Ariadne auf Naxos at Glyndebourne: take 2

25/05/13

I don't often go to a show twice, but in the past few months I have revisited a few - the RAM Onegin, the ROH Don Carlos, the ENO Wozzeck and this Glyndebourne Ariadne, each excellent in its own way. I am very glad to have seen this Ariadne again - the second viewing brought a better performance from all the leads, and it confirmed to me everything that I had written in my first review - namely that this is one of the best pieces of Regie theatre that I have seen, and probably the best production of Ariadne auf Naxos that I have experienced. Read my first review to find out why.

This time, the Prologue flowed better musically I thought, Jurowski building more momentum and leaving the players more room to breathe. The orchestra sounded simply magnificent in the main opera, with Jurowski's fleet pacing more controlled, as well as greater confidence in the orchestral playing resulting in an even more convinving and beautiful reading than the already extremely impressive first night.

Soile Isokoski's Ariadne was more steady and beautiful this time, as was Sergey Skorokhodov's Bacchus who was still coughing but sang quite magnificently in the finale with a beautiful ringing tone - he can surely only improve as he returns to full health. Laura Claycomb's Zerbinetta is really a very good interpretation - this is Strauss singing to get very, very excited about - again it's the great legato, musicality, and controlled pliancy that sets her apart from her colleagues who currently interpret this role - it's a rare thing when the big show-piece aria doesn't just dazzle, but is musically satisfying and moving too. The nymphs and dance troupe were again very impressive, and far more exciting than usual.

Strauss with Karita Mattila, Thomas Hampson, the LPO and Jurowski. (The Rest is Noise inaugural concert)

19/01/2013
Royal Festival Hall

This was the inaugural concert in the LPO's two year concert series based on Alex Ross' popular book on 20th century music The Rest is Noise. And like the book it starts with Strauss, who according to Ross is the key composer that bridges the 19th century and 20th century, a culmination of the old century and a preparation for what came next. The concert featured Jurowski talking about Strauss in between pieces, which he did intelligently, but was largely unnecessarily I thought, and I don't know if this is going to be standard practise for every concert in this series.

First was Also Sprach Zarathustra which exciting and lovely though it is seems more silly to me as a response to Nietzsche's text every time I hear it. Yes it's not meant to be a piece of "musical philosophising" but it is meant to be a tribute to Nietzsche, and the "Ascent of Man" described by Strauss' "plot". But could anything be more inappropriate to the mood of Nietzsche's text than the spirit of the Waltz which explicitly or implicitly permeates almost every bar of the score?

I'll get to the review soon, but first an aside. I know this is probably sacrilege amongst Straussians (amongst whose number I certainly count myself) but I actually think many of the tone poems are overorchestrated, and that all the gilt and glitz usually sounds better on the "flattened" sound of a CD than it does in the concert hall. Don Quixote is the first one which is perfectly achieved (I think it's probably his best non vocal work), but I'd say that the preceding ones are where Strauss is really learning and honing his craft, and that the richest rewards of this exploration are reaped in the operas of the following two decades. I also happen to think that he continued to refine further his orchestration even through the fallow years of his musical creativity (mid 1920s to late '30s after which the Indian summer begins) - the perfect muted beauty of Capriccio didn't appear out of nowhere, and nor is it simply a return to what he was doing before.

Anyway, this was a rather light, fleet footed reading of the score I thought, though sumptuously played by the LPO with absolutely astonishing ensemble in the strings in the ridiculously challenging passagework. I was sitting right in the front row, so balance was strange though only in this piece on the program so I don't know if this was a quirk of circumstance. The strings often overpowered woodwind, even if the playing was of such high standard that it was hard to complain too much. Lead violinist Peter Schoeman impressed with diamond edged assurance and tremendously solid tone. It never quite took off fully though, and I wanted more gut busting explosiveness than was delivered.

