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Janáček - Jenůfa

February 8, 2014, 3:54 am
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La Monnaie, Brussels, Sunday February 2 2014

Conductor: Ludovic Morlot. Production and sets: Alvis Hermanis. Costumes: Anna Watkins. Lighting: Gleb Filshtinsky. Video: Ineta Sipunova. Jenůfa: Andrea Danková. Laca Klemeň: Charles Workman. Števa Buryja: Nicky Spence. Kostelnička Buryjovka: Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet. Stařenka Buryjovka: Carole Wilson. Stárek: Ivan Ludlow. Rychtář: Alexander Vassiliev. Rychtářka: Mireille Capelle. Karolka: Hendrickje Van Kerckhove. Pastuchnyňa: Beata Morawska. Jano: Chloé Briot. Barena: Nathalie Van de Voorde. Tetka: Marta Beretta. Orchestra and Chorus of La Monnaie.

Let me see...
  • Janacek was Moravian. So was Mucha.
  • Jenufa is set in a Moravian village.
  • Moravian folk costume is unexpectedly lavish.
  • Kabuki uses lavish costumes and is highly stylised.
  • Mucha and art nouveau were all the rage in Prague at the time.
  • The ballets russes were all the rage elsewhere. Shame they didn't tour to Prague.
  • In Jenufa, the crux of the drama - deep-freezing the baby - is in act two. That takes place à huis clos; acts one and three are more public, less intense.
These seem to have been the ideas behind this production of Jenufa, which has been a geat critical success.

Janacek
Behind a Mucha-style curtain, the stage was strictly partitioned, with a strip of apron in front of a second proscenium divided into four main spaces: tall vertical panels to either side and, in the middle space, a large screen above a lower "letter-box" opening. The screens were used for projections and the large upper one could rise to reveal a bright, stepped space for the chorus.

The parti pris was to stage the outer acts as a "poetic" (so the programme notes had it; "scrapbook", I might have said) encounter between Moravian folk art and the more sophisticated aesthetic currents prevailing in Prague at the time of the opera. The action was played out puppet-style, with stylized, Kabuki-inspired gestures, in sumptuously embroidered traditional costumes: the women with lampshade skirts and puffed sleeves the size of footballs; the men with elaborately flowered and feathered headgear. La Monnaie's workshops are said to have worked on these clothes for a year. Art nouveau motifs and images, some rotating, were projected, biscuit-tin style, on the screens, while a fascinating, Rite-of-Spring ballet was danced in the letter-box space by girls in plain cream.

In absolute contrast, the middle act was set, in the letter-box, in a grimy, contemporary kitchen, with a gas stove and fridge-freezer to the right, a rusty iron bedstead to the left, snow falling heavily behind icy windows, bare bulbs, pious images, and everyday modern clothes.

The trouble with this approach, apart from the fact that the "hieratic" acting was only half-heartedly done - as is often the case when a director decides to do it - was that the outer acts were stripped of any dramatic impact and reduced to a mere visual feast. The crux of the drama - deep-freezing the baby - may be in act two, but Jenufa is disfigured for life in act one and the baby does, after all, thaw out in the middle of her wedding in act three...

And though Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet is a great actress, the grim and grimy reality of act two was not especially convincingly directed, and stuffing the baby's clothes into the freezing compartment in an act of madness before collapsing at the end was simply odd.

Vocally, Andrea Danková was an excellent Jenufa. Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet has no top left and has to resort to screams instead of singing, but as I just said she's still a great actress with striking presence and this "cheating" is therefore done to great effect. They made a very fine pair. Nicky Spence has, I was told, a "big sound" but it didn't make it too well up to where I was sitting. Many people were impressed by Charles Workman's Steva; I bow to them. I'm not keen, as I've often remarked, on his "stiff" sound that, to me, never seems to open up. He's a good actor, but in this production had little chance to show it, being bound up in the stylization.

I read in the press that Ludovic Morlot was at least better in Janacek than in Mozart. To me, this Jenufa sounded more like a reading than a performance, lacking in variety and subtlety.

Jenufa should be electrifying. This lavish but conspicuously self-conscious production has been described as "magical". To me it was just a disappointment.
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Puccini - La Fanciulla del West

February 8, 2014, 9:42 am
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ONP Bastille, Friday February 7 2014

Conductor: Carlo Rizzi. Production: Nikolaus Lehnhoff. Sets: Raimund Bauer. Costumes: Andrea Schmidt-Futterer. Lighting: Duane Schuler. Video: Jonas Gerberding. Minnie: Nina Stemme. Jack Rance: Claudio Sgura. Dick Johnson: Rafael Rojas. Nick: Roman Sadnik. Ashby: Andrea Mastroni. Sonora: André Heyboer. Trin: Emanuele Giannino. Sid: Roberto Accurso. Bello: Igor Gnidii. Harry: Eric Huchet. Joe: Rodolphe Briand. Happy: Enrico Marabelli. Larkens: Wenwei Zhang. Billy Jackrabbit: Ugo Rabec. Wowkle: Anna Pennisi. Jake Wallace: Alexandre Duhamel. José Castro: Matteo Peirone. Un Postiglione: Olivier Berg. Un baritono: Daejin Bang. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris. 

La Fanciulla, with its weak plot, weird heroine and quaint libretto, which assumes Americans all shout "Hello" when they enter a bar, must be a difficult work to stage credibly (supposing, that is, we may expect opera, exotic and irrational as it is, to be credible). Nikolaus Lehnhoff makes no attempt, preferring to send it up, on a grand and presumably costly scale.

Puccini
After a brief, black-and-white film of agitated traders, he sets act one in a high-tech bunker, tunnel or perhaps sewer under New York (Wall Street?), with ribbed walls, round entrances and a gaping, rough-edged, rectangular hole through which we see projections of skyscrapers, a church steeple or, when feeling nostalgic, the countryside. If the Polka is a bikers' bar or a gay one is a moot point. At any rate everyone is in black leather from head to (long-pointed) toe and many are unshaven, bald or long-haired, and tattooed, in sunglasses, stetsons, chaps and/or floor-length leather greatcoats, brandishing pistols. They play cards or the slot machines, laugh or brawl with oddly effective, jerky movements. Whether bikers or leather queens, it seems  unlikely they'd pine for their mothers and cottages - not the country kind, by a stream, at any rate - sing waltzes or gather round Minnie to hear readings from the bible she keeps in the safe. Only the minstrel is in white - leather of course, with long fringes and a guitar, against the country backdrop. Minnie is in red - leather of course - against a reddened sky.

The costumes throughout are unmistakeably not French: ugly and ill-fitting.

In act two, we find Minnie living in a large, streamlined Barbie caravan in the mountains, flanked, in a blanket of snow, by giant plastic Bambis whose eyes glow red at times of passion. A flagpole flies the stars and stripes in the garden. The caravan is open, revealing an all-pink, quilted vinyl (leather perhaps) interior with a bed on the left and a kitchen, with a pink-haloed madonna, on the right. The posse looking for Ramerrez never thinks of looking behind the little (pink) screen beside the bed. To hide Dick, once wounded, in the "loft", Minnie grabs a long, hooked pole, opens a (pink, quilted) trapdoor in her ceiling and yanks down a pantographic aluminium ladder, sending him up on the roof (in the snow, mind you) before struggling (moment of suspense for the audience) to push back the recalcitrant ladder and close the hatch with her pole.

Recent Met Production
Act three opens on a magnificently constructed heap of wrecked American cars, some with working lights, from which the bikers, once called upon, eventually emerge. In the background, a mountain landscape and sweeping clouds. A block and tackle swing to the left, convenient for lynching. But of course, there is no lynching. The heaped cars part, revealing a staircase in lights; the MGM logo, lion and all, rises to the sky; and Minnie appears at the top of the stairs in a dazzlingly ugly Hollywood ballgown (think Jessica Rabbit). As the singing soars, the lion roars; and as the work ends, Minnie and Dick - by now in black tie - ascend the stairs towards the White House in a shower of dollar bills.

Some of the audience were not happy about this. There may have been a "message" in there about American clichés, but by now messages about American clichés are surely clichéd.

Marco Berti was off sick, so yesterday evening we had Rafael Rojas singing from the side of the stage while a lanky production assistant played a singularly ungainly, unattractive Dick, more homeless or hobo than hero. Rojas was excellent, but the house was too big so it's unlikely people up in the Bastille's stratospheric regions heard much of him. It would be interesting to hear him again in better circumstances. As the production wasn't designed to have a tenor on the apron, his last note was spoiled when he was beaned by a descending gauze.

Nina Stemme is a great singer, with all the resources needed for Minnie, though not a glamorous one. After a rather stiff, hard start, she warmed into the part and sang it magnificently. Claudio Sgura, tall and charismatic, was a better match, as Jack Rance, than the less amply-voiced Johnson.

