We left at the interval...

ONP Bastille, Monday July 6 2015

Conductor: Daniel Oren. Production: David McVicar. Sets: Charles Edwards. Costumes: Brigitte Reiffenstuel. Lighting: Adam Silverman. Choreography: Andrew George. Maurizio: Marcelo Alvarez. Il Principe di Bouillon: Wojtek Smilek. L’Abate di Chazeuil : Raúl Giménez. Michonnet: Alessandro Corbelli. Quinault : Alexandre Duhamel. Poisson : Carlo Bosi. Adriana Lecouvreur : Angela Gheorghiu. La Principessa di Bouillon : Luciana D’intino. Madamigella Jouvenot : Mariangela Sicilia. Madamigella Dangeville: Carol Garcia. Paris Opera Orchestra and Chorus.

Cilea

Having slept on it, I’ve decided it was actually quite nice to end the season with an “old-fashioned” evening of Italian opera: stand-and-deliver singing by a strong cast in period costumes and sets and no regie soul-searching. I wouldn’t want this sort of thing very often – especially not Adriana: once every 20 years is enough – but the audience evidently liked it: unusually, for Paris, half of them actually stood to clap at the end and were still standing, clapping, when the house lights went up. Perhaps this is the sort of staging London critics like, too, rather than the William Tell that has so upset them recently.

David McVicar’s production has been around; Paris is its last stop. Like traditional Met ones, it relies almost entirely on “lavish” sets and costumes for impact, not acting or ideas. Perhaps Adriana is regie-proof and a traditional approach is wise; but as a friend pointed out, it’s a work with weaknesses that can do with some help. The one hint at a concept is “all Adriana’s world’s a stage”: the set is dominated (and the stage almost filled) by a revolving wooden theatre we see from the back, the wings or the front as the production requires. In act one we see it from behind, then from the wings. In act two its neo-classical front, set at an angle, with pastel-coloured columns and flying figures trumpeting round a coat of arms in the pediment, serves as the villa by the Seine. In act three, we have it full-frontal for the ballet at the Hôtel de Bouillon. In act four, we are behind it again, and a stove has appeared for Adriana to throw her poisoned violets into.

As a full-sized, working theatre is a very large object, it tends to cramp to the front a whole flea-market of period props: screens, sofas, bandy-legged desks, chairs, candelabras, and drapery matching the brocaded, Watteau-inspired costumes that somehow remain solidly, prosaically un-French in cut and cloth (I assume they were not made in the Paris Opera’s workshops). To either side are the high, shabby back-sides of what we assume are painted sets. These could, I thought, usefully have been omitted: the theatre-within-a-theatre might have been more effective and would certainly have given the cast and chorus more breathing-space revolving alone on an empty stage. Instead, these side shutters add to the clutter and restriction of movement (though they do give the Princess her “secret exit” in act two).

This kind of staging - elaborate but undemanding melodrama - suited the singers.

Alvarez, not a born actor, seemed totally at ease in this environment and sang (even acted) better than ever. He got the loudest applause. Luciana d’Intino was clearly also more comfortable here than wielding a pistol as Amneris in Py’s over-the-top Aida. She’s a very solid trouper, with not-too-chesty chest notes and glorious, grainy top ones that remind me of Shirley Verrett, which is saying something. As Michonnet, Alessandro Corbelli was spot-on both vocally and dramatically, not overdoing the “character” side of the part that's more marked in those of Il Principe and L'Abate, impeccably carried through by Wojtek Smilek and Raúl Giménez.

This was only the second time I had seen Angela Gheorghiu on stage, the first having been something like 15 years ago. She seems to be the target of a lot of criticism, even mockery, on websites. Is this because of her behaviour (e.g., but not only, cancellations) and pronouncements? Like the others mentioned above, she is no doubt better cast in a production of this kind than a regie one, her acting skills being what they are – although here I thought she did a very creditable job of dying, poisoned, at the end. Her voice, understandably, no longer sounds as young as she tends to act, and the highest note in the score was strained. It is also, for the Bastille, too small: even on the fourth row, at times I could see her lips moving but hear nothing. But at other times, while her lips barely parted at all, let alone moved, she gave us some gorgeous singing of a kind we rarely hear these days – presumably one of the reasons she’s quite often called an “old-fashioned diva”: "honey and cream," said my neighbour, liquid and smooth. And I heard none of the intonation problems people now complain of. So she scored a real hit, alongside Alvarez and the rest of the cast: applause for Alvarez, at curtain-calls, was loudest, but applause for “Poveri Fiori” was, during the opera, longest; unusually long by today’s standards.

The orchestra was at its very best. Regarding Daniel Oren’s conducting, I can’t put it better than Avant-Scène Opéra: the score was “conduite avec son engagement coutumier par un Daniel Oren généreux d’élans fougueux mais aussi de nuances impalpables, et attentif au plateau en toute circonstance". His concentration and commitment were visible from where I was sitting, and the impalpable quality at its most striking in the prelude to act IV : I’ve rarely heard such beguiling pianissimi at the Bastille. Or anywhere else, come to think of it, since Tristan in Vienna.

Maestro Wenarto sings "Io son l'umile ancella".

La Monnaie (at Halles de Schaerbeek), Brussels, Sunday September 27 2015.

Conductor: Alejo Pérez. Production: Mariusz Trelinski. Sets: Boris Kudlicka. Costumes: Marek Adamski. Lighting: Felice Ross. Video: Bartek Macias. Duchess: Allison Cook. Hotel Manager, Duke, Laundryman, Other guest: Peter Coleman-Wright. Electrician, Lounge Lizard, Waiter, Priest, Rubbernecker, Delivery boy: Leonardo Capalbo. Maid, Confidante, Waitress, Mistress, Rubbernecker, Society journalist: Kerstin Avemo. La Monnaie orchestra.

Thomas Adès

Brussels’ royal opera house is shut for renovation, so this season is peripatetic. On account of work, I missed what was apparently a fun (and more) production of L'Elisir d'Amore at the Cirque Royal two weeks back, being in Muscat instead. Powder Her Face took us to a former market hall in Schaerbeek, up near the Nord station, where the streets are lined with Turkish grocers’, cafés, restaurants and cake shops. So for a change, on an unusually sunny day for Brussels, we had Urfa kebabı, İskender and künefe for lunch before the show.

It’s always hard to form an opinion of a production of a work you don’t know. But having read the libretto (with its stage directions) and reviews of other productions, it seems to me Trelinski’s relentlessly dark-and-sleek-and-shiny-but-sordid approach, fiddling with the action, actually diminished the work’s dramatic potential. I would imagine UK productions, at least, would have been a bit more “Shakespearean”, with irony, even fun, up front making the tragic end more tragic. In Trelinksi’s version, the Duchess, more a Lulu-like victim than a former deb of the year, staggers around in a dazed, drugged or drunken stupor from start to finish, slashing her wrists in the bath at the end (rather than walking off with the gramophone, as suggested in the stage directions); any humour is kind-of-forced upon the reluctant director by the text and score.

A hotel bedroom

As to fiddling with the action… Unless I was more than usually inattentive, the 1936 13-scene “pantomime” – surely quite an important bit of business? - was simply ditched: the Maid as Waitress sang her extraordinary “Fancy Aria” in front of a dazzling tinsel curtain. The famous fellatio scene was here set in a Hopper-esque American petrol (i.e. “gas”) station, with a small diner to the left and petrol pumps to the right (not vice-versa as in Hopper's painting), and the Duchess drove on in a little red MG – a distinctly British choice in the this distinctly un-British setting. This made her attempts to call for room service, from a pay-phone on the diner wall, senseless and looked to me like directorial self-indulgence. The fellation was soon sex, first frontal, then anal.

For the record… The old market hall, totally blacked out, offered plenty of space for the action. The chamber orchestra was up at the back, behind us. On the left was the long, fancily-papered wall of a hotel corridor, with wall lights and numbered doors. It was used for black-and-white projections of pre-war footage evoking, e.g. the Duchess’s first marriage. On the right, a nod to Amsterdam’s red-light district, was (sometimes) the graffiti-marked façade of what was presumably some sort of sex club, with muscular young men, bare-chested in leather and masks, writhing in strobe lights behind the unwashed windows. Twice the Duchess entered under the “Open” neon sign.

The main stage, with a revolving ring bringing on and taking off props, was glossy black marble with a central inlay. This black gloss, the overall design scheme and the Duchess’s costumes and demeanour reminded me of the boring “glam-trash” perfume commercials that come on TV around Christmas (intentionally? Her scent – Joy - is mentioned in the text, and in this production she slashes her veins with the broken bottle). It opened with the Duchess’s bathroom, but was at other times the Savoy lobby, with revolving doors; an art deco living room with a giant satin couch; a bedroom for the court scene, with the Duke/Judge emerging form under the covers and the Rubberneckers watching events on TV, eating crisps from a decidedly un-50s plastic bag; that Hopper-esque petrol station; or hidden by the aforementioned tinsel curtain. The Maid and Electrician, at the end, were replaced by child tango dancers in Fred-and-Ginger outfits.

Musically the afternoon was excellent. Perhaps the orchestra could have been a bit more incisive; perhaps the scenes could have been driven by with a touch more impetus; but perhaps that was just me. With such a strong cast, it would be nitpicking to single out minor shortcomings that might anyway have been figments of my drowsy, Sunday-afternoon imagination. So though it may look like a cop-out, I'll just say a big bravo to them all for both singing and acting, and hope to see some or all of them again, in new repertoire or old.

Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Paris, Saturday October 10 2015

Conductor: William Christie. Production: Stephen Langridge. Choregraphy: Philippe Giraudeau. Sets and costumes: Alison Chitty. Lighting: Fabrice Kebour. Theodora: Katherine Watson. Irene: Stéphanie d’Oustrac. Didymus: Philippe Jaroussky. Septimius: Kresimir Spicer. Valens: Callum Thorpe. Les Arts Florissants.

