Archive for the Opera Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Wozzeck

Posted in Opera with tags , , on October 3, 2009 by telescoper

It was a late decision for me to go to see Welsh National Opera‘s production of Wozzeck last night (Friday 2nd October) at the Wales Milennium Centre. It has been a busy week and I’m travelling at the weekend too, so I wasn’t sure I could fit it in. In the end, I am really glad I did because it was by far the best of the three operas WNO are presenting in the current season; you can read about the other two here and here.

Stylistically, Wozzeck (composed by Alban Berg) is a far cry from Madam Butterfly and La Traviata but it is also a tragedy of some sort. The principal character – Wozzeck himself –  is one of life’s losers. The Opera opens with him establishing his servile nature by shaving a character called the Captain in order to supplement his salary. The original story has a military setting, but in this production it is moved to a factory producing tins of baked beans.

Wozzeck has fathered a child out of wedlock with Marie and is doing everything he can to earn money for her and their son. Later on we find out that he is also trying to earn cash by helping another character, the Doctor, in a medical experiment the main element of which seems to involve eating a large quantity of the baked beans produced in the factory.

Perhaps caused by his peculiar diet as well as the stress of his personal situation, Wozzeck is clearly losing his marbles. He suffers from hallucinations. Then Marie has an affair with another character, the Drum Major – we know he’s a bad guy because he likes golf and wears nasty white shoes. The Doctor and the Captain see the Drum Major and Marie in flagrante delicto and subsequently taunt Wozzeck with his lover’s infidelity. Wozzeck goes berserk, challenges the Drum Major to a fight and gets himself badly beaten up for his trouble. He takes  out his frustration on Marie, luring her outside and then killing her by cutting her throat with an opened baked bean tin. He doesn’t have the sense to wash the blood from his hands and when this is spotted he returns to the scene and tries to find the murder weapon. In the original story Wozzeck had thrown the weapon (a knife) into a lake: trying to get it back in order to hide it in a better place he falls in and drowns. In this production he had thrown the tin can into a huge hopper full of similar tins. He falls into this and dies among the rubbish. In the final scene, his young son is told of the death of his mother and father but it doesn’t really sink in. He sings a childish song and opens a tin of baked beans. Like father, like son.

The stark industrialised scenery and drably austere clothing  serve to reinforce the steady dehumanisation of Wozzeck and accentuate his descent into madness.  The subtext is about the exploitation of the poor and disadvantaged; the message is that those to whom evil is done, do evil in return. Wozzeck’s actions are not condoned, but we know from the start that he’s a man in trouble and if only someone had helped him rather than everyone tormenting him, things might have turned out for the better. Shades of Peter Grimes.

Peter Hoare was a creepily comical Captain and Cliver Bailey an appropriately ghoulish Doctor. Marie was sung beautifully by Wioletta Chodowicz. But even these were somewhat eclipsed by Christopher Purves’ wonderful and deeply moving performance as the tortured Wozzeck. His singing and acting raised the level of this to truly world-class. One of the best I’ve ever seen.

The real star of the show for me, though, was Berg’s amazing music, which managed to be both sumptious and edgy at the same time. This is an atonal piece, and I know some people are pretty much allergic to music that doesn’t rest on a tonal framework. But the orchestral colours Berg achieves have a remarkable effect in combination with the action on stage and some of the more lyrical passages are intensely beautiful.

Actually, it’s a remarkable opera altogether. For a start it’s exceptionally compact. Three Acts each of five Scenes but the overall running time is about 90 minutes (with no interval). The music for each act is constructed like a concert work. The three Acts are marked Five Character Pieces, Symphony in Five Movements and Six Inventions (five of the latter accompany the scenes, the sixth is an orchestral interlude before the final scene). There are leitmotifs, unusual vocal techniques such as Sprechgesang and Sprechstimme, innovative rhythmic explorations with strange uses of percussion, and so on. Berg packs so much into this work that it is definitely one to listen to over and over again.

I and the rest of the audience responded very enthusiastically both to the performers on stage and  to the Orchestra of WNO who did full justice to a 20th Century masterpiece. Bravo!

1 Comment »

Madam Butterfly

Posted in Opera with tags , on September 27, 2009 by telescoper

Apparently the production of Giacomo Puccini‘s Madam Butterfly I saw last night is now over thirty years old , but the current revival by Welsh National Opera still managed to fill the Wales Millennium Centre. The critics might carp that a season of three operas that includes both this one and La Traviata isn’t exactly radical scheduling, but WNO has to cope with economic realities and they need to put bums on seats in order to survive. Recycling old productions like this is one way of maximising revenue that they can spend on future productions. Fortunately, although I have seen Butterfly several times, I haven’t seen this particular staging so have no reason to complain that it’s doing the rounds yet again.