The rest of the cast and chorus were all on fine form, as was the orchestra, at its most sumptuous in the sumptuous score under Rizzi. Musically, therefore, this was a good evening. Visually it was, despite the impressive scale and skill of the staging, more comical than convincing: an expensive joke.


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Debussy - Pelléas et Mélisande

February 22, 2014, 3:50 pm
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Opéra Comique, Paris, Wednesday February 19 2014

Conductor: Louis Langrée. Production and sets: Stéphane Braunschweig. Costumes: Thibault Vancraenenbroeck. Lighting: Marion Hewlett. Pelléas: Phillip Addis. Mélisande: Karen Vourc'h. Golaud: Laurent Alvaro. Arkel: Jérôme Varnier. Geneviève: Sylvie Brunet-Grupposo. Yniold: Dima Bawab. Un médecin, Le berger, Luc Bertin-Hugault. Accentus chorus. Orchestre des Champs-Élysées.

Debussy
This is a revival of the Opéra Comique's 2010 production of Pelléas, which I wrote up at the time. I don't, therefore, need to describe the production again. It was after that evening that, at a friend's suggestion, I adopted the present name of my blog. But, like every time - which is why nobody should take any of these reports to heart - this time it was different. Very different, as unusally, I was on the front row, three feet from the pit with an ear, nose and throat specialist's view of the singers' tonsils.

Though many or most people seem to find Debussy's music beautiful, I usually find it, overall, pasty, pastel, rambling and formless - yet sinister: gloomy and grim and dismal and depressing as a month of drizzly Sundays. This is my loss, I don't doubt (and there's no need to click on "Comment" to call me a stupid, arrogant, bitter cunt: you've already told me that, several times). In this case, thrust practically  into the midst of the musicians, while (paraphrasing Beecham) I admittedly don't "get" Debussy, I absolutely loved the noise he made on the Champs Elysées'"HIP" instruments: richly timbred and colourful, yet not, even at close range, overpowering. And being thrust, as well, practically among the singers, I found it easy to be convinced - as far as anyone can be convinced by this whacky story of an Addams family without a sense of humour - by the detailed, committed, convincing acting. The lighthouses and child's play that I wasn't keen on before were still there; but being so close up, the lack of action I complained of in 2010 was made up for by the fascination of individual acting skills - not that I or (I checked) those with me care one bit for the characters or what happens to them.

Though the Golaud wasn't the same singer, once again it became Golaud's show. Laurent Alvaro seems to have found the role of his life, playing a particularly tortured (yet charismatic) prince and singing with great subtlety. At any rate, I found his use of a very smoky pianissimo extremely effective, while his outbursts were not, as I seem to remember they might have been in the past, overbearing.

Getting the ring back
Pelléas and Mélisande were the same, but have matured from teenagers into adults. Addis still has the smiling charm that makes him the only reasonably likeable, near-normal character in the otherwise exasperating, unsympathetic bunch; Vourc'h is now a woman and could no longer be taken for a mere girl. Their vocal performances have simply matured with them. I don't think anyone could fault them.

The part of Geneviève suits Sylvie Brunet to a tee. For the first time, her distinctive timbre reminded me - very gratifyingly - of Dame Janet Baker. They were all so fluent that even Jérôme Varnier seemed a touch stiff in comparison, but perhaps the role and the way it was played in this production were reasons for that. And Dima Bawab manages somehow to make Le Petit Ignoble's "petit" this and "petit" that nearly tolerable, for once.

So this was probably my best Pelléas yet, and I should think Pelléas-lovers loved it. We stayed after the interval.
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Gerard Mortier 1943-2014

March 9, 2014, 1:39 am
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He was infuriating, but perhaps that's partly why, in the end, we liked him and ended up missing him. Of course, there were (and still are) other reasons...

" ... la ligne neuve ouverte par Mortier.  Celle de renouveler l’Opéra, de le rendre contemporain et nécessaire, plus ouvert sur le monde d’aujourd’hui et à toutes les couches de la population sans perdre l’exigence de qualité..."

La Libre Belgique
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Chausson, Chausson, Paganini, Schumann

March 22, 2014, 8:15 am
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Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Paris, Wednesday March 19 2014
  • Chausson: Poème de l'amour et de la mer op. 19
  • Chausson: Poème for violin and orchestra op. 25
  • Paganini: I Palpiti for violin and orchestra, after Rossini's Tancredi
  • Schumann: Symphony n° 2 op. 61
Ann Hallenberg: mezzo-soprano. Laurent Korcia: violin. Jean-Jacques Kantorow: conductor. Orchestre de chambre de Paris

Chausson
In the last few years I've drifted away from concert halls and spent my time (and pots of hard-earned money) almost exclusively in opera houses. This is no doubt a mistake: hours and hours of second-rate music indifferently performed have probably corrupted my taste irretrievably. So my opinion on concerts should be taken with a big pinch of salt. This one, it seemed to me, was odd and frustrating. The combination of works was odd enough. But the order they were played in was odder still.

It seemed unfair on Ann Hallenberg to have her start with the strangest and most demanding piece of the evening. To me it would have made more sense to warm up with an overture, then do the violin Poème, the Paganini lollipop and Korcia's encore, leaving the thornier Poème de l'amour et de la mer till part two, before the Schumann. But it was not so.

Ann Hallenberg's performance, which was what I was there for really, had everything you'd expect from her: beauty of sound, sophisticated phrasing, breadth of nuance, sincerity of feeling, intelligence and impeccable taste. Her mezzo voice has, of course, a warmer, rounder, less "piercing" sound than a soprano. All the more reason, then, for the orchestra, under its conductor, to play with special sensitivity. The Paris chamber orchestra was, unfortunately, unable to match the singer's carefully-crafted dynamic range and plugged doggedly away at mf and above.

As a result, her subtle effects (and of course the text) were sometimes lost in what came across as insensitive noise from a standard, "jobbing" orchestra. Attacks were - a French orchestral speciality - sometimes patchy, and Chausson's most tortuous, "amiable tapeworm" harmonies came across as decidedly murky.

But Laurent Korcia plays regularly with Kantorow and this band, so perhaps it's just my cloth ears letting me down again. He plays exactly the way I like: plenty of vigour, plenty of character, limited sentimentality. He seems very much his own man, so to speak, not playing to the gallery but doing things exactly the way he sees them and probably not seeing eye to eye with everyone - literally indeed, as his intriguing stage stance involves downcast eyes most of the time, a twist and curve of the body that looks somehow coy or shy, and only the faintest of smiles at applause. He doesn't obviously engage with his audience, yet is devilishly charismatic.

His sounds, which I put deliberately in the plural, since they were distinctly varied, seemed almost aggressively individual: rasping bowing, or what I thought of as daringly expressive tuning, for example (if such a notion makes any sense to anyone but me). I admit I personally found his harmonics, in the Paganini I wasn't especially interested in, hard to decipher. I came away feeling it was somehow strange he should play Chausson at all: he seems so obviously cut out for Bartok, Prokofiev, Shostakovich...Yet he's become something of a Paganini specialist - go figure, as our American friends say.

So, as I think I've made clear, there was, to me, a puzzling mis-match between one of Europe's greatest mezzos, as the programme notes had it, France's foremost violinist, as you can read anywhere, and what is not one of Europe's greatest orchestras, nor, despite its fancy name, France's foremost. And as, after the interval, the orchestra was to go it alone... we left.


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Rameau - Platée

March 26, 2014, 5:55 am
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Opéra Comique, Paris, Monday March 24 2014

Conductor: Paul Agnew. Production: Robert Carsen. Choreography: Nicolas Paul. Sets and costumes: Gideon Davey. Lighting: Robert Carsen and Peter van Praet. Platée: Marcel Beekman. La Folie: Simone Kermes. Thalie: Virginie Thomas. Mercure, Thespis: Cyril Auvity. Clarine, Amour: Emmanuelle de Negri. Jupiter: Edwin Crossley-Mercer. Momus: João Fernandes. Cithéron, Momus in Prologue: Marc Mauillon. Junon: Emilie Renard. Chorus and orchestra: Les Arts Florissants.

Rameau
Platée is one of a handful of works I like so much I can listen through at any time with pleasure, so I can’t say I was actually disappointed to see it on the Opéra Comique’s 2013-2014 schedule. But as the Paris Opera’s own production is excellent and has become a repertoire staple, and as staged Rameau remains a relative rarity even in France, I thought it was a shame we couldn’t have something different and wondered how Carsen’s take would measure up to Laurent Pelly’s benchmark, especially as I have quite often found Carsen’s work too coolly chic (all straitjacketed up in New Look tailoring and tight French pleats) for me.

