Madama Butterfly at ENO

26/10/13

Anthony Minghella's Madama Butterfly is very popular on both sides of the pond (the Met uses it too), and it's easy to see why. It's an opera production that feels modern in its bright, bold design, balancing spareness and lushness with simple elegance, whilst not messing with the opera's central story at all, or questioning Puccini's taste in tackling this subject matter (or indeed the audience's enjoyment of it). What it doesn't do is try to negotiate the very uncomfortable cultural problems at the work's heart, nor make sense of the work's bizarre psychology and dramatic foundations. Instead it delivers everything that a traditionalist might ask of the experience of a Madama Butterfly.

First then, the design. Michael Levine's set is in essence rather sparse - the black raked floor, slightly mirrored ceiling, and sliding screens offer a neutral backdrop for the extremely colourful items of set dressing, lighting and costumes that fill it. It's obvious that all these elements have been worked on very closely together by the team - the lighting particularly by Peter Mumford makes sophisticated use of the set to create some often extraordinary effects. Hang Feng's costumes can be more problematic, but also raise more questions - some look quite realistic/historical, with their artful prints and elegant cuts. Butterfly's followers on the other hand wear the gaudiest colours and designs imaginable, and with their card board cut out wigs, the inspiration can only have come from Japanese anime cartoons, which had reached a fever pitch in Western popularity when the production premièred. Although the result of the anime influence is jarring and ugly, this cartoonish design matches the cartoony music that Puccini composes in the first scene for the Japanese characters - so obviously trying to capture some surface exoticisms, but wholly failing to grasp the aesthetic or feel of the alien culture. Somehow it works. Pinkerton's Japanese looking costume in the opening scene is a nice touch, especially when contrasted with Sharpless' stolidly European attire - Pinkerton is really getting into playing with this culture, "trying it on", without ever trying to properly integrate trying to understand it. The metaphor is clear.

paper wigs and anime costumes on kneeling followers,
visible lighting (see below)

click on the images for a closer look at what I mean.

The lighting can get very sugary indeed, the stage drowned in a welter of pinks and lilacs, as cherry blossoms, lanterns and paper cranes litter the stage. Whether deliberately or not, the divide between genuine beauty and gaudy kitsch is continually probed, broken and remade in this production, and though the middle act tends strongly towards the latter, I did wonder whether this was a comment on the music and whether we were being subtly played with by Minghella here. There are clues - the lighting from the side of the stage is clearly visible throughout and constantly on the move, so our attention is drawn to it: we always see the means of construction of this luxuriant fantasy land, which in turn invites us to do the same with the score and opera as a whole. Those not inclined to this sort of probing need not pursue this course of reflection, and again, it's difficult to tell whether it's intentional, but I appreciated the fact that it made me think this way - not every directorial choice must be conscious for it to be enjoyed!

Also problematic, but yet again revealing, is the use of traditional Japanese puppets. As well as their use for some minor characters, Butterfly's son is presented to us as a very mobile, semi realistic Bunraku puppet, dressed as an American sailor and waving an American flag. When wrenched from his original cultural/artistic context, Cio Cio San's puppet offspring seems freakish and alien, especially when placed in such close proximity to living, breathing people: the little Homunculus occupies an uncanny valley, where cuteness is mingled with an innate feeling of disgust and revulsion at the human simulacrum. The unnerving effect of this is a psychological rather than a cultural one, but the message becomes confused on the way - is this mild discomfort we feel intentional or not? Exactly how we are meant to relate to this purported piece of Japanese culture is ambiguous and troubling.


Overall, I often wished that the design had been simpler and bolder - the most visually effective and beautiful moments occur when the characters are highlighted onstage against a dark background, and the strong colours aren't washed in a sea of saccharine pastels. The dance scene which opens the production (photos of which are very often used to advertise it) is almost the best part of the show for this reason - the four red ribbons that emanate from the dancer's torso are predictably (but very effectively) mirrored at the end, during Cio Cio San's final scene - in each case the intense focus on the artist creates a spellbinding effect of concentration and attention, something which certainly does seem to be a feature of the genuine Japanese culture that I have encountered.

