Valery Gergiev's 60th birthday concert
Barbican Hall, 22nd May 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
When the 
booking originally opened for this concert back in January 2012 as part of the LSO’s 2012/13 season, no actual programme was offered for our edification, the rubric merely noting, styled as above, that it would be in celebration of the Maestro’s sexagennial anniversary (or Diamond Jubilee if, as many do, you regard him as an absolute monarch). I booked for it blind, like everybody else, vaguely imagining that it would play to his known strengths in the Russian repertoire, or else take the form of some extended musical knees-up with lots of guest stars. In the event it only relatively recently became known that whilst the latter expectation would be partially met, in the shape of concert items played by Alexander Toradze and Leonidas Kavakos, the main musical meat of the evening was to be operatic, comprising Act V of Berlioz’s Les Troyens, with soloists both local (in the largely supporting roles) and Russian (in the case of the two principal ones). Now, Valery Gergiev certainly has form in Berlioz, having conducted concert performances here of both Benvenuto Cellini and (on three separate occasions, no less) La damnation de Faust. And his handling of Les Troyens, staged at the Valencia opera house by the La fura dels Baus collective as some Kubrickian space oddity, has been preserved on DVD.
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Britten: A Midsummer Night's Dream
Mariinsky Concert Hall, 19th May 2013, Gavin Dixon
Opera house, 
concert hall, and now another opera house: the Mariinsky is a company well-served for venues. The concert hall is a particularly versatile space, as this evening’s fully-staged performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream demonstrated. For an opera usually staged with large and involved sets, the more modest presentation here came as a refreshing surprise, and the imaginative use of trapeze artists allowed the action to take place in three dimensions. Musically, the performance was a little dour, but as usual, the Mariinsky Company was able to pepper the cast with enough outstanding vocal talents to keep the standards high, even if the English diction often left much to be desired.
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Verdi: Falstaff
Glyndebourne Festival, 19th May 2013, Sebastian Petit
What an
utterly joyous evening! Even a darkening sky and a chilly interval picnic failed to diminish the fizzing pleasure of this first revival of Richard Jones’ 1940s Falstaff (revived here under Sarah Fahie). Originally playing to rather mixed notices but now with an almost entirely new cast the production coalesced into a superbly sharp, detailed and hilarious experience. The cast worked as a tautly wound ensemble who appeared to enjoy every minute and centred round the astonishing Laurent Naouri as Sir John Falstaff.
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Yards of tartan; fabulous singing! 
Rossini: La donna del lago
Royal Opera, 17th May 2013, Mark Pullinger
Yards of tartan, a
tenor as hirsute Braveheart rebel Highlander and a picturesque mural (or murial) of Loch Katrine, which would have had Hilda Ogden green with envy, place us emphatically in Scotland for this new staging of Rossini’s La donna del lago at Covent Garden. Originally planned as a co-production with the Palais Garnier and La Scala, the Royal Opera gave Luis Pasqual’s staging the boot and employed John Fulljames to do the directorial honours instead (oh that it had the courage to do likewise with other co-prods foisted upon it – yes, I do mean Rusalka). La donna del lago, based on Sir Walter Scott’s narrative poem The Lady of the Lake, presents a romanticized view of Highland history and Fulljames taps into its events as a ‘museum piece’, not always with coherence. It will have mattered little for many in the audience, who were there primarily for the singing and cheered the cast to the rafters.
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Opera North, Leeds, 16th May 2013, Geoffrey Mogridge
In the glorious 
summer of 1947, Glyndebourne Festival Opera House, the setting for the premiere of Benjamin Britten's chamber opera Albert Herring, must have seemed the very antithesis of post-war austerity Britain. It might be hard to imagine the aristocratic Lady Billows having to produce a ration book; but the whole population had to do so to purchase basic foods such as eggs, bread, milk and sugar. Meanwhile, society was going through immense change as the old order, and with it the rigid class structures, slowly began to erode. Given Britten's distaste of the class system, it is unlikely that he composed Albert Herring solely as a light-hearted rural romp designed to light up people's lives during the post-war drabness. Glyndebourne's founder John Christie is said to have heartily disliked the piece, dismissing it saying "This isn't our kind of thing, you know”. Perhaps Christie's reaction was not surprising, as the sharply drawn characters are parodies of familiar establishment figures and their servitors.
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Monty Python meets G&S in crowd-pleasing Pirates!
Sullivan: The Pirates of Penzance
Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 15th May 2013, Kelvin Holdsworth
Scottish Opera 
and the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company have set sail with a sure-fire summer hit with their delightful new production of The Pirates of Penzance. A real crowd pleaser, this production deserves the success that it will undoubtedly have.
It became quickly obvious during the overture that this was a production that we were intended to laugh at. The seagull saw to that, first being heard crying plaintively above the sound of the orchestra and then appearing on strings from the very top of the proscenium and flying around over an azure curtain.
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Berg: Wozzeck
English National Opera, 11th May 2013, Gavin Dixon
Carrie Cracknell, a 
respected theatre director, makes her operatic debut with this ENO Wozzeck. The work demands much of its interpreters, not least a visual conception as compelling as the drama within the music. That’s exactly what it gets, in a production that moves the action to a present-day British army barracks, instilling claustrophobia, social decay and abusive power hierarchies at every turn. Cracknell treats all of her singers as real actors, leading to psychological insights that are all too rare from an opera that is more often played for its shock value. Edward Gardner also seeks, and regularly finds, details and subtleties in the work with his precise and measured reading. But the impressive intellect behind this production, both on the stage and in the pit, never obscures the work’s sheer emotional power. Everything builds towards the searing conclusion, in which the graphic visuals are fully the equal of the intensely powerful music.
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Magdalena Kožená
Barbican Hall, 8th May 2013, Sebastian Petit
Entering the 
Barbican Hall foyers I suspected I might have, in a senior moment, turned up on the wrong night. While not quite yet colonised by tumbleweed, the foyers were horribly unpopulated considering the centre was hosting a recital by a big name artist like Magdalena Kožená. The rich variety of musical life in our capital can often result in deserving events failing to attract the level of support they deserve. This was clearly the case last night with the lures of the all-star (minus 1) Don Carlo and the opening of Liam Scarlett’s latest excursion into the world of nightmare leading to a less than half-full hall at the Barbican.
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Wagner: Parsifal
Oper Stuttgart, 5th May 2013, Faye Courtney
Cannibalism, 
self-mutilation, mad axe murderers, two-headed genetic mutants and women wearing clingfilm – just a few of the things you don’t usually expect to see in your average production of Parsifal. Welcome to the crazy world of Calixto Bieito, whose brilliant and disturbingly nihilistic interpretation of Wagner’sBühnenweihfestspiel is most definitely not for traditionalists, the squeamish or those of a sensitive disposition. For all its sublime music, Parsifal is Wagner’s most dramatically inert opera - yet incredibly, Bieito has somehow achieved the near impossible feat of creating a 5 hour long theatrical experience where it’s impossible to be bored for a single minute.
Read more>>
Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer
Oper Stuttgart, 4th May 2013, Faye Courtney
I’m not personally 
convinced that Wagner wrote Der fliegende Holländer because he was secretly trying to make some kind of anti-Capitalist ‘statement’, but try telling that to Calixto Bieito, a director who never lets trifling little details like the composer’s intentions stand in the way of creating a controversial piece of Regietheater, or as some may translate it - ‘Eurotrash’. Though his shock tactics are guaranteed to divide critics and public alike, you can’t deny that Bieito’s productions are usually intensely theatrical and thought-provoking affairs. However, in the case of his Dutchman for Oper Stuttgart the whole basic concept of a bunch of badly behaved businessmen in a rubber dinghy sadly fails to hit the mark.
Read more>>
Handel: Joshua
Opera North, Leeds, 4th May 2013, Geoffrey Mogridge
My earliest 
prevailing image of oratorio - particularly those of George Frederick Handel - is of instrumental textures like clotted cream and the full-throated roar of serried ranks of choristers dressed in flowing white gowns or black evening tails stacked up behind a swollen orchestra in an ornate Victorian Town Hall; or (alternatively) one of the great northern chapel choirs with organ or harmonium accompaniment delivering the annual performance of Messiah, Judas Maccabaeus or Saul.
Read more>>
Verdi: Don Carlo
Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, 2nd May 2013, Nicola Lischi
The most 
amazing thing about this performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlois that it took place at all. The troubles that have been plaguing the Fondazione del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino are well known and this writer has already mentioned them in other recent reviews. The bottom line is that, without going into details, the Maggio ended up in such a sorry state that a few months ago the Italian government had no choice but to place an external commissioner, Francesco Bianchi, at its helm, so as to shed light on the actual extent of the deficit and try to save the sinking ship.
Read more>>
Handel: Atalanta
Cambridge Handel Opera, 30th April 2013, Sandra Bowdler
Cambridge 
saw an outstanding performance of Handel’s Atalanta, which could compare with anything from a major company. The production, singing and music were all next to flawless, and it was a Baroque production with a slight tongue in cheek style which delighted the audience. Atalanta was written to celebrate the marriage of the Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha to Frederick Louis (or Friedrich Ludwig), the son of King George II of England, in London in 1736. This context is necessary to understand some of the features of the opera, in particular why the plot is considered to be remarkably fluffy, even by the standards of Baroque opera.
Read more>>
Shostakovich: The Nose
Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg, 29th April 2013, Gavin Dixon
The Mariinsky company
is very proud of this production of Shostakovich’s The Nose. And so they should be, as this is a spectacular staging that plays to all the company’s strengths. It is a rollercoaster from beginning to end; bizarre and surreal, but also dynamic and constantly inventive. The production premiered in 2004, and after completing its run was taken on tour by Valery Gergiev to Stockholm, Paris, London (the Barbican) and Berlin. Then, in 2009, it was chosen as the work to launch the Mariinsky’s own label. Now, The Nose returns to the Mariinsky stage, this its first revival in four years.
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ENO 2013/14 season
English National Opera 
announced their new season this morning, boasting ten new (or ‘new to the UK’) productions and four classic revivals. Film director and Monty Python veteran Terry Gilliam returns to ENO to lend his talent to a new production of Berlioz’s rarely performed Benvenuto Cellini, with the American rising star Corrine Winters (this season’s stunning Violetta) taking the role of Teresa – the cast also includes Michael Spyres in the title role and Willard White and will be conducted by ENO Music DirectorEdward Gardner. If it’s anywhere near as good as Gilliam’s wacky but brilliant Damnation of Faust then we should all be in for an extraordinary evening.
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Puccini: La bohème
English National Opera, 29th April 2013, John E de Wald
By his
very ubiquity on operatic stages, Puccini can be a difficult composer to get right. Of his works, La bohème is surely the most hackneyed and the most capable of inducing cynicism, not through its own vice so much as sheer familiarity with the plot and the music. Done well, Puccini’s virtuosic talent for melody and naturalistic vitality soars as in little else; and through its intelligent stage direction, scintillating orchestra, and superb cast of principals, this excellent revival of Jonathan Miller’s ENO staging reminds us of just how good the opera can be.
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Elizabeth Connell Memorial Concert
St John's Smith Square, 27th April 2013, Miranda Jackson
In December 
2008 the great dramatic soprano, Elizabeth Connell, stepped into the breach and took on the role of Turandot in the Royal Opera House production when the leading lady was indisposed. At the time she was playing the role of Hansel and Gretel’s Mother. What a contrast: from impoverished wife of an alcoholic husband to indomitable princess. It was a stellar cast in the Humperdinck with Sir Tom Allen as her husband, but the role of Turandot has to be one of a handful of roles which an aspiring dramatic soprano yearns to tuck under her bejewelled belt.
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Handel: Giulio Cesare in Egitto
Metropolitan Opera, New York, 27th April 2013, Mark Pullinger
I come not to 
bury Dessay, but to praise her. Anyone who witnessed last season’s screening of La traviata from the Met featuring Natalie Dessay would have approached this cinema relay of Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto starring the French coloratura soprano as Cleopatra with extreme caution. Indeed, those who listened to a Youtube recording of what is purportedly Dessay singing ‘Da tempeste il legno infranto’ on the opening night of the run could well have returned their tickets. For one performance she withdrew, resulting in Danielle de Niese, whose sex-kitten of a Cleopatra won her worldwide fame when David McVicar’s riot of a production was first seen at Glyndebourne, stepping in to save the show. Yet, despite some evidence of vocal frailty, Dessay emerged largely victorious to fight another day.
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Stravinsky: Apollon musagète; Oedipus Rex
LSO, Barbican Hall, 25th April 2013, Dominic Wells
For this, 
one of his numerous 70thBirthday concerts, Sir John Eliot Gardiner chose to deliver an all-Stravinsky programme with an ancient Greek theme: Apollon musagète, and Oedipus Rex. Joining him on stage were the London Symphony Orchestra and, for the second work, the gentlemen of the conductor’s own Monteverdi Choir – a vocal ensemble beyond superlatives. This combination of conductor and ensembles has worked well in the past in other Stravinskian repertoire, including one of the best versions of the Symphony of Psalms I have ever heard (originally on DG but re-released at budget price on Brilliant Classics: 9015) and arguably the greatest CD-recording of The Rake’s Progress (DG 459 648-2). For the most part, the high standard of those recordings was evident last night in London’s Barbican Hall.
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Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin
C Major Entertainment, Mark Pullinger
Kasper Holten 
faced something of a critical backlash (not from these quarters) for his use of dancer doubles in his recent Royal Opera production of Eugene Onegin, yet their use in this opera isn’t unique – Stefan Herheim did the same in Amsterdam. Both employed flashback techniques to explore the memories of the protagonists looking back on their past. In his production for the Polish National Opera, but filmed in Valencia, film, theatre and opera director Mariusz Trelinski adds a new twist. Who is the mysterious figure clad in white, with deathly pallor, stalking Tatyana and almost directing events?
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Juan Diego Flórez in recital
Barbican Hall, 24th April 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
If, like me, you 
attended Sunday’s “Flórez and Friends” concert at the Barbican – as opposed to sitting through oceans of orchestral filler in the RFH in order to dribble over the unfeasible length of Jonas Kaufmann’s ‘Wälse’ – you may be forgiven for wondering how an audience already in a state of chronic, uncritical delight could possibly be pleasured any more. In which case, you needed to be at tonight’s solo recital, the latest tranche of Juan Diego Flórez’s Barbican residency, which comprehensively proved the time-honoured adage “it ain’t over until the sooty-lashed one sings at least four encores”. The nubile bounced around, whooping; the mature squirmed with satisfaction in their seats, emitting the odd low moan; I shouldn’t be at all surprised if the lame weren’t seen dancing in the aisles, and the dead – always a fair percentage of any opera audience – weren’t newly-risen. Indeed, anyone suffering with scrofula could well have been cured merely by touching his immaculately tailored trousers (though I’m still working out how to explain this to the police).
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Elizabeth Connell Memorial Concert
South African soprano Elizabeth Connell (1946 - 2012) was acclaimed for her performances of the great Strauss, Verdi and Wagner heroines. On Saturday 27 April a special concert to honour her memory will be held at St John's, Smith Square, with all proceeds being donated to the Musicians' Benevolent Fund as well as the Elizabeth Connell Prize, an annual award for young dramatic sopranos.
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Juan Diego Flórez & Friends
Barbican Hall, 21st April 2013, Sebastian Petit
There are 
times in every critic’s life when they enter a place of entertainment in a less than exalted frame of mind, wishing fervently that they were not required to sit in judgement on whatever artistic offering is being given that night. This was undoubtedly the case with me tonight as I entered the Barbican Hall. Despite the fact that I had been looking forward to this concert for nigh on six months, a combination of a rotten night’s sleep and an overlarge dinner had put me in a distinctly un-sunny mood. Had what followed been of poor or even average quality it would likely have received a fairly un-indulgent review. Fortunately the evening was so far up the scale of excellence it is in danger of receiving a rave.
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Verdi: Requiem
Royal Festival Hall, 20th April 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
Daniele Gatti was 
the Music Director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for 13 years, from 1996 onwards: and the net result of his long and faithful devotion to them was to end up occupying a kind of twilight existence, seen somehow as not central to the city’s musical activities, having allied himself to the Cinderella of London orchestras. Happily for him, the rest of the world was rather more aware of his worth, and no sooner had he left than he was ensconced at Bayreuth, La Scala and the Met, as well as consolidating his position as a favoured guest with most of the great international orchestras. But after having conducted his way through most of the Verdi repertory at the ROH throughout the 1990s as the House’s Principal Guest Conductor year-in, year-out until the closure, he only reappeared there in 2001, promptly to vanish for the next eleven seasons. When he finally returned last year, to lead the new Falstaff, he was greeted with a homecoming hero’s sense of welcome. And something similar could be sensed tonight, at the Southbank-resident Philharmonia Orchestra’s major contribution to this year’s ongoing Verdi bicentenary celebrations.
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Mozart: Die Zauberflöte
Royal Opera, 16th April 2013, Sebastian Petit
Mozart and 
Schikaneder’s bizarre opera can be told in almost any way a director chooses - from Peter Sellars’ disastrous Glyndebourne LA freeway “retelling” through Julie Taymor’s Lion King spin-off to various “traditional” versions which seem little removed from pantomime. Fortunately David McVicar’s production pays the work the compliment of treating it seriously. And if the comic aspects recede to give way to the serious thread of the story I, for one, am not going to quarrel with that decision. Most importantly, this emphasis allows the two leads, often reduced to dully serious interludes between the Papageno scenes, to blossom and grow as characters.
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Britten: The Turn of the Screw
Barbican Hall, 16th April 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
When this pair 
of concert performances of Britten’s most ingeniously crafted opera – literally, variations on a theme - was first announced early last year as part of the London Symphony Orchestra’s 2012/13, the conductor was meant to be Sir Colin Davis, the band’s Principal Conductor from 1995 until 2006 (after which he became its tirelessly hands-on President). Alas, illness intervened, and the last performances he gave with the LSO in their home hall were the two Der Freischützen almost exactly a year ago - the first of which I reviewed here - followed by dual outings of Berlioz’s Grande Messe des Morts in St. Paul’s Cathedral in July, his absolute public dernière (and a rather more fitting use of the building than that in which it presently finds itself embroiled, hired out for a has-been politico’s overblown obsequies). Sir Colin was too ill to conduct, or even attend, his own 85th birthday concert last September, and we had all long-since been advised that he would not be conducting these Turns of the Screw, entrusted instead to Richard Farnes, the Music Director of Opera North.
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Valery Gergiev's 60th birthday concert
Barbican Hall, 22nd May 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
When the booking originally opened for this concert back in January 2012 as part of the LSO’s 2012/13 season, no actual programme was offered for our edification, the rubric merely noting, styled as above, that it would be in celebration of the Maestro’s sexagennial anniversary (or Diamond Jubilee if, as many do, you regard him as an absolute monarch). I booked for it blind, like everybody else, vaguely imagining that it would play to his known strengths in the Russian repertoire, or else take the form of some extended musical knees-up with lots of guest stars. In the event it only relatively recently became known that whilst the latter expectation would be partially met, in the shape of concert items played by Alexander Toradze and Leonidas Kavakos, the main musical meat of the evening was to be operatic, comprising Act V of Berlioz’s Les Troyens, with soloists both local (in the largely supporting roles) and Russian (in the case of the two principal ones). Now, Valery Gergiev certainly has form in Berlioz, having conducted concert performances here of both Benvenuto Cellini and (on three separate occasions, no less) La damnation de Faust. And his handling of Les Troyens, staged at the Valencia opera house by the La fura dels Baus collective as some Kubrickian space oddity, has been preserved on DVD.
Read more>>
Britten: A Midsummer Night's Dream
Mariinsky Concert Hall, 19th May 2013, Gavin Dixon
Opera house, concert hall, and now another opera house: the Mariinsky is a company well-served for venues. The concert hall is a particularly versatile space, as this evening’s fully-staged performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream demonstrated. For an opera usually staged with large and involved sets, the more modest presentation here came as a refreshing surprise, and the imaginative use of trapeze artists allowed the action to take place in three dimensions. Musically, the performance was a little dour, but as usual, the Mariinsky Company was able to pepper the cast with enough outstanding vocal talents to keep the standards high, even if the English diction often left much to be desired.
Read more>>
Verdi: Falstaff
Glyndebourne Festival, 19th May 2013, Sebastian Petit
What an utterly joyous evening! Even a darkening sky and a chilly interval picnic failed to diminish the fizzing pleasure of this first revival of Richard Jones’ 1940s Falstaff (revived here under Sarah Fahie). Originally playing to rather mixed notices but now with an almost entirely new cast the production coalesced into a superbly sharp, detailed and hilarious experience. The cast worked as a tautly wound ensemble who appeared to enjoy every minute and centred round the astonishing Laurent Naouri as Sir John Falstaff.
Read more>>
Yards of tartan; fabulous singing!
Rossini: La donna del lago
Royal Opera, 17th May 2013, Mark Pullinger
Yards of tartan, a tenor as hirsute Braveheart rebel Highlander and a picturesque mural (or murial) of Loch Katrine, which would have had Hilda Ogden green with envy, place us emphatically in Scotland for this new staging of Rossini’s La donna del lago at Covent Garden. Originally planned as a co-production with the Palais Garnier and La Scala, the Royal Opera gave Luis Pasqual’s staging the boot and employed John Fulljames to do the directorial honours instead (oh that it had the courage to do likewise with other co-prods foisted upon it – yes, I do mean Rusalka). La donna del lago, based on Sir Walter Scott’s narrative poem The Lady of the Lake, presents a romanticized view of Highland history and Fulljames taps into its events as a ‘museum piece’, not always with coherence. It will have mattered little for many in the audience, who were there primarily for the singing and cheered the cast to the rafters.
Read more>>
Opera North, Leeds, 16th May 2013, Geoffrey Mogridge
In the glorious summer of 1947, Glyndebourne Festival Opera House, the setting for the premiere of Benjamin Britten's chamber opera Albert Herring, must have seemed the very antithesis of post-war austerity Britain. It might be hard to imagine the aristocratic Lady Billows having to produce a ration book; but the whole population had to do so to purchase basic foods such as eggs, bread, milk and sugar. Meanwhile, society was going through immense change as the old order, and with it the rigid class structures, slowly began to erode. Given Britten's distaste of the class system, it is unlikely that he composed Albert Herring solely as a light-hearted rural romp designed to light up people's lives during the post-war drabness. Glyndebourne's founder John Christie is said to have heartily disliked the piece, dismissing it saying "This isn't our kind of thing, you know”. Perhaps Christie's reaction was not surprising, as the sharply drawn characters are parodies of familiar establishment figures and their servitors.
Read more>>
Monty Python meets G&S in crowd-pleasing Pirates!
Sullivan: The Pirates of Penzance
Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 15th May 2013, Kelvin Holdsworth
Scottish Opera and the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company have set sail with a sure-fire summer hit with their delightful new production of The Pirates of Penzance. A real crowd pleaser, this production deserves the success that it will undoubtedly have.
It became quickly obvious during the overture that this was a production that we were intended to laugh at. The seagull saw to that, first being heard crying plaintively above the sound of the orchestra and then appearing on strings from the very top of the proscenium and flying around over an azure curtain.
Read more>>
Berg: Wozzeck
English National Opera, 11th May 2013, Gavin Dixon
Carrie Cracknell, a respected theatre director, makes her operatic debut with this ENO Wozzeck. The work demands much of its interpreters, not least a visual conception as compelling as the drama within the music. That’s exactly what it gets, in a production that moves the action to a present-day British army barracks, instilling claustrophobia, social decay and abusive power hierarchies at every turn. Cracknell treats all of her singers as real actors, leading to psychological insights that are all too rare from an opera that is more often played for its shock value. Edward Gardner also seeks, and regularly finds, details and subtleties in the work with his precise and measured reading. But the impressive intellect behind this production, both on the stage and in the pit, never obscures the work’s sheer emotional power. Everything builds towards the searing conclusion, in which the graphic visuals are fully the equal of the intensely powerful music.
Read more>>
Magdalena Kožená
Barbican Hall, 8th May 2013, Sebastian Petit
Entering the Barbican Hall foyers I suspected I might have, in a senior moment, turned up on the wrong night. While not quite yet colonised by tumbleweed, the foyers were horribly unpopulated considering the centre was hosting a recital by a big name artist like Magdalena Kožená. The rich variety of musical life in our capital can often result in deserving events failing to attract the level of support they deserve. This was clearly the case last night with the lures of the all-star (minus 1) Don Carlo and the opening of Liam Scarlett’s latest excursion into the world of nightmare leading to a less than half-full hall at the Barbican.
Read more>>
Wagner: Parsifal
Oper Stuttgart, 5th May 2013, Faye Courtney
Cannibalism, self-mutilation, mad axe murderers, two-headed genetic mutants and women wearing clingfilm – just a few of the things you don’t usually expect to see in your average production of Parsifal. Welcome to the crazy world of Calixto Bieito, whose brilliant and disturbingly nihilistic interpretation of Wagner’sBühnenweihfestspiel is most definitely not for traditionalists, the squeamish or those of a sensitive disposition. For all its sublime music, Parsifal is Wagner’s most dramatically inert opera - yet incredibly, Bieito has somehow achieved the near impossible feat of creating a 5 hour long theatrical experience where it’s impossible to be bored for a single minute.
