L'Orfeo at the Barbican

28/09/13
Academy of Ancient Music

This "concert hall staging" of L'Orfeo was the first in a projected Monteverdi cycle that the Academy of Ancient Music plans to undertake over the next three seasons. Director Orpha Phelan updates the piece to the present day, the wedding guests marching down the isles of the stalls in preparation for what looks like a typical British wedding. Security guards stand around in the foyer and onstage, one of whom it turns out is conductor/musical director Richard Egarr who surprisingly takes his place at the harpsichord. As Orfeo awaits his bride Eurydice, who it seems is not that keen to marry Orfeo, it is announced that she has been killed by a snake, though it seemed here that she might actually have been in some way murdered. Orfeo is lead by a nurse (Speranza) to Eurydice cadaver on a mortuary bed, and is discouraged from staying by an angry doctor (Coronte). Orfeo's grief here becomes a sort of mad scene, where he merely imagines going to hell. John Mark Ainsley is extremely moving here as he casts around desperately looking for a way out of his predicament. After the interval we see that Orfeo has hit the bottle, and he makes a scene in front of the party guests - the madness has not yet subsided as he hallucinates images of his dead wife. One of the guests (Plutone) takes pity on him at the urging of his wife (Prosperina) by giving Orfeo more drink and dressing him. Orfeo's father (Apollo) intervenes, telling his son to get a grip and Orfeo listlessly returns to society.

This basically coherent retelling of the story is a clear attempt to remove any classical references or supernatural elements from L'Orfeo, but it's not clear what the audience gains from this. Much of the libretto is rendered bizarre by the new context and it takes a long time to get used to the fact that what the characters are singing is meant to be only an approximation of what they actually mean. I find this sort of production distancing and alienating because you can't rely on your normal expectations of where suspension of disbelief is and isn't required - in short you have relearn the rules of the theatre. Or to put it another way, the realist setting suggests a realist/non-supernatural interpretation of the text, but since that is not attempted here (references to supernatural elements are merely ignored), the dramatic effect is jarring for longer than is comfortable or surely intended. Caroline Hughes' design is simple but serves the idea perfectly well - her lighting is the best part of this and she manages to create a real sense of atmosphere in Act III's mortuary mad scene.

Musically things were much more convincing. John Mark Ainsley is a moving Orfeo, still extremely controlled and expressive, though the voice has lost some of it's former bloom and flexibility. I instantly recognised Katherine Manley's voice having been so impressed with her as Creusa in the ENO's Medea earlier this year. She once again revealed a gleaming, expressive full lyric soprano with an excellent technique in the roles of Prosperina and one of the Nymphs - I would love to hear her in more recent repertoire. Sophie Bevan is luxury casting in the small role of Eurydice. Daniela Lehner was good as La Musica and Speranza, particularly in her low register which has an attractive colour. Thomas Hobbs made a powerful Apollo, beautifully matching John Mark Ainsley in their Act V duet. The smaller roles were mostly excellently taken by the rest of the young cast, though Paul Gerimon was sounding a little choked in the usually fearsome role of Coronte.

Richard Egarr's direction of the Academy of Ancient Music orchestra is energetic and large scale, an approach announced in the magnificent opening fanfare which here didn't so much dance as march into action. The continuo accompaniment is tasteful and varied, if not quite as colourful as seems to be the fashion in some French baroque ensembles. Orchestral playing is unerringly excellent, supporting the singers as gracious equals and Egarr doesn't underline anything - the sighing beauty of the string and woodwind lines, and the blaring majesty of the brass is left to speak for itself.

Medea at the ENO

06/03/13

Sarah Connolly. All photos copyright Clive Barda and ENO

This is the first full staging of Charpentier's Médée of 1693 in the UK, and with the ENO's Castor and Pollux in 2011 and Glyndebourne's Hippolyte et Aricie this summer let's hope that French baroque opera (or for me more specifically and more ardently, let's hope Rameau) is here to stay on the major UK stages.


This is one of the best things the ENO have done in a while. Charpentier's score turns out to be tuneful, dramatically concise, beautifully orchestrated, occasionally inspired and fully worth the effort lavished on it. I say tuneful, but don't expect a Handel opera with 15 second bouts of action-recitative followed by a 7 minute aria exploring the character's emotional reaction. This is much more fleet paced with very little repetition of the words (which can make Act I and II a little hard to follow as there's so much pretext that is assumed). As a result, musically it unfolds mainly in a sort of lyrical arioso style, with true arias mostly saved for the extensive ballet sequences which form such an important part of French Baroque opera, but which also at least give them a more explicit narrative function than we might find in some Rameau operas. Medea herself doesn't get a proper aria until Act III, and what emerges is quite beautiful - we get piled on dissonances and suspensions in a muted string haze all slightly awkwardly arrayed, with a plangently understated melodic line that Sarah Connolly shapes wonders with. There is a similarly affecting aria for Creon when he goes mad, and the brief orchestral depiction of madness on flickering strings is quite brilliant. Elsewhere the score sometimes sags - Medea's invocation that brings up daemons to help her is disappointingly jolly and light - this is just the sort of thing that Rameau excelled at half a century later.