Next came a rarity. Strauss' op.33 constitutes a major set of four large scale orchestral songs, all of which were conceived in their orchestral guises, an unusual trait for this genre with Strauss. None of this is top drawer Strauss, though all four are worthy of more than the occasional listen and contain many moments of real inspiration. Verfuhrung (Seduction) is perhaps predictably the strongest, and has a particularly magical second half full of classic Straussian harmonic sideslips. Gesang der Apollopriesterin is a paler affair, deliberately so, but doesn't play to Strauss' strengths. Karita Mattila took a long while to warm up during the former and it's clear that singing is quite an effortful process for her now, the voice seeming quite unwieldy - the mouth, jaw and throat are constantly making muscular adjustments to control the sound which though still large and impressively full is also squeezed and hints at wobble when singing below a forte. In fact, it seems that quiet singing is no longer possible "on the breath" for her, and the result is a very hoarse, unstable sound in tender passages. Her German diction is poor, possibly as a result of all the facial manipulations that are required to keep the voice in control, though I'm not familiar with much of her previous German singing I have to say, so I don't know if it has deteriorated. Tuning is still more or less good, though there is significant crooning to get to some notes. Gesang der Apollopriesterin fared significantly better with its less complex lines, but thank god for the astounding Salome that finished the concert or I would have been quite disappointed with a singer that I have admired for some time.


Hampson offered the opposite extreme. Even at 57 his superb technique means he's still exceptionally in control, offering a smooth legato line and effortless high notes without any obvious signs of tiring. On the other hand the timbre is not quite as silky and warm as it has been, and he doesn't seem to have the vast range of vocal colours at his disposal any more that he used to possess. He also simply failed to sing any note below the middle of the bass cleff above a croaking piano, sort of an issue in these songs which go so low and so high, especially when the highs were so brilliant and loud. It's very detailed, considered singing, and he has perfect German with excellent diction, but the lack of emotional range and truly personal response to the text meant that it felt merely polished and composed, rather than communicative and intimate. I do tend to prefer ultra controlled singers who are detailed interpreters and superlative technicians (Fischer-Dieskau, Schwarzkopf, Fleming) who some might find fussy, to more wild, instinctive, rougher singers (Rysanek, Netrebko), but while decent Hampson I thought here epitomised the dangers and pitfalls of the former approach.

His two songs Hymnus and Pilgers Morgenlied are both very exciting and beautiful pieces, the former exalted and resonant, and the stormy, frothing momentum of the latter is especially rarely heard because of its extreme tessitura. But the major rarity was the Notturno op.44 no.1 which opened the second half. Again the extreme vocal demands of this opus has severely curtailed the number of performances, and it's another orchestral song composed expressly for the medium on the grandest scale, this time a full quarter hour. And it's just so strange: a polytonal, moonlit landscape of utmost psychological intensity and depressive angst, with a broken hearted, eerie violin solo drifting listlessly above the nightmarish terrain. It's one of Strauss' finest inspirations and offers a view of a road not travelled - his hand at expressionism, a far cry from his normal gemütlichkeit, virtuosity and shock tactics. And it comes from 1899*! This performance was decent I thought, better than the previous offerings, though again I felt that Hampson was not brave enough in getting to the heart of this tortured, bleakly beautiful piece.

After this we were back on familiar ground with the Dance of the Seven Veils from Salome. I have to say I adore this unpretentious orchestral showpiece, which shocks and thrills just as it should without any illusions to profundity or sublimity. I know that people complain that it's the weakest part of the opera, but it's difficult to know what they expect from this most tacky section of the drama - that Strauss does so much with such vulgar base material can only be described as alchemical and again almost without precedent in his oeuvre - is anything this cleanly or efficiently scored in his output before or after, so full of contrast and thrills whilst remaining completely lucid and clear at every moment? Yes it's cheap, but it's also brilliant. This performance was wonderfully judged by Jurowski I thought, in tempo, gesture and timbre, the players clearly relishing this bonbon and playing as a single machine.