The story must be familiar enough. Cio-Cio-San – the Madam Butterfly of the title – a 15 year old Geisha, is betrothed to Lieutenant BF Pinkerton of the United States Navy who has come to Japan with his ship. Pinkerton is contemptuous of all things Japanese, and shows his true nature by explaining that he has paid just 100 Yen  for his new wife via a marriage broker. She, however, is devoted to her new husband; so much so that she renounces her religion in favour of that of her man (although I doubt Pinkerton ever goes to church). Act I culminates with their wedding and a gorgeous love duet with the kind of ravishing music that only Puccini can supply.

Act II is set three years later. Pinkerton has gone back to the States, but Butterfly waits patiently for his return, singing the beautiful aria Un bel di vedremo, or One Fine Day as it is usually translated. Her maid Suzuki thinks that he will never come back – she never liked Pinkerton anyway – and points out that they’re running out of money, but Butterfly refuses to contemplate giving up on him and marrying again. She  has had a son by Pinkerton and intends to remain faithful. At the end of Scene 1 we find that Pinkerton’s ship has arrived and Butterfly waits all night to greet him. The exquisitely poignant cora a bocca chiusa (humming chorus) accompanies her vigil.

After this intermezzo, Scene 2 finds  us at dawn the following day. Butterfly is asleep. Pinkerton shows up, but he has brought with him a new American wife who offers to rescue Butterfly from poverty by adopting her son and taking him to America. Butterfly awakes, finds out what has happened. Pinkerton has left money for her but she refuses to take it, having already decided to kill herself.  She says goodbye to her son with the heartbreaking aria  Tu, tu piccolo iddio, binds his eyes so he can’t see, then kills herself. Pinkerton and his wife arrive to see her bloody corpse.

In this production the principals were Amanda Roocroft, an excellent singer and a fine actress but a bit miscast as Butterfly. Tenor Russell Thomas on the other hand was exactly right as Pinkerton: brash burly and arrogant but with a superb tenor voice. Pinkerton is a complete bastard, of course, but he has to have enough charisma for you to imagine that it’s possible Butterfly to fall for him. Their singing together at the end of Act I was rapturous, dispelling any doubts about the reality of the mutual desire.

The staging is quite simple: a traditional Japanese house with sliding screens surrounded by stylised trees and gardens. The costumes were less colourful than I had expected, dominated by browns and beiges rather than brightly coloured pattern silks. Thankfully they resisted the temptation to plaster on the make-up to try make the characters look Japanese; all that ever achieves is to make all concerned look ridiculous.

The original production of Madam Butterfly was staged in 1904 (although it took several revisions before the two-act version we saw last night emerged). It therefore dates from a time when Europeans (including Puccini) were quite ignorant about Japanese culture. Modern audiences probably find some of the stereotypes rather uncomfortable. I would say, however, that the only two characters in the Opera to show any moral integrity and nobility of spirit are the maid Suzuki and Butterfly herself. The rest are unpleasant in some way or other, especially Pinkerton who is completely odious. So the Opera is not nasty about Japan, although its attitudes are a bit dated.

Madam Butterfly is worth it for the music alone – call me a softy but I love Puccini’s music. The score was handled beautifully in this performance by Carlo Rizzi. He’s a master storyteller too and it’s a beautifully crafted piece of musical theatre.

Overall I’d probably give this production about 7/10: enjoyable and professionally done, but perhaps with just a hint that it is nearing the end of its shelf-life. Although at times it was wonderfully impassioned, at other times I had the feeling that the cast were just going through the motions.

I have been dithering about mentioning one unfortunate thing about the production, which did have people around us sniggering. Butterfly’s son is blond with blue eyes –  she sings about this,  in case there is any doubt. Russell Thomas (Pinkerton)  is an African-American. The plot involves a scene in which questions are asked about whether Pinkerton really is the boy’s father. That is not supposed to be funny, but it was glaringly obvious that the son of  black man and a Japanese woman is not going to have blond hair and blue eyes…

You always have to suspend your disbelief a bit in the opera theatre, but this was going a bit far. There’s no reason at all not to cast a black singer as Pinkerton, especially when he has such a fine voice. He looked the part as a naval officer, but surely something could have been done to avoid this obvious absurdity?

Anyway, I don’t want to end on a blemish so here’s a short clip of the humming chorus taken from a production with staging not dissimilar to what we saw last night, complete with authentic coughing from the audience.

