Royal Opera House's 2013-14 Season

What an exceptionally exciting season! Best for a long while in my opinion - so much to savour. Aside from the inevitable Tosca/Bohemes there's almost nothing I don't want to see.

See it in full here.

Turandot (Sep then Feb/Mar)
Haven't seen the ROH's Turandot but it's an opera I find it very difficult to get on with, but I'll still go for the casts. UPDATE: after recent Tosca experience, I don't think I can face it, unless someone pays me to go.

Le nozze di Figaro (Sep/Oct then May)
McVicar's production is one of the best things he's ever done, and the casts are good. The first run is conducted by Gardiner, and then for complete contrast the second run will be Colin Davis (yay!). Keen to see Sally Matthews' Countess again, and Gerald Finley as Count also is great news.

Elektra (Sep/Oct)
This season is the 150th anniversary of Strauss' birth so he's appearing three times this season. Adrianne Pieczonka as Chrysothemis is very good news, and Christine Goerke I've never heard before but is a good voice on the evidence of youtube clips (though is it big enough?)

Les Vêpres siciliennes (Oct/Nov)
A new production by Stephan Herheim, his first at the ROH. Seriously exciting. I haven't talked much about him on this blog as I've never seen one of his productions live, but he is obviously the big name in opera directing at the moment so this is a major occasion. Cast is not greatly exciting, though I am one of the people who do like Brian Hymel. Maybe Poplavskaya will continue to improve? Will be good to see Schrott in a large role I guess too.

Wozzeck (Oct/Nov)
with Simon Keenlyside, Karita Mattila, John Tomlinson. Enough said.

Parsifal (Nov/Dec)

Stephen Langridge's Minotaur production this season was quite wonderful, but Parsifal is a very different piece. Still exciting to have a new production though cast is VERY mixed: Gurnemanz - René Pape, Amfortas - Gerald Finley (so far, so excellent), Parsifal - Simon O’Neill (what? Really?) Kundry - Angela Denoke (FFS).

Carmen (Dec/Jan)
Garanca and Rice are both great singers and I will definitely want to see both in this role. It's not my favourite production and the rest of the cast doesn't excite me that much however. Alagna may be good.

Manon (Jan/Feb)

I very much like Massenet's suavity and Manon may be his most consistently beautiful score. In theory a great opera, but so rarely sung satisfactorily. Ailyn Pérez gets just two performances as Manon and is potentially more interesting than Ermonela Jaho, but again I want to see both.

Don Giovanni (Feb)

Kasper Holten attempts the most oft ill directed of Mozart's operas. The current production is frankly awful and has lasted bizarrely long so it's not at all bad news that it's being replaced. After this season's quite poor Eugene Onegin most, including me, will be wary, but I'm eternally hopeful. Haven't seen his recent Don Giovanni film, but I imagine many Londoner's will be looking to view it quite soon. Cast not particularly enticing, but Véronique Gens will be interesting.

La fille du régiment (Mar)

Ciofi was surprisingly good as Marie last season, but the big news is Florez is back as Tonio. Ewa Podles is strangely cast in a role that will reveal very few of her qualities (Can we please get her as Ulrica?!!?!) and Kiri Te Kanawa makes an appearance as La Duchess de Crackentorp - no doubt we'll get an ill advised little song from her. This is about the best production you could imagine of this slight work, so I don't mind seeing it again.

King Priam and Paul Bunyan

ETO in two not often heard works - both extremely welcome, particularly the Tippett which is an odd gem.

Die Frau Ohne Schatten (Mar/Apr)

Will be good to see this very difficult to stage Strauss work presented here with a very decent cast and an excellent conductor. It's a work about which I have very mixed feelings - some parts are magnificent, some are dross, and it doesn't sit comfortably in Strauss' output. Emily Magee is quite an exciting prospect as the Empress and Johan will no doubt make a vocally splendid but physically limited Emperor.

