Calixto Bieito's Fidelio at ENO

25/09/13

Opening night at the ENO proved to be a much more exciting affair than the run of the mill Turandot that the ROH proffered. The ENO has taken on two of Calixto Bieito's less shocking stagings over the last two seasons, though they are still unexpected and radical enough to raise a few eyebrows and boos, always a good thing when you see who it is who's booing. This is a thought provoking production, and my criticisms are extensive only because I sense that it has the seed of something very powerful.

For Bieito, all of the characters in Fidelio are in a prison of sorts, be it mental or otherwise. The astonishing set (designed by Rebecca Ringst) is a 3D maze constructed out of perspex and strip lighting, which the characters wander through looking for an escape. The opening sequence, set to the Leonore III overture (which works superbly), is a breathtaking spectacle. The actors crawl out of the pit into the desolate, flickering beauty of the labyrinth. Tim Mitchell's lighting designs are exceptional here and throughout. The meaning is ambiguous, but perhaps Bieito is showing the characters choosing to enter the prison and is by extension saying that we choose and define our own restraints. Once all the characters are in, it's surprising however how literal the prison remains.

There's a weird episode in the first scene where Jaquino forces himself on Marzelline as if to rape her in his frustration - a horrible and shocking display of what his own prison of sexual obsession has done to him. She pushes him off, but the whole event doesn't convince - two seconds later she looks totally happy as if nothing has happened, and is singing joyously of Fidelio. Most of Act I passes slowly and even verges occasionally on being boring as the plot becomes abstracted by the lack of dramatic logic. Act II flows better and raises more interesting questions. After the interval, the set pivots down into a horizontal position, making the prison seem more real and physical now than mental. When Florestan is rescued by Leonore a really surprising thing happens - a caged string quartet descends from the sky, playing the unearthly slow movement Heiliger Dankgesang of Beethoven's op.132, while Florestan and Leonore sit quietly with each other. It's a profoundly touching moment, and we realise that even though Florestan has been rescued by his love, he is either not ready or too damaged to be helped by her; Bieito seems to be saying we cannot truly be "saved" by others. Before this though there's a major dramatic misfire - the ecstatic duet that precedes this scene sees the newly united couple first dressing into a suit and elegant dress, while singing about the joy of the other's embrace. Bieito deliberately ignores the words, showing us that these two seem far more interested in propriety and getting back to their old gender roles than they are in each other. Again it's the music that's the sticking point here though - Bieito is clearly trying to make this scene laughable, but it isn't emotionally or dramatically convincing because nothing has prepared us dramatically for these actions, and Beethoven's music (let alone the text) makes this dramatic choice feel phony and utterly implausible. Ironically avoiding Beethoven's total lack of irony is one thing, but comedy and irony requires just as much truth as serious drama and the characters still need to have some sort of logic to them if we're meant to believe in their onstage reality.

The ending is extremely ambiguous. With Don Pizarro's plot foiled, Don Fernando enters from one of the ENO's boxes as a bewigged, wealthy 18th century gentleman/prince, totally at odds with the rest of the production's period or aesthetic - a representative of a past era which was exactly what Beethoven was saying in this piece that we needed to get away from. What I took it to mean was that with all the talk of equality, hope and freedom, this nobleman playboy is still required to actually grant everyone freedom, and he sees his role in the rousing final chorus as a fun amusement for himself. Don Fernando is not subject to the rules that everyone else is (OK, possibly a clear message in line with what I've just said) - he shoots Florestan dead, but then Leonore mysteriously revives him, and the episode isn't further commented on. I have no idea why or how this happens.

As so often with Bieto, the "Konzept" seems interesting and pregnant with possibilities and is rendered with a compelling visual strength, but these things are far stronger than the moment to moment action. In Bieito's narrative, it's clear that the characters are meant to be alienated from each other, but this usually manifests itself in vague standing around, ironically not so far from the park and bark aesthetic of a bygone era. Interaction between characters, especially during the big conflicts always seems both clumsy and overly rehearsed ("now you fall down here"), intentions rarely specific or easy to read.

But even if this is deliberate, and the characters are meant to seem physically unconvincing, and even if they're not talking to each other, or are talking past each other, for me at least, characters still need to be acting within the confines of whatever psychological situation they find themselves in for us to believe in them. I need to feel that they are experiencing something, even if it's only a mental phenomenon.* Alternatively, if planning a very unusual production like this, where the actors (deliberately) feel dislocated from what they expect in a role, they need to be provided with a new language of acting in order to be expressive and interesting as characters. Here every character seemed very generic and unspecific to me. I don't mind when directors have a political point that they want to make about an opera using a radical "konzept" - it adds to the variety of the stultifying canon and may possibly make us see a work afresh, which is always a rare gift. But for me at least, it has to work as drama on a moment by moment basis too. Opera is not primarily an intellectual art form: this aspect has to work alongside the emotions and senses. These things are the remit of the music - it cannot be ignored.