It turned out I needn’t have worried: the new production is glittering in every sense. And as this is said to be the start of a “Rameau year”, we are supposed (so I read) to get more of his works as the months go by. I’ll believe that when I see it, however: there isn’t a single one in the Paris Opera’s next season, for a start.

Carsen sets Platée, a comedy in which the “ridiculous” heroine is cruelly deceived and mocked, in the cruelly deceptive, mocking world of fashion, centred mainly, though not exclusively, on Chanel. The staging opens and closes with a dazzling tinsel curtain and the basic setting is the same throughout: mirror-gloss black floor, mirrored walls with neoclassical round-arched details, facetted crystal wall lights.

After a kind of trendy dressing-up party during the prologue, in which the on-stage gaiety is for once infectious, a glitzy restaurant and bar, with round tables and Perspex, Ritz-style café chairs, is invaded by a cellphone-crazy crowd of brightly variegated fashion victims - just like the Hotel Costes during fashion week. Mercure, in a check suit and floppy hair, displaces customers (like a directeur de salle at the Hôtel Costes) to make way at the best table for a sleek, chic and slender Diana Vreeland* figure. She too is glued to her cellphone until disturbed by Platée, who to judge from her bathrobe, turban, slippers and green face-mask, is having a spa treatment at the hotel.

Jupiter
In act two, the same darkly gleaming room and spindly chairs are laid out for a fashion show, with name tags on the seats and, at the rear, the famous rue Cambon staircase. Press photographers flock in and cameras flash for Jupiter’s stunning appearance on the steps: Karl Lagerfeld, complete with white cat. La Folie, first in a scrunched-up silver balloon dress, later in plain green, in mirrored polka-dots (I've lost track of the precise order) and later still in pseudo-period panniers with fuchsia-pink stockings, is, so I’m told, supposed to be Lady Gaga. Jove’s metamorphoses and the ballets (mostly of the abrupt, apoplectic contortionist kind, with one very striking slow-motion exception) are cleverly dealt with as the fashion parade itself, culminating, at “Hymène, Hymène”, with the bridal gown, short but with an endless train. Platée declares it “Hé, bon, bon, bon” and dons it while goodies are distributed in white Chanel bags with the interlocking Cs changed to Js.

In act three, the glossy black space is now a magnificent bedroom with black-and-silver commodes, huge white bouquets and an elaborate silver finial over the gigantic bed. It was at this stage that I wondered if Carsen and his team were referring wryly/slyly to the famous production of Atys also staged at the Salle Favart with Les Arts Florissants. My imagination, probably. Junon turns out (you do wonder, after all, who Karl Lagerfeld’s wife can possibly be) to be Coco Chanel in person. The ballets and chorus descend into a kind of slow-moving, champagne-fuelled orgy until the cruel dénouement. After a brief tussle on the floor with Cithéron, Platée, alone in bra and pants on the now-empty stage, takes one of Cupid’s arrows, stabs herself and, surrounded by tinsel, slumps to the floor.

Freed of the usual New Look trappings I mentioned above, this production was less chilly, less tight-arsed than some of Carsen’s. Hiding the chorus usually strikes me as a directorial cop-out but here he at least didn’t do it all the time. I suppose you might say slipping into a slow-moving, champagne-fuelled orgy was a sign of flagging inspiration; but it can’t be easy dealing, in act three, with the deliberate putting-off of Juno’s final entry – Platée herself loses patience – and the overall effect was fun, highly professional and suitably glossy.

Junon
Musically, as it was all so very satisfactory there isn’t a lot to say. The cast made a great comic team, and in a comic work the voices don’t necessarily have to be perfect: it’s often character that counts. This worked for Marcel Beekman, whose voice in other roles might sound harsh but whose comic acting was perfect. It also worked in Simone Kermes’ favour. The impression I got was that the vast range of vocal colour and dynamics some critics praise her for is, at least partially, an accident – she doesn’t really seem to be in control but rather at the mercy of the caprices of her voice. But, while her French is decidedly strange, the crooning pianissimi she goes in for are actually audible in a house the size of Favart, her tuning is not as dodgy as the critics have said (I think it’s probably when she sings almost "agressively" without vibrato that it sounds off), and her top notes are spot on. I’ve no idea if her wild gesticulations made her a convincing Lady Gaga (whom I’ve never seen) but she undeniably threw herself into them, yet without, as my neighbour said he’d feared she might, trying to hog the limelight.

Edwin Crossley-Mercer and Marc Mauillon were especially good and I was surprised the former didn’t get a louder outburst of applause – but he didn’t seek it either, taking a very brief bow. The chorus was perfect as usual. The orchestra, with the “boss” off sick, seemed to me a demi-point less disciplined than usual, but their usual standards are very high, after all, and this was definitely the familiar, fleet-footed Arts Florissants style.

While less subtle and original than in Pelly's production, overall this was nevertheless an evening of first-rate entertainment. Let’s hope we’ll have a record of it on video.

*Oops, showing my age: Anna Wintour.
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Bruckner's 2nd, Schubert's 7th, 8th or 9th

May 19, 2014, 9:02 am
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Orchestre de l'Opéra national de Paris. Philippe Jordan, conductor.
  • Anton Bruckner: Symphony n°2 in C minor
  • Franz Schubert: Symphony n°8 in C major ("Great"), D 944.

From Wikipedia, re the Scuthbert: "There continues to be some controversy over the numbering of this symphony, with German-speaking scholars sometimes numbering it as symphony No. 7, the most recent version of the Deutsch catalog (the standard catalogue of Schubert's works, compiled by Otto Erich Deutsch) listing it as No. 8, and English-speaking scholars often listing it as No. 9".

I had no idea. I thought the "8" on the Paris Opera's website was a mistake, and I wasn't the only ignoramus in town...

Bruckner
Over the past few years I've got out of the habit of booking orchestral concerts (that will change next season). But when I did, living in France my policy was to book for big-name visiting orchestras, preferably with a relatively modern programme. Why? Because France has no orchestra performing consistently at the highest international standard – “consistently” being the operative word, as France’s orchestras, like her footballers, are capable of winning world championships, but not often and you can never predict when. And then, wrong though I may be, I'm no longer particularly interested in hearing pre-20th century works played by slick modern orchestras.

The reason, therefore, that I was at this Bruckner-and-Schubert concert at the Paris Opera was simply that the tickets were a present, i.e. free. It was nice to be able to hear Bruckner's 2nd, and very nice to hear Schubert’s “Great” (whatever the number may be) after all these years. And both were very capably played.

Schubert
But, typically of French orchestras, the Paris Opera strings can’t sustain as you (and Philippe Jordan too, perhaps, as he seemed to be gesturing for it) might like in Bruckner - they rarely use all of the bow - the brass don't come across with massed, chorale-like depth, the horns sometimes crack, and the inner detail of the score can seem hazy. The performance was robust but not spine-tingling.

Perhaps Schubert is a better bet for a French band. But Jordan might have dismissed a desk or two from his strings: I thought the playing was too loud too often. Overall, for Schubert, it lacked delicacy - and Schubertian mystery.

As is often the case in France, in both works the woodwind were best by far and deserved the extra applause they got. My companions were very happy, and the rest of the audience liked the whole evening so much they clapped after every movement. So I suppose it’s bitter and stupid of me, once more, to say I’d rather have had the VPO for the Bruckner and something much more HIP for the Schubert, not the bland sounds of a modern opera orchestra.
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Ann Hallenberg - Der Abschied

May 19, 2014, 2:55 pm
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Verdi - Rigoletto

May 21, 2014, 10:58 am
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La Monnaie, Brussels, Sunday May 18 2014

Conductor: Carlo Rizzi. Production: Robert Carsen, reprised by Gayral Christophe. Sets: Radu Boruzescu. Costumes: Miruna Boruzescu. Lighting: Robert Carsen, Peter Van Praet. Il Duca di Mantova: Arturo Chacón-Cruz. Rigoletto: Dimitri Platanias. Gilda: Simona Šaturová. Sparafucile: Ain Anger. Maddalena: Sara Fulgoni. Giovanna: Carole Wilson. Il Conte di Monterone: Carlo Cigni. Marullo: Jean-Luc Ballestra. Matteo Borsa: Roberto Covatta. Il Conte di Ceprano: Laurent Kubla. La Contessa di Ceprano: Yvette Bonner. Usciere di Corte: Gerard Lavalle. Orchestra and men's chorus of La Monnaie. 

Robert Carsen’s production of Rigoletto has been around before arriving in Brussels, so it will be familiar to many. I’d seen parts of it on TV myself. It sets the work in a wine-dark circus ring, and once you’ve said that the concept is fairly easy to imagine.