So it's often beautiful, and as viewers we aren't made to feel guilty about it. Sighs of relief. The story is told well by Minghella, and revival director Sarah Tipple has both the soprano who premièred the production and a fine Suzuki to build her production around. Not all the singers can be coaxed into good acting, but Tipple makes sure that the important emotional scenes hit home.

But what about what this staging ignores? Pinkerton is painted in a bad light, as is surely the intention of the libretto - he's a Western voyeur, and worse than that a flagrant exploiter. But wait, aren't we also Western voyeurs? And, we are dealing with Geishas here, the marriage contracts are being handed out by the Japanese; no one ought to be under any false pretences about what is going on here. The opera revolves around sex tourism - this was known then, and it's known now. (Whether you want to add paedophilia into the mix or not is up to you). Given that everyone else in Cio-Cio San's society seems to understand this situation, and Cio Cio San doesn't appear to be in a state of madness, isn't there an interesting psychology to be explored here? The story very obviously centres around the conflict between eternal devotional love (Cio Cio San) and fleeting sexual desire (Pinkerton), but wouldn't it be interesting to probe why this conflict has arisen? Is Pinkerton really the party that's in the wrong? I think he is partly, as he's a pure hedonist and should surely realise that Cio Cio San thinks this is something that it isn't, and he certainly also enjoys the power he has over her to a sinister degree. But on the other hand maybe he thinks that she's just acting the part well, and he's just doing what all his friends are no doubt doing too. This is a widespread cultural phenomenon we're dealing with here, not a one off: she is being sold to him, legally, as a temporary wife. No one else misunderstands this but Cio Cio. Why? Her mania of devotion is fascinating, and it's frustrating that so many productions just take this at face value, while so few seem to be interested in the roots of this phenomenon. How does Cio Cio use her experience to serve herself? She constructs a huge edifice of victimhood around which to centre her life; whether she does this consciously or not is a further matter for fruitful exploration. When people question her she either ignores them or threatens them with death. She is a fantasist with an extremely unhealthy attachment to her dreams who uses her fanatical devotion as a crutch against her family, and fall from society (a double fall - it happens both pre and during the opera). Her story is heart rending, but it is also self inflicted. This is key. If we don't own up to this, it seems to me that the desecration of her innocence and suicide are entirely without logic or meaning.

To come to Puccini's music - regular readers will know the difficulties I have with it, but don't worry, I'm not going to bash it again. I actually found occasion to accept and enjoy what I could this time. The strange conceit of opening the opera with a fugal idea, that most Western of formal devices, presumably is an attempt to depict the extraordinary formal control that Japanese culture exhibits, though the fugue soon breaks down into familiar Puccinian strains. A metaphor for the entire work perhaps - and though it should be extremely obvious from the music, it bears saying again - this is not a portrait of Japan; as always with imitation, it tells us more about the imitator than the imitated. This music tells us about a Westerner of the fin-de-siecle's view of the East. To go to the other end of the work, there was a moment which I thought showed surprising restraint (in a weird sense of the word) from Puccini. Following Butterfly's death, the spectacular crudity of the music that closes the opera is a brilliant stroke from Puccini - for once there's no syrupy sentimentality or mock tragedy and the spare, unemotional, unimpressive, entirely ungratifying, and above all, hideous uglyness of the blaring orchestra, decries the squalid meaninglessness of Butterfly's sacrifice. There is far more subtlety to be drawn out of this piece than traditional productions let on.