Read more>>
Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer
Oper Stuttgart, 4th May 2013, Faye Courtney
I’m not personally convinced that Wagner wrote Der fliegende Holländer because he was secretly trying to make some kind of anti-Capitalist ‘statement’, but try telling that to Calixto Bieito, a director who never lets trifling little details like the composer’s intentions stand in the way of creating a controversial piece of Regietheater, or as some may translate it - ‘Eurotrash’. Though his shock tactics are guaranteed to divide critics and public alike, you can’t deny that Bieito’s productions are usually intensely theatrical and thought-provoking affairs. However, in the case of his Dutchman for Oper Stuttgart the whole basic concept of a bunch of badly behaved businessmen in a rubber dinghy sadly fails to hit the mark.
Read more>>
Handel: Joshua
Opera North, Leeds, 4th May 2013, Geoffrey Mogridge
My earliest prevailing image of oratorio - particularly those of George Frederick Handel - is of instrumental textures like clotted cream and the full-throated roar of serried ranks of choristers dressed in flowing white gowns or black evening tails stacked up behind a swollen orchestra in an ornate Victorian Town Hall; or (alternatively) one of the great northern chapel choirs with organ or harmonium accompaniment delivering the annual performance of Messiah, Judas Maccabaeus or Saul.
Read more>>
Verdi: Don Carlo
Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, 2nd May 2013, Nicola Lischi
The most amazing thing about this performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlois that it took place at all. The troubles that have been plaguing the Fondazione del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino are well known and this writer has already mentioned them in other recent reviews. The bottom line is that, without going into details, the Maggio ended up in such a sorry state that a few months ago the Italian government had no choice but to place an external commissioner, Francesco Bianchi, at its helm, so as to shed light on the actual extent of the deficit and try to save the sinking ship.
Read more>>
Handel: Atalanta
Cambridge Handel Opera, 30th April 2013, Sandra Bowdler
Cambridge saw an outstanding performance of Handel’s Atalanta, which could compare with anything from a major company. The production, singing and music were all next to flawless, and it was a Baroque production with a slight tongue in cheek style which delighted the audience. Atalanta was written to celebrate the marriage of the Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha to Frederick Louis (or Friedrich Ludwig), the son of King George II of England, in London in 1736. This context is necessary to understand some of the features of the opera, in particular why the plot is considered to be remarkably fluffy, even by the standards of Baroque opera.
Read more>>
Shostakovich: The Nose
Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg, 29th April 2013, Gavin Dixon
The Mariinsky company is very proud of this production of Shostakovich’s The Nose. And so they should be, as this is a spectacular staging that plays to all the company’s strengths. It is a rollercoaster from beginning to end; bizarre and surreal, but also dynamic and constantly inventive. The production premiered in 2004, and after completing its run was taken on tour by Valery Gergiev to Stockholm, Paris, London (the Barbican) and Berlin. Then, in 2009, it was chosen as the work to launch the Mariinsky’s own label. Now, The Nose returns to the Mariinsky stage, this its first revival in four years.
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ENO 2013/14 season
English National Opera announced their new season this morning, boasting ten new (or ‘new to the UK’) productions and four classic revivals. Film director and Monty Python veteran Terry Gilliam returns to ENO to lend his talent to a new production of Berlioz’s rarely performed Benvenuto Cellini, with the American rising star Corrine Winters (this season’s stunning Violetta) taking the role of Teresa – the cast also includes Michael Spyres in the title role and Willard White and will be conducted by ENO Music DirectorEdward Gardner. If it’s anywhere near as good as Gilliam’s wacky but brilliant Damnation of Faust then we should all be in for an extraordinary evening.
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Puccini: La bohème
English National Opera, 29th April 2013, John E de Wald
By his very ubiquity on operatic stages, Puccini can be a difficult composer to get right. Of his works, La bohème is surely the most hackneyed and the most capable of inducing cynicism, not through its own vice so much as sheer familiarity with the plot and the music. Done well, Puccini’s virtuosic talent for melody and naturalistic vitality soars as in little else; and through its intelligent stage direction, scintillating orchestra, and superb cast of principals, this excellent revival of Jonathan Miller’s ENO staging reminds us of just how good the opera can be.
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Elizabeth Connell Memorial Concert
St John's Smith Square, 27th April 2013, Miranda Jackson
In December 2008 the great dramatic soprano, Elizabeth Connell, stepped into the breach and took on the role of Turandot in the Royal Opera House production when the leading lady was indisposed. At the time she was playing the role of Hansel and Gretel’s Mother. What a contrast: from impoverished wife of an alcoholic husband to indomitable princess. It was a stellar cast in the Humperdinck with Sir Tom Allen as her husband, but the role of Turandot has to be one of a handful of roles which an aspiring dramatic soprano yearns to tuck under her bejewelled belt.
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Handel: Giulio Cesare in Egitto
Metropolitan Opera, New York, 27th April 2013, Mark Pullinger
I come not to bury Dessay, but to praise her. Anyone who witnessed last season’s screening of La traviata from the Met featuring Natalie Dessay would have approached this cinema relay of Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto starring the French coloratura soprano as Cleopatra with extreme caution. Indeed, those who listened to a Youtube recording of what is purportedly Dessay singing ‘Da tempeste il legno infranto’ on the opening night of the run could well have returned their tickets. For one performance she withdrew, resulting in Danielle de Niese, whose sex-kitten of a Cleopatra won her worldwide fame when David McVicar’s riot of a production was first seen at Glyndebourne, stepping in to save the show. Yet, despite some evidence of vocal frailty, Dessay emerged largely victorious to fight another day.
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Stravinsky: Apollon musagète; Oedipus Rex
LSO, Barbican Hall, 25th April 2013, Dominic Wells
For this, one of his numerous 70thBirthday concerts, Sir John Eliot Gardiner chose to deliver an all-Stravinsky programme with an ancient Greek theme: Apollon musagète, and Oedipus Rex. Joining him on stage were the London Symphony Orchestra and, for the second work, the gentlemen of the conductor’s own Monteverdi Choir – a vocal ensemble beyond superlatives. This combination of conductor and ensembles has worked well in the past in other Stravinskian repertoire, including one of the best versions of the Symphony of Psalms I have ever heard (originally on DG but re-released at budget price on Brilliant Classics: 9015) and arguably the greatest CD-recording of The Rake’s Progress (DG 459 648-2). For the most part, the high standard of those recordings was evident last night in London’s Barbican Hall.
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Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin
C Major Entertainment, Mark Pullinger
Kasper Holten faced something of a critical backlash (not from these quarters) for his use of dancer doubles in his recent Royal Opera production of Eugene Onegin, yet their use in this opera isn’t unique – Stefan Herheim did the same in Amsterdam. Both employed flashback techniques to explore the memories of the protagonists looking back on their past. In his production for the Polish National Opera, but filmed in Valencia, film, theatre and opera director Mariusz Trelinski adds a new twist. Who is the mysterious figure clad in white, with deathly pallor, stalking Tatyana and almost directing events?
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Juan Diego Flórez in recital
Barbican Hall, 24th April 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
If, like me, you attended Sunday’s “Flórez and Friends” concert at the Barbican – as opposed to sitting through oceans of orchestral filler in the RFH in order to dribble over the unfeasible length of Jonas Kaufmann’s ‘Wälse’ – you may be forgiven for wondering how an audience already in a state of chronic, uncritical delight could possibly be pleasured any more. In which case, you needed to be at tonight’s solo recital, the latest tranche of Juan Diego Flórez’s Barbican residency, which comprehensively proved the time-honoured adage “it ain’t over until the sooty-lashed one sings at least four encores”. The nubile bounced around, whooping; the mature squirmed with satisfaction in their seats, emitting the odd low moan; I shouldn’t be at all surprised if the lame weren’t seen dancing in the aisles, and the dead – always a fair percentage of any opera audience – weren’t newly-risen. Indeed, anyone suffering with scrofula could well have been cured merely by touching his immaculately tailored trousers (though I’m still working out how to explain this to the police).
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Elizabeth Connell Memorial Concert
South African soprano Elizabeth Connell (1946 - 2012) was acclaimed for her performances of the great Strauss, Verdi and Wagner heroines. On Saturday 27 April a special concert to honour her memory will be held at St John's, Smith Square, with all proceeds being donated to the Musicians' Benevolent Fund as well as the Elizabeth Connell Prize, an annual award for young dramatic sopranos.
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Juan Diego Flórez & Friends
Barbican Hall, 21st April 2013, Sebastian Petit
There are times in every critic’s life when they enter a place of entertainment in a less than exalted frame of mind, wishing fervently that they were not required to sit in judgement on whatever artistic offering is being given that night. This was undoubtedly the case with me tonight as I entered the Barbican Hall. Despite the fact that I had been looking forward to this concert for nigh on six months, a combination of a rotten night’s sleep and an overlarge dinner had put me in a distinctly un-sunny mood. Had what followed been of poor or even average quality it would likely have received a fairly un-indulgent review. Fortunately the evening was so far up the scale of excellence it is in danger of receiving a rave.
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Verdi: Requiem
Royal Festival Hall, 20th April 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
Daniele Gatti was the Music Director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for 13 years, from 1996 onwards: and the net result of his long and faithful devotion to them was to end up occupying a kind of twilight existence, seen somehow as not central to the city’s musical activities, having allied himself to the Cinderella of London orchestras. Happily for him, the rest of the world was rather more aware of his worth, and no sooner had he left than he was ensconced at Bayreuth, La Scala and the Met, as well as consolidating his position as a favoured guest with most of the great international orchestras. But after having conducted his way through most of the Verdi repertory at the ROH throughout the 1990s as the House’s Principal Guest Conductor year-in, year-out until the closure, he only reappeared there in 2001, promptly to vanish for the next eleven seasons. When he finally returned last year, to lead the new Falstaff, he was greeted with a homecoming hero’s sense of welcome. And something similar could be sensed tonight, at the Southbank-resident Philharmonia Orchestra’s major contribution to this year’s ongoing Verdi bicentenary celebrations.
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Mozart: Die Zauberflöte
Royal Opera, 16th April 2013, Sebastian Petit
Mozart and Schikaneder’s bizarre opera can be told in almost any way a director chooses - from Peter Sellars’ disastrous Glyndebourne LA freeway “retelling” through Julie Taymor’s Lion King spin-off to various “traditional” versions which seem little removed from pantomime. Fortunately David McVicar’s production pays the work the compliment of treating it seriously. And if the comic aspects recede to give way to the serious thread of the story I, for one, am not going to quarrel with that decision. Most importantly, this emphasis allows the two leads, often reduced to dully serious interludes between the Papageno scenes, to blossom and grow as characters.
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Britten: The Turn of the Screw
Barbican Hall, 16th April 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
When this pair of concert performances of Britten’s most ingeniously crafted opera – literally, variations on a theme - was first announced early last year as part of the London Symphony Orchestra’s 2012/13, the conductor was meant to be Sir Colin Davis, the band’s Principal Conductor from 1995 until 2006 (after which he became its tirelessly hands-on President). Alas, illness intervened, and the last performances he gave with the LSO in their home hall were the two Der Freischützen almost exactly a year ago - the first of which I reviewed here - followed by dual outings of Berlioz’s Grande Messe des Morts in St. Paul’s Cathedral in July, his absolute public dernière (and a rather more fitting use of the building than that in which it presently finds itself embroiled, hired out for a has-been politico’s overblown obsequies). Sir Colin was too ill to conduct, or even attend, his own 85th birthday concert last September, and we had all long-since been advised that he would not be conducting these Turns of the Screw, entrusted instead to Richard Farnes, the Music Director of Opera North.
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Valery Gergiev's 60th birthday concert
Barbican Hall, 22nd May 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
When the booking originally opened for this concert back in January 2012 as part of the LSO’s 2012/13 season, no actual programme was offered for our edification, the rubric merely noting, styled as above, that it would be in celebration of the Maestro’s sexagennial anniversary (or Diamond Jubilee if, as many do, you regard him as an absolute monarch). I booked for it blind, like everybody else, vaguely imagining that it would play to his known strengths in the Russian repertoire, or else take the form of some extended musical knees-up with lots of guest stars. In the event it only relatively recently became known that whilst the latter expectation would be partially met, in the shape of concert items played by Alexander Toradze and Leonidas Kavakos, the main musical meat of the evening was to be operatic, comprising Act V of Berlioz’s Les Troyens, with soloists both local (in the largely supporting roles) and Russian (in the case of the two principal ones). Now, Valery Gergiev certainly has form in Berlioz, having conducted concert performances here of both Benvenuto Cellini and (on three separate occasions, no less) La damnation de Faust. And his handling of Les Troyens, staged at the Valencia opera house by the La fura dels Baus collective as some Kubrickian space oddity, has been preserved on DVD.
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Britten: A Midsummer Night's Dream
Mariinsky Concert Hall, 19th May 2013, Gavin Dixon
Opera house, concert hall, and now another opera house: the Mariinsky is a company well-served for venues. The concert hall is a particularly versatile space, as this evening’s fully-staged performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream demonstrated. For an opera usually staged with large and involved sets, the more modest presentation here came as a refreshing surprise, and the imaginative use of trapeze artists allowed the action to take place in three dimensions. Musically, the performance was a little dour, but as usual, the Mariinsky Company was able to pepper the cast with enough outstanding vocal talents to keep the standards high, even if the English diction often left much to be desired.
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Verdi: Falstaff
Glyndebourne Festival, 19th May 2013, Sebastian Petit
What an utterly joyous evening! Even a darkening sky and a chilly interval picnic failed to diminish the fizzing pleasure of this first revival of Richard Jones’ 1940s Falstaff (revived here under Sarah Fahie). Originally playing to rather mixed notices but now with an almost entirely new cast the production coalesced into a superbly sharp, detailed and hilarious experience. The cast worked as a tautly wound ensemble who appeared to enjoy every minute and centred round the astonishing Laurent Naouri as Sir John Falstaff.
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Yards of tartan; fabulous singing!
Rossini: La donna del lago
Royal Opera, 17th May 2013, Mark Pullinger
Yards of tartan, a tenor as hirsute Braveheart rebel Highlander and a picturesque mural (or murial) of Loch Katrine, which would have had Hilda Ogden green with envy, place us emphatically in Scotland for this new staging of Rossini’s La donna del lago at Covent Garden. Originally planned as a co-production with the Palais Garnier and La Scala, the Royal Opera gave Luis Pasqual’s staging the boot and employed John Fulljames to do the directorial honours instead (oh that it had the courage to do likewise with other co-prods foisted upon it – yes, I do mean Rusalka). La donna del lago, based on Sir Walter Scott’s narrative poem The Lady of the Lake, presents a romanticized view of Highland history and Fulljames taps into its events as a ‘museum piece’, not always with coherence. It will have mattered little for many in the audience, who were there primarily for the singing and cheered the cast to the rafters.
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Opera North, Leeds, 16th May 2013, Geoffrey Mogridge
In the glorious summer of 1947, Glyndebourne Festival Opera House, the setting for the premiere of Benjamin Britten's chamber opera Albert Herring, must have seemed the very antithesis of post-war austerity Britain. It might be hard to imagine the aristocratic Lady Billows having to produce a ration book; but the whole population had to do so to purchase basic foods such as eggs, bread, milk and sugar. Meanwhile, society was going through immense change as the old order, and with it the rigid class structures, slowly began to erode. Given Britten's distaste of the class system, it is unlikely that he composed Albert Herring solely as a light-hearted rural romp designed to light up people's lives during the post-war drabness. Glyndebourne's founder John Christie is said to have heartily disliked the piece, dismissing it saying "This isn't our kind of thing, you know”. Perhaps Christie's reaction was not surprising, as the sharply drawn characters are parodies of familiar establishment figures and their servitors.
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Monty Python meets G&S in crowd-pleasing Pirates!
Sullivan: The Pirates of Penzance
Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 15th May 2013, Kelvin Holdsworth
Scottish Opera and the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company have set sail with a sure-fire summer hit with their delightful new production of The Pirates of Penzance. A real crowd pleaser, this production deserves the success that it will undoubtedly have.
It became quickly obvious during the overture that this was a production that we were intended to laugh at. The seagull saw to that, first being heard crying plaintively above the sound of the orchestra and then appearing on strings from the very top of the proscenium and flying around over an azure curtain.
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Berg: Wozzeck
English National Opera, 11th May 2013, Gavin Dixon
Carrie Cracknell, a respected theatre director, makes her operatic debut with this ENO Wozzeck. The work demands much of its interpreters, not least a visual conception as compelling as the drama within the music. That’s exactly what it gets, in a production that moves the action to a present-day British army barracks, instilling claustrophobia, social decay and abusive power hierarchies at every turn. Cracknell treats all of her singers as real actors, leading to psychological insights that are all too rare from an opera that is more often played for its shock value. Edward Gardner also seeks, and regularly finds, details and subtleties in the work with his precise and measured reading. But the impressive intellect behind this production, both on the stage and in the pit, never obscures the work’s sheer emotional power. Everything builds towards the searing conclusion, in which the graphic visuals are fully the equal of the intensely powerful music.
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Magdalena Kožená
Barbican Hall, 8th May 2013, Sebastian Petit
Entering the Barbican Hall foyers I suspected I might have, in a senior moment, turned up on the wrong night. While not quite yet colonised by tumbleweed, the foyers were horribly unpopulated considering the centre was hosting a recital by a big name artist like Magdalena Kožená. The rich variety of musical life in our capital can often result in deserving events failing to attract the level of support they deserve. This was clearly the case last night with the lures of the all-star (minus 1) Don Carlo and the opening of Liam Scarlett’s latest excursion into the world of nightmare leading to a less than half-full hall at the Barbican.
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Wagner: Parsifal
Oper Stuttgart, 5th May 2013, Faye Courtney
Cannibalism, self-mutilation, mad axe murderers, two-headed genetic mutants and women wearing clingfilm – just a few of the things you don’t usually expect to see in your average production of Parsifal. Welcome to the crazy world of Calixto Bieito, whose brilliant and disturbingly nihilistic interpretation of Wagner’sBühnenweihfestspiel is most definitely not for traditionalists, the squeamish or those of a sensitive disposition. For all its sublime music, Parsifal is Wagner’s most dramatically inert opera - yet incredibly, Bieito has somehow achieved the near impossible feat of creating a 5 hour long theatrical experience where it’s impossible to be bored for a single minute.
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Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer
Oper Stuttgart, 4th May 2013, Faye Courtney
I’m not personally convinced that Wagner wrote Der fliegende Holländer because he was secretly trying to make some kind of anti-Capitalist ‘statement’, but try telling that to Calixto Bieito, a director who never lets trifling little details like the composer’s intentions stand in the way of creating a controversial piece of Regietheater, or as some may translate it - ‘Eurotrash’. Though his shock tactics are guaranteed to divide critics and public alike, you can’t deny that Bieito’s productions are usually intensely theatrical and thought-provoking affairs. However, in the case of his Dutchman for Oper Stuttgart the whole basic concept of a bunch of badly behaved businessmen in a rubber dinghy sadly fails to hit the mark.
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Handel: Joshua
Opera North, Leeds, 4th May 2013, Geoffrey Mogridge
My earliest prevailing image of oratorio - particularly those of George Frederick Handel - is of instrumental textures like clotted cream and the full-throated roar of serried ranks of choristers dressed in flowing white gowns or black evening tails stacked up behind a swollen orchestra in an ornate Victorian Town Hall; or (alternatively) one of the great northern chapel choirs with organ or harmonium accompaniment delivering the annual performance of Messiah, Judas Maccabaeus or Saul.
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Verdi: Don Carlo
Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, 2nd May 2013, Nicola Lischi
The most amazing thing about this performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlois that it took place at all. The troubles that have been plaguing the Fondazione del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino are well known and this writer has already mentioned them in other recent reviews. The bottom line is that, without going into details, the Maggio ended up in such a sorry state that a few months ago the Italian government had no choice but to place an external commissioner, Francesco Bianchi, at its helm, so as to shed light on the actual extent of the deficit and try to save the sinking ship.
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Handel: Atalanta
Cambridge Handel Opera, 30th April 2013, Sandra Bowdler
Cambridge saw an outstanding performance of Handel’s Atalanta, which could compare with anything from a major company. The production, singing and music were all next to flawless, and it was a Baroque production with a slight tongue in cheek style which delighted the audience. Atalanta was written to celebrate the marriage of the Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha to Frederick Louis (or Friedrich Ludwig), the son of King George II of England, in London in 1736. This context is necessary to understand some of the features of the opera, in particular why the plot is considered to be remarkably fluffy, even by the standards of Baroque opera.
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Shostakovich: The Nose
Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg, 29th April 2013, Gavin Dixon
The Mariinsky company is very proud of this production of Shostakovich’s The Nose. And so they should be, as this is a spectacular staging that plays to all the company’s strengths. It is a rollercoaster from beginning to end; bizarre and surreal, but also dynamic and constantly inventive. The production premiered in 2004, and after completing its run was taken on tour by Valery Gergiev to Stockholm, Paris, London (the Barbican) and Berlin. Then, in 2009, it was chosen as the work to launch the Mariinsky’s own label. Now, The Nose returns to the Mariinsky stage, this its first revival in four years.
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ENO 2013/14 season
English National Opera announced their new season this morning, boasting ten new (or ‘new to the UK’) productions and four classic revivals. Film director and Monty Python veteran Terry Gilliam returns to ENO to lend his talent to a new production of Berlioz’s rarely performed Benvenuto Cellini, with the American rising star Corrine Winters (this season’s stunning Violetta) taking the role of Teresa – the cast also includes Michael Spyres in the title role and Willard White and will be conducted by ENO Music DirectorEdward Gardner. If it’s anywhere near as good as Gilliam’s wacky but brilliant Damnation of Faust then we should all be in for an extraordinary evening.
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Puccini: La bohème
English National Opera, 29th April 2013, John E de Wald
By his very ubiquity on operatic stages, Puccini can be a difficult composer to get right. Of his works, La bohème is surely the most hackneyed and the most capable of inducing cynicism, not through its own vice so much as sheer familiarity with the plot and the music. Done well, Puccini’s virtuosic talent for melody and naturalistic vitality soars as in little else; and through its intelligent stage direction, scintillating orchestra, and superb cast of principals, this excellent revival of Jonathan Miller’s ENO staging reminds us of just how good the opera can be.
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Elizabeth Connell Memorial Concert
St John's Smith Square, 27th April 2013, Miranda Jackson
In December 2008 the great dramatic soprano, Elizabeth Connell, stepped into the breach and took on the role of Turandot in the Royal Opera House production when the leading lady was indisposed. At the time she was playing the role of Hansel and Gretel’s Mother. What a contrast: from impoverished wife of an alcoholic husband to indomitable princess. It was a stellar cast in the Humperdinck with Sir Tom Allen as her husband, but the role of Turandot has to be one of a handful of roles which an aspiring dramatic soprano yearns to tuck under her bejewelled belt.
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Handel: Giulio Cesare in Egitto
Metropolitan Opera, New York, 27th April 2013, Mark Pullinger
I come not to bury Dessay, but to praise her. Anyone who witnessed last season’s screening of La traviata from the Met featuring Natalie Dessay would have approached this cinema relay of Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto starring the French coloratura soprano as Cleopatra with extreme caution. Indeed, those who listened to a Youtube recording of what is purportedly Dessay singing ‘Da tempeste il legno infranto’ on the opening night of the run could well have returned their tickets. For one performance she withdrew, resulting in Danielle de Niese, whose sex-kitten of a Cleopatra won her worldwide fame when David McVicar’s riot of a production was first seen at Glyndebourne, stepping in to save the show. Yet, despite some evidence of vocal frailty, Dessay emerged largely victorious to fight another day.
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Stravinsky: Apollon musagète; Oedipus Rex
LSO, Barbican Hall, 25th April 2013, Dominic Wells
For this, one of his numerous 70thBirthday concerts, Sir John Eliot Gardiner chose to deliver an all-Stravinsky programme with an ancient Greek theme: Apollon musagète, and Oedipus Rex. Joining him on stage were the London Symphony Orchestra and, for the second work, the gentlemen of the conductor’s own Monteverdi Choir – a vocal ensemble beyond superlatives. This combination of conductor and ensembles has worked well in the past in other Stravinskian repertoire, including one of the best versions of the Symphony of Psalms I have ever heard (originally on DG but re-released at budget price on Brilliant Classics: 9015) and arguably the greatest CD-recording of The Rake’s Progress (DG 459 648-2). For the most part, the high standard of those recordings was evident last night in London’s Barbican Hall.