1 Comment »

La Traviata

Posted in Opera with tags , on September 19, 2009 by telescoper

Summer must be over: the students are returning to University next week;  the cricket season is just about to end; the football season is well under way; the Last Night of the Proms is all done and dusted. But at least it all means the Opera season has started again!

Last night I went to the Wales Millennium Centre to see Welsh National Opera’s production of La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi. Actually, to be precise, this was a co-production with Scottish Opera who supplied the sets scenery and costumes, it was directed by David McVicar and was first staged in Scotland before transferring to Wales for this run.

La Traviata is one of the most enduringly popular of all operas – and is one of the most frequently performed. It’s quite curious that its first performance in Venice was a complete disaster and it took several revisions before it became established as part of the operatic repertoire. A production like the one we saw last night, however, makes it abundantly clear why it is such an evergreen classic. Act I in particular is just one memorable tune after another.

The opera is based on the novel La Dame Aux Camélias which later became a play with the same name. It tells the story of Violetta, a glamorous courtesan and flamboyant darling of the Paris party scene. She meets a young chap called Alfredo at a spectacular do in her house in Act I and he tells her he’s completely in love with her. She laughs him off and he departs crestfallen. When the party’s over and  he’s gone, though, she finds herself thinking about him. The trouble with Violetta is that she is already seriously ill with consumption (tuberculosis) at the start. She knows that she is doomed to die and is torn between her desire to be free and her growing love for Alfredo.

Cut to Act II, Scene I, a few months later. Violetta and Alfredo are shacked up in a love nest away from Paris. While Alfredo is away paying off some of Violetta’s bills, Alfredo’s father Giorgio turns up and tries to convince Violetta to abandon her relationship with his son because its scandalous nature threatens their family’s prospects, particular his daughter’s (Alfredo’s sisters) plans to get married. Violetta eventually agrees to do a runner. Alfredo returns and meets his father who tries to convince him to return to his family in Provence. Alfredo is distraught to hear of Violetta’s departure, refuses to go with his father, and vows to find Violetta again.

Scene 2 is back in Paris, at the house of a lady called Flora. There’s a lot of singing and dancing and general riotousness.Alfredo turns up, slightly the worse for drink and proceeds to gamble (winning a huge amout of money). Violetta turns up and Alfredo insults her by throwing his winnings at her. He’s then overcome by remorse but the Baron Douphol, a wealthy friend of Violetta, is outraged and challenges Alfredo to a duel.

Act III is set a few months later in Violetta’s bedroom where she’s clearly dying. Alfredo has run off after wounding the Baron in a duel. The doctor gives Violetta just a few hours to live. Alfredo returns. The lovers forgive each other and embrace. Violetta dies.

In this performance Violetta was Greek soprano Myrtò Papatanasiu, a name that’s quite new to me. She’s tall, elegant and has a lovely voice. Violetta is quite a demanding role- there are several tricky coloratura passages to cope with – but her character is quite complicated too. Although we know she’s ill right from the start she’s not by any means a passive victim. She’s a courtesan who has clearly put it about a bit, but she’s also got a strong moral sense. She’s vulnerable, but also at times very strong. I thought Myrtò Papatanasiu was a wonderful Violetta who not only sang beautifully but had a mesmerising stage presence.

The other star of the show (for me) was Dario Solari as Alfredo’s father. His richly textured baritone voice was a revelation to me. He was quite limited as an actor but musically excellent.

Tenor Alfie Boe’s Alfredo was less convincing. His voice was not as powerful as the other principals and at times he sounded very strained. He’s quite small in stature as well as voice and I found it hard to imagine that this particular Violetta would fall so dramatically for him. However Alfredo is torn between the powerful personalities of Violetta and his father so in a strange way his relative weakness worked out pretty well in that mixture.

The  look of the opera – staging and costumes – was also stunning. The Paris parties were riots of colour and movement with just as much debauchery as desired.

All in all an excellent production which I thoroughly enjoyed from start to finish. It was so good, in fact, that even after seeing it many times, and knowing very well what was going to happen, the final scene of Violetta’s death was still deeply moving. My love of Italian opera makes me regret even more that the UK will be be leaving the European Union in 2020.

Finally, I should also mention that La Traviata has a wonderful overture. I’ll probably stop going to opera when I no longer get butterflies in my stomach during the overture. It’s childish but I still get excited like that sitting  in the theatre waiting for the performance to start. This overture certainly does that for me, and it also underlines the  underlying tragedy of the story. Opening with ghostly strings that presage Violetta’s inevitable death, it then bursts into one of the beautiful melodies that Verdi seemed to be able to produce at the drop of a hat. Genius.