Händel

An old friend of mine was too ill to go to the TCE for Theodora last night (hacking cough, like many in Paris at the moment - but people know Christie too well to dare hack their lungs out with him in the pit) and therefore asked for a report immediately after. As these e-mails or texts shot-off in the heat of the night while still abuzz from a show sum up one's main conclusions, I'll reproduce mine here:

Have you heard this Katherine Watson? If not you must try to get back to the TCE. I see she was a choral scholar at Trinity (1). That kind of background probably explains her degree of accomplishment and musicianship when yet so young. A very good partner to Jarrousky. This being the case, as you might expect, with all the unemphatic fluency of Les Arts Florissants in the hands of Christie himself, it was musically a great evening. The production, on the other hand, while harmless (it didn't prevent the singers projecting engagement and emotion) was bland and totally unoriginal. I say "harmless," but it's a shame it wasn't a more outstanding one: what an evening that would have made it!

So, yes, Katherine Watson struck me as remarkably accomplished and musical - a sweet soprano voice but with reserves of power, intelligently and sensitively used, taking me back to an earlier, "emerging HIP" British Händelian generation: the likes of Sheila Armstrong or Felicity Palmer. She's also pretty and a charismatic actress. I see (on her web site) that Hugh Canning (Sunday Times) has already said "Clearly one to watch". I had the same thought, and will look out for her in future. And when I say "good partner to Jarrousky," that's of course because he, too, is sweet-voiced, intelligent and sensitive. So their act two scenes together were what the French call a morceau d'anthologie - one for the annals.

Didymus

The evening gave evidence, once more, that it's no use judging voices from recordings. I'd never been seduced by what I heard of Jaroussky so far, but discovered that, live, he has a very engaging, seductive timbre as well as an engaged and engaging presence on stage. His sometimes even languid phrasing, the purity of his held notes and sheer beauty of the top ones make up for the (common, I might say, among male altos) near-inaudibility of his lowest range. His voice is medium-to-low-powered (though not "incredibly small," as I'd been warned), hardly operatic, and with his unworldly demeanour and choirboy looks, he is anything but convincing as a wicked Roman soldier (though, in a drab uniform, he has something of the young Charles de Gaulle about him). But Theodora is not an opera after all, and he's perfectly convincing - and more: moving - as a Christian youth.

Callum Thorpe is another well-trained former chorister, in his case at Coventry Cathedral, with an undeniably striking bass voice, bright in timbre but cavernous beneath, and striking looks as well. He was, once or twice, a touch short-winded for long Händelian lines, taking breath mid-word, but that's a minor point: I'd be happy to hear him again any time. He made a youthful Valens, swamped, somewhat, in his uniform. Kresimir Spicer was quite a commanding Septimius, with an interesting timbre (though so grainy I did wonder if he had a cold coming on) put to real dramatic use, a wide dynamic range and great agility and accuracy. His diction was excellent. In this ruly context, Stéphanie d'Oustrac, with her relatively unruly voice, came across as the baroque equivalent of a character mezzo, a Händelian Azucena. Nothing wrong with that: it made a change.

Not much one can say about Christie and the orchestra and chorus of Les Arts Florissants. As you might expect, the music-making all evening was at the highest level - as I said above, totally yet unemphatically fluent. Händel's sublime late score was lovingly (at times really sublimely) phrased by Christie - more oratorio than dramatic: he did not play up the drama in, for example, the production's confrontation between Christians and Roman riot police.

Because, yes, riot police there were. As is so often the case these days, on the "baddies'" side, the leering men were got up in dinner jackets and the leering women in sparkling black ball gowns with extravagant hairdos and stilettos. The chorus, as usual, were not really cut out for convincing drunken revels and suggested high-class sex. The "goodies" were middle class lefties in beige linens, pale grey cotton and sensible, flat shoes, hugging each other (probably on the way to buy organic produce at inflated prices, it occurred to me) and sharing out bibles. No hint of sex. There were six handsome extras in riot gear and berets, fidgeting nervously with batons. The sets were sliding, ochre-coloured walls, against which rebels were (silently) shot, leaving blood splashes. There was, when required, a gold bust of the Emperor; there were even our old pals the iron bedsteads (though not the lone, unshaded light-bulb that usually hangs over them. A directorial oversight, no doubt). The on-stage martyrs' black-and white photos were posted up au fur et à mesure on the walls, eventually joined by what I think were real photos of real, modern-day martyrs. This was an attempt at seriousness, but the whole production was a bit too blandly, smoothly "luvvie" in overall style to convince.

Which was a pity. An outstanding production would have taken outstanding music-making to exceptional heights. Still, the singers projected their commitment in spite of the trivialising distractions, so I'm not complaining, and New York will get all the music without them. New Yorkers should go.

(1) Trinity College Cambridge.

Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Paris, Monday October 12 2015

Conductor: Kirill Petrenko. Ariadne/Prima Donna: Amber Wagner. Bacchus/Tenor: Jonas Kaufmann. Zerbinetta: Brenda Rae. Composer: Alice Coote. Music Master: Markus Eiche. Lackey: Christian Rieger. Brighella: Matthew Grills. Dancing Master: Kevin Conners. Harlequin: Elliot Madore. Major-Domo: Johannes Klama. Scaramuccio: Dean Power. Truffaldino: Tareq Nazmi. Officer: Petr Nekoranec. Wigmaker: John Carpenter. Naiad: Eri Nakamura. Dryad: Okka von der Damerau. Echo: Anna Virovlansky. Bayerisches Staatsorchester.

Strauss

I hinted, in my report on Saturday’s Theodora, that it might have been better without the distractions of the bland production. I don’t know if we should call last night‘s Ariadne auf Naxos a concert performance or a semi-staged one. There were no sets or costumes and the orchestra was on-stage; but the singers, in evening dress, had no chairs or stands, and acted their parts out, all of them, with gusto. It was so successful, so wildly applauded it had me thinking back over the years to other successfully un-staged operas, the most memorable of all being a white-hot Elektra, in the same theatre in 1984, when Leonie Rysanek, Maureen Forrester and Ute Vinzing went at it hammer and tongs, bawling each other out in evening gowns, big hair and big jewels. That one is (or was) available on CD, by the way – and can be found online. The uncomfortable fact is – and of course I’m not the first to raise the point - that these “dramatic oratorio” opera performances are often more satisfactory than productions with sets and costumes and concepts you may or may not go along with. You can see and hear the singers better, and focus more tightly on the music and drama. Discuss.

Amber Wagner must be thanking Anja Harteros for dropping out of this gig. Not only did she get the chance to sing Ariadne opposite one of today’s best and best-looking tenors; she also scored a huge hit with the potentially awkward Parisians, who roared their approval. Ariadne sits, or at any rate, in the opera per se, starts low for sopranos. Not even the wonderful Lisa Della Casa sounds comfortable grubbing around down there. Amber Wagner has, fortunately, a really gorgeous lower range, with all the notes properly produced and in tune (including “Totenreich”) and a very, very nice husky, smoky undertone that she carries up with her almost to the very top (to be candid, I wondered if she's really a soprano and not a mezzo with a wide range). She makes good use of varied dynamics, and soars wonderfully when Strauss requires it – and of course, he often does. My neighbour was spellbound; and as I said, the audience roared. I would love to hear her in more Strauss. As Helena, for example (and preferably in the same kind of semi-staging, Helena being what it is).

And if she sang Helena, Brenda Rae would be more than welcome as Aithra. Such a relief to hear a Zerbinetta who has more body to her voice than a soubrette or nightingale (or pipsqueak). Brenda Rae’s sound is what’s often called “creamy” – for a lyric, coloratura soprano, relatively luscious. Yet she produces it naturally, almost as if speaking; and, like Ann Hallenberg in a different repertoire, rattling off Graun as if shelling peas, she makes it sound easy and looks as though she’s enjoying every second. Her “Großmächtige Prinzessin” brought the evening to a halt for some time.

Despite a cold, Jonas Kaufmann was the most convincing Bacchus I've ever had the good fortune to witness. He's often criticised for being too dark for his roles; but he was a very welcome change from the brighter kind of Heldentenor, whose purple-faced, near-apoplectic Bacchus tends to be nerve-racking: you never know when he will split or fluff a top note, or simply explode. A voice like Kaufmann's makes more sense of this famously thankless part. He forged through it, defeated by that cold only in the final bars, when his voice unfortunately caved in.

Alice Coote had my neighbour muttering "Quelle énergie, quelle énergie !" at the interval, and I knew exactly what he meant. The part is undeniably a gift to any mezzo with the energy and oomph to tackle it, and Coote, her voice perhaps brighter than the usual Composer, really threw herself into it, a thrilling performance with only one tiny and irrelevant accident.

Nearly all the casting was brilliant. I'll put in special mentions for Markus Eiche - really outstanding; Kevin Conners; and the wonderfully audible Okka von der Damerau, who, if not already a Valkyrie will surely soon become one (1). And the Bayerisches Staatsorchester under Petrenko was just the kind of orchestra I like: incisive and accurate, every detail (even in the trickiest meandering passages e.g. at the start of the Opera) legible, in place and in tune. Petrenko's tempi were brisk-ish throughout: no wallowing: the pulse under "Es gibt ein Reich" pulsated, it wasn't the bass-line to a dirge; and the three girls frolicked (vocally speaking) rather than lolling around, as they sometimes do. So we were out in time to get to the Turks' for dinner.

Here, Maestro Wenarto sings Zerbinetta.

(1) The IMG Artists website confirms this: "Other highlights this season include her debuts with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra singing Bruckner's Te Deum under the baton of Riccardo Muti and with the Hong Kong Philharmonic singing Grimgerde in Wagner´s Die Walküre under Jaap van Zweden".

Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Paris, Saturday October 24 2015

Conductor: Yuri Temirkanov. Soprano: Camilla Tilling. St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra.