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Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin
C Major Entertainment, Mark Pullinger
Kasper Holten faced something of a critical backlash (not from these quarters) for his use of dancer doubles in his recent Royal Opera production of Eugene Onegin, yet their use in this opera isn’t unique – Stefan Herheim did the same in Amsterdam. Both employed flashback techniques to explore the memories of the protagonists looking back on their past. In his production for the Polish National Opera, but filmed in Valencia, film, theatre and opera director Mariusz Trelinski adds a new twist. Who is the mysterious figure clad in white, with deathly pallor, stalking Tatyana and almost directing events?
Read more>>
Juan Diego Flórez in recital
Barbican Hall, 24th April 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
If, like me, you attended Sunday’s “Flórez and Friends” concert at the Barbican – as opposed to sitting through oceans of orchestral filler in the RFH in order to dribble over the unfeasible length of Jonas Kaufmann’s ‘Wälse’ – you may be forgiven for wondering how an audience already in a state of chronic, uncritical delight could possibly be pleasured any more. In which case, you needed to be at tonight’s solo recital, the latest tranche of Juan Diego Flórez’s Barbican residency, which comprehensively proved the time-honoured adage “it ain’t over until the sooty-lashed one sings at least four encores”. The nubile bounced around, whooping; the mature squirmed with satisfaction in their seats, emitting the odd low moan; I shouldn’t be at all surprised if the lame weren’t seen dancing in the aisles, and the dead – always a fair percentage of any opera audience – weren’t newly-risen. Indeed, anyone suffering with scrofula could well have been cured merely by touching his immaculately tailored trousers (though I’m still working out how to explain this to the police).
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Elizabeth Connell Memorial Concert
South African soprano Elizabeth Connell (1946 - 2012) was acclaimed for her performances of the great Strauss, Verdi and Wagner heroines. On Saturday 27 April a special concert to honour her memory will be held at St John's, Smith Square, with all proceeds being donated to the Musicians' Benevolent Fund as well as the Elizabeth Connell Prize, an annual award for young dramatic sopranos.
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Juan Diego Flórez & Friends
Barbican Hall, 21st April 2013, Sebastian Petit
There are times in every critic’s life when they enter a place of entertainment in a less than exalted frame of mind, wishing fervently that they were not required to sit in judgement on whatever artistic offering is being given that night. This was undoubtedly the case with me tonight as I entered the Barbican Hall. Despite the fact that I had been looking forward to this concert for nigh on six months, a combination of a rotten night’s sleep and an overlarge dinner had put me in a distinctly un-sunny mood. Had what followed been of poor or even average quality it would likely have received a fairly un-indulgent review. Fortunately the evening was so far up the scale of excellence it is in danger of receiving a rave.
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Verdi: Requiem
Royal Festival Hall, 20th April 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
Daniele Gatti was the Music Director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for 13 years, from 1996 onwards: and the net result of his long and faithful devotion to them was to end up occupying a kind of twilight existence, seen somehow as not central to the city’s musical activities, having allied himself to the Cinderella of London orchestras. Happily for him, the rest of the world was rather more aware of his worth, and no sooner had he left than he was ensconced at Bayreuth, La Scala and the Met, as well as consolidating his position as a favoured guest with most of the great international orchestras. But after having conducted his way through most of the Verdi repertory at the ROH throughout the 1990s as the House’s Principal Guest Conductor year-in, year-out until the closure, he only reappeared there in 2001, promptly to vanish for the next eleven seasons. When he finally returned last year, to lead the new Falstaff, he was greeted with a homecoming hero’s sense of welcome. And something similar could be sensed tonight, at the Southbank-resident Philharmonia Orchestra’s major contribution to this year’s ongoing Verdi bicentenary celebrations.
Read more>>
Mozart: Die Zauberflöte
Royal Opera, 16th April 2013, Sebastian Petit
Mozart and Schikaneder’s bizarre opera can be told in almost any way a director chooses - from Peter Sellars’ disastrous Glyndebourne LA freeway “retelling” through Julie Taymor’s Lion King spin-off to various “traditional” versions which seem little removed from pantomime. Fortunately David McVicar’s production pays the work the compliment of treating it seriously. And if the comic aspects recede to give way to the serious thread of the story I, for one, am not going to quarrel with that decision. Most importantly, this emphasis allows the two leads, often reduced to dully serious interludes between the Papageno scenes, to blossom and grow as characters.
Read more>>
Britten: The Turn of the Screw
Barbican Hall, 16th April 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
When this pair of concert performances of Britten’s most ingeniously crafted opera – literally, variations on a theme - was first announced early last year as part of the London Symphony Orchestra’s 2012/13, the conductor was meant to be Sir Colin Davis, the band’s Principal Conductor from 1995 until 2006 (after which he became its tirelessly hands-on President). Alas, illness intervened, and the last performances he gave with the LSO in their home hall were the two Der Freischützen almost exactly a year ago - the first of which I reviewed here - followed by dual outings of Berlioz’s Grande Messe des Morts in St. Paul’s Cathedral in July, his absolute public dernière (and a rather more fitting use of the building than that in which it presently finds itself embroiled, hired out for a has-been politico’s overblown obsequies). Sir Colin was too ill to conduct, or even attend, his own 85th birthday concert last September, and we had all long-since been advised that he would not be conducting these Turns of the Screw, entrusted instead to Richard Farnes, the Music Director of Opera North.
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Valery Gergiev's 60th birthday concert
Barbican Hall, 22nd May 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
When the booking originally opened for this concert back in January 2012 as part of the LSO’s 2012/13 season, no actual programme was offered for our edification, the rubric merely noting, styled as above, that it would be in celebration of the Maestro’s sexagennial anniversary (or Diamond Jubilee if, as many do, you regard him as an absolute monarch). I booked for it blind, like everybody else, vaguely imagining that it would play to his known strengths in the Russian repertoire, or else take the form of some extended musical knees-up with lots of guest stars. In the event it only relatively recently became known that whilst the latter expectation would be partially met, in the shape of concert items played by Alexander Toradze and Leonidas Kavakos, the main musical meat of the evening was to be operatic, comprising Act V of Berlioz’s Les Troyens, with soloists both local (in the largely supporting roles) and Russian (in the case of the two principal ones). Now, Valery Gergiev certainly has form in Berlioz, having conducted concert performances here of both Benvenuto Cellini and (on three separate occasions, no less) La damnation de Faust. And his handling of Les Troyens, staged at the Valencia opera house by the La fura dels Baus collective as some Kubrickian space oddity, has been preserved on DVD.
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Britten: A Midsummer Night's Dream
Mariinsky Concert Hall, 19th May 2013, Gavin Dixon
Opera house, concert hall, and now another opera house: the Mariinsky is a company well-served for venues. The concert hall is a particularly versatile space, as this evening’s fully-staged performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream demonstrated. For an opera usually staged with large and involved sets, the more modest presentation here came as a refreshing surprise, and the imaginative use of trapeze artists allowed the action to take place in three dimensions. Musically, the performance was a little dour, but as usual, the Mariinsky Company was able to pepper the cast with enough outstanding vocal talents to keep the standards high, even if the English diction often left much to be desired.
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Verdi: Falstaff
Glyndebourne Festival, 19th May 2013, Sebastian Petit
What an utterly joyous evening! Even a darkening sky and a chilly interval picnic failed to diminish the fizzing pleasure of this first revival of Richard Jones’ 1940s Falstaff (revived here under Sarah Fahie). Originally playing to rather mixed notices but now with an almost entirely new cast the production coalesced into a superbly sharp, detailed and hilarious experience. The cast worked as a tautly wound ensemble who appeared to enjoy every minute and centred round the astonishing Laurent Naouri as Sir John Falstaff.
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Yards of tartan; fabulous singing!
Rossini: La donna del lago
Royal Opera, 17th May 2013, Mark Pullinger
Yards of tartan, a tenor as hirsute Braveheart rebel Highlander and a picturesque mural (or murial) of Loch Katrine, which would have had Hilda Ogden green with envy, place us emphatically in Scotland for this new staging of Rossini’s La donna del lago at Covent Garden. Originally planned as a co-production with the Palais Garnier and La Scala, the Royal Opera gave Luis Pasqual’s staging the boot and employed John Fulljames to do the directorial honours instead (oh that it had the courage to do likewise with other co-prods foisted upon it – yes, I do mean Rusalka). La donna del lago, based on Sir Walter Scott’s narrative poem The Lady of the Lake, presents a romanticized view of Highland history and Fulljames taps into its events as a ‘museum piece’, not always with coherence. It will have mattered little for many in the audience, who were there primarily for the singing and cheered the cast to the rafters.
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Opera North, Leeds, 16th May 2013, Geoffrey Mogridge
In the glorious summer of 1947, Glyndebourne Festival Opera House, the setting for the premiere of Benjamin Britten's chamber opera Albert Herring, must have seemed the very antithesis of post-war austerity Britain. It might be hard to imagine the aristocratic Lady Billows having to produce a ration book; but the whole population had to do so to purchase basic foods such as eggs, bread, milk and sugar. Meanwhile, society was going through immense change as the old order, and with it the rigid class structures, slowly began to erode. Given Britten's distaste of the class system, it is unlikely that he composed Albert Herring solely as a light-hearted rural romp designed to light up people's lives during the post-war drabness. Glyndebourne's founder John Christie is said to have heartily disliked the piece, dismissing it saying "This isn't our kind of thing, you know”. Perhaps Christie's reaction was not surprising, as the sharply drawn characters are parodies of familiar establishment figures and their servitors.
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Monty Python meets G&S in crowd-pleasing Pirates!
Sullivan: The Pirates of Penzance
Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 15th May 2013, Kelvin Holdsworth
Scottish Opera and the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company have set sail with a sure-fire summer hit with their delightful new production of The Pirates of Penzance. A real crowd pleaser, this production deserves the success that it will undoubtedly have.
It became quickly obvious during the overture that this was a production that we were intended to laugh at. The seagull saw to that, first being heard crying plaintively above the sound of the orchestra and then appearing on strings from the very top of the proscenium and flying around over an azure curtain.
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Berg: Wozzeck
English National Opera, 11th May 2013, Gavin Dixon
Carrie Cracknell, a respected theatre director, makes her operatic debut with this ENO Wozzeck. The work demands much of its interpreters, not least a visual conception as compelling as the drama within the music. That’s exactly what it gets, in a production that moves the action to a present-day British army barracks, instilling claustrophobia, social decay and abusive power hierarchies at every turn. Cracknell treats all of her singers as real actors, leading to psychological insights that are all too rare from an opera that is more often played for its shock value. Edward Gardner also seeks, and regularly finds, details and subtleties in the work with his precise and measured reading. But the impressive intellect behind this production, both on the stage and in the pit, never obscures the work’s sheer emotional power. Everything builds towards the searing conclusion, in which the graphic visuals are fully the equal of the intensely powerful music.
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Magdalena Kožená
Barbican Hall, 8th May 2013, Sebastian Petit
Entering the Barbican Hall foyers I suspected I might have, in a senior moment, turned up on the wrong night. While not quite yet colonised by tumbleweed, the foyers were horribly unpopulated considering the centre was hosting a recital by a big name artist like Magdalena Kožená. The rich variety of musical life in our capital can often result in deserving events failing to attract the level of support they deserve. This was clearly the case last night with the lures of the all-star (minus 1) Don Carlo and the opening of Liam Scarlett’s latest excursion into the world of nightmare leading to a less than half-full hall at the Barbican.
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Wagner: Parsifal
Oper Stuttgart, 5th May 2013, Faye Courtney
Cannibalism, self-mutilation, mad axe murderers, two-headed genetic mutants and women wearing clingfilm – just a few of the things you don’t usually expect to see in your average production of Parsifal. Welcome to the crazy world of Calixto Bieito, whose brilliant and disturbingly nihilistic interpretation of Wagner’sBühnenweihfestspiel is most definitely not for traditionalists, the squeamish or those of a sensitive disposition. For all its sublime music, Parsifal is Wagner’s most dramatically inert opera - yet incredibly, Bieito has somehow achieved the near impossible feat of creating a 5 hour long theatrical experience where it’s impossible to be bored for a single minute.
Read more>>
Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer
Oper Stuttgart, 4th May 2013, Faye Courtney
I’m not personally convinced that Wagner wrote Der fliegende Holländer because he was secretly trying to make some kind of anti-Capitalist ‘statement’, but try telling that to Calixto Bieito, a director who never lets trifling little details like the composer’s intentions stand in the way of creating a controversial piece of Regietheater, or as some may translate it - ‘Eurotrash’. Though his shock tactics are guaranteed to divide critics and public alike, you can’t deny that Bieito’s productions are usually intensely theatrical and thought-provoking affairs. However, in the case of his Dutchman for Oper Stuttgart the whole basic concept of a bunch of badly behaved businessmen in a rubber dinghy sadly fails to hit the mark.
Read more>>
Handel: Joshua
Opera North, Leeds, 4th May 2013, Geoffrey Mogridge
My earliest prevailing image of oratorio - particularly those of George Frederick Handel - is of instrumental textures like clotted cream and the full-throated roar of serried ranks of choristers dressed in flowing white gowns or black evening tails stacked up behind a swollen orchestra in an ornate Victorian Town Hall; or (alternatively) one of the great northern chapel choirs with organ or harmonium accompaniment delivering the annual performance of Messiah, Judas Maccabaeus or Saul.
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Verdi: Don Carlo
Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, 2nd May 2013, Nicola Lischi
The most amazing thing about this performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlois that it took place at all. The troubles that have been plaguing the Fondazione del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino are well known and this writer has already mentioned them in other recent reviews. The bottom line is that, without going into details, the Maggio ended up in such a sorry state that a few months ago the Italian government had no choice but to place an external commissioner, Francesco Bianchi, at its helm, so as to shed light on the actual extent of the deficit and try to save the sinking ship.
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Handel: Atalanta
Cambridge Handel Opera, 30th April 2013, Sandra Bowdler
Cambridge saw an outstanding performance of Handel’s Atalanta, which could compare with anything from a major company. The production, singing and music were all next to flawless, and it was a Baroque production with a slight tongue in cheek style which delighted the audience. Atalanta was written to celebrate the marriage of the Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha to Frederick Louis (or Friedrich Ludwig), the son of King George II of England, in London in 1736. This context is necessary to understand some of the features of the opera, in particular why the plot is considered to be remarkably fluffy, even by the standards of Baroque opera.
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Shostakovich: The Nose
Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg, 29th April 2013, Gavin Dixon
The Mariinsky company is very proud of this production of Shostakovich’s The Nose. And so they should be, as this is a spectacular staging that plays to all the company’s strengths. It is a rollercoaster from beginning to end; bizarre and surreal, but also dynamic and constantly inventive. The production premiered in 2004, and after completing its run was taken on tour by Valery Gergiev to Stockholm, Paris, London (the Barbican) and Berlin. Then, in 2009, it was chosen as the work to launch the Mariinsky’s own label. Now, The Nose returns to the Mariinsky stage, this its first revival in four years.
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ENO 2013/14 season
English National Opera announced their new season this morning, boasting ten new (or ‘new to the UK’) productions and four classic revivals. Film director and Monty Python veteran Terry Gilliam returns to ENO to lend his talent to a new production of Berlioz’s rarely performed Benvenuto Cellini, with the American rising star Corrine Winters (this season’s stunning Violetta) taking the role of Teresa – the cast also includes Michael Spyres in the title role and Willard White and will be conducted by ENO Music DirectorEdward Gardner. If it’s anywhere near as good as Gilliam’s wacky but brilliant Damnation of Faust then we should all be in for an extraordinary evening.
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Puccini: La bohème
English National Opera, 29th April 2013, John E de Wald
By his very ubiquity on operatic stages, Puccini can be a difficult composer to get right. Of his works, La bohème is surely the most hackneyed and the most capable of inducing cynicism, not through its own vice so much as sheer familiarity with the plot and the music. Done well, Puccini’s virtuosic talent for melody and naturalistic vitality soars as in little else; and through its intelligent stage direction, scintillating orchestra, and superb cast of principals, this excellent revival of Jonathan Miller’s ENO staging reminds us of just how good the opera can be.
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Elizabeth Connell Memorial Concert
St John's Smith Square, 27th April 2013, Miranda Jackson
In December 2008 the great dramatic soprano, Elizabeth Connell, stepped into the breach and took on the role of Turandot in the Royal Opera House production when the leading lady was indisposed. At the time she was playing the role of Hansel and Gretel’s Mother. What a contrast: from impoverished wife of an alcoholic husband to indomitable princess. It was a stellar cast in the Humperdinck with Sir Tom Allen as her husband, but the role of Turandot has to be one of a handful of roles which an aspiring dramatic soprano yearns to tuck under her bejewelled belt.
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Handel: Giulio Cesare in Egitto
Metropolitan Opera, New York, 27th April 2013, Mark Pullinger
I come not to bury Dessay, but to praise her. Anyone who witnessed last season’s screening of La traviata from the Met featuring Natalie Dessay would have approached this cinema relay of Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto starring the French coloratura soprano as Cleopatra with extreme caution. Indeed, those who listened to a Youtube recording of what is purportedly Dessay singing ‘Da tempeste il legno infranto’ on the opening night of the run could well have returned their tickets. For one performance she withdrew, resulting in Danielle de Niese, whose sex-kitten of a Cleopatra won her worldwide fame when David McVicar’s riot of a production was first seen at Glyndebourne, stepping in to save the show. Yet, despite some evidence of vocal frailty, Dessay emerged largely victorious to fight another day.
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Stravinsky: Apollon musagète; Oedipus Rex
LSO, Barbican Hall, 25th April 2013, Dominic Wells
For this, one of his numerous 70thBirthday concerts, Sir John Eliot Gardiner chose to deliver an all-Stravinsky programme with an ancient Greek theme: Apollon musagète, and Oedipus Rex. Joining him on stage were the London Symphony Orchestra and, for the second work, the gentlemen of the conductor’s own Monteverdi Choir – a vocal ensemble beyond superlatives. This combination of conductor and ensembles has worked well in the past in other Stravinskian repertoire, including one of the best versions of the Symphony of Psalms I have ever heard (originally on DG but re-released at budget price on Brilliant Classics: 9015) and arguably the greatest CD-recording of The Rake’s Progress (DG 459 648-2). For the most part, the high standard of those recordings was evident last night in London’s Barbican Hall.
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Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin
C Major Entertainment, Mark Pullinger
Kasper Holten faced something of a critical backlash (not from these quarters) for his use of dancer doubles in his recent Royal Opera production of Eugene Onegin, yet their use in this opera isn’t unique – Stefan Herheim did the same in Amsterdam. Both employed flashback techniques to explore the memories of the protagonists looking back on their past. In his production for the Polish National Opera, but filmed in Valencia, film, theatre and opera director Mariusz Trelinski adds a new twist. Who is the mysterious figure clad in white, with deathly pallor, stalking Tatyana and almost directing events?
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Juan Diego Flórez in recital
Barbican Hall, 24th April 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
If, like me, you attended Sunday’s “Flórez and Friends” concert at the Barbican – as opposed to sitting through oceans of orchestral filler in the RFH in order to dribble over the unfeasible length of Jonas Kaufmann’s ‘Wälse’ – you may be forgiven for wondering how an audience already in a state of chronic, uncritical delight could possibly be pleasured any more. In which case, you needed to be at tonight’s solo recital, the latest tranche of Juan Diego Flórez’s Barbican residency, which comprehensively proved the time-honoured adage “it ain’t over until the sooty-lashed one sings at least four encores”. The nubile bounced around, whooping; the mature squirmed with satisfaction in their seats, emitting the odd low moan; I shouldn’t be at all surprised if the lame weren’t seen dancing in the aisles, and the dead – always a fair percentage of any opera audience – weren’t newly-risen. Indeed, anyone suffering with scrofula could well have been cured merely by touching his immaculately tailored trousers (though I’m still working out how to explain this to the police).
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Elizabeth Connell Memorial Concert
South African soprano Elizabeth Connell (1946 - 2012) was acclaimed for her performances of the great Strauss, Verdi and Wagner heroines. On Saturday 27 April a special concert to honour her memory will be held at St John's, Smith Square, with all proceeds being donated to the Musicians' Benevolent Fund as well as the Elizabeth Connell Prize, an annual award for young dramatic sopranos.
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Juan Diego Flórez & Friends
Barbican Hall, 21st April 2013, Sebastian Petit
There are times in every critic’s life when they enter a place of entertainment in a less than exalted frame of mind, wishing fervently that they were not required to sit in judgement on whatever artistic offering is being given that night. This was undoubtedly the case with me tonight as I entered the Barbican Hall. Despite the fact that I had been looking forward to this concert for nigh on six months, a combination of a rotten night’s sleep and an overlarge dinner had put me in a distinctly un-sunny mood. Had what followed been of poor or even average quality it would likely have received a fairly un-indulgent review. Fortunately the evening was so far up the scale of excellence it is in danger of receiving a rave.
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Verdi: Requiem
Royal Festival Hall, 20th April 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
Daniele Gatti was the Music Director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for 13 years, from 1996 onwards: and the net result of his long and faithful devotion to them was to end up occupying a kind of twilight existence, seen somehow as not central to the city’s musical activities, having allied himself to the Cinderella of London orchestras. Happily for him, the rest of the world was rather more aware of his worth, and no sooner had he left than he was ensconced at Bayreuth, La Scala and the Met, as well as consolidating his position as a favoured guest with most of the great international orchestras. But after having conducted his way through most of the Verdi repertory at the ROH throughout the 1990s as the House’s Principal Guest Conductor year-in, year-out until the closure, he only reappeared there in 2001, promptly to vanish for the next eleven seasons. When he finally returned last year, to lead the new Falstaff, he was greeted with a homecoming hero’s sense of welcome. And something similar could be sensed tonight, at the Southbank-resident Philharmonia Orchestra’s major contribution to this year’s ongoing Verdi bicentenary celebrations.
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Mozart: Die Zauberflöte
Royal Opera, 16th April 2013, Sebastian Petit
Mozart and Schikaneder’s bizarre opera can be told in almost any way a director chooses - from Peter Sellars’ disastrous Glyndebourne LA freeway “retelling” through Julie Taymor’s Lion King spin-off to various “traditional” versions which seem little removed from pantomime. Fortunately David McVicar’s production pays the work the compliment of treating it seriously. And if the comic aspects recede to give way to the serious thread of the story I, for one, am not going to quarrel with that decision. Most importantly, this emphasis allows the two leads, often reduced to dully serious interludes between the Papageno scenes, to blossom and grow as characters.
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Britten: The Turn of the Screw
Barbican Hall, 16th April 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
When this pair of concert performances of Britten’s most ingeniously crafted opera – literally, variations on a theme - was first announced early last year as part of the London Symphony Orchestra’s 2012/13, the conductor was meant to be Sir Colin Davis, the band’s Principal Conductor from 1995 until 2006 (after which he became its tirelessly hands-on President). Alas, illness intervened, and the last performances he gave with the LSO in their home hall were the two Der Freischützen almost exactly a year ago - the first of which I reviewed here - followed by dual outings of Berlioz’s Grande Messe des Morts in St. Paul’s Cathedral in July, his absolute public dernière (and a rather more fitting use of the building than that in which it presently finds itself embroiled, hired out for a has-been politico’s overblown obsequies). Sir Colin was too ill to conduct, or even attend, his own 85th birthday concert last September, and we had all long-since been advised that he would not be conducting these Turns of the Screw, entrusted instead to Richard Farnes, the Music Director of Opera North.
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Valery Gergiev's 60th birthday concert
Barbican Hall, 22nd May 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
When the booking originally opened for this concert back in January 2012 as part of the LSO’s 2012/13 season, no actual programme was offered for our edification, the rubric merely noting, styled as above, that it would be in celebration of the Maestro’s sexagennial anniversary (or Diamond Jubilee if, as many do, you regard him as an absolute monarch). I booked for it blind, like everybody else, vaguely imagining that it would play to his known strengths in the Russian repertoire, or else take the form of some extended musical knees-up with lots of guest stars. In the event it only relatively recently became known that whilst the latter expectation would be partially met, in the shape of concert items played by Alexander Toradze and Leonidas Kavakos, the main musical meat of the evening was to be operatic, comprising Act V of Berlioz’s Les Troyens, with soloists both local (in the largely supporting roles) and Russian (in the case of the two principal ones). Now, Valery Gergiev certainly has form in Berlioz, having conducted concert performances here of both Benvenuto Cellini and (on three separate occasions, no less) La damnation de Faust. And his handling of Les Troyens, staged at the Valencia opera house by the La fura dels Baus collective as some Kubrickian space oddity, has been preserved on DVD.
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Britten: A Midsummer Night's Dream
Mariinsky Concert Hall, 19th May 2013, Gavin Dixon
Opera house, concert hall, and now another opera house: the Mariinsky is a company well-served for venues. The concert hall is a particularly versatile space, as this evening’s fully-staged performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream demonstrated. For an opera usually staged with large and involved sets, the more modest presentation here came as a refreshing surprise, and the imaginative use of trapeze artists allowed the action to take place in three dimensions. Musically, the performance was a little dour, but as usual, the Mariinsky Company was able to pepper the cast with enough outstanding vocal talents to keep the standards high, even if the English diction often left much to be desired.
