Glyndebourne; last year they temporized in another building but this year they have a handsome new auditorium with good acoustics lined in black American walnut with comfy blue seats. As previously the foyer is a squash, not enough room for the gentry in bow ties, the furry ladies, the horse-dealers, farmers, gossoons …. and tourists come from far and wide. If it is Halloween then it is festival time in Wexford.
This is an amazing achievement. After all the house exists for opera only for these three weeks in the year and Wexford is only a small town, two and half hours driving (through the rain as likely as not) from Dublin. But its grand fun. So how did they raise the spondulicks – 33 mill. according to one paper, 26 in another? Is it all Eireish money – or did some of it sprout from Brussels?
It all began in 1951 when a certain Dr Walsh decided to wake up the town for a month, whilst in the other eleven months of the year he was the city hospital’s anaesthetist. He started with local produce, The Rose of Castile by Balfe; for some years the chorus and staffing was also local, Irish ladies and fellers on stage, and helping backstage, some with muscles pushing the scenery about, the girls busy with needle and thread in the workshop. Over the years Walsh formulated the policy of putting on operas that were rarely if ever heard in the big opera houses, three in rotation daily so that you could see them all in a weekend with side-shows elsewhere, concerts and the odd lecture. (I myself gave an odd lecture in one of my seventeen visits to Wexford.)
So in the festival there have been operas by composers like Wolf-Ferrari, Spontini, Hérold, Thomas, Mercadante, Zandonai, Goldmark, Fauré, Floyd, Rubinstein, occasionally spliced with early Wagner or rare Rossini, Gluck or Mozart, wonderful and important side-dishes to the staple fare we get at Covent Garden, Coliseum, Glynders or elsewhere.
This year many of us found that the most enjoyable show was at one of the side shows, given in a makeshift local hall seats as first come, first served (like Easy Jet), no orchestra but a good pianist. The opera was a one-acter by Rossini, Senior Bruschino. This is a farce which moves swiftly along with the occasional coloratura aria, hectic choruses and lashings of patter songs. The performance was brilliant, the stars being Marco Filippo Romano in the title-role and Andrea Zaupa as Gaudenzio, both baritones. Alberto Triola’s direction ensured that the action fairly zipped along with a heady flavour like pasta al dente with sparkling Lambrusco. Intoxicating. Another day we had a tolerable Suor Angelica, the weepy runt of Il Trittico by Puccini; but piano accompaniment did the music no favours since it emphasized the constant plonking chordal accompaniments when we needed legato strings.
So, to the big three and hands up, any reader who has even heard of Carlo Pedrotti 1817 – 93, famous conductor in his time, a Verona man who spent much of his time conducting and admining in Turin? Apart from Sibelius and his Symphony No. 8, Pedrotti is the only composer known to have discouraged performances of his own works: ”Ropa vecchia” he called them, “old stuff, old hat”. He was wrong; true his 1856 Tutti in Maschera harks back to the style of Rossini more than it harks forward (!) to Verdi whose Masked Ball was unmasked three years later but it is a conservative sounding piece of great charm and fluency with good if unmemorable tunes, the whole thing beautifully written for voices and orchestra. The plot is farcical, involving singers, an impresario, a sponsoring Turk and two pairs of lovers (Cosi fan) and the whole climaxes gracefully at a Ballo in Maschera. Brad Cooper is an Australian tenore di grazia to watch and admire, Sarah Coburn American, was an excellent prima donna impersonating a prima donna and Marco Filippo Romano was the star of the show (as he had been in Senior Bruschino) as the wily impresario. Sets, costumes, conducting all first-rate.
I saw Richard Rodney Bennett’s The Mines of Sulphur at its Sadler’s Wells premiere in 1965 and later when superbly directed by Giorgio Strehler, in the Piccolo Scala in Milan. The Mines, title from a quote from Othello, not very germane to Beverley Cross’s fluent libretto, a horror story set on the Cornish moors 200 years ago concerning a ruffian’s breaking in and murder, followed by the arrival of a troupe of actors who are made to perform for their shelter, the drama culminating in a threat of plague. A Wexford programme note, counselling for the defence, calls it an opera of sinister charms and lyrical conceit. Acting more for the prosecution, I would say that Mines is a superbly professional job but a child of its time, a time when composers felt they had to compose serially or bust. In other words there is little charm and no lyricism; and that from Bennett who before going atonal and Alban Bergian wrote charming Brittenish songs, piano works, and who later wrote clever tonal film music, Orient Express type. John Bellemer was the commanding raffian holding the action together in the sulphuric moors.
The third Wexford offering was Rimsky-Korsakov’s Snow Maiden, stuffed as full of Russian folk material (real and invented) in its time 1882 as his pupil Stravinsky’s Petrushka was in its time thirty years later. Snow Maiden takes a long time to get going, just as it takes a long time, too long, finishing. In between there are considerable delights, arias, choruses and the famous Dance of the Tumblers. The tumblers were spot-on, which is more than could be said of the chorus (tumbling if not bouncing Czechs, by the way, although the pick-up Festival Orchestra was mostly Irish). The singing was consistently good and wobble-free. Outstanding was the high lyric tenor, Bryan Hywel as the Czar, American but sounding like a real Russian, descendant of the great Leonid Smirnov. Five star performance but then the rest of the cast was good too: Katerina Jalvocova, travesty role of Lel, a bespectacled poetical shepherd; Natela Nicoli as Mother Spring, Lina Telruashvili (has to be Georgian with a name like that) as the sexy Kupava and Irina Samoylova in white tutus and the title role. (not many Western names but no doubt the East Europeans are glad of a job and not too expensive to hire).
Conductor Dmitri o.k. (surname Jurowski, brother of the LPO/Glyndebourne director). Pipes for trees otherwise good sets by Dick Bird with an ominous ship hulk in some scenes. Snow Maiden (she melts in the end) could do with an hour’s cut but the time passed pleasantly with tunes galore.
So, the festival always takes place at Hallowe’en; when it comes round next year, why not pop over for a good time, several glasses of Guinness, Irish hospitality and the next three operas which will be:
Maria Padilla by Gaetano Donizetti
The Ghosts of Versailles by John Corigliano
Il Cappello di Paglia di Firenze (The Florentine Straw Hat) by Nino Rota
This is an amazing achievement. After all the house exists for opera only for these three weeks in the year and Wexford is only a small town, two and half hours driving (through the rain as likely as not) from Dublin. But its grand fun. So how did they raise the spondulicks – 33 mill. according to one paper, 26 in another? Is it all Eireish money – or did some of it sprout from Brussels?
