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The Magic Flute

Posted in Opera with tags , , on September 25, 2010 by telescoper

At the end of a very busy week I was wondering if I’d have the energy to cope with a Friday night at the Opera, but last night’s performance of The Magic Flute by Welsh National Opera was definitely worth making the effort. It was a revival of a production first performed in 2005, sung in English to a very witty translation by Jeremy Sams of the original German libretto.

I have actually reviewed the Magic Flute before (at ENO) and have also written about my theory that it’s all about particle physics (here). I’ll just repeat here that this gloriously silly piece is one of my absolute favourite operas and I’ve now seen (I think) nine productions of it in various locations. This one was a lot of fun, well sung and imaginatively directed. I particularly enjoyed the references to surrealist art; the main set consisted of wooden doors embedded in a cloud-flecked blue sky, a clear reference to Magritte; and the monster that assails Tamino at the start was a  lobster, a symbol associated with many works by Salvador Dali although not usually such a large one as this!

The plot, such as it is, is as follows. A prince, Tamino, is rescued from a monster (a giant lobster) by three Ladies who work for the Queen of the Night. He then meets Papageno, a comical bird-catcher replet with feathery costume, nets and cages. The two are sent to find Pamina, the Queen’s daughter, whom they are told has been abducted and imprisoned by a chap called Sarastro. The unlikely pair are given a magic flute and a set of magic bells to help them. Guided by three boys they journey to Sarastro’s realm, where there lives a brotherhood of men ruled by wisdom. Tamino learns that Sarastro isn’t in fact the evildoer he has been portrayed and Sarastro convinces the dynamic duo to join the brotherhood by passing a series of trials. Papageno flunks, but succeeds in getting what he really wants, a girlfriend (Papagena). Tamino succeeds and is united with Pamina. Together they endure the final ordeals of fire and water and are united in love. The forces of light prevail over darkness, and they all live happily ever after.

Of course the plot doesn’t really make any sense by itself, but it’s not really supposed to – it’s full of Masonic symbolism and is rooted in a much older tradition of musical drama that provides context but which you don’t need to know about in order to enjoy the music. What is so very special about the Magic Flute however is that it is so unapologetically absurd that it somehow ends up seeming immensely profound. I’m reminded of the old proverb “If a fool will persist in his folly he may become wise”. I think it’s daft, but in the same way that life is daft and that’s why it’s so universally popular. As in his other great operas you also experience Mozart’s uncanny ability to produce moments of robust comedy bordering on the slapstick followed by moving expressions of the deepest emotion. Perfect examples of the former last night were provided by the hilarious scene in which Tamino’s magic flute charms a motley variety of animals, including a very tarty bird, and also the priceless moment when the magic bells turn away the evil Monostatos and his henchmen by making them dance off like ballerinas, which was a hoot. By contrast, Pamina’s solo aria in Act II where she thinks Tamino has spurned her, beautifully sung by Elizabeth Watts, was heartbreakingl in its sincerity.

I think all the principals were pretty good, although Tim Mirfin’s Sarastro was lacking in the gravitas that only a true basso profundo can supply. Laure Meloy as the Queen of the Night negotiated the difficult coloratura passages and duly hit her top F, although it was little more than a squeak if truth be told. At times her voice sounded like it was coming into and going out of focus, but she had real stage presence and looked fabulous in a wonderful frock. Neal Davies was a genial Papageno, Elizabeth Watts an outstanding Pamina. A special mention must be made of the three boys (actually played by two groups: Guy Roberts/Rory Turnbull, Robert Field/Henry Payne, and Erwan Hughes/Josh Morgan; I don’t know which was which last night). These parts are often considered too demanding to be sung by boys so are frequently done by female singers. I thought the boys last night were absolutely wonderful, although I suspect they may have been miked as they produced unusual power.

All in all, an excellent night out. I think I could do with some of those magic bells at the Board of Studies on Monday morning…


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Fidelio

Posted in Opera with tags , , , , , , , , on September 18, 2010 by telescoper

Another sign that the summer is over is that the autumn season of Welsh National Opera has started at the Wales Millennium Centre. Last night I went to the opening night of their new production of Fidelio, the only opera ever composed by Ludwig van Beethoven.