In the Brussels context, the start seemed unpromisingly déjà vu. Not Carsen’s fault, but last season’s Lucrezia Borgia was actually staged at the Cirque Royal, and already contained déjà vu elements of its own, La Monnaie having gone through a run of sleazy productions. At the time, I wrote: ‘No doubt coincidentally, but still […] this production had much in common with the previous two in Brussels […] similar acts of gratuitous sadism on naked girls in a corrupt, criminal, nouveau-riche milieu […] The bored, idle, yobbish rich, all in black […] dinner jackets with open-necked shirts…’

This Rigoletto opens with the bored, idle, yobbish rich, all in black, seated in the circus watching a lion tamer cracking his whip at near-naked girls and Rigoletto – a clown, of course, in capacious black with touches of white - capering round obscenely with a hideous inflatable doll. Later, the Duke strips off before climbing a ladder to join the captive Gilda in the box over the entrance to the ring, and the doll gets a second outing, but apart from that the shrug-inducing shenanigans die out and give way to a soberer, more straightforward working through of the circus theme, albeit minus the gaudy colours of the usual circus, with acrobats in black among the dinner jackets, Gilda rising high-up seated on a trapeze, and at the end a stunning coup de theatre as a naked female silk-acrobat (so I believe they're called) cascades down in a flash in a sash and ends suspended, with a jolt, dead.

This isn’t Carsen’s best production, but works well enough. On Sunday, however, it seemed to me to lack dramatic commitment and impact. Was he in Brussels to oversee this reprise? Probably not, as one Gayral Christophe is credited with it.

The cast, despite cancellations and replacements, was typical Brussels: strong but no outright stars. Arturo Chacón-Cruz is a very decent mid-weight young tenor with a nice presence and bright, accurate top notes (I was surprised to see those being targeted for criticism in reviews of earlier performances) but a rather monochrome medium. Dimitri Platanias was powerful and clear but not always reassuringly secure - which could also be said of the diabolical-looking Ain Anger's cavernous, booming voice. Simona Šaturová's is sweet in the middle with a touch of Slav steel at the top but, to me, short on drama. My companions thought she warmed up in part two. Sara Fulgoni was not a great Maddalena.

I realised, thinking up this report, that I simply don't remember anything about the orchestra and conducting. Perhaps that's a compliment to Carlo Rizzi. What did strike me, though, was that Rigoletto, much as I like Verdi, does nothing for me at all.

Izzy sings "La donna è mobile".
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If you are in or near Monaco...

May 22, 2014, 1:55 pm
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Charles Lecocq - Ali Baba

May 23, 2014, 10:46 am
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Opéra Comique, Paris, Tuesday May 20 2014

Conductor: Jean-Pierre Haeck. Production: Arnaud Meunier. Sets: Damien Caille-Perret. Costumes: Anne Autran Dumour. Lighting: Nicolas Marie. Morgiane: Sophie Marin-Degor. Zobéïde: Christianne Bélanger. Ali-Baba: Tassis Christoyannis. Zizi: Philippe Talbot. Cassim, François Rougier. Saladin: Mark van Arsdale. Kandgiar: Vianney Guyonnet. Maboul, le Cadi: Thierry Vu Huu. Chorus: Accentus/Opéra de Rouen Haute-Normandie. Orchestra of the Opéra de Rouen Haute-Normandie.

Lecocq
Rigoletto was set in a circus, but Ali Baba was more fun. Some critics have grumbled about the production, but I've seen tackier, cornier ones in the same house, among them last year's "oriental" offering, Mârouf, savetier du Caire. One of the grumbles was about the transposition, in which the bazar became a shopping centre and the costumes were vaguely 70s or 80s, so it's true that the slave auction was slightly out of place; but at least we were spared the pantomime silliness of Mârouf's cardboard Cairo, outlandish costumes and vaguely racist stereotypes.

There were four escalators, a cash desk, potted palms and advertisements for dream holidays by the beach (South Beach by the looks of it). Later there would be various spoof signs for "Look-Koom" or "Baghdad Burger," etc. When the escalators were grouped head-to-head they became the rock that slid apart at the famous command to reveal a vault, more than a cavern, of square-fronted drawers splotched with gold leaf and laden with treasure. Ali Baba was a cleaner in the mall and his house was a run-down affair affair with grubby wallpaper and a bare bulb until he moved into his palace, surrounded by fawning air hostesses. Of course, the jars in the cellar were oil barrels. The forty thieves were more like forty goofy gangsters. Everyone acted up a comic storm, like the best kind of boulevard farce.

The cast made a strong team vocally too, whether in "serious" singing or comical character parts. Tassis Christoyannis was excellent in "Jamais je ne vis plus beaux yeux", for example, and Sophie Marin-Degor was remarkable throughout, whether "serious" or actually tap-dancing her way off stage.  Christianne Bélanger was equally excellent as the sex-starved Zobéïde, assuring Ali Baba that though he might be her second (husband), he would be the first. They were surrounded by a host of promising young singers in supporting roles. Lecocq's music is somewhere between Offenbach and Bizet (they were fellow-students). It would be nice to have such strong, enthusiastic teams performing more Lecocq, and of course Offenbach as well.

The orchestra and chorus were on great form too, conducted with a combination of vigour (too much vigour for some critics) and care by Jean-Pierre Haeck. As we left the house, my neighbour remarked that after such a show you could only leave in a good mood. So if some critics were grumpy, we could only imagine the opening night had perhaps had teething troubles, corrected since. Great fun.

There is a complete 1961 performance on YouTube, with the wonderful diction (and less-than-wonderful French orchestral playing) they had back then. The yacking stops and the opera starts at 2.30.
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Marc-Olivier Dupin - Robert le cochon et les Kidnappeurs

June 14, 2014, 7:20 am
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Opéra comique, Paris, Friday June 13 2014

Conductor: Marc-Olivier Dupin. Production: Ivan Grinberg. Sets and costumes: Paul Cox. Lighting: Madjid Hakimi. Robert le cochon; Louyaplu, le tueur de loups: Marc Mauillon. Mercibocou le loup: Paul-Alexandre Dubois. Vieux Hibou; Ferdinand, gardien muet du dépotoir: Damien Bouvet. Nouille la grenouille; la Lune: Donatienne Michel-Dansac. Trashella, propriétaire du dépotoir: Edwige Bourdy. Poitou-Charentes Orchestra.

"On a quiet night, Robert the Pig (Robert le Cochon) learns that his friend Mercibocou the Wolf has been kidnapped by Trashella, the owner of the big garbage dump. To set him free, the boldness of Robert the Pig, the passion of Nouille the Frog and the complicity of the Moon will be necessary."

You'll have gathered from this introduction, copied and pasted from the Opéra Comique's website, that Robert le Cochon is not so much an opera, nor even an operetta or a musical, as a children's show with a relatively fancy score and simple, colourful sets, like pictures in a book of children's stories: the dump, with its piles of different-coloured dogs' kennels, clocks, lampshades, chairs, computers and red drums, used by Mercibocou to build Nouille la Grenouille's rocket. To the left, the owl on a tree stump; at the rear, a naively painted rural backdrop. Above, as and when needed, a large, singing moon. Nouille is in a frog suit with a red skirt, Robert is in a pig suit with shorts, Mercibocou is in blue overalls with a wolf's head and Trashella wears a long red dress and has hair like Marge Simpson's. The acting and choreography are as naive as the painted backdrop.

The score, for eighteen instruments including a piano and an accordeon, is:

"... a patchwork of objects found in the vast dump of "serious" music, from renaissance polyphony to romantic opera and popular songs."

Overall, it is reminiscent of Shostakovich's Jazz Suites, of Cheryomushki or the "teapot" scene in L'Enfant et les sortilèges, with occasional outbursts of "modern" and percussive, rhythmic passages that reminded me of Britten's scores for children or "Tom, Tom the piper's son" in The Turn of the Screw.

The only really sound voice in this production was that of Marc Mauillon, most recently seen as Cithéron in Robert Carsen's production of Platée and here projecting the same engaging personality. Paul-Alexandre Dubois could probably put his precarious intonation down to the character demands of his part as a wolf. The female singers were, so a neaby Frenchman thought, "unworthy of a capital city." He found it impossible to believe better candidates were not available. And it turned out that the little old lady next to me had had exactly the same thought as I did: on Broadway, with tighter directing and better singing (she went so far as imagining what Natalie Dessay would have made of Nouille la Grenouille!) and dancing, even in the same sets, this would have made an excellent, fun show.