Jonas Kaufmann Main Stage recital (Apr 19)

Oh Yes.

Faust (Apr)
Another spectacular cast: Netrebko, Terfel, Keenleyside, Calleja. Not my favourite score, but the cast makes it unmissable.

La traviata (Apr/May)

Two intriguing casts: Damrau/Demuro/Hvorostovsky and Pérez/Costello/Keenleyside. I can't really imagine Damrau as a Violetta past the first act, but I'm still keen to see it! Most reports suggest that Hvorostovsky may be past his prime, but this should still suit him perfectly. The other cast includes a very good young husband and wife team as the lovers, and Keenleyside was quite brilliant as Germont in Munich last summer.

Tosca (May/Jun)

Double cast Dyka/Alagna/Hampson and Radvanovsky/Massi/Catana. Not that interesting for me.

Les Dialogues des Carmelites (May/Jun)
New production for ROH by Carsen makes it very appealing, but this is one of the most overrated of all operas among the opera Cognescenti (my thoughts are here). I'd much rather see Tiresias' Tits.

Manon Lescaut (Jun/Jul)

My favourite Puccini opera in a new production with a stellar cast: Kristine Opolais/Jonas Kaufmann/Christopher Maltman with Pappano at the reigns. Very good news.

Ariadne auf Naxos (Jun/Jul)
This is one of my favourite operas. Karita Mattila as Ariadne is an interesting prospect, though I fear it might be a decade too late based on recent performances. Ruxandra Donose is also an intriguing choice as the composer. Jane Archibald is a decent though not outstanding Zerbinetta (I saw her in the Fleming Ariadnes last year in Baden Baden. Fleming is rumoured to be singing Ariadne at ROH with Thielemann in 2014/15).

Maria Stuarda (Jul)

Joyce DiDonato has been making the rounds with this role at the moment and I am very curious to see her in it. It's not my favourite voice and has split critical opinion in this role. This year's Rossini will be a good indicator of how it will go.

La bohème (Jul)
Double cast, three dates with Gheorghiu. Yawn.

Moses und Aron (Jul)
Two performances from the Welsh National Opera of Schoenberg's great unfinished opera. Can't imagine this will appear again for a long time, so again probably unmissable. I think it is very good news to see the UK's opera companies pulling together in this way and forging connections.

Gloria – a pigtale (Jul)

Just noticed this amongst other things which still seem hazy or are on at the Linbury (e.g. the Turnage - is it mainstage?). Very few details, but H.K. Gruber one of my very favourite contemporary composers. Another sure highlight.

The Siege of Calais (L’assedio di Calais) at ETO

09/03/13
Hackney Empire
Sung in Italian with English surtitles

all photos copyright ETO and Richard Hubert Smith

Donizetti's L’assedio di Calais receives its "UK professional premiere" by the English Touring Opera and such an obscure choice is vindicated here by some excellent singing and a score of unusual richness for this composer. It's a rather dour story, short on dramatic events, but in this two act presentation (with an allegedly redundant and trivial "happy ending" third act excised, though with the best of the music salvaged and inserted into the first two acts) it is concise and engaging in James Conway's staging. Conway updates it to Stalingrad ("the definitive siege of modern times", though there was a Siege of Calais in 1940 during WWII) though it might well be any of the appalling conflicts of the 20th century - what registers is the awful deprivation and desperate circumstances of the characters. There are some interesting ambiguities - the besieged people rebel against their leader Eustachio claiming that he is selfishly not giving himself up, but when confronted, without evidence he denounces the rebel faction's leader as a spy, and whips up his credulous citizens with talk of war and fighting to the last man. Throughout there's the uncomfortable feeling that we might not be sympathising with the "good guys" - Eustachio's son Aurelio is fearsomely dedicated to what seems to be his father's ideal rather than his wife and family to which he is nevertheless dutifully committed (risking his life at the beginning to get food for himself and them).