Mary Plazas makes an excellent Madama Butterfly. Her diminutive stature, and convincingly girlish acting make her believably youthful. It shows that she was the production's original Butterfly - her acting is detailed and nuanced. Vocally she is fine too. In the first scene, when Butterfly needs to sound most youthful, the vibrato felt a bit wide, and there is weakness in the low register, but actually overall this performance is a vocal success, and she gets better as the evening progresses. The problem of balancing in the voice the psychological and physical fragility of Butterfly, against the sheer vocal heft required to ride Puccini's orchestration is probably the role's biggest challenge, and this is Plazas' trump card.

Timothy Richards is often a little underpowered as Pinkerton, but he's very solid vocally and he doesn't at all make an unattractive sound. He is however very blank acting wise in the present company and doesn't really cut a rounded character on stage. One thing in particular jarred, though it was no fault of his own. With Puccini's repeated references to the fact that Pinkerton is not just Western, but American (by the fifth direct quotation of The Star Spangled Banner we rather get the point), and the fact that the ENO singers are singing in English, it's really jarring to hear that sort of RPish generic singers' English coming from both Pinkerton and Sharpless. Once again, on one of those rare occasions where the ENO's language policy could be used to a production's advantage, it is not capitalised on. Whose job is it to notice these things? (As an aside: it also raises the interesting question of what language the characters in the opera are "really" speaking - presumably the answer is English.)

Pamela Helen Stephen is a consummate actor-musician, making the absolute most of the famously thankless role of Suzuki. I recently asked on twitter whether mezzos actually enjoyed playing this part, and it seems that many do. In the 90's Helen Stephen was a pristine Mozartian (see her wonderful Cherubino on youtube [how could the Countess resist?]), and if the voice has lost its former purity, it maintains its attractive basic timbre and is now capable of a much wider palette of colours and can tackle more dramatic writing without strain. If all operatic acting were as committed and simple as this, the artform would be unstoppable.

George von Bergen's Sharpless is a bit of a caricature dramatically, all awkward moustache twitches and concerned glances into the middle distance. Vocally he is powerful and accurate, but the voice can become uncomfortably hard when put under pressure. Gianluca Marciano doesn't do anything particularly out of the ordinary in the pit, but he doesn't do anything wrong either: balance is good, and the stage and pit are well synched. The ENO orchestra sound well focussed and big boned.

Certain productions and certain operas seem to find "fetish" words attached to them, usually derived from an early review, then endlessly repeated in the press and marketing for the production, and eventually leaking into all subsequent reviews. This production's fetish word is "sumptuous". It occasionally is, but for me the "sumpture" becomes plain "sump" often enough that I wouldn't say that it is the production's main attraction. The biggest boon of this revival is the excellent singing and acting of the two females at the centre of this story.


Photos (c) ENO/Clive Barda/Thomas Bowles

A Mass of Life at the Edinburgh Festival

11/08/2012

Delius' A Mass of Life is squarely in that category of grandiose gargantuanism that was clearly a big fascination for British composers at the beginning of the English musical renaissance around the turn of the century. The twin predecessors of this category of titanic works are clear: first the German line - Bach's Masses and Passions, Beethoven's Choral Symphony, Brahms' Requiem, Wagner, Bruckner, Mahler 8, Gurrelieder - proving that, talent permitting, works of this ambition and scale were a real possibility, and then early English examples emulating this line (Parry, Stanford) with Elgar at the peak with his masterpiece The Dream of Gerontius (1900), which cements the idea of the Big Choral Work as something achievable by English composers, followed by the comparatively disappointing and only intermittently inspired The Apostles (1903) and The Kingdom (1906), which were to have been two parts of an enormous trilogy.

The proliferance of works of this sort in England also derived from the will and means to perform them - the grand old tradition of the choral society as the cornerstone of British musical life even before it had major composers. A Mass of Life came early (1905) and is therefore particularly significant historically, but other works in this line include Vaughan Williams' Sea Symphony (1909), Foulds' A World Requiem (1921), Brian's Gothic Symphony (1927) (though his Symphonies No. 2, 3 and 4 are all in this category too), in this company the relatively modest Belshazzar's Feast (1931), with later offerings from Howells (Hymnus Paradisi (1938), his masterpiece, then the larger but lesser Stabat Mater (1965) and thrusting Missa Sabrinensis (1954)), Finzi (Intimations of Immortality (1950)) and Britten (War Requiem (1962)).