It all began in 1951 when a certain Dr Walsh decided to wake up the town for a month, whilst in the other eleven months of the year he was the city hospital’s anaesthetist. He started with local produce, The Rose of Castile by Balfe; for some years the chorus and staffing was also local, Irish ladies and fellers on stage, and helping backstage, some with muscles pushing the scenery about, the girls busy with needle and thread in the workshop. Over the years Walsh formulated the policy of putting on operas that were rarely if ever heard in the big opera houses, three in rotation daily so that you could see them all in a weekend with side-shows elsewhere, concerts and the odd lecture. (I myself gave an odd lecture in one of my seventeen visits to Wexford.)
So in the festival there have been operas by composers like Wolf-Ferrari, Spontini, Hérold, Thomas, Mercadante, Zandonai, Goldmark, Fauré, Floyd, Rubinstein, occasionally spliced with early Wagner or rare Rossini, Gluck or Mozart, wonderful and important side-dishes to the staple fare we get at Covent Garden, Coliseum, Glynders or elsewhere.
This year many of us found that the most enjoyable show was at one of the side shows, given in a makeshift local hall seats as first come, first served (like Easy Jet), no orchestra but a good pianist. The opera was a one-acter by Rossini, Senior Bruschino. This is a farce which moves swiftly along with the occasional coloratura aria, hectic choruses and lashings of patter songs. The performance was brilliant, the stars being Marco Filippo Romano in the title-role and Andrea Zaupa as Gaudenzio, both baritones. Alberto Triola’s direction ensured that the action fairly zipped along with a heady flavour like pasta al dente with sparkling Lambrusco. Intoxicating. Another day we had a tolerable Suor Angelica, the weepy runt of Il Trittico by Puccini; but piano accompaniment did the music no favours since it emphasized the constant plonking chordal accompaniments when we needed legato strings.
So, to the big three and hands up, any reader who has even heard of Carlo Pedrotti 1817 – 93, famous conductor in his time, a Verona man who spent much of his time conducting and admining in Turin? Apart from Sibelius and his Symphony No. 8, Pedrotti is the only composer known to have discouraged performances of his own works: ”Ropa vecchia” he called them, “old stuff, old hat”. He was wrong; true his 1856 Tutti in Maschera harks back to the style of Rossini more than it harks forward (!) to Verdi whose Masked Ball was unmasked three years later but it is a conservative sounding piece of great charm and fluency with good if unmemorable tunes, the whole thing beautifully written for voices and orchestra. The plot is farcical, involving singers, an impresario, a sponsoring Turk and two pairs of lovers (Cosi fan) and the whole climaxes gracefully at a Ballo in Maschera. Brad Cooper is an Australian tenore di grazia to watch and admire, Sarah Coburn American, was an excellent prima donna impersonating a prima donna and Marco Filippo Romano was the star of the show (as he had been in Senior Bruschino) as the wily impresario. Sets, costumes, conducting all first-rate.
I saw Richard Rodney Bennett’s The Mines of Sulphur at its Sadler’s Wells premiere in 1965 and later when superbly directed by Giorgio Strehler, in the Piccolo Scala in Milan. The Mines, title from a quote from Othello, not very germane to Beverley Cross’s fluent libretto, a horror story set on the Cornish moors 200 years ago concerning a ruffian’s breaking in and murder, followed by the arrival of a troupe of actors who are made to perform for their shelter, the drama culminating in a threat of plague. A Wexford programme note, counselling for the defence, calls it an opera of sinister charms and lyrical conceit. Acting more for the prosecution, I would say that Mines is a superbly professional job but a child of its time, a time when composers felt they had to compose serially or bust. In other words there is little charm and no lyricism; and that from Bennett who before going atonal and Alban Bergian wrote charming Brittenish songs, piano works, and who later wrote clever tonal film music, Orient Express type. John Bellemer was the commanding raffian holding the action together in the sulphuric moors.
The third Wexford offering was Rimsky-Korsakov’s Snow Maiden, stuffed as full of Russian folk material (real and invented) in its time 1882 as his pupil Stravinsky’s Petrushka was in its time thirty years later. Snow Maiden takes a long time to get going, just as it takes a long time, too long, finishing. In between there are considerable delights, arias, choruses and the famous Dance of the Tumblers. The tumblers were spot-on, which is more than could be said of the chorus (tumbling if not bouncing Czechs, by the way, although the pick-up Festival Orchestra was mostly Irish). The singing was consistently good and wobble-free. Outstanding was the high lyric tenor, Bryan Hywel as the Czar, American but sounding like a real Russian, descendant of the great Leonid Smirnov. Five star performance but then the rest of the cast was good too: Katerina Jalvocova, travesty role of Lel, a bespectacled poetical shepherd; Natela Nicoli as Mother Spring, Lina Telruashvili (has to be Georgian with a name like that) as the sexy Kupava and Irina Samoylova in white tutus and the title role. (not many Western names but no doubt the East Europeans are glad of a job and not too expensive to hire).
Conductor Dmitri o.k. (surname Jurowski, brother of the LPO/Glyndebourne director). Pipes for trees otherwise good sets by Dick Bird with an ominous ship hulk in some scenes. Snow Maiden (she melts in the end) could do with an hour’s cut but the time passed pleasantly with tunes galore.
So, the festival always takes place at Hallowe’en; when it comes round next year, why not pop over for a good time, several glasses of Guinness, Irish hospitality and the next three operas which will be:
Maria Padilla by Gaetano Donizetti
The Ghosts of Versailles by John Corigliano
Il Cappello di Paglia di Firenze (The Florentine Straw Hat) by Nino Rota
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
BOHÈME REVIVED YET AGAIN
October 11, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Puccini’s Bohème is revived for the 22nd time in the production by John Copley. That surely is a record of some kind. Julia Trevelyan Oman’s time sets were first seen in 1974, John was then forty-one. He still looks like a rather scruffy, mischievous urchin, full of naughtiness, adored by singers, indeed everyone he meets or works with. I mean no disrespect when I say I don’t think he has ever done a production that was epoch-making or absolutely brilliant. But then he has never done one that was less than adequate in the best sense of the word. You can rely on Copley to serve the composer and the librettist; never does he give the impression that he thinks he is more important than they are, he is not trying to make one aware of John Copley rather than the opera he is directing. He would never bring Brünnhilde on with a paper-bag over her head or Canio singing his big aria with his pants down. Seeing La Bohème in his production again brought back memories of Bohème over the years at, and even beyond Covent Garden.
Beecham; “Your Majesty, can you tell me, which is your favourite opera?”
King Edward: “Bohème”.
Beecham: “May I ask you Majesty, why”?
King Edward:”It’s the shortest.”
Maybe it is, but after two quite long intervals, the main, big curtains did not descend until twenty-past ten by which time the audience was well satisfied, even anybody seeing the opera for the first time would have a good idea of Puccini’s best-loved and most-performed work. I often say to myself that I shall give up going to opera if the day ever dawns when act four of Bohème does not make me gulp with emotion, possibly shedding a tear. And why did Puccini choose to end it with the coda of Colline’s coat arietta? But how right he was, how potent!
