Intermezzo

Moar Capuleti ! Moar Montecchi !!! Anna and Elina ride again

I Capuleti e i Montecchi - Royal Opera House, 30 March 2009

I booked tickets for both ends of the current Capuleti run (curiously, four weeks apart), on the basis that even a serial canceller like Netrebko wouldn't dare cop out of both. Luckily I dodged the inevitable and caught her twice.

She wasn't at her absolute best, occasionally forcing her tone or slipping beneath the note, in a way that suggested lapses of concentration rather than serious problems. But most of her singing was very lovely indeed - liquid, intelligent and delicately nuanced - and she even managed a good firm trill at one point.

It was announced that Elina Garanca was suffering from a cold - collective sigh - but that she'd sing anyway - delighted applause. I couldn't tell anything was amiss. As on the first night, she shaded Netrebko in purely vocal terms.

But there's a real partnership between these two, at the musical level and beyond, and it transcends any of the finicky technical stuff. Listening to their exquisitely-matched love duet, or watching them grapple playfully on the bed afterwards as the applause thundered out made that clear.

The orchestra's contribution was patchy - dodgy woodwind intonation marred the prelude, and a few moments of hush were unbalanced by over-enthusiastic violins. But the solos, especially the haunting horn that introduces Giulietta, were well-taken. As on the first night, the only real disappointment lay with the male roles - when you're playing the same game as Netrebko, Garanca, and Elder, you need to be in the same league - mere adequacy is just not enough.

Pappano on your box

BBC opera coverage is about to improve.

BBC4 have recruited Antonio Pappano to present a three-part series on Italian opera called Viva Opera Italia. It will air in May 2010.

In May this year they'll televise the Royal Opera House's new production (opening tomorrow) of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas with Handel's Acis and Galatea.

And Hytner's Don Carlo comes to your sofa sometime this winter.

And starting in May, Radio 3 will broadcast eight productions from the current ROH season, including Der fliegende Holländer (with Bryn Terfel), Tales of Hoffman (with Villazón) and I Capuleti e I Montecchi with Anna Netrebko and Elina Garanca.

The whole lot will be available on the iPlayer after broadcast as well.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Radio 3 schedule - all at 6.30pm

16 May – Offenbach: The Tales of Hoffmann

23 May – Korngold: Die Tote Stadt

30 May – Wagner: The Flying Dutchman

6 June – Strauss: Elektra

13 June – Bellini: I Capuleti e I Montecchi

20 June – Purcell: Dido and Aeneas; Handel Acis and Galatea

27 June – Wagner: Lohengrin

4 July – Berg: Lulu

Rossini's Ermione - medium rare or well-done?

Ermione - Royal Festival Hall, 28 March 2009

Ermione is not quite the rarity that this concert's publicity suggested. Scattered recordings and the odd staging prove that.

But it wasn't hard to see why it's usually passed over in favour of Rossini's better-known works. Innovations like the choral overture have novelty on their side but not much else. Amongst the formulaic chirruping there lurk a few good tunes, but no great ones. The plot is strong (it's lifted from Racine's Andromaque), but Rossini doesn't manage to wrestle it to the ground and pummel it into shape. So the first act huffs and puffs without going anywhere, and the abrupt ending in death and madness feels like a cop-out.

So, like Matilde di Shabran, it's one of those works that needs staggeringly good singers to bring it alive.

Well, it got one, anyway  - Colin Lee. He still looks like the chartered accountant he once was, but his vocal agility and phenomenal accuracy put him up there with Juan Diego Flórez. As Ermione's spurned lover, Oreste, driven to murder by her impossible demands, he gave it everything in a truly impassioned performance. Outstanding, and the packed, enthusiastic audience gave him the lengthy ovation he deserved.

Bülent Bezdüz provided the JDF (pre-rhinoplasty) looks and some stylish, ardent singing in the small role of Pilade. Like Colin Lee, he made it all sound easy.