Samal Blak's set slightly confusingly utilises a pipe as it's main focus (its myriad functions don't give us a clear sense of orientation between siegers/besieged), but overall works well to create the dilapidated tenor of the evening. Everything is in a state of squalid disrepair, and hanging up are pieces of urban wreckage which disturbingly resemble carcasses in a butchers.

Helen Sherman, Eddie Wade and Paula Sides

The score as I say is uncommonly rich for Donizetti, and has some lovely set pieces - most notably a sextet for the condemned men, and a gorgeous duet in thirds for Eleonora and the mezzo breeches role of Aurelio. This is the strongest cast yet of the three ETO productions this spring, with some outstanding contributions from the leads and not a weak link in the cast. Paula Sides is even better as Eleonora than she was as Despina in Cosi, and Helen Sherman, (on whom the make-up department have done wonders) the "hero" of the piece is spectacularly good as Aurelio, singing with verve, accuracy and commitment and possessing a voice of exciting beauty, evenness and fullness in all registers, and with a thrilling edge in the sound. She's singing Nero in the ETO's Autumn Coronation of Poppea so we have that to look forward to. Eddie Wade is a new voice to me: he is excellent as Eustachio, striding through Donizetti's writing with ease. The ETO chorus also sound magnificent in the extensive crowd scenes, and the ETO orchestra under Jeremy Silver respond once again with full bodied tone and excellent ensemble. Great stuff.

Tickets for all three shows are very reasonable indeed - go see them!

sextet

Helen Sherman as Aurelio

Simon Boccanegra at ETO

08/03/13
Hackney Empire
Sung in Italian with English surtitles.

Craig Smith and Elizabeth Llewellyn as
Simon and Amelia.
all photography copyright ETO and
Richard Hubert Smith

English Touring Opera's second opera this season is extremely ambitious. General director James Conway has selected Simon Boccanegra, his first ever Verdi, but a good one for the ETO to do because of its intimacy, non outrageous vocal requirements and the fact that it's one of Verdi's finest works in this reviewer's opinion. The very complex story is brought easily into focus by Conway who doesn't get bogged down in the specifics of the politics and focuses on what Verdi is really most interested in: the human interactions and moments of very personal emotion. The endless criticising of Verdi's plots is a tiresome red herring, because they're all so clearly designed to give Verdi what he wants and needs to write his best music. The period is updated to post war Italy for the Prologue, a period of political chaos in the country, which places the rest of the action in the early 1970s. Never is there a conflict between text and interpretation - it's refreshing in fact not to have the Doge encumbered by his traditional robes/cassock/man-dress.

Simon Boccanegra is one of Verdi's most musically interesting and rewarding works despite containing fewer obvious hit tunes than the more popular operas in his oeuvre. The centre of gravity of the vocal writing is very low indeed - two basses, two baritones, a tenor and a soprano are the leads - and this darkness is matched in the glowering opacity of the beautiful orchestral writing - Verdi finds endless dark hues and inky depths in his orchestration and the piece feels unusually integrated and all of a whole as a result - it's as if he tried in this opera to produce a study in dark colours. Samal Blak's simple and austere designs work well and reflect both score and the nautical references in the text without ever becoming too literal - a much better offering here from him than for yesterday's Cosi.

Grant Doyle and Keel Watson

Craig Smith's Simon Boccanegra is vocally quite brilliant, tireless, full, and heartbreaking in the finale of Act 3  where his endlessly supported pianos are searingly pained and tender. Acting wise he is unfortunately less convincing - his body language does not read as that of a leader, and his actions contain little conviction. Charne Rochford's Adorno is also awkwardly acted and though secure vocally, the voice becomes strident and metallic in the upper half of the voice. Grant Doyle's Paulo is the cast's best actor and he's very, very good vocally too in this smallish but important villain role. Keel Watson sounded strained in the Prologue as Fiesco and continued to sing on heroically through a coughing fit - clearly something was awry. He was however much more secure in the second half and vocally excellent. His massive frame made him an imposing nemesis for Boccanegra but unfortunately also limited his ability to move effectively on stage.