Marian Nowakowski (as Colline): Psst! How does it go?
Ian Wallace (as Marcello) sings Collines opening phrase which is all on one note.
Christopher Maltman seemed to sing slightly louder than anybody else and he somewhat dominated the cast with his Marcello.
But Wookyung Kim, from Seoul, showed a pleasing toner, musically and vocally satisfying (we are getting used to the continental drift where opera singers are concerned: recently in Australia Verdi’s penultimate opera was performed with a black Desdemona and a white Otello).
We wondered why Bjørling could not be bothered to pick up the key, but when his heart packed up and he died a few weeks later we realised why. At least he got through the performance in London that time. What a voice! The perfect mixture of head and chest voice with that god-given and alcohol-soaked timbre.
Hei-Kyung Hong having returned to her native land, Mimi was sung by the Greek soprano Alexis Voulgaridou (no English substitute?) and her voice and personality were more than adequate if less than memorable.
Dame Nellie was heartbroken when her favourite Rodolfo Jean de Reszke retired and she found at first that the stocky, cocky Caruso could be tiresome when he quacked a rubber duck in her face when she was a Mimi a-dying. Nor did his Schaunard appreciate it when he went to put on his hat and found that Caruso had filled it with water. But she came to like his voice!
Roderick Williams is one of my favourite artists. Whether he has a main part or, as here, Schaunard, he always gives a superb performance as regards voice, music and histrionics (he is a good composer too).
New Zealand Anna Leese was Mimi’s friend Musetta, good voice, pleasant personality without setting the Fleet River on fire.
Usually kind and generous, Dame Nellie could be bitchy occasionally as when she was standing in the wings and sang –along with Musetta, above all trying to blot out Musetta’s final top note. Yet Mary Garden, the first Melisande and not given much to praising other singers wrote that she never heard a more beautiful sound in her life than Melba’s off-stage top C at the end of act one. And Lyuba Welitsch was sensational as Musetta, the best waltz song ever, at the end of which she hurled herself like a torpedo into Paolo Silveri’s arms.
The production was straightforward, content to let the singers and the music work out Puccini’s unerring stage sense and his inexhaustible flow of stunning tunes and enchanting orchestration. Despite the pleasure of the first two acts it is the third which grips the emotions deeply, the purely operatic couldn’t-do-it-in-a-play-quarrel of Musetta and Marcello simultaneously played out with the despondent Mimi and the on-off loving care of Rodolfo. Infinitely touching. The conductor here must take credit; Christian Badea steered well, faithfully observed Puccini’s carefully designed pauses and made the death scene work.
Sir Thomas: “Mimi (Lisa Perli, the Purley queen) please don’t sit up for your dying phrases but stay lying down.”
Lisa Perli: “But Sir Thomas, I cannot give a good performance lying down.”
Sir Thomas: “On the contrary, Miss Perli, I hear you’ve given some of the best performance of your life in that position.”
Beecham; “Your Majesty, can you tell me, which is your favourite opera?”
King Edward: “Bohème”.
Beecham: “May I ask you Majesty, why”?
King Edward:”It’s the shortest.”
Maybe it is, but after two quite long intervals, the main, big curtains did not descend until twenty-past ten by which time the audience was well satisfied, even anybody seeing the opera for the first time would have a good idea of Puccini’s best-loved and most-performed work. I often say to myself that I shall give up going to opera if the day ever dawns when act four of Bohème does not make me gulp with emotion, possibly shedding a tear. And why did Puccini choose to end it with the coda of Colline’s coat arietta? But how right he was, how potent!
Marian Nowakowski (as Colline): Psst! How does it go?
Ian Wallace (as Marcello) sings Collines opening phrase which is all on one note.
Christopher Maltman seemed to sing slightly louder than anybody else and he somewhat dominated the cast with his Marcello.
But Wookyung Kim, from Seoul, showed a pleasing toner, musically and vocally satisfying (we are getting used to the continental drift where opera singers are concerned: recently in Australia Verdi’s penultimate opera was performed with a black Desdemona and a white Otello).
We wondered why Bjørling could not be bothered to pick up the key, but when his heart packed up and he died a few weeks later we realised why. At least he got through the performance in London that time. What a voice! The perfect mixture of head and chest voice with that god-given and alcohol-soaked timbre.
Hei-Kyung Hong having returned to her native land, Mimi was sung by the Greek soprano Alexis Voulgaridou (no English substitute?) and her voice and personality were more than adequate if less than memorable.
Dame Nellie was heartbroken when her favourite Rodolfo Jean de Reszke retired and she found at first that the stocky, cocky Caruso could be tiresome when he quacked a rubber duck in her face when she was a Mimi a-dying. Nor did his Schaunard appreciate it when he went to put on his hat and found that Caruso had filled it with water. But she came to like his voice!
Roderick Williams is one of my favourite artists. Whether he has a main part or, as here, Schaunard, he always gives a superb performance as regards voice, music and histrionics (he is a good composer too).
New Zealand Anna Leese was Mimi’s friend Musetta, good voice, pleasant personality without setting the Fleet River on fire.
Usually kind and generous, Dame Nellie could be bitchy occasionally as when she was standing in the wings and sang –along with Musetta, above all trying to blot out Musetta’s final top note. Yet Mary Garden, the first Melisande and not given much to praising other singers wrote that she never heard a more beautiful sound in her life than Melba’s off-stage top C at the end of act one. And Lyuba Welitsch was sensational as Musetta, the best waltz song ever, at the end of which she hurled herself like a torpedo into Paolo Silveri’s arms.
The production was straightforward, content to let the singers and the music work out Puccini’s unerring stage sense and his inexhaustible flow of stunning tunes and enchanting orchestration. Despite the pleasure of the first two acts it is the third which grips the emotions deeply, the purely operatic couldn’t-do-it-in-a-play-quarrel of Musetta and Marcello simultaneously played out with the despondent Mimi and the on-off loving care of Rodolfo. Infinitely touching. The conductor here must take credit; Christian Badea steered well, faithfully observed Puccini’s carefully designed pauses and made the death scene work.
Sir Thomas: “Mimi (Lisa Perli, the Purley queen) please don’t sit up for your dying phrases but stay lying down.”
Lisa Perli: “But Sir Thomas, I cannot give a good performance lying down.”
Sir Thomas: “On the contrary, Miss Perli, I hear you’ve given some of the best performance of your life in that position.”