Like most of these works, Delius' A Mass of Life isn't quite able to fully support its massive bulk as he lacks the technical musculature or the instinctive drive for the task. Its date puts it near the beginning of his maturity where he's still discovering what he can do and as such the work has stronger and weaker portions. At this stage his orchestration lacks the clear water colour luminosity of his prime, and things tend to get muddy, turgid, undifferentiated, (especially in live performance) until the quieter portions which occasionally hint at the dreamy atmosphere of his later works. Not just the orchestration though is responsible for this aural confusion- the slithering chromatic harmony lacks direction and pulse and is choked by its own complexity, though distinctive Delian drooping phrases do occasionally rear their head, as lines wilt and billow ever downwards and outwards.

It turns out that the work's finest portion by some margin, was actually composed first: the two final numbers Gottes Weh ist tiefer and Kommt Lasst uns jetzt wandeln were actually premiered separately in a slightly different form in 1899 - only here does Delius achieve the Wagnerian gravitas and Mahlerian intensity that the whole work so obviously aims at, in music of very special beauty. The rest of the piece reaches for the ecstatic and visionary tenor of the text, but feels overwrought and unremitting, impressive though the massed forces and huge choral outbursts can be. The selection of texts, all excerpted from Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra, sensibly eschew the more overtly philosophical tracts in favour of the more poetic portions of that book, though word setting rarely seems specific enough beyond communicating the general febrile fervour of the text.

No one could accuse the performance of lacking commitment or betraying a lack of belief in the work however - Andrew Davis lead a performance that was ceaselessly energetic and driven, though he ultimately failed to clarify the work's opacity or imbue it with more personality. The bolstered Edinbrugh Festival Chorus did extremely well in a very demanding sing, sounding magnificently full and fiery in the opening chorus, though the relentlessly high writing for the sopranos took its toll on the tuning in the final half hour of the piece.

The work also employs four soloists, of which the baritone has by far the lion's share of the material. Hanno Müller-Brachmann was truly magnificent in this part, singing with a flawless diction, a beautifully lightly coloured lyric line, and rising to Wagnerian climaxes which never sounded laboured or pressured. He's a singer very clearly in the line of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and his sound and approach invite instant comparison without Müller-Brachmann coming off badly in any way. The aforementioned final section was exquisitely sung and one can only hope that he will be engaged by the ROH for some Wagner or Mozart in the very near future.

The other soloists all sang well even if they lacked the special timbre and clarity of Müller-Brachmann. Anna Christy has a light, rather tweety voice, with an intense vibrato that makes her soprano a little edgy rather than silvery. Still, she sung her small parts with a nice legato and excellent intonation. Tenor Robert Murray sounded fresh and well matched to the baritone, but Pamela Helen Stephen, whose acting I so admired in the recent ROH Troyens, seemed a little out of sorts, with a lack of connection between notes and sounding slightly stressed and pushed in higher lying passages. Diction and tuning were very good however and there wasn't a question of not being able to sing it.

It's always interesting to see these behemoths in the concert hall because they are so rarely done - inevitably there will be disappointments, but Müller-Brachmann's singing and wonderful music of the last quarter hour of the work made it all worth while.