Rossini: Barber of Seville overture
Mendelssohn: Symphony N°4, Italian Symphnoy
Mahler: Symphony N°4.

Yuri Temirkanov

An evening of undemonstrative virtuosity. You might call Temirkanov an "anti-Bernstein". His gestures are sparing and his conducting seems (ars being celare artem) likeably literal and straightforward: no showiness (or showmanship), no lush wallowing, no violent extremes, no pulling the score about: when the score comes to an abrupt halt (e.g. the end of the second movement of the Mahler), no slowing down to smooth the abruptness out. The magnificent orchestra comes across, under his guidance, as quietly impressive: one vast, neat, gently humming machine, with not so much a sense of separate sections as one of a single, intricately interconnected mechanism. Never a note out of place, of course; not one quack from a horn or a trumpet. Everything just so, legible, fresh and clear - though presumably not to every Mahler-lover's taste, as I think they often enjoy a wallow or two, and it's precisely that sort of self-indulgence that has put me off Mahler since I was a teenager. Fortunately there was no self-indulgence here and the music's frequent grotesqueness was tempered.

Was it my imagination, because I knew where the performers came from, that I sometimes heard Tchaikovsky in the Rossini (the "handing over" of runs from section to section), Prokofiev (his Classical Symphony) in the Mendelssohn and Petruschka in the Mahler?

Camilla Tilling (standing in for Alice Crowe, off sick) was expressive and charming but perhaps a bit lightweight, though you might say her blending into the orchestral sound, rather than soaring above it, was right in a context where the notion of orchestral togetherness was so strong.

ONP Bastille, Monday October 26 2015

Conductor: Philippe Jordan. Production: Romeo Castellucci. Moses: Thomas Johannes Mayer. Aron: John Graham-Hall. Ein junges Mädchen: Julie Davies. Eine Kranke: Catherine Wyn-Rogers. Ein junger Mann: Nicky Spence. Der Nackte Jüngling: Michael Pflumm. Ein Mann: Chae Wook Lim. Ein anderer Mann, Ephraimit: Christopher Purves. Ein priester: Ralf Lukas. Vier Nackte Jungfrauen: Julie Davies, Maren Favela, Valentina Kutzarova, Elena Suvorova. Drei Älteste: Shin Jae Kim, Olivier Ayault, Jian-Hong Zhao. Sechs Solostimmen: Béatrice Malleret, Isabelle Wnorowska-Pluchart, Marie-Cécile Chevassus, John Bernard, Chae Wook Lim, Julien Joguet. Sets, costumes and lighting: Romeo Castellucci. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris. Maîtrise des Hauts-de-Seine, Paris Opera children’s chorus.

Schoenberg by Schoenberg

I am ashamed to say that in all my long years I had never taken the time to listen to Moses und Aron. It was criminal negligence and I regret it now: last night I discovered a magnificent score, magnificently played and sung.

Six years ago, Nicolas Joel chose to open his directorship of the Paris Opera with Gounod’s Mireille in (I wrote at the time) “a staging that seemed (in the context of the change of management at the ONP, from Mortier to Joel) to be almost aggressively outdated and provincial.” Stéphane Lissner’s decision to open his tenure with Moses und Aron, originally to be directed by the late Patrice Chéreau and now, following Chéreau’s untimely death, by Romeo Castellucci, has been hailed hopefully by at least one newspaper critic as a sign of “the return of theatre to the Paris Opera.” Certainly, if this is a sign of what’s to come, in terms both of repertoire and of staging, things are looking up.

Romeo Castellucci’s production has gone down well with the press (and was, I read, only booed by a minority on the opening night, which is significant). If anything, while faithful, in its modern way (no palm trees or tea-towels on heads, thank goodness), to the text, it highlights the fretful, shifting, multi-layered ambiguities in Schoenberg’s thorny – and sometimes wordy - libretto. For a start, nearly all of act one is set more or less hazily - depending on how strongly lit - behind a gauze ("Milk of Magnesia," said a friend). The set is a seamless, open white space – infinitely white, therefore - with no props. At the start, a reel-to-reel tape recorder is lowered down in a spotlight, and the black tape begins to spill into Aron’s hands: the word of God, probably, that he is supposed to help Moses transmit to the people who, milling around, generously robed and hooded in white, bring to mind a flock of sheep.

Words are projected on the centre of the gauze: sometimes, slowly, words from the text; later, faster and faster successions of synonyms, or what seem to be just random nouns. The staff and snake appear as a large, 2001: A Space Odyssey spaceship also lowered down, sections of it rotating. Viscous, black liquid, oil or ink, spills from one end on to Moses’s hand: his leprosy.

In act two the tape and the ink, under Aron’s stewardship (and compromise) in Moses’s absence, gradually take over. Ink is poured from plastic jerrycans on the virgins, like a demonic anointment or baptism; extras, dressed in white, descend into a rectangular pool of ink and come out black; ink is smeared on floors and white flags and even poured on the back of the gigantic (one-and-a-half tonnes, we’re told) but placid Charolais bull led in to represent the Golden Calf. The orgy is merely hinted at (fortunately, as on-stage orgies are rarely convincing): at one point, the curved rear of the stage cracks open neatly at mid-height, leaving a horizontal slit through which slithering bodies can be seen; later, a single nude girl is lain before the bull while dancers in white, some of them handicapped, perform intricate gymnastics on the inky floor.

Aron is not only covered in ink and inky tape, like a gull in a slick, but eventually, against a majestic backdrop of snowy mountains (scaled by extras on ropes, like skyscraper window-cleaners), just before Moses comes down with the commandments, appears as a shaman in a costume of black tape (imitating raffia or straw) and a mask. During the ensuing argument, stage-hands clean the blackened stage with squeegee mops, leaving the word of the law in large letters embossed in the floor.

Moses (not this production. The Met?)

So there’s a series of undeniably striking images and the production is intriguing and coherent; but I wasn’t alone in growing, by the end, a bit fed up with all the baptisms in ink (“looks like 'Moses meets the giant squid'" said my neighbour) and I’d agree with those who have found the production just a bit too self-consciously aesthetic and a bit too static, pushing the work towards oratorio. A DVD would still be welcome, for both the images (sorry, Moses) and the music.

Thomas Johannes Mayer and John Graham-Hall were both excellent principals, though the latter, while commendably valiant, was, like many, nearly defeated by the scale of the Bastille. Secondary roles were carefully cast. But the triumph of the evening belonged to the chorus, orchestra, conductor and above all Schoenberg’s magnificent score, played with astonishing, crystalline clarity and legibility and sung with commitment and force.

The house was full and the audience applauded and cheered loudly and at length. So much for those who continue to claim that such “difficult” works are box-office poison, and that what opera audiences want is more Bellini, Verdi and Puccini. Let’s hope Stéphane Lissner will carry on as he has begun.

Maestro Wenarto sings Erwartung.

Glad to see this back on YT:

Maestro Wenarto also sings "I am the wife of Mao Tse Tung".

ONP Garnier, Thursday December 10 2015

Conductor: Esa-Pekka Salonen. Production: Krzysztof Warlikowski. Sets and Costumes: Malgorzata Szczesniak. Lighting: Felice Ross. Video: Denis Guéguin. Duke Bluebeard: John Relyea. Judith: Ekaterina Gubanova. Elle: Barbara Hannigan. Lui: Claude Bardouil. Paris Opera Orchestra.

Two preliminary thoughts:

In the 80s, every opera house needed a flimsy silk curtain that could be whisked away in a flash as the music struck up, sometimes getting caught in the scenery and pulling it down. Later, they all had to stock a bombed-out concrete bunker, plenty of combat gear and a dozen black leather greatcoats. Last week (I've been away on business, which is why I'm writing this so late) it occurred to me that they can now probably chuck out their silk curtains and bunkers to make room for a set of large glass cases on wheels: every self-respecting new production uses some.
There has been a great deal of heated hoo-ha over the past few weeks about the Paris Opera's decision to remove (without applying for permission to alter a listed building) and, it emerges, destroy original partitions between boxes at the Palais Garnier, leaving said boxes "gaping" toothlessly. That's where I found myself the other night for Bluebeard's Castle, and I must say the effect, at the moment (the work isn't finished) looks ghastly: gashed crimson brocade and clunky, crimson-painted mechanisms crossing the ceilings - the equipment needed, I suppose, to slip new, removable partitions back in between performances.

But on to Bluebeard and La Voix Humaine.

Bartok

"Familiarity," writes my favourite author Ivy Compton-Burnett, who had a great deal to say, most of it grimly hilarious, about marriage and families, "breeds contempt, and ought to breed it. It is through familiarity that we get to know each other." To cut a potentially long story short, Krzysztof Warlikowski knits together the evening's two works, performed without an interval (so I couldn't have left even if I'd wanted to, which I didn't) by simply following the cycle of human partnerships: infatuation (illusion); discovery and familiarity (disillusion); separation - in this pessimistic case, through murder and suicide.

During the magnificent Bard's Prologue, Bluebeard is already on stage in a dramatic cape (recalling Dracula), performing shaky magic tricks involving the usual rabbits, doves, and the levitation of his tottering, possibly drunk or drugged assistant, wig askew, who remains largely unimpressed.

"The music starts,
The flame leaps up and up.
Let the play begin!
The curtains of our eyelids all are raised.
And when they fall, Sirs,
Give us your applause.
‘Tis an old castle, as ancient as the tale.
Hearken ye, one and all.
Hearken ye."

The Palais Garnier is mirrored, in black and white, on stage and Judith rises, spotlit, from the front row of the stalls and crosses a bridge over the pit to the stage. The opera starts, in its single set: high walls of glass tiles, with a long Ruhlmann-style sofa on the left and a matching drinks cabinet on the right. There is a fair amount of whisky-drinking in this production, as a badgering Judith, in green satin and red hair, forces revelations out of the less strong-willed Duke.