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
CAV and PAG
Which opera tugs most persistently at your heart-strings? Surely is must be Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. He hits your emotions roughly every four bars, compared perhaps with Carmen and Porgy and Bess every eight bars, Puccini every twelve, Mozart sixteen, Verdi likewise. Richard Strauss every fifty and Wagner every hundred or so – perhaps this could be a new parlour-game. Mascagni’s misfortune was that he peaked with Cav. at the age of twenty-six, never hitting the jack-pot again. One opera of his had seven simultaneous premieres around Italy and notched up seven flops, poor chap, cocky little strutter that he was.
English National Opera on September 20 let loose new productions by Richard Jones of that remarkable double-bill Cav and Pagliacci. Now Richard Jones is a hot number amongst opera directors these days. There is no one better than him (or Zefirelli) at staging crowd scenes, as we saw but his other feature is that he likes to shock, even if shock comes form Richard Jones and has little or nothing to do with the composer or the librettist. He is the director that had Brünnhilde come on with a paper-bag over her head. But his production of Cav (translated in the programme as Sicilian Revenge which is another title for what we usually call Country Chivalry was mild, why even the first snog of the evening was discreetly staged behind a row of chairs). There seemed no harm in the décor (by the ingenious Ultz) keeping us confined in a sort of shopping mall, no open air, no church, think when we speak of (Alfio’s) horses there are none, and Turiddu the no-good-boyo is killed on stage. Maybe, we thought, Jones is biding his time, leading us up the garden path for mayhem in Pag. (too right, he was). True, Turiddu pours a glass of wine into Alfio’s pocket before the customary eat-biting which in Sicily preludes a duel.
The best singing, the only first class singing of the evening, came from Peter Auty as Turiddu, his first major role I think, but surely not his last. Otherwise we had tidy singing but nothing to fill the house (one has sympathy for the singers, the Coliseum is a great barn of a place) Jane Dutton, pregnant by no-good-boyo did not compare with the great ones of the past; and her and Jones’ idea of indicating anguish was frequently to clutch at her skirt, hoiking it up. Chorus fine, orchestra roused itself but Edward Gardner would seem not to be the man for verismo. He did not stir the heart, the head or the loins. Even more thin-blooded was I Pagliacci (The clowns but the programme insisted on comedians which is way off English)
The prologue went off half-cock. The singer was bespectacled so that he looked like Arthur Askey. He sang tidily and discreetly whereas the voice here needs to be full-blooded, even fruity.
In Pag Jones let rip, showing his utter disrespect for Leoncavallo’s score; the domestic drama was turned into crude farce with doors, cupboards, and Canio actually losing his trousers for goodness sake! The combination of that and a less than good tenor resulted in his big aria, Laugh, clown, laugh being received in frosty silence instead of the usual roar of acclamation.
The result of this larking about meant that the passion and tragedy of the drama disappeared with Canio’s trousers. This was an artistic betrayal. Shame, ENO shame Richard Jones, and shame the musical director Edward Gardner for allowing this travesty to happen!
English National Opera on September 20 let loose new productions by Richard Jones of that remarkable double-bill Cav and Pagliacci. Now Richard Jones is a hot number amongst opera directors these days. There is no one better than him (or Zefirelli) at staging crowd scenes, as we saw but his other feature is that he likes to shock, even if shock comes form Richard Jones and has little or nothing to do with the composer or the librettist. He is the director that had Brünnhilde come on with a paper-bag over her head. But his production of Cav (translated in the programme as Sicilian Revenge which is another title for what we usually call Country Chivalry was mild, why even the first snog of the evening was discreetly staged behind a row of chairs). There seemed no harm in the décor (by the ingenious Ultz) keeping us confined in a sort of shopping mall, no open air, no church, think when we speak of (Alfio’s) horses there are none, and Turiddu the no-good-boyo is killed on stage. Maybe, we thought, Jones is biding his time, leading us up the garden path for mayhem in Pag. (too right, he was). True, Turiddu pours a glass of wine into Alfio’s pocket before the customary eat-biting which in Sicily preludes a duel.
The best singing, the only first class singing of the evening, came from Peter Auty as Turiddu, his first major role I think, but surely not his last. Otherwise we had tidy singing but nothing to fill the house (one has sympathy for the singers, the Coliseum is a great barn of a place) Jane Dutton, pregnant by no-good-boyo did not compare with the great ones of the past; and her and Jones’ idea of indicating anguish was frequently to clutch at her skirt, hoiking it up. Chorus fine, orchestra roused itself but Edward Gardner would seem not to be the man for verismo. He did not stir the heart, the head or the loins. Even more thin-blooded was I Pagliacci (The clowns but the programme insisted on comedians which is way off English)
The prologue went off half-cock. The singer was bespectacled so that he looked like Arthur Askey. He sang tidily and discreetly whereas the voice here needs to be full-blooded, even fruity.
In Pag Jones let rip, showing his utter disrespect for Leoncavallo’s score; the domestic drama was turned into crude farce with doors, cupboards, and Canio actually losing his trousers for goodness sake! The combination of that and a less than good tenor resulted in his big aria, Laugh, clown, laugh being received in frosty silence instead of the usual roar of acclamation.
The result of this larking about meant that the passion and tragedy of the drama disappeared with Canio’s trousers. This was an artistic betrayal. Shame, ENO shame Richard Jones, and shame the musical director Edward Gardner for allowing this travesty to happen!
A cut-price Falstaff
Verdi’s Falstaff on the cheap must be the verdict on Pimlico Opera’s production 21 September at the Grange Opera House (near Alton, Hampshire) before embarking on a tour of seventeen towns ‘where you are) although rather daftly the programme did not mention which they are. The orchestra was small, single players of wind and brass, no mention in the programme of who boiled down the score, and only ten string players. This robbed Verdi’s last opera of its unique iridescence and its kaleidoscopic charm. Nor did the conductor Alice Fordham do much more than keep the playing tidy. Verdi’s full-blooded score sounded anaemic. There was no chorus and there were cuts, Falstaff’s lute song for instance.
So what remained? Quite a lot. Firstly there was a finely rounded title role performance from the Falstaff, David Alexander Borloz and a fruity Mistress Quickly from Emma Carrington. Verity Parker had the notes for Nanette (her last top A was a treat, but a bit of wobble lower down – a pity she was given such dowdy clothes). Alice, Ford, Meg and Fenton all sang tidily but that tidiness excluded much in the way of vocal purity, elegance or character. Tidiness is not high art.
A brick arch cunningly did for all scenes with suitable different decorations, including a rather improbable swimming pool (yes, it was modern dress) and, for some reason, different clocks for each venue, not forgetting a lift chez Ford, where the lovers hid and lights indicated that at one point it was at five floors at the same time.