If the ENO want to continue doing modern productions like this, and I strongly think they should, in my opinion they really have to look at their translation policy, since they also seem committed long term to opera in English as an idea. Me and my companion (coincidentally also a translator) found that David Pountney's translation felt consistently totally at odds with either the piece or the style of the production. The beautiful passages by Borges for the spoken parts made the contrast all the keener. Is rhyme really the most important aspect of this libretto? So often in this translation it takes precedent over good grammar, beautiful language, and appropriateness to the setting. I mean some people might value rhyme above poetic sense, but for me it seems that translation is one of the very few a chances we get in opera to change the "sacred" text! Surely the opportunity should be used to bind text, drama and music together better. This same thing was one of my only criticisms of last season's brilliant ENO Wozzeck.

Musically, the cast is very good. Emma Bell makes a vocally thrilling Leonore, her fierce commitment to expression and communication totally overshadowing the slightly approximate moments of coloratura. The range of colours she gets out of her voice is admirable - it's not that it's the widest palette ever, but rather that they are always precise and apt. Stuart Skelton is similarly very impressive as Florestan - a truly heroic voice that is capable and unafraid of singing with detail and finesse. His crescendo opening word "God" was simply astonishing - exactly what was wanted. Sarah Tynan's Marzelline was the most vocally impressive of the rest of the cast, possessing a voice with a youthful Mozartian timbre and flexibility. Philip Horst's Pizarro was sometimes straining to be heard, but he convinced dramatically at least. James Creswell's Rocco offered the reverse - a sonorous voice, but the most at sea dramatically. The ENO chorus is on excellent form.

Edward Gardner does fascinating things in the pit. There was a precision and elemental power in the overture that was transfixing. Elemental not in the normal sense of "man and nature" that we expect of Beethoven - elemental in the sense of it seeming to correspond with very precise and fundamental mental/psychic states. The late quartets and piano sonatas contain this same quality, which seems to entirely transcend style and period. This almost worrying yet cool intensity extended to almost all of the purely orchestral passages of the opera and worked wonderfully with the staging. The vocal music is treated rather differently. Gardner makes it sound like Beethoven was picking up where Mozart left off with Die Zauberflote - dancing, joyous, almost graceful, that most un-Beethovinian quality! The contrast is large, but it seems to me not entirely unwarranted - Gardner brings to the fore the experimental nature of Beethoven's score, and also the wealth of influences it contains. Although this lightish approach to the vocal music can jar aesthetically with the darkness of the staging, Bieito's production is clearly trying to get us to question our assumptions about the piece, so paradoxically Gardner is not at odds with the spirit of the staging. He cements his place as one of this country's most talented opera conductors.

Bieito's Fidelio is not great as drama, but it is as an intellectual exploration of Beethoven's opera. Certainly worth seeing for this reason, and musically also.

*Maybe not everyone thinks this?

Pekka Kuusisto and pianist Olli Mustonen at Wigmore Hall

11/04/13

The recital opened with Beethoven's Violin Sonata No 6 in A op.30/1. Musicologists and program note writers love pointing out that the title page of these and other late classical/early romantic string sonatas denote that they are Sonatas for pianoforte with violin accompaniment, not the other way round as we usually think of violin sonatas. This always seems like irritating knit picking when it's stated in dry prose, but this performance seemed to embody this idea. Eschewing legato, pianist Olli Mustonen dominated the aural picture, smashing out every sforzando and right hand melody with brutal percussive force - the lack of contrast or release made for tiring and even irritating listening from him. Especially so when Pekka Kuusisto's violin playing was so spellbindingly brilliant, finding endless nuance, fun, and interest in even the simplest phrases, fast passages dazzlingly dispatched, a chain of lissome, searching string sound. Not everything that comes out of his violin is beautiful, and sometimes the sound can even be downright ugly, but it's always surprising, unaffected and totally convincing. Occasionally he'll also just spin the most breathtaking phrase that follows every rule of tasteful "proper" playing. I simply don't know of any other currently performing musician that is so open to risk taking or unbeholden to previous standards and so manifestly an artist of the first standing (this last thing is important in light of the first two things). Kuusisto's musical choices in the Beethoven were as quirky and unconventional as Mustonen's but the difference was that he managed to create living, breathing art, whereas Mustonen remained merely weird and violently loud.