Les Troyens at the ROH

25/06/2012


Where to start? This is a massive evening, 5 acts, 5.5 hours long, huge cast, huge chorus, huge sets, huge score. I do very much like Berlioz, the good bits are just so good, but he is so maddeningly inconsistent, and Les Troyens, a piece which should be his magnum opus, puts his defects as well as his strengths into stark profile. As an orchestrator he is of course superb, one of the most original and successful of all composers in this regard. Harmonically too he is an innovator, but more accidentally here - there's a strong feeling that he is working things out empirically chord to chord, piece to piece, which makes for some fantastic and fantastically odd moments, but it also can prevent him building in the larger range, and when he chooses to use such enormous canvases as he does in Les Troyens, this becomes problematic. The vocal writing is not what one might call glamorous - no chances to show boat for the principals, though it is all very demanding.


McVicar's production does its best to sort through this gigantically chaotic piece and like the score, succeeds in places and is found wanting elsewhere. Staging wise, the first half, comprising Acts I and II, which depicts the fall of Troy to the Greeks, was most successful. At the outset of the opera we are presented with the curving outer wall of the now no longer besieged Troy, the chorus singing joyously about the Greeks mysterious retreat. Cassandra of course is less than convinced. McVicar has chosen to update this to the early half of the 19th century, a period he seems to love. I'm not sure if he has a particular war in mind that he was translating it to, but it basically worked. Early reports suggested that he was doing one of those horrible mixing of all cultures thing again, like the disastrous Aida, but if this was the original intention, there was very little sign of that here - aside from odd anachronisms created by the updating (pagan rituals and gods in Christian times) it was basically all from this period.


The Trojan horse when it came was absolutely magnificent - only the head was seen on stage, beautifully lit, descending slowly on the audience, and moving with so many degrees of freedom that it seemed like a living horse, rather than a wooden one. In fact it was made of lots of welded together Greek arms - cannons and muskets and the like, a nice touch that added to the idea of it as a peace offering (but also simultaneously as a massive warning of the threat it contains). At the end of Act 2, its mane becomes a flaming wall of fire, and it breathes fire. It's difficult to describe how awesome the sight of it is, and its basically worth the price of admission for this alone.


As Cassandra, Anna Caterina Antonacci is quite splendid and she received the biggest ovations at the end of the night. The intensity of her delivery is thrilling, though I did think that she was given a bit too much scene chewing to do by McVicar - I wishes all her actions had been a bit less OTT, or perhaps it would have been better to have her completely batshit insane, and really extreme. She's 51 now so naturally the voice is no longer quite what it once was, in terms of beauty or flexibility or volume, but its still very in tune, basically does what she wants it too, and she's expressive and very much gets the point across, so one never wishes for something else from her. Fabio Capitanucci is her fiancé Coroebus and is presented as an insensitive, pompous idiot, barely looking at her, let alone listening to her dire warnings - McVicar seems to have drawn a blank as to why on earth these two characters are courting - so different are they in every way, and they don't seem at all comfortable on stage as a couple. He sings well, though there are even less glory moments for him than the other leads.


One of the most affecting scenes was the royal pageant in Act I, which culminates in the presentation of the horse. Hecuba is superbly acted by Pamela Helen Stephen, maybe the best acting I've seen on the ROH stage this year - such dignity, subtlety and commanding presence. It's a tiny role and barely a singing part - I don't think there even are any solo lines for her and initially I thought they had just hired an actress who was mouthing the choruses. Truly spell binding - if only all opera acting could be this good! The slightly bigger role of her husband King Priam was also superbly acted by Robert Lloyd, here portrayed as ancient and verging on infirm, getting by on pure grit and ineluctable authority.


This sort of genius in small moments characterised the whole evening. Many of the small roles were wonderfully taken by Jette Parker Young Artists - Jihoon Kim made a very good Ghost of Hector and Barbara Senator a very good Asanius (and doesn't she look like Nina Stemme here!). Even better were Ji-Min Park as a slightly breathy, but very beautiful sounding Iopas, Hanna Hipp who sounded magnificently rich and dark in the larger role of Anna, Dido's sister, and also veteran Brindley Sherratt in wonderfully booming voice as Narbal. Not a single cast member in fact was found wanting.