Although performing at the Grange Pimlico Opera is not to be confused with its sister company, Grange Opera, which plays for a whole summer (this year superior productions of Dvorak’s Rusalka and Puccini’s Fanciulla del West). Pimlico Opera began as the brain child of Wasfi Kani who conducted (rather well) before becoming a fund-raiser and administrator of Grange Opera. I remember their Sweeney Todd in Wormwood Scrubs which was performed by a cast combining Pimlico singers and prisoners. I taped some interviews with the inmates and foolishly asked a non-musical question: ‘what’s the worst thing about prison?’ ‘No visitors.’ ‘What, no nice girl-friend comes to visit?’ ‘Well, I murdered ‘er, din’ I?’.
So what remained? Quite a lot. Firstly there was a finely rounded title role performance from the Falstaff, David Alexander Borloz and a fruity Mistress Quickly from Emma Carrington. Verity Parker had the notes for Nanette (her last top A was a treat, but a bit of wobble lower down – a pity she was given such dowdy clothes). Alice, Ford, Meg and Fenton all sang tidily but that tidiness excluded much in the way of vocal purity, elegance or character. Tidiness is not high art.
A brick arch cunningly did for all scenes with suitable different decorations, including a rather improbable swimming pool (yes, it was modern dress) and, for some reason, different clocks for each venue, not forgetting a lift chez Ford, where the lovers hid and lights indicated that at one point it was at five floors at the same time.
Although performing at the Grange Pimlico Opera is not to be confused with its sister company, Grange Opera, which plays for a whole summer (this year superior productions of Dvorak’s Rusalka and Puccini’s Fanciulla del West). Pimlico Opera began as the brain child of Wasfi Kani who conducted (rather well) before becoming a fund-raiser and administrator of Grange Opera. I remember their Sweeney Todd in Wormwood Scrubs which was performed by a cast combining Pimlico singers and prisoners. I taped some interviews with the inmates and foolishly asked a non-musical question: ‘what’s the worst thing about prison?’ ‘No visitors.’ ‘What, no nice girl-friend comes to visit?’ ‘Well, I murdered ‘er, din’ I?’.
The Calisto Show
Submarines in the pit of the Royal Opera House? No, what at first glance looked like periscopes were in fact theorbos in triplicate, the long-necked bass instruments used in the seventeenth century. Enlightenment dawned on me, as if I didn’t know that I was going to see a matinee performance on Saturday September 27 of what must surely be the oldest opera ever to be seen in Covent Garden, La Calisto, by Francesco Cavalli (1602 – 1676, a man of Venice, possibly a pupil of Monteverdi), described by him as a Dramma per musica. It was the ninth show by the composer and his librettist Faustini; it premiered in 1651 in Venice and, unlike its predecessors, it was a flop. It was revived in 1970 at Glyndebourne in a version conducted and orchestrated rather lushly by Raymond Lappard. Since then it has had many stagings.
Compared with Monteverdi, Cavalli’s is a much plainer style, no stabbing harmonies of voices clashing semitonally. But the score leaves much to the imagination of ‘realizors’, much of the accompaniments are anybody’s guess and were, indeed, partly improvised here as directed by Ivor Bolton with the Monteverdi Continuo Ensemble and members of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Much of the prologue and two acts lasting just short of three hours is recitative, merging sometimes into arioso, sometimes merging into arias, with an occasional tutti, merging into dance music. The music is pleasant but not as vital or ‘operatic’ as ? master Monteverdi’s.
Therefore, staging, singing and playing are all important. The noises from the pit were always lively and meaningful, easy on the ear. The singing reached a high standard, led by Sally Matthews, a true soprano sounding nothing but true notes, powerful and stylish. And she looked attractive, her curves actually increased by her pregnancy. For all this, she plays a virgin determined to remain so, until at the end she is transformed, by Jove (and by Jove!) into a bear, and set in a constellation. The whole plot is mightily concerned with kissing, smooching and so on, with two pairs of lovers and a cast including one handsome shepherd and so many god and classical references that you need a Who’s Who and a What’s What in Antiquity to unravel all the complexities of the plot. Alternatively you could just look and listen.
David Alden has devoted his life to putting on this kind of show and he has worked wonders in the production with sets and costumes that positively ravish the senses. Beautiful shapes and wondrous colours assail the eyes. Paul Steinberg uses several stagehands to move his large shaped pieces around whilst Buki Shiff’s costumes are among the finest, most gorgeous and imaginative I have seen on any stage, one damn thing after another, all of them pleasing and beguiling the eye.
Compared with Monteverdi, Cavalli’s is a much plainer style, no stabbing harmonies of voices clashing semitonally. But the score leaves much to the imagination of ‘realizors’, much of the accompaniments are anybody’s guess and were, indeed, partly improvised here as directed by Ivor Bolton with the Monteverdi Continuo Ensemble and members of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Much of the prologue and two acts lasting just short of three hours is recitative, merging sometimes into arioso, sometimes merging into arias, with an occasional tutti, merging into dance music. The music is pleasant but not as vital or ‘operatic’ as ? master Monteverdi’s.
Therefore, staging, singing and playing are all important. The noises from the pit were always lively and meaningful, easy on the ear. The singing reached a high standard, led by Sally Matthews, a true soprano sounding nothing but true notes, powerful and stylish. And she looked attractive, her curves actually increased by her pregnancy. For all this, she plays a virgin determined to remain so, until at the end she is transformed, by Jove (and by Jove!) into a bear, and set in a constellation. The whole plot is mightily concerned with kissing, smooching and so on, with two pairs of lovers and a cast including one handsome shepherd and so many god and classical references that you need a Who’s Who and a What’s What in Antiquity to unravel all the complexities of the plot. Alternatively you could just look and listen.
David Alden has devoted his life to putting on this kind of show and he has worked wonders in the production with sets and costumes that positively ravish the senses. Beautiful shapes and wondrous colours assail the eyes. Paul Steinberg uses several stagehands to move his large shaped pieces around whilst Buki Shiff’s costumes are among the finest, most gorgeous and imaginative I have seen on any stage, one damn thing after another, all of them pleasing and beguiling the eye.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
SMAULL SONG BUT GOOD SONG
You may have seen advertisements in this journal for a summer course for singers August 1 to 9 and I went to see what goes on. To start with SMAULL is not a misprint, it is a Gaelic name for a farm in a place about as remote as you can get although as the Crow Flies (or British Airways) only some three score miles due west of Glasgow. It is on the Isle of Islay where the Lords of the Isles held sway a few centuries ago. From the airport you get in your car, take an A road, then several B roads and finally some roads further down the alphabet, ending up unlocking a padlock, opening a few more gates, till you get to the farm house where live the organisers of the course, Philip Maxwell, and his wife Briony. Adjacent to the house are barns, one of which is the home of several hundred choughs, the other of which has been turned into two music rooms. Here may be found the dozen participants in the course, the teachers and one or two hangers on, like myself, a non-participating listener.