Many people will be most curious about up and coming soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn's debut in the beautiful role of Amelia which is at the top end of lyric repertoire and is entering the spinto territory. Hearing her "up close" in the Hackney Empire revealed things that I couldn't hear during her recent ENO Micaelas. The voice has a very smoky/husky lower register, dark middle range and incisive, full bodied top. The vibrato I find quite slow and wide for her voice category, but overall it is a sound of some beauty. The viscosity and density of the voice suggests that more spinto repertoire awaits, but it doesn't always feel fully in control yet - diminuendos aren't smooth and just cut out to off the breath singing, and occasionally a note doesn't sound fully engaged or supported until a quarter of a second into the note. The contrast between the smooth top and husky lower middle voice and chest voice gives the voice a raw edge which some will like, but to me it suggests raw potential that is yet to be fully capitalised on. She's still at the very early stages of her career so I look forward to seeing her continue to develop. Acting wise she is not very fluent either and seems inhibited in her interaction with her father and with Adorno, her lover. As mentioned already though, her two colleagues also had issues in this regard, and it was the only thing that marred the evening for me. The beautiful and important scene in which Boccanegra finds his long lost daughter is an unfortunate casualty.


Overall though this is a good evening of opera, with great musical rewards and the emotional pay off in Act 3 is overwhelming. The ETO's orchestra continue to go from strength to strength and are even better in conductor Michael Rosewell's hands than they were in their already impressive showing in yesterday's Cosi. The orchestral sound is simply magnificent for a band of this size, yielding nothing to the ROH orchestra (who will play the opera this summer), the strings' richness and fullness belying their small numbers and the wind and brass blending beautifully and never overpowering them. The sense of ensemble is excellent. What more can you ask for?

Cosi fan Tutte at the ETO

Hackney Empire
07/03/13

The English Touring Opera launch their Spring 2013 tour with Cosi Fan Tutte, Mozart's most mysterious, amoral, diaphanous, warm and easy going opera. The cruel symmetries, profound human insights and lunacies, ultra suave music and curious blankness at the heart of it are all the cause of much fascination which make writers and audiences return to it again and again. It can be played for laughs, it can be played for tears - its openness allows it to easily reflect back almost any interpretation that one may have of it.

photos copyright ETO and Robert Workman

Samal Blak's designs are mostly bland, but border on the ugly: the set reminds one of the similarly vanilla ROH Jonathan Miller Cosi with its two large cream panels, against a cream back drop and floor; the addition of crude willow stencils and inelegantly shaped apertures are the only adornment we get on otherwise flat panelling. The libretto makes constant reference to nature and the elements, and there's the intimation of a cycle from day to evening to night to morning again - but the relentless fluorescent beige doesn't allow for any of this to be suggested, and the willow design and flowery dresses do not do enough to suggest the beauty and majesty of natural forces or even the Mediterranean warmth and lightness that floods the score.

To continue briefly along the design aspect of the show: why also is the maid Despina's costume grander and more fetching than her two preening mistresses' relatively tame attire? I'll stop going on about it, but I thought this production really suffered from its boring and ungraceful design.

Laura Mitchell and Anthony Gregory

With so little to look at, and with no surtitles to distract* (a good thing!) the focus was squarely on the acting, which is as it should be, but this is a double edged sword. I found most of the acting quite approximate, as if all the singers were doing impressions of the emotions they were meant to be feeling rather than their actions coming from the necessity of genuine emotion. This was confirmed to me instantly when the cast went to bow and instantly we got relaxed, very natural movement, and genuine smiles and interaction with one another. To do this whilst in character is of course the difficulty and art of acting! Paul Higgins' direction offers a light hearted and unradical view of the work, though Despina is given a bit more depth than usual - her motive for leading the girls astray is that she is embittered by a past wracked by romantic disappointment. She is otherwise sarcastic and rather flippant with her mistresses in the first scene, though by the end does feel genuine regret at her part in matters when the deceit is unveiled. There is no "solution" proferred at the end either - the couples first pair up with their original lovers, then with their new ones, then with their friends and no decision is come to.