I was particularly looking forward to this performance, partly because it has been very heavily plugged by the WNO publicity machine and partly because I’ve never actually seen it done live, although I have seen it on DVD and heard it on the radio. The opening night press presence and a full house added to the general sense of occasion as we took our seats in front of a bare stage dominated by a huge metal cage representing the prison about which the entire plot revolves.

Leonore has disguised herself as a man, Fidelio, and has gained employment as assistant to the chief gaoler, Rocco, in the hope of finding and freeing her imprisoned husband Florestan. To complicate matters, Rocco’s daughter, Marzelline, has fallen in love with Fidelio, which annoys her suitor Jaquino (even though he doesn’t know Fidelio is actually a woman). Leonore persuades Rocco to let her help him in the underground cells where the political prisoners are held in inhuman conditions. The prison governor, the villainous Don Pizarro, learns of an impending inspection by the minister and decides that Florestan – who has been particularly cruelly treated – must be killed to hide the evidence of his abuse. Leonore hears of the plan to murder her husband and, as the prisoners are briefly allowed out into the sunlight, she searches in vain for Florestan among them. He is still in chains below ground. Eventually Leonore and Rocco descend into the darkness of the dungeon and find Florestan, near death having a vision of an angel that has come to rescue him. Leonore looks on as Pizarro arrives and tries to kill her husband, but she stops him and reveals here true identity. In the nick of time (geddit?), the Minister, Don Fernando, arrives and, appalled by what he sees, commands that all the prisoners be released. Leonore sets her husband free.

Much of Beethoven’s music from his “middle period” – Fidelio was first performed in 1805 – is about the struggle for political liberty and social justice that was taking place throughout Europe at the time so it’s not difficult to see why he was attracted to this story. Although originally written in three acts, it is now performed in a version with only two. This gives the opera a fascinating structure. The music in Act I is clearly a nod back in the direction of Mozart, while Act II is dramatically different, with a much wider range of orchestral colour, and is clearly a look forward towards Romanticism. Another thing that struck me was that, throughout, there is much more of an emphasis on combinations of two or more voices (compared to solo arias) than you find in many other operas in the standard repertoire; an example is the wonderful Act I Quartet. Also there are no less than four published versions of the overture. Often this opera is performed with the version called Leonore No. 3, but the one simply known as Fidelio.

Unfortunately, though, the overture was where it started to go wrong. The orchestral playing was ragged and out of balance, with the brass section (especially the horns) particularly lacking in control. This carried on into Act I and seemed to affect the singers who appeared ill-at-ease. Worse, the movement of the actors on stage was bizarre: moving backwards and forwards along straight lines, or sometimes circling around each other, as if they were automata running on rails. Perhaps this was supposed to emphasize the constraints on individual liberty represented by life in the prison. Who knows? I thought it just looked silly.

Fidelio is really a singspiel (a form of opera in which the recitative is spoken not sung). In this performance however much of the spoken text essential to understanding the plot was cut so it was hard to understand the context of what was going on. I was lucky in that I knew a bit about it before seeing it, but I’m sure a total newcomer would have been completely baffled. The set was stark and minimal, and the costumes grey and nondescript – appropriately enough for the prison setting – but they didn’t do much for the plot either, especially in the pervasive semi-darkness provided by the lighting.

It was only near the end of Act I that the cast seemed to settle down. By the time the massed ranks of the supporting singers appeared for the celebrated Prisoner’s Chorus it had really started to gel.
I don’t know if words were spoken at the interval, but Act II was a great deal better, although not quite good enough to banish memories of the debacle that was Act I. The compelling stage presence of WNO stalwart Dennis O’Neill as Florestan (who only appears in Act II) gave the performance a much-needed focus, the acting was more relaxed, more naturalistic, and more compelling than in the first act, and the rousing finale as uplifting as anything you could want to hear.

Lisa Milne was a fine Leonore/Fidelio, Robert Hayward a menacing Pizarro, Clive Bayley was in superb voice as Rocco, and as I’ve mentioned above, Dennis O’Neill was great too. Also worthy of a mention was the superb WNO chorus, led by Chorus Master Stephen Harris.