The seven "doors" are museum-style glass cases, gliding in silently, and to their left, large projections of the bloody-nosed face of a pretty little boy hint at a sad and possibly violent childhood. The torture chamber is an old-fashioned bathtub aglow with red light (Warlikowski is often closer to the libretto than his detractors admit). The armory contains a display of swords. In the treasury, the jewels are worn by a row of glowing golden busts. The garden is a case of orchids. For the Kingdom, the light streams in from a TV set showing the Beast from Cocteau's Beauty and the... (a neat link to the Poulenc later in the evening) But the Kingdom is perhaps an illusion - no more than the glass "snowball" of a white mountain brandished by Bluebeard.

The pool of tears is shed, it seems, by the child Bluebeard himself, already dressed in a mini-magician's cape and cradling a white rabbit. Finally, the three former wives appear, in glamorous, glittering haute couture, to fondle Bluebeard on the sofa and at last Judith joins them in their glass-walled cage... temporarily.

Poulenc

After a brief passage of static noise, Poulenc replaces Bartok and a new Judith, Elle, emerges from the depths of the set, teetering, as Warlikowski's heroines often do, especially when played by Barbara Hannigan, on the highest of heels in slender black trousers and a slinky top, her make-up streaked down her face, revolver in hand. There's a telephone on the drinks cabinet (the basic set hasn't changed), but she never lifts the receiver.

As the work progresses, Lui, somehow resembling Bluebeard, staggers in from the rear through his glass-walled den (with a TV set showing the Beast from Cocteau's Beauty and the... an electric guitar and his dog, in this case an Alsatian, that's usually omitted), his shirt-front drenched in blood and eventually, to cut a potentially long story short, dies before Elle puts the gun in her mouth and the lights go out.

Cocteau

Though the usual intelligence and coherency were there, this was a simpler production than others I've seen by Warlikowski. Some critics liked the simplification but I quite enjoy picking apart the usual multiple references, so though for once the director wasn't booed, a I felt a bit short-changed. Also, having read glowing reviews of the whole shebang, I wondered if I hadn't hit the run's vocal off night. John Relyea was a decent but uncharismatic Bluebeard. Ekaterina Gubanova sang with a sumptuous, richly-timbred voice but was nearly inaudible over the organ and orchestra at at the crucial fifth door. And while Barbara Hannigan's performance was dramatically and physically as remarkable as ever, including an impressive, teeth-rattling fall from the sofa to the boards, her basically lyric voice, bringing a new, expressive brittleness to the part, quite un-French in sound, was also surprisingly under-powered even in the Palais Garnier's relatively reasonable dimensions.

Salonen's Bartok was definitely not late- or post-romantic, more analytical and expressionistic. The orchestra sounded slightly shaky at the start to me, but picked up as the evening went on. And while I was a tiny touch disappointed, my neighbour was clearly quite shaken by Hannigan's Elle, and the audience clapped and cheered louder and longer than usual, even for Warlikowski. So, with Moses und Aron and now this convincing double-bill, Paris Opera director Stéphane Lissner, though he may have vandalised Garnier's house, has already chalked up two striking hits.

Maestro Wenarto ends La Voix Humaine.

ONP Bastille, Friday December 11 2015

Conductor: Philippe Jordan. Director and sets: Alvis Hermanis. Costumes: Christine Neumeister. Lighting: Gleb Filshtinsky. Video: Katrina Neiburga. Marguerite: Sophie Koch. Faust: Jonas Kaufmann. Méphistophélès: Bryn Terfel. Brander: Edwin Crossley-Mercer. Voix céleste: Sophie Claisse. Paris Opera Orchestra and Chorus. Maîtrise des Hauts-de-Seine and Paris Opera Children's Chorus.

Berlioz

One of the reasons I started writing about everything I saw - productions and singers - was just to recall it, as I often found I couldn't. Alvis Hermanis's production (great name, Alvis: conjures up memories of stylish, sporty cars, many years ago) should, however, be easy to remember, as it features Stephen Hawking in his electrically-driven chair. It has also led to memorable, near-historic levels of booing, heckling and exchanged insults, even during the show, forcing Philippe Jordan to intervene from time to time to quieten people down. Someone who has been going to opera at least as long as I have told me it was the worst production he had ever seen.

Perhaps the problem is that many opera-goers aren't science-fiction fans. My neighbour, who reads practically nothing else, loved it. I don't read any at all, yet I thought that, though it has its flaws (my thought really was that it takes some very risky risks, coming perilously close to ridicule) it isn't that bad. On the contrary. Nor have I read anything by Stephen Hawking, though I understand he has very sound views on religion. The Daily Mail online, which I don't normally read either, usefully tells me:

"The physicist, who has decoded some of the greatest mysteries of the universe, said it is ‘essential’ for man to spread across the galaxy in case Earth is destroyed. He suggested that it was ‘almost certain’ that a disaster ‘such as nuclear war or global warming’ would obliterate the planet within a thousand years. ‘It is essential that we colonise space,’ he stressed. ‘I believe that we will eventually establish self-sustaining colonies on Mars and other bodies in the solar system, but not within the next 100 years.'"

Faust

So. At the outset, Hermanis wonders, in large projected letters, who Faust might be in the 21st century, and decides he would be a scientist. He then tells us, in more projected text, what The Daily Mail so usefully told me, and goes on to pretend that the time has come for a group of 200 international volunteers to set off for Mars, never to return. Up on the screens, we see their faces, nationalities and jobs.

From then on, Faust's journey is presented, if I understand the concept correctly, as man's quest, in the context of climate change, terrorist attacks, etc., to colonise other planets, with Hawking as Faust, meandering around the stage in his chair, doubled by Jonas Kaufmann*, in a dark corduroy jacket and glasses, as the same. Mephistophélès and his supporters are usually in white lab coats. When not in white coats, the chorus wear very ordinary modern clothes until the final scenes, when they climb into sky-blue space-suits with embroidered badges showing their different national flags. As Marguerite, the unfortunate Sophie Koch, who can be made to look glamorous, is got up in frumpish green dresses and flat shoes or bootees.

At the rear, a grid of large screens shows beautifully-produced videos illustrating the libretto: a field of poppies in the wind, for example, as Faust sings of his solitude or, during Kaufmann's magnificent "Nature immense", a volcano. However, some of the illustrations are too graphic for some of the audience - spermatozoa shooting home, for example, when Faust is in Marguerite's bedroom. The videos are, therefore, one major element; young dancers, mostly in white underwear, are another. Often shut up in glass cases (hence my remark about glass cases when reporting on the Bartok/Poulenc double-bill at the Palais Garnier) they play various parts, including the army during the famous march, gradually descending into convulsive gesticulation - the horror of war, I think (not to mention the horror of contemporary dance). During Brander's Song of the Rat, while the videos display laboratory rats, the dancers play them, imprisoned in their glass cages. Only during the Ballet of the Sylphs do the girls wear, more or less, tutus.

At the very end, the director takes his biggest risk. While the chorus prepare to set off for Mars, climbing, as I said, into space-suits, and rockets fire up, Hawking tumbles to the floor from his chair. Slowly, in an elaborate choreography involving the young dancers bearing him aloft and supporting him on their backs in a kind of apotheosis (glancing back, I thought, to the kind of mawkish Catholic Kitsch the 1840s would have been perfectly capable of dishing up), and falteringly he ends up, albeit unsteady, on his feet as Kaufmann slumps into the chair. I take no more interest in modern dance than I do in science-fiction, but all along, Hawkings has been played, so it turns out, by one of Pina Bausch's favourite dancers. The End.

Now, on the night I was there, the audience had been noisily ill-behaved in the first part and even booed Jordan. Yet, however risky the ending, however close it may come to ridicule (actually descending into it, as far as a critic friend was concerned, in his e-mail to me after the opening night), there was not a single boo as the lights went out. To my amazement, the rude, noisy, grumbling couple in the row behind, who had booed at the end of part one, not only remained silent, but the husband even remarked: "Les cing dernières minutes" - i.e. Hawking's slow-motion apotheosis - "rachètent tout le reste." My neighbour, the sci-fi fan, had been genuinely moved and found the whole thing "magnifique." I'm not a fan of convulsive modern dance (far from it), but it wasn't convulsive all the way through. With climate change being discussed at COP 21 in Paris and people flocking to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens and buy the merchandise for Christmas, the themes and their treatment didn't seem so outlandish to me, nor, since science was one of those themes, was I shocked by the scientific images. In fact, I found the modernization actually restored to the work the sense of magic and wonder that's so hard to conjure up in this materialistic age, where neither God nor the Devil impress us. I did note, as the critics complained, that there wasn't actually much direction to the acting, but Faust is a contemplative character, so it isn't shocking if he wanders thoughfully round the stage.

Alvis

For the same reason, it wasn't abnormal that Kaufmann so often crooned in head voice, though I wished he'd done it less; and of course, his "Nature immense" was, as I said above, truly magnificent. My neighbour thought Sophie Koch was strained by the part, but I didn't notice it; I just wished the production hadn't made her look so miserable and drab. Terfel was the usual absolute bête de scène, affable and at ease. Perhaps, with his bright bass and Kaufmann's dark tenor, there was too little contrast between the two. Edwin Crossley-Mercer made a deluxe Brander.

The chorus wasn't as good as usual. Nor was Jordan, whose approach to Berlioz was ponderous to the point of sounding Brucknerian. When you've heard Gardiner's Trojans on period instruments, that seemed a definite step backwards.

* The Métro was crowded at rush hour. A curly-haired chap apologised for stepping on my toe (he hadn't): Kaufmann on his way to Bastille.

Maestro Wenarto sings "D'amour l'ardente flamme".

