Intermezzo

What's on this winter at the Royal Opera House

Barely a week into the new season at Covent Garden, and already we're being asked to whip out our Amexes again, this time for November to March productions. Booking opens this week for those who've paid for the privilege, and next month for the common herd.

Rolando Villazón fights through miles of curtain fabric to reprise his Covent Garden debut role in Les Contes d'Hoffmann. Antonio Pappano conducts the elaborate John Schlesinger production, inching ever closer to its sell-by date. Ekaterina Lekhina (Olympia) is a new name to me, but Gidon Saks, Kristine Jepson and Christine Rice promise sturdy support (photo: Clive Barda).

Rolando also submits to a live interview on 10 November. Space is limited, so early booking advised.

The other star vehicle of the season is a new Tim Albery production of Der fliegende Holländer with (cancelitis permitting) Bryn Terfel in the title role. Anja Kampe makes an overdue ROH debut as Senta. Tickets will be restricted to two per customer for this one.

Britten's The Beggar's Opera pops up in the Linbury Studio. The new production by Justin Way (not by conductor Richard Hickox as the website currently claims - there are limits to his talents) is likely to be popular, so again, early booking advised. The excellent and underused Tom Randle is Macheath.

Also to the Linbury comes the long-overdue London debut of George Benjamin's highly-praised ("the most important new opera of the past 25 years") mini-opera Into the Little Hill , coupled with Harrison Birtwistle's Down by the Greenwood Side. The cast includes Susan Bickley and Claire Booth.

The brilliant Willy Decker production of Korngold's Die tote Stadt that I caught in Vienna finally makes its way to London.  Unfortunately Klaus Florian Vogt and Angela Denoke aren't coming with it, but Stephen Gould and Nadja Michael should be a more than passable substitute. And there's the bonus of Gerald Finley in the smaller role of Frank.

David McVicar's t1ts'n'todgers Rigoletto returns with indecent haste. Francesco Meli, Leo Nucci, Ekaterina Siurina and Kurt Rydl are amongst the few cast members who get to keep their clothes on.

Elektra isn't illuminated by Charles Edwards's jumbled production, but with Mark Elder in the pit and a cast that includes Susan Bullock, Anne Schwanewilms, Jane Henschel and Johan Reuter it should at least push some musical buttons.

Even I can't get excited about yet another Turandot revival, but include it for the sake of completeness.

On the ballet side, I have to recommend the triple bill The Seven Deadly Sins / Carmen / DGV: Danse à grande vitesse, especially for the first of these and its wonderful music. Chanteuse Martha Wainwright returns to sing Weill's evocative music, and Zenaida Yanowsky is her dancing doppelganger (photo: John Ross).

Britten and Pears - "we like a lot of carrots"

Another one from the home of Sir Colin Davis's kebab recipe, Adrian Ball's 1971 Food of Love: The Favourite Feasts of World's Music-Makers.

The recipes contributed by the long list of musicians vary so much in style and detail that I can only think they were included pretty much as written, with minimal editing.

Claudio Arrau, at the time possibly the greatest living pianist, offers an extravagantly concocted Lobster Bisque. 

At the other end of the scale, a joint contribution from Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears combines the unforgotten proscriptions of rationing with the Englishman's enduring fondness for nursery food. In other words, how English food earned its bad name.

Here is their starter, Miss Hudson's Soup:

"Take the bone of a good English sirloin (or any bones or chicken carcase) a great deal of onions, celery and carrots, varying in emphasis according to preference of taste. (We like a lot of carrots.) Cover with water in a deep pot, and simmer for three hours. Cool, remove fat, strain and season."

They follow with Soles Red House (fried breaded soles) and Dark Treacle Jelly, and accompany with "the Wine Society's Chablis".

Like many of the book's contributors, when asked to suggest music for the meal, they responded "none of course".

All the better to savour those carrots.

Daniel Harding's matching Brahms and trousers

Midori/LSO/Harding  - Barbican, 3 and 6 April 2008

The LSO have gone Midori-mad this spring. These two concerts, with a violin concerto apiece, formed part of a whole series of events built around Midori (concert programme here).