Then came the final scene of the same opera. Jurowski explained that he had chosen to use an orchestration that Strauss had indicated when he revised it in around 1930 for performances by more lyric voices such as the Mozart singer Maria Rajdl (who presumably still had significant vocal heft, as she premiered the eponymous role in Die Aegyptische Helena) so that the role no longer required an Isolde like Marie Wittich for whom it was written. I have to say that I didn't much miss the removed instrumentation and in fact this was by some distance the finest sound the orchestra made all evening - like in the previous piece, but now even more so the orchestra glowered and glowed as if a single entity. Part of it is that the last half hour of Salome is of course in every parameter simply one of the 4 or 5 most inspired expanses of music that Strauss ever composed, but Jurowski lead with deft touch and a superb feel for not just colour but forward direction too. I eagerly await his Ariadne this summer at Glyndebourne.

copyright Richard Avedon

Vocally this was the best portion of the evening too. Mattila strode through with burning willpower and a tangible need to communicate and seemed to be experiencing a moment of personal inspiration which rose frequently to truly incandescent focus. She was hurling her voice around which was exciting but risky, and the same hoarseness in quiet singing and more than occasional instability that marred the songs crept in here too. But the total musical and physical embodiment of character in her performance was of a terrifying intensity, to the point where you sometimes almost forgot she was singing. As a result she transcended her technical limitations utterly, and actually when singing her loudest in the middle voice, a seam of silver-golden tone from her prime was tapped again. I wouldn't want to hear it like this every time necessarily, but this was a performance of blazing power, and it was a wonder to watch Mattila as if possessed give so much of herself, presenting the most complete performance she could muster in that moment. Thrilling and awe inspiring.

Tony Pappano and Tony Hall were in the audience, joining the vast majority in giving Mattila a standing ovation.





*Strauss' orchestral songs for low male voice are a real passion of mine as they're of such consistently inspired quality, and virtually never performed - there are another three to add to the list of those performed here. Five of the six are recorded by the superb Andreas Schmidt with equally superb accompaniment here, and I urge the interested or sceptical to try this disc - one of my very favourites.

Jurowski and the LPO play Zemlinsky and Strauss at the Royal Festival Hall

26/09/2012

A pleasurable concert, partially ruined by the appalling acoustics of the Royal Festival Hall. I was sitting in good seats near the back of the front stalls which are meant to be acoustically the best, but I do wonder whether just being closer might not be a bit better. The Zemlinsky was a little disappointing, and I don't think his operas are as good as the Lyric symphony or some of his instrumental works, but also think that some of his other operas are stronger. I realise that some of my descriptions of the music might equally apply to Schreker ("sickly aura of the piece by consistently subverting and undermining the tonality, sweeping forward in endless gushes of lurid orchestral splurge") but Schreker feels much more like his own man, and just goes so much further towards extremity, kitsch, schmaltz, abandonment, excess, queasy beauty; he's the braver composer, less beholden, and the greater for it. More on him hopefully soon.

I reviewed it for Bach track:

http://www.bachtrack.com/review-rfh-lpo-jurowski-strauss-zemlinsky-florentine

Here's a taster:

Zemlinsky’s A Florentine Tragedy comprised the second half of the concert. Composed in 1917, this deeply autobiographical one act opera is the work of a man drunk on Strauss’ Salome of a decade earlier, but it feels like a second brew of its obvious model and suffers in every way in comparison to its predecessors (Der Rosenkavalier is freely borrowed from as well, first in the prelude, and then whenever sweetness or lighter strains are called for). This is not just a case of unfairly comparing two different works and complaining that one is not the other one – the parallels are so flagrant and numerous that comparison is unavoidable and surely even perhaps intentional.