The Opéra Comique's video trailer gives some idea of the production, not much of the music.
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Verdi - La Traviata

June 15, 2014, 1:36 pm
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ONP Paris Bastille, Saturday June 14 2014

Conductor: Daniel Oren. Production: Benoît Jacquot. Sets: Sylvain Chauvelot. Costumes: Christian Gasc. Lighting: André Diot. Violetta Valéry: Diana Damrau. Flora Bervoix: Anna Pennisi. Annina: Cornelia Oncioiu. Alfredo Germont: Francesco Demuro. Giorgio Germont: Ludovic Tézier. Gastone: Gabriele Mangione. Il Barone Douphol: Fabio Previati. Il Marchese d’Obigny: Igor Gnidii. Dottore Grenvil: Nicolas Testé. Orchestra and chorus of the Opéra National de Paris.

It looked, with this new production of La Traviata, as if Nicolas Joël intended to mark the end of his tenure in Paris with a parting shot on how opera should, he's said to think, be staged: "traditional" production with a starry cast. The aim was perhaps also to offer a sort of ripost to the Paris Opera's previous production, by Christoph Marthaler, commissioned by Gerard Mortier. The result was only to emphasise the potential weakness of this approach (and to have, in the press, several critics almost wistfully admitting they preferred Marthaler's "regie" vision, East-German warts and all). Which seems, come to think of it, to have been his main achievement over the last four years, since the awful Mireille - "putain, Mireille," as a friend put it - that opened his reign. Benoît Jacquot's approach is one that was popular in the 80s: basically, one big, expensive object per scene, on an empty stage, and a handful of easily-grasped ideas.

Violetta
In this case, the stage was both empty and black: no rear visible at all: "Vertiginous" black, said one critic. Our act one object was a gigantic royal bed centre-right with, under its high canopy, Manet's Olympia with her black maid. Our first simple idea was: Olympia is Violetta (or vice versa) and sure enough, Annina was blacked-up and wearing the same pale pink costume as in the painting. The revellers at Violetta's party were all men (i.e. including the lady members of the chorus) in undertaker black, with stove-pipe top hats (I wondered: did Frenchmen really all keep their hats on indoors in the 1850s?), lined up grimly en bloc to the left. They were motionless. "C'est l'enterrement dès le début," said my neighbour: a burial from the word go. That was easily grasped. Violetta's vast silk crinoline was sumptuously plain; she may once have been Olympia yet here looked positively virginal (we'll come back to that). The lighting was painterly: old masterish. It will look good on video.

As act two is in two parts, we had two big objects, both at the same time. On the left was a tree, as realistic as a stage tree could be, with a stone bench beneath its branches. Violetta was still in plain, crinolined silk and décolletée. Jacquot explained he couldn't see her dressed as a milkmaid, or something to that effect. Alfredo was now dressed as Werther, in tan suède, and sat on the tree roots in a conventional, Wertherish way to sing. On the right, as far as we could see in the dark, was a massive marble construction: a balustraded staircase along Palais Garnier lines, with globed candelabra, leading up to a similarly-balustraded terrace above a tribune with niches. There were a few cabaret tables in front, and some more funereal partygoers: extras in black with Zorro masks and Spanish sombreros, dotted around, immobile. There they stayed, in the dark, immobile as I just said, throughout the entire first tableau. "Sadism," said one critic.

So there was no curtain between tableaux: suddenly the lights went up - those Second Empire globes and our old friend the giant crystal chandelier - the marble was revealed to be lavishly polychrome, and there we were at Flora's for another joyless party.

A gypsy
Everyone, male or female, was in black except the dancers. The gypsy girls, who arrived in orangey pink, hiding their faces with fans, turned out to be men, some bearded. Conchita Wurst's contribution at the Eurovision Song Contest was surely too recent to have inspired this? The bullfighters were women, in red. All, horses and bull included, for some reason wriggled their bottoms at the audience. The chorus observed this puzzling performance motionless from the packed stairs; called away to dinner, they simply turned their backs and stayed put. And the most ridiculous thing, on the Bastille's even too-capacious stage, with fully half of it gloomily vacant to the left under the tree and leaving the Bastille's state-of-the-art computer-controlled machinery, perfectly capable of shifting kit and caboodle into a more convenient position, unused, the dance and ensuing drama (with Violetta in another sumptuously plain silk crinoline, now jet black) took place squeezed into the pocket-handkerchief-sized space left between the grandiose, carpeted stairs, thrusting forward, and the orchestra pit.

For the final act, as we guessed at the interval, the giant bed was back, now on the left and stripped of its hangings, with the Manet down and facing the headboard, roped up, like the striped mattress, to be carted off, sold. This being so, Violetta was now curled on a small iron bedstead to the right, looking (and sounding: we'll come back to that) tiny and lost (especially as she was no longer in a crinoline) in the fathomless black space. When the mardi gras hubbub struck up, a portion of black curtain rose at the rear to reveal, not mardi gras revellers but another block of top-hatted, undertaker-like men in black. The ideas were, as I said, simple. "Symbolisme de quatre sous," remarked one person on a blog: tuppenny-ha'penney symbolism, you might say.

Short of bringing Kaufmann in to sing Alfredo - which Mortier, often criticised for putting the director first, did for Marthaler's once decried, now lamented production - Joël brought together as good a cast as any available. Ludovic Tézier is an ideal Germont senior, and got the most applause. There's nothing to add to that. Francesco Demuro is not Kaufmann but is a decent Alfredo, best at youthful enthusiasm, so his big moment was "De' miei bollenti spiriti". It's true that his top notes are somewhat covered - more harmonic than full sound - and he tends to sob, but at least the latter can be taken as a stab at emotion. Diana Damrau is excellent in almost every respect: interesting timbre, dynamic range at the service of subtlety of phrasing, agility, perfect tuning. She put a great deal of effort into projecting a Violetta frustrated with and fighting against her fate. And yet... Hers is an intrinsically beautiful voice, not an intrinsically dramatic one - nor is her Italian diction crisp - and my thought, as the evening went on, was that none of the singers had the help they needed from the production.

The Bastille stage
First, the Bastille is simply too big for a staging that leaves Violetta alone on a tiny bed against a gaping black hole. At the Bastille, that black hole is simply huge. Second, well, a gaping black hole is what it is: there were no sets to reflect sound back into the house. Damrau's top notes rang out splendidly enough, but I wondered if her lower register was audible at the back. Often during the evening, sitting in row 11 of the stalls, I found the singers (apart from Tézier) relatively remote; when Violetta was alone on her tiny bed, I felt inclined to lean forward to be sure of hearing. And third, this cold, stiff, funereal production failed to generate (or deliberately eschewed) dramatic tension, sensuality or emotion. Olympia or not, as one critic suggested, we had the odd suspicion this impeccable Violetta died a virgin. The chorus stood still in serried ranks. The transvestite ballet was more comical than sexy. The soloists, usually grouped in some small space on the stage, were left to themselves. Tézier, as is well known, is not a great mover, even if he proved once more he is a great singer. The others, try as they might (and as I said, Damrau put a great deal of effort into developing a character) were defeated by the leaden pall that settled over the evening. Result: an evening of singing that was admirable (indeed) but not exciting or moving.

As I remember, I once write that Currentzis loved Verdi to death. Daniel Oren conducted as if he thought he was Celibidache directing Bruckner, lovingly stretching out the bars, to such an extent that at one point I was almost certain Diana Damrau was trying to force him to get a move on.

At dinner afterwards we ordered champagne and toasted the end of Nicolas Joël's stint as director. Question now is, will Lissner be better? Opera being what it is, you never know.
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Monteverdi et al - L'incoronazione di Poppea

June 24, 2014, 7:44 am
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ONP Garnier, Sunday June 22 2014

Conductor: Rinaldo Alessandrini. Production: Robert Wilson with Giuseppe Frigeni. Sets: Robert Wilson, Annick Lavallée-Benny. Costumes: Jacques Reynaud / Yashi. Lighting: A. J. Weissbard, Robert Wilson. La Fortuna, Drusilla: Gaëlle Arquez. La Virtù, Damigella: Jaël Azzaretti. Amore: Amel Brahim-Djelloul. Ottone: Varduhi Abrahamyan. Poppea: Karine Deshayes. Nerone: Jeremy Ovenden. Arnalta: Manuel Nuñez Camelino. Ottavia: Monica Bacelli. Nutrice: Giuseppe de Vittorio. Seneca: Andrea Concetti. Valletto: Marie-Adeline Henry. Mercurio: Nahuel Di Pierro. Secondo Tribuno, Famigliare di Seneca. Salvo Vitale. Soldato pretoriano, Lucano, Famigliare di Seneca, Secondo Console: Valerio Contaldo. Soldato pretoriano, Liberto, Primo Tribuno: Furio Zanasi. Concerto Italiano.