8 Comments »

The Heldentenor

Posted in Opera with tags , , , , , , on August 28, 2009 by telescoper

Last week I was listening one of this summer’s Promenade concerts on the radio. The one in question featured the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, a group of young Arab and Israeli players conducted by Daniel Barenboim. Before the music actually started there was a lengthy discussion by the radio pundits and members of the orchestra about the decision to include in their programme a piece by Richard Wagner, the Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde. The orchestra had actually done this as an encore piece previously, but had never had in on their published programme. The problem was that Wagner was a notorious anti-semitic bastard and his music is considered by many to be emblematic of German Nazism. Many members of the orchestra – not only those who happened to be Jewish, in fact – did not feel at all comfortable playing music that carried such distressing overtones. After much discussion, however, they had decided to reclaim Wagner’s music from its awful past and treat it as their own. The performance they produced last week was really excellent, I should add.

For reasons which should become obvious fairly soon, this spurred me on to put something up here by the great Danish singer  Lauritz Melchior. Born in Copenhagen in 1890, Melchior was probably the greatest of all the Heldentenors. If you don’t know what a Heldentenor is, it’s a term used to describe the heroic lead in most of Wagner’s operas. In the words of Anna Russell, he

… is very big, very strong, very brave, very stupid. He carries a spear and wears a helmet. He talks to birds, laughs at dragons, and travels by swan.

Melchior had an immensely powerful voice, which is obligatory if you have to cut through a huge Wagnerian orchestra, but, unlike many other singers who can sing very loud, he was also extremely accurate and his voice had a very rich texture. Other dramatic tenors of his day had purer voices – but if Richard Tauber‘s was polished silver, Melchior’s was more like wrought iron. It’s a matter of taste of course, but I haven’t heard any modern singers anywhere near as good as him in Wagnerian roles. For me, Melchior is the Heldentenor.

The other thing I should mention about Melchior was that he was Jewish (NOTE: This appears to be incorrect – see comments). Although he performed frequently in German opera houses – including  Bayreuth – during the 1920s, he stopped doing so in 1931 when Hitler and his cronies started systematically persecuting Jewish musicians. He spent much of the rest of his life as a star performer at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and eventually took up American citizenship. Despite his ancestry and his hatred for the Nazis, however, he never stopped performing Wagner’s music.

When he  died in 1973,  Melchior’s body was transported back to his native Denmark and he was buried in the famous Assistens Cemetery in his home town of Copenhagen. His grave, in fact, is not far from that of the jazz musician Ben Webster.

I don’t know the date of this particular clip, but it was made for American television, I guess sometime during the 1950s. Melchior was already an old man by then, but I love the way he sets himself for this performance and you don’t have to make any allowance for his years. His diction is superb, there’s a wonderful timbre to his voice and when he unleashes the fortissimo his power is almost shocking. This is the narration In Fernem Land, from Wagner’s Lohengrin that also provides the theme for the exquisite instrumental Prelude to Act I of the opera, which also provided Anna Russell with her reference to travelling by swan..

21 Comments »

Lulu

Posted in Biographical, Opera with tags , , , on June 6, 2009 by telescoper

On Thursday (4th June) I went to the first night of the Royal Opera’s new production of Lulu, an Opera by Alban Berg. I was planning to blog about this yesterday but after the Opera my birthday celebrations descended into drunken chaos and I ended up getting back very late to Cardiff yesterday; I had to catch up a number of things so I didn’t have time. After the performance and dinner in a nearby restaurant we sat out on Joao’s roofgarden in Notting Hill drinking until the sun started to come up. That part is a bit of blur, but judging by the scale of my hangover yesterday it must have been good. Anyway, I’ve now recovered enough write something about the Opera.

Before Thursday I hadn’t seen Lulu in a live performance, although I do have it on DVD so I knew a bit about it. Berg was a student of Arnold Schoenberg, but he developed his own take on the twelve-tone techniques developed by his mentor. Not everyone finds  serialist music easy to enjoy, but I think if you’re going to have a go at it this Opera is one of the best places to start. I think the score for Lulu is completely wonderful: it’s constantly changing texture, sometimes lushly romantic (with a big  nod in the direction of Mahler in Act I), sometimes bleak and jagged. Sometimes there is no music at all and the singers use a stylised method of vocalisation in between speaking and singing (called Sprechstimme). This  is used only sparingly in Lulu, but it is wonderfully effective dramatically when it is.