The singers are mixed pros, students and amateurs, living in the house or nearby, a happy band of congenial muzos. Each of the singers has prepared three songs (the first two had worked up Britten, Brahms and Poulenc; Roussel, Wolf and Schumann). In addition certain numbers or scenes from operas were on the agenda; and the singers also sang as a chamber choir. The standard varied.
Mary Hill not only coached but also took SATB ensemble. She was one of the teachers but the main master classes were given by Richard Jackson, sometimes baritone in the Song Makers Almanac. He knew every song by heart and its background. He had the gift of improving the singing of each participant by at least a third within twenty minutes, always encouraging, wonderfully inventive in his direction and never falling into the trap of turning teaching into an ego trip.
Richard was illuminating, inspiring – and entertaining. The accompanist, young Australian Claire Howard, also deserves a mention, expert, sympathetic and supportive (pretty too!).
There were two moments that stood out during my brief visit, both relating to Debussy: Marjorie Ouvry, inspired by Jackson, turned Noël des enfants –Debussy’s last song – into a wartime/mini drama; and Jan Wiener caught perfectly the fleeting poetic moods and emotions of La flûte de Pan. This was a singer in, what should one say?, the second flush of youth, using her voice in a way that had me remembering the great Maggie Teyte, who sixty years ago opened British ears to the marvels of French song.
The singers are mixed pros, students and amateurs, living in the house or nearby, a happy band of congenial muzos. Each of the singers has prepared three songs (the first two had worked up Britten, Brahms and Poulenc; Roussel, Wolf and Schumann). In addition certain numbers or scenes from operas were on the agenda; and the singers also sang as a chamber choir. The standard varied.
Mary Hill not only coached but also took SATB ensemble. She was one of the teachers but the main master classes were given by Richard Jackson, sometimes baritone in the Song Makers Almanac. He knew every song by heart and its background. He had the gift of improving the singing of each participant by at least a third within twenty minutes, always encouraging, wonderfully inventive in his direction and never falling into the trap of turning teaching into an ego trip.
Richard was illuminating, inspiring – and entertaining. The accompanist, young Australian Claire Howard, also deserves a mention, expert, sympathetic and supportive (pretty too!).
There were two moments that stood out during my brief visit, both relating to Debussy: Marjorie Ouvry, inspired by Jackson, turned Noël des enfants –Debussy’s last song – into a wartime/mini drama; and Jan Wiener caught perfectly the fleeting poetic moods and emotions of La flûte de Pan. This was a singer in, what should one say?, the second flush of youth, using her voice in a way that had me remembering the great Maggie Teyte, who sixty years ago opened British ears to the marvels of French song.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Dog Bites Soprano
New Glyndebourne Opera
August 10
The premiere at Glyndebourne of a new, commissioned opera by Peter Eötvöșa, a Hungarian composer previously known as a fine conductor mainly of contemporary works. Love and Other Demons is based on the novel of that name by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The action takes place in a colonial sea port in Columbia in the 18th century and it begins with an eclipse of the sun, during which Sierva is bitten by a dog (non-singing role) which gives her rabies and causes her to scream for most of the opera in stratospherically high notes way above the staves. The Bishop orders Delaura, his librarian, to exoricize her but before that happens she is sent to a convent and there are encounters with the Abbess, and a former nun who has gone mad. Whilst Sierva is possessed of demons Delaura is possessed with love for Sierva. Eventual exorcism and death of Sierva.
The production is elaborate and brilliant, by the Romanian director, Silviu Purcararete, even though at times it is difficult to make out what is going on. And the programme book does not help as the synopsis is inept. The libretto, by Kornel Hamvai, is in English although certain passages are written in a foreign tongue. Fortunately, there are subtitles which reveal often that English is not a language that the composer knows well. Some of the wording veers between naiveté and pretension. There is not much choral or ensemble music. The score is wispy and gestural, curiously neutral textures and orchestration for a composer who is a conductor. Musical content is in short supply. Most people I spoke to agreed that one observed and listened but emotions were not engaged.
Allison Bell took over the part of the Sierva from the indisposed advertised soprano and achieved wonders with her high lying vocal utterings. Nathan Gunn, Felicity Palmer, Jean Rigby and Mats Almgren were excellent respectively as Delaura, the Abbess, the Insane Nun and the Bishop, all serving the composer right. There was nothing in the music to frighten the horses and the duration was short.
It will be interesting to see if this opera survives or sinks without a trace. Last performance this season 30 August, I don’t think it will be difficult to get a ticket.
Friday, August 01, 2008
Aldeburgh Festival
No.61, June 13 – 29 began with a stinker and ended with a bang. Things here are changing; some of the almost derelict buildings adjacent to the concert hall at Snape are being developed into space for dressing rooms, a 340-seater concert room and rehearsal rooms - £15 million has already been raised. Also Thomas Adès ‘Die Frist ist um’ (ref. Flying Dutchman ‘the time is up’) after ten years. He has been performing less and less and has relied on the help of an assistant director, the composer John Woolrich, two of whose composition were performed this June, one of them the premiere of a Violin Concerto. Adès’ advertised new work was not ready in time but he piano-partnered Steven Isserlis in a good programme; Sonatas by Debussy, Poulenc, and Schumann’s A minor Violin Sonata No.3 in a transcription by Isserlis; this is the late work that Clara forbad performances of, on the grounds that its composer was of unsound mind at the time, which he was, it is a relentlessly striving, nerve-wracking sonata that only relaxes at the very end. Fine playing. Adès also directed the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group in his own Living Toys and works by Ligeti, Gerald Barry and Kurtag.
Gyorgy Kurtag was the featured composer this year and we suffered (in both senses of the word) a dozen of his wispy works. Some managed to derive some satisfaction for these but most of us failed to find them attractive, inventive, inspired or even worthwhile. Kurtag was born 82 years ago and it was a sight to see him and his equally venerable wife Marta, like some Derby and Joan, at an upright (amplified) piano playing away at the wisps, interspersed with some much appreciated Bach transcriptions.
I was congratulated three times on having missed the opening festival salvo, a stage piece An Ocean of Rain by Yanis Kiriakides, Greek, born 1969, which the Sunday Times critic said was unspeakably awful and drove my Telegraph colleague almost to apoplexy. Just one performance.
Director-delegate of the festival is the justly renowned French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard who (June 14) also conducted the Britten Sinfonia in thoroughly acceptable performances of Haydn’s delightful Symphony No. 22, Ives The Unanswered Question with Kurtag’s answer to it entitled Ligatura, the rare Three Piece for Chamber Orchestral by Schoenberg (1910) and Webern’s early string orchestral Five Pieces; after the interval came an excellent Coronation Concerto with Aimard as soloist-director. He also gave a piano recital playing rather too emphatically most of The Art of Fugue interspersed with (yes, you’ve guessed it) Kurtag, nine more wisps.