Monteverdi
It’s a pity, to me at any rate, that Poppea comes round more often than Orfeo, but it's interesting to see how many different production styles all manage to make a go of it: Dynasty-style skulduggery in dark, sleek art deco settings; liquorice-allsorts/day-glo farce; thoroughly post-modern and streetwise, with everyone on the stage at once … It’s interesting, also, to see how many different kinds of opera Bob Wilson manages to make something of, sometimes successfully, sometimes less. People disagree, of course, about the successes and failures: I liked his Ring, plenty didn’t.

Poppea doesn’t have to be semi-pornographic, though we’re now used to it being well sexed-up. There’s no actual sex prescribed in the libretto, as far as I remember; it’s only what modern directors and audiences read into it. This new Paris production has been criticised for being “refrigerated” in “50 shades of grey” as one reviewer cleverly put it, referring to Wilson’s usual subdued colour scheme yet hinting at the absent sex: Poppea is a schemer, supported by Amore, but still an aspiring empress, not an outright tart. But that isn’t a complaint I’d make. In a way, Wilson’s staging is almost old-fashioned in simply telling the story as it appears in the libretto, in his characteristically formal, stylised way. And as this stately formalism has things in common with “HIP” theatrical practice – the supposed reconstitution of period gesture and movement, I mean – it suits Monteverdi’s score without distracting from it: you can concentrate on the playing and singing much more closely than in busier shows.

The production also, with its superbly-made “neo-period” costumes: plain, palest-coloured silks (lemon, lavender, very pale pink…), graphic black velvet (and sometimes stylised armour) for the men, and stiff, starched-lace standing collars; its cool, careful “signature” lighting and sparse but carefully-honed and handled sets, has the austere beauty of certain dark old masters. The action, as ever with Bob Wilson, is slow-moving. But I find I fall easily into the rhythm; and I was sitting near enough at the Palais Garnier to benefit in full from the work that had gone into facial expression: the batting of eyelids, the half-open mouth, the rolling eyes - of the nurses especially, hands on hips, heads cocked knowingly, swaying around with exaggerated swagger.

There were carefully-lit walls and openings that rose and fell, columns, grey or chromed, and once an obelisk, sprouting from the ground; a grove of saplings; a symbolic, suspended cypress and an archway for Seneca; and a neat labyrinth of low hedges, gliding in, for Poppea to fall asleep in against a starry sky with a rising sliver of crescent moon. The final prop was one large and crisply-carved (where not battered) Corinthian capital, sliding imperceptibly forward during the duet.

Somehow, though the modest ensemble, more continuo than orchestra, was undeniably “HIP” (and discreetly lovely), the musical options seemed old-fashioned too: a Mozartian tenor for Nerone, a mature voice for Poppea, and, with Ottone sung by a mezzo, not a counter-tenor in sight or, more importantly still, sound. No voiceless wonders, no hysterics; just good-to-excellent singing at Monteverdi’s service.

Karine Deshayes makes, as I said, a more mature Poppea, darker-voiced, than we’re now used to, often wonderfully musical, and vocally well paired with Jeremy Ovenden’s elegant tenor – elegant, but perfectly capable of heroism, as in his ringing duet with Lucano.

Monica Bacelli has been singing Ottavia for at least a decade now, which may explain why her voice seems to make quite different sounds at different pitches – or perhaps it was just mannerism? In this production, she’s a less sympathetic, less tragic victim than usual, so less moving, and perhaps the vocal mannerism was asked for by the directors. The nurses, Arnalta especially, were excellent character singers.

Varduhi Abrahamyan is a warm, sober, bronze-toned Ottone, thoroughly convincing both vocally and dramatically. She, too, was well-paired with the strongly contrasting, silvery yet full and rounded voice of Gaëlle Arquez as Drusilla: something of a revelation. In a strong cast (as I said, there were, for once, none of those voiceless wonders “early-music” conductors often appear to like – though I’ve been told I’m wrong about that: it’s all a question of timbre) they were undoubtedly the stars of the show.

I had a lovely evening – all the more so as, being at the end of a row and near an exit, I was first out at the interval and, for a few seconds, had Garnier’s grand foyer, in all its dimly-glowing, “candlelit” splendour, then the loggia facing the avenue de l’Opéra in the evening sunlight, to myself.
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Strauss - Daphne

September 23, 2014, 1:00 pm
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Sunday September 21 2014

Conductor: Lothar Koenigs. Production: Guy Joosten. Sets: Alfons Flores. Costumes: Moritz Junge. Lighting: Manfred Voss. Video: Franc Aleu. Choreography: Aline David. Peneios: Iain Paterson. Gaea: Birgit Remmert. Daphne: Sally Matthews. Leukippos: Peter Lodahl. Apollo: Eric Cutler. Erste Magd: Tineke Van Ingelgem. Zweite Magd: Maria Fiselier. Schäfer: Matt Boehler, Gijs Van der Linden, Kris Belligh, Justin Hopkins. Orchestra and men’s chorus of La Monnaie.

Nobody these days wants to see tenors in tunics or cavorting shepherds, so Daphne, wonderful though it is, is sometimes performed in concert but too rarely staged. The director must scratch his head wondering what modern parallels he can use. Guy Joosten decided that nature-obsessed and literally tree-hugging Daphne, refusing to party with the uncouth, was defying all her parents and their milieu represented, and that, in this day and age, that would be the world of finance. Wall Street. Fair enough, as ideas go - “E for earnest endeavour,” a conductor I played under used to say during rehearsals. But as the concept was worked though, its limits were soon obvious.

Strauss
The single set was impressive, filling the stage in all directions. A staircase rose from the middle of the apron, split to left and right, then rose again, on both sides, to a gallery at the rear, thus embracing a gigantic, twisted tree – so gigantic and twisted it was hard to credit Daphne's claim it was planted “in der Kindheit Tagen”, unless something like Jack's famous beanstalk. Lighting and videos: stock market listings, greenery, a web, flames... carefully projected on the stairs or the tree, were excellently crafted and effective throughout.

As the curtain rose, we found the chorus and extras got up, not as nymphs, shepherds and cowherds, but as traders, all in nattily-tailored black (who isn't, in these updates?), gesticulating and poking at iPads flashing, like the projections, multicoloured listings and graphs. Gaea wore a yellow drag-queen (or Castafiore) dress and had big, blond hair, a glass in one hand and a decanter in the other. The two maidens were fashionistas in heels, brandishing bags, which made sense enough when they tried to coax Daphne into a frock for the festivities. Daphne herself was a kind of green-haired waif in unflattering bootees and a cardigan, Leukippos wore a pastel-coloured suit and Apollo looked distinctly un-godlike (or un-cowherd-like, for that matter) in scruffy grey, with black army boots. He brought with him (“the herd got restless, started stamping, and all together galloped away”) Arturo Di Modica's famous charging Wall Street bull, here apparently inflatable, and a highly unexpected (in the Wall Street context) golden bow.

The Bull
The tame, almost good-mannered orgy involved young men on high-tech, strap-on stilts with bright blue, low-tech, strap-on dildos. When Apollo ended this unconvincing carousal with a thunderclap, and pitch-darkness ensued, the bull deflated and the stairs, in part, collapsed. He killed Leukippos with an arrow, brandished, not shot from the golden bow. And as Daphne climbed way up into her gigantic, twisted tree for the metamorphosis, it was set alight by the traders and burned in projected flames – very effectively to Strauss's marvellous music, though puzzlingly as regards the story.

The main problem overall, of course, was that on the trading floor, little of the libretto, with its shepherds and herdsmen and fishermen and vineyards and Olympian gods, made much sense. And in truth, some of the business verged on the laughable. So in all, while the setting was magnificent, what went on in it was, dramatically speaking, less convincing.

Musically, though, it was a different matter. Lothar Koenigs coaxed far better playing than I expected from the Monnaie orchestra (this bewitching score was once described to me as "needlessly difficult" by someone who'd had to tackle it), going for a gentle, warm-sounding performance no doubt better matched to their abilities than a harder-driven, more "paroxystic" approach (I have Böhm's live recording in mind).

The supporting cast was also better than some of the critics implied. I wondered if, in some cases, we were better placed, in the circles, to hear them than the critics, who would have been given seats in the stalls - the set being what it was, the singers were often quite high up. Contrary to what I read, Birgit Remmert's low notes (and as we all know, Gaea has plenty of those) were all perfectly audible, and Iain Paterson seemed fine to me, even thrilling at times, not the weak link some implied. The maidens were excellent. (For those who don't know, Böhm's First Maiden in 1964 was Rita Streich!)