La Monnaie at Bozar, Brussels, Sunday December 20 2015

Conductor: Lothar Koenigs. Live projections: Manual Cinema. Conductor of children’s chorus: Denis Menier. Peter: Dietrich Henschel. Gertrud: Natascha Petrinsky. Hänsel: Gaëlle Arquez. Gretel: Talia Or. Die Knusperhexe: Georg Nigl. Sandmännchen and Taumännchen: Ilse Eerens. La Monnaie Symphony Orchestra. La Monnaie Children’s Choir, La Maîtrise.

Humperdinck

As I’ve already said since this season started, the main Brussels house is undergoing renovation, so La Monnaie is peripatetic. I should imagine management realised that Hänsel und Gretel is hardly “oratorio” fare and therefore offered it to us “semi-staged”, or so they put it, at Bozar, an art-déco arts complex up the hill.

Bozar’s concert hall has a warm, enveloping, “sherry commercial” kind of acoustics, so La Monnaie’s orchestra sounded impressively lush and loud there. Anything but post-modern and/or transparently analytical, Lothar Koenigs’ conducting seemed to me Stokovskian “old school”, alternating emphatically, in stately measure, between majestic solemnity and solemn majesty (i.e. think "cathedral" not "laboratory"), bringing a great deal of nobility to the score’s many beaux moments but, at the mauvais quart d’heure the end seems to me to be, bringing to mind a particularly galumphing performance of The Ride of the Valkyrie or even – well, a bit – a Bavarian Biergarten.

The children’s chorus and soloists were very good . Gaëlle Arquez has quite a hard-edged mezzo voice that carries but is perhaps somewhat monochrome; Talia Or’s soprano is maybe more rounded and interesting, but was one notch undersized for the large hall and orchestra. Natasha Petrinsky came sailing in with great Wagnerian promise, got up, so it seemed, as Morticia Addams: long black hair with high, spiky stiletto heels and a slender black dress, slit to thigh-level, with a black-spangled top. In the event, some of her notes were more Wagnerian than others (i.e. it was uneven in its gimlet piercing-power) but there was nothing to complain about – at all.

Natasha Petrinsky

Georg Nigl likes to sing Monteverdi´s Orfeo, Papageno, and Wozzeck (perhaps he doesn’t, on the other hand, like the letter “e’). His (naturally) playing up the Witch as a character part made any assessment of his normal voice hopeless, but he screamed and cackled very well and got the loudest applause of all at the end, which I suppose the Witch usually does. Ilse Eerens sang very sweetly. But the star of the cast was really the always-excellent Dietrich Henschel, musical as ever and showing no sign of the passing of time – the only one, by the way, to leave the score in the dressing room and, hands free, act the part on stage.

The others, in the absence of music stands, clung to theirs, and when thrust into the oven Nigl just strolled offstage, which is why I typed “semi-staged” in inverted commas.

There were, however, live (though there seemed no point in that as it wasn’t perceptible) shadow projections of pointy-nosed characters by a Chicago-based outfit called Manual Cinema, reminiscent in part of vintage Czech cartoons, in part of the dreary, wanly-coloured kind of graphics the English used to like (John Piper, Edward Ardizzone…) and in part of Le Petit Prince, France’s answer to Jonathan Livingston Seagull. The effect was no doubt intended to be naively charming and please the kids. It was what you might call “gentil,” but as an old friend of mine used to say, “La gentillesse n’est pas une vertu” or, as I recently read on a French website: “‘Mais bon, il est gentil’ (...) En gros, il ou elle est con.”

In sum, some very fine music-making and well-meaning animation but, as my neighbour remarked on the way out: “Oui, c’est pas mal. Mais on s’en fout.”

Here, Maestro Wenarto plays the Witch.

Il giardino di Armida has also covered this concert and unearthed this video clip.

One of the highlights of Alvis Hermanis' Paris production.

Théâtre des Champs Eysées, Paris, Monday January 11 2016

Conductor and fortepiano: Ottavio Dantone. Soprano: Olga Peretyatko. Accademia Bizantina.

Il viaggio a Reims: “Partir, oh Ciel! Desio… Grazie vi rendo o Dei”.
Il Signor Bruschino: Sinfonia.
Il viaggio a Reims: “All’ombra amena”.
Il barbiere di Siviglia: Temporale (storm).
Il turco in Italia: “I vostri cenci vi mando.. Squallida veste e bruna… L’infelice, che opprime sventura”.
Semiramide : “Bel raggio lusinghier”.
Tancredi: Sinfonia.
Tancredi: “Di mia vita infelice… No, che il morir”.
Grand’overtura obbligata a contrabasso.
Matilde di Shabran: “Ami alfine… Tacea la tromba altera”.

Rossini

I believe Olga Peretyatko has had quite a tough schedule touring this Rossini recital. I have also read that she's in the habit of introducing the numbers herself, but was advised against it (possibly by the TCE management?) in Paris, a detail she announced, using a microphone, at the start of the evening. Perhaps fatigue, perhaps the destabilising change in routine, perhaps the cold and damp, perhaps just stage fright at facing a new audience - perhaps any or all of these affected the first half of the programme, as what we heard sounded highly competent, carefully crafted and studiously musical, but too well-behaved (what the French call "policed"), and neither particularly individual nor obviously exceptional - taking no risks. La Comtesse de Folleville lacked folly, as the soprano tried too hard to act. My neighbour went so far as to complain he was very nearly bored.

But eventually, after the interval, it was as if a different person and different singer emerged (in a different dress: red instead of fuchsia. I say "fuchsia," not "pink," just to show I know how to spell it), more at ease, more natural, less arch - and with clearer diction. From Tancredi onwards we were on a roll: warm, silkily golden timbre, a fuller voice than usual, these days, in Rossini, beautiful phrasing, impeccable staccato flourishes, full-voiced high notes... Olga Peretyatko is not a "stratospheric" coloratura soprano, so she's sparing with the top notes and doesn't chuck them in, unwritten, for free - she ends her arias on the low note, not the high one; but when she sings them, they are indeed sung: worked at (I don't think they come easily), full-voiced, phrased even - and in tune.

In other words, in the second half of this recital it finally became clear why she's now so famous - and attracts fans from abroad carrying bouquets of roses marked "Viva Rossini, Viva Olga". Her encore was "Una voce poco fa". And as it was the only one she'd brought, and the Parisians plugged away at their rhythmic clapping, refusing to let her go, she had to sing it twice.

Ravenna

The Accademia Bizantina (an odd name, but they come from Ravenna) is a period-instrument orchestra. They, too, seemed to take a while to warm up: there were some strange sounds from the woodwinds at the back and odd tuning from the 'cellos on the right. Our old friend the lone booer, up in the gods, even had it in for the conductor, for a while. But, like Olga P., in the second half of the programme, they were up to cruising speed, and gave us Rossini with bite and crunch and sparks, sudden, startling ffs, and the whiff of the field that valveless horns bring, even a degree of Sturm und Drang, often bringing to mind Haydn, and sometimes Gluck and Schubert.

Very interesting, and I was glad to find out, by the end, what the fuss was about. Once again, all was well that ended well.

Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, Thursday February 4 2016

Conductor: David Charles Abell. Production: Lee Blakeley. Sets: Charles Edwards. Costumes: Brigitte Reiffenstuel. Choreography: Nick Winston. Lighting: Emma Chapman. Lilli Vanessi/Katharine: Christine Buffle. Fred Graham/Petruchio: David Pittsinger. Lois Lane/Bianca: Francesca Jackson. Bill Calhoun/Lucentio: Alan Burkitt. Hattie: Jasmine Roy. Paul: Fela Lufadeju. First Man (Gunman): Martyn Ellis. Second Man (Gunman): Daniel Robinson. Gremio: Jack Harrison-Cooper. Hortensio: Thierry Picaut. Harry Trevor/Baptista: Joe Sheridan. Ralph (Stage Manager)/Nathaniel: Damian Thantrey. Stage Doorman/Haberdasher: Franck Vincent. Cab driver: Thomas Boutilier. Gregory - Dance Captain: Ryan-Lee Seager. Philip: Sean Lopeman. Harrison Howell: John Paval. Orchestre de Chambre de Paris.

Cole Porter

I've said it before, e.g. when writing up Manon Lescaut in 2013: "If you leave at the interval, chances are someone will tell you it got better after." So sure enough, having quit Kiss Me Kate at half time, next morning I had an email saying: "A mistake. The first half did drag but you missed a side-splitting "Brush up your Shakespeare" from the two Mafiosi. I wept."

Oh, well. Why did we leave? Various reasons, I suppose. At least the e-mail chum agreed about the amplification: "Don't get me started on miking! I'm told the Châtelet's technology is old and that you can now get systems with more 'direction'. I'm fed up scrutinising faces to see who's singing." Exactly: it took too long to locate whose lips were moving, whether in dialogue or songs.

The women's New Look costumes were undeniably impressive, in fact almost stealing the show: "Stunning 1950s Dior-inspired gowns in the finale," said the friend, but there were plenty in part one as well. The men were dressed much like Gene Kelly in An American in Paris - wide, high-waisted trousers, cut too short, and short-sleeved shirts under sleeveless fairisle jumpers. All impeccably done. The on-stage, no-business-like-show-business rehearsal staging was conventional: a theatre name in white bulbs (proper ones, not EU-mandated scams); thickly-moulded, unmistakeably American proscenium arches; two red-brick "backstage" structures with iron stairs (topped with a busy wardrobe department with women at ironing boards), revolving to reveal dressing rooms as required. The "Italian" business took place in stylised cardboard sets that also looked, in period, like An American in Paris (the big ballet number).

We open in Venice

But as I watched this show, I remembered a recent discussion, on Parterre, about the NYCO's "renaissance" production of Tosca. There, I said: "I saw a Gioconda in Florence (with Dimitrova, so I heard it as well) that IIRC recreated the original, old designs. Result: it was just old-looking." It sounds as ungrateful as looking a gift horse in the mouth, but the late 40s/early 50s aesthetic was so thoroughly carried through that the production, while new, felt, as I mentioned to my friend in that morning-after e-mail exchange, like an old one warmed up.

