We left at the interval...

La Monnaie, Brussels, Sunday October 26 2014

Conductor: Koen Kessels. Choreography and production: Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. Sets and videos: Eugenio Szwarcer. Costumes: Khanh Le Thanh. Lighting: Willy Cessa. Soprano: Claron McFadden. Mezzo-soprano: Sara Fulgoni. Counter-tenor: Gerald Thompson. Tenor: Ed Lyon. Bass: Mark S. Doss. Dance: Eastman - Aimilios Arapoglou, Damien Jalet, Jason Kittelberger, Kazutomi Kozuki, Elias Lazaridis, Johnny Lloyd, Nemo Oeghoede, Shintaro Oue, Guro Nagelhus Schia, Ira Mandela Siobhan. Child sopranos: Gabriel Kuti, Theo Lally, Gabriel Crozier. Orchestra and Chorus of La Monnaie.

“Whether you call it shell shock or post-traumatic stress disorder, war creates serious psychological wounds. A hundred years after the outbreak of the Great War, Belgian composer Nicholas Lens and Australian author and musician Nick Cave have written a new opera on this theme. In twelve poems or canti he evokes the anonymous protagonists of the war in a highly personal and fluent style: soldiers, mothers, orphans, prisoners, etc. The testimonies of these individual characters, with whom everyone can identify, make the universal call for a humane and peaceful world. […] This new creation by La Monnaie has been incorporated into the official calendar of the Federal Committee for the Organisation of the Commemoration of World War I.” From La Monnaie’s website.

Nicholas Lens

Nicholas Lens calls his new work an opera, and he knows best, but it is subtitled “A Requiem of War” and, as mentioned in the text published by La Monnaie, above, is structured in twelve “cantos” written by Nick Cave. In my usual ignorance, I had to Google to find out who Nick Cave was. If I found his texts flat and uninspiring - “I float, I emote,” for example - that’s probably also more evidence of my ignorance. People used to his songs would know better, and undeniably the overall structure was clear.

I should imagine the kind of shortcut-by-analogy I’m about to take to describe the music drives composers mad, but I see no other simple way to give an idea of what a new work sounds like. It’s somewhere between mature-to-late Britten and Tippett’s A Child of Our Time (without the spirituals), with occasional excursions into Ligeti (the opening especially, reminiscent, no doubt superficially, of the "Dies Irae" of his Requiem) and brief hints of Gershwin. It is accessible to any regular classical-music listener and is often tonal in sound, at times even “traditionally” melodic, but without dumbing-down into easy listening. It calls for a large orchestra, with a piano, a cartload of percussion instruments, and a couple of balloons to burst; so large that at times (but not often) the singers are nearly drowned, making the supertitles especially useful.

Nick Cave

The vocal parts are mostly quite conventional; the soprano’s is perhaps the exception, requiring some stratospheric notes closer to screaming than singing. That would explain why Claron McFadden was more stretched than the others in the excellent cast: any soprano (with the possible exception of Yma Sumac, who might, however, have looked out of place in a commemoration of WWI) would be. Sara Fulgoni was so excellent I now wonder why I didn’t admire her Maddalena in Rigoletto. Ignorance again, probably. Perhaps I don’t like the part. Ed Lyon, who comes in for a fair (or rather, unfair) amount of ill-natured stick on websites, seems to me to be firming up and maturing into an excellent English-type tenor. Mark S. Doss was very impressive indeed. Gerald Thompson started out less so, but improved as the work progressed.

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s staging was legible and neatly executed, seamlessly combining acting, dance, video and scene changes. The stage was white, with a white rear wall that folded into terraces of various heights, making platforms for the performers, or video screens. (At the beginning the dancers, dead, dropped off these high shelves alarmingly.) The men's costumes were the various uniforms of the armies at war, and to create a sense of sheer number, of wave after wave of soldiers and officers thrust to their deaths, the performers appeared in different uniforms as the afternoon went on. The soprano, a universal wife-and-mother figure, wore a plain, wifely, motherly, maroon dress.

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui

The dancers, nearly all men, kept up a kind of perpetuum mobile, not only dancing (writhing expressively) and dying in quick succession, over and over, rolling from stretcher to stretcher, but shifting around, as they danced, a small selection of props: sandbags, wooden crosses, stretchers and rifles, and using them to create new spaces or structures on stage. The singers, both soloists and chorus, were incorporated, as I just said, seamlessly into this carefully-choreographed action. Videos of soldiers in various positions: crouching, crawling, shooting, falling, dead… were projected on to the floor – this was very effective from where I sat but presumably less so from the stalls – and equally effectively on to plain white cut-out figures lined up on the terraces.

The production was, overall, impressively slick – which was the one thing about this excellent show that “bugged” me a tiny bit: the war itself was, of course, a humongous, lethal mess.

This is a work it would be good to listen to at home, or better still watch. I see La Monnaie willl stream it in November. Perhaps, after that, it will be available to buy. I’d like to.

ONP Garnier, Monday October 27 2014

Conductor: Philippe Jordan. Production: Zabou Breitman. Sets: Jean-Marc Stehlé. Costumes: Arielle Chanty. Choreography: Sophie Tellier. Lighting: André Diot. Selim: Jürgen Maurer. Konstanze: Erin Morley. Blonde: Anna Prohaska. Belmonte: Bernard Richter. Pedrillo: Paul Schweinester. Osmin: Lars Woldt. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris.

Mozart

Believe it or not, I was actually in Istanbul, having lunch in the grounds of Topkapi Palace* (in Turkish, "Topkapı Sarayı" hence "Serail" in Mozart's title), when I got a text message from Paris: "Entführung is dismal! Opéra de Limoges style." As it happens (this will seem far-fetched, but truth is supposed to be stranger than fiction) the person opposite me during lunch was from Limoges, and took umbrage at the implied slur on her home town. She was with me at last night's performance of the Entführung in question, at the Palais Garnier (in Turkish, "Garnier Sarayı", naturally – unless some phonetically-schooled Turks write it “Gağniye”). Giving her verdict at the interval, she hadn't forgotten that message: "Tell him (a) up yours and (b) even in Limoges they'd never dare..." - meaning never dare put on such a dire show. Wondering what to write about it, I was lost for words. Fortunately the more resourceful "Opera Cake" has since reminded me that "moronic" and "moron" exist: this was a moronic production that took us all for morons.

By what process, I have often wondered, do people who have never directed an opera before get invited to do it? Of course, you have to start somewhere; and of course, sometimes it's a success: I remember being surprised when Warlikowski, who admitted he hadn’t a clue about opera, was asked, but he has since become my favourite director. As usual, I had to look Zabou Breitman up. She has acted in lots of films, and the very person who sent me the text message tells me she is genuinely talented at that. I'll take his word for it. Her production was indescribably cringe-making, like the very worst of school plays, with wobbly painted sets and shaky crepe-paper vegetation, a brainless oriental fantasy worthy of a tacky provincial Christmas panto, with acting at least as badly directed and far fewer laughs; indeed no laughs at all. Benny Hill would have done a better job. My neighbour swore blonde’s litter was copied from a Belgian cartoon strip called Marsupilami.

Blonde's litter

I felt sorry for the extras, looking forlorn as they slouched around with nothing to do, and the belly dancers: yes, there were even belly dancers. The spoof "silent film" images projected on the curtain during the overture showed promise that was not fulfilled. I imagine they were intended to prepare us for a naive treatment of the oriental theme. But if the action was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, I'm afraid it just looked incompetently directed; and if the use of exclusively Moorish designs (including some djellabas among the rag-bag of corny costumes) in a supposedly Ottoman setting was meant to be an elaborate joke, it fell flat: it came across as sheer ignorance.

The Paris Opera website rattles on regardless about the serious messages behind the plot: “... humanist values […] the virtues of tolerance and fidelity in love, the celebration of human goodness [which] prefigure those developed in The Magic Flute and La Clemenza di Tito, [Mozart's] final operatic masterpieces. A metaphor for the combat between Liberty and all forms of absolutism, Belmonte’s quest to deliver Konstanze from Selim’s yoke resounded throughout Europe, inspired at that time by the spirit of the Enlightenment. ‘All our efforts to express the essence of things came to nothing in the aftermath of Mozart’s appearance. Die Entführung towered above us all,’ wrote Goethe, overwhelmed by the composer’s nobleness of spirit and radiant optimism.” Excusez du peu. Well, there was no sign of anything of that sort in last night’s shipwreck.