Observing Kuusisto playing, and as a string player admiring his freedom, it became obvious to me where his very particular genius lies. His left arm is as good as anyone's, with beautifully accurate intonation, a large palette of vibratos, and superb virtuosity. But it's his right arm (that is his bowing arm) that is truly exceptional and puts him musically ahead of most of his peers. The freedom of movement, supreme control, and ceaseless exploration of approaches to the bow affords him an unlimited expressive resource and infinite musical possibilities - his range of timbres, colours, articulations and phrasing choices is bewildering, and the speed and ease with which he can switch between them equally unfathomable. And after all this wild stuff that no one else can do, he'll whip out some old school perfect Russian bow hold (Heifetz/Elman/Oistrakh/Kogan take your pick) and play with the imperious nobility of these old masters.

For those that don't much care about the subtleties of string technique, what this translates to for the listener without fail is edge of the seat music making where you have to hang on every note for fear of not taking in what is unfolding in front of you. But fear is not the right word to describe the experience of seeing him play - joy is closer. The barrier between musician and music is invisible. Just this week I commended Carolin Widmann as being a model of great string playing, but this is the absolute opposite and equally beautiful.

Enough fangirling.

The second item on the program was the world premiere of Mustonen's own violin sonata. The first movement opens with an angular figure that is relentlessly continued in the violin virtually without pause, gradually building to a climax of considerable power and intensity that feels very Schnittkerian. The second movement starts with an extended almost direct quotation/transcription from portions of "Dance of the Earth" from The Rite of Spring (my brief over the shoulder scan of the program notes made no official mention of this) but soon this is combines with the mania of a middle period Shostakovich scherzo, and the thundering extremity of Ustvolskaya. (After Googling the proper spelling of her name, I see that by amazing coincidence Tom Service has just this week written an article about her at the Guardian website which is good as an introduction if you aren't already familiar with her singular oeuvre). A more lyrical episode follows before a dutiful recapitulation of the opening. There are some excellent moments, and bits that are memorable, but overall it feels a little too derivative for comfort - the nagging feeling that there is nothing here that hasn't been done more inventively by the composers mentioned above. Still an excellent performance by both artists and one that surely must be considered close to definitive, Mustonen's piano writing clearly reflecting his playing style and Kuusisto fully up to the demands of the tortuous violin writing.

Stravinsky's Duo Concertante opened the second half. In general, Stravinsky's piano writing is usually rather percussive which meant that Mustonen had a field day, never giving the lyrical violin part room to breath, smothering it in a welter of xylophonic bangs and crashes. We only have to hear Stravinsky's own recording with Szigeti to hear that this was not at all what he intended. Only in the final movement, where the piano has long chords while the violin plays its awed, exquisitely carved melody, was the right balance achieved and the restrained neoclassical beauty of the piece revealed.

Ravel's violin sonata has always seemed to me to be a weak link in his otherwise flawless oeuvre, but Kuusisto played it more convincingly than I have ever heard it previously. The first movement emerged as a naively youthful romance, Kuusisto spinning a delicate line of melting ardency and sweetness, a hundred miles from the crystalline artifice that Ravel is famed for and that we all think we know. Or maybe we've all just been missing the point - the frail heart of Ravel has never been so tenderly revealed to me. The pizzicatos that opened the second movement "Blues" were hilariously abrupt and unringing from Kuusisto, but then it all became clear 30 seconds later when the piano started making the exact same noise when accompanying the violin. Totally uncanny. There's very little that actually suggests the Blues about this movement, but Kuusisto again seemed to get it exactly right with his free floating, almost casual approach, with nothing too emphatic: many violinists completely over-egg the written portamentos, and are much too insistent rhythmically. The Perpetuum Mobile finale is never somehow the rip roaring finish that it seems to be aiming at, and again Mustonen was too loud to let the violin figurations speak. A shame, as he had up until this movement given his best contribution of the evening, supporting the violin line very beautifully in the first movement as well as bringing lovely details to the fore, and also acting as a brilliantly clear, stable base for Kuusisto's hazy intonations in the second movement.

We got two encores. The first was Stravinsky's Tango in an arrangement for violin and piano by Mustonen. The second was the second of Prokofiev's melodies op.35. In the poco piu mosso section after he applied the mute, Kuusisto found a sound I've just never heard before, veiled, unearthly, domed, that nonetheless had immense vibrancy, like a distant beautiful voice heard over a lake. 