The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, conducted by Antonio Pappano, were absolutely fantastic throughout the performance. I’m no musician but I reckon this music must be extremely difficult to play, especially in the brass section, but they played with great passion as well as flawless precision. They really brought Berg’s music to life, and invested it with a vitality that positively glowed throughout the performance. With playing like this, it was easy to understand why Berg is such an influential composer: you can hear in this Opera the ideas behind many Hollywood movie scores, for example.

So what about the Opera itself? The play revolves around the character of Lulu, an enigmatic figure who is at times innocent and vulnerable and at others cynical and manipulative. Her personality is only revealed to us through her interactions with men, all of which end in disaster. Lulu’s first husband has a heart attack and dies; her second commits suicide. She then shoots another man and is imprisoned but eventually escapes. By the end of the opera, many years later on, she has wound up in London and is living in poverty working as a prostitute. She dies at the hands of Jack the Ripper.

The structure of the Opera is like a mirror, with Lulu’s reversal of fortunes happening after an intermezzo in the middle of Act 2, at the centre of which there is a remarkable musical palindrome (shown above). Before this her role in the drama is to drive the men around her into obsession, madness and death, although she never appears to understand why she has this effect on them. After the dramatic fulcrum of the piece she becomes more and more of a victim. The reason for this is not some great change in her own psychological make-up but just that she is getting older and  losing her looks. No longer sexually desirable, she has lost the only way of controlling the men in her life. From this point on, her decline is inexorable and death inevitable.

The new production is quite unlike the recording I have on DVD in that the staging is resolutely minimal. There is no set, just an occasional translucent screen, the costumes are modern and colours are monochrome. Lulu is dressed at one point  in a black cocktail dress very like that worn by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. This might have been a deliberate reference to the parallels between Lulu and Holly Golightly (at least in Truman Capote’s novella, which is a much darker concoction than the film based on it); soprano Agneta Eichenholz bears more than a passing resemblance to Audrey Hepburn too. Her slender build -unusual for an opera singer with such a powerful voice – allowed her to play Lulu’s vulnerable aspects very well.

Against a sparse backdrop  the characters emerge as series of grotesques, which – at least in principle – is not a bad way of  presenting this Opera. Set in such a way it appears as a piece of absurdist theatre which is definitely part of what it represents. There are two problems, however.

One is that the sets give very little clue as to the location of the drama: I wouldn’t have known that the last scene was meant to be Victorian London unless I’d seen it before, so Jack the Ripper’s appearance must have been very  confusing to those who hadn’t picked up on that. Lulu is also meant to be a lot older in the last Act, but no attempt is made to age her in this production.  The libretto makes repeated reference to a painting of her, and it serves at the end to remind her of her age, but no portrait ever appears; I found that a bizarre omission.

The other problem is that there are strong links between the story of Lulu and the Grand Guignol  genre of horror plays, with their  opulently macabre  stagings and exaggeratedly gory endings. Throwing all those connections  away robs the Opera of all of its schlock value and, with that, a great deal of the irony needed to make this blackest of black comedies work the way it should. The killing of Lulu in fact happens off stage in this production which makes the ending very tame. I wouldn’t want to go over-the-top in depicting the horror of Lulu’s death – I wanted to see an Opera, not a snuff movie – but the audience should be shocked by the brutality of her final moments; these are the key to what the Opera is about. Perhaps the director was concerned not to let the drama descend into mere titillation. There’s always a danger of crossing the line into vulgar pornography in depicting explicit sexuality and violence, but I think this production is too afraid of taking risks. This opera should feel more dangerous than this setting allows it to be. Ypu’re not meant to feel comfortable about this Opera.

Although limited by the stylized nature of the production, the principals were good. Agneta Eichenholz’s is a  desensitized creature, damaged by abuse and inhabiting a moral vacuum. Her detachment in the face of the death and destruction around her is perfectly judged. She sang beautifully for the most part but – possibly because of first night nerves – her voice came apart on a couple of high notes early on. Other characters worth mentioning are Michael Volle who was outstanding as Dr Schön and Philip Langridge in the dual role of the Prince and the Marquis.

This morning I read Andrew Clements’ review in the Guardian which I thought was a bit harsh: only two stars doesn’t really do justice to a fascinating evening. I would have  given three stars for the quality of the music alone. Personally, I could have listened to the whole thing in a concert performance and still enjoyed it. But having decided to go for a full staging,  it seems to me a bit perverse to have stripped  it down so drastically. Clements claimed he was “bored” by what happened on stage. I certainly wasn’t, but I did find myself more perplexed by the production than by the moral ambivalence of the story itself, so I’d have to say it didn’t really do justice to an Opera which I still think of as masterpiece.