A future opera director

Whatever their intrinsic merits - and Bernhard Richter, for one, has undeniably displayed those, as Atys, for example, in 2011 - the mostly young singers were not up to their parts in a space of Garnier's size (Garnier may be smaller than the Bastille but it still has 2,000 seats) and over a modern orchestra. Konstanze's dramatic "Welcher Wechsel herrscht in meiner Seele" was met last night with excruciating silence. And not everyone was as audible as Erin Morley: my elderly neighbour (on the fourth row) wondered aloud if her hearing was going as, so she claimed, some of the soloists were inaudible. The impression I got, though admittedly I may just have been projecting my own dismay on the cast, was that everyone involved realized that this was one giant turkey and had lost heart, for which they can't be blamed.

The only brief pleasure I got personally from the undertaking was listening to the excellent quartet of soloists ordered out of the pit by Selim himself to accompany "Martern aller Arten" on stage. "Bravi"to them. If the evening improved in any way after the interval, I can't say: we were off to an early dinner - mercimek çorbası, köfte, sütlaç at the Turks'.

*At Karakol, between the entrance gate and St Irene's church. This is an excellent restaurant, open-air in fine weather with views down to the Sea of Marmara, and it's a shame it doesn't open in the evening as excellent restaurants are hard to find at dinner time over in the old city.

Maestro Wenarto sings "Konstanze! dich wiederzusehen!"

La Monnaie, Brussels, Sunday December 7 2014

Conductor: Ludovic Morlot. Production: Krzysztof Warlikowski. Sets & Costumes: Malgorzata Szczesniak. Lighting: Felice Ross. Video: Denis Guéguin. Don Giovanni: Jean-Sébastien Bou. Il Commendatore: Sir Willard White. Donna Anna: Barbara Hannigan. Don Ottavio: Topi Lehtipuu. Donna Elvira: Rinat Shaham. Leporello: Andreas Wolf. Masetto: Jean-Luc Ballestra. Zerlina: Julie Mathevet. Orchestra and Chorus of La Monnaie.

Mozart (again)

You can't win them all. After a series of successful productions (in my view at any rate: his Makropoulos Affair is one of the Bastille’s best ever), I suppose Krzysztof Warlikowski was bound to come a cropper at some stage, and that was exactly how French daily Le Figaro chose to head its review "Don Giovanni : Warlikowski se casse les dents", i.e. Warlikowski comes a cropper. You expect something novel, thoughtful and interesting from him, but here he disappointed by dishing up what any lesser "regie" director might have (and so often has) dished up – mirthlessly cynical high life/hi jinx with embarrassing simulated sex. Cunnilingus coloratura is by now a real cliché, yet Donna Anna sang “Non mi dir” with Don Ottavio’s head up her coat.

Visually it was glamorous and slickly done, with faultlessly chic costumes all round (“the Don wears Prada”, you might say), the tightest, shortest possible dresses and highest possible heels for Donna Anna, and superb coloured lighting – far better done, in its genre, than Andrea Breth’s Traviata in the same house two years’ back, so I wondered why the Brussels audience booed so loudly this time. Exasperation, probably, at being served more of much the same (and they may not have liked Donna Anna shooting Ottavio in the head at the end).

The acting was, nevertheless, outstanding and there were, still, some striking theatrical images - the Don’s death in particular, on his own butcher’s block (the dinner he prepared was raw meat only) - provided you managed not to be distracted by black dancers flailing around and foaming at the mouth, references, so it seemed, to the “Hottentot Venus” or (as the Commander came back from the dead) voodoo trances.

In the sleek circumstances, you couldn’t help suspecting casting was based on looks (especially figure) first, voice later. The suitably slender, blue-suited Topi Lehtipuu sang stylishly enough and Sir Willard White was of course up to his part - more so than Bou, stretched to his limit. Barbara Hannigan’s (amazingly long-legged) performance was oddly mannered, reminding me of Maria Ewing at her most flesh-creepingly irritating. Rinat Shaham, after a rocky start, had her moments: in an otherwise stonily unresponsive afternoon, only she and Hannigan got any applause, both after their big act-two numbers. The rest of the cast were more or less out of their depth; and when Warlikowski had everyone singing from boxes at the sides, no-one was properly audible. I wondered if it was Ludovic Morlot’s own idea to drag the score (recits especially) out to three-and-a-half hours, but imagine the director also had a hand in it, for dramatic (and somehow un-Mozartian) effect. The orchestra was lacklustre indeed and even, at times, sounded out of tune. That surely must have been an illusion, due to my own tin ear?

An eminent musicologist has suggested to me that people are now simply fed up with “regie” productions (leading me to fear a return to “period practice” along the stilted, dust-blurred lines of Cadmus et Hermione at the Opéra Comique or Hippolyte et Aricie at Garnier). Of course, I can understand people being fed up with bad ones; but to me, Warlikowski has always been very good, when not out-and-out excellent. I hope, therefore, that this Don G. is the exception that will prove the rule and that the next time I see one of his shows, he will be back on more imaginative form.

Maestro Wenarto shows how it should be done.

Bozar, Brussels, Sunday December 21 2014

Conductor: Ludovic Morlot. Vierge Marie: Stéphanie d'Oustrac. Saint-Joseph: Lionel Lhote. Hérode: Paul Gay. Le père de famille / Polydorus: Frédéric Caton. Le récitant / Centurion: Yves Saelens. Orchestra & Chorus of La Monnaie, Reflection Vocal Ensemble, La Monnaie Children’s Choir.

Pendant dix ans Marie, et Joseph avec elle / Virent fleurir en lui la sublime douceur, / La tendresse infinie / A la sagesse unie.

Berlioz trying to stay awake

“Sagesse” is probably not a word you’d usually apply to Berlioz, whose music is always full of surprises, often quite startling ones; but “sublime douceur” and “tendresse infinie” seem to sum up well the score of L’Enfance du Christ, one of his milder efforts.

Sunday afternoon’s performance at the Bozar in Brussels showed little sign of conductor, Ludovic Morlot having recently stated:

"I can only note that the orchestra and I have not succeeded in sharing a common artistic vision”.

He will be leaving at the end of the month, having served only two out of five years as musical director of Belgium’s Royal Opera. Stéphanie d’Oustrac was a vocally flawless Virgin Mary, round and dark in sound, though looking oddly detached. Lionel Lhote, someone I’ve often admired in Brussels, was irreproachable as an elegant Joseph (elegant vocally; I’m not so sure about his Dickensian evening outfit) perhaps the best I’ve ever heard him yet. Paul Gay, towering over the conductor even though the latter was standing on a podium, was far better employed here than as Gounod’s Méphistophélès at the Bastille, though still lacking the one or two lowest notes called for. Yves Saelens was a sweet, delicate lyric tenor. Frédéric Caton did what he had to do. And the orchestra, once warmed up, was on its best behaviour.

Christ in Brussels

I did write, regarding Morlot’s conducting of Britten’s War Requiem in the same hall, that “the main shortcoming […] was, to me, lack of dynamic variety. It was mostly loud to very loud…” Once again, it seemed to me he might have taken advantage of the Bozar’s acoustics to play with more delicacy and less tendency to cover the singers. And as usual with Morlot, there were times when I could personally have done with more urgency. But apart from that it was a nice, warm performance, very suitable for Christmas (think “sherry commercials”), and warmly received – so no hard feelings, apparently.

The only question is how much simple piety hard-boiled atheists can take in a hot hall after a substantial Belgian lunch without nodding off. “C’est très beau,” said my neighbour. “Mais qu’est-ce qu’on s’en fout.”

Alexander Pirogov sings Shaklovity's aria from Khovanshchina.

Hungarian State Opera - Erkel Theatre, Budapest, Saturday January 17 2015

Conductor: Gergely Kesselyák. Turandot: Szilvia Rálik. Altoum: István Róka. Timur: Kolos Kováts. Calaf: Atilla Kiss B. Liu: Gabriella Létay Kiss. Ping: Zoltán Kelemen. Pang: István Horváth. Pong: NC. Mandarin: Sándor Egri.