The Cunning Little Vixen at Glyndebourne

03/06/2012

Janacek is very close to my heart, and there is absolutely no question for me that his operatic output is one of the finest contributions to the stage, musically and dramatically of any composer. While he does have a major following, it is likely that he will never be truly popular or a sure box office draw - his idiom is too gnarled and personal, too painful, too strange; the subjects are too odd, too unsentimental, too close to the bone; the main roles are the opposite of traditional operatic fair, and don't ever give an opportunity for vocal display or show boating and so the really major singers of each generation will only occasionally sing them. They also seem to present difficulties in staging for many directors because they're so compressed, so detailed and layered (though to me these things seem like gifts to an opera director.) Are they too real?

But what a treasure trove of riches they present, what a cabinet of curiosities, beauties, what an unfathomable range of expression and mood! Each one is so unlike the others as well in mood and feel, though Janacek's radiant voice and highly personal means of making music always shine through.

The Cunning Little Vixen is seen by many as a good entry point, though it's not without its difficulties. The lack of espressivo, eschewal of all operatic convention, and humorous, elliptical libretto may shock the unsuspecting customer. "What's going on here?" The wilful resistance to give the audience what it wants and expects, a Tosca's pain, a Butterfly's heartache, an Othello's jealousy, a Salome's depravity etc. etc. can seem to the Janacek neophyte like a stubborn refusal to bestow pleasure, like it's all going his way, and he's not holding up his end of the bargain. But familiarity with the idiom, his other music, and indeed each individual opera, reveals that he's just doing his own thing, in his own way, and that they have just as much to offer the sensitive, open minded listener as anything in the standard operatic repertoire.

Though I wasn't very keen on this production, the music making more than made up for it, and I am very very glad to have gone.

Melly Still returns to Glyndebourne after having made her opera directing debut in 2009 with Rusalka that other supreme Czech opera rooted in nature and the Bohemian forest (technically Janacek's forest is Moravian.) A few of the same problems that plagued the Dvorak are also problems here. The set is consistently underlit by Paule Constable (also the lighting designer on Rusalka), and though so often she's aiming for dusky glimmer and evening warmth the result it rarely comes off. More annoying is again the reluctance by Still to explore the psychological underpinnings of the work, or what it might mean. Like in Rusalka, any excuse to add a humorous sex scene is pounced upon by Still, but why is there here so little characterisation or differentiation between the characters? Why so little detail in the interactions?

The basic plot concerning the Vixen is well handled, and her capture, escape, courtship and death are all clearly delineated, and sometimes touchingly presented. There's often a lot of humour, and Still really chooses to play the piece for laughs. This is fine as much of the libretto is very funny, but the problem is that this is where her approach ends. The human scenes are muddled and confusing - for those not familiar with the opera/score/libretto (which is surely the majority of the audience), it's often extremely difficult to tell who is being addressed, and how the characters relate to each other. The parallel between the silent Teryncka and the Vixen is made obvious early on, but then its later significance barely registers. As a result the dramatic and emotional purpose of the human scenes becomes nebulous and they only seem in vague relation to the main thread of the opera, beyond some vague talk about young love and yearning for the past.

The human and animal world are also poorly distinguished. The animals are invariably dressed as humans (costumes by Dinah Collin), and usually it is very hard to tell which animal they are until the libretto tells us. The foxes at least are easy: they are dressed as orange clothed gypsies, with ginger hair and fox tails that they carry around in their hands. The tails are sometimes used to expressive effect, but too often seems to hamper a scene as the actors negotiate these clumsy implements. Why not just have them attached but with handles?

The chickens become tottering, wigged, corseted sex workers, though the cockerel is strangely drab and unexciting looking, especially as Still seems to suggest he is only a symbol of proud male fertility (he has a big red penis and balls permanently attached to his hands). There is simply almost nothing animal-like in the way these actors move, behave or look, except that occasionally they'll impulsively try and shag each other. The woodpecker is a bearded lady with a hammer, frogs are people with nets (and eyes on their hands a la Pan's Labyrinth), dragonflies are men in dresses, sparrows become people with blue sparkly tops, flowers in their hair and sticks, etc. etc. Although I think this lack of precision and contrast ruins certain symmetries and beauties in the opera, the idea of having the animals as humans could be be interesting if there was some sort of reasoning behind it, or new truth revealed by it. But there's no evidence to suggest that Still really means anything by this directorial decision - the animals really are meant to be thought of as animals, and nothing more or less.