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Verdi: Falstaff
Glyndebourne Festival, 19th May 2013, Sebastian Petit
What an utterly joyous evening! Even a darkening sky and a chilly interval picnic failed to diminish the fizzing pleasure of this first revival of Richard Jones’ 1940s Falstaff (revived here under Sarah Fahie). Originally playing to rather mixed notices but now with an almost entirely new cast the production coalesced into a superbly sharp, detailed and hilarious experience. The cast worked as a tautly wound ensemble who appeared to enjoy every minute and centred round the astonishing Laurent Naouri as Sir John Falstaff.
Read more>>
Yards of tartan; fabulous singing!
Rossini: La donna del lago
Royal Opera, 17th May 2013, Mark Pullinger
Yards of tartan, a tenor as hirsute Braveheart rebel Highlander and a picturesque mural (or murial) of Loch Katrine, which would have had Hilda Ogden green with envy, place us emphatically in Scotland for this new staging of Rossini’s La donna del lago at Covent Garden. Originally planned as a co-production with the Palais Garnier and La Scala, the Royal Opera gave Luis Pasqual’s staging the boot and employed John Fulljames to do the directorial honours instead (oh that it had the courage to do likewise with other co-prods foisted upon it – yes, I do mean Rusalka). La donna del lago, based on Sir Walter Scott’s narrative poem The Lady of the Lake, presents a romanticized view of Highland history and Fulljames taps into its events as a ‘museum piece’, not always with coherence. It will have mattered little for many in the audience, who were there primarily for the singing and cheered the cast to the rafters.
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Opera North, Leeds, 16th May 2013, Geoffrey Mogridge
In the glorious summer of 1947, Glyndebourne Festival Opera House, the setting for the premiere of Benjamin Britten's chamber opera Albert Herring, must have seemed the very antithesis of post-war austerity Britain. It might be hard to imagine the aristocratic Lady Billows having to produce a ration book; but the whole population had to do so to purchase basic foods such as eggs, bread, milk and sugar. Meanwhile, society was going through immense change as the old order, and with it the rigid class structures, slowly began to erode. Given Britten's distaste of the class system, it is unlikely that he composed Albert Herring solely as a light-hearted rural romp designed to light up people's lives during the post-war drabness. Glyndebourne's founder John Christie is said to have heartily disliked the piece, dismissing it saying "This isn't our kind of thing, you know”. Perhaps Christie's reaction was not surprising, as the sharply drawn characters are parodies of familiar establishment figures and their servitors.
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Monty Python meets G&S in crowd-pleasing Pirates!
Sullivan: The Pirates of Penzance
Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 15th May 2013, Kelvin Holdsworth
Scottish Opera and the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company have set sail with a sure-fire summer hit with their delightful new production of The Pirates of Penzance. A real crowd pleaser, this production deserves the success that it will undoubtedly have.
It became quickly obvious during the overture that this was a production that we were intended to laugh at. The seagull saw to that, first being heard crying plaintively above the sound of the orchestra and then appearing on strings from the very top of the proscenium and flying around over an azure curtain.
Read more>>
Berg: Wozzeck
English National Opera, 11th May 2013, Gavin Dixon
Carrie Cracknell, a respected theatre director, makes her operatic debut with this ENO Wozzeck. The work demands much of its interpreters, not least a visual conception as compelling as the drama within the music. That’s exactly what it gets, in a production that moves the action to a present-day British army barracks, instilling claustrophobia, social decay and abusive power hierarchies at every turn. Cracknell treats all of her singers as real actors, leading to psychological insights that are all too rare from an opera that is more often played for its shock value. Edward Gardner also seeks, and regularly finds, details and subtleties in the work with his precise and measured reading. But the impressive intellect behind this production, both on the stage and in the pit, never obscures the work’s sheer emotional power. Everything builds towards the searing conclusion, in which the graphic visuals are fully the equal of the intensely powerful music.
Read more>>
Magdalena Kožená
Barbican Hall, 8th May 2013, Sebastian Petit
Entering the Barbican Hall foyers I suspected I might have, in a senior moment, turned up on the wrong night. While not quite yet colonised by tumbleweed, the foyers were horribly unpopulated considering the centre was hosting a recital by a big name artist like Magdalena Kožená. The rich variety of musical life in our capital can often result in deserving events failing to attract the level of support they deserve. This was clearly the case last night with the lures of the all-star (minus 1) Don Carlo and the opening of Liam Scarlett’s latest excursion into the world of nightmare leading to a less than half-full hall at the Barbican.
Read more>>
Wagner: Parsifal
Oper Stuttgart, 5th May 2013, Faye Courtney
Cannibalism, self-mutilation, mad axe murderers, two-headed genetic mutants and women wearing clingfilm – just a few of the things you don’t usually expect to see in your average production of Parsifal. Welcome to the crazy world of Calixto Bieito, whose brilliant and disturbingly nihilistic interpretation of Wagner’sBühnenweihfestspiel is most definitely not for traditionalists, the squeamish or those of a sensitive disposition. For all its sublime music, Parsifal is Wagner’s most dramatically inert opera - yet incredibly, Bieito has somehow achieved the near impossible feat of creating a 5 hour long theatrical experience where it’s impossible to be bored for a single minute.
Read more>>
Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer
Oper Stuttgart, 4th May 2013, Faye Courtney
I’m not personally convinced that Wagner wrote Der fliegende Holländer because he was secretly trying to make some kind of anti-Capitalist ‘statement’, but try telling that to Calixto Bieito, a director who never lets trifling little details like the composer’s intentions stand in the way of creating a controversial piece of Regietheater, or as some may translate it - ‘Eurotrash’. Though his shock tactics are guaranteed to divide critics and public alike, you can’t deny that Bieito’s productions are usually intensely theatrical and thought-provoking affairs. However, in the case of his Dutchman for Oper Stuttgart the whole basic concept of a bunch of badly behaved businessmen in a rubber dinghy sadly fails to hit the mark.
Read more>>
Handel: Joshua
Opera North, Leeds, 4th May 2013, Geoffrey Mogridge
My earliest prevailing image of oratorio - particularly those of George Frederick Handel - is of instrumental textures like clotted cream and the full-throated roar of serried ranks of choristers dressed in flowing white gowns or black evening tails stacked up behind a swollen orchestra in an ornate Victorian Town Hall; or (alternatively) one of the great northern chapel choirs with organ or harmonium accompaniment delivering the annual performance of Messiah, Judas Maccabaeus or Saul.
Read more>>
Verdi: Don Carlo
Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, 2nd May 2013, Nicola Lischi
The most amazing thing about this performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlois that it took place at all. The troubles that have been plaguing the Fondazione del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino are well known and this writer has already mentioned them in other recent reviews. The bottom line is that, without going into details, the Maggio ended up in such a sorry state that a few months ago the Italian government had no choice but to place an external commissioner, Francesco Bianchi, at its helm, so as to shed light on the actual extent of the deficit and try to save the sinking ship.
Read more>>
Handel: Atalanta
Cambridge Handel Opera, 30th April 2013, Sandra Bowdler
Cambridge saw an outstanding performance of Handel’s Atalanta, which could compare with anything from a major company. The production, singing and music were all next to flawless, and it was a Baroque production with a slight tongue in cheek style which delighted the audience. Atalanta was written to celebrate the marriage of the Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha to Frederick Louis (or Friedrich Ludwig), the son of King George II of England, in London in 1736. This context is necessary to understand some of the features of the opera, in particular why the plot is considered to be remarkably fluffy, even by the standards of Baroque opera.
Read more>>
Shostakovich: The Nose
Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg, 29th April 2013, Gavin Dixon
The Mariinsky company is very proud of this production of Shostakovich’s The Nose. And so they should be, as this is a spectacular staging that plays to all the company’s strengths. It is a rollercoaster from beginning to end; bizarre and surreal, but also dynamic and constantly inventive. The production premiered in 2004, and after completing its run was taken on tour by Valery Gergiev to Stockholm, Paris, London (the Barbican) and Berlin. Then, in 2009, it was chosen as the work to launch the Mariinsky’s own label. Now, The Nose returns to the Mariinsky stage, this its first revival in four years.
Read more>>
ENO 2013/14 season
English National Opera announced their new season this morning, boasting ten new (or ‘new to the UK’) productions and four classic revivals. Film director and Monty Python veteran Terry Gilliam returns to ENO to lend his talent to a new production of Berlioz’s rarely performed Benvenuto Cellini, with the American rising star Corrine Winters (this season’s stunning Violetta) taking the role of Teresa – the cast also includes Michael Spyres in the title role and Willard White and will be conducted by ENO Music DirectorEdward Gardner. If it’s anywhere near as good as Gilliam’s wacky but brilliant Damnation of Faust then we should all be in for an extraordinary evening.
Read more>>
Puccini: La bohème
English National Opera, 29th April 2013, John E de Wald
By his very ubiquity on operatic stages, Puccini can be a difficult composer to get right. Of his works, La bohème is surely the most hackneyed and the most capable of inducing cynicism, not through its own vice so much as sheer familiarity with the plot and the music. Done well, Puccini’s virtuosic talent for melody and naturalistic vitality soars as in little else; and through its intelligent stage direction, scintillating orchestra, and superb cast of principals, this excellent revival of Jonathan Miller’s ENO staging reminds us of just how good the opera can be.
Read more>>
Elizabeth Connell Memorial Concert
St John's Smith Square, 27th April 2013, Miranda Jackson
In December 2008 the great dramatic soprano, Elizabeth Connell, stepped into the breach and took on the role of Turandot in the Royal Opera House production when the leading lady was indisposed. At the time she was playing the role of Hansel and Gretel’s Mother. What a contrast: from impoverished wife of an alcoholic husband to indomitable princess. It was a stellar cast in the Humperdinck with Sir Tom Allen as her husband, but the role of Turandot has to be one of a handful of roles which an aspiring dramatic soprano yearns to tuck under her bejewelled belt.
Read more>>
Handel: Giulio Cesare in Egitto
Metropolitan Opera, New York, 27th April 2013, Mark Pullinger
I come not to bury Dessay, but to praise her. Anyone who witnessed last season’s screening of La traviata from the Met featuring Natalie Dessay would have approached this cinema relay of Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto starring the French coloratura soprano as Cleopatra with extreme caution. Indeed, those who listened to a Youtube recording of what is purportedly Dessay singing ‘Da tempeste il legno infranto’ on the opening night of the run could well have returned their tickets. For one performance she withdrew, resulting in Danielle de Niese, whose sex-kitten of a Cleopatra won her worldwide fame when David McVicar’s riot of a production was first seen at Glyndebourne, stepping in to save the show. Yet, despite some evidence of vocal frailty, Dessay emerged largely victorious to fight another day.
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Stravinsky: Apollon musagète; Oedipus Rex
LSO, Barbican Hall, 25th April 2013, Dominic Wells
For this, one of his numerous 70thBirthday concerts, Sir John Eliot Gardiner chose to deliver an all-Stravinsky programme with an ancient Greek theme: Apollon musagète, and Oedipus Rex. Joining him on stage were the London Symphony Orchestra and, for the second work, the gentlemen of the conductor’s own Monteverdi Choir – a vocal ensemble beyond superlatives. This combination of conductor and ensembles has worked well in the past in other Stravinskian repertoire, including one of the best versions of the Symphony of Psalms I have ever heard (originally on DG but re-released at budget price on Brilliant Classics: 9015) and arguably the greatest CD-recording of The Rake’s Progress (DG 459 648-2). For the most part, the high standard of those recordings was evident last night in London’s Barbican Hall.
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Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin
C Major Entertainment, Mark Pullinger
Kasper Holten faced something of a critical backlash (not from these quarters) for his use of dancer doubles in his recent Royal Opera production of Eugene Onegin, yet their use in this opera isn’t unique – Stefan Herheim did the same in Amsterdam. Both employed flashback techniques to explore the memories of the protagonists looking back on their past. In his production for the Polish National Opera, but filmed in Valencia, film, theatre and opera director Mariusz Trelinski adds a new twist. Who is the mysterious figure clad in white, with deathly pallor, stalking Tatyana and almost directing events?
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Juan Diego Flórez in recital
Barbican Hall, 24th April 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
If, like me, you attended Sunday’s “Flórez and Friends” concert at the Barbican – as opposed to sitting through oceans of orchestral filler in the RFH in order to dribble over the unfeasible length of Jonas Kaufmann’s ‘Wälse’ – you may be forgiven for wondering how an audience already in a state of chronic, uncritical delight could possibly be pleasured any more. In which case, you needed to be at tonight’s solo recital, the latest tranche of Juan Diego Flórez’s Barbican residency, which comprehensively proved the time-honoured adage “it ain’t over until the sooty-lashed one sings at least four encores”. The nubile bounced around, whooping; the mature squirmed with satisfaction in their seats, emitting the odd low moan; I shouldn’t be at all surprised if the lame weren’t seen dancing in the aisles, and the dead – always a fair percentage of any opera audience – weren’t newly-risen. Indeed, anyone suffering with scrofula could well have been cured merely by touching his immaculately tailored trousers (though I’m still working out how to explain this to the police).
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Elizabeth Connell Memorial Concert
South African soprano Elizabeth Connell (1946 - 2012) was acclaimed for her performances of the great Strauss, Verdi and Wagner heroines. On Saturday 27 April a special concert to honour her memory will be held at St John's, Smith Square, with all proceeds being donated to the Musicians' Benevolent Fund as well as the Elizabeth Connell Prize, an annual award for young dramatic sopranos.
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Juan Diego Flórez & Friends
Barbican Hall, 21st April 2013, Sebastian Petit
There are times in every critic’s life when they enter a place of entertainment in a less than exalted frame of mind, wishing fervently that they were not required to sit in judgement on whatever artistic offering is being given that night. This was undoubtedly the case with me tonight as I entered the Barbican Hall. Despite the fact that I had been looking forward to this concert for nigh on six months, a combination of a rotten night’s sleep and an overlarge dinner had put me in a distinctly un-sunny mood. Had what followed been of poor or even average quality it would likely have received a fairly un-indulgent review. Fortunately the evening was so far up the scale of excellence it is in danger of receiving a rave.
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Verdi: Requiem
Royal Festival Hall, 20th April 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
Daniele Gatti was the Music Director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for 13 years, from 1996 onwards: and the net result of his long and faithful devotion to them was to end up occupying a kind of twilight existence, seen somehow as not central to the city’s musical activities, having allied himself to the Cinderella of London orchestras. Happily for him, the rest of the world was rather more aware of his worth, and no sooner had he left than he was ensconced at Bayreuth, La Scala and the Met, as well as consolidating his position as a favoured guest with most of the great international orchestras. But after having conducted his way through most of the Verdi repertory at the ROH throughout the 1990s as the House’s Principal Guest Conductor year-in, year-out until the closure, he only reappeared there in 2001, promptly to vanish for the next eleven seasons. When he finally returned last year, to lead the new Falstaff, he was greeted with a homecoming hero’s sense of welcome. And something similar could be sensed tonight, at the Southbank-resident Philharmonia Orchestra’s major contribution to this year’s ongoing Verdi bicentenary celebrations.
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Mozart: Die Zauberflöte
Royal Opera, 16th April 2013, Sebastian Petit
Mozart and Schikaneder’s bizarre opera can be told in almost any way a director chooses - from Peter Sellars’ disastrous Glyndebourne LA freeway “retelling” through Julie Taymor’s Lion King spin-off to various “traditional” versions which seem little removed from pantomime. Fortunately David McVicar’s production pays the work the compliment of treating it seriously. And if the comic aspects recede to give way to the serious thread of the story I, for one, am not going to quarrel with that decision. Most importantly, this emphasis allows the two leads, often reduced to dully serious interludes between the Papageno scenes, to blossom and grow as characters.
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Britten: The Turn of the Screw
Barbican Hall, 16th April 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
When this pair of concert performances of Britten’s most ingeniously crafted opera – literally, variations on a theme - was first announced early last year as part of the London Symphony Orchestra’s 2012/13, the conductor was meant to be Sir Colin Davis, the band’s Principal Conductor from 1995 until 2006 (after which he became its tirelessly hands-on President). Alas, illness intervened, and the last performances he gave with the LSO in their home hall were the two Der Freischützen almost exactly a year ago - the first of which I reviewed here - followed by dual outings of Berlioz’s Grande Messe des Morts in St. Paul’s Cathedral in July, his absolute public dernière (and a rather more fitting use of the building than that in which it presently finds itself embroiled, hired out for a has-been politico’s overblown obsequies). Sir Colin was too ill to conduct, or even attend, his own 85th birthday concert last September, and we had all long-since been advised that he would not be conducting these Turns of the Screw, entrusted instead to Richard Farnes, the Music Director of Opera North.
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Valery Gergiev's 60th birthday concert
Barbican Hall, 22nd May 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
When the booking originally opened for this concert back in January 2012 as part of the LSO’s 2012/13 season, no actual programme was offered for our edification, the rubric merely noting, styled as above, that it would be in celebration of the Maestro’s sexagennial anniversary (or Diamond Jubilee if, as many do, you regard him as an absolute monarch). I booked for it blind, like everybody else, vaguely imagining that it would play to his known strengths in the Russian repertoire, or else take the form of some extended musical knees-up with lots of guest stars. In the event it only relatively recently became known that whilst the latter expectation would be partially met, in the shape of concert items played by Alexander Toradze and Leonidas Kavakos, the main musical meat of the evening was to be operatic, comprising Act V of Berlioz’s Les Troyens, with soloists both local (in the largely supporting roles) and Russian (in the case of the two principal ones). Now, Valery Gergiev certainly has form in Berlioz, having conducted concert performances here of both Benvenuto Cellini and (on three separate occasions, no less) La damnation de Faust. And his handling of Les Troyens, staged at the Valencia opera house by the La fura dels Baus collective as some Kubrickian space oddity, has been preserved on DVD.
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Britten: A Midsummer Night's Dream
Mariinsky Concert Hall, 19th May 2013, Gavin Dixon
Opera house, concert hall, and now another opera house: the Mariinsky is a company well-served for venues. The concert hall is a particularly versatile space, as this evening’s fully-staged performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream demonstrated. For an opera usually staged with large and involved sets, the more modest presentation here came as a refreshing surprise, and the imaginative use of trapeze artists allowed the action to take place in three dimensions. Musically, the performance was a little dour, but as usual, the Mariinsky Company was able to pepper the cast with enough outstanding vocal talents to keep the standards high, even if the English diction often left much to be desired.
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Verdi: Falstaff
Glyndebourne Festival, 19th May 2013, Sebastian Petit
What an utterly joyous evening! Even a darkening sky and a chilly interval picnic failed to diminish the fizzing pleasure of this first revival of Richard Jones’ 1940s Falstaff (revived here under Sarah Fahie). Originally playing to rather mixed notices but now with an almost entirely new cast the production coalesced into a superbly sharp, detailed and hilarious experience. The cast worked as a tautly wound ensemble who appeared to enjoy every minute and centred round the astonishing Laurent Naouri as Sir John Falstaff.
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Yards of tartan; fabulous singing!
Rossini: La donna del lago
Royal Opera, 17th May 2013, Mark Pullinger
Yards of tartan, a tenor as hirsute Braveheart rebel Highlander and a picturesque mural (or murial) of Loch Katrine, which would have had Hilda Ogden green with envy, place us emphatically in Scotland for this new staging of Rossini’s La donna del lago at Covent Garden. Originally planned as a co-production with the Palais Garnier and La Scala, the Royal Opera gave Luis Pasqual’s staging the boot and employed John Fulljames to do the directorial honours instead (oh that it had the courage to do likewise with other co-prods foisted upon it – yes, I do mean Rusalka). La donna del lago, based on Sir Walter Scott’s narrative poem The Lady of the Lake, presents a romanticized view of Highland history and Fulljames taps into its events as a ‘museum piece’, not always with coherence. It will have mattered little for many in the audience, who were there primarily for the singing and cheered the cast to the rafters.
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Opera North, Leeds, 16th May 2013, Geoffrey Mogridge
In the glorious summer of 1947, Glyndebourne Festival Opera House, the setting for the premiere of Benjamin Britten's chamber opera Albert Herring, must have seemed the very antithesis of post-war austerity Britain. It might be hard to imagine the aristocratic Lady Billows having to produce a ration book; but the whole population had to do so to purchase basic foods such as eggs, bread, milk and sugar. Meanwhile, society was going through immense change as the old order, and with it the rigid class structures, slowly began to erode. Given Britten's distaste of the class system, it is unlikely that he composed Albert Herring solely as a light-hearted rural romp designed to light up people's lives during the post-war drabness. Glyndebourne's founder John Christie is said to have heartily disliked the piece, dismissing it saying "This isn't our kind of thing, you know”. Perhaps Christie's reaction was not surprising, as the sharply drawn characters are parodies of familiar establishment figures and their servitors.
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Monty Python meets G&S in crowd-pleasing Pirates!
Sullivan: The Pirates of Penzance
Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 15th May 2013, Kelvin Holdsworth
Scottish Opera and the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company have set sail with a sure-fire summer hit with their delightful new production of The Pirates of Penzance. A real crowd pleaser, this production deserves the success that it will undoubtedly have.
It became quickly obvious during the overture that this was a production that we were intended to laugh at. The seagull saw to that, first being heard crying plaintively above the sound of the orchestra and then appearing on strings from the very top of the proscenium and flying around over an azure curtain.
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Berg: Wozzeck
English National Opera, 11th May 2013, Gavin Dixon
Carrie Cracknell, a respected theatre director, makes her operatic debut with this ENO Wozzeck. The work demands much of its interpreters, not least a visual conception as compelling as the drama within the music. That’s exactly what it gets, in a production that moves the action to a present-day British army barracks, instilling claustrophobia, social decay and abusive power hierarchies at every turn. Cracknell treats all of her singers as real actors, leading to psychological insights that are all too rare from an opera that is more often played for its shock value. Edward Gardner also seeks, and regularly finds, details and subtleties in the work with his precise and measured reading. But the impressive intellect behind this production, both on the stage and in the pit, never obscures the work’s sheer emotional power. Everything builds towards the searing conclusion, in which the graphic visuals are fully the equal of the intensely powerful music.
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Magdalena Kožená
Barbican Hall, 8th May 2013, Sebastian Petit
Entering the Barbican Hall foyers I suspected I might have, in a senior moment, turned up on the wrong night. While not quite yet colonised by tumbleweed, the foyers were horribly unpopulated considering the centre was hosting a recital by a big name artist like Magdalena Kožená. The rich variety of musical life in our capital can often result in deserving events failing to attract the level of support they deserve. This was clearly the case last night with the lures of the all-star (minus 1) Don Carlo and the opening of Liam Scarlett’s latest excursion into the world of nightmare leading to a less than half-full hall at the Barbican.
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Wagner: Parsifal
Oper Stuttgart, 5th May 2013, Faye Courtney
Cannibalism, self-mutilation, mad axe murderers, two-headed genetic mutants and women wearing clingfilm – just a few of the things you don’t usually expect to see in your average production of Parsifal. Welcome to the crazy world of Calixto Bieito, whose brilliant and disturbingly nihilistic interpretation of Wagner’sBühnenweihfestspiel is most definitely not for traditionalists, the squeamish or those of a sensitive disposition. For all its sublime music, Parsifal is Wagner’s most dramatically inert opera - yet incredibly, Bieito has somehow achieved the near impossible feat of creating a 5 hour long theatrical experience where it’s impossible to be bored for a single minute.
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Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer
Oper Stuttgart, 4th May 2013, Faye Courtney
I’m not personally convinced that Wagner wrote Der fliegende Holländer because he was secretly trying to make some kind of anti-Capitalist ‘statement’, but try telling that to Calixto Bieito, a director who never lets trifling little details like the composer’s intentions stand in the way of creating a controversial piece of Regietheater, or as some may translate it - ‘Eurotrash’. Though his shock tactics are guaranteed to divide critics and public alike, you can’t deny that Bieito’s productions are usually intensely theatrical and thought-provoking affairs. However, in the case of his Dutchman for Oper Stuttgart the whole basic concept of a bunch of badly behaved businessmen in a rubber dinghy sadly fails to hit the mark.
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Handel: Joshua
Opera North, Leeds, 4th May 2013, Geoffrey Mogridge
My earliest prevailing image of oratorio - particularly those of George Frederick Handel - is of instrumental textures like clotted cream and the full-throated roar of serried ranks of choristers dressed in flowing white gowns or black evening tails stacked up behind a swollen orchestra in an ornate Victorian Town Hall; or (alternatively) one of the great northern chapel choirs with organ or harmonium accompaniment delivering the annual performance of Messiah, Judas Maccabaeus or Saul.
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Verdi: Don Carlo
Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, 2nd May 2013, Nicola Lischi
The most amazing thing about this performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlois that it took place at all. The troubles that have been plaguing the Fondazione del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino are well known and this writer has already mentioned them in other recent reviews. The bottom line is that, without going into details, the Maggio ended up in such a sorry state that a few months ago the Italian government had no choice but to place an external commissioner, Francesco Bianchi, at its helm, so as to shed light on the actual extent of the deficit and try to save the sinking ship.