Puccini

Per capita GDP in the US is about $53,000; in France, it's around $44,000; in Hungary, it's $13,000. Yet the Hungarian State Opera somehow manages to maintain two houses – its magnificent, gilded, neo-renaissance main one and the more modern (and larger) Erkel Theatre – offering a season of fully-staged operas with orchestra, chorus and, in many cases, soloists of international standard. The most expensive seats at the Erkel cost the equivalent of 12 euros (at the main house, that is doubled). The productions may be more or less sophisticated, but clearly this is a company that works hard to give its patrons the best it can with the funds available.

A real critic, paid to be impartially objective, may not take such things into account. But as my (French) neighbour put it on Saturday, when the Paris Opera, with its annual subsidy of 100 million euros, is capable of putting on a Seraglio with singers barely audible even at Garnier, and so dire to watch that despite the 190-euro ticket price we escaped at the first opportunity, in Budapest you're inclined to be indulgent.

Still, as Calaf, Atilla Kiss B. was more rough than ready. His voice was so uneven in the first act you sometimes weren't quite sure what he was doing: singing, moaning, groaning or what. It oddly brought to my mind one of those battered jalopies you sometimes see that have been patched up with doors, bonnet and boot lid of different colours. His “Sia benedetta!” was worrying: a bizarre, strangled sort of sound, so it was probably just as well that in the third and highest “Gli enigmi sono tre” he was covered by the soprano. Yet he somehow recovered for “Nessun Dorma”, scooping up into the higher notes from well below, and scored a huge hit with the local fans, the conductor having helped, much to my surprise, by choosing what you might call the “concert ending” of the aria, coming to a (thunderous) full stop that shamelessly called for applause.

Erkel Theatre

Gabriella Létay Kiss sang fairly loudly throughout, with quite a hard sound, so I missed some of the potential subtleties of the part. But remember, I'm contrasting this production favourably with one in Paris where we could barely hear the singers at all.

Szilvia Rálik, when singing softly, i.e. after she'd gone completely to pieces (as Anna Russell said of Brünnhilde, for those who don't get the quote) in Alfano's ghastly final scenes, had a very beautiful voice with an interesting timbre. Not at all the Wagnerian kind of voice sometimes cast as Turandot. I suppose we can say she's a lirico-spinto, as before that, much of the time she was pushed to her absolute limit – but not beyond it. She can undeniably sing the part, indeed is singing it eight times this month. The question is whether she should. It would be a shame to harm such a fine instrument. (I hope to hear her later this year as Jenufa, which should be more comfortable for her.)

The chorus, sometimes on stage and sometimes dispersed around the house, sang very well (better than they acted). The orchestra too, only conductor Gergely Kesselyák tended to bash his way through the score, giving us real thrills in the loud bits that were meant to be such (the brass, by the way, were in a raised stage-side box and as such especially audible), but very little of the poetry or mystery that should also, quite often, be there.

The single set was made of lightweight, fretted structures in red and gold lacquer, with openwork staircases that could be moved about as required and roofed pavilions that could be raised above the rear terrace as required for the appearance, for example, of the emperor. The faintly rickety, dusty look quite faithfully recalled the Forbidden City in Beijing and there were definitely some visually effective moments. The soloists' costumes were colourful, in some cases visibly copied from actual Chinese theatre (Ping, Pang and Pong, white faced with red streaks, were wreathed in flags; the plebs, though, were all in simple black). Turandot had the usual, Medusa-like headgear, but also, in this case, a gold mask that Calaf ripped off towards the end (i.e. when he might equally have been ripping off her bodice).

That was one of the production's ideas, and a better one than the chorus's rapid semaphoric gestures, which they managed only fitfully, or Calaf's disappearance, once he'd decided to go for the riddle, through a brightly-lit moon door (or science-fiction Stargate) that opened and closed like James Bond's camera shutter. He made no attempt at acting but simply strutted around and took up poses, legs apart. I'm not sure his grim facial expression changed once and I must admit I wondered what Liu and Turandot saw in him (And if looks count, Turandot should really have married the Prince of Persia). Szilvia Rálik, on the contrary, threw herself into the role, so it wasn't surprising to see her turn up for dinner afterwards at the same restaurant as my little party: she must have been starving. I'd be quite happy to see her turn up at the Paris opera, in slightly less demanding roles.

Incidentally, there is noticeably no sign, in Budapest, of opera audiences growing old: everyone is there, mum and dad, grandma and granddad, the kids and courting couples, all dressed up to the nines and apparently enjoying every minute. Paris's Seraglio wasn't worth twelve times as much.

Maestro Wenarto sings "Nessun Dorma".

Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Paris, Tuesday January 20 2015

Conductor: Rafael Payare. Wiener Philharmoniker.

Schubert: Symphony n°8, D. 759, "Unfinished"
Tchaikovsky: Symphony n°4
(Encore) Eduard Strauss: Mit Chic (polka)

Tchaikovsky

For the 2014-2015 season I decided we'd have a change from quitting second-rate performances of second-rate scores at the interval by dropping one of our usual opera subscriptions and buying a series of visiting (i.e. non-French) orchestras at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées.

On account of work (as anyone who goes to operas and concerts knows, these things have to be paid for), I missed the first of these wholly orchestral concerts: the St Petersburg Philharmonic in Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky (in this case, the 6th), magnificent I was told by the friends who were able to attend. This VPO concert was thus, for me, the first, and it was largely a disappointment: I had hoped to be thoroughly wowed, and wasn't.

Rafael Payare has been Dudamel's assistant but, counter-intuitively, is "aussi austère que son compatriote Gustavo Dudamel est flamboyant" (altamusica.com: "as austere as his compatriot Gustavo Dudamel is flamboyant"). Bent over and wearing a long coat, he has, leaving aside the afro hairdo, the dour demeanour of a Presbyterian minister. This should (apart from the hair) go down well in Ulster, where he now works. His conducting is meticulous and restrained, dry almost (using only limited vibrato), businesslike and brisk in spirit but not in tempo, avoiding showy effect and reining in the VPO, from whom he elicited neither very loud fortissimi nor very soft pianissimi.

Of course there were moments when the VPO's virtuosity shone through. The four-square togetherness of the brass. The soaring horn tuttis. The precision of the piccolo in those terrible twiddly bits in the scherzo, that brought an admiring smile to the face of the principal 'cellist. (There must be times when flautists wish they could strangle Tchaikovsky - think of the equally twiddly bits in the finale of the famous piano concerto.) The precision of the pizzicato in the whole of that scherzo. The orchestra's amazing ability to come to a sudden, absolute silence after a gigantic chord with cymbals.

But on a cold night, a restrained performance of Schubert's 8th is no way to warm things up (why don't orchestras do overtures any more?). This concert only really got going halfway through the first movement of the Tchaikovsky - and indeed, the end of that first movement drew an impressed whistle from someone that made the orchestra laugh, and a brief ripple of applause. So there was some excitement. But ultimately, the meticulousness and restraint (which incidentally had Tchaikovsky's frequent "handovers" from strings to woodwind to brass and back again sounding more clunky than thrilling) made for rather a dull evening.

In the end (literally), it was the (single) Viennese encore that brought the orchestra out of its strait-jacket. It was the most convincing part of the programme - short enough to leave us plenty of time for a warming lentil soup at the Turks'.

Lyric Opera, Chicago, Monday February 2 2015, -11° C

Conductor: Dmitri Jurowski. Production: John Caird. Designer: Bunny Christie. Lighting: Duane Schuler. Tosca: Tatiana Serjan. Cavaradossi: Brian Jagde. Scarpia: Evgeny Nikitin. Angelotti: Richard Ollarsaba. Sacristan: Dale Travis. Spoletta: Rodell Rosel. Sciarrone: Bradley Smoak. Shepherd: Annie Wagner. Jailer: Anthony Clark Events. Lyric Opera Orchestra and Chorus.

Puccini

In (freezing, of course) Chicago for work, I decided to take the opportunity to hear, in Tosca, two singers new to me: Tatiana Serjan, who has sung a lot of Verdi, often with Muti; and Brian Jagde, a young American tenor who will be new to most people, standing in for Misha Didyk.