Carmen Giannattasio's Ermione was pretty good too. The dramatic part of the role gave her no problems - gelosia and vendetta spat out in every syllable. But the voice is a little heavy for the rapid coloratura, which sounded effortful and sometimes even panicky. It was a problem shared by the all-too-stolid Paul Nilon as Pirro, too - every note was accurate, but hauled laboriously into place.

Patricia Bardon was an odd choice for Andromaca, the target of Ermione's spite and envy. There's no question about her abilities, but the voice is simply too deep and sultry, and again, too slow-moving to sparkle in this repertoire. 

The London Philharmonic were clearly well-rehearsed, but David Parry's spun-out phrasing and thick vibrato left the music earth-bound where it should have soared. The Geoffrey Mitchell Choir though were excellent, really alert and co-ordinated, and their diction was faultless.

There seems to be a ready market for second-string Rossini, so I suspect more is on its way.  But as with any music, the less polish there is in the writing, the more there needs to be in the performance, and this one didn't quite get all the way there.

Paul Nilon and Carmen Giannattasio:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~flip page for more photos~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Stefan Herheim pulls the strings

Director Stefan Herheim talks briefly to BZ (in German) about his new production of Lohengrin for Berlin's Staatsoper. With René Pape and Burkhard Fritz dropping out at the last minute, Herheim says he had to work 90 hours last week. And he recalls his first opera house - a puppet theatre he had at the age of six.

Did this inspire his production? As reported in Der Tagesspiel (German again), it's positively puppet-packed - and they all look like Richard Wagner. Some are in horned helmets, others sport Wagner's favoured velvet toque and sideburns. Herheim's coy about how he's going to use them. But he says he sees Lohengrin as a puppet, a symbol of an empty promise. If this means we get some silly toy on stage instead of Klaus Florian Vogt, I'll come round and snip Mr Herheim's strings. Personally.

Rehearsal photos by Karl Forster from BZ

 

Scuse me Madge, your slip is showing - Julietta at the Barbican

Juliette (/Julietta) - BBCSO / Bělohlávek - Barbican, 27 June 2009

Oh Magdalena, Magdalena. How can such a naturally stunning beauty as Magdalena Kožena get it so consistently wrong? The organisers probably thought they'd covered all bases. Hair professionally curled and pinned, flattering barely-there makeup, diaphanous floral gown. In the semi-staged semi-darkness she embodied the fragile, elusive Julietta, who captivates the hero Michel with her haunting aria.

Then she stepped forward into the spotlight.

And 2,000 people saw her underwear.

Let me put it this way. If you're wearing a see-through dress, you need a slip that starts at the same place as the transparent fabric does. In this case, the bust. Not six inches below. If she'd hoicked her slip up and pinned it in place, we'd have been none the wiser. Instead, we were mesmerised by the sort of long white undergarment that might shield nuns' nun-bits from their habits. Oh dear. So near and yet.....

Like Julietta's composer and its original libretto, Magdalena is, of course, Czech. But a golden opportunity was skipped here in favour of premiering Martinů's own recently-rediscovered French translation - making the title, more correctly, Juliette.

Besides offering a world first, and probably allowing more of the audience to appreciate it without the subtitles, this decision had a lot to commend it musically. Martinů was living in Paris when he wrote Julietta. And the opera reflects a very French sensibility in its ironic and sometimes cruel humour, its measured inconsequentiality and conscious eclecticism. Even the story - the man who pursues his love-object in a dream-world where everyone has amnesia - is quintessentially surrealist. There are hints of Janáček in there, but the more obvious comparisons are the Paris Stravinsky (Martinů even pops in a Sacre paraphrase), and particularly Poulenc. 

Jiří Bělohlávek's studied insouciance and wit captured the flavour perfectly, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra sounded immaculately prepared. Some extended longueurs evaded even his sure touch - Martinů spread his treasures thinly over a vast opus, and this is one opera that could have done with some editing. But the deft solo passages and curious percussion sparkled. And he straightened his face and got serious for the last act's great dramatic moment as Michel decides to abandon real life forever and follow Juliette into a penumbral world of dreams. 