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Handel: Atalanta
Cambridge Handel Opera, 30th April 2013, Sandra Bowdler
Cambridge saw an outstanding performance of Handel’s Atalanta, which could compare with anything from a major company. The production, singing and music were all next to flawless, and it was a Baroque production with a slight tongue in cheek style which delighted the audience. Atalanta was written to celebrate the marriage of the Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha to Frederick Louis (or Friedrich Ludwig), the son of King George II of England, in London in 1736. This context is necessary to understand some of the features of the opera, in particular why the plot is considered to be remarkably fluffy, even by the standards of Baroque opera.
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Shostakovich: The Nose
Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg, 29th April 2013, Gavin Dixon
The Mariinsky company is very proud of this production of Shostakovich’s The Nose. And so they should be, as this is a spectacular staging that plays to all the company’s strengths. It is a rollercoaster from beginning to end; bizarre and surreal, but also dynamic and constantly inventive. The production premiered in 2004, and after completing its run was taken on tour by Valery Gergiev to Stockholm, Paris, London (the Barbican) and Berlin. Then, in 2009, it was chosen as the work to launch the Mariinsky’s own label. Now, The Nose returns to the Mariinsky stage, this its first revival in four years.
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ENO 2013/14 season
English National Opera announced their new season this morning, boasting ten new (or ‘new to the UK’) productions and four classic revivals. Film director and Monty Python veteran Terry Gilliam returns to ENO to lend his talent to a new production of Berlioz’s rarely performed Benvenuto Cellini, with the American rising star Corrine Winters (this season’s stunning Violetta) taking the role of Teresa – the cast also includes Michael Spyres in the title role and Willard White and will be conducted by ENO Music DirectorEdward Gardner. If it’s anywhere near as good as Gilliam’s wacky but brilliant Damnation of Faust then we should all be in for an extraordinary evening.
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Puccini: La bohème
English National Opera, 29th April 2013, John E de Wald
By his very ubiquity on operatic stages, Puccini can be a difficult composer to get right. Of his works, La bohème is surely the most hackneyed and the most capable of inducing cynicism, not through its own vice so much as sheer familiarity with the plot and the music. Done well, Puccini’s virtuosic talent for melody and naturalistic vitality soars as in little else; and through its intelligent stage direction, scintillating orchestra, and superb cast of principals, this excellent revival of Jonathan Miller’s ENO staging reminds us of just how good the opera can be.
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Elizabeth Connell Memorial Concert
St John's Smith Square, 27th April 2013, Miranda Jackson
In December 2008 the great dramatic soprano, Elizabeth Connell, stepped into the breach and took on the role of Turandot in the Royal Opera House production when the leading lady was indisposed. At the time she was playing the role of Hansel and Gretel’s Mother. What a contrast: from impoverished wife of an alcoholic husband to indomitable princess. It was a stellar cast in the Humperdinck with Sir Tom Allen as her husband, but the role of Turandot has to be one of a handful of roles which an aspiring dramatic soprano yearns to tuck under her bejewelled belt.
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Handel: Giulio Cesare in Egitto
Metropolitan Opera, New York, 27th April 2013, Mark Pullinger
I come not to bury Dessay, but to praise her. Anyone who witnessed last season’s screening of La traviata from the Met featuring Natalie Dessay would have approached this cinema relay of Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto starring the French coloratura soprano as Cleopatra with extreme caution. Indeed, those who listened to a Youtube recording of what is purportedly Dessay singing ‘Da tempeste il legno infranto’ on the opening night of the run could well have returned their tickets. For one performance she withdrew, resulting in Danielle de Niese, whose sex-kitten of a Cleopatra won her worldwide fame when David McVicar’s riot of a production was first seen at Glyndebourne, stepping in to save the show. Yet, despite some evidence of vocal frailty, Dessay emerged largely victorious to fight another day.
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Stravinsky: Apollon musagète; Oedipus Rex
LSO, Barbican Hall, 25th April 2013, Dominic Wells
For this, one of his numerous 70thBirthday concerts, Sir John Eliot Gardiner chose to deliver an all-Stravinsky programme with an ancient Greek theme: Apollon musagète, and Oedipus Rex. Joining him on stage were the London Symphony Orchestra and, for the second work, the gentlemen of the conductor’s own Monteverdi Choir – a vocal ensemble beyond superlatives. This combination of conductor and ensembles has worked well in the past in other Stravinskian repertoire, including one of the best versions of the Symphony of Psalms I have ever heard (originally on DG but re-released at budget price on Brilliant Classics: 9015) and arguably the greatest CD-recording of The Rake’s Progress (DG 459 648-2). For the most part, the high standard of those recordings was evident last night in London’s Barbican Hall.
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Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin
C Major Entertainment, Mark Pullinger
Kasper Holten faced something of a critical backlash (not from these quarters) for his use of dancer doubles in his recent Royal Opera production of Eugene Onegin, yet their use in this opera isn’t unique – Stefan Herheim did the same in Amsterdam. Both employed flashback techniques to explore the memories of the protagonists looking back on their past. In his production for the Polish National Opera, but filmed in Valencia, film, theatre and opera director Mariusz Trelinski adds a new twist. Who is the mysterious figure clad in white, with deathly pallor, stalking Tatyana and almost directing events?
Read more>>
Juan Diego Flórez in recital
Barbican Hall, 24th April 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
If, like me, you attended Sunday’s “Flórez and Friends” concert at the Barbican – as opposed to sitting through oceans of orchestral filler in the RFH in order to dribble over the unfeasible length of Jonas Kaufmann’s ‘Wälse’ – you may be forgiven for wondering how an audience already in a state of chronic, uncritical delight could possibly be pleasured any more. In which case, you needed to be at tonight’s solo recital, the latest tranche of Juan Diego Flórez’s Barbican residency, which comprehensively proved the time-honoured adage “it ain’t over until the sooty-lashed one sings at least four encores”. The nubile bounced around, whooping; the mature squirmed with satisfaction in their seats, emitting the odd low moan; I shouldn’t be at all surprised if the lame weren’t seen dancing in the aisles, and the dead – always a fair percentage of any opera audience – weren’t newly-risen. Indeed, anyone suffering with scrofula could well have been cured merely by touching his immaculately tailored trousers (though I’m still working out how to explain this to the police).
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Elizabeth Connell Memorial Concert
South African soprano Elizabeth Connell (1946 - 2012) was acclaimed for her performances of the great Strauss, Verdi and Wagner heroines. On Saturday 27 April a special concert to honour her memory will be held at St John's, Smith Square, with all proceeds being donated to the Musicians' Benevolent Fund as well as the Elizabeth Connell Prize, an annual award for young dramatic sopranos.
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Juan Diego Flórez & Friends
Barbican Hall, 21st April 2013, Sebastian Petit
There are times in every critic’s life when they enter a place of entertainment in a less than exalted frame of mind, wishing fervently that they were not required to sit in judgement on whatever artistic offering is being given that night. This was undoubtedly the case with me tonight as I entered the Barbican Hall. Despite the fact that I had been looking forward to this concert for nigh on six months, a combination of a rotten night’s sleep and an overlarge dinner had put me in a distinctly un-sunny mood. Had what followed been of poor or even average quality it would likely have received a fairly un-indulgent review. Fortunately the evening was so far up the scale of excellence it is in danger of receiving a rave.
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Verdi: Requiem
Royal Festival Hall, 20th April 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
Daniele Gatti was the Music Director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for 13 years, from 1996 onwards: and the net result of his long and faithful devotion to them was to end up occupying a kind of twilight existence, seen somehow as not central to the city’s musical activities, having allied himself to the Cinderella of London orchestras. Happily for him, the rest of the world was rather more aware of his worth, and no sooner had he left than he was ensconced at Bayreuth, La Scala and the Met, as well as consolidating his position as a favoured guest with most of the great international orchestras. But after having conducted his way through most of the Verdi repertory at the ROH throughout the 1990s as the House’s Principal Guest Conductor year-in, year-out until the closure, he only reappeared there in 2001, promptly to vanish for the next eleven seasons. When he finally returned last year, to lead the new Falstaff, he was greeted with a homecoming hero’s sense of welcome. And something similar could be sensed tonight, at the Southbank-resident Philharmonia Orchestra’s major contribution to this year’s ongoing Verdi bicentenary celebrations.
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Mozart: Die Zauberflöte
Royal Opera, 16th April 2013, Sebastian Petit
Mozart and Schikaneder’s bizarre opera can be told in almost any way a director chooses - from Peter Sellars’ disastrous Glyndebourne LA freeway “retelling” through Julie Taymor’s Lion King spin-off to various “traditional” versions which seem little removed from pantomime. Fortunately David McVicar’s production pays the work the compliment of treating it seriously. And if the comic aspects recede to give way to the serious thread of the story I, for one, am not going to quarrel with that decision. Most importantly, this emphasis allows the two leads, often reduced to dully serious interludes between the Papageno scenes, to blossom and grow as characters.
Read more>>
Britten: The Turn of the Screw
Barbican Hall, 16th April 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
When this pair of concert performances of Britten’s most ingeniously crafted opera – literally, variations on a theme - was first announced early last year as part of the London Symphony Orchestra’s 2012/13, the conductor was meant to be Sir Colin Davis, the band’s Principal Conductor from 1995 until 2006 (after which he became its tirelessly hands-on President). Alas, illness intervened, and the last performances he gave with the LSO in their home hall were the two Der Freischützen almost exactly a year ago - the first of which I reviewed here - followed by dual outings of Berlioz’s Grande Messe des Morts in St. Paul’s Cathedral in July, his absolute public dernière (and a rather more fitting use of the building than that in which it presently finds itself embroiled, hired out for a has-been politico’s overblown obsequies). Sir Colin was too ill to conduct, or even attend, his own 85th birthday concert last September, and we had all long-since been advised that he would not be conducting these Turns of the Screw, entrusted instead to Richard Farnes, the Music Director of Opera North.
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Valery Gergiev's 60th birthday concert
Barbican Hall, 22nd May 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
When the booking originally opened for this concert back in January 2012 as part of the LSO’s 2012/13 season, no actual programme was offered for our edification, the rubric merely noting, styled as above, that it would be in celebration of the Maestro’s sexagennial anniversary (or Diamond Jubilee if, as many do, you regard him as an absolute monarch). I booked for it blind, like everybody else, vaguely imagining that it would play to his known strengths in the Russian repertoire, or else take the form of some extended musical knees-up with lots of guest stars. In the event it only relatively recently became known that whilst the latter expectation would be partially met, in the shape of concert items played by Alexander Toradze and Leonidas Kavakos, the main musical meat of the evening was to be operatic, comprising Act V of Berlioz’s Les Troyens, with soloists both local (in the largely supporting roles) and Russian (in the case of the two principal ones). Now, Valery Gergiev certainly has form in Berlioz, having conducted concert performances here of both Benvenuto Cellini and (on three separate occasions, no less) La damnation de Faust. And his handling of Les Troyens, staged at the Valencia opera house by the La fura dels Baus collective as some Kubrickian space oddity, has been preserved on DVD.
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Britten: A Midsummer Night's Dream
Mariinsky Concert Hall, 19th May 2013, Gavin Dixon
Opera house, concert hall, and now another opera house: the Mariinsky is a company well-served for venues. The concert hall is a particularly versatile space, as this evening’s fully-staged performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream demonstrated. For an opera usually staged with large and involved sets, the more modest presentation here came as a refreshing surprise, and the imaginative use of trapeze artists allowed the action to take place in three dimensions. Musically, the performance was a little dour, but as usual, the Mariinsky Company was able to pepper the cast with enough outstanding vocal talents to keep the standards high, even if the English diction often left much to be desired.
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Verdi: Falstaff
Glyndebourne Festival, 19th May 2013, Sebastian Petit
What an utterly joyous evening! Even a darkening sky and a chilly interval picnic failed to diminish the fizzing pleasure of this first revival of Richard Jones’ 1940s Falstaff (revived here under Sarah Fahie). Originally playing to rather mixed notices but now with an almost entirely new cast the production coalesced into a superbly sharp, detailed and hilarious experience. The cast worked as a tautly wound ensemble who appeared to enjoy every minute and centred round the astonishing Laurent Naouri as Sir John Falstaff.
Read more>>
Yards of tartan; fabulous singing!
Rossini: La donna del lago
Royal Opera, 17th May 2013, Mark Pullinger
Yards of tartan, a tenor as hirsute Braveheart rebel Highlander and a picturesque mural (or murial) of Loch Katrine, which would have had Hilda Ogden green with envy, place us emphatically in Scotland for this new staging of Rossini’s La donna del lago at Covent Garden. Originally planned as a co-production with the Palais Garnier and La Scala, the Royal Opera gave Luis Pasqual’s staging the boot and employed John Fulljames to do the directorial honours instead (oh that it had the courage to do likewise with other co-prods foisted upon it – yes, I do mean Rusalka). La donna del lago, based on Sir Walter Scott’s narrative poem The Lady of the Lake, presents a romanticized view of Highland history and Fulljames taps into its events as a ‘museum piece’, not always with coherence. It will have mattered little for many in the audience, who were there primarily for the singing and cheered the cast to the rafters.
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Opera North, Leeds, 16th May 2013, Geoffrey Mogridge
In the glorious summer of 1947, Glyndebourne Festival Opera House, the setting for the premiere of Benjamin Britten's chamber opera Albert Herring, must have seemed the very antithesis of post-war austerity Britain. It might be hard to imagine the aristocratic Lady Billows having to produce a ration book; but the whole population had to do so to purchase basic foods such as eggs, bread, milk and sugar. Meanwhile, society was going through immense change as the old order, and with it the rigid class structures, slowly began to erode. Given Britten's distaste of the class system, it is unlikely that he composed Albert Herring solely as a light-hearted rural romp designed to light up people's lives during the post-war drabness. Glyndebourne's founder John Christie is said to have heartily disliked the piece, dismissing it saying "This isn't our kind of thing, you know”. Perhaps Christie's reaction was not surprising, as the sharply drawn characters are parodies of familiar establishment figures and their servitors.
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Monty Python meets G&S in crowd-pleasing Pirates!
Sullivan: The Pirates of Penzance
Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 15th May 2013, Kelvin Holdsworth
Scottish Opera and the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company have set sail with a sure-fire summer hit with their delightful new production of The Pirates of Penzance. A real crowd pleaser, this production deserves the success that it will undoubtedly have.
It became quickly obvious during the overture that this was a production that we were intended to laugh at. The seagull saw to that, first being heard crying plaintively above the sound of the orchestra and then appearing on strings from the very top of the proscenium and flying around over an azure curtain.
Read more>>
Berg: Wozzeck
English National Opera, 11th May 2013, Gavin Dixon
Carrie Cracknell, a respected theatre director, makes her operatic debut with this ENO Wozzeck. The work demands much of its interpreters, not least a visual conception as compelling as the drama within the music. That’s exactly what it gets, in a production that moves the action to a present-day British army barracks, instilling claustrophobia, social decay and abusive power hierarchies at every turn. Cracknell treats all of her singers as real actors, leading to psychological insights that are all too rare from an opera that is more often played for its shock value. Edward Gardner also seeks, and regularly finds, details and subtleties in the work with his precise and measured reading. But the impressive intellect behind this production, both on the stage and in the pit, never obscures the work’s sheer emotional power. Everything builds towards the searing conclusion, in which the graphic visuals are fully the equal of the intensely powerful music.
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Magdalena Kožená
Barbican Hall, 8th May 2013, Sebastian Petit
Entering the Barbican Hall foyers I suspected I might have, in a senior moment, turned up on the wrong night. While not quite yet colonised by tumbleweed, the foyers were horribly unpopulated considering the centre was hosting a recital by a big name artist like Magdalena Kožená. The rich variety of musical life in our capital can often result in deserving events failing to attract the level of support they deserve. This was clearly the case last night with the lures of the all-star (minus 1) Don Carlo and the opening of Liam Scarlett’s latest excursion into the world of nightmare leading to a less than half-full hall at the Barbican.
Read more>>
Wagner: Parsifal
Oper Stuttgart, 5th May 2013, Faye Courtney
Cannibalism, self-mutilation, mad axe murderers, two-headed genetic mutants and women wearing clingfilm – just a few of the things you don’t usually expect to see in your average production of Parsifal. Welcome to the crazy world of Calixto Bieito, whose brilliant and disturbingly nihilistic interpretation of Wagner’sBühnenweihfestspiel is most definitely not for traditionalists, the squeamish or those of a sensitive disposition. For all its sublime music, Parsifal is Wagner’s most dramatically inert opera - yet incredibly, Bieito has somehow achieved the near impossible feat of creating a 5 hour long theatrical experience where it’s impossible to be bored for a single minute.
Read more>>
Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer
Oper Stuttgart, 4th May 2013, Faye Courtney
I’m not personally convinced that Wagner wrote Der fliegende Holländer because he was secretly trying to make some kind of anti-Capitalist ‘statement’, but try telling that to Calixto Bieito, a director who never lets trifling little details like the composer’s intentions stand in the way of creating a controversial piece of Regietheater, or as some may translate it - ‘Eurotrash’. Though his shock tactics are guaranteed to divide critics and public alike, you can’t deny that Bieito’s productions are usually intensely theatrical and thought-provoking affairs. However, in the case of his Dutchman for Oper Stuttgart the whole basic concept of a bunch of badly behaved businessmen in a rubber dinghy sadly fails to hit the mark.
Read more>>
Handel: Joshua
Opera North, Leeds, 4th May 2013, Geoffrey Mogridge
My earliest prevailing image of oratorio - particularly those of George Frederick Handel - is of instrumental textures like clotted cream and the full-throated roar of serried ranks of choristers dressed in flowing white gowns or black evening tails stacked up behind a swollen orchestra in an ornate Victorian Town Hall; or (alternatively) one of the great northern chapel choirs with organ or harmonium accompaniment delivering the annual performance of Messiah, Judas Maccabaeus or Saul.
Read more>>
Verdi: Don Carlo
Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, 2nd May 2013, Nicola Lischi
The most amazing thing about this performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlois that it took place at all. The troubles that have been plaguing the Fondazione del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino are well known and this writer has already mentioned them in other recent reviews. The bottom line is that, without going into details, the Maggio ended up in such a sorry state that a few months ago the Italian government had no choice but to place an external commissioner, Francesco Bianchi, at its helm, so as to shed light on the actual extent of the deficit and try to save the sinking ship.
Read more>>
Handel: Atalanta
Cambridge Handel Opera, 30th April 2013, Sandra Bowdler
Cambridge saw an outstanding performance of Handel’s Atalanta, which could compare with anything from a major company. The production, singing and music were all next to flawless, and it was a Baroque production with a slight tongue in cheek style which delighted the audience. Atalanta was written to celebrate the marriage of the Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha to Frederick Louis (or Friedrich Ludwig), the son of King George II of England, in London in 1736. This context is necessary to understand some of the features of the opera, in particular why the plot is considered to be remarkably fluffy, even by the standards of Baroque opera.
Read more>>
Shostakovich: The Nose
Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg, 29th April 2013, Gavin Dixon
The Mariinsky company is very proud of this production of Shostakovich’s The Nose. And so they should be, as this is a spectacular staging that plays to all the company’s strengths. It is a rollercoaster from beginning to end; bizarre and surreal, but also dynamic and constantly inventive. The production premiered in 2004, and after completing its run was taken on tour by Valery Gergiev to Stockholm, Paris, London (the Barbican) and Berlin. Then, in 2009, it was chosen as the work to launch the Mariinsky’s own label. Now, The Nose returns to the Mariinsky stage, this its first revival in four years.
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ENO 2013/14 season
English National Opera announced their new season this morning, boasting ten new (or ‘new to the UK’) productions and four classic revivals. Film director and Monty Python veteran Terry Gilliam returns to ENO to lend his talent to a new production of Berlioz’s rarely performed Benvenuto Cellini, with the American rising star Corrine Winters (this season’s stunning Violetta) taking the role of Teresa – the cast also includes Michael Spyres in the title role and Willard White and will be conducted by ENO Music DirectorEdward Gardner. If it’s anywhere near as good as Gilliam’s wacky but brilliant Damnation of Faust then we should all be in for an extraordinary evening.
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Puccini: La bohème
English National Opera, 29th April 2013, John E de Wald
By his very ubiquity on operatic stages, Puccini can be a difficult composer to get right. Of his works, La bohème is surely the most hackneyed and the most capable of inducing cynicism, not through its own vice so much as sheer familiarity with the plot and the music. Done well, Puccini’s virtuosic talent for melody and naturalistic vitality soars as in little else; and through its intelligent stage direction, scintillating orchestra, and superb cast of principals, this excellent revival of Jonathan Miller’s ENO staging reminds us of just how good the opera can be.
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Elizabeth Connell Memorial Concert
St John's Smith Square, 27th April 2013, Miranda Jackson
In December 2008 the great dramatic soprano, Elizabeth Connell, stepped into the breach and took on the role of Turandot in the Royal Opera House production when the leading lady was indisposed. At the time she was playing the role of Hansel and Gretel’s Mother. What a contrast: from impoverished wife of an alcoholic husband to indomitable princess. It was a stellar cast in the Humperdinck with Sir Tom Allen as her husband, but the role of Turandot has to be one of a handful of roles which an aspiring dramatic soprano yearns to tuck under her bejewelled belt.
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Handel: Giulio Cesare in Egitto
Metropolitan Opera, New York, 27th April 2013, Mark Pullinger
I come not to bury Dessay, but to praise her. Anyone who witnessed last season’s screening of La traviata from the Met featuring Natalie Dessay would have approached this cinema relay of Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto starring the French coloratura soprano as Cleopatra with extreme caution. Indeed, those who listened to a Youtube recording of what is purportedly Dessay singing ‘Da tempeste il legno infranto’ on the opening night of the run could well have returned their tickets. For one performance she withdrew, resulting in Danielle de Niese, whose sex-kitten of a Cleopatra won her worldwide fame when David McVicar’s riot of a production was first seen at Glyndebourne, stepping in to save the show. Yet, despite some evidence of vocal frailty, Dessay emerged largely victorious to fight another day.
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Stravinsky: Apollon musagète; Oedipus Rex
LSO, Barbican Hall, 25th April 2013, Dominic Wells
For this, one of his numerous 70thBirthday concerts, Sir John Eliot Gardiner chose to deliver an all-Stravinsky programme with an ancient Greek theme: Apollon musagète, and Oedipus Rex. Joining him on stage were the London Symphony Orchestra and, for the second work, the gentlemen of the conductor’s own Monteverdi Choir – a vocal ensemble beyond superlatives. This combination of conductor and ensembles has worked well in the past in other Stravinskian repertoire, including one of the best versions of the Symphony of Psalms I have ever heard (originally on DG but re-released at budget price on Brilliant Classics: 9015) and arguably the greatest CD-recording of The Rake’s Progress (DG 459 648-2). For the most part, the high standard of those recordings was evident last night in London’s Barbican Hall.
Read more>>
Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin
C Major Entertainment, Mark Pullinger
Kasper Holten faced something of a critical backlash (not from these quarters) for his use of dancer doubles in his recent Royal Opera production of Eugene Onegin, yet their use in this opera isn’t unique – Stefan Herheim did the same in Amsterdam. Both employed flashback techniques to explore the memories of the protagonists looking back on their past. In his production for the Polish National Opera, but filmed in Valencia, film, theatre and opera director Mariusz Trelinski adds a new twist. Who is the mysterious figure clad in white, with deathly pallor, stalking Tatyana and almost directing events?
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Juan Diego Flórez in recital
Barbican Hall, 24th April 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
If, like me, you attended Sunday’s “Flórez and Friends” concert at the Barbican – as opposed to sitting through oceans of orchestral filler in the RFH in order to dribble over the unfeasible length of Jonas Kaufmann’s ‘Wälse’ – you may be forgiven for wondering how an audience already in a state of chronic, uncritical delight could possibly be pleasured any more. In which case, you needed to be at tonight’s solo recital, the latest tranche of Juan Diego Flórez’s Barbican residency, which comprehensively proved the time-honoured adage “it ain’t over until the sooty-lashed one sings at least four encores”. The nubile bounced around, whooping; the mature squirmed with satisfaction in their seats, emitting the odd low moan; I shouldn’t be at all surprised if the lame weren’t seen dancing in the aisles, and the dead – always a fair percentage of any opera audience – weren’t newly-risen. Indeed, anyone suffering with scrofula could well have been cured merely by touching his immaculately tailored trousers (though I’m still working out how to explain this to the police).
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Elizabeth Connell Memorial Concert
South African soprano Elizabeth Connell (1946 - 2012) was acclaimed for her performances of the great Strauss, Verdi and Wagner heroines. On Saturday 27 April a special concert to honour her memory will be held at St John's, Smith Square, with all proceeds being donated to the Musicians' Benevolent Fund as well as the Elizabeth Connell Prize, an annual award for young dramatic sopranos.