Jagde has a big, bold voice of the “Domingo-tenor” kind, with darkish-gold undertones but a bright top, able really to nail the highest notes in the score without hesitation. He was better at loud than soft, and neither looked nor sounded Latin (his acting had more frat-boy charm than gravitas), but perhaps more subtlety, dynamic variety and general smoochiness will come with experience. At any rate, he delivered some real thrills, which these days is far from guaranteed.

Serjan has a biggish voice too, though not as big as I’d imagined from hearing YouTube clips – not that I trust those any more than they deserve – with a lot of metal to it and just enough “edge”. On the whole I’d say she saved her best singing for the best bits, and then it was really very, very good. I often find “Vissi d’arte” a tedious interruption (same goes for “O mio babbino caro”) but here, as Serjan is a convincing singing actress, it was urgent and vital, one of the best I’ve ever heard. Just two reservations: instead of opening out generously, her topmost notes, while in tune and by no means sounding perilous, closed disappointingly into a rapid vibrato; and her diction was as hot-potato as it comes.

Nikitin was as worrying as ever. You always think something is about to go badly wrong, but it doesn’t. His singing seems to be more and more "Russian" - I don’t really know how to describe what I mean: a kind of wild, throw-away style that’s sometimes close to Sprechgesang but is oddly effective. For Scarpia, his voice is relatively light, but while critics have said he lacked “noirceur” (well, perhaps not using that particular French word but I know what I mean) and he strained at the top, I still found him stylish.

Dmitri Jurowski’s conducting was placid and disconcertingly low key, but there were admittedly/undeniably some tender, loving moments. The playing was not always strictly together, surprisingly for an American orchestra, and coordination with the stage was shaky: it seemed to me that at one point in act two the singers were genuinely lost for a few bars. The chorus, however, was very good.

The production had some ideas, not especially convincing. The space was the same in all three acts: a gloomy hall, serving as church, palace (sort of: see later) and prison, with a gaping hole in the roof and a couple of shell-holes at the back. War-torn, we assumed. Also, each act opened with one of those flimsy curtains popular in the eighties being brought down and dragged off, and, as back then, one of them got stuck on a bit of scenery and had to be prised off by a stage-hand. The first was white with bloodstains; the second red and black; the last black and red.

The grim, narrow church looked more protestant than Roman, and when the crowd arrived in equally gloomy costumes from the period Puccini composed the piece, I thought of Peter Grimes in Brussels. You wondered, later, why such a fancy Te Deum was led by such a lavishly-costumed old cardinal in such a drab chapel.

Mario was painting large details of the Madonna (i.e. a single, giant “occhio” per fresco) on large chunks of plaster that had presumably fallen from the gaping hole, one per storey of his three-storey wooden scaffold. The directing wasn’t always in line with the drama (my idea of it at any rate). It seemed odd that Mario should lean jauntily on his scaffold, arms crossed, to banter sociably about his jealous girlfriend with an Angelotti on his last legs, and to me Tosca’s light-hearted flirtatiousness sat oddly beside her faith and jealousy. At this point, and right up to the execution scene, as at the Met, the supertitles had the audience in stitches – but you do see Tosca subtitled as a “melodramma eroi-comico” after all. The lady behind me taught me that a guffaw could actually be quite a high-pitched sound. The translation was modern and sometimes surprising: l’Attavanti was a “slut” and Tosca, having stabbed Scarpia, a “bitch”.

Right weather, wrong opera

Tosca was dressed, by the way, as Mimi, so eventually I forgot Peter Grimes and decided this was Tosca costumed as La Bohème– apparently the director was taking cues from the original play as to her humble origins. OK, by the time of the opera she’s supposed to be the ultimate diva but, well, we’re used to this kind of thing (and more) by now… And, the thing that has got some critics all worked up: in each act we had the ghost of Toscas past, an angelic child in white, holding out her arms: Tosca’s humble origins and lost innocence, emerging almost literally from the woodwork at times of high drama – and singing the shepherd’s song.

The act one and act three sets – act three being a an empty prison with that same gaping hole in the roof – were ugly, but the act two one was surprisingly good, once the gauzy curtain had been whisked away: not Scarpia’s sumptuous office, but a store-room piled high with grey crates and Roman sculptures (a reference, it seems, to wartime spoils). The action was fairly conventional, apart from the little white ghost arriving à point to remind Tosca to lay a rosary on the late Scarpia’s chest, though Tosca’s concert dress was hardly the spectacular John Singer Sargent number it could/should have been: she still looked like Mimi: this time Mimi dressed up for a night out at Momus’s café.

Once Tosca’s little ghost had brought down the final gauze and sung her shepherd’s song at the rear, gazing at the stars, act three took place, as I’ve already said twice, in a prison – a prison-cum-madhouse, as there were other mad-looking inmates bumbling about in shabby white uniforms. Hangman’s nooses hung through the by-now-familiar gaping hole, and Angelotti's body was brought in and strung up, spinning, according to Scarpia’s act two instructions (“Ebbene, lo si appenda morto alle forche!”). Once more, the action otherwise took place quite conventionally (to frequent peals of laughter: “Ma prima... ridi amor... prima sarai fucilato”, hohoho…), with a very creditable bang when the guns went off (compensating for the very unconvincing bourdon of St Peter’s, which sounded like someone banging a tin can with a spoon), making the novices in the audience jump, until Tosca stabbed herself in the neck with the same knife as she had used to dispose of Scarpia, and jumped off the ledge at the rear.

So… in the end, neither a Tosca to die for nor a particular failure, just better-than-often singing in a ho-hum-well-never-mind production. And off into the glacial night for a late dinner. Visitors to Chicago who find it hard to swallow dinner at tea-time may like to know that the highly-recommended (by a food-mad Buckeye in N. Carolina) Purple Pig, a few minutes’ taxi-ride away at 500 N. Michigan, is open till midnight.

Maestro Wenarto sings Recondite Harmony.

La Monnaie, Brussels, Sunday February 8 2015

Conductor: Christophe Rousset. Production: Pierre Audi. Sets and Costumes: Patrick Kinmonth. Lighting: Matthew Richardson. Tamerlano: Christophe Dumaux. Bajazete: Jeremy Ovenden. Asteria: Sophie Karthäuser. Andronico: Delphine Galou. Irene: Ann Hallenberg. Leone: Nathan Berg. Zaide: Caroline D’Haese. Les Talens Lyriques.

Händel

The last time I heard Tamerlano was in 2005, in concert, so I was glad to see it appear again in La Monnaie’s 2014-2015 schedule – staged, this time. Pierre Audi’s production, originally conceived for Drottningholm in 2000, is not traditional – I mean, it doesn’t attempt to reconstruct a period performance. But it is conservative to the point of austerity. “No fellatio this time," a friend noted at the interval.

The bare boards are framed by a receding succession of grey panels, blueish or greenish, depending on the lighting, with simple pilasters, and mouldings picked out in gold. They provide multiple openings to the wings for entries and exits. Only in the second half (act two of the three was split to make for one interval) does a single wooden chair make an appearance, symbolising the throne. As often in opera, the chair is much manhandled, thrown down and set up again. The scenery at the rear eventually gives way to wooden walls, and painted clouds come down to hide the moulded panels.

The costumes are period in form, beautifully cut and, for the women, stiffly corseted, but plain, in a palette of sober colours: cream, champagne, taupe, grey, plum, purple, dark blue, burgundy, brown or black. Each character’s colour changes with the acts. No extravagant wigs. The lighting is simple but well done, often from the sides and sometimes, at moments of crisis, stark.

Apart from Bajazet's eventual bare-chested ranting, the action is expressed through modest, measured, well-practised gestures and glances, a certain amount of meaningful pacing around and a little bit too much lying on the floor. Quite often, characters being thought or talked (i.e. sung) about make silent appearances. Bajazet is more expressionistic and Dickensian-looking (Scrooge-like) than the others, with long grey hair and twisted, tortured limbs. Tamerlano is sometimes courteous, sometimes serpentine and sardonic, sometimes exasperated or petulant to the point of fury. Irene is regal, with a straight back; Leone somewhat put-upon, with a bad one. Andronico and Asteria have less clearly-marked personalities, other than the usual one of star-crossed young lovers.