The cast had worked hard to inject humour and variety into the long declamatory passages, though some coped better with the French than others. William Burden's language skills were more convincing in speech than in song, where he over-nasalised. But he was effective and sympathetic in the central part of Michel, and really put everything into it.

Magdalena Kožena, despite the, er, unfortunate slip, captured Juliette's ethereal other-worldly appeal perfectly. It's not a large part (despite the opera's title) but she was very much the dominant presence throughout.

The role experience of the Paris Opera's character tenor Andreas Jäggi showed in his detailed portrayals of the Police Chief, Postman and Clerk. Costumes and props differentiated the several roles most of the cast played, and Roderick Williams too was a standout, defining his characters neatly and projecting with power and assurance. Rosalind Plowright was a memorable fortune-teller in a swirling cloak. Even with the encumbrance of scores and stands, this was one 'semi-staging' that really worked, eliminating potential confusions and elevating the performance to a higher level. 

Most importantly, it focussed attention on the music, which although this year is the fiftieth anniversary of Martinů's death, few have so far been prepared to do. Some news about Martinů's other great opera, The Greek Passion is anticipated soon though, and Bělohlávek and the BBCSO will be bringing a symphony cycle to the Barbican in the autumn. About time!

*****************UPDATE*********************

to be broadcast on Radio 3 on Tuesday 31 March at 6.30pm - and presumably available for the next week on the iPlayer too (thanks HairMan for the comment)

