Intermezzo

Anna Nicole ( . Y . ) premiere - have the Royal Opera House boobed?

Anna Nicole - Royal Opera House, 17 February 2011 (world premiere)

After weeks of sustained hype, the like of which the Royal Opera House has never seen, the most impressive thing about the Anna Nicole show is its polish.

Richard Jones's splashy, cartoonish production is Vegas-perfect. It catches the eye and tells the story, in a series of tightly-focussed interviews to camera. The orchestra plays immaculately (so far as I could tell on a first-time listen) for Pappano and the cast is unsurpassable from top to bottom.

Pappano fishes for pearls

Les pêcheurs de perles - Royal Opera House, 4 October 2010

 

Even though the orchestra was on the stage instead of in the pit, Covent Garden felt like a righted ship last night. Following a lacklustre opening month in London with the best part of the ROH touring Japan, there returned a deeply satisfying sense of business as usual. Even though this was only a concert performance, and a less than perfect one at that, Pappano’s hand on the tiller lent an energy and sense of purpose so far absent.

Gerald Finley to marry Katherine Jenkins's agent

Look! She's already got the hat!

Katherine Jenkins's agent Heulwen Keyte is to marry awesome super-baritone Gerald Finley, the Telegraph announced today.

Congratulations to the happy couple, and be careful who you pick as bridesmaid.

Otello stile inglese

Otello - LSO / Davis - Barbican, 3 December 2009

You sneeze, you lose. With Torsten Kerl off sick, the pages of lastminutetenor.com yielded Simon O'Neill. Not the most obvious choice of Otello, even for a concert performance like this one. Indeed you could scour the big Wagnerian's resume and find no mention of Verdi whatsoever. But his bright, hard edged voice proved an excellent fit, and his unfamiliarity with the score was barely noticeable. Now that the role is associated more with darker baritonal tenors like Domingo, the clarity and ease of O'Neill's thrilling top notes hinted at a long-gone golden age. The short-fused Moor's temper flashes perhaps didn't spark quickly enough, but it was impossible not to be moved by Otello's final agonised moments.

The rest of the casting was just as brave, and nearly as successful. The only authentic Italian in the cast was Eufemia Tufano, an understated Emilia. Desdemona's purity and incorruptibility were perfectly evoked in the unearthly silvery soprano of Anne Schwanewilms, even if her delivery was some distance north of Italianate. The London Symphony Chorus trumped her for sheer incomprehensibility though - I didn't catch one single word of their spirited singing all night.

Gerald Finley's intelligently drawn Iago schemed with devious charm. But ultimately he lacks the fundamental heft for this role, as even a golden voice spinning meticulously-crafted phrases cannot conceal. Bantamweight tenors Allan Clayton and Ben Johnson were effective as Cassio and Roderigo, and a trio of magnificent basses - Alexander Tsymbalyuk, Matthew Rose and Lukas Jakobski - rounded off the ensemble. 

Sir Colin Davis, we were informed before the concert, has just been awarded the Queen's Medal for Music. Typically, he was keener to get on with the show than acknowledge the predictable ovation. His hard-driven first act lacked a degree of dramatic nuance - when everything's loud, fast and exciting, perversely, nothing is. But with the excess fuel burned off, a more measured approach proved infinitely more compelling. The second half in particular simmered and glowed, sweeping into blazing climaxes, yet eggshell-delicate beneath Desdemona's beautiful Willow Song. A rapturous intensity revealed so many details I'd never noticed before.

A recording will be stitched together from this performance and the repeat on 6 December. Not a purist's Otello perhaps but a vivid reminder that at 82, Sir Colin Davis is still on top of his game.

 

*****   more photos on next page   *****