I'm often surprised at how unprepared people are when they come to the opera, in some cases enquiring "What have we got tonight?" as they enter the house. Like many, my Belgian neighbours plunged into their programmes at half time to see who the singers that had most impressed them were. "Asteria has a beautiful voice. And Irene - Irene's is very beautiful." In a cast that was, on the whole, excellent, Sophie Karthäuser and Ann Hallenberg were nevertheless the stars, or at any rate best suited the dimensions of La Monnaie. Both are able to project a full and subtle range of both dynamics and emotions into the house.

Beyazit I

This raised, for the ignoramus I am, the question of how casting works. It seemed odd ("a waste," said my neighbour, and the usherette agreed, saying others had made the same remark), not to cast Ann Hallenberg in the more prominent and taxing role of Andronico. She has the dramatic power that Delphine Galou (whose agility is not in question) is unable to muster, e.g. in the likes of "Chi vide mai più sventurato amante ?" and can maintain volume during rapid passages and in the lower range, making her a more suitable partner for Sophie Karthäuser. Taxed as she was, Delphine Galou came across as relatively monochrome and underpowered; it might have been more sensible to offer her Irene.

I like Christophe Dumaux, even if he always sounds and acts much the same (I've often thought that if you like Bruckner, you're glad all his symphonies sound alike). For a start, unlike some countertenors, he's audible and doesn't sound like steam escaping from a rusty pipe. He was a suitably serpentine, sardonic, petulant Tamerlano. Jeremy Ovenden (whose voice reminded me of Nigel Robson in Gardiner's recording) was an excellent Bajazet in all registers, from tenderness to rage. Nathan Berg sang Leone as a character part, if you see what I mean, whether deliberately or to make a virtue of necessity was impossible to tell. I wasn't alone in wondering. The empty stage was, however, kind to no-one, acoustically speaking, so the voices (apart from Karthäuser's and Hallenberg's) often seemed a touch remote (to be candid, I did sometimes wish I had an ear trumpet with me), and this combined with the understated production to limit the overall dramatic impact. Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques gave us their usual combination of bounce, vigour, careful shaping, and accuracy.

La Monnaie alternated performances of Tamerlano and Alcina. Here, Maestro Wenarto sings "Tornami a vagheggiar", with interesting fingerwork.

Extraordinary and not to be missed:

'In the final act, now with dark hair (change of wig: Warlikowski), smoking again in her tightly-belted leather coat, high heels and sunglasses and complaining, as the little old lady next to me pointed out, of darkness closing in (“Take your bloody glasses off, then” the old lady had thought), did she really look ill?'

No more remarks like that from the little old lady (to read more, just type "old lady" in the search box). She left us for good on Thursday morning.

ONP Garnier, Monday March 30 2015

Conductor: Michel Plasson. Production: Charles Roubaud. Sets: Emmanuelle Favre. Costumes: Katia Duflot. Lighting: Vinicio Cheli. Chimène: Sonia Ganassi. L’Infante: Annick Massis. Rodrigue: Roberto Alagna. Don Diègue: Paul Gay. Le Roi: Nicolas Cavallier. Le Comte de Gormas: Laurent Alvaro. Saint Jacques: Francis Dudziak. L’Envoyé maure: Jean-Gabriel Saint-Martin. Don Arias: Luca Lombardo. Don Alonzo: Ugo Rabec. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris.

I've often said it's much easier to describe a bad evening at the opera than a good one. There was something special about Monday night's Le Cid at Garnier, yet it was far from flawless, so I've been wondering what gave it that particular buzz.

Massenet

For a start, it can't have been the production, which was pretty much forgettable. By setting the work in the Spain of the 1930s, Charles Roubaud raised expectations of a concept (Rif war? Civil war?) which were not fulfilled: the updating was merely aesthetic. The sets managed to reproduce convincingly the curious, drab, buff-coloured anonymity of official interiors, notably a kind of courthouse with tiers of seats on either side of a doorway topped with a massive bronze lion. Chimène's bedroom was, here, a soulless, sparsely-furnished saloon with a giant art deco grille over the shuttered window, a couple of Ruhlmann-style commodes and small pink armchairs and sofas reminiscent of the Théâtre des Champs Elysées. Rodrigue's camp was a bare war-room with maps at the rear and a fluorescent-lit ceiling. The men were, understandably, in uniforms - all sand-coloured, but with green or red braid, depending on their allegiance; the women in white court dresses, or what were, I think, in the 30s called afternoon frocks, with mantillas and fluttering fans.

It wasn't the acting, either, limited (with the exception of Sonia Ganassi's Chimène, more of which later) to pacing (Don Diègue, with cane), being regal (Annick Massis, draped in a pink stole and doing it exceptionally well) or, in the case of Roberto Alagna, kneeling when necessary (to get dubbed or to pray) and otherwise, feet apart, just standing and delivering, à l'ancienne.

Nor was all the singing obviously outstanding. Garnier was certainly a better place for Paul Gay to be singing than the Bastille, and the king and count were good enough ("no better than they ought to be," a late Scottish friend of mine might have said). Annick Massis was undeniably sumptuous and I only wish I'd seen and heard her more often and that her role as the Infanta had given her more to do than just empathise with Chimène and project fabulous aigus over the magnificent chorus.

Regarding Sonia Ganassi, a respected acquaintance whose opinion is always sound found, as usual, the mot juste, saying she did not think it quite the right role for her, but "She is an earnest artist, at least". Sonia Ganassi threw herself into it with more than enough earnest endeavour to make up for not quite achieving the right degree of pathos: "Pleurez mes yeux" was visibly heartfelt yet not, in the end, very moving and not, in terms of applause, the show-stopper it ought to be. It was tough luck, too, that Ganassi's parting top note went awry. Top marks for commitment, though.

And...

Even discreetly but frequently stifling a cough, even with the slightly sinusy-sounding timbre of a tenor with a cold and the need to cut climactic top notes prudently (and uncharacteristically) short, Roberto Alagna reminded us what a rare and thrilling thing a truly great singer is and how much more usual it is for us to make do with less-than-great ones. His voice was resounding and his diction, by today's standards, astounding (I had, for example, to look up to the supertitles when Ganassi was singing). Le Cid is largely Rodrigue's opera, or if it isn't, Alagna made it so, playing it not for subtlety, by any means, but, as my neighbour put it at the interval, for testosterone: "C'est un petit coq".

And then there was Plasson in the pit. I have rarely heard the (potentially cantankerous) Paris Opera orchestra respond so movingly to a conductor, with gorgeous woodwind playing (e.g. in the introduction to "Pleurez mes yeux") and a truly magnificent instrumental reprise of "Ô souverain". The score was chopped up (you could see the orchestral parts in the pit plastered with large squares of blank paper) and the ballets were, as seems to be considered quite normal these days, omitted, leaving the Infanta's alms-giving scene oddly stranded, but Plasson achieved a performance of rare fervour and intensity, and the (potentially cantankerous) orchestra stayed in the pit to stand and applaud him on stage.

It all added up to an evening of opera that brought the words "good old days" to my mind or, as my neighbour put it: "Ça, c'est de l'opéra" - flawed, as opera is almost bound to be when you consider how much has to go right and thus can go wrong, one way or another, yet exciting. This was one of those relatively few evenings that make forking out the exorbitant annual fees and sitting through so many flaccid or humdrum performances (supposing you dont leave at the interval) worthwhile.

Laurie Anderson sings "O Superman".

Maestro Wenarto sings "Pleurez mes yeux".

La Monnaie, Brussels, Sunday April 12 2015

Conductor: Franck Ollu. Production: Pierre Audi. Sets: Berlinde De Bruyckere. Lighting: Jean Kalman. Costumes: Wojciech Dziedzic. Video: Mirjam Devriendt. Electro-acoustic emplacement: Thierry Coduys. Penthesilea: Natascha Petrinsky. Prothoe: Marisol Montalvo. Achilles: Georg Nigl. Odysseus: Werner Van Mechelen. Oberpriesterin: Eve-Maud Hubeaux. Bote: Wiard Witholt. Botin: Yaroslava Kozina. Amazone: Marta Beretta. La Monnaie Orchestra & Chorus.