And then, my experience of musicals has mostly been in New York. There, you wonder how they do it. They make it all look effortlessly easy and fun and bright as a button, as if there's nothing to it and they're loving every minute. For the first half hour of Kiss Me Kate it looked to me as thought the cast's hearts weren't altogether in it. The musical specialists (Alan Burkitt, Francesca Jackson) were more convincing than the operatic ones. Vintage scooters were a cute idea, but the performers looked unsteady and uneasy on them. After an hour, things warmed up: by the time of "I hate Men" Christine Buffle was visibly enjoying herself. But overall it was bon enfant, it was diligent, but this first half lacked the gleaming Broadway flair and finish.

When my companion said "You can stay if you want," I hesitated. But, miserable meanie that I must be, in the end I left.

ONP Bastille, Monday February 8 2016

Conductor: Daniele Callegari. Production: Alex Ollé. Sets: Alfons Flores. Costumes: Lluc Castells. Lighting: Urs Schönebaum. Il Conte di Luna: Ludovic Tézier. Leonora: Anna Netrebko. Azucena: Ekaterina Semenchuk. Manrico: Marcelo Alvarez. Ferrando: Roberto Tagliavini. Ines: Marion Lebègue. Ruiz: Oleksiy Palchykov. Un vecchio zingaro: Constantin Ghircau. Un messo: Cyrille Lovighi. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris.

Verdi

When a man with a mike stood in front of the curtain and announced that Madame Netrebko, sick, would be replaced by Madame He, he was booed. Judging by the number of men in dark suits sporting Légion d’Honneur rosettes queuing to pick up free tickets half an hour before, it can’t have been because many had wasted their money. (This reminds me of something. Skip this parenthesis if you want to get on quickly to Trovatore. It reminds me of an evening at the Opéra Comique, some years back, when the minister of culture was on the front row of the balcony and Jérôme Savary, the director at the time, who had incidentally dubbed his house théâtre musical populaire, decided to seize the opportunity to make a cheeky speech about its popular success on a shoestring budget from the state and started by drawing the audience’s attention to the minister, adding: “He’s the only person here who hasn’t paid for his ticket.”)

Of course, this was a disappointment, though if a singer is really sick I don’t see what booing is supposed to do about it. I have only ever seen Anna Netrebko once, years ago, and that was an unsatisfactory evening of Bellini that contributed to the name of my blog. Since then she’s been hogged by the Met. But in the end, in any case, we had a bloody good Trovatore, as Trovatores go.

Hui He was not scheduled to sing in this production until February 20 so it was game of her to step in. Perhaps this was a last-minute change. If so, she can obviously be forgiven for being nervous. Through most of the range she has a smooth, warm, darkish, eminently “comfortable” timbre: a beautiful voice and one that carries in the Bastille. During the first part (there was one interval), my neighbour (as we found out chatting during it) had had exactly the same thought as I, which was that she was possibly lacking the high notes for the part, and might perhaps consider moving to mezzo roles. But it was hard to tell if the unfortunate accident with a top note in her first scene and the precariousness of later ones (sometimes flat, though "helped up" by the vibrato), occasional “holes” in the voice, or her tendency to rush ahead of the (already zippy) orchestra, were normal features of her singing today or due to nerves. Perhaps the latter, as by the end of the opera she seemed more at ease (relief at getting there relatively unscathed?) and her high notes were more fluent, though the tendency remained for them to fade in volume.

Losing Netrebko, we no doubt lost something, but less than we might have feared. We heard (and heard without straining, which is something these days in the vast Bastille) a lot of very beautiful singing, and if the acting was not so hot, well, that could be nerves too, or lack of rehearsal (with nearly two weeks to go before her scheduled debut); in any case, there wasn’t a huge amount of acting to do in this production (see below).

Ekaterina Semenchuk was an excellent Azucena, not quite as darkly chesty as some, dramatically and vocally powerful but always musical. Musical too, as usual, was Ludovic Tézier, who sailed through it. And while Marcelo Alvarez may not be the most thrilling singing actor, he’s generous and reliable: he can sing the notes, and if not quite solar, his top ones undeniably hit a spot. Secondary roles were well cast and the chorus improved as the evening advanced. Daniele Callegari went mostly for rapid tempi (I say “mostly” because once or twice I was then puzzled at how far he let Alvarez slow down). After audibly ragged triplets in the opening bars, the orchestra was on average form: “no better than they ought to be” as a late Scottish friend might have said. Perhaps on account of the cast change upsetting everyone a bit, all evening there were occasional problems of coordination between stage and pit.

I haven’t read any reviews yet, but suspect some critics will say this production relies more on its sets, costumes and lighting than actual directing. I’ll put a word in first for the lighting, as it struck me that it was a more than usually active contributor to the overall experience: you may often notice excellent lighting, but it isn’t often it comes across as a genuine protagonist. The set was ingenious: rows of giant, rectangular blocks were suspended on steel wires (four per block: one at each corner) and could be raised high above the stage or lowered and plugged – more or less - into rectangular holes in it. Less, and the effect was a kind of Stonehenge; more, with only the top poking out of the ground, it was a graveyard (sometimes with crosses added). Totally plugged in, forming a flat surface, the blocks left a forest of taut steel wires – tricky for the cast and chorus. Totally unplugged and up in the air, they left the holes: braziers, trenches or graves. This clever dispositif was totally modular, making various kinds of spaces possible, and backed on three sides by mirrors to make it seem still larger.

The repeated movements up and down could have become a wearisome gimmick; but the magnificent lighting, changing colour, casting shadows, highlighting soldiers in their dark trenches and glinting off their helmets, making broad stripes on the ground or great spotlight beams from a sky of cubist clouds (a) avoided boredom (or, to be more polite, ensured variety) and (b) crafted impressively painterly, highly graphic, geometric, almost expressionistic tableaux.

The costumes set the period at the outset: World War I uniforms with old-fashioned gas masks. Later, the nuns would have gas masks on shoulder straps over their white habits. That being once done, however, Ollé did very little to justify the decision, leaving it to the audience to think it through. If WWI was a “konzept” he didn’t really develop it – hampered by the sets, perhaps: all those wires to thread through and solid piers or gaping holes to avoid. No anvils, just a long, refugee-like trail of gypsies with babies, during the "Anvil Chorus" isn't really much to go on, and the principals' acting was operatic standard issue. Which is why I think the critics will complain (as they quite frequently do these days) that in a fancy set there was no actual directing. The production is visually sometimes quite splendid, indeed fascinating to look at, but the opera, as staged in it, might almost be a dramatic oratorio.

I, however, am not complaining. If I exclude Tcherniakov’s Brussels production, which I liked very much but is something of a special case, and make allowances for Hue He’s likely nerves, this was still, vocally and visually if not especially dramatically, the most satisfactory Trovatore I’ve ever seen and heard.

Here, Maestro Wenarto shows how it should be done. And here as well, demonstrating the development in his artistry. Here, a very moving Miserere.

If only Bellini were always as entertaining...

Palais de la Monnaie, Brussels, Sunday April 3 2016

Conductor: Samuel Jean. Production: Richard Brunel. Sets: Anouk Dell'Aiera. Costumes: Claire Risterucci. Lighting: Laurent Castaingt. Don Pedro: Frédéric Caton. Claudio: Etienne Dupuis. Bénédict: Julien Dran. Don Juan: Sébastien Dutrieux. Léonato: Pierre Barrat. Héro: Sophie Karthäuser. Béatrice: Michèle Losier. Samarone: Lionel Lhote. Ursule: Eve-Maud Hubeaux. Orchestra and Chorus of La Monnaie.

Berlioz

I like directors who set you thinking, which is why Tcherniakov and Warlikowski are favourites. I'm less keen when a director decides to "improve" a work by rewriting and reordering it to suit his own ideas.

Richard Brunel seems to have found Béatrice et Bénédict a bit too frothy and fun, and decided it should be grimmer and that Samarone should play a bigger, blacker role. It had never occurred to me before, though it now seems obvious, that this is easy to do when a work has spoken dialogues. You can change the plot without composing new music - you just move it around, as on Sunday. As I didn't know the piece, with a defter touch on Brunel's part I might not have noticed. But I sensed something was wrong as this "new version" wavered awkwardly from light-hearted to heavy-handed, and it was clear once Héro was denounced as a two-timer by Samarone, called a slut and a whore and spat on by her lover, and in the end, when it was all cleared up, still refused to marry him, that the reworking was severe.

Visually, the show was less startling. There was a single, multi-purpose set and a single set of multi-purpose props. At the start we were perhaps in church or in a village square. There was a spiral staircase on the left up to a pulpit that later

doubled as a balcony. At the rear was a war-memorial wall of dead soldiers's photos that the living soldiers burst through in modern camouflage with guns (with Brussels still in shock after suicide bombings in March, we had been warned about this in advance by management). Wardrobes that at first were linen cupboards became soldiers' lockers, and were later used for hiding in and eavesdropping from before lying down and turning into a banqueting table. Washtubs became bathtubs as the soldiers stripped to their boxers to soap down. ("This being La Monnaie," said a friend after, "it's a wonder they kept anything on at all.") Mattresses lay around singly or in piles. As the wedding approached, Héro stepped unexpectedly off the pulpit-balcony into thin air on wires and, as she alighted, continuing the theme of reuse, her long, white train became the tablecloth.

The costumes told us the setting was vaguely post-war. The acting was as theatrically sound as if this had been a spoken play. The lighting was mostly amber, presumably with Sicilian sunshine in mind.

We had a very good ensemble cast in which the women shone and Sophie K. stood out in particular. There were some unusually beautiful duets and ensembles, despite the fact that the director's determination to import grimness clashed with the tone of the score. The orchestra was on form, the chorus less so I thought: I've known them sound more sure of themselves. But it must have been hot up there...