I’m not going to pretend that I wasn’t a bit disappointed by the way this performance started, but I’d still recommend going to see it. I’d have happily paid the money just for Act II. Perhaps it was first-night nerves anyway. I don’t do stars, but if I did I’d give it three…


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Rigoletto

Posted in Opera with tags , , on June 26, 2010 by telescoper

Desperate for something to blog about other than the World Cup, I decided to end the working week with an evening of Opera at the  Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff Bay. The new summer season of Welsh National Opera consists of only two operas; the one that has received the most press attention – and excellent reviews – has been their new production of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg starring Bryn Terfel. Although not long ago I promised to make an effort to get to grips with Wagner I’m afraid I couldn’t face the six-and-a-half hours running time and decided to give it a miss. Maybe next time. However, I couldn’t do without any fix of Grand Opera so decided to go to WNO’s production of Verdi’s Rigoletto.

Rigoletto is best known for a clutch of famous set-pieces, especially the tenor arias Questa o quella and La donna e mobile, Caro Nome, a spectacular coloratura piece for a soprano, and a truly beautiful quartet Bella figlia. If you hear these joyfully exuberant pieces on their own, you will probably get quite the wrong idea about what the Opera  is actually like. It’s actually one of the darkest tragedies to be found on the opera stage.

The hunchback Rigoletto is employed as a sort of court jester for the Duke of Mantua, a cynical Lothario possibly made by the same firm who constructed Don Giovanni. Rigoletto entertains the Duke not so much by telling jokes but by making fun of his enemies, and sometimes the other members of the court. The decadent Duke, who apparently has difficulty keeping his trousers on, is eventually confronted by Count Monterone whose daughter the Duke has dishonoured. Rigoletto swings into action and abuses the Count who lays a curse on the hunchback. Somewhat surprisingly, the curse has a powerful effect on Rigoletto who suddenly becomes remorseful and anxious for his future. He’s been pretty good at making enemies, and feels that payback time must be coming. Thus the tragedy is set in motion, and we know something very bad is going to happen.

Incidentally, there’s more than a hint of Don Giovanni, both musically and dramatically, in Count Monterone’s arrival at the Duke’s palace in Act I Scene I. I don’t know enough about Verdi to be sure, but I’m pretty convinced that it’s a deliberate homage to Mozart’s own tragic masterpiece.

On his way home, Rigoletto runs into a sinister character called Sparafucile who turns out to be a professional assassin. He offers his services should they ever be needed. When Rigoletto gets home we find out that he has a beautiful daughter, Gilda, whom he adores.In this scene we see the human side of Rigoletto. He’s no longer simply grotesque and nasty. He’s  a troubled and vulnerable man, coping with his deformity in the only way he knows how and doing his best to provide for and protect his daughter. He’s despised and he knows it.   Rigoletto is not a hero, but he’s not really a villian either. That ambiguity plays large part in giving this opera such emotional impact.

It then turns out the  Duke is  trying to seduce Gilda. To complicate matters further, the Duke’s courtiers kidnap Gilda as a prank thinking that she is Rigoletto’s mistress. When he finds out what has happened he eventually rescues Gilda, but swears revenge. Perhaps Sparafucile will come in useful after all…

Unfortunately, Gilda is bewilderingly naive and has actually rather taken to the Duke. She sings Caro Nome about him, but it’s actually a false name he’s given her. This aria works so well in the setting of the Opera because the audience knows that the Duke is a scumbag. Only Gilda doesn’t. It turns out, though, that Sparafucile has other irons in his fire; he also pimps for his sleazy sister Maddalena. At Rigoletto’s request he lures the Duke to his pad to have his way with Maddalena. Rigoletto brings Gilda along to see the Duke’s infidelity at first hand. She’s shocked, and he sends her away while Sparafucile gets ready to top the Duke. A thunderstorm gathers.

But Gilda’s so smitten with the Duke that she can’t bear to see him killed. Neither can Maddalena. He’s obviously quite a stud, this Duke. Maddalena tries to persuade Sparafucile to kill Rigoletto, when he returns with the payment, instead of the Duke. That way he’ll still get his money. In a moment of deliciously black comedy, Sparafucile refuses with words to the effect of “Do you think I’m some kind of crook?”. But Gilda returns to Sparafucile’s house in the storm, dressed in man’s clothes and pretending to be a beggar. Sparafucile doesn’t know who it is, and conceives a cunning plan. He  kills her, puts her body into a sack and passes it off as the remains of the Duke. Rigoletto returns, and can’t resist looking inside the sack. Gilda isn’t quite dead, but she dies in his arms. The curse has been fulfilled.