 

~~~~~~~~~~  more photos on next page!  ~~~~~~~~~~

Rumblings in Brabant - Klaus Florian Vogt is Berlin's new Lohengrin

From Per-Erik at WagnerOpera.net comes the fabulous almost too-good-to-be-true news that Klaus Florian Vogt will replace Burkhard Fritz as Lohengrin in Stefan Herheim's new production at Berlin's Staatsoper. And I has ticket!

Despite Rene Pape's recent pull-out, this is shaping up to be some production - the world's greatest Wagner conductor , one of the most fascinating, provocative (in a good way) directors around - and now every sane music-lover's favourite Lohengrin. Can't wait!

Opera Holland Park - booking opens today

Booking opened today for Opera Holland Park's 2009 season, which runs from June to August.

This year's line-up comprises Roberto Devereux,  Hänsel und Gretel,  La bohème, Orpheus in the Underworld, Un ballo in maschera and Kat'a Kabanová. 

Once again, a number of seats (front and sides) are available for just £10 each.

Tickets tend to go quickly and many performances sold out last year, so it's never to early to book.

I've just bought my tickets - and what an unaccustomed pleasure it was to find no queues, no 'waiting room', no hanging pages, no rejected payments - all of which are of course familiar to Covent Garden regulars.

More details and booking link here, with a pdf seating plan here. Be aware that online bookings carry a fee of £1 per ticket and £2 per transaction.

Royal Opera House secrets remain hidden

 

The Royal Opera House's Director of Opera, Elaine Padmore, doesn't exactly have a high media profile. So Jill Campbell Mackay's interview for the Cyprus Mail is a bit of a rarity.

Few beans are spilled, but she does explain something of what her job involves - swanning round the world watching operas seems to be one of the more attractive perks. She also reveals (with the breathtaking amnesia her position demands) that "we don’t really get problems with the performers - with their managers perhaps."

More here.

Budgies over Berlin

According to BBC News, Michael Nyman has decided to dispense with divas for his latest work, which premieres tomorrow at the Berliner Festspiele.

The vocals for Sparkie: Cage and Beyond are instead provided by 50 year old recordings of Sparkie, a Newcastle budgie with a vocabulary of more than 500 words.

Sparkie was taught a number of nursery rhymes by Newcastle owner Metty Williams in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In true Geordie twang he chirped out: "Wor little spuggy ran oop the wahter spoot. The rain came down and washed the spuggy oot." For anyone south of Newcastle the rhyme tells how a small sparrow was stuck in a drainpipe before being washed out by the rain.  Sparkie came to prominence in 1958 when he beat off 2,768 entrants to win a BBC talking bird competition. He became a national celebrity and went on to make a record that sold 20,000 copies.

I couldn't find any Sparkie sound files, so instead, here is a site that translates your name (or any other word you like) into nightingale song. Oh yus!

Edinburgh International Festival 2009 : line-up announced

The theme of this year's Edinburgh International Festival is the Enlightenment, although as the festival's director Jonathan Mills explained to The Stage,

“The Enlightenment for me, very personally, is a point of departure only. It is a phrase I am using both metaphorically and quite literally. So I am searching for things that have been enlightening from Scotland and I am recognising the enlightenment as a movement that was able to be created here.”

Whatever. The credit crunch has bitten, and this year's programme is distinctly more conservative than last, with a noticeable lack of big names.

While focussing on the baroque, as the theme suggests, there are also generous nods to this year's Big Four anniversaries, Handel, Haydn, Purcell and Mendelssohn, though sadly no space for Martinu.

Conventional staged operas are thin on the ground. But there's a puppet version of Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, and Handel's Admeto, re di Tessaglia will be tackled samurai style by the director who set Munich's Rigoletto on the Planet of the Apes. Staatsoper Stuttgart bring an intriguing-sounding staging of a selection of Bach cantatas.

Concert performances include Purcell's Fairy Queen, and Handel's Judas Maccabaeus, Rinaldo (from Masaaki Suzuki's Bach Collegium) and Acis and Galatea. The vibrato ban will be lifted for Verdi's Macbeth (Lado Ataneli, Susan Neves, John Relyea and Massimo Giordano) by the BBCSSO and Der Fliegende Holländer (Franz Grundheber, Eva Johansson and Nikolai Schukoff) from Hamburg State Opera. Patricia Bardon heads the cast for the RSNO's performance of Berlioz's Roméo et Juliette.