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Juan Diego Flórez & Friends
Barbican Hall, 21st April 2013, Sebastian Petit
There are times in every critic’s life when they enter a place of entertainment in a less than exalted frame of mind, wishing fervently that they were not required to sit in judgement on whatever artistic offering is being given that night. This was undoubtedly the case with me tonight as I entered the Barbican Hall. Despite the fact that I had been looking forward to this concert for nigh on six months, a combination of a rotten night’s sleep and an overlarge dinner had put me in a distinctly un-sunny mood. Had what followed been of poor or even average quality it would likely have received a fairly un-indulgent review. Fortunately the evening was so far up the scale of excellence it is in danger of receiving a rave.
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Verdi: Requiem
Royal Festival Hall, 20th April 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
Daniele Gatti was the Music Director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for 13 years, from 1996 onwards: and the net result of his long and faithful devotion to them was to end up occupying a kind of twilight existence, seen somehow as not central to the city’s musical activities, having allied himself to the Cinderella of London orchestras. Happily for him, the rest of the world was rather more aware of his worth, and no sooner had he left than he was ensconced at Bayreuth, La Scala and the Met, as well as consolidating his position as a favoured guest with most of the great international orchestras. But after having conducted his way through most of the Verdi repertory at the ROH throughout the 1990s as the House’s Principal Guest Conductor year-in, year-out until the closure, he only reappeared there in 2001, promptly to vanish for the next eleven seasons. When he finally returned last year, to lead the new Falstaff, he was greeted with a homecoming hero’s sense of welcome. And something similar could be sensed tonight, at the Southbank-resident Philharmonia Orchestra’s major contribution to this year’s ongoing Verdi bicentenary celebrations.
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Mozart: Die Zauberflöte
Royal Opera, 16th April 2013, Sebastian Petit
Mozart and Schikaneder’s bizarre opera can be told in almost any way a director chooses - from Peter Sellars’ disastrous Glyndebourne LA freeway “retelling” through Julie Taymor’s Lion King spin-off to various “traditional” versions which seem little removed from pantomime. Fortunately David McVicar’s production pays the work the compliment of treating it seriously. And if the comic aspects recede to give way to the serious thread of the story I, for one, am not going to quarrel with that decision. Most importantly, this emphasis allows the two leads, often reduced to dully serious interludes between the Papageno scenes, to blossom and grow as characters.
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Britten: The Turn of the Screw
Barbican Hall, 16th April 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
When this pair of concert performances of Britten’s most ingeniously crafted opera – literally, variations on a theme - was first announced early last year as part of the London Symphony Orchestra’s 2012/13, the conductor was meant to be Sir Colin Davis, the band’s Principal Conductor from 1995 until 2006 (after which he became its tirelessly hands-on President). Alas, illness intervened, and the last performances he gave with the LSO in their home hall were the two Der Freischützen almost exactly a year ago - the first of which I reviewed here - followed by dual outings of Berlioz’s Grande Messe des Morts in St. Paul’s Cathedral in July, his absolute public dernière (and a rather more fitting use of the building than that in which it presently finds itself embroiled, hired out for a has-been politico’s overblown obsequies). Sir Colin was too ill to conduct, or even attend, his own 85th birthday concert last September, and we had all long-since been advised that he would not be conducting these Turns of the Screw, entrusted instead to Richard Farnes, the Music Director of Opera North.
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Valery Gergiev's 60th birthday concert
Barbican Hall, 22nd May 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
When the booking originally opened for this concert back in January 2012 as part of the LSO’s 2012/13 season, no actual programme was offered for our edification, the rubric merely noting, styled as above, that it would be in celebration of the Maestro’s sexagennial anniversary (or Diamond Jubilee if, as many do, you regard him as an absolute monarch). I booked for it blind, like everybody else, vaguely imagining that it would play to his known strengths in the Russian repertoire, or else take the form of some extended musical knees-up with lots of guest stars. In the event it only relatively recently became known that whilst the latter expectation would be partially met, in the shape of concert items played by Alexander Toradze and Leonidas Kavakos, the main musical meat of the evening was to be operatic, comprising Act V of Berlioz’s Les Troyens, with soloists both local (in the largely supporting roles) and Russian (in the case of the two principal ones). Now, Valery Gergiev certainly has form in Berlioz, having conducted concert performances here of both Benvenuto Cellini and (on three separate occasions, no less) La damnation de Faust. And his handling of Les Troyens, staged at the Valencia opera house by the La fura dels Baus collective as some Kubrickian space oddity, has been preserved on DVD.
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Britten: A Midsummer Night's Dream
Mariinsky Concert Hall, 19th May 2013, Gavin Dixon
Opera house, concert hall, and now another opera house: the Mariinsky is a company well-served for venues. The concert hall is a particularly versatile space, as this evening’s fully-staged performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream demonstrated. For an opera usually staged with large and involved sets, the more modest presentation here came as a refreshing surprise, and the imaginative use of trapeze artists allowed the action to take place in three dimensions. Musically, the performance was a little dour, but as usual, the Mariinsky Company was able to pepper the cast with enough outstanding vocal talents to keep the standards high, even if the English diction often left much to be desired.
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Verdi: Falstaff
Glyndebourne Festival, 19th May 2013, Sebastian Petit
What an utterly joyous evening! Even a darkening sky and a chilly interval picnic failed to diminish the fizzing pleasure of this first revival of Richard Jones’ 1940s Falstaff (revived here under Sarah Fahie). Originally playing to rather mixed notices but now with an almost entirely new cast the production coalesced into a superbly sharp, detailed and hilarious experience. The cast worked as a tautly wound ensemble who appeared to enjoy every minute and centred round the astonishing Laurent Naouri as Sir John Falstaff.
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Yards of tartan; fabulous singing!
Rossini: La donna del lago
Royal Opera, 17th May 2013, Mark Pullinger
Yards of tartan, a tenor as hirsute Braveheart rebel Highlander and a picturesque mural (or murial) of Loch Katrine, which would have had Hilda Ogden green with envy, place us emphatically in Scotland for this new staging of Rossini’s La donna del lago at Covent Garden. Originally planned as a co-production with the Palais Garnier and La Scala, the Royal Opera gave Luis Pasqual’s staging the boot and employed John Fulljames to do the directorial honours instead (oh that it had the courage to do likewise with other co-prods foisted upon it – yes, I do mean Rusalka). La donna del lago, based on Sir Walter Scott’s narrative poem The Lady of the Lake, presents a romanticized view of Highland history and Fulljames taps into its events as a ‘museum piece’, not always with coherence. It will have mattered little for many in the audience, who were there primarily for the singing and cheered the cast to the rafters.
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Opera North, Leeds, 16th May 2013, Geoffrey Mogridge
In the glorious summer of 1947, Glyndebourne Festival Opera House, the setting for the premiere of Benjamin Britten's chamber opera Albert Herring, must have seemed the very antithesis of post-war austerity Britain. It might be hard to imagine the aristocratic Lady Billows having to produce a ration book; but the whole population had to do so to purchase basic foods such as eggs, bread, milk and sugar. Meanwhile, society was going through immense change as the old order, and with it the rigid class structures, slowly began to erode. Given Britten's distaste of the class system, it is unlikely that he composed Albert Herring solely as a light-hearted rural romp designed to light up people's lives during the post-war drabness. Glyndebourne's founder John Christie is said to have heartily disliked the piece, dismissing it saying "This isn't our kind of thing, you know”. Perhaps Christie's reaction was not surprising, as the sharply drawn characters are parodies of familiar establishment figures and their servitors.
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Monty Python meets G&S in crowd-pleasing Pirates!
Sullivan: The Pirates of Penzance
Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 15th May 2013, Kelvin Holdsworth
Scottish Opera and the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company have set sail with a sure-fire summer hit with their delightful new production of The Pirates of Penzance. A real crowd pleaser, this production deserves the success that it will undoubtedly have.
It became quickly obvious during the overture that this was a production that we were intended to laugh at. The seagull saw to that, first being heard crying plaintively above the sound of the orchestra and then appearing on strings from the very top of the proscenium and flying around over an azure curtain.
Read more>>
Berg: Wozzeck
English National Opera, 11th May 2013, Gavin Dixon
Carrie Cracknell, a respected theatre director, makes her operatic debut with this ENO Wozzeck. The work demands much of its interpreters, not least a visual conception as compelling as the drama within the music. That’s exactly what it gets, in a production that moves the action to a present-day British army barracks, instilling claustrophobia, social decay and abusive power hierarchies at every turn. Cracknell treats all of her singers as real actors, leading to psychological insights that are all too rare from an opera that is more often played for its shock value. Edward Gardner also seeks, and regularly finds, details and subtleties in the work with his precise and measured reading. But the impressive intellect behind this production, both on the stage and in the pit, never obscures the work’s sheer emotional power. Everything builds towards the searing conclusion, in which the graphic visuals are fully the equal of the intensely powerful music.
Read more>>
Magdalena Kožená
Barbican Hall, 8th May 2013, Sebastian Petit
Entering the Barbican Hall foyers I suspected I might have, in a senior moment, turned up on the wrong night. While not quite yet colonised by tumbleweed, the foyers were horribly unpopulated considering the centre was hosting a recital by a big name artist like Magdalena Kožená. The rich variety of musical life in our capital can often result in deserving events failing to attract the level of support they deserve. This was clearly the case last night with the lures of the all-star (minus 1) Don Carlo and the opening of Liam Scarlett’s latest excursion into the world of nightmare leading to a less than half-full hall at the Barbican.
Read more>>
Wagner: Parsifal
Oper Stuttgart, 5th May 2013, Faye Courtney
Cannibalism, self-mutilation, mad axe murderers, two-headed genetic mutants and women wearing clingfilm – just a few of the things you don’t usually expect to see in your average production of Parsifal. Welcome to the crazy world of Calixto Bieito, whose brilliant and disturbingly nihilistic interpretation of Wagner’sBühnenweihfestspiel is most definitely not for traditionalists, the squeamish or those of a sensitive disposition. For all its sublime music, Parsifal is Wagner’s most dramatically inert opera - yet incredibly, Bieito has somehow achieved the near impossible feat of creating a 5 hour long theatrical experience where it’s impossible to be bored for a single minute.
Read more>>
Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer
Oper Stuttgart, 4th May 2013, Faye Courtney
I’m not personally convinced that Wagner wrote Der fliegende Holländer because he was secretly trying to make some kind of anti-Capitalist ‘statement’, but try telling that to Calixto Bieito, a director who never lets trifling little details like the composer’s intentions stand in the way of creating a controversial piece of Regietheater, or as some may translate it - ‘Eurotrash’. Though his shock tactics are guaranteed to divide critics and public alike, you can’t deny that Bieito’s productions are usually intensely theatrical and thought-provoking affairs. However, in the case of his Dutchman for Oper Stuttgart the whole basic concept of a bunch of badly behaved businessmen in a rubber dinghy sadly fails to hit the mark.
Read more>>
Handel: Joshua
Opera North, Leeds, 4th May 2013, Geoffrey Mogridge
My earliest prevailing image of oratorio - particularly those of George Frederick Handel - is of instrumental textures like clotted cream and the full-throated roar of serried ranks of choristers dressed in flowing white gowns or black evening tails stacked up behind a swollen orchestra in an ornate Victorian Town Hall; or (alternatively) one of the great northern chapel choirs with organ or harmonium accompaniment delivering the annual performance of Messiah, Judas Maccabaeus or Saul.
Read more>>
Verdi: Don Carlo
Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, 2nd May 2013, Nicola Lischi
The most amazing thing about this performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlois that it took place at all. The troubles that have been plaguing the Fondazione del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino are well known and this writer has already mentioned them in other recent reviews. The bottom line is that, without going into details, the Maggio ended up in such a sorry state that a few months ago the Italian government had no choice but to place an external commissioner, Francesco Bianchi, at its helm, so as to shed light on the actual extent of the deficit and try to save the sinking ship.
Read more>>
Handel: Atalanta
Cambridge Handel Opera, 30th April 2013, Sandra Bowdler
Cambridge saw an outstanding performance of Handel’s Atalanta, which could compare with anything from a major company. The production, singing and music were all next to flawless, and it was a Baroque production with a slight tongue in cheek style which delighted the audience. Atalanta was written to celebrate the marriage of the Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha to Frederick Louis (or Friedrich Ludwig), the son of King George II of England, in London in 1736. This context is necessary to understand some of the features of the opera, in particular why the plot is considered to be remarkably fluffy, even by the standards of Baroque opera.
Read more>>
Shostakovich: The Nose
Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg, 29th April 2013, Gavin Dixon
The Mariinsky company is very proud of this production of Shostakovich’s The Nose. And so they should be, as this is a spectacular staging that plays to all the company’s strengths. It is a rollercoaster from beginning to end; bizarre and surreal, but also dynamic and constantly inventive. The production premiered in 2004, and after completing its run was taken on tour by Valery Gergiev to Stockholm, Paris, London (the Barbican) and Berlin. Then, in 2009, it was chosen as the work to launch the Mariinsky’s own label. Now, The Nose returns to the Mariinsky stage, this its first revival in four years.
Read more>>
ENO 2013/14 season
English National Opera announced their new season this morning, boasting ten new (or ‘new to the UK’) productions and four classic revivals. Film director and Monty Python veteran Terry Gilliam returns to ENO to lend his talent to a new production of Berlioz’s rarely performed Benvenuto Cellini, with the American rising star Corrine Winters (this season’s stunning Violetta) taking the role of Teresa – the cast also includes Michael Spyres in the title role and Willard White and will be conducted by ENO Music DirectorEdward Gardner. If it’s anywhere near as good as Gilliam’s wacky but brilliant Damnation of Faust then we should all be in for an extraordinary evening.
Read more>>
Puccini: La bohème
English National Opera, 29th April 2013, John E de Wald
By his very ubiquity on operatic stages, Puccini can be a difficult composer to get right. Of his works, La bohème is surely the most hackneyed and the most capable of inducing cynicism, not through its own vice so much as sheer familiarity with the plot and the music. Done well, Puccini’s virtuosic talent for melody and naturalistic vitality soars as in little else; and through its intelligent stage direction, scintillating orchestra, and superb cast of principals, this excellent revival of Jonathan Miller’s ENO staging reminds us of just how good the opera can be.
Read more>>
Elizabeth Connell Memorial Concert
St John's Smith Square, 27th April 2013, Miranda Jackson
In December 2008 the great dramatic soprano, Elizabeth Connell, stepped into the breach and took on the role of Turandot in the Royal Opera House production when the leading lady was indisposed. At the time she was playing the role of Hansel and Gretel’s Mother. What a contrast: from impoverished wife of an alcoholic husband to indomitable princess. It was a stellar cast in the Humperdinck with Sir Tom Allen as her husband, but the role of Turandot has to be one of a handful of roles which an aspiring dramatic soprano yearns to tuck under her bejewelled belt.
Read more>>
Handel: Giulio Cesare in Egitto
Metropolitan Opera, New York, 27th April 2013, Mark Pullinger
I come not to bury Dessay, but to praise her. Anyone who witnessed last season’s screening of La traviata from the Met featuring Natalie Dessay would have approached this cinema relay of Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto starring the French coloratura soprano as Cleopatra with extreme caution. Indeed, those who listened to a Youtube recording of what is purportedly Dessay singing ‘Da tempeste il legno infranto’ on the opening night of the run could well have returned their tickets. For one performance she withdrew, resulting in Danielle de Niese, whose sex-kitten of a Cleopatra won her worldwide fame when David McVicar’s riot of a production was first seen at Glyndebourne, stepping in to save the show. Yet, despite some evidence of vocal frailty, Dessay emerged largely victorious to fight another day.
Read more>>
Stravinsky: Apollon musagète; Oedipus Rex
LSO, Barbican Hall, 25th April 2013, Dominic Wells
For this, one of his numerous 70thBirthday concerts, Sir John Eliot Gardiner chose to deliver an all-Stravinsky programme with an ancient Greek theme: Apollon musagète, and Oedipus Rex. Joining him on stage were the London Symphony Orchestra and, for the second work, the gentlemen of the conductor’s own Monteverdi Choir – a vocal ensemble beyond superlatives. This combination of conductor and ensembles has worked well in the past in other Stravinskian repertoire, including one of the best versions of the Symphony of Psalms I have ever heard (originally on DG but re-released at budget price on Brilliant Classics: 9015) and arguably the greatest CD-recording of The Rake’s Progress (DG 459 648-2). For the most part, the high standard of those recordings was evident last night in London’s Barbican Hall.
Read more>>
Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin
C Major Entertainment, Mark Pullinger
Kasper Holten faced something of a critical backlash (not from these quarters) for his use of dancer doubles in his recent Royal Opera production of Eugene Onegin, yet their use in this opera isn’t unique – Stefan Herheim did the same in Amsterdam. Both employed flashback techniques to explore the memories of the protagonists looking back on their past. In his production for the Polish National Opera, but filmed in Valencia, film, theatre and opera director Mariusz Trelinski adds a new twist. Who is the mysterious figure clad in white, with deathly pallor, stalking Tatyana and almost directing events?
Read more>>
Juan Diego Flórez in recital
Barbican Hall, 24th April 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
If, like me, you attended Sunday’s “Flórez and Friends” concert at the Barbican – as opposed to sitting through oceans of orchestral filler in the RFH in order to dribble over the unfeasible length of Jonas Kaufmann’s ‘Wälse’ – you may be forgiven for wondering how an audience already in a state of chronic, uncritical delight could possibly be pleasured any more. In which case, you needed to be at tonight’s solo recital, the latest tranche of Juan Diego Flórez’s Barbican residency, which comprehensively proved the time-honoured adage “it ain’t over until the sooty-lashed one sings at least four encores”. The nubile bounced around, whooping; the mature squirmed with satisfaction in their seats, emitting the odd low moan; I shouldn’t be at all surprised if the lame weren’t seen dancing in the aisles, and the dead – always a fair percentage of any opera audience – weren’t newly-risen. Indeed, anyone suffering with scrofula could well have been cured merely by touching his immaculately tailored trousers (though I’m still working out how to explain this to the police).
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Elizabeth Connell Memorial Concert
South African soprano Elizabeth Connell (1946 - 2012) was acclaimed for her performances of the great Strauss, Verdi and Wagner heroines. On Saturday 27 April a special concert to honour her memory will be held at St John's, Smith Square, with all proceeds being donated to the Musicians' Benevolent Fund as well as the Elizabeth Connell Prize, an annual award for young dramatic sopranos.
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Juan Diego Flórez & Friends
Barbican Hall, 21st April 2013, Sebastian Petit
There are times in every critic’s life when they enter a place of entertainment in a less than exalted frame of mind, wishing fervently that they were not required to sit in judgement on whatever artistic offering is being given that night. This was undoubtedly the case with me tonight as I entered the Barbican Hall. Despite the fact that I had been looking forward to this concert for nigh on six months, a combination of a rotten night’s sleep and an overlarge dinner had put me in a distinctly un-sunny mood. Had what followed been of poor or even average quality it would likely have received a fairly un-indulgent review. Fortunately the evening was so far up the scale of excellence it is in danger of receiving a rave.
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Verdi: Requiem
Royal Festival Hall, 20th April 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
Daniele Gatti was the Music Director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for 13 years, from 1996 onwards: and the net result of his long and faithful devotion to them was to end up occupying a kind of twilight existence, seen somehow as not central to the city’s musical activities, having allied himself to the Cinderella of London orchestras. Happily for him, the rest of the world was rather more aware of his worth, and no sooner had he left than he was ensconced at Bayreuth, La Scala and the Met, as well as consolidating his position as a favoured guest with most of the great international orchestras. But after having conducted his way through most of the Verdi repertory at the ROH throughout the 1990s as the House’s Principal Guest Conductor year-in, year-out until the closure, he only reappeared there in 2001, promptly to vanish for the next eleven seasons. When he finally returned last year, to lead the new Falstaff, he was greeted with a homecoming hero’s sense of welcome. And something similar could be sensed tonight, at the Southbank-resident Philharmonia Orchestra’s major contribution to this year’s ongoing Verdi bicentenary celebrations.
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Mozart: Die Zauberflöte
Royal Opera, 16th April 2013, Sebastian Petit
Mozart and Schikaneder’s bizarre opera can be told in almost any way a director chooses - from Peter Sellars’ disastrous Glyndebourne LA freeway “retelling” through Julie Taymor’s Lion King spin-off to various “traditional” versions which seem little removed from pantomime. Fortunately David McVicar’s production pays the work the compliment of treating it seriously. And if the comic aspects recede to give way to the serious thread of the story I, for one, am not going to quarrel with that decision. Most importantly, this emphasis allows the two leads, often reduced to dully serious interludes between the Papageno scenes, to blossom and grow as characters.
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Britten: The Turn of the Screw
Barbican Hall, 16th April 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
When this pair of concert performances of Britten’s most ingeniously crafted opera – literally, variations on a theme - was first announced early last year as part of the London Symphony Orchestra’s 2012/13, the conductor was meant to be Sir Colin Davis, the band’s Principal Conductor from 1995 until 2006 (after which he became its tirelessly hands-on President). Alas, illness intervened, and the last performances he gave with the LSO in their home hall were the two Der Freischützen almost exactly a year ago - the first of which I reviewed here - followed by dual outings of Berlioz’s Grande Messe des Morts in St. Paul’s Cathedral in July, his absolute public dernière (and a rather more fitting use of the building than that in which it presently finds itself embroiled, hired out for a has-been politico’s overblown obsequies). Sir Colin was too ill to conduct, or even attend, his own 85th birthday concert last September, and we had all long-since been advised that he would not be conducting these Turns of the Screw, entrusted instead to Richard Farnes, the Music Director of Opera North.
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Valery Gergiev's 60th birthday concert
Barbican Hall, 22nd May 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
When the booking originally opened for this concert back in January 2012 as part of the LSO’s 2012/13 season, no actual programme was offered for our edification, the rubric merely noting, styled as above, that it would be in celebration of the Maestro’s sexagennial anniversary (or Diamond Jubilee if, as many do, you regard him as an absolute monarch). I booked for it blind, like everybody else, vaguely imagining that it would play to his known strengths in the Russian repertoire, or else take the form of some extended musical knees-up with lots of guest stars. In the event it only relatively recently became known that whilst the latter expectation would be partially met, in the shape of concert items played by Alexander Toradze and Leonidas Kavakos, the main musical meat of the evening was to be operatic, comprising Act V of Berlioz’s Les Troyens, with soloists both local (in the largely supporting roles) and Russian (in the case of the two principal ones). Now, Valery Gergiev certainly has form in Berlioz, having conducted concert performances here of both Benvenuto Cellini and (on three separate occasions, no less) La damnation de Faust. And his handling of Les Troyens, staged at the Valencia opera house by the La fura dels Baus collective as some Kubrickian space oddity, has been preserved on DVD.
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Britten: A Midsummer Night's Dream
Mariinsky Concert Hall, 19th May 2013, Gavin Dixon
Opera house, concert hall, and now another opera house: the Mariinsky is a company well-served for venues. The concert hall is a particularly versatile space, as this evening’s fully-staged performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream demonstrated. For an opera usually staged with large and involved sets, the more modest presentation here came as a refreshing surprise, and the imaginative use of trapeze artists allowed the action to take place in three dimensions. Musically, the performance was a little dour, but as usual, the Mariinsky Company was able to pepper the cast with enough outstanding vocal talents to keep the standards high, even if the English diction often left much to be desired.
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Verdi: Falstaff
Glyndebourne Festival, 19th May 2013, Sebastian Petit
What an utterly joyous evening! Even a darkening sky and a chilly interval picnic failed to diminish the fizzing pleasure of this first revival of Richard Jones’ 1940s Falstaff (revived here under Sarah Fahie). Originally playing to rather mixed notices but now with an almost entirely new cast the production coalesced into a superbly sharp, detailed and hilarious experience. The cast worked as a tautly wound ensemble who appeared to enjoy every minute and centred round the astonishing Laurent Naouri as Sir John Falstaff.
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Yards of tartan; fabulous singing!
Rossini: La donna del lago
Royal Opera, 17th May 2013, Mark Pullinger
Yards of tartan, a tenor as hirsute Braveheart rebel Highlander and a picturesque mural (or murial) of Loch Katrine, which would have had Hilda Ogden green with envy, place us emphatically in Scotland for this new staging of Rossini’s La donna del lago at Covent Garden. Originally planned as a co-production with the Palais Garnier and La Scala, the Royal Opera gave Luis Pasqual’s staging the boot and employed John Fulljames to do the directorial honours instead (oh that it had the courage to do likewise with other co-prods foisted upon it – yes, I do mean Rusalka). La donna del lago, based on Sir Walter Scott’s narrative poem The Lady of the Lake, presents a romanticized view of Highland history and Fulljames taps into its events as a ‘museum piece’, not always with coherence. It will have mattered little for many in the audience, who were there primarily for the singing and cheered the cast to the rafters.