Thrilling too, very much so, was Eric Cutler's impeccable, resounding Apollo, leaving Peter Lodahl somewhat in the shade through no actual fault of his own, and to some extent stealing the show from Sally Matthews. But this is a tough role and she mastered it, with a darker, fuller voice than I remembered from her Mozart and definitely all the notes, even the curious twiddly bits - I noticed none of the intonation problems one critic claimed to have heard (but of course every performance is different: I was told Cutler cracked sometimes on the opening night). Also, again, the set played a part: Daphne was sometimes down to the side in one of the under-stair spaces, with nothing behind to push sound back into the house; when she was up on the staircase, she projected better and was thus a better match for Cutler.

I'm not a great one for favourites, but Daphne is certainly one of the Strauss operas I like best of all. This was the first time I'd seen it staged (having heard it perhaps twice in concert), and of course I was glad for that, even if the concept didn't always work out. The production was, however, leaving aside the antics, handsomely designed, and musically it was an excellent afternoon - more excellent than (the eternal pessimist - but that comes from going to opera so often) I'd dared hope for. A fair start to the new season.

Maestro Wenarto, who has not yet recorded an excerpt from Daphne, and Strauss's Dance of the Seven Veils.
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Rameau - 250 years

September 25, 2014, 6:14 am
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Born September 25 1683, died September 12 1764.
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Rossini - Il barbiere di Siviglia

September 26, 2014, 9:25 am
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ONP Bastille, Thursday September 25 2014

Conductor: Carlo Montanaro. Production: Damiano Michieletto. Sets: Paolo Fantin. Costumes: Silvia Aymonino. Lighting: Fabio Barettin. Il Conte d’Almaviva: René Barbera. Bartolo: Carlo Lepore. Rosina: Karine Deshayes. Figaro: Dalibor Jenis. Basilio: Orlin Anastassov. Fiorello: Tiago Matos. Berta: Cornelia Oncioiu. Un Ufficiale: Lucio Prete. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris.

Paris’s new production of Il barbiere– not
Rossini
altogether new, as it was created in Geneva in 2010 – should be fairly easy to describe. The curtain rises on an ordinary, slightly shabby, yellow street façade in Seville. We see the ground floor and three storeys above, but there could be more. To the left is a tapas bar (the Barracuda) with a giant ice cream cone and a table and chairs outside. In the middle, under Rosina’s balcony, is Almaviva’s (blue) car. All over is a multitude of realistic detail: the fire hydrant, the blue-and-white street numbers, the “no parking” sign, the graffiti, the plastic dustbin, the washing at the windows, the bird droppings running down the globe-shaped street lights. The outside scenes take place, naturally, in this street, with the chorus dressed as modern policemen or soldiers or as a colourful horde of modern locals, young and old.

For the indoors scenes, the whole central section rotates to reveal winding stairs and the inside of all the rooms, on all three floors, with their clashing wallpapers and tiles and variegated furniture, fixtures and fittings, realistic again down to the last detail, and as it turns, the singers wind their way in and out of the rooms and up and down the stairs. This is of course a classic stage set-up. What’s different here is simply the scale of the whole undertaking, the degree of detail and the precision of the directing. There were things going on (in rooms, on balconies... people living their lives) all the time: "a mini-universe," wrote one French critic. “They must have rehearsed for ages,” said the little old lady on my right.

There were also some nice ideas, like broadsheets of newspaper gently raining down during “La calunnia” or a young man streaking across on his bicycle during the storm – but no intellectual picking-apart of the story, which is apparently why one of the critics, in his review, practically sneered at the audience for applauding it so loudly (unusually, the production team was cheered on opening night).

The overall effect was colourful (e.g. Berta’s transparent plastic mac, printed with large sunflowers and worn over a yellow-and-orange dress), at times frenzied, with smoke billowing, washing flying off the lines and people running around in all directions while the lights flashed, and fun.

Seville
In these well-oiled circumstances it would have been good enough to have a cast of team-playing singing actors – which they were. But tenor René Barbera was a cut above that, with a true, full Rossini voice – no trace of what the French call a “voix de crécelle” – literally a “rattle-voice” but you know what they mean: a thin, bleating kind of tenorino– and a great deal of smiling charm and presence on stage. And Karine Deshayes is, or should be (and has been, for some years) an excellent Rosina: she produces beautiful sounds and sings with care and subtlety. Unfortunately I have to say that there were times – ensembles especially, but not only - when I could see her lips moving but hear nothing, and I was on row four of the stalls (which explains how I could see her lips moving). The Bastille is really no place for Rossini.

Apart from wondering why Il barbiere was once more at the Bastille, not Garnier (because it sells well, I imagine), I wondered why, as people (except me) liked the old production so much, we had to have a new one at all, or why the money couldn’t have been spent on a different piece of Rossini for a change. But even if the conducting was fairly ordinary: not bad but not really sparkling, it was lovely to re-discover Rossini’s masterpiece in an unpretentiously entertaining staging that (unlike Coline Serreau’s – which combined the kind of intellectual pretensions the grumpy critic missed with plain silly stage business) made the time fly.

Maestro Wenarto sings "Una voce poco fa" (in French).
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Wagner, Mahler (and Brahms)

September 27, 2014, 7:46 am
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Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Paris, Friday September 26 2014

Philippe Herreweghe, Conductor. Ann Hallenberg, Mezzo Soprano. Orchestre des Champs Elysées.
  • Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, prelude to act III
  • Mahler: Kindertotenlieder
  • Brahms: symphony N°4.
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For reasons I could have done without, I have a special interest in Ann Hallenberg's Mahler. Earlier this year, on account of work, I had to cancel a trip to Berlin to hear her sing Das Lied von der Erde. The Abschied I missed appeared shortly after on internet, the very day deep tragedy struck, and listening to it (many times) helped me cope. Naturally, when I saw she would be singing the Kindertotenlieder in Paris this month, I booked.

Mahler
Ann Hallenberg has fretted on line that she may not be “the kind of singer the audience wants to hear in Mahler”. She is, of course, wrong to worry. Her Mahler is as anyone who knows her singing would expect: impeccably tuned for a start, perfectly phrased and intelligently nuanced, sincerely expressed, without histrionics. Her dynamic range is wide, without affecting her excellent diction, and her timbre runs from liquid bronze to raw silk.

Her concern that “my and Maestro Herreweghe's non-sentimental interpretation will be too... untraditional” may have been better founded. His is a vibrato-free zone, his orchestra is not the VPO, and Ann Hallenberg is better-known for Baroque and Rossini (not absolutely "unsentimental" perhaps, but different kinds of sentiment), so there may well be traditionalists who are upset by it. But the result is not only more transparent; it is drier and sparer than usual, and only makes the songs more uncompromisingly bleak – surely a legitimate approach, though not a comfortable one.

The songs were preceded (without a break or applause) by a snatch of Wagner and followed, after the interval, by the Brahms. But I bought my tickets to hear Ann Hallenberg sing Mahler, and by then, not convinced I needed drier, sparer Brahms, was on my way to dinner with ravening friends.

(In May I published a link to that Berlin performance of Der Abschied.)
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Rameau - Castor et Pollux

October 14, 2014, 1:03 pm
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Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Paris, Monday October 13 2014

Conductor: Hervé Niquet. Production: Christian Schiaretti. Choreography: Andonis Foniadakis. Sets: Rudy Sabounghi. Costumes: Thibaut Welchlin. Lighting: Laurent Castaingt. Castor: John Tessier. Pollux: Edwin Crossley-Mercer. Télaïre: Omo Bello. Phœbé: Michèle Losier. Jupiter: Jean Teitgen. Mercure, un spartiate, un athlète: Reinoud van Mechelen. Cléone, une ombre heureuse: Hasnaa Bennani. Un grand prêtre: Marc Labonnette. Le Concert Spirituel.

Rameau
Nothing new, of course, but it’s still funny how widely opinions on opera differ, making you wonder if there’s any value in reading or hearing anyone else’s. As I left the Théâtre des Champs Elysées last night, one friend I ran into exclaimed “I hated every minute!” But another simply said “On ne va pas bouder son plaisir” – literally “We aren’t going to pout (or pull faces) at our pleasure”, meaning even if the evening hadn’t been perfect, it would be fastidious deliberately to pick holes in it. I was more in sympathy with friend number two.

This new production is more beautiful than dramatically compelling: the acting is placid, even when in theory thunderbolts are crashing around, hell is opening up underfoot and heroes are either dying or returning from the dead. The drama could have done with being cranked up a good notch or two. Hervé Niquet’s refusal, with his brisk, no-nonsense tempi, to milk the mourning scenes also restrained the tragedy. So we were left, rather, to admire the plastic beauties of the staging.