Joyce DiDonato pops up in the OAE's Haydn programme, and Bryn Terfel visits the Usher Hall with Malcolm Martineau for a programme of British songs. Further recitals come from Willard White, Michael Volle, Christopher Maltman and Bejun Mehta.

The great Jordi Savall appears twice, with his ensembles Hespèrion XXI and Le Concert des Nations. For me, he was the highlight of the 2007 festival - can he do it again?

Full programme details here.

Public booking opens on 4 April, although according to The Scotsman, marketing deals struck by the Festival's organisers mean the best tickets are going to package tourists.

Philippe Jaroussky - no going Bach

Philippe Jaroussky / Jérôme Ducros- Purcell Room, 23 March 2009

Gabriel Dupont: Mandoline  Ernest Chausson: Le colibri, Op.2 No.7  Camille Saint-Saens: Tournoiement (Songe d'opium)  Reynaldo Hahn: Offrande  Jules Massenet: Nuit d'espagne for voice & piano  Cecile Chaminade: Automne  Reynaldo Hahn: A Chloris  Gabriel Faure: Automne  Ernest Chausson: Papillons  Ernest Chausson: Les heures  Cecile Chaminade: Sombrero - extract  Cesar Franck: Nocturne for voice & piano  Reynaldo Hahn: Trois jours de vendage  Gabriel Faure: En Sourdine  Guillaume Lekeu: Sur une tombe
Reynaldo Hahn: Fetes galantes  Cesar Franck: Prelude for piano  Gabriel Faure: Nell, Op.18 No.1  Ernest Chausson: Le temps des lilas  Reynaldo Hahn: Quand je fus pris au pavillon  Cecile Chaminade: Mignonne  Reynaldo Hahn: L'Heure exquise

It takes a brave countertenor to step out of the baroque box and dip a toe into the perfumed waters of French mélodie. But Philippe Jaroussky, sporting a boyish grin and an everso-slightly oversized suit, like he'd borrowed it from his dad, is that man. And who couldn't be excused for tiring of endless Vivaldi? Not a problem for le public français, for whom his top-20 Vivaldi albums make him bigger than Katherine Jenkins. Could les Brits, so far resistant to his charms, be tempted towards his new mélodie album Opium, the source of most of tonight's programme? 

The angel purity of his voice bathes these mostly familiar works in a clean blue light. Their earthbound sensuality seems supplanted by something more noble and ethereal. But it's a illusion. Jaroussky's seamless legato, submerged consonants and immaculate breath control create a sheeny surface, but he resists entanglement with the specifics of text. Indeed he's reluctant even to articulate the words clearly. This delight in sensual beauty is arguably inherent in the genre's aesthetic. But it meant he was rarely truly engaging. 

So much for the farewell to baroque - Jaroussky sounded at his most comfortable with the faux-Bach of Hahn's A Chloris. The Iberian fireworks of Nuit d'espagne and Chaminade's Sombrero neatly punctured the languid reverie, reminding us of Jaroussky's phenomenal coloratura skillz.

Pauline Viardot's Havanaise, the first of his two encores, evoked a more specific comparison - Cecilia Bartoli. This is her territory, no question. While Jaroussky probably wields the technical edge, la Ceci, I can't help feeling, would have crafted it with more colour and more joy.

A closing reprise of Chaminade's comic Sombrero gave Jaroussky the opportunity to slip down for a couple of lines into his natural baritone - surprisingly deep, surprisingly rough. I don't think he could have shocked us more if he'd dropped his trousers.

 

Jenufa - ENO's communist plot

Jenùfa - ENO, 19 June 2009

Thanks to ENO's generous ticket offer, I took in this last-but-one performance of Jenùfa for just £20, my bottom nestled in the unaccustomed luxury of a side stalls seat. With armrests! And legroom! The offer seems to have worked its magic - stalls and balcony (£5) were packed. Evidence that ENO really need to rethink their regular pricing, which sees front and centre seats selling like hot cakes however dire the production. Charging a bit more for these choice seats and a bit less for the others might help more cash-strapped punters to find their way to the Coliseum.

David Alden switches Jenùfa from a nineteenth century Moravian village to a grungy Eastern Bloc setting, popping in a few anachronistic details like a gleaming British motorbike. Like any update, it brings us closer to a world we can understand. But more importantly here, it makes it clear that the Kostelnička's crime is rooted in something more personal than the shame of a child born out of wedlock. This is an open-minded society where a couple of good-time girls (in nineties minis and crop tops) can mingle with the regular villagers. What drives the Kostelnička to infanticide here is not just social disapprobation, but the fear of divine judgement, honed by her own sad history. Her religious convictions border on the manic, underlined by an obsession with prayer and god-shop knick-knacks.