4 Comments »

Eurovision

Posted in Opera with tags , on May 16, 2009 by telescoper

Just  in case you’ve had the misfortune to sit through the tedious spectacle that is the annual Eurovision song contest,  let this be a reminder that Eurovision wasn’t always synonymous with utter garbage…

4 Comments »

Doctor Atomic

Posted in Opera with tags , , , , on March 1, 2009 by telescoper

It’s not often that my interest in Opera overlaps significantly with my career in Physics, but this Saturday night (28th March) was a definite example, with English National Opera‘s production of Doctor Atomic by John Adams providing the opportunity. I even went with a group of six physicists to see it.

The piece is, of course, centred around the personality of J Robert Oppenheimer “The Father of the Atomic Bomb” and is set in Los Alamos in the runup to the first “Trinity” test detonation of an atomic bomb in July 1945. Other physicists feature in the story, especially Edward Teller and Robert Wilson, and images of many more taken from their security passes are projected onto the set at the opening of Scene 1.

According to what I was told, John Adams originally engaged a librettist to write the text for the Opera but this didn’t work out, and a libretto was instead stitched together by Peter Sellars from a variety of sources, including the poetry of John Donne, the Bhagavad Gita, scientific documents, and assorted memoranda from Los Alamos.

This means that the work doesn’t really have a real narrative trajectory, and there is very little in the way of character development, but instead it resolves itself into a series of impressionist tableaux. Rather than attempting to provide the coherence that the libretto lacks through the music, Adams chose to work with what he had and not try to impose a larger structure on it via the score.

The result is fascinating but it’s not without its problems. I greatly admire John Adams’ music, which manages to be both innovative and accessible. There certainly are many places in Doctor Atomic where the music, words and drama come together to make wonderful Opera. Frankly, though, there are also some passages where it gets becalmed, especially in the domestic scenes between Oppenheimer and his wife which didn’t seem to me to add any special insight into the character of either. The Opera ends with the countdown to the detonation of the Trinity Test, but I thought this was also too long, robbing the event of some of its power, although the last moments and the explosion itself were brilliantly done.

This is a new Opera, first performed as recently as 2005 in San Francisco. This production is only the second, as it has moved directly to London from a successful run at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Many of the great operas which we now regard as standards went through several iterations before they arrived at their final version. This may happen to Doctor Atomic too. The running time of around three hours is by no means excessive by opera standards, but I do think it would work even better on stage if it were shortened quite a bit and tightened up to remove the longueurs from both acts and focus on building the tension as the test approaches.

I hope all this doesn’t sound too negative. It really is a fascinating and compelling piece. The ending, involving an empty stage and a tape recording of the words of a dying Japanese woman asking for water, moved at least one of our little group to tears.

And of course there’s that aria. At the end of Act 1, just before the interval, Oppenheimer is alone on stage while the prototype bomb is suspended behind him. His thoughts are expressed by the words of a Sonnet Batter my Heart, by John Donne:

Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town to’another due,
Labor to’admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly’I love you, and would be lov’d fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me,’untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you’enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Coming back to Cardiff on the train this morning I read a glowing review of Doctor Atomic in the Observer by Fiona Maddocks which referred to this aria as the greatest written since Puccini. I’m not sure I’d go as far as that, but it is truly wonderful, especially when sung as it was last night by the flawless Gerald Finley. It also struck me that it has many parallels with, and is as at least as good as, the aria When the Great Bear and Pleiades in Peter Grimes by Benjamin Britten. Whether Doctor Atomic eventually comes to be regarded as a great Opera in the way Peter Grimes has remains to be seen, but I would bet my bottom dollar that this aria will anyway be performed many many times as a concert piece.

Fortunately, though, you don’t have to take my word for how good  it is. Since the Met version of this production has been released on video, I can end with Batter my Heart just as we saw and heard it last night, with John Adams great music stuttering uneasily at the start but taking on a radiant quality as the aria develops. Superb.

4 Comments »

The Magic Flute

Posted in Opera with tags , , on February 15, 2009 by telescoper

On Saturday 14th February I went to the Coliseum in St Martin’s Lane to see ENO‘s revival of Nicholas Hytner’s acclaimed production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute.

I’ve lost track of how many different productions I have seen of this strange and wonderful masterpiece, but this one was as good as any I can remember. It is sung in English rather than the original German (all productions by English National Opera are in English, in fact). Translating the libretto isn’t at all necessary for this work because the plot makes no sense whatsoever in whatever language the words happen to be sung or spoken. It’s all so weird it might as well be about particle physics.