This score is the most delicate, refined, crystalline and bejewelled of all of Janacek's operas, though of course it still has the urgency, rawness and immediacy that are the hallmarks of his music. Rawness is not crudity though, a distinction not reflected in the set design (Tom Pye). The main set item is a large tree made of pieces of square cut timber and perspex sheets with leaves and flowers, and in the background a steep cartoony path winds up a slope. Occasionally nice perspective effects are made possible by this, and the path also becomes the fox/badger hole a couple of times.  Unfortunately the extreme crudity of the finish doesn't at all square with the gossamer detail and broad sweeping grandeur of the most beautiful parts of the score, nor the snappy incisiveness of its more insouciant portions. The seasons change, but again that's where the idea stops.

Perhaps the biggest casualty is the last scene which is meant to be an awesome affirmation of the power and majesty of nature, but the Forester nostalgic reminiscences and then startled moment of soaring elation are here only communicated by the overwhelming beauty and surge of the music - on stage, singer Sergei Lieferkus just watches the animals playing around him, smiles, then lies on the floor.

As already mentioned, Janacek rarely attracts star singers (excepting perhaps his earliest masterpiece, Jenufa) because it's emphatically not about divadom or showy vocalising (the main character of Makropulos Case, notwithstanding). Lucy Crowe's role of Vixen Sharp Ears is by far the opera's biggest role, and she sings and acts it very nicely. There a touch of hoarseness in the climaxes which is not at all inappropriate for the role, and the rest is very nicely pointed. Sergei's Leiferkus' Forester didn't register as the major character he was meant to be - it's a fine voice and he can sing the notes, but more subtle acting and beautiful singing would have been welcome in this part. Emma Bell's Fox and Lucie Špičková's Dog were also good; Everyone else did the music justice, whilst never offering anything truly memorable. The chief glories were emanating from the pit.

Vladimir Jurowski lead the London Philharmonic orchestra in an incandescent performance, one of the finest pieces of Janacek conducting I've ever heard. During his life, Mackerras essentially owned this repertoire, but since his sad departure the field has been opened to conductors who really understand this music to pick up the mantle and continue bringing it to the public with the highest possible standards. The rhythmic and timbral precision made one hear this score afresh, and Jurowski really let it soar in the brief moments that Janacek allows it. Above all, the extraordinary luminosity, warmth and generosity of this music came across with huge force, and one hopes (nay, prays) that Jurowski will continue to conduct Janacek's scores in the future. Does his last season as musical director of Glyndebourne next year preclude his conducting in future seasons? Again, one hopes not.

Glyndebourne I: Meistersinger

Glyndebourne Festival
2/6/2011

I always forget that the first act of Meistersinger is bloody awful - unremitting exposition, tedious, almost without character because it's so neutral and lacking in beauty*. I say this only because Act 2 is actually genuinely funny (who knew that Wagner could pull that off?) and often very beautiful, and act 3 is absolutely gorgeous almost throughout. I had standing tickets for this, the longest opera in the standard repertoire and I was not looking forward to the prospect of standing for the whole thing after the first act. Luckily, I met some friends who had a spare ticket so after the first act was able to see the set properly. This production (directed by David McVicar, designed by Vicki Mortimer) is absolutely gorgeous and has a great sense of fun - I can't imagine having enjoyed it more. It's one opera that Dave McVicar can't shoe-horn any breasts or blood into - if anything one is surprised at how unradical his view of the work is. I like the updating into the early 19th century - it's not earth shattering, but certainly adds it's own piquancy and feel, and the chocolate boxeyness of it I read as McVicar's slight parody of equivalent 16th century stagings and also his warm acceptance that actually occasionally, when done beautifully, they can be a wonderful indulgence. The main feature of the set is a vaulted pseudo Gothic arch with sensuously beautiful curves that actually (anachronistically) put in mind the natural arcs of art nouveau - and not for nothing - a reminder that nature inspires art, as the hero Walther is so keen to express. This piece is ingeniously reused and given a new context in each scene, most beautifully in the last Act where it acts as both the ceiling of Sachs' workshop (and one really feels like one is "in the city") and then with a clear blue sky as a backdrop, it becomes a canopy, a festival marquee, a centrepiece for the final scene.