Before accepting the Directorship Aimard sent for all the festival programmes – which is good. But when asked by a journalist what his attitude to Britten was he (allegedly) replied; “Neutral” – which doesn’t sound so good. In fact, many of us regulars consider that not enough music of the Master is heard at the festivals. The tally this June was ten works, four of them almost as wispy as Kurtag.
Highlights? A masterly Diabelli Variations, Beethoven as to the manner successfully acquired, by Stephen Kovacevich. The pianist had a stroke not long ago but his art seems only to have deepened still further. There were enjoyable string quartet programmes given by the (French) Modigliani, the Badke and the Belcea, the latter with Imogen Cooper for an invigorating Trout. Northern Sinfonia played a noble Schumann 3 (the Rhenish) directed by Thomas Zehetmair with some Schubert songs orchestrated by Webern and one with Britten tickling the Trout.
One enjoyable trip to the flicks was to see two Barry Gavin films featuring A.L. (Bert) Lloyd 1908-82, a remarkable man who was a whaler, broadcaster, scholar, singer, journalist, folk-song collector (collaborator with Vaughan Williams, no less.) His programme on The Origins of Polyphony is such a seminal and enjoyable item that the BBC has not revived it! One film showed Lloyd retracing Bartok’s steps in Eastern Europe collecting songs (wonderful peasant wedding scene); the other was a personal memoir.
The festival ended with a concert by the hard-working and virtuosic City of Birmingham Symphony that consisted, after the obligatory Kurtag wisp, of two British masterpieces; Britten’s Cello Symphony and Walton’s Symphony No.1. Edward Gardner earned his spurs directing, with suitable expertise and tension, exemplary performances. Yes, the Britten is gritty, quite hard work for the ears and the brain but rewarding. Both works were written at a time of great personal turmoil. Walton has said that the symphony relates to his tempestuous liaison with the Baroness Irma Doernberg but what was worrying Britten in 1960? Shall we ever know?
I stayed two weeks in Aldeburgh and went to three-quarters of the events (and was one of them; I gave a talk about Britten and Tippett), skipping some that I knew I would not enjoy. Curious, but I find that some of my colleagues seem to employ double standards. When I started writing reviews there were some ageing Canute-like critics who seemed to want to stem the tide of ‘modernism’, senior writers such as Frank Howes of the Times, and Richard Cappell of the Telegraph. I don’t want to stem the tide but I don’t necessarily want to swim in it. Whereas nowadays many critics coo at every new work that comes along, I demand a minimum of melody, something that I can relate to and recognise if it should happen to recur. Music is the art I love best and I hate not enjoying most of the new music. Such a lot of it recalls the Emperor’s New Clothes and is the result of a lack of professionalism.
I suppose it was ever thus. But there are exceptions: Weir, Turnage, Adams and (if the piece lasts less than ten minutes) Taverner. Above all music must have passion and imagination, not just confirm to fashion. And Stravinsky once said “Sincerity is a sine qua non, which however in itself guarantees nothing.”
Typical of music today is a story about the composer Sciarino. He was heard to say: “Pollini talked about my music recently on the radio He said my music has passion – I’ll kill him.”
Gyorgy Kurtag was the featured composer this year and we suffered (in both senses of the word) a dozen of his wispy works. Some managed to derive some satisfaction for these but most of us failed to find them attractive, inventive, inspired or even worthwhile. Kurtag was born 82 years ago and it was a sight to see him and his equally venerable wife Marta, like some Derby and Joan, at an upright (amplified) piano playing away at the wisps, interspersed with some much appreciated Bach transcriptions.
I was congratulated three times on having missed the opening festival salvo, a stage piece An Ocean of Rain by Yanis Kiriakides, Greek, born 1969, which the Sunday Times critic said was unspeakably awful and drove my Telegraph colleague almost to apoplexy. Just one performance.
Director-delegate of the festival is the justly renowned French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard who (June 14) also conducted the Britten Sinfonia in thoroughly acceptable performances of Haydn’s delightful Symphony No. 22, Ives The Unanswered Question with Kurtag’s answer to it entitled Ligatura, the rare Three Piece for Chamber Orchestral by Schoenberg (1910) and Webern’s early string orchestral Five Pieces; after the interval came an excellent Coronation Concerto with Aimard as soloist-director. He also gave a piano recital playing rather too emphatically most of The Art of Fugue interspersed with (yes, you’ve guessed it) Kurtag, nine more wisps.
Before accepting the Directorship Aimard sent for all the festival programmes – which is good. But when asked by a journalist what his attitude to Britten was he (allegedly) replied; “Neutral” – which doesn’t sound so good. In fact, many of us regulars consider that not enough music of the Master is heard at the festivals. The tally this June was ten works, four of them almost as wispy as Kurtag.
Highlights? A masterly Diabelli Variations, Beethoven as to the manner successfully acquired, by Stephen Kovacevich. The pianist had a stroke not long ago but his art seems only to have deepened still further. There were enjoyable string quartet programmes given by the (French) Modigliani, the Badke and the Belcea, the latter with Imogen Cooper for an invigorating Trout. Northern Sinfonia played a noble Schumann 3 (the Rhenish) directed by Thomas Zehetmair with some Schubert songs orchestrated by Webern and one with Britten tickling the Trout.
One enjoyable trip to the flicks was to see two Barry Gavin films featuring A.L. (Bert) Lloyd 1908-82, a remarkable man who was a whaler, broadcaster, scholar, singer, journalist, folk-song collector (collaborator with Vaughan Williams, no less.) His programme on The Origins of Polyphony is such a seminal and enjoyable item that the BBC has not revived it! One film showed Lloyd retracing Bartok’s steps in Eastern Europe collecting songs (wonderful peasant wedding scene); the other was a personal memoir.
The festival ended with a concert by the hard-working and virtuosic City of Birmingham Symphony that consisted, after the obligatory Kurtag wisp, of two British masterpieces; Britten’s Cello Symphony and Walton’s Symphony No.1. Edward Gardner earned his spurs directing, with suitable expertise and tension, exemplary performances. Yes, the Britten is gritty, quite hard work for the ears and the brain but rewarding. Both works were written at a time of great personal turmoil. Walton has said that the symphony relates to his tempestuous liaison with the Baroness Irma Doernberg but what was worrying Britten in 1960? Shall we ever know?
I stayed two weeks in Aldeburgh and went to three-quarters of the events (and was one of them; I gave a talk about Britten and Tippett), skipping some that I knew I would not enjoy. Curious, but I find that some of my colleagues seem to employ double standards. When I started writing reviews there were some ageing Canute-like critics who seemed to want to stem the tide of ‘modernism’, senior writers such as Frank Howes of the Times, and Richard Cappell of the Telegraph. I don’t want to stem the tide but I don’t necessarily want to swim in it. Whereas nowadays many critics coo at every new work that comes along, I demand a minimum of melody, something that I can relate to and recognise if it should happen to recur. Music is the art I love best and I hate not enjoying most of the new music. Such a lot of it recalls the Emperor’s New Clothes and is the result of a lack of professionalism.
