The Lighthouse and Dido and Aeneas at Royal Academy of Music

16/05/13

The Lighthouse is a curious opera, but one that gets better as it goes through. The force of attention required to actually keep up with the text through the orchestration and unpredictable vocal lines is extreme, and in a performance without surtitles I must admit that I found the story difficult to follow, even though diction was good. The beginning I don't think works - three men all attempt to give an account of the their discovery of an abandoned light house to their boss. The interest here is in the disparities of their accounts, but as I say it's hard to keep up with each of them, let alone compare them - I'm just not sure that opera is the ideal medium for this sort of thing. The score is standard Peter Maxwell Davies - mildly modernist, gently atonal, loosely constructed, quirkily but underwhelmingly orchestrated. Things get much better in the second half where we see some sort of actual version of what went on. Three lighthouse keepers feel trapped in each other's company in the confines of a lighthouse. At first they attempt to pass their incarceration with some singing. The first is a sort of sea shanty folk song pastiche, a horrible account of a nasty childhood, amusingly and gruesomely retold by the slightly unhinged Blazes (baritone). The second keeper, the gentle and nervous Sandy (tenor), sings a sentimental Victorian ballad, again a wonderful pastiche which reveals the character superbly, and is so generous in the context that it can't help but bring a smile to the face. The final keeper Arthur (bass) sings a salvation army song with sonorous aplomb, agony and hardship transformed into a twisted religious ecstacy, again brilliantly in keeping with the character. Then a mysterious event occurs and each character gets a substantial dramatic scena - Blazes a madscene, terrifyingly dispatched by Samuel Queen, Sandy a wistful memory of his family, and Arthur a disturbing pseudo Christian ritual. (afterwards I read the synopsis and found out that the three lighthouse keepers were killed by the officers we met in the first act, though this wasn't obvious to me at the time. Maybe I was still dazed by the lighthouse keepers' scenes. I probably should have read it before hand: lesson learned.)

The vocal performances of the three leads were unstintingly brilliant in a difficult score that requires total commitment from the performers. It would be impossible to mark out one above the others - they were all individually great and worked brilliantly together as an ensemble. Iain Milne's exciting tenor sailed effortlessly through his music, his ballad an embarrassment of tenorial riches. The way he captured the timidity and sentimental innocence of the character was extremely endearing. Samuel Queen brings the requisite intensity for the baritone role of Blazes, singing with nuance, precision and splendid tone. He bravely and rightly pares down the voice for the folk song. Andri Björn Róbertsson seemed not so dark voiced in his recent RAM Gremin but here reveals that the true bass repertoire is well within his grasp, and though it is not yet huge in scale, there is a satisfying depth and evenness across all registers. Occasionally the vowel modification suggested he might be artificially darkening the voice a bit, but it worked for the character. Again the characterisation is strong and lucid - his sententious moralising, disapproving sobriety, visionary fear of god. All three roles require surprising excursions into falsetto, and all three sounded very good here. Particularly impressive at this was the Róbertsson who brought a fully supported sound right up into the high notes which meant that they were richer and more beautifully resonant than many a counter tenor that I have heard. Maybe a second career option!?

I thought John Ramster's production was very successful in presenting this tricky piece - he leaves plenty of ambiguity for the imagination and intellect to latch onto (surely the composer and librettist's intention) but at the same time I felt gripped throughout, even when it wasn't entirely clear what was going on. Somehow the simplicity of the setting and cutting away of the extraneous was also entirely in keeping with the music. There was impressive but understated detail in the characterisation too - the acting was simple but wholly believable and therefore engaging, even at the most farfetched moments in the plot. It wasn't quite as overwhelmingly superb as the RAM Onegin earlier this year, but then this opera does not offer anything like the riches of that masterpiece. Still, an enjoyable and wholly worthwhile evening and it was such a pleasure to see young singers rise so fully to a challenge and succeed so admirably. Contemporary English opera is in very good hands.


Dido and Aeneas, Purcell's evergreen one acter, has an arresting simplicity without paucity of effect, an emotional impact and richness of content that it is hard to fully explain. Director John Ramster realises this and presents the piece stripped down and bare, with Brechtian resonances that avoid us getting too deeply involved in the characters so that we instead reflect more abstractly on what the meaning of this work might be. I'm not sure I liked it overall, as much of the personal drama and clarity of the story was lost in this abstracted, choreographed, slightly clownish setting, but the concept at least is carried through logically. Perhaps the problem was that it didn't go far enough into strangeness, but perhaps the cast also weren't quite strong enough to carry it, though almost all sang nicely and accurately, with Sónia Grané a particularly sweet voiced Belinda. Rozanna Madylus caught my ear the most however and stood out for me as the Sorceress. The voice is not yet the finished article, but she seems able to draw on a pleasing range of vocal colours (an excellent sign at this early stage) some already fully formed, others clearly still works in progress, and I think she has enormous potential as a performer.