Before seeing this opera, I had no idea of the gruesome tale (as retold by Kleist) of Penthesilea. Here are some indications from the web…

First, very simply, from encyclopedia.com:

“Penthesilea is about an Amazon queen who falls in love with the Greek hero Achilles but later goes mad with passion and kills him”.

Wikipedia hints at the gruesomeness:

“Penthesilea (1808) is a tragedy by the German playwright Heinrich von Kleist about the mythological Amazon queen, Penthesilea, described as an exploration of sexual frenzy. Goethe rejected it as ‘unplayable’”.

The Reader's Encyclopedia of World Drama reveals more – we learn that Penthesilea carries out a…

“… savage attack on him with dogs, elephants, and all the weapons of war imaginable. After killing him and drinking his blood, she is brought to her senses and is horrified by the cruelty of her passion. Penthesilea now repents her deed and coldly takes her own life”.

Dusapin

La Monnaie’s own website links the story (pessimistically, but in interviews Dusapin admittedly doesn’t seem to have a very sunny disposition) to the modern world:

“It was Heinrich von Kleist (1808) who brought the subject into the modern era. In his version, Achilles does not kill Penthesilea, but vice versa: in a moment of tragic madness she tears apart the one she loves with her teeth. Pascal Dusapin’s Penthesilea is his seventh opera; he includes in his score a quote from Christa Wolf: ‘Thus begins the modern era and it is not beautiful.’”

From the above it will be clear that the story is a violent, “antique” tragedy of the Elektra or Medea sort. Dusapin has successfully created a dark, powerfully dramatic work, gripping and harrowing, centred on a strong female (anti-)heroine, with a leading role as dominant and taxing for the singer as Medea or Elektra. The work has been greeted as a “triumphant masterpiece”, and a triumph, too, for Natascha Petrinsky. She is in theory a mezzo, but a high one, with a bright, forceful sound and – usually, though less so in this grim environment, in the jeans, boots and tee-shirt of a modern-day amazon – a glamorous presence. She has often sung in Brussels – as Flora, Geschwitz, Varvara… As the latter, already it seemed to me the “roles were reversed”, her voice sounding brighter than Evelyn Herlitzius’ Katja. In Elektra, I noted “We both preferred the glamorous Klytemnestra (Natascha Petrinsky)” to Nadine Secunde’s Elektra and Annalena Persson’s Chrysothemis. Her Penthesilea was such a fearsomely committed performance that it tended to overshadow the rest of the undeniably strong and equally committed cast, Marisol Montalvo in particular.

This Brussels premiere has scored a hit - proving once more that opera is not in fact dead and that opera audiences are not the brainless, Bohème-obsessed conservatives they’re often accused of being - despite both conductor and directors standing in for others.

The production, originally to be directed by Katie Mitchell, was as dark as the plot. It combined unsettlingly ambiguous video projections – of the squelchier kind of nature close-up, of water (or blood?) dripping slowly and darkly off hair or fur (human or animal?), of the flaying and salting of skins (whose?) – with caked-looking gridirons on a dubiously stained floor, that were eventually piled up with pelts as in a tannery (I know a bit about this: I worked in one as a student) and sometimes large aluminium shapes that might have been aircraft parts or the housings of jet engines. The men were long-haired, in flowing, black, sleeveless coats, black gloves and boots: a kind of war-torn Rick Owens look that’s a touch too trendy for me. The women wore brown and beige. Individual and group movements were well-directed, but in reality all eyes were inevitably glued to Natascha Petrinsky’s wild Penthesilea.

Dusapin’s score is of course, in the circumstances, not what you might call easy listening; but it is by no means intractable. The scoring is fairly conventional, but with emphasis on the lower register: contrabassoons, tubas, double basses and, if I heard right, a bass flute. So, as you might expect, there’s quite of lot of “amiable tapeworm” meandering, but leavened by the use of a solo harp and a cimbalom or dulcimer, oddly evocative of the ancient world; and of course, although Dusapin doesn’t go in for banks of exotic percussion, breaking out at times into considerable violence. The chorus, commenting on the action from time to time, was haunting. Some music and sound effects (e.g. dripping) were transmitted round the house through speakers in the stage-side boxes and attached to the balconies. Under Franck Ollu, replacing Ludovic Morlot, who has resigned (thankfully, some might say), the orchestra did a great job.

This premiere is, I think, a real event, and it’s likely that Penthesilea will do the rounds rather as Eötvös’s Tri Sestry has done, entering, as much as any contemporary opera can be said to do so, the repertory. If it comes out on video, it will be well worth buying.

Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Paris, Wednesday April 15 2015

Conductor: Christoph Eschenbach. Soloist: Leonidas Kavakos

Brahms:

Violin Concerto
Symphony N°1

The last time I heard the VPO in the same theatre I was disappointed. This Brahms concert made up for that in full.

Brahms

Leonidas Kavakos' playing was so (deceptively) "simple" sounding that it was only as the concerto progressed that I realised what an outstanding performance I was actually hearing. It comes across as effortlessly straightforward, which of course it can't be: a great deal of skill and effort and talent must have gone and go into achieving such undemonstrative, un-flashy virtuosity, such fluency in pianissimo passages played without vibrato, note-perfect. The result reminded me of Ana-Caterina Antonacci's singing - in her case, so conversational she makes you feels as if she's taking you into her confidence: you almost forget she's singing, not just talking to you. With Kavakos, it was like having a pleasant conversation with an intelligent friend, one whose intelligence is worn lightly - smiling too, sometimes, as he moved around his little space on stage - at the first violons beside him, at the cellos behind, the conductor and the audience as he played.

Engaging, agreeable playing without ostentation and overall a great performance, supported in the same vein, as you might expect, by Eschenbach and the orchestra. Perhaps this is "modern" Brahms playing, not HIP but influenced by HIP: not schmaltzy or, worse still, slushy; lean (in sentiment, not sound) rather than lush.

The same might be said of the symphony. It was a massive display of string force, great square blocks of sustained string power, neoclassical rather than late or post-romantic, making the structure of the score (not always what you might at first think: Brahms plays tricks) easy to "read".

Contrabassoon

I remember, back when I was still in an orchestra, thinking what a great play Brahms'First was for the strings: everybody gets the same meaty stuff to play, forwards or backwards, one way up or the other. This impression, on Wednesday, of emphasis on the string sections may well have come in part from my being seated near the front of the stalls: in terms of balance that meant all the wind and percussion were hidden from view. But Eschenbach seemed to look mainly to his first violins to lead, nevertheless taking care to pass phrases, visibly, with a gesture of the hand, from strings to winds and back. Of course, the woodwind and brass playing was glorious when to the fore: those famous horn and flute calls at the start of the last movement for example: not only the strings could sustain!

I have enough experience to know, however fantastic the performance has been, better than to clap a string soloist too loud and long, but not everyone does, so after the concerto we got the inevitable unaccompanied Bach encores: "Ça casse l'ambiance," said my neighbour: it puts the mockers on things. But after the symphony we got a very jaunty performance of the first Hungarian Dance that had the players themselves grinning, so that's what people were whistling, or trying to whistle, on the Métro platforms afterwards.

Hungarian National Opera, Budapest, Saturday April 18 2015

Conductor: Graeme Jenkins. Production: Attila Vidnyánszky. Sets and costumes: Olexander Bizolub. Buryja: Éva Balatoni. Laca Klemen: János Bándi. Steva Burya: Atilla Kiss B. Kostelnicka: Gyöngyi Lukács. Jenufa: Szilvia Rálik. Mill Foreman: Gábor Bretz. Mayor: László Szvétek. Mayor's wife: Katalin Gémes. Karolka: Krisztina Simon. Neighbour: Éva Várhelyi. Barena: Erika Markovics. Jano: Eszter Zavaros.

Janacek

In Budapest on the whole singers don't hold back, but despite the commitment of the four principals this performance of Jenufa was not a great success, for various reasons, some of them probably do do with it being a first night.

For a start, the two tenors had a problem with pacing. Vocally they were sharply contrasted: Attila Kiss B.'s voice is clear and brassy; János Bándi's is darker and, in timbre but not volume, softer. Both threw themselves almost alarmingly into the first act, and this time Kiss B. was in better act-one form than as Calaf in January. But by act two he was already strained, and János Bándi, though globally an admirable Laca, was audibly tired by act three.