Michaela Martens, in a classic piece of only-in-teh-opera casting, was probably the youngest person on stage, so her singing was fresher and less matronly than the Kostelničkas we usually hear. Though formidable, she's a less domineering presence too. 

So the story inevitably focuses on Jenùfa herself. Her painful decline through rejection, disfigurement and betrayal was unerringly charted by Amanda Roocroft. Her singing may not be technically flawless, but dramatically her performance was utterly and heartbreakingly convincing. As the walls of the set brilliantly split asunder when the the Kostelnička's shocking crime is exposed, so Roocroft made us understand that Jenùfa's inner world is breaking apart.

The cast were directed with an attention to detail that means that every single character rings true, and not just while they're singing. Tom Randle's Števa may be vain and cowardly, but we can also see the fun-loving charm that attracts Jenùfa to him. Similarly, Robert Brubaker's first act Laca is an irritating oaf who thoroughly justifies Jenùfa's rejection - only at her lowest point does his steadfastness and sincerity show through.

Alden's only failing is his weakness for misplaced humour. Janáček's tale of infanticide and betrayal is fatally short on natural laughs. But superimposing a joke or two doesn't improve it. The Grandmother was beautifully played by Susan Gorton, but why does she need to be got up as a tubby Rosa Klebb? Similarly the Mayor and his wife - straight out of some DDR musical comedy - raised quite inappropriate giggles simply by walking on stage.

Musically, Eivind Gullberg Jensen's ENO debut was a total triumph. The orchestra sounded wonderful, possibly the best I've ever heard them. There was an inevitability to the tempos that made everything flow naturally, and Jensen made the difficult job of balancing solo voices against Janáček's dense orchestrations seem a piece of cake. Never once were singers overwhelmed. The chorus lost their way here and there. Like their fuzzy diction, it provided further evidence of a gradual slide in standards over the last couple of years.

ENO are increasingly supplanting hard-sell treasures like this and the recent Partenope with seat-filling tosh. It's a trend in desperate need of reversal, and one that a further prompt revival of this production would address.

 

 

 

 

Stephen Sondheim's etiquette tips

From Stephen Sondheim's The Frogs, here are Nathan Lane and Roger Bart with Invocation and Instructions to the Audience:

full lyrics on next page--------------->

Rene Pape - noch erkrankt

 

It appears the 'circulatory problems' which first derailed Rene Pape's Berlin Faust last month, then caused him to cancel his Parsifal in Berlin and London, have mutated into 'a very bad cold'.

So bad in fact that it's expected to last for at least the next two weeks. As Per Erik at Wagner Opera reports in more detail, he's now cancelled April's eagerly-anticipated new Lohengrin in Berlin.

His replacement is Kwangchul Youn - capable, experienced, respected - but would he do a gig in a gay disco? Or own up to smoking like a chimney? With Pape, it's not just about the voice, glorious though it is, it's the edge that his life brings to his art.

Whatever the truth behind the tangle of stories, we can only hope he'll be back on stage as soon as his health allows.

Royal Opera House Summer Season is on the way

Not long now till the Royal Opera House summer season opens for booking - 25 March for Friends and 28 April for the rest.

The highlight for me is Berg's Lulu, in a new production by Christof Loy, a director for whom drama is never confined to the stage. He famously (allegedly) sacked Tubby Voigt from his Ariadne in 2004, then walked out of his own production - La finta giardiniera - a couple of years later, citing Spinal Tap style "musical differences" with the conductor.

For his Lulu, newbie Agneta Eichenholz takes the title role, but more importantly, Klaus Florian Vogt makes his Covent Garden debut as Alwa. (Which means he'll be hanging around Covent Garden while Lohengrin's on, should either of the scheduled leads catch Netrebkoitis - we can but hope). A welcome return for Michael Volle (Dr Schön / Jack the Ripper) too. Pappano conducts.

Richard Eyre's beautifully coherent and underrated La traviata returns, this time with the cougarific pairing of Renee Fleming and Joseph Calleja in the leads. Will la Renee's unconcealable chemistry with Thomas Hampson (Germont) lend an 'interesting' dimension? Tony Pappano conducts this one too.