This revival of James MacDonald’s production places the action not in 19th Century Mantua but in Washington DC of the early sixties. There’s more than a hint of JFK in the Duke, his palace is the White House, the street scenes evoke West Side Story, and so on. Gilda in bobby socks works pretty well too. The problem is that it’s not obvious how Rigoletto fits into this setting, nor why people are wandering around Washington DC talking about coming from Burgundy and going to Verona.

Unfortunately, Gwyn Hughes-Jones was indisposed so Shaun Dixon had to stand in at short notice as the Duke. In the circumstances he gave a creditable performance but his voice lacked the power needed to shine in the big tenor arias and he didn’t have much in the way of stage presence, either. It’s quite difficult to understand Gilda’s credulity unless the Duke possesses considerable charisma, so he was a bit of a weak point.

On the other hand, baritone Simon Keenlyside was absolutely smashing as Rigoletto, and so was David Soar as a magnificently creepy Sparafucile.  Even better than these was American soprano Sarah Coburn as Gilda. Caro nome is heard so often – in commercials and elsewhere – that it’s very hard for singers to do something special with it. Sarah Coburn has wonderful control but her rendition was not only a flawless exhibition of vocal gymnastics;  she also invested it with a heartbreaking vulnerability completely in keeping with Gilda’s character. Her Caro nome was worth the ticket price on its own, I’d say. It was too much for the lady in the seat in front of me, though, who burst into tears half way through.

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Tosca

Posted in Opera with tags , , , on March 6, 2010 by telescoper

I’ve been so busy over the last couple of weeks that I almost forgot that the current run of Tosca at Welsh National Opera was about to come to an end without me having seen it. Nightmare. I suddenly remembered on Thursday that yesterday’s performance was the last one in Cardiff, but I managed to get tickets just in the nick of time. Unsurprisingly, there was a packed house in the Wales Millennium Centre last night; we were treated to an evening of jealousy and murder set to gorgeous music by Giacomo Puccini.

Tosca is an opera in three acts (which means two intervals, glug glug..). It’s basically a melodrama, and is set in Rome in 1800. Each act takes place in a very specific location within the eternal city. Act I is in the Church of  Sant’Andrea della Valle, Act II in the Palazzo Farnese, and the final denouement of Act III takes place among the battlements at the top of the Castel Sant’ Angelo overlooking the Tiber. The setting is so specific to time and place that it resists being monkeyed about with, done in modern dress, staged in a chip shop or whatever. Thankfully, Michael Blakemore’s production (of which this is a revival) is very firmly of the period and location required. As a longstanding opera bore, I have to admit that I have been on a Tosca pilgrimage and have visited all three locations in Rome. The scenery used in last night’s performance isn’t exactly as the real locations but it definitely evokes them very well.

(Incidentally, there was a famous reconstruction of Tosca made in 1992 in which all the action was staged at the true location. You can find an example from Act III here.)

Floria Tosca (Elisabete Matos) is a celebrated opera singer who is in love with an artist (and political radical) by the name of Mario Cavaradossi (Geraint Dodd), who helps to hide an escaped political prisoner while working on a painting in Act I. The odious Baron Scarpia (Robert Hayward), chief of police, comes looking for the convict and decides to catch Tosca and Cavaradossi too. He lusts after Tosca and hates Cavaradossi. In Act II, we find Scarpia at home eating dinner for one while Cavaradossi is being tortured in order to find out the location of the escapee. Tosca turns up to plead for his life, but she hasn’t bargained with the true depths of Scarpia’s depravity. He wants to have his way with her, and to put pressure on he lets her listen to the sound of her lover being tortured. She finally consents, in return for Scarpia’s promise to let Cavaradossi go and grant free passage to the two of them. This he seems to do, but while she is waiting for him to write the letter of conduct she sees a knife. Instead of letting Scarpia defile her, she grabs it and stabs him to death. Act III begins with Cavaradossi facing execution, sure he is about to die. Tosca is convinced that this is just a charade and that Scarpia ordered them to pretend to shoot Cavaradossi so he wouldn’t look like he was being merciful, which would be out of character. The firing squad fire and Cavaradossi falls. But it was no fake. He is dead. Tosca is distraught and bewildered. Shouts offstage reveal that the police have found Scarpia’s body and that Tosca must have murdered him. To avoid capture she hurls herself from the battlements. Her last words are “O Scarpia, avanti a Dio!” – I’ll meet you before God, Scarpia.