I'd thought, again in January, that Szilvia Rálik would be better cast as Jenufa than as Turandot. She produced some great notes on Saturday night, and there were undoubtedly "moments", but for Jenufa, at the top, her voice is in fact relatively hard, sometimes strident, and at the bottom, relatively weak, i.e. some of the role sits low for her. Also, her stage presence is more regal than young and innocent. So, though she is a local star and features in close-up on posters around the city, she was overshadowed somewhat by Gyöngyi Lukács as Kostelnicka: vocally expressive, not too chesty, acting sometime quite violently, but visually too young (Jenufa could have been her elder sister) and with an almost completely expressionless face. Gyöngyi Lukács got a bouquet flung at her; Szilvia Rálik not, which was embarrassing.

Everyone, soloists and chorus, had their eyes glued on the conductor and/or prompter, and chorus movements seemed clunky (occasionally cramping the the vigorous folk-dancers) and unsure, like the singing, which was hesitant and, for such large numbers, oddly faint-hearted. As was the orchestra, disappointingly bland and undramatic under Graeme Jenkins. Surely in Janacek the orchestra should be a genuine protagonist and have more impact and oomph.

The production was simple. It would be nice to say simple and effective, but it was really more simple but, on Saturday at any rate, disjointed. The act-one set had a large mill wheel at the back towards the left, and an all-purpose door to each side at the front. For act two, the wheel stayed in place, but to create the more intimate space needed, large nets were hauled up, interwoven with rags, and some basic furniture was brought on. In act three, the mill wheel had gone but there was a smaller one set up in the air to make a maypole, and a long table was placed diagonally across the raked floor.

The "idea" introduced at this point was not very convincing: extras brought on two-foot cubes of plastic ice and started piling them up. Once the baby had been found, a fourth block arrived wrapped in sacking. When this was pulled off it revealed not, fortunately, the baby with its red cap, but an angel figurine, complete with burning candle (yes: inside the ice). A miracle, I suppose it was meant to be.

Overall, the staging seemed, as I said above, clunky (including the lighting) and under-prepared. The costumes, however (unlike the sets, though by the same designer) were very interesting. I don't know anything about Moravian folk dress, except that it is lavish; so I don't know if, in the inter-war period (which we could guess at from some chorus members in simple blouses and knee-length skirts), there were really 1930s variations on the folk theme, or if the idea of having smocked or embroidered and fringed or beribboned patches on the men's modern suits, for example, was the designer's. Whatever, this was a rare case of the costumes stealing the show from the sets or the production overall.

Bartok

Dinner was at Callas. Neither the food nor the service is quite up to the prices charged (by Budapest standards), but it's right next to the main opera house, serves late, and above all is in a spectacular Wiener-Werkstätte-style hall. To our dismay, there were two violons, a double-bass and a piano bashing out anything and everything from pop songs to Mozart and Vivaldi concerti, making conversation impossible. In the corner next to us was a group of four very smartly-dressed people, all in black, one of whom, a young man with long fair hair and a violin case near his chair, paid more attention to the musicians than to his friends' conversation. Eventually he moved nearer, and finally, borrowed the main violin and launched into Bartok's Romanian Dances - all of them, as fortunately there was, it turned out after the first movement, a score to hand for the pianist. I don't know who this young violinist was, but this, not Jenufa, was the truly magical musical event of the evening. I shook his hand and thanked him as I left.

Maestro Wenarto sings the opening of Jenufa.

Mi paventi il figlio indegno (Graun) Ann Hallenberg from Jeffrey Stivers on Vimeo.

La Monnaie, Brussels, Sunday May 24 2015

Conductor: Carlo Rizzi. Concept and Production: Àlex Ollé (La Fura dels Baus). Sets: Alfons Flores. Costumes: Lluc Castells. Lighting: Urs Schönebaum. Video: Emmanuel Carlier. Gustav III: Riccardo Massi. René Ankarström: Scott Hendricks. Amelia: Monica Zanettin. Ulrica Arfvidsson: Marie-Nicole Lemieux. Oscar: Ilse Eerens. Cristiano: Roberto Accurso. Ribbing: Tijl Faveyts. Horn: Carlo Cigni. Un Giudice: Zeno Popescu. Un Servo: Pierre Derhet. Orchestra and Chorus of La Monnaie.

Verdi meets censor

This Ballo, involving a couple of interesting young singers, was musically quite satisfactory overall, and at times excellent.

Scott Hendricks is a baritone I've admired at La Monnaie and the Bastille in the past. Yesterday his singing was fairly blustery (and he looked quite grumpy at the curtain calls), but that was alright, once his character had gone bad. Marie-Nicole Lemieux was as excellent an Ulrica as you'd expect: vocally sumptuous and radiating presence. Ilse Errens had a shaky start but eventually very nearly made Oscar, here played as a woman, a tolerable character - I've said before it's one I could totally live without - I think I once said Oscar should be shot.

Monica Zanettin is particularly interesting: her voice is powerful and dark, sometimes almost plummy, at risk of turning to what my neighbour called "bouillie" - porridge, more or less - but with a strong counteracting graininess. She is also obviously charismatic, not an easy thing to achieve when everyone is masked - see below. "Ecco l'orrido campo" was especially impressive. Vocal and dramatic charisma are what Riccardo Massi, on the other hand, lacked: left to his own devices, he had the awkward, ambling demeanour of a beefy but amiable local butcher or baker. Yet he has, it seems, been a stunt-man and as Radamès at the Met he was described as an "alert actor" so perhaps this was the director's fault. He has an agreeable timbre and seems to reach the high notes with ease, but I did wonder whether he shouldn't be singing Mozart, at this stage, rather than, already, Radamès. The pair of them unfortunately got briefly lost in "Oh, qual soave brivido", a sign, perhaps, of inexperience that threw them for a while afterwards.

As I've often said before, the Monnaie orchestra is good at Verdi, but I found Carlo Rizzi's conducting a bit placid and lacking in nervous energy: zip. The chorus was, however, on cracking form.

Underground car park, 1861

There was nothing intrinsically unworkable about Àlex Ollé's Orwellian concept, for which he was rather grandly credited first, above the conductor, on the website, as if it was going to be something startlingly new and bold, which it wasn't: one stifling totalitarian regime replacing another. The set was the concrete bunker every European house should now have in stock; in this case, quite a handsome one of concentric rectangles, open towards the audience, of dangling square pillars that could be let down to form spaces of various sizes - small, medium, large - in a forest of columns resembling an underground car park - but also recalling period engravings. Dusty grey "period" furniture made a ghostly reference to the 18th century. The lighting was good - changing colour, for example, to red for the "orrido campo". After an opening video of the multiple horrors of the modern world (apart from cat photos on Facebook) projected on a naked body, Gustav the dictator's personality cult was embodied in projections of a gleaming silver head or his masked face.

All the cast, soloists, chorus and extras, wore dusty grey, blue, purple or black suits, numbered across the back, and - as so very often in these updates - strutted round, like super-efficient, super-officious consultants and secretaries, with briefcases and notepads (which surely, in a production set in the near future, should really have been iPads?). All wore a kind of sci-fi second skull, in latex, that symbolised oppression and must have been very uncomfortable on a warm May afternoon. These rubber masks were only pulled off once, as a sign of rebellion, by Ulrica and her followers.

Extra masks, gleaming silver, were added for the ball, and for the final coup de théâtre, the conspirators pulled on gas masks as, during the pardon, smoke filled the hall under yellow lights, the face on the screen at the rear changed, and Gustav and his court were gassed to death, one and all. So no-one could say Ollé hadn't taken the "maschera" in the title to heart.

This grim concept was, as I said, not unworkable, but surprisingly Ollé did little to help it succeed. As making Gustav a baddie as bad as his successors goes against the grain of the work as is, surely he should have helped Massi act nasty, but, again as I said, the singers, once the concept was established, were left to themselves to play the opera out as if it had been a traditional production in a provincial backwater. That, I think, was a lost opportunity: neither the cast's potential nor the production's was fully realised.

Maestro Wenarto sings "Ecco l'orrido campo".
Followed by "Morro, ma prima in grazia".