There's no doubt that Midori is a fantastic ambassador for the violin, for classical music, for the arts generally. As a performer, I'm less convinced. Midori's technical control is impeccable, but in both the Tchaikovsky concerto of the first night and the Britten of the second, it smothered any spontaneity. The jarring brutality superimposed on the finale of the Tchaikovsky was no substitute. Elsewhere, Midori's self-effacing charm ultimately frustrated - it's not enough just to play louder than the rest of the guys. I longed for a bit of her character to peep through.

The first concert's closer, Stravinsky's Firebird Suite, was a test the LSO passed with flying colours. All soloists, especially the horn and flute, were superb. Daniel Harding sustained the narrative drive and vitality without compromising the rich tapestry of orchestral texture.  He's a storyteller, for me consistently impressive in opera if more varied elsewhere, and this is the sort of thing that shows him at his best.

The second concert ended with a curiously deflated reading of Brahms'  2nd Symphony. Recalling Harding's idiosyncratic and rather wonderful Brahms 4 here with the LSO a couple of years ago, I'd hoped for the same sort of verve and clarity. It wasn't laden with the sort of dull gravitas that so often makes Brahms a bore, but it hardly sparkled either, meandering shapelessly along. Rather like Harding's mismatched suit, with its green-black jacket and red-black trousers (yes, black comes in different shades) it passed muster at a glance, but the parts didn't quite add up to a satisfying whole.

Slipped unexpectedly in front of the first concert was a new five minute piece by Edward Rushton called Everything goes so Fast. Why the LSO don't pre-announce their new music 'extras' or include them in the concert programme is beyond me. It confuses the audience, denies young composers valuable publicity, and, worst, makes it look as if the LSO is ashamed to be connected with the work it performs. Big mistake. Anyway, the idea in this particular piece, a process of textural decay, seemed too slender to sustain a full five minutes' exploration, so subtle that it was almost imperceptible, and undermined rather than underlined by the rhythmic monotony. Perhaps it looked better on paper. To the ear it sounded more like a work in progress than the finished article.

Spring springs for Daniel Harding

LSO/Harding - Barbican, 30 March 2008

The logic of a programme which pairs Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No 2 with Britten's Spring Symphony eludes me.

And hasn't Gergiev given us plenty of Prokofiev with the LSO recently anyway? I don't understand the implications of Daniel Harding sticking his flag in that territory too. But whatevs.

The soloist in the Prokofiev was Viktoria Mullova, supercool in zebra print dress over black leggings and flat ankle boots. Her performance was far from routine, and never less than accomplished, but somehow it failed to catch fire. The same could be said of the orchestra's response, despite its balance and refinement. Is it really that insubstantial a work, or did it just sound that way? Perhaps Harding just wanted to avoid vulgarity, but its sweet-centred lyricism came across as chocolate boxy.

Britten's Spring Symphony was far more satisfying, not to mentioned well timed. With the clocks going forward in the morning, and (finally) some coat-ditching weather, it really did feel like the first day of spring.

The Spring Symphony is unusual in demanding a full orchestra, then giving it remarkably little to do for most of the time. Vocal music dominates, and the various English poems are often lightly orchestrated or not at all.

The London Symphony Chorus sparkled in the many a cappella choral sections, as did the score-free and note-perfect Tiffin Boys' Choir. The soloists, Susan Gritton, Sarah Connolly and Mark Padmore, radiated the joys of spring - or perhaps just a long Sunday lie-in and a good lunch. Freshness and charm pervaded throughout. Harding deftly wove together the awkward open textures, skilfully building the tension before releasing the work's final explosion. Spring at last.

All hands on deck - Billy Budd at the Barbican

Billy Budd - LSO/Harding - Barbican, 9 December 2007

The huge crew of this Billy Budd just about squeezed on to the Barbican stage with the help of a bit of sophisticated musical chairs. With every elbow tightly choreographed, there wasn't room to even think about any staging. Just a hint of costuming - the officers sported full frack and the seamen all-black - though the significance of Gidon Saks's lurex tee and winklepickers is anybody's guess.