La Monnaie's main house is under renovation, so a temporary "Palais de la Monnaie" has been erected, a modern, tent-like industrial hangar among old warehouses in Brussels' docks. Management seem more optimistic about how long this solution will be needed than our usherette, who is convinced it will last all next season. This is bad news. The "tent" offers no sound insulation whatever (in quiet moments you could actually hear birds cheeping on the roof) and is on the flight path planes follow (along the canal) to land at Zaventem. As the airport only opened on Sunday after the bombs, there were relatively few flights; but in future there will be plenty - not to mention children playing and police or ambulance sirens passing by, and the constant noise, inside, of blowers.

Sunday also turned warm. The sun on the tent made it uncomfortably hot inside, and this was just early April. And as, in the temporary structure, there are no balconies, people who usually have balcony seats find themselves too far away to see who is singing at any point. I must say I am now looking forward to Mitridate even less than I normally would...

ONP Bastille, Monday May 2 2016

Conductor: Nicola Luisotti. Production: Claus Guth. Sets and costumes: Christian Schmidt. Lighting: Olaf Winter. Il Duca di Mantova: Michael Fabiano. Rigoletto: Quinn Kelsey. Gilda: Olga Peretyatko. Sparafucile: Rafal Siwek. Maddalena: Vesselina Kasarova. Giovanna: Isabelle Druet. Il Conte di Monterone: Mikhail Kolelishvili. Marullo: Michal Partyka. Matteo Borsa: Christophe Berry. Il Conte di Ceprano: Tiago Matos. La Contessa: Andreea Soare. Paggio della Duchessa: Adriana Gonzalez. Usciere di corte: Florent Mbia. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris.

Verdi

It's always frustrating when, as sometimes happens, the efforts of an excellent cast are undermined by the distancing effects of an unsuccessful production. So it was this week at the Bastille, with this Rigoletto - or so it seemed to me, at any rate. As also quite often happens, the initial idea was reasonable enough but unconvincingly carried through.

As the opera began, an old tramp in a long coat, with remnants of white makeup on his face, knelt and opened a carton. He pulled out, first, a (monochrome) Harlequin's outfit, then a blood-stained white dress. Carrying his memories round in a box, we easily understood; and the production would be a flashback, in basically a single set: the box,blown up to Bastille proportions.

But from then on, it was as if the director and his assistants couldn't make their minds up, trying out one cliché ("poncif" was the word my French neighbour used) of modern staging after another to no satisfactory overall effect. The opening scene was in renaissance costume until Monterone burst in in plain, dark, modern clothes. Perhaps it had been a fancy dress ball after all: we never saw period costumes again. When they finally met, Gilda, in a demure white dress, and the duke, in a stiff, nerdy hairpiece and nerdy specs, together looked like Janet and Brad in Rocky Horror. The old tramp we had seen was not, it turned out, Rigoletto, but his double. There would be doubles (or more) throughout the show. Sparafucile and Rigoletto were even dressed the same and mirrored each other's gestures as they struck their deal, and during "Caro nome" we had three ages of Gilda, in identical white dresses, on points and the duke's nerdy double, also a dancer, attending her on her pedestal.

The duke and Gilda

There were video projections as well, admittedly not all as corny as the one of Gilda running towards us, in slow motion, through a field of wild flowers (or later, running away again).

None of all this business seemed urgently necessary and the effect was fragmented, not coherent. Least understandable of all, to me (perhaps I was tired and not in a mood for working things out) and unkindest to the tenor was to have him, after a good snort of coke, sing "La donna e mobile" in front of a line-up of showgirls in white feathers, wriggling their bottoms at him and provoking laughter from the audience. I really don't know why Maddalena was leading this revue at Sparafucile's house, in black patent, thigh-high boots and spangled tails - though it must be said Vesselina Kazarova wore the outfit with panache.

The trouble with this sort of production is that, by distancing you from the characters and preventing you from engaging with them, it limits the singers' powers to stir up emotion. This is, as I said, frustrating when you have such a good cast up there on stage, battling away at it.

Least hindered was perhaps Quinn Kelsey, who managed to project a moving portrayal of a tragically broken man. Vocally he was an unusual, un-Italian Rigoletto, lighter and grainier in tone than you expect, sounding somehow higher than the notes he was actually singing, perhaps a touch colourless, but powerful neverless. It was a pity that the effect of his final business, packing the dress into the carton to "boucler la boucle" of the flashback production, was underwhelming.

I was very glad to have at last a chance to see and hear Michael Fabiano. His voice is darker than I expected, especially at the top, with a striking variety of colour and timbre and wide dynamic range. His singing was generous - maybe even more generous than need be: with such reserves he could afford to take things easier - and, so I thought, risk-taking and pugnacious, as if determined to break out of the constraints of the production and project real personality from behind those nerdy specs. This pluckiness was undeniably engaging, when these days so much singing is cautious and sparing.

Olga Peretyatko, though by no means old, is a bit too grown-up to skip across the stage like a kid to greet her father. Vocally, she is, as my neighbour put it, not a fragile Gilda, and he meant it as a compliment. I enjoyed what sounded to me like old-fashioned diva singing, with some truly gorgeous sounds and impressive technique - I don't think I just imagined, at one point, two successive, flawless messa di voce.

Maddalena

The rest of the cast was more or less perfect, with Vesselina Kasarova not only looking great in her boots and tails but in much better vocal shape than I had, I must admit, feared. And the orchestra, under Nicola Luisotti, was for once a genuine protagonist, not just an accompaniment.

The production is, for now, available on line and will apparently come out on DVD, so anyone interested will have a chance to see if my impressions make sense. To me, putting this cast in this production was a lost opportunity. I'm told Guth has done better work. To me, Carsen's "circus" staging would, if he could have been persuaded to come and revive it himself, probably have been a better bet.

Palais de la Monnaie, Brussels, Sunday May 15 2016

Conductor: Christophe Rousset. Production and costumes: Jean-Philippe Clarac and Olivier Deloeuil - Le Lab. Sets and lighting: Rick Martin. Video: Jean-Baptiste Beïs. Mitridate: Michael Spyres. Aspasia: Lenneke Ruiten. Sifare: Myrtò Papatanasiu. Farnace: David Hansen. Ismene: Simona Šaturová. Marzio: Sergey Romanovsky. Arbate: Yves Saelens. Orchestra of La Monnaie.

Mozart

Waffle-warning: this account is going to start with a fair amount of waffle not all directly related to yesterday's performance of Mitridate. Feel free to skip the digression. To help, I will mark the start of the write-up proper clearly in CAPITALS. But first, the waffle...

These must be nail-racking, nerve-biting times for the people in charge of La Monnaie. The house was already supposed to be hard up, as they all are these days. Then it announced that its home, the Théâtre Royal, seriously needed renovating, so last season's performances took place in various other venues around Brussels, as mentioned in my write-ups e.g. of Adès's Powder her Face.

Work started late and will go on longer than expected (fancy that!), so the company looked around for alternatives and finally decided it would recycle a big top used for opera in Liège and put up for sale in 2014 for half a million euros. This was, it transpired, too clapped-out to be reused. The upshot is that La Monnaie has, in the end, as I said in my April account of Béatrice et B., erected a brand-new plastic hangar on industrial waste ground a fair distance, across uneven terrain, from any main road. A double-decker London bus has been parked on the bare earth, halfway there, to sell champagne to those desperate for a drink on the way. Some shuttle buses and golf carts and extra staff have been laid on for those, such as old and infirm patrons, who find the trek too much. And anyone in a wheelchair has to take the long way round (reminding me of a sign that used to be posted at a back door to the Gare de l'Est in Paris, saying that the entrance for people with restricted mobility was 500 metres to the left).

To (big) top it all (OK, that pun is cringe-making; but I could also have made a joke out of waffle-warning, in the Belgian context, but didn't...) to top it all, as I was saying, management found they could not put on their existing, Carsen production of Mitridate there, so they literally put the show out to tender with a call for proposals. I believe they got more than 100, and what we saw yesterday was the winning bid, by Jean-Philippe Clarac and Olivier Deloeuil from an outfit in Bordeaux called "Le Lab".

It turns out, as I also said in April, that La Monnaie's shiny new tent is not only stiflingly hot when the sun's out, but also right on the flight path for planes landing at Zaventem (I was told, and it may be true, that pilots follow the nearby canal). It is anything but soundproof. During B & B, in addition to planes (at that particular time mercifully few, as the airport was only just cautiously re-opening after the March terrorist attack) and despite the very audible rumble and rush of the ineffectual ventilators, I heard birds chirping on the roof, let alone kids playing outside and police cars screaming by. In other words, the new venue is, if truth be told, unfit for purpose and a trial to all: above all, I should think, to the conductor, singers and orchestra, but also to the audience. Even with seats closer to the stage (my present ones are too far away to see who's singing), I'm not looking forward to next season there. And I'm sorry to say that even today I had a message from an acquaintance saying "The hangar was awful. We're not returning until they do the old theatre up." Bad news for a struggling house.

MITRIDATE STARTS HERE

Mitridate is a work that needs help, not hindrances. It is about as undramatic as they come, so it was perhaps as well that the new production kept people amused (though I did wonder "aloud" as it were, on Facebook this morning, whether opera seria based on Racine ought actually to amuse us). The concept was not, as La Libre Belgique complained at some length ("un sentiment de déjà-vu et d’ennui..."), novel, but unlike La Libre Belgique most people seemed ready to indulge it in return for being kept awake, in the airless heat of the tent, by its perpetual movement and changes of focus from live action to video.

The work was set in modern Europe and indeed contemporary Brussels: the Roman Union v. the Pontus Kingdom. The hall was decked with the EU member states' flags, interspersed with TV screens frequently flashing "breaking news", CNN- or BBC-style, complete with Angela Merkel, David Cameron and François Hollande, and even before we were in our seats, outside in the foyer, a makeshift shrine to the supposedly-late Mitridate had sprung up, a bank of flowers, candles, teddy-bears, flags and hand-written messages like those that appeared after the recent attacks in Paris and Brussels.