Technically it’s not an opera, but a singspiel: the recitative – the bit in between the arias – is spoken rather than sung. It’s really more like a musical comedy in that sense, and was originally intended to be performed in a kind of burlesque style. That blends rather nicely with the Coliseum‘s own history: it only became an opera theatre relatively recently; before the Second World War it was  a Variety Theatre or  Music Hall. The Magic Flute also has many points of contact with the pantomime tradition, including the character of the  villainous Monostatos (Stuart Kale) who, at this performance, was roundly booed at his curtain call in authentic panto fashion. His retaliatory snarl was priceless.

I won’t even attempt to explain the plot, if you can call it that, because it’s completely daft. It’s daft, though, in a way that much of life is daft, and I think that’s the secret of its enduring popularity. Mozart’s music carries you along and constantly seems to be telling you not to take it all too seriously.

This production never gets bogged down  or, worse, stuck up its own backside as some I have seen. Instead it’s played straight to the gallery and none the worse it is for that.

The English text is very clever, including dextrous rhymes and plenty of puns, but I’d still have to say I prefer the original language because it fits so much better with the music. The Queen of the Night’s aria “Die Holle Racht” has so many harsh Germanic sounds in the original which just can’t be done in English with anything like the same effect.

I don’t think there are any really weak points in this production. The sets are simple but stylish and effective, and it all looks and sounds wonderful. Tamino (Robert Murray) is earnest and rather dull, but then I think he’s supposed to be. It might have been a mistake for him to go bare-chested in Act II though, as I don’t think man boobs were really what the audience wanted on St Valentine’s day. The comic momentum was kept on the boil by on the crazy birdcatcher Papageno (Roderick Williams). Pamina (Sarah-Jane Davis) was a little hesitant at first, and can’t act at all well, but sang her show-piece aria in the Second Act with real emotion. Robert Lloyd’s Sarastro added the right amount of gravitas without the pomposity the role sometimes generates; his bass is a lovely voice too, deep and warm with a rich texture to it. And then there’s the Queen of Night (Emily Hindrichs) who also seemed a little hesitant as she found her way through the difficult coloratura of the famous Act I aria that culminates in a nerve-jangling Top F, but was awesome in the second act when calling for the death of Sarastro. Her costume and hairstyle were more than a little reminiscent of Elsa Lanchester in Bride of Frankenstein. The three ladies had similar hairstyles, but without the side streaks and in a shocking blue. I couldn’t help thinking of Marge Simpson.

There were many funny moments, perhaps the best being when Papageno and Papagena fasten their safety belts before being hoisted into the rafters in a giant bird’s nest. Papageno even managed a reference to a Valentine.  I wonder if that was put in specially for Saturday?

5 Comments »

Leontyne Price

Posted in Opera with tags , on February 11, 2009 by telescoper

I’m getting a habit of forgetting birthdays. I meant to post this yesterday but it slipped my mind owing to me writing some bullshit for a grant application.

Anyway, I just wanted to post a birthday greeting to the wonderful Leontyne Price who was 82 years old on Tuesday 10th February. In case you’ve never heard of her, before she retired from the stage she was one of the great opera singers of her generation, famous for her enormous vocal range and smoky mezzo tones. She had a relatively light voice, without the thrilling power or dangerous edge of, say, Maria Callas, but she certainly knew how to use it for a big dramatic effect.

Amongst the many notable things about her was that she was the first black soprano to star at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The great jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, never one to be exaggerated in his praise of other musicians, said of her

I have always been one of her fans because in my opinion she is the greatest female singer ever, the greatest opera singer ever. She could hit anything with her voice. Leontyne’s so good it’s scary. Plus, she can play piano and sing and speak in all those languages… I love the way she sings Tosca. I wore out her recording of that, wore out two sets.

I’m not sure she was the greatest singer ever, and she wasn’t that marvellous as an actress, but she’s definitely up there amongst the very best. I have an old LP of her singing Aida which is truly magnificent (despite all the scratches). In fact, according to a BBC poll in 2007 she was voted the 4th greatest opera singer, behind Maria Callas (who else?), Dame Joan Sutherland, and Victoria de los Angeles. That’s pretty exalted company.

Anyway, the later performances on Youtube aren’t the best, so I’ve picked an older one of her near the peak of her powers, with her voice gorgeously expressive and very fluid in the upper register. Here she is in probably her best role, as the eponymous Aida who, incidentally, is Ethiopian.