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Opera North, Leeds, 16th May 2013, Geoffrey Mogridge
In the glorious summer of 1947, Glyndebourne Festival Opera House, the setting for the premiere of Benjamin Britten's chamber opera Albert Herring, must have seemed the very antithesis of post-war austerity Britain. It might be hard to imagine the aristocratic Lady Billows having to produce a ration book; but the whole population had to do so to purchase basic foods such as eggs, bread, milk and sugar. Meanwhile, society was going through immense change as the old order, and with it the rigid class structures, slowly began to erode. Given Britten's distaste of the class system, it is unlikely that he composed Albert Herring solely as a light-hearted rural romp designed to light up people's lives during the post-war drabness. Glyndebourne's founder John Christie is said to have heartily disliked the piece, dismissing it saying "This isn't our kind of thing, you know”. Perhaps Christie's reaction was not surprising, as the sharply drawn characters are parodies of familiar establishment figures and their servitors.
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Monty Python meets G&S in crowd-pleasing Pirates!
Sullivan: The Pirates of Penzance
Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 15th May 2013, Kelvin Holdsworth
Scottish Opera and the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company have set sail with a sure-fire summer hit with their delightful new production of The Pirates of Penzance. A real crowd pleaser, this production deserves the success that it will undoubtedly have.
It became quickly obvious during the overture that this was a production that we were intended to laugh at. The seagull saw to that, first being heard crying plaintively above the sound of the orchestra and then appearing on strings from the very top of the proscenium and flying around over an azure curtain.
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Berg: Wozzeck
English National Opera, 11th May 2013, Gavin Dixon
Carrie Cracknell, a respected theatre director, makes her operatic debut with this ENO Wozzeck. The work demands much of its interpreters, not least a visual conception as compelling as the drama within the music. That’s exactly what it gets, in a production that moves the action to a present-day British army barracks, instilling claustrophobia, social decay and abusive power hierarchies at every turn. Cracknell treats all of her singers as real actors, leading to psychological insights that are all too rare from an opera that is more often played for its shock value. Edward Gardner also seeks, and regularly finds, details and subtleties in the work with his precise and measured reading. But the impressive intellect behind this production, both on the stage and in the pit, never obscures the work’s sheer emotional power. Everything builds towards the searing conclusion, in which the graphic visuals are fully the equal of the intensely powerful music.
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Magdalena Kožená
Barbican Hall, 8th May 2013, Sebastian Petit
Entering the Barbican Hall foyers I suspected I might have, in a senior moment, turned up on the wrong night. While not quite yet colonised by tumbleweed, the foyers were horribly unpopulated considering the centre was hosting a recital by a big name artist like Magdalena Kožená. The rich variety of musical life in our capital can often result in deserving events failing to attract the level of support they deserve. This was clearly the case last night with the lures of the all-star (minus 1) Don Carlo and the opening of Liam Scarlett’s latest excursion into the world of nightmare leading to a less than half-full hall at the Barbican.
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Wagner: Parsifal
Oper Stuttgart, 5th May 2013, Faye Courtney
Cannibalism, self-mutilation, mad axe murderers, two-headed genetic mutants and women wearing clingfilm – just a few of the things you don’t usually expect to see in your average production of Parsifal. Welcome to the crazy world of Calixto Bieito, whose brilliant and disturbingly nihilistic interpretation of Wagner’sBühnenweihfestspiel is most definitely not for traditionalists, the squeamish or those of a sensitive disposition. For all its sublime music, Parsifal is Wagner’s most dramatically inert opera - yet incredibly, Bieito has somehow achieved the near impossible feat of creating a 5 hour long theatrical experience where it’s impossible to be bored for a single minute.
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Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer
Oper Stuttgart, 4th May 2013, Faye Courtney
I’m not personally convinced that Wagner wrote Der fliegende Holländer because he was secretly trying to make some kind of anti-Capitalist ‘statement’, but try telling that to Calixto Bieito, a director who never lets trifling little details like the composer’s intentions stand in the way of creating a controversial piece of Regietheater, or as some may translate it - ‘Eurotrash’. Though his shock tactics are guaranteed to divide critics and public alike, you can’t deny that Bieito’s productions are usually intensely theatrical and thought-provoking affairs. However, in the case of his Dutchman for Oper Stuttgart the whole basic concept of a bunch of badly behaved businessmen in a rubber dinghy sadly fails to hit the mark.
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Handel: Joshua
Opera North, Leeds, 4th May 2013, Geoffrey Mogridge
My earliest prevailing image of oratorio - particularly those of George Frederick Handel - is of instrumental textures like clotted cream and the full-throated roar of serried ranks of choristers dressed in flowing white gowns or black evening tails stacked up behind a swollen orchestra in an ornate Victorian Town Hall; or (alternatively) one of the great northern chapel choirs with organ or harmonium accompaniment delivering the annual performance of Messiah, Judas Maccabaeus or Saul.
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Verdi: Don Carlo
Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, 2nd May 2013, Nicola Lischi
The most amazing thing about this performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlois that it took place at all. The troubles that have been plaguing the Fondazione del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino are well known and this writer has already mentioned them in other recent reviews. The bottom line is that, without going into details, the Maggio ended up in such a sorry state that a few months ago the Italian government had no choice but to place an external commissioner, Francesco Bianchi, at its helm, so as to shed light on the actual extent of the deficit and try to save the sinking ship.
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Handel: Atalanta
Cambridge Handel Opera, 30th April 2013, Sandra Bowdler
Cambridge saw an outstanding performance of Handel’s Atalanta, which could compare with anything from a major company. The production, singing and music were all next to flawless, and it was a Baroque production with a slight tongue in cheek style which delighted the audience. Atalanta was written to celebrate the marriage of the Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha to Frederick Louis (or Friedrich Ludwig), the son of King George II of England, in London in 1736. This context is necessary to understand some of the features of the opera, in particular why the plot is considered to be remarkably fluffy, even by the standards of Baroque opera.
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Shostakovich: The Nose
Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg, 29th April 2013, Gavin Dixon
The Mariinsky company is very proud of this production of Shostakovich’s The Nose. And so they should be, as this is a spectacular staging that plays to all the company’s strengths. It is a rollercoaster from beginning to end; bizarre and surreal, but also dynamic and constantly inventive. The production premiered in 2004, and after completing its run was taken on tour by Valery Gergiev to Stockholm, Paris, London (the Barbican) and Berlin. Then, in 2009, it was chosen as the work to launch the Mariinsky’s own label. Now, The Nose returns to the Mariinsky stage, this its first revival in four years.
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ENO 2013/14 season
English National Opera announced their new season this morning, boasting ten new (or ‘new to the UK’) productions and four classic revivals. Film director and Monty Python veteran Terry Gilliam returns to ENO to lend his talent to a new production of Berlioz’s rarely performed Benvenuto Cellini, with the American rising star Corrine Winters (this season’s stunning Violetta) taking the role of Teresa – the cast also includes Michael Spyres in the title role and Willard White and will be conducted by ENO Music DirectorEdward Gardner. If it’s anywhere near as good as Gilliam’s wacky but brilliant Damnation of Faust then we should all be in for an extraordinary evening.
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Puccini: La bohème
English National Opera, 29th April 2013, John E de Wald
By his very ubiquity on operatic stages, Puccini can be a difficult composer to get right. Of his works, La bohème is surely the most hackneyed and the most capable of inducing cynicism, not through its own vice so much as sheer familiarity with the plot and the music. Done well, Puccini’s virtuosic talent for melody and naturalistic vitality soars as in little else; and through its intelligent stage direction, scintillating orchestra, and superb cast of principals, this excellent revival of Jonathan Miller’s ENO staging reminds us of just how good the opera can be.
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Elizabeth Connell Memorial Concert
St John's Smith Square, 27th April 2013, Miranda Jackson
In December 2008 the great dramatic soprano, Elizabeth Connell, stepped into the breach and took on the role of Turandot in the Royal Opera House production when the leading lady was indisposed. At the time she was playing the role of Hansel and Gretel’s Mother. What a contrast: from impoverished wife of an alcoholic husband to indomitable princess. It was a stellar cast in the Humperdinck with Sir Tom Allen as her husband, but the role of Turandot has to be one of a handful of roles which an aspiring dramatic soprano yearns to tuck under her bejewelled belt.
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Handel: Giulio Cesare in Egitto
Metropolitan Opera, New York, 27th April 2013, Mark Pullinger
I come not to bury Dessay, but to praise her. Anyone who witnessed last season’s screening of La traviata from the Met featuring Natalie Dessay would have approached this cinema relay of Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto starring the French coloratura soprano as Cleopatra with extreme caution. Indeed, those who listened to a Youtube recording of what is purportedly Dessay singing ‘Da tempeste il legno infranto’ on the opening night of the run could well have returned their tickets. For one performance she withdrew, resulting in Danielle de Niese, whose sex-kitten of a Cleopatra won her worldwide fame when David McVicar’s riot of a production was first seen at Glyndebourne, stepping in to save the show. Yet, despite some evidence of vocal frailty, Dessay emerged largely victorious to fight another day.
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Stravinsky: Apollon musagète; Oedipus Rex
LSO, Barbican Hall, 25th April 2013, Dominic Wells
For this, one of his numerous 70thBirthday concerts, Sir John Eliot Gardiner chose to deliver an all-Stravinsky programme with an ancient Greek theme: Apollon musagète, and Oedipus Rex. Joining him on stage were the London Symphony Orchestra and, for the second work, the gentlemen of the conductor’s own Monteverdi Choir – a vocal ensemble beyond superlatives. This combination of conductor and ensembles has worked well in the past in other Stravinskian repertoire, including one of the best versions of the Symphony of Psalms I have ever heard (originally on DG but re-released at budget price on Brilliant Classics: 9015) and arguably the greatest CD-recording of The Rake’s Progress (DG 459 648-2). For the most part, the high standard of those recordings was evident last night in London’s Barbican Hall.
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Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin
C Major Entertainment, Mark Pullinger
Kasper Holten faced something of a critical backlash (not from these quarters) for his use of dancer doubles in his recent Royal Opera production of Eugene Onegin, yet their use in this opera isn’t unique – Stefan Herheim did the same in Amsterdam. Both employed flashback techniques to explore the memories of the protagonists looking back on their past. In his production for the Polish National Opera, but filmed in Valencia, film, theatre and opera director Mariusz Trelinski adds a new twist. Who is the mysterious figure clad in white, with deathly pallor, stalking Tatyana and almost directing events?
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Juan Diego Flórez in recital
Barbican Hall, 24th April 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
If, like me, you attended Sunday’s “Flórez and Friends” concert at the Barbican – as opposed to sitting through oceans of orchestral filler in the RFH in order to dribble over the unfeasible length of Jonas Kaufmann’s ‘Wälse’ – you may be forgiven for wondering how an audience already in a state of chronic, uncritical delight could possibly be pleasured any more. In which case, you needed to be at tonight’s solo recital, the latest tranche of Juan Diego Flórez’s Barbican residency, which comprehensively proved the time-honoured adage “it ain’t over until the sooty-lashed one sings at least four encores”. The nubile bounced around, whooping; the mature squirmed with satisfaction in their seats, emitting the odd low moan; I shouldn’t be at all surprised if the lame weren’t seen dancing in the aisles, and the dead – always a fair percentage of any opera audience – weren’t newly-risen. Indeed, anyone suffering with scrofula could well have been cured merely by touching his immaculately tailored trousers (though I’m still working out how to explain this to the police).
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Elizabeth Connell Memorial Concert
South African soprano Elizabeth Connell (1946 - 2012) was acclaimed for her performances of the great Strauss, Verdi and Wagner heroines. On Saturday 27 April a special concert to honour her memory will be held at St John's, Smith Square, with all proceeds being donated to the Musicians' Benevolent Fund as well as the Elizabeth Connell Prize, an annual award for young dramatic sopranos.
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Juan Diego Flórez & Friends
Barbican Hall, 21st April 2013, Sebastian Petit
There are times in every critic’s life when they enter a place of entertainment in a less than exalted frame of mind, wishing fervently that they were not required to sit in judgement on whatever artistic offering is being given that night. This was undoubtedly the case with me tonight as I entered the Barbican Hall. Despite the fact that I had been looking forward to this concert for nigh on six months, a combination of a rotten night’s sleep and an overlarge dinner had put me in a distinctly un-sunny mood. Had what followed been of poor or even average quality it would likely have received a fairly un-indulgent review. Fortunately the evening was so far up the scale of excellence it is in danger of receiving a rave.
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Verdi: Requiem
Royal Festival Hall, 20th April 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
Daniele Gatti was the Music Director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for 13 years, from 1996 onwards: and the net result of his long and faithful devotion to them was to end up occupying a kind of twilight existence, seen somehow as not central to the city’s musical activities, having allied himself to the Cinderella of London orchestras. Happily for him, the rest of the world was rather more aware of his worth, and no sooner had he left than he was ensconced at Bayreuth, La Scala and the Met, as well as consolidating his position as a favoured guest with most of the great international orchestras. But after having conducted his way through most of the Verdi repertory at the ROH throughout the 1990s as the House’s Principal Guest Conductor year-in, year-out until the closure, he only reappeared there in 2001, promptly to vanish for the next eleven seasons. When he finally returned last year, to lead the new Falstaff, he was greeted with a homecoming hero’s sense of welcome. And something similar could be sensed tonight, at the Southbank-resident Philharmonia Orchestra’s major contribution to this year’s ongoing Verdi bicentenary celebrations.
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Mozart: Die Zauberflöte
Royal Opera, 16th April 2013, Sebastian Petit
Mozart and Schikaneder’s bizarre opera can be told in almost any way a director chooses - from Peter Sellars’ disastrous Glyndebourne LA freeway “retelling” through Julie Taymor’s Lion King spin-off to various “traditional” versions which seem little removed from pantomime. Fortunately David McVicar’s production pays the work the compliment of treating it seriously. And if the comic aspects recede to give way to the serious thread of the story I, for one, am not going to quarrel with that decision. Most importantly, this emphasis allows the two leads, often reduced to dully serious interludes between the Papageno scenes, to blossom and grow as characters.
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Britten: The Turn of the Screw
Barbican Hall, 16th April 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
When this pair of concert performances of Britten’s most ingeniously crafted opera – literally, variations on a theme - was first announced early last year as part of the London Symphony Orchestra’s 2012/13, the conductor was meant to be Sir Colin Davis, the band’s Principal Conductor from 1995 until 2006 (after which he became its tirelessly hands-on President). Alas, illness intervened, and the last performances he gave with the LSO in their home hall were the two Der Freischützen almost exactly a year ago - the first of which I reviewed here - followed by dual outings of Berlioz’s Grande Messe des Morts in St. Paul’s Cathedral in July, his absolute public dernière (and a rather more fitting use of the building than that in which it presently finds itself embroiled, hired out for a has-been politico’s overblown obsequies). Sir Colin was too ill to conduct, or even attend, his own 85th birthday concert last September, and we had all long-since been advised that he would not be conducting these Turns of the Screw, entrusted instead to Richard Farnes, the Music Director of Opera North.
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Valery Gergiev's 60th birthday concert
Barbican Hall, 22nd May 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
When the booking originally opened for this concert back in January 2012 as part of the LSO’s 2012/13 season, no actual programme was offered for our edification, the rubric merely noting, styled as above, that it would be in celebration of the Maestro’s sexagennial anniversary (or Diamond Jubilee if, as many do, you regard him as an absolute monarch). I booked for it blind, like everybody else, vaguely imagining that it would play to his known strengths in the Russian repertoire, or else take the form of some extended musical knees-up with lots of guest stars. In the event it only relatively recently became known that whilst the latter expectation would be partially met, in the shape of concert items played by Alexander Toradze and Leonidas Kavakos, the main musical meat of the evening was to be operatic, comprising Act V of Berlioz’s Les Troyens, with soloists both local (in the largely supporting roles) and Russian (in the case of the two principal ones). Now, Valery Gergiev certainly has form in Berlioz, having conducted concert performances here of both Benvenuto Cellini and (on three separate occasions, no less) La damnation de Faust. And his handling of Les Troyens, staged at the Valencia opera house by the La fura dels Baus collective as some Kubrickian space oddity, has been preserved on DVD.
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Britten: A Midsummer Night's Dream
Mariinsky Concert Hall, 19th May 2013, Gavin Dixon
Opera house, concert hall, and now another opera house: the Mariinsky is a company well-served for venues. The concert hall is a particularly versatile space, as this evening’s fully-staged performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream demonstrated. For an opera usually staged with large and involved sets, the more modest presentation here came as a refreshing surprise, and the imaginative use of trapeze artists allowed the action to take place in three dimensions. Musically, the performance was a little dour, but as usual, the Mariinsky Company was able to pepper the cast with enough outstanding vocal talents to keep the standards high, even if the English diction often left much to be desired.
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Verdi: Falstaff
Glyndebourne Festival, 19th May 2013, Sebastian Petit
What an utterly joyous evening! Even a darkening sky and a chilly interval picnic failed to diminish the fizzing pleasure of this first revival of Richard Jones’ 1940s Falstaff (revived here under Sarah Fahie). Originally playing to rather mixed notices but now with an almost entirely new cast the production coalesced into a superbly sharp, detailed and hilarious experience. The cast worked as a tautly wound ensemble who appeared to enjoy every minute and centred round the astonishing Laurent Naouri as Sir John Falstaff.
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Yards of tartan; fabulous singing!
Rossini: La donna del lago
Royal Opera, 17th May 2013, Mark Pullinger
Yards of tartan, a tenor as hirsute Braveheart rebel Highlander and a picturesque mural (or murial) of Loch Katrine, which would have had Hilda Ogden green with envy, place us emphatically in Scotland for this new staging of Rossini’s La donna del lago at Covent Garden. Originally planned as a co-production with the Palais Garnier and La Scala, the Royal Opera gave Luis Pasqual’s staging the boot and employed John Fulljames to do the directorial honours instead (oh that it had the courage to do likewise with other co-prods foisted upon it – yes, I do mean Rusalka). La donna del lago, based on Sir Walter Scott’s narrative poem The Lady of the Lake, presents a romanticized view of Highland history and Fulljames taps into its events as a ‘museum piece’, not always with coherence. It will have mattered little for many in the audience, who were there primarily for the singing and cheered the cast to the rafters.
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Opera North, Leeds, 16th May 2013, Geoffrey Mogridge
In the glorious summer of 1947, Glyndebourne Festival Opera House, the setting for the premiere of Benjamin Britten's chamber opera Albert Herring, must have seemed the very antithesis of post-war austerity Britain. It might be hard to imagine the aristocratic Lady Billows having to produce a ration book; but the whole population had to do so to purchase basic foods such as eggs, bread, milk and sugar. Meanwhile, society was going through immense change as the old order, and with it the rigid class structures, slowly began to erode. Given Britten's distaste of the class system, it is unlikely that he composed Albert Herring solely as a light-hearted rural romp designed to light up people's lives during the post-war drabness. Glyndebourne's founder John Christie is said to have heartily disliked the piece, dismissing it saying "This isn't our kind of thing, you know”. Perhaps Christie's reaction was not surprising, as the sharply drawn characters are parodies of familiar establishment figures and their servitors.
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Monty Python meets G&S in crowd-pleasing Pirates!
Sullivan: The Pirates of Penzance
Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 15th May 2013, Kelvin Holdsworth
Scottish Opera and the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company have set sail with a sure-fire summer hit with their delightful new production of The Pirates of Penzance. A real crowd pleaser, this production deserves the success that it will undoubtedly have.
It became quickly obvious during the overture that this was a production that we were intended to laugh at. The seagull saw to that, first being heard crying plaintively above the sound of the orchestra and then appearing on strings from the very top of the proscenium and flying around over an azure curtain.
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Berg: Wozzeck
English National Opera, 11th May 2013, Gavin Dixon
Carrie Cracknell, a respected theatre director, makes her operatic debut with this ENO Wozzeck. The work demands much of its interpreters, not least a visual conception as compelling as the drama within the music. That’s exactly what it gets, in a production that moves the action to a present-day British army barracks, instilling claustrophobia, social decay and abusive power hierarchies at every turn. Cracknell treats all of her singers as real actors, leading to psychological insights that are all too rare from an opera that is more often played for its shock value. Edward Gardner also seeks, and regularly finds, details and subtleties in the work with his precise and measured reading. But the impressive intellect behind this production, both on the stage and in the pit, never obscures the work’s sheer emotional power. Everything builds towards the searing conclusion, in which the graphic visuals are fully the equal of the intensely powerful music.
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Magdalena Kožená
Barbican Hall, 8th May 2013, Sebastian Petit
Entering the Barbican Hall foyers I suspected I might have, in a senior moment, turned up on the wrong night. While not quite yet colonised by tumbleweed, the foyers were horribly unpopulated considering the centre was hosting a recital by a big name artist like Magdalena Kožená. The rich variety of musical life in our capital can often result in deserving events failing to attract the level of support they deserve. This was clearly the case last night with the lures of the all-star (minus 1) Don Carlo and the opening of Liam Scarlett’s latest excursion into the world of nightmare leading to a less than half-full hall at the Barbican.
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Wagner: Parsifal
Oper Stuttgart, 5th May 2013, Faye Courtney
Cannibalism, self-mutilation, mad axe murderers, two-headed genetic mutants and women wearing clingfilm – just a few of the things you don’t usually expect to see in your average production of Parsifal. Welcome to the crazy world of Calixto Bieito, whose brilliant and disturbingly nihilistic interpretation of Wagner’sBühnenweihfestspiel is most definitely not for traditionalists, the squeamish or those of a sensitive disposition. For all its sublime music, Parsifal is Wagner’s most dramatically inert opera - yet incredibly, Bieito has somehow achieved the near impossible feat of creating a 5 hour long theatrical experience where it’s impossible to be bored for a single minute.
Read more>>
Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer
Oper Stuttgart, 4th May 2013, Faye Courtney
I’m not personally convinced that Wagner wrote Der fliegende Holländer because he was secretly trying to make some kind of anti-Capitalist ‘statement’, but try telling that to Calixto Bieito, a director who never lets trifling little details like the composer’s intentions stand in the way of creating a controversial piece of Regietheater, or as some may translate it - ‘Eurotrash’. Though his shock tactics are guaranteed to divide critics and public alike, you can’t deny that Bieito’s productions are usually intensely theatrical and thought-provoking affairs. However, in the case of his Dutchman for Oper Stuttgart the whole basic concept of a bunch of badly behaved businessmen in a rubber dinghy sadly fails to hit the mark.
Read more>>
Handel: Joshua
Opera North, Leeds, 4th May 2013, Geoffrey Mogridge
My earliest prevailing image of oratorio - particularly those of George Frederick Handel - is of instrumental textures like clotted cream and the full-throated roar of serried ranks of choristers dressed in flowing white gowns or black evening tails stacked up behind a swollen orchestra in an ornate Victorian Town Hall; or (alternatively) one of the great northern chapel choirs with organ or harmonium accompaniment delivering the annual performance of Messiah, Judas Maccabaeus or Saul.
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Verdi: Don Carlo
Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, 2nd May 2013, Nicola Lischi
The most amazing thing about this performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlois that it took place at all. The troubles that have been plaguing the Fondazione del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino are well known and this writer has already mentioned them in other recent reviews. The bottom line is that, without going into details, the Maggio ended up in such a sorry state that a few months ago the Italian government had no choice but to place an external commissioner, Francesco Bianchi, at its helm, so as to shed light on the actual extent of the deficit and try to save the sinking ship.
Read more>>
Handel: Atalanta
Cambridge Handel Opera, 30th April 2013, Sandra Bowdler
Cambridge saw an outstanding performance of Handel’s Atalanta, which could compare with anything from a major company. The production, singing and music were all next to flawless, and it was a Baroque production with a slight tongue in cheek style which delighted the audience. Atalanta was written to celebrate the marriage of the Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha to Frederick Louis (or Friedrich Ludwig), the son of King George II of England, in London in 1736. This context is necessary to understand some of the features of the opera, in particular why the plot is considered to be remarkably fluffy, even by the standards of Baroque opera.
Read more>>
Shostakovich: The Nose
Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg, 29th April 2013, Gavin Dixon
The Mariinsky company is very proud of this production of Shostakovich’s The Nose. And so they should be, as this is a spectacular staging that plays to all the company’s strengths. It is a rollercoaster from beginning to end; bizarre and surreal, but also dynamic and constantly inventive. The production premiered in 2004, and after completing its run was taken on tour by Valery Gergiev to Stockholm, Paris, London (the Barbican) and Berlin. Then, in 2009, it was chosen as the work to launch the Mariinsky’s own label. Now, The Nose returns to the Mariinsky stage, this its first revival in four years.
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ENO 2013/14 season
English National Opera announced their new season this morning, boasting ten new (or ‘new to the UK’) productions and four classic revivals. Film director and Monty Python veteran Terry Gilliam returns to ENO to lend his talent to a new production of Berlioz’s rarely performed Benvenuto Cellini, with the American rising star Corrine Winters (this season’s stunning Violetta) taking the role of Teresa – the cast also includes Michael Spyres in the title role and Willard White and will be conducted by ENO Music DirectorEdward Gardner. If it’s anywhere near as good as Gilliam’s wacky but brilliant Damnation of Faust then we should all be in for an extraordinary evening.