The opera wasn’t particularly well received when it was first performed in 1900, being famously described by one critic as “a shabby little shocker”. I think the secret of its success is twofold. First and foremost the music is wonderful throughout. Of course there are the great arias: Vissi d’arte, Vissi d’amore sung by Tosca in Act II and E Lucevan le Stelle from Act III, sung by Cavaradossi; but even apart from those tremendous set-pieces, Puccini uses the music to draw out the psychology of the characters. And that leads to the second point. Each of the three principals could have been very two-dimensional. Cavaradossi the good guy. Scarpia the bad guy. Tosca the love interest. But all the characters have real credibility and depth. Cavaradossi is brave and generous, but he succumbs to despair before his death. No superhero this, just a man. Scarpia is a nasty piece of work all right, but at times he is pathetic and vulnerable. He is monstrous, but one is left with the impression that something made him monstrous. And then there’s Tosca, proud and jealous, loving but at the same time capable of violence and spite. They’re all so real. I guess that’s why this type of opera is called Verismo!

The orchestra and cast were excellent. Elisabete Matos has a fine voice for the role, and also managed to spit venom at Scarpia in authentic fashion. Geraint Dodd sang wonderfully, I thought. E Lucevan le Stelle is done so often that it’s difficult to make it fresh but his rendition was overwhelmingly emotional. Best of all, Robert Hayward has a dark baritone voice that gave Scarpia a tremendous sense of power and danger.

The only problem with the performance was right at the end. Elisabete Matos didn’t appear on cue for her curtain call. I was baffled. Eventually she appeared on stage, helped by a member of the backstage team. She looked very unwell and was clutching her ribs. I think she must have landed badly after her fall from the battlements. I hope she’s not badly hurt.

Whoever was responsible for health and safety might be for the firing squad themselves.

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The Abduction from the Seraglio

Posted in Opera with tags , , , on February 14, 2010 by telescoper

It’s been an unusually long time since I last went to the Opera, but now the spring season of Welsh National Opera has finally arrived I couldn’t resist the chance last night to see their brand new and wonderfully entertaining production of The Abduction from the Seraglio by Mozart. It was also nice to be accompanied on this occasion by fellow astrologists Ed and Haley, who I hope enjoyed the show as much as I did.

I was particularly glad to see this on the schedule for this season because it’s an Opera I haven’t seen staged before and didn’t know very much about. Mozart composed the music for  it in 1781, when he was at the ripe old age of 25 , to a libretto in German and with the title Die Entführung aus dem Serail. The WNO production is sung in the original language, which is the way I like it.

Like  The Magic Flute, which Mozart wrote about a decade later, The Abduction is a singspiel rather than an opera, in that the recitative is spoken rather than sung. The music is not through-composed as you find in a true opera, but a series of set-piece arias, duets, trios and quartets. Still, Mozart was pretty good at those. It’s also, in case you hadn’t realised, like the Magic Flute, a comedy which Mozart was also pretty good at!

The plot, such as it is, concerns the hero Belmonte’s search for his beloved Konstanze, her servant Blonde and his own servant Pedrillo, who have been captured by the Turk Pasha Selim who hopes to persuade Konstanze to join the harem inside his Seraglio. The Pasha’s heavy, Osmin, acts as bouncer, keeping Belmonte from getting into the place and releasing the captives but eventually, Pedrillo tricks Osmin into drinking some drugged wine; while he’s asleep the lovers are re-united. However, the attempt by Belmonte and Pedrillo to help  Konstanze and Blonde escape is botched and they are captured by Pasha Selim and his guards. Contrary to all expectations, however, the Pasha doesn’t take his revenge, but allows them to leave. Osmin flies into a rage and suffers some sort of splenetic seizure. The Opera ends with the others celebrating their freedom, while Pasha Selim consoles himself with his other wives and a hookah.

It’s admittedly a bit thin, even by the standards of comic opera but, right from the fabulous overture, the music is lovely and there’s a great deal of good-humoured fun, especially during the Pasha’s attempt to shower Konstanze with gifts of jewelry, frocks and shoes, in Act 2, and the abduction itself, in Act 3, which is bungled in appropriately hilarious fashion.