The sounds of the sea were gloriously evoked by Daniel Harding and the LSO. Here Britten brings symphonic-scale resources to a minutely-embroidered chamber orchestration. Crashing waves, rolling shanties, the thunder of battle exploded into life, sometimes ear-splittingly so. fff-ing loud does seem to be Harding's default volume, but here it seemed utterly appropriate, wrong-but-right, and never drowned the details. Nor the singers -- a few odd moments aside, Harding cleared a generous path for them.

This was the first (or the second if you count an identical performance two nights earlier) of a series of Barbican concerts fronted by Ian Bostridge, and it was also his first outing as Captain Vere. Vere's agonising choice between personal morality and public duty was laid out painfully and vividly, but his public face was less clearly sketched. Indeed, Bostridge seemed completely disinterested in presenting any kind of external characterisation, as if dissection was an adequate substitute for portraiture. But, dramatic considerations aside, his singing was flawless, lyrical, at times heartstoppingly beautiful.

Maybe I've been spoiled by recollections of Simon Keenlyside tackling Billy Budd, but I found Nathan Gunn was a little colourless in the title role, with more charm than real charisma. He improved as the night went on though, and managed in his dawn song (aided by a haunting piccolo solo) to be truly touching and not simply sentimental.

Gidon Saks, the burly, scary Claggart was imposing of voice and demeanour, convincing from head to toe. Brooding malevolence was tempered with flashes of the vulnerability that drives his persecution of Billy. It was a commanding performance, hinting that what lay inside Claggart was too monstrous to contemplate. Absolute perfection.

And the many smaller roles were more than adequately filled. Matthew Best as Dansker, Andrew Kennedy as Novice, Andrew Tortise as Squeak and Alasdair Elliot as Red Whiskers were all particularly impressive, but really, there were no disappointments amongst the soloists at all.

The London Symphony Chorus sailed on somewhat rougher seas, making a splendid job of many of their moments, especially the big shanties, but falling apart rather here and there. I had the impression a couple more rehearsals might have helped.

The whole thing was recorded for future release by EMI -- if they can edit out the first act coughfest it should be a remarkable recording.

Rattle and Harding go head to head in Friday night battle

"Anyone with open ears is going to be stunned by the overwhelming beauty of the piece"

says Simon Rattle of Schumann's super-rare oratorio Das Paradies und die Peri, which he brings to the Royal Festival Hall this Friday, December 7.

Though he hedges his bets with
"to our very puritanical, middle-European ears, people think this is simply too beautiful, the dissonances are too extraordinary. People have a problem with ecstatic music".

He's gathered a fantastic cast - Bernarda Fink, Sally Matthews, Kate Royal, Mark Padmore and David Wilson Johnson - so he may just prove himself wrong there.

Same night, different place, the Barbican offers stiff competition with the gay jinks of Britten's Billy Budd.

But there will be no rigging, no jigging and definitely no frigging on Captain Daniel Harding's ship - it's a concert version. Which means (I am presuming) we will have the rare privilege of seeing Nathan Gunn (in the title role) with his shirt on. Ian Bostridge and Gidon Saks (a late replacement for the sick John Relyea) fill the other principal roles, but the casting is chiefly interesting for the quality it brings to the smaller parts - Matthew Rose, Andrew Kennedy, Darren Jeffery, Andrew Staples and Roderick Williams to name just a few.

Fortunately an agonising decision can be averted by opting for the repeat of Billy Budd on Sunday 9 December.

For anyone interested in finding out more about the Schumann, Misha Donat leads a talk on Thursday 6 December at 6pm in the Sunley Pavilion of the Royal Festival Hall. Though here there's no way round the fixture clash with the first night of the Royal Opera House's Parsifal, so I'll be giving it a miss.

ENO end the season with a good Screw

The Turn of the Screw - ENO, 1 December 2007

At last something decent from ENO. They score on all fronts with this coherent, gripping and musically potent interpretation of Britten's opera. The unsettling drama is played out in a spare, monochromatic, Victorian setting which immediately roots it in the time of Henry James's original tale. The grubby glass panels creaking across the stage and dead leaves fluttering underfoot suggest neglect and decay. Intimacy and an unknown beyond are simultaneously evoked by bathing the corners of the huge Coliseum stage in darkest shadow.