The curtain was up as we entered the house, revealing… more of the house: the single set echoed (perfectly) the architecture and subdued decoration of the Théâtre des Champs Elysées itself. As my neighbour remarked, when the production goes to St Etienne, this will be less obvious. The building was, in its day (just before WWI, Paul Poiret period and just in time for the Riot of Spring), avant-garde: an all-concrete structure (though faced with marble and sculpted reliefs), discreetly and to some extent austerely neo-classical, paving the way for what would become art déco. The space on stage, with simple geometry and soft colours, like the areas front-of-house, repeated at the rear the square, fluted, gilded columns that flank the stage, reproduced some of the pale, rectangular, neo-classical frescoes in the foyer (by Bourdelle, I think), outlined in gold, and was lit from above by a copy of the house’s large, circular ceiling light - a plain, ground-glass affair with a design of clouds (it was said, before the theatre last closed for much-needed restoration, that one of those large glass panels had fallen and sliced an armchair in two).

Bourdelle and a wall painting
The ladies of the chorus were in taupe-ish grey, classically-draped dresses with one shoulder bare, while the women dancers had floatier, white versions; the soloists were in more glamorous but almost equally restrained drapery, Phoebé in green, Télaïre in gold lamé. The men of the chorus sometimes had black breastplates with moulded six-packs, or at others were in priestly robes; the soloists’ breastplates (and six-packs) were gilded, Pollux had a splendid gold, hoplite helmet, and at times he and Castor had equally splendid bi-metal shields, and lances. All the men had ample, skirt-like trousers – the male dancers bare-chested. Only Jupiter, when he descended on his cloud – cleverly, that ceiling light, with its cloud design – was in an 18th century coat, black with sparkly bits. His helmet was Greek, too, but shaped, up top, like an eagle’s head. Visually, the whole show, with its shades of grey and touches of gold in golden lighting, was almost too self-consciously harmonious. Eye candy, so to speak. But who could complain?

The acting, as I said, was fairly placid, whatever the plot brought on. It seemed a shame: a bit more acting oomph in such carefully-crafted surroundings could have made this an outstanding show. The ballets were, however, vigorous, writhing and semaphoric – they must have been exhausting for the dancers – and made the scenes in hell, wreathed in smoke and lit in red, quite effective, in a neo-baroque way. They were booed at the end, as usual, but the booing was soon out-clapped and out-cheered. I’ve seen worse ballets at the opera. Far worse – though friend number one claimed he never had, so perhaps he was among the booers. With all the mention of “ombres” (shades) underground, there was interplay with shadows on a screen lowered down, which, at the end, showed the expanding universe and a spinning zodiac.

The cast was young, so in some cases inexperience showed, but thankfully not a cast of voiceless wonders. Both tenors, John Tessier and Reinoud van Mechelen, were undeniably able to sing the bravura arias Rameau threw at them, which isn’t always the case with these young, HIP casts. Tessier was, however, at his limit and maybe a touch lightweight for the part; van Mechelen was not, belting out his “Sound the trumpets” (“Éclatez, fières trompettes”) number fearlessly, alone in front of the riveted gold safety curtain. Edwin Crossley-Mercer, a handsome figure with short grey hair (as opposed to Castor's, long and fair), confirmed the good impression he made on me in Platée earlier this year, even if, as I've often said here, rapid vibrato isn't to my taste. Jean Teitgen was a stentorian Jupiter, faultless to my ear, as I like noise, but probably a bit over the top to some people's.

Jupiter's cloud
Talking of widely differing opinions, the first review I've seen published raves about Omo Bello. She certainly has a good voice, but (I suppose this is quibbling), despite her good acting, facially at least, it seemed to me a bit premature for her to be singing a tragédienne's part like Télaïre and, to my (cloth, if you like) ear it seemed to me her intonation was at times slightly unstable. It struck me, then, that she was almost overshadowed by the interesting, bronzey timbre of Michèle Losier and even the very sweet singing of Hasnaa Bennani, unexpected in her lesser roles.

As mentioned above, Hervé Niquet's conducting is of the brisk, no-nonsense kind - to the point, very nearly, of heartlessness, undermining the work's tragic potential. I also think his orchestra lacks the rhythmic clarity, the springiness, of some of his confrères'. But that's just me, and at any rate the playing is at least efficacious. The sound is robust, almost lush. The chorus was excellent.

This is a handsome show. Cameras were in the house for television. Perhaps the production will make it to DVD, in which case it will be a nice addition to the Rameau catalogue. My mother, long a Rameau fan, will enjoy it.
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Puccini - Tosca

October 24, 2014, 5:45 am
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ONP Bastille, Thursday October 16 2014

Conductor: Daniel Oren. Production: Pierre Audi. Sets: Christof Hetzer. Costumes: Robby Duiveman. Lighting: Jean Kalman. Floria Tosca: Martina Serafin. Mario Cavaradossi: Marcelo Alvarez. Scarpia: Ludovic Tézier. Cesare Angelotti: Wojtek Smilek. Spoletta: Carlo Bosi. Sciarrone: André Heyboer. Il Sagrestano: Francis Dudziak. Un carceriere: Andrea Nelli. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris. Hauts-de-Seine and ONP children’s choruses.

Puccini
The last time I saw Tosca was in New York, in the Met’s tired old Zeffirelli production. I hadn’t seen it in Paris for a long time, the reason being the awfulness of the previous staging: once was enough. But for the 2014-2015 season, the ONP at last announced a new one, by Pierre Audi, so we decided which of the three casts looked most promising, and booked.

In the event, it was a let-down. There was little passion in this production (“on s’ennuie” said a friend at the first interval) , though as the evening went on and, act by act, the sets got uglier, there was some dramatic improvement. It was essentially a perfectly conventional production in new (but ugly) sets, the “big idea” being a (very big) wooden cross.

In act one, it was lying flat on the stage, bunker-like, one arm towards the audience leaving a space on either side: to the left, the area in front of the Attavanti chapel, to the right Mario’s fresco - oddly, not a Madonna as such but a bevy of naked beauties borrowed from Bouguereau. People entered from the top down a narrow staircase in a slit. In acts two and three the cross was up in the air, hovering first over Scarpia’s round, cluttered, blood-red room - more like a provincial notary’s office than an apartment in the Palazzo Farnese - and finally, not over the Castel Sant’Angelo as you might expect, but over a sort of army camp in marshy land with charred trees and clumps of grass, reminiscent of a Paul Nash WWI battlefield. The little shepherd popped up to sing his song, then lay down again. No sign of a flock.

La Madonna
The costumes were standard Tosca issue, apart from there being more black leather than was likely in period Roman tailoring.

As sometimes happens, the production team seem to have focused their efforts on the overall concept and design and neglected the directing per se. Just as, in the past, singers used to bring their own costumes, here it looked like they’d each brought their own acting. As a result, Marcelo Alvarez and Martina Serafin formed an unlikely couple. In the first two acts Serafin played Tosca as a rather swanky, corseted bourgeoise with a selection of silent-film gestures: clutching her pearls, cupping her face, clawing the walls… Not a million miles from Lady Billows in her younger days, and as such, not someone you were touched by. Meanwhile, Alvarez’ Mario was an affable, ordinary, back-slapping bloke you might have a few drinks with down at the local in Buenos Aires. So you couldn’t see why they ever got together and there was little sign of passionate attachment between them.

In act two, Ludovic Tézier was more convincing as Scarpia – stolid and static, as usual, but with quite an effective set of wry and occasionally faintly lascivious facial expressions (though these must have been wasted on people up in the gods). And in act three, in a plain dress, Martina Serafin literally let her hair down and recovered her humanity. So dramatically, as I said, the opera would have ended better than it had begun, if only at the very end Tosca had had a castle to leap off. Instead, she just walked into a dazzling white light at the rear, leaving you to wonder what was supposed to have happened to her. Assumption?

Castel Sant'Angelo
Martina Serafin’s vocal resources are considerable, so there was nothing to complain about on that score; it was just a pity she wasn’t as human all the way through as she became at the end. Marcelo Alvarez’ resources are comparably impressive, but he put a great deal of effort into reining them in and nuancing his singing. In his case, it was a pity, IMHO, that, with the conductor’s apparent complicity (stopping the orchestra), he deliberately went for applause at the end of his big numbers. That looked hammy. Ludovic Tézier audibly hadn’t yet got over whatever it was he was suffering from at the start of the run: unusually for him, his voice even cracked. But he still sang with his usual elegance – not a typical Scarpia, but a musical one. And if there was, as I said, little passion in this production, Daniel Oren’s conducting, which seemed quite placid to me (and quite drawn-out to some others), was no doubt partly responsible.

Overall, despite the sound singing, not an exciting evening. Which is not at all the conclusion you hope to reach after Tosca.

Maestro Wenarto sings "Vissi d'Arte".
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