Belmonte was played by Robin Tritschler, who has a tenor voice of exceptional clarity and beauty and who invested his role with an engaging wide-eyed innocence. Petros Magoulas played the psychopathic Osmin for laughs and provided the performance with some of its funniest moments. Pedrillo was played by local boy Wynne Evans and Blonde was Claire Ormshaw; both were excellent, musically and comedically. Pasha Selim was also very well played by Simon Thorpe. The Pasha has to appear a bit frightening early on, so that his later magnanimity comes as a surprise; this he did very well. The only weak point I felt was Lisette Oropesa as the heroine Konstanze. She didn’t sing at all well in Act I, perhaps owing to first-night nerves,  but seemed to settle down by Act 2 where she coped with the coloratura a lot better. Her acting, however, was extremely disappointing and, at times, downright embarassing. It wasn’t enough to spoil the production – at least not for me – but it was a shame, as a really good night could have been a truly superb one.

Finally I should mention that all the action is set on the Orient Express, circa 1920, with costumes and props of that period too. The scenery is cleverly designed so that it can be slid to and fro along the stage to reveal cabins either side of the main saloon at its centre. The whole thing looks wonderful and the mobile set also provided comic moments of its own, especially during the abduction scene when Pedrillo is accidentally left clinging to the outside of the train.

I was left wondering to some extent why this Opera isn’t better known. It’s probably because it  doesn’t have the subtlety of the famous da Ponte comedies, but the music is gorgeous especially in the passages for multiple voices, such as the quartet in Act II. In other passages the music  sounds a bit like a parts of the Magic Flute. In many ways I think you can see this piece as Mozart on his way to perfecting the style he would achieve in these works. It’s pretty good, but perhaps doomed to lie in the shadow of his later masterpieces.

All in all, a great night out. There’s only one other performance of The Abduction from the Seraglio in Cardiff (next Saturday, 20th February) and then it goes on the road. I’m not sure there are any tickets remaining for next week:  if there are, it’s well worth seeing but if not then all is not lost – it’s likely this will be in the WNO repertoire for some time to come.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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!

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Jenufa

Posted in Music, Opera with tags , on October 8, 2008 by telescoper

Another day, another opera. Today I had to duck out of the usual post-seminar drinks and food and get down to the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff Bay for one of only two performances in Cardiff by WNO this season of Jenufa by Leos Janacek.

You couldn’t wish for an opera more different in style and substance than Saturday’s Otello, although I suppose both operas would probably be classed as tragedies. Gone are the opulent sets and costumes and associated courtly intrigues of Otello. Instead we enter a world of drab and claustrophobic interiors within which a dark story of ordinary country folk unfolds in all its bleakness. Jenufa has a child by her lover, Steva, whom she hopes will marry her. When he refuses to do the honorable thing, Jenufa’s stepmother, Kostelnicka, drugs Jenufa and kills the baby, disposing of the body in a freezing lake. Jenufa is then persuaded to marry the dim but devoted Laca. In the final act, the baby’s body is found, Jenufa is accused and then Kostelnicka confesses her guilty act, claiming that she wanted to save Jenufa from disgrace. She goes off to be tried for the murder, while the steadfast Laca promises to stand by Jenufa come what may.

None of the characters is particularly sympathetic or even comprehensible. Laca (Peter Hoare) changes from a brutish oaf, who accidentally stabs Jenufa in the face in Act 1, to a doting husband in Act 3. Steva (Stephen Rooke) is superficially attractive but clearly a bit of a bounder. Kostelnicka (Susan Bickley) is severe, pompous and moralistic. Jenufa (Nuccia Focile) just seems a bit vacuous in Act 1 but progressively disintegrates under the stress of shame and rejection becomes increasingly morose and unpredictable as the opera goes on.

But these are not meant to be easy roles to understand. They are as inconsistent as real people, and as difficult to figure out.

On paper the plot and characterization seem very slight, but what holds it all together is Janacek’s wonderful music which seems to pull together all the rather ragged strands left dangling by the libretto. The score features lush romantic passages interspersed with snatches of folk tunes and jagged unresolved ideas that seem to mirror the fractured psychology engulfing Jenufa and Kostelnicka. Although the story is unrelentingly grim, there always seems to be something interesting going on in the music. Near the end, when Kostelnicka confesses the infanticide and accepts her punishment the music is particularly beautiful and even uplifting. However dark the deed, it seems to say, some form of redemption is always possible. How Janacek manages to conjure such a radiant burst of optimism at the end of such a dark tragedy is nothing short of miraculous.

I could listen to Janacek’s music for hours. As a matter of fact, now I think about it, that’s exactly what I did.

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