all photos (c) Sara Shorter

DVD Review: Dido and Aeneas 2008 L'Opera Comique

Francois Roussillon

Dido: Malena Ernman
Aeneas: Christopher Maltman
Belinda: Judith van Wanroij
Sorceress: Hilary Summers
Prologue: Fiona Shaw

Director: Deborah Warner

Conductor: William Christie
Les Arts Florissants






A wonderful performance of Purcell's only opera which brilliantly balances the comic and tragic elements of the drama - the only thing one regrets is that it is over so quickly. In a DVD extra feature William Christie voices his suspicions that the piece is incomplete and notes points in the score where ad lib is written, as well as known about scenes that have gone missing (e.g. for the Sorceress) and also that much of the separately published libretto has apparently not been set to music. We cannot know because Purcell's music comes to us only through 18th century copies, from sympathetic hands who were determined that this music should last.

What does remain is of course magnificent, an ultra condensed, intense drama that is one of the most brilliant instances of the genre composed before Mozart. Christie is brave in fleshing out the ad libitum parts, and crafting a short Prologue with director Deborah Warner. Actress (and now sometime opera director) Fiona Shaw takes on this role, reciting portions of Ted Hughes' Echo and Narcissus, T.S. Eliot's the Wasteland and the famous Yeats poem "Aedh wishes for the cloths of Heaven". In common with most authentic Baroque prologues it's not directly relevant to the opera, but it proves an interesting opening. Fiona Shaw's skill in declamation and obvious knowledge of vocal resonance can only be compared with operatic singing - the utilisation of vocal registers and colours is unerring and virtuosic. Occasionally the voice cracks from too much pushing, and also she's more at home with the storytelling than the poetry, but she is engaging and sets the tone admirably.

Deborah Warner's production takes as its starting point the story that Purcell composed this opera for a girls school in London, and so there is a huge sea of little faces that invade the action at certain moments. The chorus are in modern dress at the sides of the stage, observing and commenting on the action and occasionally interacting, and the central characters are all in 17th century costume and mostly act on a slightly raised central stage like in a Noh play. The whole thing appears to take place in a 17th century courtyard. It's understated but visually very striking and evocative of all the layers that are being combined here. Quite an achievement.

But what is even more impressive is the knitting together of the disparate dramatic styles to create a cohesive whole that entertains and moves at every point. Malena Ernman is a magnificent Dido, vocally beautiful, with a rich chest register and a beautifully pure soprano like top. She is also a superb actress, one of the most natural and subtle that I have ever seen in opera and her interactions with the equally superb Christopher Maltman as Aeneas are worth the price of the DVD alone. Maltman could also simply not be bettered either dramaitcally or vocally - the vibrato is maybe a teensy bit wide at times, but the text is beautifully articulated and his acting again a model of sensitivity and nuance. His character registers far more fully than normal and in some ways is the linchpin of the production. Very special indeed.

On the comedy side, Hilary Summers is a really fantastic sorceress, her acting hilarious and commanding, and her trademark timbre, hollow, androgynous and eerie, quite unlike any other singer's that I have heard, is quite ideal for the role. Deborah Warner makes her as contrasted as possible from Dido, removing any sense of grace or elegance by giving her aggressive and manly mannerisms and a terrifyingly capricious sense of humour. She does not neglect the character's central sadness either, and one is most frustrated that her part isn't bigger. Her assistant witches are maybe the only slight weakness of the production and they can become a little irritating, but not enough to spoil anything.

The contribution of the choir and orchestra of Les Arts Florissants and William Christie is as faultless as ever, and if I wouldn't quite put this alongside their absolute best ever work, it would be difficult to name people who could do it better.

This is probably the best version of the opera on DVD then as Connolly is scuppered by the terribly boring ROH production and the Hickox/Ewing 1995 one is an "opera film", a genre which I have a very hard time enjoying. Highly recommended.

Susan Graham at the Wigmore Hall

29/06/12

So glad I went to this. Such brilliant singing and a real treat for me - I don't expect to hear singing of this quality live more than a handful of times a year. You can listen on iplayer, but it sounds so different - it's still very nice, but the voice is even more beautiful in the hall.

Anyway, I reviewed it for Bachtrack. The Bachtrack editor changed some of the "One"s to "I"s, which looks a bit jarring to me, but maybe it reads better for other people. I realise it's purely a taste issue, but for me, "one noticed how well preserved the voice was" puts an objectifying distance on it, whereas "I noticed how well preserved the voice was" just seems like a story, or a stream of consciousness observation. Interesting to be challenged on it, and I might bear it in mind and change my style in the future to omit either "one"s or "I"s. Also this is not my most elegant prose, but it basically communicates what I felt about the thing.


Here it is:

http://www.bachtrack.com/review-wigmore-hall-susan-graham-malcolm-martineau