Britten was repeatedly attracted to ambiguity, to texts which lack a clear resolution. Director David McVicar preserves this aspect to some extent. He doesn't do absolutely all the audience's thinking -- crucially, he never clarifies whether the whole drama is taking place in the Governess's head, though heavy hints are dropped. But he decides for us if and when the ghostly Quint and Jessel are visible to the other characters, and why -- at one point contradicting both text and music when he seats Miss Jessel at the Governess's desk while Britten has her slowly approaching it. And McVicar is much more blatantly assured than Britten could ever have dared to be about the possible paedophilic element underlying the work -- he even has the child Miles plant a suggestive kiss on the Governess's lips as he sings "I am bad aren't I" at the end of the first act.

The corruption of the children is boldly underlined by the clever use of one of those grotesquely human Victorian wax dolls -- a toy disturbingly abused by the children as they first dress it in a pig mask, then bury it furiously beneath the leaves. And the restless inching-around of the same furniture from scene to scene in same basic set neatly underscores Britten's musical structure of theme and variations.

Musically, everything worked well, starting with Garry Walker's sensitive and detailed orchestral contribution. Rebecca Evans was a fluttery and neurotic Governess, exquisitely lyrical, confounded by the alarmingly adult Miles of fourteen year old Jacob Moriarty. Both Jacob and Nazan Fikret (Flora) were shockingly good, easily a match for the rest of the cast in vocal and dramatic ability. And casting these parts with slightly older children than normal allows them to display a knowingness entirely in keeping with McVicar's ideas.

Timothy Robinson played Quint with subdued but ever present menace. His singing was resolute, powerful, and in places surprisingly Pears-like. The sensual harshness of Cheryl Barker's Miss Jessel made her more accomplice than victim, and her voice took on a firm, almost strident edge. Ann Murray brought together vocal steel and feather lightness in her chilly and assured Mrs Grose.

ENO may struggle in some areas, but like their last couple of Britten productions, Death in Venice and Billy Budd, this could be counted pretty much a total success. And it's not audience poison either - I would guess the Coliseum was at least 90% full on my visit. Something for the schedulers to think about? 

   

Christine Brewer's Wigmore opener kicks Proms into touch

Christine Brewer/Roger Vignoles - Wigmore Hall, 8 September 2007

The opening night of the Wigmore Hall season is cunningly scheduled to provide a welcome alternative to the last night of the Proms. The honour this season went to soprano Christine Brewer, a Wigmore Hall favourite.

In a concert recorded for later release in the Wigmore Live series, she married a familiar first half - Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder and Wolf's 4 Mignon Lieder - with some less well-known works in the second - Britten's Cabaret songs and John Carter's Cantata.

Coming on in a glamorous cerulean satin dress topped with a floral print kimono and incongruously battered black Queen Mother shoes, she delivered a predictably immaculate performance.

Her powerful voice is even across its whole range, her diction is clear but never mannered, her dynamics perfectly controlled, her tone flexible and intelligently deployed. And she makes it all seem so easy, so natural, even her breathing seems to be by some imperceptible osmosis.

In the Wagner I sensed her attention was more focused on line than on individual words, and her natural warmth substituted for a more specific engagement. Dramatic intensity was clearly not to form a part of tonight's performance. But the sublime Goethe poetry of the Wolf songs brought more pointed colouring to the text. Roger Vignoles, particularly in the tricky Wolf, proved an able and sensitive partner on the piano, the perfect foil.

Incidentally, this night was also the concert debut of the new Wigmore Hall piano, a Steinway selected with the aid (puzzlingly) of András Schiff, undoubtedly expert, but a pianist so attached to Bosendorfer he may never use the new acquisition. It seems to have a brighter, brasher tone than its predecessor, but that could simply be my imagination.

For her second half, emphasising the switch to a very different repertoire, Brewer dropped the gown and went for an art teacher look - black top and pants, complemented with a colourful braid-trimmed kimono.