Acts III to V chart rockier ground dramatically, though the most beautiful music is to be found here. I wasn't very keen Es Devlin's sets here, which were a sort of cartoony false perspective Carthage, with a central disc with a tiny buildings on it which Dido strolled around. Despite everyone wearing brightly coloured and boldly patterned African garb (though I fear there may have been other cultures mixed in there), there was of course only one black face to be seen on a stage of over 100 people, which gave everything a rather surreal look that didn't seem to match to any recognisable culture. Took me a while to realise that that was why it looked so weird.


The music of Act III is mostly on the less inspired side, notably excepting a surprising dance for girl peasants in the middle which is exquisitely scored and has a very beautiful melody. As Dido, Eva-Maria Westbroek is a much more glamorous voice than Antonacci, but she seemed lost as Didon dramatically. Didon is the "people's princess", but for McVicar that means touching the crowd like a pop musician, hollywood smiles, and hugging children. There's not one hint of nobility in this characterisation of Dido (I place the blame at McVicar's feet), and it's not until her Act 5 monologue that a compelling three dimensional character emerges. She sings very well though, best of all in this monologue, unleashing a time stopping pianissimo on the final note. I wasn't all that moved however. For me there's a slight loss of lustre compared to a few years ago and I hear the beginning of spreading on her top notes. Still this is very nice singing.


Little happens in Act IV, but it's a string of pure delights musically. First the Hunt and Storm Ballet which is simply one of the best pieces of ballet music between Rameau and Tchaikovsky. Then Narbal's aria, another wonderful ballet sequence, Iopas' aria, Aeneas' tale and then to even more wonderful things: the ravishingly beautiful septet which is probably the most beautiful number in the whole opera, and then the almost as lovely but slightly prolix duet for the lovers. This is basically number opera, in stark contrast to some of the earlier acts which seems to aiming at somewhat larger dramatic units and scenas. This wild eclecticism of style is one of the reasons why Les Troyens remains problematic, but it also where many of its charms lie.


As a side note, the dancers all had modern hair, with a couple of the men having cool hipster haircuts. This sort of thing maddens me - when it just clearly hasn't been thought about. Antonacci had contemporary hair too, possibly excusable because she's a wild woman/prophetess, so we'll forgive that, but the dancers really annoyed me. Also, dancers make the worst actors ever - they are trained to always extend to the maximum, expand gestures to exaggeration, and the result is pure irritation and unbelievability. Maybe I'm the only one who thinks this.


Act V revealed Bryan Hymel to be perhaps the star of the show as Aeneas. (Maybe?) He has a bad rep in London after singing a Don Jose a few years back that seems to have been universally slated. He was magnificent however in the ROH Rusalka earlier this year, and he is again very good here. Stepping into Kaufmann's shoe's is never going to be an easy task, but Hymel is so different and so excellent that I only occasionally got pangs of regret about Kaufmann's absence. Enée is a famously ungrateful role in that it is a shockingly difficult sing, but has few glory moments compared to the women in this opera. But Hymel really made something of it here, never sounding overtaxed, and his top notes are a treat. Really magnificent singing this, and he's only 33 so he's only going to get better. Maybe I am overstating things, but he's definitely someone I'll be watching from now on.


There's way too much to mention in this production to go into more than cursory detail, but overall the good significantly outweighs the bad - definitely try and see it, if only for the reason that its so rarely done, and also to see that beautiful horse apart from anything! It's not a stunning evening of drama and it only just about coheres, but again like the score, this production presents a series of wonderful scenes which are hugely enjoyable taken on their own.


Antonio Pappano is in the pit with the ROH orchestra and he clearly believes in the score passionately. Plenty of wonderful moments and as always he's just so good at supporting the singers. The ROH Chorus were on fine form too. Too tired to write any more now!


This is a four way co production between the ROH, Vienna State Opera, La Scala and San Francisco opera, so it is definitionally coming to an opera house near you soon.