McVicar updates the opera to WWII without worrying too much about finding literal analogues for the situation, and nor does he try to transform the supernatural elements of the plot with psychologising. It works well because McVicar focuses on the story telling with his unerring directness and detail, and of course as he's gradually taken on the role of a modern Zeffirelli for the world's biggest opera houses, in the sense that he's unafraid of sensation and spectacle, he is not averse to throwing in the kitchen sink for the dance entertainments. Here we get a glittery pink plane with rotating propeller, ridden on by a camp cupid. Yep. There are also ludicrously camp army dances, and drag daemons, which completely clash with the style of the period being evoked, but somehow it doesn't jar too much because McVicar has his tongue firmly in his cheek, and clearly just wants to delight. Fatuous moralising is not an interest of his. Elsewhere, the main thrust of the story between Medea, Creon, Jason and Creusa is sensitively told in an uncluttered, unsentimental way, helped by the Christopher Cowell's translation which is one of the best I've heard for the ENO.


Visually this is a very beautiful show. The set is a corner view into a grand 18th century looking room, and furniture is brought in and out to suit the needs of each scene. What makes it so special though is the mirrored floor which provides lighting designer Paule Constable with endless opportunities for subtle and unusual effects that imbue the piece with a soft beauty, intimacy and coruscating glamour. Often the gilt furniture is lit from below, and feels like it's glowing from within, and during dance sequences the dancers float in double above the action in an extraordinarily beautiful way. I have loved Constable's lighting designs before for the McVicar ROH Figaro and Glyndebourne Meistersinger, though have also found them wanting occasionally (e.g. the Glyndebourne Vixen) but overall he seems to be one of the best people around for this stuff.

This sort of but doesn't quite show what I mean. Depicted here is Creon's vision, with the previous intimations of incestuous lust for his daughter consummated dramatically, if not literally, in a particularly memorable sequence. Yes we do get the "dancing clones" opera cliché here, but it was well done, I promise.

The cast is extremely good, one of the best I've ever heard at the ENO. By every metric Sarah Connolly's performance is quite brilliant: dramatically committed, textually deft and vocally gorgeous. It's such a generous and full sound that even in the sad acoustics of the Coliseum, the lovely legato, shining timbre and rich vocal colours come through with ease. So much better for her than the recent Wagner excursion at ROH, which was dramatically as fine as ever, but vocally not quite right. I can't wait for her Phèdre at Glyndebourne this summer. Occasionally the timbre is uncannily similar to Baker for a few notes, and then fully Connolly again, and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson in the more recent past also bears a strong resemblance. Brindley Sherratt is in superb voice with a Tomlinson like resonance and timbre. When is he going to sing Gurnamenz/Hunding/Sachs at ROH? Am I the only one who thinks he's fantastic? He is.

Katherine Manley

Katherine Manley is a new name for me, but what a gorgeously gleaming lyric voice she revealed with a superb legato, exquisite dynamic control and even sound across the range. It's the sort of voice that I think everyone *thinks* Sophie Bevan has (based on casting). Manley seems to do loads of Baroque stuff, but she sings properly (support, vibrato wise etc.) and is quite special. She moves very naturally onstage and is mostly a good actress, though her death was a little artificial and disappointing staid (McVicar surely as much to blame). Sophie, Pamina and Zdenka are surely roles to hear her in soon (her website is infuriatingly scant on information), but this is a voice with a lot of bloom and firm roots, so I could see Tatyana, Figaro Countess, Manon, Liu, Rusalka, Arabella and Marschallin in the future as well as big Handel roles too.


Roderick Williams is also in lovely voice as Orontes, though overacts to such a degree that he is difficult to take seriously on stage. Still, he's surely one of the best English lyric baritones around. Jeffrey Francis is also dramatically challenged but seems underengaged, and though he doesn't struggle vocally, it's just not quite as beautiful a sound as any of the other four leads. Smaller parts revealed no particularly notable singing.

Jeffrey Francis and Sarah Conolly

The orchestral playing is almost faultless and conductor Christian Curnyn provides superb advocacy for the score, falling just short of the undisputed twin kings in this repertoire (Christie and Minkowski) but he's certainly one to watch. If slightly greater attention had been paid to the all important expressive French ornamentation I wouldn't have had a criticism.






Two (2) chairs are thrown. Think I'm going to start documenting this at the end of every review.