The hugely jolly if puddle-deep Leiser and Caurier Il barbiere di Siviglia gets an all-star cast this time round - Simon Keenlyside, Joyce DiDonato, Juan Diego Flórez, with the fabulous Alessandro Corbelli and the great Ferruccio Furlanetto the cream on top. More Pappano.

Bryn Terfel is the main attraction in Jonathan Kent's tourist-friendly Tosca. Marcello Giordani attempts to fill the shoes last worn by Jonas Kaufmann and Deborah Voigt displays her slimmed-down talents. Jacques Lacombe conducts.

I can't get too excited about Un ballo in maschera with Ramón Vargas and Angela Marambio, though I look forward to Anna Christy's ROH debut as Oscar.

The Mariinsky's summer Ring Cycle is also booking - no casting yet announced. I don't know whether that's good or bad news. But given that the company harbours everything from wet-behind-the-ears teens to world-class soloists, we can only hope for the best. Check out the ticket prices carefully before you book - there are very few cheap seats, even in the amphitheatre.

Gambling types may grab a ticket for Rolando Villazón's recital with Tony Pappano on 24 June.  'Mixed form' doesn't begin to describe Rolando's recent performances, but at least with the opportunity to pick and fine-tune his programme, we may see him at his best.

Finally, the Jette Parker Young Artists Summer Concert on 19 July is an opportunity to hear more from the company's walk-on specialists.

Nutella, Jim, but not as we know it

Sorry to drift off-topic, but some things are just too important not to share.

Via the temple to overpriced gastronomy that is the top floor of KaDeWe in Berlin, amidst the 1,300 cheeses, the Kobe beef, the endless shelves of herb-flecked vinegars and jewel-bright jams and genetically-perfect fresh-from-Rungis vegetables, I made an important discovery. 

Surprise - Germany's own cuisine has more to offer than pickled cabbage and lubricious pork products.

From delicatessen Grashoff of Bremen comes --- albino Nutella!

It's actually white chocolate cream with macadamia nuts, a luxuriously pure, concentrated form of both, and densely, artery-cloggingly delicious:

Clever Grashoff make another twelve varieties too - including dark chocolate cream with crystals of Himalayan salt:

and white chocolate cream with pistachios and bitter almonds:

Imagine my joy on returning to London to find I can restock this most essential provision online. Mainline Grashoff Central here.

your urges can be explained

From Reuters: A university researcher has spent three years hanging out at the opera so that he can charge his tix to the taxpayer tell the journal Qualitative Sociology why we love it so much.

And the answer is -

"Fans get hooked when they are still outsiders, before having an active apparatus to interpret the experience, or are thoroughly socialized in what constitutes the enjoyment and how they should decode it. Learning through interaction happens not at the beginning, as expected, but as the logical continuation that helps to shape the initial attraction."

mmmmm, whatevs. The translation, apparently: "fans described the intense attraction they felt the first time at the opera house as something explosive, which had intense and enduring physical effects, not dissimilar to love at first sight. Then the learning begins, with fans taking a number of years to discover how to truly appreciate opera fully."

 Further decryption by trained journalists here.

More flying Dutchmen - Haitink drops anchor at Barbican

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra / Haitink - Barbican, 14 March 2009

Mozart Symphony No 35 in D major 'Haffner'
Debussy La mer
Beethoven Symphony No 7 in A major

This concert was the first one of a two day flying visit from the Concertgebouw and their venerable Conductor Laureate Bernard Haitink, recently turned 80 and still going strong. Or strong-ish anyway. The steps up to the stage were clearly a bit of a trial, as they were for Thomas Quasthoff a few days ago. And they're not the first - isn't it about time the Barbican gave a little thought to stage access for its many less sprightly guests?

The opening Haffner Symphony was as efficient as you'd expect from the Concertgebouw, but rather charmless, and with that introspective quality that small ensembles marooned in the middle of the Barbican stage often have. I felt more like an eavesdropper than a spectator.

A sturdy and surprisingly hard-driven La Mer showed them at closer to their best, not a detail submerged beneath the rolling rhythms. And there are no weak links in this orchestra - the playing was as near flawless as you could hope for.