Vocal honours go to Paula Sides' Despina, with her attractive soubrette timbre, easy fluency of line and ringing top (note that she is not the Despina in the photo above). Fiordiligi is famously virtually impossible to cast entirely adequately even in the biggest houses and Laura Mitchell has a good stab - Her "Per pieta" was  good I thought - the lows almost matching the highs, and with a nice sense of the character's frailty and vulnerability, but her first act aria, "Come scoglio", virtually designed by Mozart to expose an uneven strength of the registers, proved less successful. More worrying throughout was a strong tendency to sing sharp when any force was applied to the chords. Kitty Whately has a more naturally appealing tone and proved more successful in the far less demanding role of Dorabella. The boys' strongly contrasting voices was a nice piece of casting - Anthony Gregory's sweetly sensitive lyric tenor as Ferrando and Toby Girling's less careful, beefier baritone as Guglielmo. The two duets in Act II were vocal highlights, keenly felt by the singers and beautifully accompanied, but the other ensembles were all poorly balanced, each allowing one or two voices to dominate far too much. Don Alfonso gets some of the best arias in the piece, all of very short duration and with the most inspired orchestral accompaniments. Richard Mosley-Evans had the right sort of voice for the role, but sadly got out of time with the pit in every single solo passage.

The highlight of this performance was undoubtedly the contribution from the pit. The overture revealed charming virtuosity from the winds which set the standard for the rest of the evening - nary a note was out of place, and the orchestra, conducted by James Burton, sounded fresh, engaged and unified. The score is cut in Act II.

A slightly disappointing start to the ETO season but you can't win them all and the following evening's Simon Boccanegra was much more convincing.

*sung in English

Medea at the ENO

06/03/13

Sarah Connolly. All photos copyright Clive Barda and ENO

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


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

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


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

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

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

Katherine Manley

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


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

Jeffrey Francis and Sarah Conolly

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






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

Le Nozze di Figaro at Guildhall

02/03/13

Mozart is often seen as a very good match for young voices, and while it is less demanding stamina and volume wise than much of the standard repertoire, there is also little that is so exacting and exposed vocally. While I have been impressed in the past by some student productions of Mozart, this evening also outlined some of the pitfalls of conventional wisdom.

Catherine Backhouse as Cherubino
credit: Clive Barda

Martin Lloyd-Evans new production for the Guildhall updates things to contemporary America, with the count transformed into a Republican Governor, the Countess his neglected media wife, and Figaro and Susanna and the others "the help". Cherubino is a stereotype of an American high schooler, and it's not clear what he's doing hanging around the American upper classes. Virtually every other male character becomes another grey suit and utterly indistinct from one another. It's OK, though not particularly interesting as a concept, but the main problem is that it's barely developed - there are power suits, TV news screens and political slogans ("Today's Illegals, Tomorrow's Democrats" ironic considering Almaviva's suspiciously Hispanic sounding name), but basically there is no significant impact on how the story is told, especially on the subject of class division, and actually some of the updating serves to make the story less credible than normal. There were also numerous incongruencies in the characterisation. Would a man of the social status of a Governor really throw himself at the feet of a maid he was trying to bed? Would a middle aged Governor's wife really countenance an affair with a high schooler? Would she really fail to cower as her husband re-enters the room brandishing a blunt object when just two minutes before he had slapped her to the ground in a rage? Would Figaro really just come into the room and sit on his employers' bed? Too many moments like these muddied the waters dramatically.