The Britten/Auden Cabaret songs, as the title hints, are far from characteristic Britten, with their hints of Porter and Weill. The first one in the set of four, Calypso, was my only moment of doubt in the evening. Brewer, wavering between two irreconcilable styles, swung from singing the high notes to belting the lower lying passages. But it was largely redeemed by her wicked humour and a couple of piercing taxi-whistles she slipped in.

In the other songs of this set, her American accent and sense of humour created a warmth and ease that often eludes classically-trained singers in this sort of repertoire.

The Cantata she ended with is a classical setting of four spirituals - Peter go ring dem bells, Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, Let us break bread together, and Ride on King Jesus - by the little-known African-American composer John Carter. Brewer again sang these with a radiant born-to-it ease and great sensitivity, though I am not sure Carter's rather fussy, laboured arrangements do the exquisite simplicity of these great songs any favours.

A reception made even more enthusiastic by the free wine offered to all in the interval drew three encores, Hall Johnson's arrangement of I've heard of a city called heaven, Strauss's Ich liebe dich, and last, Mira, from Bob Merrill's musical Carnival! With its uncomplicated down-home warmth, it was not hard to see why it's Brewer's favourite song.

Coming up this autumn - Opera in London

Plenty going on of course at the Royal Opera House this autumn, and here's what's happening elsewhere in London.

English National Opera kick off their season at the end of September with a new Carmen. They follow with a revival of Nicholas Hytner's charming Magic Flute, Kate Royal and Lucy Crowe in a new production of Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppea directed by Chen Shi-Zheng, a Zandra Rhodes-designed Aida from Houston Grand Opera and a David McVicar Turn of the Screw.

Sadler's Wells once again play host to a few one-offs and touring productions. Sarah Tynan features in a pair of one-act operas by Elisabeth Maconchy on 13 to 17 November. She's back on 26 November for the London premiere of a new James McMillan opera for WNO, The Sacrifice, inspired by ancient Welsh folktales. Glyndebourne on tour visit Sadler's Wells in December with Albert Herring, Macbeth (recently prommed too) and L'Elisir d'Amore.

English Touring Opera hit Hackney Empire on 12 October with Handel's Teseo followed by Country Matters, an English-language version of Haydn's L'Infidelta Delusa on 13 October. They're back on 25 October with Bridgetower, a new jazz opera by Julian Joseph. ETO may not have the star names or the big budgets, but they still manage to conjure up some high quality productions at very reasonable prices, so these will definitely be on my list.

Some musical muppetry for the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, where Purcell's Dido and Aeneas "is expanded and reinvigorated by Director Tim Carroll, who weaves Marlowe's play of the same events into the opera, while the action is illuminated by a cast of magical marionettes". Two performances, on 13 and 14 October (note ETO fixture clash).

And the OAE are back for a rare concert performance of Schumann's Das Paradies und die Peri in the Royal Festival Hall on 7 December. "Not an opera" according to Schumann, who titled it a 'poem' and described it as "not for the chapel, but rather for cheerful folk." Cheerful folk joining the OAE include Simon Rattle and a solid cast of Bernarda Fink, Sally Matthews, Kate Royal and Mark Padmore.

Again the OAE have a schedule overlap, this time with the Barbican's Billy Budd on 7 and 9 December, featuring Nathan Gunn as Billy and Ian Bostridge. In sharp contrast to the Royal Festival Hall's increasingly greedy ticket prices, this is a great bargain, with the top price just £30 and loads of balcony seats at £6 and £12.

The Barbican also hosts Les Arts Florissants on 24 October with Landi's Il Sant'Alessio, featuring Philippe Jaroussky in the title role.

Back at the Royal Festival Hall, the LPO have secured the services of the radiant Patrizia Ciofi for a concert performance of Bellini's rarely-heard La Straniera on 3 November .

And the LPO present another concert performance on 21 November, this time the UK premiere of Korngold's Das Wunder der Heliane. Tickets are already getting thin for this. For the Korngold-ignorant (raises hand) there's a free talk beforehand by Jessica Duchen.