Haitink's take on Beethoven's Seventh was fleet and decisive. His snappy phrasing was warmed by the natural glow of the Concertgebouw strings and underpinned by that itchy beat. There was no pause for breath - even the usually monumental Allegretto was light-footed. As the band tumbled into the last movement at breakneck pace there was a palpable sense that some were struggling just to keep up. Somehow it held together. But that was the only point where Haitink's ideas felt imposed rather than organic, and his faithful observance of all the repetitions lent a perfect balance.

Despite an immediate standing ovation there was to be no ercore, but perhaps just as well - that Beethoven would have been an impossible act to follow.

    

Standing ovation for Bernard Haitink and the Concertgebouw: 

Mr Pappano turns it up to 11

Verdi's Requiem - Royal Opera House, 13 March 2009

Antonio Pappano followed Verdi's opening instruction for his Requiem - il più piano possible - to the letter. The hushed voices of the chorus hovered barely audible above the muted strings. I held my breath. It was the only time in 90 straight minutes I needed to. From where I sat near the front of the stalls, the ear-bludgeoning loudness of what followed masked everything, including what appeared to be a full-blown conversation between the elderly couple in front of me.

I suppose too much noise is better than not enough, but the range of dynamic nuance between f and fff permitted little subtlety. Marked only by a slight shift in volume, the Dies Irae lost its terror. Each time Sir Colin Davis launched into it with the LSO a few weeks ago, I nearly leapt out of my seat. Here I simply shrunk back a little further. The acoustic reflecting panels boxed around the orchestra on stage may have been rather more effective than the ROH realised.

For a reading leaning firmly to the secular, theatrical side, there were surprisingly few dramatic moments, though the trumpets blaring from the side boxes on high in the Tuba Mirum certainly grabbed the attention.

But that said, it was accurately played, perfectly co-ordinated, and there were plenty of compensations in the singing. 

Micaela Carosi, a late sub for Barbara Frittoli, looked understandably tentative. A few wobbles at the top aside, she sang confidently and firmly, though I couldn't find her any more engaging than I did in last year's Tosca.

It was almost enough that serial canceller Olga Borodina actually turned up for a change. Her voice was lush and firm, her manner coolly imposing. Worth the wait.

The otherwise reliable Piotr Beczala cracked on the opening note of the Hostias. (Quick, cue the career death announcement!) The most impressive solo singing came from the Russian bass Ildar Abdrazakov in his ROH debut, solid and dignified, but the immaculately prepared Royal Opera House chorus took home the vocal honours.

Olga Borodina:

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ParsiVal

LSO / Gergiev - Barbican, 12 March 2009

If Gergiev isn't truly fired up by what he's conducting, it's painfully obvious. The centrepiece of this LSO concert was the whole third act of Parsifal  - which I would guess on this showing doesn't do it for him. OK, it was efficiently played by the LSO. But a few neatly-crafted peaks aside, it was as tepid as a cup of Barbican tea. And a concert performance really needs drama, in some ways more than a staged version would. Wagner doesn't hand much out on a plate with Parsifal. The themes of suffering and redemption are buried deep beneath the surface. Gergiev fared so much better with the more overt and flamboyant expression of the Russian operas he presented here just a few weeks ago. With Barenboim's magnificent Berlin reading fresh in my memory, Gergiev's Parsifal paled in comparison.

There was one unmistakeable high point, and that was the brief contribution of Evgeny Nikitin as Amfortas. He has that wan, shagged-out Russian look - too many late nights, not enough fresh vegetables - and he looks as if he couldn't care less. But when he opened his mouth he was transformed, as if he'd been sitting there quietly simmering for an hour and was ready to boil over. Amfortas's anguish and guilt erupted in Nikitin's intense, yet finely-controlled performance.

Robert Holl, in the unfortunate position of replacing Rene Pape at short notice, gave a creditable account of Gurnemanz, earnest and human, though with a slight touch of the routine about it.

The Parsifal, Sergey Semishkur was a weak link. There's an interesting if not especially beautiful voice there - steel cored and bright - but it's not reined in effectively, and vibrato and dynamics were all over the place.

Some compensation for the disappointments was provided by the first half's Dutilleux cello concerto, Tout un monde lointain. LSO principal cellist Tim Hugh soloed with care and precision, matched by some exquisitely delicate playing from the orchestra.