I suppose it was ever thus. But there are exceptions: Weir, Turnage, Adams and (if the piece lasts less than ten minutes) Taverner. Above all music must have passion and imagination, not just confirm to fashion. And Stravinsky once said “Sincerity is a sine qua non, which however in itself guarantees nothing.”
Typical of music today is a story about the composer Sciarino. He was heard to say: “Pollini talked about my music recently on the radio He said my music has passion – I’ll kill him.”
Monday, July 21, 2008
A Rake Without Progress
Neither Stravinsky, Hogarth nor W.H Auden were best served by the new production at Covent Garden of The Rake’s Progress, first night of five shows on July 7. Robert Lépage seems to be one of those directors determined to stamp a production with his own personality rather than project that of the composer or librettist. So, here we have yet another of these ‘concept’ productions. In this case Lépage’s stated idea is to angle the opera from the point of view of the period/time during which the composer was writing; so we are in a world of 1950, of tv (flickering sets all over the stage), oil (there’s a nodding donkey in the Trulove garden – which turns into a film camera in the brothel scene – Hollywood for the moment, it’ll be Las Vegas by and by) oh! The unnecessary expense of all the gadgetry! Tom Rakewell is dressed initially as a cowboy; in the scene of Baba’s first appearance, Anne arrives in a red sports car, Baba in a sedan outside on Oscar evening-cinema exterior. In Tom’s town house there is a bubble which turns into an indoors caravan. Baba is not submerged by the usual tea cosy but in a swimming pool, later the scene of the Auction. There are some better ideas: the explosions of light when Tom shakes hands with Nick Shadow; and the way in which the coupling Tom and Mother Goose literally disappear through a hole in the bed.
But the director, for all the gimmicks, floors that up and down neon lights etc., does not add anything to the story nor bring the characters to life.
So, what of the music? Thomas Adés conducts but fails to point up the sharpness, the pathos or the tenderness in the score. The orchestra plays well, the chorus sings well but the result is dull, lacklustre. And of the voices, only John Relyea’s Nick Shadow seems truly worthy to stand and deliver on our number one operatic stage where so many great voices have been heard in the past. Sally Matthews sings her lullaby in the looney-bin beautifully softly but her louder notes do not charm, move one, or seem in focus.
Charles Castronovo’s voice for the Rake on this occasion dealt with the notes but lacked sap and projection. Patricia Bradon sang well as Baba and showed an almost totally hirsute body above a good pair of legs. Sellem, the auctioneer was badly cast, neither well sung, funny or interesting.
Stravinsky seemed pleased with the libretto but most of act two sounds as if he didn’t quite understand all the intellectual quirks and implications of the text which surely tries too hard to establish its literary credentials, too often trying to show an eighteenth century style but giving the composer some pretty unsolvable problems.
But the director, for all the gimmicks, floors that up and down neon lights etc., does not add anything to the story nor bring the characters to life.
So, what of the music? Thomas Adés conducts but fails to point up the sharpness, the pathos or the tenderness in the score. The orchestra plays well, the chorus sings well but the result is dull, lacklustre. And of the voices, only John Relyea’s Nick Shadow seems truly worthy to stand and deliver on our number one operatic stage where so many great voices have been heard in the past. Sally Matthews sings her lullaby in the looney-bin beautifully softly but her louder notes do not charm, move one, or seem in focus.
Charles Castronovo’s voice for the Rake on this occasion dealt with the notes but lacked sap and projection. Patricia Bradon sang well as Baba and showed an almost totally hirsute body above a good pair of legs. Sellem, the auctioneer was badly cast, neither well sung, funny or interesting.
Stravinsky seemed pleased with the libretto but most of act two sounds as if he didn’t quite understand all the intellectual quirks and implications of the text which surely tries too hard to establish its literary credentials, too often trying to show an eighteenth century style but giving the composer some pretty unsolvable problems.
Candide/Candud
Leonard Bernstein was the all-American Mr. Music. He adored applause, he courted it, he got it and he deserved it. On form he was the top conductor, a brilliant communicator, a compelling lecturer/educator/tv talker; his ‘serious’ compositions could be heavy, over intellectual, constipated but his work in popular music fizzed and was first-class: On The Town, Wonderful Town were hits and West Side Story (1957) is one of the great works of the 20th century. His film score for On The Waterfront is a classic.
But Candide, just now having a run of fifteen performance (last one July 12) at the London Coliseum by the English National Opera, that is another matter. It has been a problem child since the start and has been subject to endless revision. The music begins stunningly with a comedy overture in the Rossini class; piquant, tuneful, irrepressible, dashing, cleverly changing tempi to pile up a climax that whets the appetite for the operetta or musical comedy to follow. And then comes a brilliant opening number with unusual tricky rhythms that Max Adrian negotiated so magically in the first London run in the fifties at the Cambridge Theatre put on by Laurence Olivier.
But from then on it’s all downhill. The score turns clever, parodies that don’t click, tunes that sag, the whole thing becomes rather boring. The book is credited to six writers, including the starry names of Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker and Stephen Sondheim. Even Mrs Bernstein wrote one number. And the current producer, Robert Carsen, has freely adapted the mélange in a joint production with La Scala, Milan and the Châtelet, Paris. Maybe something has got lost in transit; maybe the coliseum is too darn big. But the result is stale and too cutely American for words. The rot sets in early as the ear is distracted from hearing the overture because a movie runs right through it and destorys it. The plot, derived from Voltaire’s novella, becomes tedious and the production heaps flashy Pelion on Hollywood Ossa: armies, ship decks, elaborate dance routines (Busby Berkeley, thou shouldst be living at this hour). It is no fault of the performers that the characters are cardboard caperers and do not engage our sympathy or interest. Toby Spence sings pleasantly in the title role. Anna Christy looks a treat in a pink Marilyn Monroe gown; she can hit the high C’s but lower down the staves her voice lacks focus. Alex Jennings plays Pangloss and Voltaire but lacks the spicy individuality of the beloved Max Adrian of fifty years back. Beverley Klein does her best with the crashingly tiresome Old Lady (through pleasantly reminding me of the late Caryl Brahms). Everything happens cutely on cue and I have to say the audience responded (July 4) as if it were enjoying itself.
Since there were so many revisions the writers, including Bernstein himself, he must have known that they were working on a cardboard turkey. ENO keeps on trying to earn money by putting on musicals; bums on seats maybe, but no marks for artistic excellence.
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