Unfortunately youtube has very few clips of Kuusisto's playing, and nothing quite captures what I have been writing about. There is a video of him winning the Sibelius violin competition in 1995 aged 19. It's played very straight and the control is immaculate. It's almost boring because he's playing it as if it's nothing, and surely the heroic struggle is part of the drama and brilliance of the final movement of this concerto. A friend of mine joked that he decided to just nail it because it would be good for his career and then he could do what he wanted:

The next video is a closer indication to his freedom and imagination now - though the footage is frustratingly scant. Presumably the whole video recording exists somewhere...

Or try at 4:00 minutes here.

An utterly beautiful though more restrained recording of the four seasons exists on CD:

Gianandrea Noseda and LSO with Angela Denoke

21/06/2012

I love this music and chose to go to this concert before I had heard Denoke in Salome. I'm amazed she still gets hired to do stuff. She can just about sing Marie, but there's no aspect of her voice that the decline hasn't touched. Isolde would be a disaster at this stage. Very sad as her acting in Salome was so good - her stage presence in opera is remarkable (even if here on the concert platform she looked ultra tense and awkward).

Still, those Berg excerpts just fill me with pure rapture whenever I hear 'em, so was worth the risk. Also we heard a bonkers version of Beethoven 5 which other people loved, me not so much, but was cool to witness, I guess. I reviewed it for Bachtrack:

http://www.bachtrack.com/review-lso-angela-denoke-wagner-berg-beethoven

Chamber delights at the Wigmore hall

Stephen Kovacevich 70th birthday concert
Wigmore Hall
25/06/2011

Such great programming here, so it was a shame to see that the hall was only half full. We were spoiled by the artists here too - all of them truly extraordinary players.

First was cellist Truls Mork who joined Stephen Kovacevich for Beethoven's last cello sonata (op.102 no.2). It hardly needs to be said that this late work (1815) coming from his last period is one of the finest in the repertoire. The quiet poetry of the second movement, one of Beethoven's great late cantilenas, and the first true slow movement composed for cello and piano, came across particularly well here, Mork's tone focussed and rapt and finding a purpose that hadn't quite settled in the first movement. Mork is one of the world's greatest living cellists, his playing direct, unmannered, beautiful, technically immaculate, the tone burnished and full whilst never seeming strained.

The pair were then joined by violinist Philippe Graffin, not a name I recognised, but maybe the most impressive performer of the evening. Really brilliant violin playing: gutsy, full toned, stylish, passionate and so clear in intent and effect. Playing like this puts the listener completely at ease - there's never a question that anything will go wrong, and if it does, it's completely irrelevant. Indeed, one might say the same of Mork. Together they performed Brahms' Piano Trio no.3, a terse and wonderfully intense work, playing it as if it was the younger brother of the approximately contemporaneous double concerto - wonderfully energetic string playing, accompanied and cajoled by the stormy pianism of Stephen Kovacevich - a trio of players to savour.

After the interval, Philippe Graffin returned with a new pianist, Claire Désert for the fiendish Phantasy by Schoenberg, a late work from 1949. Again, Graffin played as if possessed, the violin lines pouring out with such ease and elan and with a rare passion that seemed to suit the music to a tee. If only Schoenberg was played like this more often, he might have a few more followers! At the end even he seemed surprised by his own playing staggering backwards as he did after the last note had sounded.

Next was Schoenberg's Kammersymphonie no.1 op.9 in Webern's arrangement for piano trio plus flute and clarinet, here provided by Juliette Hurel and Chen Halevi respectively, again both players of the highest calibre. This is an arrangement that requires true virtuosos, all parts being excruciatingly difficult, the playing here immaculate with the ensemble blending beautifully, especially in the gorgeous slow section. The playing was perhaps a bit unremittingly intense - a sensory overload from start to finish, and maybe a bit more contrast would have been welcome, but this is cavilling when the standard of the playing was so high. I'm not sure how worthwhile this arrangement is - it's certainly impressive and often very beautiful, but how often are five such able musicians really going to be assembled to do it justice - it becomes a bit of a herculean exercise in virtuosity. Finally Kovacevich rejoined the group along with another pianist, Marisa Gupta, Kovacevich this time playing chimes in a reduction of Debussy's Prélude a l'apres-midi d'un faune by David Matthews. Lovely as this was, it really did feel like something was missing this time, and the chimes were a bizarre and distracting addition. Even so, it was a lovely end to a magnificent evening of chamber music.