While sitting in the theatre it was not at all obvious how the opening sequence related to the rest of the opera to me - apparently it was the smuggling in of illegal immigrants for the Governor's household which serves to underline his hypocrisy (I only understood this when I bumped into someone at the tube who had worked on it, as well as the significance of the Count's gift of a passport), so I'm willing to entertain that I missed more. These interferences aside, what mostly registered was a staticism in the outer Acts and a lack of sharpness in the acting with intentions only half heartedly acted on. It felt like a long evening. Figaro is all about detail,  warmth and pain, it's all there in the score, and a moving and powerful dramatic realisation needs to be much more clearly tied to the music.

The production is double cast and I saw the second cast. Unfortunately, I didn't really feel that any of these young singers were fully ready to tackle their roles, quite unlike the recent Royal College production I witnessed. A part of the problem may well have been the set, which had everyone singing inside a small letterbox like room which severely limited movement and may have affected the sound that reached the audience, and it must be said that the acoustics of the Silk Street Theatre are very dead and unflattering.

Hadleigh Adams and Ben McAteer
credit: Clive Barda

Most impressive perhaps was Ben McAteer as Count Almaviva who sang with a very wide range of dynamic control and excellent textual nuance, though occasionally resorted to shouting. His "Contessa perdono" was very moving. Hadleigh Adams had the notes of Figaro, though had difficulties with the diction. Raphaela Papadakis was an even happier Susanna than we normally see and although this is a promising soubrette voice, at the moment there is not yet the vocal ease and fluency that the role requires - quite often notes felt squeezed and held which made the phrasing suffer. As the Countess Magdalena Molendowska also revealed a promising voice which will surely be quite beautiful one day, but the line is constantly broken up, and while she was good in the ensembles, the Countess' two arias, some of the most deceptively difficult that Mozart wrote, proved too great a challenge at this stage. I wonder whether she was undersinging and holding back too much for stylistic reasons - there was far greater vocal freedom and an exciting vibrancy when she sang out more.

Opera orchestras at UK conservatoires usually seem under rehearsed and scrappy, probably because the students are so busy with other things but it highlights quite how difficult good orchestral accompaniment is when one realises how good many of these players are individually. Generally, conductor Dominic Wheeler marshalled things quite well, and the all important Act II Finale was beautifully realised. Elsewhere there were serious woodwind tuning issues, and the Act IV Finale wasn't as wondrous or momentous as maybe it should have been. At least he was attentive to what the singers were doing on stage, and ensemble was mostly very tight.

I wonder whether the concept hampered these young performers in getting more fully into their roles, but this was not the most convincing evening I have experienced at the Guildhall.

CD Review: Dutilleux Correspondances with Barbara Hannigan

Deutsche Grammophon
Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Barbara Hannigan (soprano)
Ansi Kartunnen (cello)













Late Dutilleux can be disconcerting. Of course Correspondances (2003) was composed earlier, but the similarities to the already long released Le Temps l'horlage (2007-09) are perhaps a little too close to comfort for fans of Dutilleux's music who will know the later piece - already the opening number "Gong (1)" reminds us quite a bit of the later song cycle (My thoughts on Le Temps l'horlage are here). The second song "Danse Cosmique" is basically the same song as "Envirez Vous" in Le Temps and in the interlude we get an accordion, quite novel in Dutilleux, but again a big feature of Le Temps. The third song "A Slava et Galina" is a letter from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to the great cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and his wife the late Galina Vishnevskaya who hid him when he had been denounced by the state in the mid 70s. This is a rather backward looking number - quite romantic at its opening, then more agitated, recalling late Ravel or one of the love melodies of Messiaen. The opening of "Gong (2)" stands out as a particularly ravishing orchestral canvass even by Dutilleux's standards - his characteristic seductive misty string clusters, glissandoing and blending with muted brass, low flutes, the accordion, and of course the gong once more. The last song "De Vincent a Théo" (the text from a letter from Vincent van Gogh to his brother Théo) starts with a gossamer legato line for the soprano underscored by many of the elements present in the previous song, but lighter, more transparent, the jungle's canopy to the previous song's densely humid forest floor. It ends in an airily ecstatic climax, floating rather than soaring as in the comparable climax in Le Temps l'horlage, entirely in keeping with the mood of the piece. Though the similarities between the two pieces are many and striking, Correpondances is the dreamier cycle, Le Temps l'horlage the quirkier, more wide ranging and more dramatic perhaps. Both are minor Dutilleux, but as with all music by this most recherché composer, lovely to have nonetheless.