Walther looks for all the world like Napoleon (though unlike Napoleon, he towers above his companions) and reminds us of the nationalism present at the time in Germany during Wagner's youth, which explains the updating.

In short it's a wonderful staging and I am perplexed by the grumblings about authenticity and lack of purpose that it has aroused. Crucially, it doesn't feel like McVicar is doing anything to the opera, a mark of a good production in general I think, but always with Wagner an even greater relief - he of all opera composers doesn't need meddling with because the vision is so complete, untrivial and serious. I'm not bashing Regie theatre at all, and I enjoy original stagings (Regie or otherwise) more often than I enjoy "traditional" stagings, but I think the danger is greatest in Wagner.

Onto the singing. As is only right, Gerald Finley as Sachs stole the evening. I was not at all expecting this because I've always seen Finley as more of a lyric baritone, but he had far more vocal presence and heft than any one else on stage, supported by his peerless diction and wonderful shaping of the text. His Sachs seemed younger than most characterisations, the world weary, Santa Clausine, cobbler-poet cliché done beautifully by some, but a cliché none the less. Does he ever really convince as a common man with all his eloquence and extraordinary beauty of expression? Finley cut the faux beery folksiness and I for one didn't at all miss it. I wonder whether he'll take on any more Wagner - the voice has focus and power married to vocal warmth, intelligence and good acting ability - I'd certainly like to see him do more.

Beckmesser, the comedy figure in this drama, was equally fantastically portrayed by Johannes Martin Kranzle, so many lovely little details of characterisation and a vocal performance that was genuinely pleasant to hear. And am I the only one who quite likes Beckmesser's song?! I like that it is so often at odds with what the orchestra is doing, and at least it's memorable! Meistersinger is flawed for a couple of reasons: first that this trivial story is stretched to become as already mentioned, the longest opera in the repertoire, and second that Wagner can't actually write a good tune as this piece so obviously cries out for in the various songs. Walther's prizesong, that is presumably meant to overwhelm us, is the some of the least memorable music in the piece - it's not bad as such, just a rather bland piece of tenoric exaltation. Compare this to Sachs' wondrous monologues and Wagner's strengths are laid bare for all to see.

This fact was not helped by the fact that Walther was not at all well portrayed by Marco Jentzsch whose tenor lacked the vocal glamour and power that this role so clearly requires. And his acting was poor to nonexistant, embarrassing next to Finley's subtle efforts. The other half of the romantic couple, Anna Gabler, was the cast's other weak link - just absolutely no sense of legato whatsoever - each note appearing, separate, before the next one was squeezed out like toothpaste. And the diction was similarly awful. It's for me the worst kind of Wagnerian singing, that is one completely divorced from the Italian school. Her interactions with Sachs at least were rather moving.

The rest of the cast were generally very good, with beautiful contributions from Michaela Selinger as Magdalene, vocally outshining Gabler. The youthful feel of this production was mirrored in Jurowski's luminous conducting and the glowing contribution of the festival chorus. The necessity of having a modestly proportioned pit orchestra coupled with the size of the Glyndebourne auditorium meant that detail and warmth could be focused on, to sometimes overwhelming effect.

A great evening of opera.


*I'm joking. Sort of.