Two brides at the Royal Opera House

Fidelio and Tsar's Bride
ROH

I've been so busy the last few weeks that I didn't manage to comment on these two productions when they happened. Full reviews seem beside the point now that they're both over, but I did want to post a few thoughts on them.

Rimsky Korsakov's 15 operas are largely an unknown quantity for me, so it was good to finally see one - one wonders when the next one will be performed in London. I thought this production was one of the best things that the ROH had done this year - cleverly and stylishly updated, visually stunning and with direction and musical values particularly notable for their quality. Maybe I was just relieved after the relative mediocrity of Fidelio, Aida and Anna Nicole that had preceded it.

This is an example of an intelligent piece of Regie (the action took place in approximately present day, and centred around Russian mob activities) - never does the libretto fight what's on stage, and the brutality of the characters actions is both more explicable and more sinister. The acting and direction were particularly notable for their naturalism and subtlety, both A Good Thing in my book. Kevin Knight's sets were some of the best that the ROH has had this year - capturing that curiously Russian mix of periods and lack of taste, they had a very strong sense of atmosphere and place, and in every scene, the set really added to the drama and visual spectacle in a grimy, low key way.

Marina Poplavskaya as Marfa, the Tzar's bride, was completely uninvolving, and rumours from rehearsals suggest that she was impossible to work with, badly behaved and completely narcissistic. But we could have told this from the performance, which even in the climactic mad scene (which seems an anachronism this late in the 19th century) left the audience unmoved - some nights there wasn't even any applause afterwards, and this from her "home crowds" - she is one of the ROH's most famous Young Artists Programme graduates. The voice is quite large and quite beautiful in places but her technique is lacking and as a result the voice feels squeezed and not quite fully in control. Her stage presence isn't exactly commanding either and her strange looks don't really register at a distance (now that Joan Sutherland has died is she the biggest jaw in opera?). Blandness is the issue, which perhaps explains the diva-ish antics. Her glacially ungracious manner with the audience afterwards rendered her even less endearing.

The rest of the cast were generally very good, particularly Ekaterina Gubanova's captivating performance as Lyubasha, the furiously obsessed love rival, whose refulgently warm mezzo, stage presence and superior acting made her the centre of the action. She's also an ex-ROH Young Artist and seems to me to be a far better ambassador for the House. Mark Elder in the pit gave the strongest possible advocacy for what is an exciting and passionate score, even if one knows and feels throughout that it is not a first rate opera.



A couple of days before, I saw the ROH's Fidelio, and it was not a pleasurable evening. This Met production is drab and dull and is thankfully being retired now - why did the opera house ever take it in the first place? I literally can't be bothered to comment on it any further, so I'll move onto the singing which was mostly fine, but never spectacular. Steven Ebel is a tenor currently in the ROH's Jette Parker Young Artists Programme, and took on the relatively large role of Jaquino. His bleating, mosquito like buzz of a vibrato is just not at all pleasant, and his cumbersomely gangly lope means he only moves badly on stage. This might seem unfair, as he's theoretically still developing as a singer and artist, but the ROHJPYA scheme is meant to be a finishing school, a last port of call before the terrifying ocean of professional operatic life. I just cannot see that he will ever be successful.

The only other singer I feel moved to talk about is Nina Stemme as Leonore/Fidelio. I have never seen a bad word written about Stemme, especially from London audiences, and this was the first time I'd seen her live, so I was quite excited. And then very disappointed. I was near the front of the stalls and found it hard to hear her much of the time. I don't know if the direness of the production meant that she wasn't trying, as it's clearly a voice of some power and resource but the voice just seemed rather dry and didn't carry at all. Maybe she was having an off day. But like my recent Glyndebourne experience with Anna Gabler as Eva there was just no sense of line whatsoever. It's not that she's sacrificing line for textual clarity either, it just wasn't pleasurable to hear. I have heard her Strauss disc which is fine for the Salome excerpt and the Four Last Songs (though vocally doesn't compete with the leading rivals. The orchestra is amazing), but related problems arise in the last scene of Capriccio - the voice just powers through the thing without any regard for musical detail or the text, and the huge dramatic vibrato and tone just seems completely inappropriate for the role. In an interview she classifies herself as a lyric-dramatic soprano and there are indeed a lot of lyric roles in her repertoire but I would not want to hear her in a single one.

I really wanted to like her too! I'll endeavour to see her in one of her Wagner roles...