On stage was a functional summit conference-room with a large oval table surrounded by chairs. At times, screens and other panels were wheeled in to create a more intimate space of easy-chairs and coffee tables; barriers kept jostling journalists at bay; a lectern appeared for speech-making. Costumes were resolutely contemporary: politicians' suits for the men, suits and stilettos for the women, smartphones and video-screens were much stared-at, and at one point Marzio lounged against a wall eating a cornet of chips. Mitridate, looking back to the legend, at one stage rolled up his sleeves to inject himself, at another took pills, and his fatal gesture, at the end, was to unplug a drip from his arm.

By now far from innovative, but entertaining enough. It might prove telegenic.

I was, as I said, a long way from the stage. I wished I were nearer, as I'm almost certain this was an all-round excellent cast, and if I'd been closer the roar of landing jets overhead would have been less worrisome. The women's singing was impeccably musical and manicured, sweet-toned and modest: top notes were not played to the gallery but almost systematically (with some very impressive exceptions) kept short and vibrato-free. It was peculiarly consistent, as if all three had been to the same school, under the same teacher - there was relatively little contrast between them. For a time I felt frustrated at the primness of it, wishing for more dramatic thrills. But then it struck me that the fault, if such it could be called in the circumstances, was perhaps more young Mozart's than theirs: his score is stronger on introversion (the sad bits, you might say) than drama. And if I'd been nearer the stage, I might have experienced more oomph.

David Hansen was more obviously dramatic, with a more striking, resounding counter-tenor voice than I expected (with my usual prejudices against counter-tenors in opera). A nice surprise. Michael Spyres has had good reviews (e.g. "... in this very difficult role that requires all the skills from rapid notes to jumps and a variety of affections he is almost exceptional"*), so perhaps yesterday was an off-day, understandable in a long run of such an impossible role: he sounded perilously stretched at some points, though at others his warm, grainy timbre, more powerfully projected than his colleagues', was thrilling.

In 2007 I wrote "Christophe Rousset and his Talens Lyriques are a lot fleeter of foot than Mark Wigglesworth and the Monnaie band, even though the latter were being as HIP as they could: no vibrato for the strings and, just to make things harder, no valves on the horns." Well, this time Rousset was in the pit, so the band was as fleet-footed and bouncy as you could wish for. It was a good thing, I thought, it was Rousset and not Christie, as I'm almost certain the latter would have downed his baton (if he used one) and stomped off as the umpteenth plane roared overhead. Rousset had at times to gesticulate almost wildly to help his soloists keep time over the din.

But to my relief, as any interruptions would have made Mitridate in the hot tent even longer, he soldiered on and we ended right on time.

*Il giardino di Armida.

Maestro Wenarto sings even earlier Mozart.

Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Paris, Saturday May 21 2016

Conductor: Daniele Gatti. Production: Pierre Audi. Sets and costumes: Christof Hetzer. Lighting: Jean Kalman. Video: Anna Bertsch. Tristan: Torsten Kerl. Isolde: Rachel Nicholls. Brangäne: Michelle Breedt. King Marke: Steven Humes. Kurwenal: Brett Polegato. Melot: Andrew Rees. Shepherd, young sailor: Marc Larcher. Steersman: Francis Dudziak. Orchestre National de France. Chorus of Radio France.

Wagner

The first thing I wanted to say here, without introduction, is that Tortsen Kerl, as Tristan, was magnificent. In his act three delirium he was phenomenal, acting up a storm in a way I had no idea he had in him. It was a rare privilege to be there. The TCE's reasonable dimensions allowed him to sing and shape the part in a way few tenors can - often they recite or bark or almost shout it out in desperation (sometimes quite effectively, I must admit) - and in a way Kerl himself was unable to bring off as Siegfried in 2011, defeated, as so many are, by the Bastille's unreasonable vastness. Apparently, earlier in the run he had people worried he might be falling ill, but there was no sign of that on Saturday night - as far as I know the slight but not unpleasant nasal timbre and hint of "congestion" are part of his usual package; and he has more body and grit to his voice than some I've heard. No, this was a truly exceptional experience.

But being at the TCE, not the Bastille, of course made a difference for everybody: singers, orchestra and audience, reminding us that “even” Wagner suffers from being performed in a jumbo-sized house. At the TCE, finesse is still possible and the impact of a large-scale work (even if the TCE’s pit limits the size of the orchestra) is intact.

People bought their tickets expecting Emily Magee as Isolde. She dropped out mid-rehearsal and was replaced by a young soprano as yet nearly unknown in France, so of course ticket-holders feared disappointment... They needn’t have. Rachel Nicholls is no doubt a very different Isolde from Emily Magee, but a very good one even so: young, energetic and determined, vocally brighter than usual at the top: her critics find her shrill and perhaps she does lack a degree of “rapturous” warmth. But she has all the notes and, like Kerl, can sing the part, not scream it.

For some people, the star of the show was actually Brett Polegato’s vigorous, generous Kurwenal. Steven Humes, as a youngish King Marke, was vocally bright, clear and powerful but in this role we could perhaps have done with more depth and warmth. Michelle Breedt was a highly committed Brangäne, warmer and rounder in timbre than Isolde, more “typically” Wagnerian might, I suppose, sum it up. In fact one of the nice things about this Tristan was that everyone was committed and generous – in a way they might also be at the Bastille, only there, from the far-off back rows of the upper reaches (I now pay a fortune for seats in the parterre, near the stage), it’s to little avail. In a smaller house their efforts pay off.

Conductor Daniele Gatti avoided wallowing and went for a fairly dry, compact sound, relatively transparent, bringing out details right down to the beautifully crafted harp arpeggio before the final long, swelling chord (the swelling upset some people). There was some memorable playing from the woodwinds (as usual; the cor anglais even came out on stage for a bow at the end) and lower strings (less usual), as well as some chaotic playing from the “hunting” horns – chaotic brass being a signature of the Orchestre National.

During act one, the production, a new one, came across as a visually seductive, timeless “modern classic”. I wasn’t alone in thinking of both Wieland Wagner and Robert Wilson: it could have been staged any time in the last 40 years. It started with a giant black square against a backlit (Wilson-style) backdrop. When the square had gone (it would be back for the other acts), the set was made up of four high-backed (nearly as high as the proscenium arch) steel trucks, gliding around, apparently unaided, to form different spaces evoking the ship’s rusty innards, sometimes plain black, sometimes with a beautiful, dimly glowing patina of blue, black and bronze. The potions were symbolised by crystals; taking them was symbolised by joining foreheads. The singers wore late 20th century “opera costumes” – needlessly complicated grey-blue draperies for the women, flowing blue-grey greatcoats, and cargo pants for the men (some of them with pony-tails ), with hints of Rick Owens. Extras were silhouetted against the backdrop like Karagöz characters. The lighting was spectacularly good, with principals brightly lit from the sides in front of dimmer backgrounds. So: not outright contemporary, but modern classic, very photogenic and and very promising.

But the following acts were less successful. The pallid, leafless act two forest was sparse: more like the rib-cage of a whale, or the ribs of a wave-worn shipwreck curving up from the ground. A facetted black menhir loomed up at the back, later shedding its black “skin” to reveal a structure of slender steel rods – like the kind of “modern” sculpture you might find at the HQ of a bank. The meaning of this was unclear, unless it was to do with Tristan and Isolde being uncovered. The costumes were now less “opera standard” and more everyday, closer to the kind of outdoor clothes people wear on Europe’s wet and windy Celtic fringes. The lovers stayed noticeably apart, singing to the far corners of the auditorium, but these days that’s standard too. Never once did Tristan look happy.

In act three, the castle was a black box, centre stage, with a glossy black interior and a single light shining out into the audience – Isolde’s light, which would go out, of course, once she arrived. The stage was strewn with black rocks, and on the right was a Flintstone-style structure with four long, knobbly legs, holding up a mummy on a bier. The costumes, in this post-apocalyptic setting, were sheer grunge, including plastic macs, and Isolde’s long hair had been cropped boyishly short.

Kerl was, as I said, magnificent in his delirium and Polegato was as vigorous as before, so there was no problem with the acting. And once Kurwenal had killed even Brangäne, the stage was left near-empty apart from the numerous dead: the black box became just a frame, and Isolde sang her Liebestod silhouetted, a black figure in a black cassock, against the light, quite effectively. But overall, though there were clearly symbols in this staging, it was hard to see what they meant (thinking of which, the videos were hard to see as well: I think I missed them, or mistook them for lighting glitches). There’s already a lot of death in Tristan. Did the successive costume changes, from “opera-classic” to modern grunge, add something about the death of mythical ideals? I don’t know and don’t seem to be alone in not knowing. Without Jean Kalman’s superb lighting, I’m not sure what would actually be left of this production.

But musically it was an outstanding evening. My neighbour was close to tears. In the circumstances I only wish – sincerely – that I liked Wagner better and could have shared fully in the excitement.

Maestro Wenarto shows once more how it should be done.

Cilea - Adriana Lecouvreur

Adès - Powder Her Face

Händel - Theodora

Strauss - Ariadne auf Naxos

Rossini, Mendelssohn and Mahler

Schoenberg - Moses und Aron

Sumi Jo in Nixon in China

Bartok - Bluebeard's Castle / Poulenc - La Voix Humaine

Berlioz - La Damnation de Faust

2016

Humperdinck - Hänsel und Gretel

La damnation de Faust : Invocation à la nature

Rossini - Olga Peretyatko

Cole Porter - Kiss Me Kate

Verdi - Il Trovatore

Bellini - La Sonnambula - "Ah non giunge"

Berlioz - Béatrice et Bénédict

Verdi - Rigoletto

Mozart - Mitridate, re di Ponto

Wagner - Tristan und Isolde