Barbara Hannigan sings it with a light purity that must be close to what the composer intended as he composed it originally for Dawn Upshaw, though Hannigan uses far more straight tones than Upshaw and is a smaller voice overall. This is a beautiful and committed reading, far better vocally than the recent South Bank recital I saw from her, Hannigan's girlish tone picking delicately over the text and supporting the line admirably.








The Cello Concerto "...Tout un monde lointain..." of 1970, one of the most searching, beautiful, challenging and masterful works for the instrument of the last half of the 20th century is one of Dutilleux's greatest masterpieces. The assurance with which Dutilleux uses his eclectic materials is quite astonishing in a period of music where everything seemed to have crumbled - the logic he manages to imbue his musical landscape with, which hovers between tonality and atonality, between his sensual French forebears and the avant guard, is a wondrous thing to experience. The classic recording that Rostropovich made at the height of his powers along with the equally brilliant Lutoslawski concerto has never been equalled for beauty, virtuosity, or unstinting sense of purpose, and though cellist Anssi Karttunen is a perfectly respectable interpreter, ably getting round the notes of this fiendish score (certainly one of the very hardest ever composed for cello) and would be wonderful live no doubt, he is not the visionary artist that Rostropovich was in his prime. It is unfortunate to compare performances like this, but for anyone who is interested in this piece, I couldn't in good conscience recommend this recording without mentioning the classic one. As an aside, there is one wonderful performance on youtube which comes very close to Rostropovich: the brilliant young cellist Xavier Phillips who equals Rostropovich's intensity and assurance.

Finally we get The Shadows of Time (1997) a piece "about" memories of the War relating to children; the central movement is dedicated to the memory of Anne Frank. If we ignore this program for a moment and listen to the music we hear a lot of Messiaen again - contrasting blocks of bold colour which hardly relate or develop - but also interspersed with this a stormily theatrical method of moving forward governed by dramatic gestures and explosive contrasts, particularly in the second movement, "Ariel Malefique". The children's voices that lead the third movement manage to avoid kitsch, but it's the least interesting music in the piece. The interlude is possibly the most beautiful and unexpected section, the haze of the string chords focussing into genuine warmth, with the same note repeatedly intoned, somehow relating to the "tuning section" of the violin concerto, before we return to the flow of events as we heard them before. The last movement sounds like a misty jazz standard from the '40s - 'Round Midnight perhaps: is the ambiguous title "dominant blue" referring to this? Once again, I'm not convinced that this is one of Dutilleux's best pieces  -there's little here that we haven't heard before from him done better - but there's plenty that is very beautiful, and as always it's immaculately crafted and worth hearing.

I must say that I've never heard Dutilleux's music sound bad in any performance I've heard - it seems to be so thoroughly well composed, clearly imagined and well notated that it's difficult to get wrong, provided the musicians are up to the challenge of playing it. I can only say that the orchestra under Esa-Pekka Salonen's guidance plays admirably, giving full thrift to Dutilleux's palette of colours. A bit of a cop out but I'm at a loss otherwise.

If you're new to Dutilleux I would recommend the cello concerto (with Rostropovich), the violin concerto (with Stern) or the string quartet before sampling this CD, but this is a nice disc with the first commercial recording of Correspondances and so well worth acquiring for those who are interested.