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Puccini: La bohème
English National Opera, 29th April 2013, John E de Wald
By his very ubiquity on operatic stages, Puccini can be a difficult composer to get right. Of his works, La bohème is surely the most hackneyed and the most capable of inducing cynicism, not through its own vice so much as sheer familiarity with the plot and the music. Done well, Puccini’s virtuosic talent for melody and naturalistic vitality soars as in little else; and through its intelligent stage direction, scintillating orchestra, and superb cast of principals, this excellent revival of Jonathan Miller’s ENO staging reminds us of just how good the opera can be.
Read more>>
Elizabeth Connell Memorial Concert
St John's Smith Square, 27th April 2013, Miranda Jackson
In December 2008 the great dramatic soprano, Elizabeth Connell, stepped into the breach and took on the role of Turandot in the Royal Opera House production when the leading lady was indisposed. At the time she was playing the role of Hansel and Gretel’s Mother. What a contrast: from impoverished wife of an alcoholic husband to indomitable princess. It was a stellar cast in the Humperdinck with Sir Tom Allen as her husband, but the role of Turandot has to be one of a handful of roles which an aspiring dramatic soprano yearns to tuck under her bejewelled belt.
Read more>>
Handel: Giulio Cesare in Egitto
Metropolitan Opera, New York, 27th April 2013, Mark Pullinger
I come not to bury Dessay, but to praise her. Anyone who witnessed last season’s screening of La traviata from the Met featuring Natalie Dessay would have approached this cinema relay of Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto starring the French coloratura soprano as Cleopatra with extreme caution. Indeed, those who listened to a Youtube recording of what is purportedly Dessay singing ‘Da tempeste il legno infranto’ on the opening night of the run could well have returned their tickets. For one performance she withdrew, resulting in Danielle de Niese, whose sex-kitten of a Cleopatra won her worldwide fame when David McVicar’s riot of a production was first seen at Glyndebourne, stepping in to save the show. Yet, despite some evidence of vocal frailty, Dessay emerged largely victorious to fight another day.
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Stravinsky: Apollon musagète; Oedipus Rex
LSO, Barbican Hall, 25th April 2013, Dominic Wells
For this, one of his numerous 70thBirthday concerts, Sir John Eliot Gardiner chose to deliver an all-Stravinsky programme with an ancient Greek theme: Apollon musagète, and Oedipus Rex. Joining him on stage were the London Symphony Orchestra and, for the second work, the gentlemen of the conductor’s own Monteverdi Choir – a vocal ensemble beyond superlatives. This combination of conductor and ensembles has worked well in the past in other Stravinskian repertoire, including one of the best versions of the Symphony of Psalms I have ever heard (originally on DG but re-released at budget price on Brilliant Classics: 9015) and arguably the greatest CD-recording of The Rake’s Progress (DG 459 648-2). For the most part, the high standard of those recordings was evident last night in London’s Barbican Hall.
Read more>>
Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin
C Major Entertainment, Mark Pullinger
Kasper Holten faced something of a critical backlash (not from these quarters) for his use of dancer doubles in his recent Royal Opera production of Eugene Onegin, yet their use in this opera isn’t unique – Stefan Herheim did the same in Amsterdam. Both employed flashback techniques to explore the memories of the protagonists looking back on their past. In his production for the Polish National Opera, but filmed in Valencia, film, theatre and opera director Mariusz Trelinski adds a new twist. Who is the mysterious figure clad in white, with deathly pallor, stalking Tatyana and almost directing events?
Read more>>
Juan Diego Flórez in recital
Barbican Hall, 24th April 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
If, like me, you attended Sunday’s “Flórez and Friends” concert at the Barbican – as opposed to sitting through oceans of orchestral filler in the RFH in order to dribble over the unfeasible length of Jonas Kaufmann’s ‘Wälse’ – you may be forgiven for wondering how an audience already in a state of chronic, uncritical delight could possibly be pleasured any more. In which case, you needed to be at tonight’s solo recital, the latest tranche of Juan Diego Flórez’s Barbican residency, which comprehensively proved the time-honoured adage “it ain’t over until the sooty-lashed one sings at least four encores”. The nubile bounced around, whooping; the mature squirmed with satisfaction in their seats, emitting the odd low moan; I shouldn’t be at all surprised if the lame weren’t seen dancing in the aisles, and the dead – always a fair percentage of any opera audience – weren’t newly-risen. Indeed, anyone suffering with scrofula could well have been cured merely by touching his immaculately tailored trousers (though I’m still working out how to explain this to the police).
Read more>>
Elizabeth Connell Memorial Concert
South African soprano Elizabeth Connell (1946 - 2012) was acclaimed for her performances of the great Strauss, Verdi and Wagner heroines. On Saturday 27 April a special concert to honour her memory will be held at St John's, Smith Square, with all proceeds being donated to the Musicians' Benevolent Fund as well as the Elizabeth Connell Prize, an annual award for young dramatic sopranos.
Read more>>
Juan Diego Flórez & Friends
Barbican Hall, 21st April 2013, Sebastian Petit
There are times in every critic’s life when they enter a place of entertainment in a less than exalted frame of mind, wishing fervently that they were not required to sit in judgement on whatever artistic offering is being given that night. This was undoubtedly the case with me tonight as I entered the Barbican Hall. Despite the fact that I had been looking forward to this concert for nigh on six months, a combination of a rotten night’s sleep and an overlarge dinner had put me in a distinctly un-sunny mood. Had what followed been of poor or even average quality it would likely have received a fairly un-indulgent review. Fortunately the evening was so far up the scale of excellence it is in danger of receiving a rave.
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Verdi: Requiem
Royal Festival Hall, 20th April 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
Daniele Gatti was the Music Director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for 13 years, from 1996 onwards: and the net result of his long and faithful devotion to them was to end up occupying a kind of twilight existence, seen somehow as not central to the city’s musical activities, having allied himself to the Cinderella of London orchestras. Happily for him, the rest of the world was rather more aware of his worth, and no sooner had he left than he was ensconced at Bayreuth, La Scala and the Met, as well as consolidating his position as a favoured guest with most of the great international orchestras. But after having conducted his way through most of the Verdi repertory at the ROH throughout the 1990s as the House’s Principal Guest Conductor year-in, year-out until the closure, he only reappeared there in 2001, promptly to vanish for the next eleven seasons. When he finally returned last year, to lead the new Falstaff, he was greeted with a homecoming hero’s sense of welcome. And something similar could be sensed tonight, at the Southbank-resident Philharmonia Orchestra’s major contribution to this year’s ongoing Verdi bicentenary celebrations.
Read more>>
Mozart: Die Zauberflöte
Royal Opera, 16th April 2013, Sebastian Petit
Mozart and Schikaneder’s bizarre opera can be told in almost any way a director chooses - from Peter Sellars’ disastrous Glyndebourne LA freeway “retelling” through Julie Taymor’s Lion King spin-off to various “traditional” versions which seem little removed from pantomime. Fortunately David McVicar’s production pays the work the compliment of treating it seriously. And if the comic aspects recede to give way to the serious thread of the story I, for one, am not going to quarrel with that decision. Most importantly, this emphasis allows the two leads, often reduced to dully serious interludes between the Papageno scenes, to blossom and grow as characters.
Read more>>
Britten: The Turn of the Screw
Barbican Hall, 16th April 2013, Stephen Jay-Taylor
When this pair of concert performances of Britten’s most ingeniously crafted opera – literally, variations on a theme - was first announced early last year as part of the London Symphony Orchestra’s 2012/13, the conductor was meant to be Sir Colin Davis, the band’s Principal Conductor from 1995 until 2006 (after which he became its tirelessly hands-on President). Alas, illness intervened, and the last performances he gave with the LSO in their home hall were the two Der Freischützen almost exactly a year ago - the first of which I reviewed here - followed by dual outings of Berlioz’s Grande Messe des Morts in St. Paul’s Cathedral in July, his absolute public dernière (and a rather more fitting use of the building than that in which it presently finds itself embroiled, hired out for a has-been politico’s overblown obsequies). Sir Colin was too ill to conduct, or even attend, his own 85th birthday concert last September, and we had all long-since been advised that he would not be conducting these Turns of the Screw, entrusted instead to Richard Farnes, the Music Director of Opera North.
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booking originally opened for this concert back in January 2012 as part of the LSO’s 2012/13 season, no actual programme was offered for our edification, the rubric merely noting, styled as above, that it would be in celebration of the Maestro’s sexagennial anniversary (or Diamond Jubilee if, as many do, you regard him as an absolute monarch). I booked for it blind, like everybody else, vaguely imagining that it would play to his known strengths in the Russian repertoire, or else take the form of some extended musical knees-up with lots of guest stars. In the event it only relatively recently became known that whilst the latter expectation would be partially met, in the shape of concert items played by Alexander Toradze and Leonidas Kavakos, the main musical meat of the evening was to be operatic, comprising Act V of Berlioz’s Les Troyens, with soloists both local (in the largely supporting roles) and Russian (in the case of the two principal ones). Now, Valery Gergiev certainly has form in Berlioz, having conducted concert performances here of both Benvenuto Cellini and (on three separate occasions, no less) La damnation de Faust. And his handling of Les Troyens, staged at the Valencia opera house by the La fura dels Baus collective as some Kubrickian space oddity, has been preserved on DVD.concert hall, and now another opera house: the Mariinsky is a company well-served for venues. The concert hall is a particularly versatile space, as this evening’s fully-staged performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream demonstrated. For an opera usually staged with large and involved sets, the more modest presentation here came as a refreshing surprise, and the imaginative use of trapeze artists allowed the action to take place in three dimensions. Musically, the performance was a little dour, but as usual, the Mariinsky Company was able to pepper the cast with enough outstanding vocal talents to keep the standards high, even if the English diction often left much to be desired. utterly joyous evening! Even a darkening sky and a chilly interval picnic failed to diminish the fizzing pleasure of this first revival of Richard Jones’ 1940s Falstaff (revived here under Sarah Fahie). Originally playing to rather mixed notices but now with an almost entirely new cast the production coalesced into a superbly sharp, detailed and hilarious experience. The cast worked as a tautly wound ensemble who appeared to enjoy every minute and centred round the astonishing Laurent Naouri as Sir John Falstaff. tenor as hirsute Braveheart rebel Highlander and a picturesque mural (or murial) of Loch Katrine, which would have had Hilda Ogden green with envy, place us emphatically in Scotland for this new staging of Rossini’s La donna del lago at Covent Garden. Originally planned as a co-production with the Palais Garnier and La Scala, the Royal Opera gave Luis Pasqual’s staging the boot and employed John Fulljames to do the directorial honours instead (oh that it had the courage to do likewise with other co-prods foisted upon it – yes, I do mean Rusalka). La donna del lago, based on Sir Walter Scott’s narrative poem The Lady of the Lake, presents a romanticized view of Highland history and Fulljames taps into its events as a ‘museum piece’, not always with coherence. It will have mattered little for many in the audience, who were there primarily for the singing and cheered the cast to the rafters.summer of 1947, Glyndebourne Festival Opera House, the setting for the premiere of Benjamin Britten's chamber opera Albert Herring, must have seemed the very antithesis of post-war austerity Britain. It might be hard to imagine the aristocratic Lady Billows having to produce a ration book; but the whole population had to do so to purchase basic foods such as eggs, bread, milk and sugar. Meanwhile, society was going through immense change as the old order, and with it the rigid class structures, slowly began to erode. Given Britten's distaste of the class system, it is unlikely that he composed Albert Herring solely as a light-hearted rural romp designed to light up people's lives during the post-war drabness. Glyndebourne's founder John Christie is said to have heartily disliked the piece, dismissing it saying "This isn't our kind of thing, you know”. Perhaps Christie's reaction was not surprising, as the sharply drawn characters are parodies of familiar establishment figures and their servitors.and the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company have set sail with a sure-fire summer hit with their delightful new production of The Pirates of Penzance. A real crowd pleaser, this production deserves the success that it will undoubtedly have.respected theatre director, makes her operatic debut with this ENO Wozzeck. The work demands much of its interpreters, not least a visual conception as compelling as the drama within the music. That’s exactly what it gets, in a production that moves the action to a present-day British army barracks, instilling claustrophobia, social decay and abusive power hierarchies at every turn. Cracknell treats all of her singers as real actors, leading to psychological insights that are all too rare from an opera that is more often played for its shock value. Edward Gardner also seeks, and regularly finds, details and subtleties in the work with his precise and measured reading. But the impressive intellect behind this production, both on the stage and in the pit, never obscures the work’s sheer emotional power. Everything builds towards the searing conclusion, in which the graphic visuals are fully the equal of the intensely powerful music.Barbican Hall foyers I suspected I might have, in a senior moment, turned up on the wrong night. While not quite yet colonised by tumbleweed, the foyers were horribly unpopulated considering the centre was hosting a recital by a big name artist like Magdalena Kožená. The rich variety of musical life in our capital can often result in deserving events failing to attract the level of support they deserve. This was clearly the case last night with the lures of the all-star (minus 1) Don Carlo and the opening of Liam Scarlett’s latest excursion into the world of nightmare leading to a less than half-full hall at the Barbican.self-mutilation, mad axe murderers, two-headed genetic mutants and women wearing clingfilm – just a few of the things you don’t usually expect to see in your average production of Parsifal. Welcome to the crazy world of Calixto Bieito, whose brilliant and disturbingly nihilistic interpretation of Wagner’sBühnenweihfestspiel is most definitely not for traditionalists, the squeamish or those of a sensitive disposition. For all its sublime music, Parsifal is Wagner’s most dramatically inert opera - yet incredibly, Bieito has somehow achieved the near impossible feat of creating a 5 hour long theatrical experience where it’s impossible to be bored for a single minute.convinced that Wagner wrote Der fliegende Holländer because he was secretly trying to make some kind of anti-Capitalist ‘statement’, but try telling that to Calixto Bieito, a director who never lets trifling little details like the composer’s intentions stand in the way of creating a controversial piece of Regietheater, or as some may translate it - ‘Eurotrash’. Though his shock tactics are guaranteed to divide critics and public alike, you can’t deny that Bieito’s productions are usually intensely theatrical and thought-provoking affairs. However, in the case of his Dutchman for Oper Stuttgart the whole basic concept of a bunch of badly behaved businessmen in a rubber dinghy sadly fails to hit the mark.prevailing image of oratorio - particularly those of George Frederick Handel - is of instrumental textures like clotted cream and the full-throated roar of serried ranks of choristers dressed in flowing white gowns or black evening tails stacked up behind a swollen orchestra in an ornate Victorian Town Hall; or (alternatively) one of the great northern chapel choirs with organ or harmonium accompaniment delivering the annual performance of Messiah, Judas Maccabaeus or Saul. amazing thing about this performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlois that it took place at all. The troubles that have been plaguing the Fondazione del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino are well known and this writer has already mentioned them in other recent reviews. The bottom line is that, without going into details, the Maggio ended up in such a sorry state that a few months ago the Italian government had no choice but to place an external commissioner, Francesco Bianchi, at its helm, so as to shed light on the actual extent of the deficit and try to save the sinking ship.saw an outstanding performance of Handel’s Atalanta, which could compare with anything from a major company. The production, singing and music were all next to flawless, and it was a Baroque production with a slight tongue in cheek style which delighted the audience. Atalanta was written to celebrate the marriage of the Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha to Frederick Louis (or Friedrich Ludwig), the son of King George II of England, in London in 1736. This context is necessary to understand some of the features of the opera, in particular why the plot is considered to be remarkably fluffy, even by the standards of Baroque opera. is very proud of this production of Shostakovich’s The Nose. And so they should be, as this is a spectacular staging that plays to all the company’s strengths. It is a rollercoaster from beginning to end; bizarre and surreal, but also dynamic and constantly inventive. The production premiered in 2004, and after completing its run was taken on tour by Valery Gergiev to Stockholm, Paris, London (the Barbican) and Berlin. Then, in 2009, it was chosen as the work to launch the Mariinsky’s own label. Now, The Nose returns to the Mariinsky stage, this its first revival in four years.announced their new season this morning, boasting ten new (or ‘new to the UK’) productions and four classic revivals. Film director and Monty Python veteran Terry Gilliam returns to ENO to lend his talent to a new production of Berlioz’s rarely performed Benvenuto Cellini, with the American rising star Corrine Winters (this season’s stunning Violetta) taking the role of Teresa – the cast also includes Michael Spyres in the title role and Willard White and will be conducted by ENO Music DirectorEdward Gardner. If it’s anywhere near as good as Gilliam’s wacky but brilliant Damnation of Faust then we should all be in for an extraordinary evening. very ubiquity on operatic stages, Puccini can be a difficult composer to get right. Of his works, La bohème is surely the most hackneyed and the most capable of inducing cynicism, not through its own vice so much as sheer familiarity with the plot and the music. Done well, Puccini’s virtuosic talent for melody and naturalistic vitality soars as in little else; and through its intelligent stage direction, scintillating orchestra, and superb cast of principals, this excellent revival of Jonathan Miller’s ENO staging reminds us of just how good the opera can be.2008 the great dramatic soprano, Elizabeth Connell, stepped into the breach and took on the role of Turandot in the Royal Opera House production when the leading lady was indisposed. At the time she was playing the role of Hansel and Gretel’s Mother. What a contrast: from impoverished wife of an alcoholic husband to indomitable princess. It was a stellar cast in the Humperdinck with Sir Tom Allen as her husband, but the role of Turandot has to be one of a handful of roles which an aspiring dramatic soprano yearns to tuck under her bejewelled belt.bury Dessay, but to praise her. Anyone who witnessed last season’s screening of La traviata from the Met featuring Natalie Dessay would have approached this cinema relay of Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto starring the French coloratura soprano as Cleopatra with extreme caution. Indeed, those who listened to a Youtube recording of what is purportedly Dessay singing ‘Da tempeste il legno infranto’ on the opening night of the run could well have returned their tickets. For one performance she withdrew, resulting in Danielle de Niese, whose sex-kitten of a Cleopatra won her worldwide fame when David McVicar’s riot of a production was first seen at Glyndebourne, stepping in to save the show. Yet, despite some evidence of vocal frailty, Dessay emerged largely victorious to fight another day.one of his numerous 70thBirthday concerts, Sir John Eliot Gardiner chose to deliver an all-Stravinsky programme with an ancient Greek theme: Apollon musagète, and Oedipus Rex. Joining him on stage were the London Symphony Orchestra and, for the second work, the gentlemen of the conductor’s own Monteverdi Choir – a vocal ensemble beyond superlatives. This combination of conductor and ensembles has worked well in the past in other Stravinskian repertoire, including one of the best versions of the Symphony of Psalms I have ever heard (originally on DG but re-released at budget price on Brilliant Classics: 9015) and arguably the greatest CD-recording of The Rake’s Progress (DG 459 648-2). For the most part, the high standard of those recordings was evident last night in London’s Barbican Hall.faced something of a critical backlash (not from these quarters) for his use of dancer doubles in his recent Royal Opera production of Eugene Onegin, yet their use in this opera isn’t unique – Stefan Herheim did the same in Amsterdam. Both employed flashback techniques to explore the memories of the protagonists looking back on their past. In his production for the Polish National Opera, but filmed in Valencia, film, theatre and opera director Mariusz Trelinski adds a new twist. Who is the mysterious figure clad in white, with deathly pallor, stalking Tatyana and almost directing events? attended Sunday’s “Flórez and Friends” concert at the Barbican – as opposed to sitting through oceans of orchestral filler in the RFH in order to dribble over the unfeasible length of Jonas Kaufmann’s ‘Wälse’ – you may be forgiven for wondering how an audience already in a state of chronic, uncritical delight could possibly be pleasured any more. In which case, you needed to be at tonight’s solo recital, the latest tranche of Juan Diego Flórez’s Barbican residency, which comprehensively proved the time-honoured adage “it ain’t over until the sooty-lashed one sings at least four encores”. The nubile bounced around, whooping; the mature squirmed with satisfaction in their seats, emitting the odd low moan; I shouldn’t be at all surprised if the lame weren’t seen dancing in the aisles, and the dead – always a fair percentage of any opera audience – weren’t newly-risen. Indeed, anyone suffering with scrofula could well have been cured merely by touching his immaculately tailored trousers (though I’m still working out how to explain this to the police).African soprano Elizabeth Connell (1946 - 2012) was acclaimed for her performances of the great Strauss, Verdi and Wagner heroines. On Saturday 27 April a special concert to honour her memory will be held at St John's, Smith Square, with all proceeds being donated to the Musicians' Benevolent Fund as well as the Elizabeth Connell Prize, an annual award for young dramatic sopranos.times in every critic’s life when they enter a place of entertainment in a less than exalted frame of mind, wishing fervently that they were not required to sit in judgement on whatever artistic offering is being given that night. This was undoubtedly the case with me tonight as I entered the Barbican Hall. Despite the fact that I had been looking forward to this concert for nigh on six months, a combination of a rotten night’s sleep and an overlarge dinner had put me in a distinctly un-sunny mood. Had what followed been of poor or even average quality it would likely have received a fairly un-indulgent review. Fortunately the evening was so far up the scale of excellence it is in danger of receiving a rave.the Music Director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for 13 years, from 1996 onwards: and the net result of his long and faithful devotion to them was to end up occupying a kind of twilight existence, seen somehow as not central to the city’s musical activities, having allied himself to the Cinderella of London orchestras. Happily for him, the rest of the world was rather more aware of his worth, and no sooner had he left than he was ensconced at Bayreuth, La Scala and the Met, as well as consolidating his position as a favoured guest with most of the great international orchestras. But after having conducted his way through most of the Verdi repertory at the ROH throughout the 1990s as the House’s Principal Guest Conductor year-in, year-out until the closure, he only reappeared there in 2001, promptly to vanish for the next eleven seasons. When he finally returned last year, to lead the new Falstaff, he was greeted with a homecoming hero’s sense of welcome. And something similar could be sensed tonight, at the Southbank-resident Philharmonia Orchestra’s major contribution to this year’s ongoing Verdi bicentenary celebrations.Schikaneder’s bizarre opera can be told in almost any way a director chooses - from Peter Sellars’ disastrous Glyndebourne LA freeway “retelling” through Julie Taymor’s Lion King spin-off to various “traditional” versions which seem little removed from pantomime. Fortunately David McVicar’s production pays the work the compliment of treating it seriously. And if the comic aspects recede to give way to the serious thread of the story I, for one, am not going to quarrel with that decision. Most importantly, this emphasis allows the two leads, often reduced to dully serious interludes between the Papageno scenes, to blossom and grow as characters. of concert performances of Britten’s most ingeniously crafted opera – literally, variations on a theme - was first announced early last year as part of the London Symphony Orchestra’s 2012/13, the conductor was meant to be Sir Colin Davis, the band’s Principal Conductor from 1995 until 2006 (after which he became its tirelessly hands-on President). Alas, illness intervened, and the last performances he gave with the LSO in their home hall were the two Der Freischützen almost exactly a year ago - the first of which I reviewed here - followed by dual outings of Berlioz’s Grande Messe des Morts in St. Paul’s Cathedral in July, his absolute public dernière (and a rather more fitting use of the building than that in which it presently finds itself embroiled, hired out for a has-been politico’s overblown obsequies). Sir Colin was too ill to conduct, or even attend, his own 85th birthday concert last September, and we had all long-since been advised that he would not be conducting these Turns of the Screw, entrusted instead to Richard Farnes, the Music Director of Opera North.
commissioned to design the booklet cover for this disc of Verdi arias and duets featuring Polish tenor Piotr Beczala, it would feature an image of a Brazil nut, emblazoned with the face of dear old Giuseppe, quivering beneath a sledgehammer. This would give the prospective purchaser an idea as to what to expect from the tenor’s approach and it would, indeed, be as unexpected as it is disappointing. I rate Beczala extremely highly and he would be in my top four tenors performing this sort of repertoire today (Jonas Kaufmann, Joseph Calleja and the underrated Marcelo Álvarez being the others), but this recital disc will do his reputation few favours.
based at the Wigmore Hall, offer a rather unique opportunity to hear some of the world’s most impressive singers to best effect, performing their own chosen repertoire in an intimate concert setting. There is a welcome purity in hearing an artist sing a concentrated programme of music tailored to their voice and taste, and to hear it unembellished by full-scale orchestra, granted only the elegant simplicity of an accompanying piano.
As if to remind us that summer festivals are just around the corner, despite the prevailing frozen conditions over much of Britain, Opus Arte has issued its new production of Janacek’s evergreen opera The Cunning Little Vixen, which opened Glyndebourne’s 2012 season. Although Melly Still’s production didn’t meet with universal acclaim and is clumsily directed at times, the performances here have much to recommend them, not least the feisty Vixen of Lucy Crowe and the weathered Forester of Sergei Leiferkus.