ONP Bastille, Paris, Monday May 25 2015

Conductor: Philippe Jordan. Production: Graham Vick. Sets and costumes: Paul Brown. Lighting: Adam Silverman. Genièvre: Sophie Koch. Arthus: Thomas Hampson. Lancelot: Roberto Alagna. Mordred: Alexandre Duhamel. Lyonnel: Stanislas de Barbeyrac. Allan: François Lis. Merlin: Peter Sidhom. Un Laboureur: Cyrille Dubois. Un Chevalier: Tiago Matos. Un Écuyer: Ugo Rabec. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris.

Chausson

If I seemed reserved in my praise of the musical side of Sunday's Ballo in Brussels, I can be quite unreserved about that of Le Roi Arthus last night: it was simply magnificent, as magnificent, sensitive yet generous a performance as you could hope to hear. Having said that, what can I usefully add? (Eight more paragraphs, perhaps?)

Though I've seen it before in Brussels, like most of us, I imagine, I know the work mainly from Jordan senior's recording with Teresa Żylis-Gara. That being so, I was surprised to see Sophie Koch cast as Genièvre. She brings a dark, mezzo timbre to the part and of course strains at the very top notes in act two, but there's only a sprinkling of those, and her commitment, intelligence and musicanship carry her through (despite the unglamorous, middle-class-housewife costume imposed on her: a lacy white summer dress and irredeemably sensible, stout-heeled sandals).

Anyone who wonders if Alagna might now be past his peak can feel reassured. Not only does he look, physically, as if he's found some sort of elixir of youth (so you think: I'll have some of what he's having, please); but, provided you're OK with his now-darker, smokier sound, he might well be singing better than ever. And if his voice is darker and smokier, it still has the projecting edge to carry and support his excellent diction: no need to glance at the supertitles. His was a heroic performance (Lancelot gets lots to sing) and the duets, even with the pair of them (and Genièvre in her stout, sensible sandals) rolling in the grass like teenagers, were marvellous.

Also, anyone who thinks Thomas Hampson is showing signs of wear can think again. Well, perhaps there are signs of his lower range diminishing; perhaps the one or two very high notes were strained; but his performance was magnificently acted (see? magnificent again) and musically near-impeccable. The scene where he shares his disappointments with a tearful Merlin was, thanks also to Peter Sidhom's abounding sincerity as he wept, moving indeed.

Glastonbury Tor

So not only did we have the best available cast for the principles; the secondary roles were unusually well cast too, giving us a chance to admire Cyrille Dubois' bright Laboureur and Stanislas de Barbeyrac's softer, elegant Lyonnel. Both had excellent diction. Even the smallest roles were filled seriously - and with a degree of charm.

The chorus was on blistering form, and the orchestra at its very best: magnificent again, loving, sensitive yet generous under Jordan junior, and standing in the pit, arms raised to applaud him and the cast loudly at the curtain calls - to a triumph in the house of a kind we rarely see these days. The expression is, I think, "in a zone" - this was the kind of fully-committed, unhesitant and unstinting playing that makes you very nearly forget there's a production going on around it.

Which in this case was possibly a good thing. Not that Graham Vick's staging wasn't bright and fresh and well-rehearsed. The trouble was it wasn't really comprehensible. The curtain went up on a gathering, against a photographic backdrop of Glastonbury Tor, of what looked like (a) the kind of New-Age, vegetarian tree-huggers who might take an interest in age-old legends (and listen to Celtic folk songs or live in the Triangle); (b) husky outdoor types with hiking boots and teeshirts under layers of warm, weatherproof clothing (Arthus, Lancelot and the knights); and (c) beer-bellied builders in hard hats, whose wives (lots of crochet, and yellow flowers in their hair) brought them baskets of lunch. A typical west-of-England (or West Wales) crowd, these days, I suppose. But the men were arranged in a circle, holding swords to the ground, while the floor and two walls of a prefabricated house were lowered for assembly - hence the presence of Bob the Builder. Once the bookshelves were installed, Genièvre was borne in aloft on a strikingly ugly, boxy, red vinyl settee, and a coffee table (round, geddit?) was set up with a vase of flowers and a picture of the happy couple (she and Arthus). The house was encircled by swords planted in the stage, roped together.

Roberto Alagna

As the opera progressed and the idyll (so we presumed) faded - and after Lancelot and Genièvre had rolled around in the rectangular patch of artificial biodiversity to the right - the Glastonbury backdrop ended up blackened (as did Genièvre's lacy frock and indeed everything else), the house, on its side in act two, was finally overturned and charred, and the glossy red settee went up in flames (to the audience's relief, quipped one critic in the press). Who was this Arthus then? A bookish king in his prefab suburban castle? A professor? Just an ordinary husband? He didn't actually smoke a pipe, but in his cable-knit cardigan he might well have sucked on one as he took another bardish volume off the shelves. What was the Glastonbury gathering up to? Some kind of re-enactment, as people do of battles, or west-country fête with a nod at local Arthurian legend? How did they end up shortly after in rival gangs, the rebels' bare torsos smeared with blood, battling to the death with swords? Why were they referred to as knights at all? As a friend remarked, it's no longer really PC to ask these questions; and certainly I'm no fan of "traditional" stagings and every inch a fan or Warlikowski; and indeed I could see that there was something here about the vanity of ideals in a wicked world; and yes, it was well directed.

But it was illegible. Not that that mattered, because it was simply swept away by the music. Magnificent.

Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Paris, Wednesday May 27 2015

Conductor: Esa-Pekka Salonen. Piano: Pierre-Laurent Aimard. Ondes Martenot: Valérie Hartmann-Claverie. Philharmonia Orchestra.

Messiaen

The Philharmonia's Turangalîla under Salonen on Wednesday evening came across, from where I was sitting, as a massive display of scorching orchestral fire-power: the brass and percussion blasting away like heavy artillery at the rear, the dry English woodwind's lighter artillery and the searing, steely siren sounds of the strings in the middle, and at the front, celesta and glockenspiel scattering gleaming, ear-piercing shrapnel, the wailing shells of the ondes Martenot, and Pierre-Laurent Aimard manning a one-man machine gun battery, shooting off salvos of bullets with deadly accuracy and taking no prisoners. Tempi were relatively brisk, Messiaen's sudden silences were deafeningly abrupt, the overall effect was more martial than loving, and apart from brief moments of respite, it was either loud, very loud, or just brutally loud: no half measures, it seemed... from where I was sitting.

Turangalila in Valencia

That, I think, was the problem. The TCE has the mad idea that top-category seats include the front rows. Not quite so mad for opera, when the orchestra is in a pit, but here I found myself in the middle of row two, staring at the string section's (impeccable) socks and the underbelly of the Steinway and perfectly placed to hear the excellent Aimard's strenuous grunting and groaning (I note you can also hear it on the BBC's broadcast of the same concert in London), especially during Jardin du sommeil d'amour. I had a very nice nod and smile from the lady at the celesta above me to the left. From such a position, of course the balance is totally skewed: the piano, celesta and glockenspiel dominate, and at moments of goodness knows how many fs, you just can't tell what's going on behind. I heard, from someone on row eleven, that it was an amazingly accurate, detailed performance - the audience behind me went wild - but, as Gershwin might have said, not for me. I'd bought this concert deliberately to hear the Philharmonia "on display" but was disappointed simply to be deafened by a maelstrom of sheer sound.

I already have my tickets for the TCE's next season. I've decided, therefore, to check the rows and, if necessary, ask for different seats.

Classical Iconoclast reviewed the London concert (which also included some Debussy) in detail.

To see Turangalila in Valencia, click here.
To see a video of an unforgettable night of Turangalila, click here.

Nicholas Lens - Shell Shock

Mozart - Die Entführung aus dem Serail

Mozart - Don Giovanni

Berlioz - L'Enfance du Christ

Happy New Year

Puccini - Turandot

VPO in Schubert and Tchaikowsky

Puccini - Tosca

Händel - Tamerlano

Ann Hallenberg - Hercules - "Where shall I fly"

Dodo 1945-2015

Massenet - Le Cid

Dusapin - Penthesilea

VPO in Brahms

Janacek - Jenufa

Celebrated Manhattan in Charcoal

Ann Hallenberg sings Graun

Verdi - Un Ballo in Maschera

Chausson - Le Roi Arthus

Messiaen - Turangalîla-Symphonie