Happy Birthday Leontyne Price and very many happy returns!

2 Comments »

The Marriage of Figaro

Posted in Opera with tags , , on February 8, 2009 by telescoper

After a week of miserable inclement weather it was a relief to have beautifully crisp sunny Saturday yesterday, capped by the prospect of a Night at the Opera. The “Spring” season of Welsh National Opera is now underway so I went to the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff Bay to see their production of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (italian name: Le Nozze di Figaro).

I’ve been going to the opera for quite a while now, and I’m definitely mildly addicted to it. It’s quite an expensive thing to get hooked on, but not compared to some things. For me, there’s a kind of excitement about opera that is almost childish. As we settled down into our seats last night, I had butterflies in my stomach and when the overture started, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck.

Here’s the overture played at a good lick by the English Baroque Soloists.

With that as your starter, who wouldn’t be looking forward to the rest of the meal?

The Marriage of Figaro, a classic Opera Buffa , was the first of three to derive from a collaboration between Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte that also produced Cosi fan Tutte and Don Giovanni. According to the programme notes, da Ponte wrote the libretto for Le Nozze di Figaro in less than six weeks, which is truly remarkable considering what a wonderfully polished work it is.

And of course there’s the music. Starting from the bustling ebullience of the briliant overture, the score is just beautiful from start to finish, the slapstick comedy punctuated by truly moving expressions of love and heartache such as the arias Porgi amor and Dove sono i bei momenti that make this piece much more than just a bit of fun. It also boasts one of the most beautiful duets in all opera, Sull’aria….Che soave zeffiretto, also known as the Letter Duet. Anyone will who has seen the memorable film Shawshank Redemption will recognize it because that’s what’s on the record Andy plays over the prison public address system after breaking into the warders’ office.

The lovely tunes wash over you one after the other in a way that’s so typical of Mozart; only Puccini had anything like his gift for wonderful melodies. With such sublime music and such a clever text, it’s very difficult to go very wrong. The one thing you have to make sure of in an Opera Buffa is to keep the pace going, much like a classic stage farce: if you dwell on it too much it’s no longer funny, just embarrassing to watch. The hectic pace only abates when the characters sing their wonderful solo arias, the surrounding comic context heightening their dramatic impact, but when these pieces are over we’re off again into the mayhem. The whole thing scurries along with never a dull moment and, by the end, you can hardly believe that it’s been the best part of four hours. The running time for last night’s performance, including one interval, was about 3 hours and 45 minutes but I never once looked at my watch.

This production is slick, beautifully sung, and keeps the momentum going in exactly the right way. The costumes are dated somewhere in the early 20th Century, with Susanna‘s French maid costume reminding me a little bit of the dress Kylie Minogue wore in Doctor Who. The sets are quite spare (although with sufficient props to hide behind, and there’s a lot of hiding behind things in this opera), with large mirrors at the side giving an extra sense of space. I was wondering how they would manage the garden setting for Act IV with this relatively simple set, but this was all done with mirrors too, this time with images of trees superimposed on them. It was quite effective, at least at first, although the mirrors kept moving around in a distracting and sometimes alarming way which spoilt it a little.

The cast was very good, especially Rosemary Joshua’s pert Susanna and Rebecca Evans as the Contessa Almaviva (both of them born in South Wales). The unflappably resourceful and charismatic Figaro was sung by David Soar, who played the part quite “straight” and let the libretto do the work. A good call, in my opinion. The Count Almaviva, Jacques Imbrailo, also sang very well and had considerable presence, but he wasn’t nearly pompous enough for my taste. Part of the joy of this opera is the subversion of roles, Figaro being so much smarter than his boss. I don’t think they quite made the most of this.

I should make a special mention of the stunningly beautiful Fiona Murphy as Cherubino. This character is a sex-starved adolescent boy, sung by a girl soprano, with definite shades of the principal boy in English pantomime. In fact, the English translation of the libretto seen in the surtitles cleverly uses the word pantomime in his/her scenes. In her Cherubino persona in the first Act, wearing a sports jacket and plus-twos, and with her hair cut short, Fiona Murphy had more than a touch of KD Lang about her. Later on Cherubino has to dress as a girl, and I found the result very interesting in all kinds of unexpected ways, not all of them comic…

Oh and I should mention that it is sung in Italian too. Call me old-fashioned but I always prefer things in the original language, especially when it’s Italian.

All in all, an excellent night out, and judging by the prolonged cheering and applause at the end, I don’t think I’m the only one who thought it so!

6 Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »