Intermezzo

Phaedra - Henze's latest opera gets its UK premiere

Phaedra - Barbican, 17 January 2010

Life imitated art in the most extraordinary and devastating way possible while Hans Werner Henze was writing Phaedra. Having dispatched his hero, Hippolytus, to the great beyond at the end of Act I, Henze himself was struck down with a mysterious, paralysing illness. For two months friends arrived at his bedside to pay their final farewells to the great composer. Then, just as suddenly and mysteriously as it began, the illness ended. Henze was on his feet again and ready to compose the second and final act - appropriately enough, the resuscitation and rebirth of Hippolytus.

The difference between the two acts – performed without a break at the Barbican – is marked. The first, mostly atonal, sets a brutally elegant retelling of the Phaedra myth in Christian Lehnert's strange and elliptical poetry. The second offers a dreamy, often rapturous vision of an afterlife. Resurrected by the goddess Artemis, Hippolytus is caged and renamed. He can’t remember his earlier life, but even so, Phaedra can’t lure him into the Underworld. Finally the Minotaur – until then a subliminal presence – actually appears, and Hippolytus is transformed into the King of the Forest (an echo of the Fourth Symphony, heard the day before).

Is Hippolytus really alive again, or is this a dream  - or perhaps a wishful memory? The libretto doesn’t provide easy answers, and Henze resists a musical resolution. With just 23 musicians, and only four of them strings, he alternates scalding atonal density with yearning glimpses of delicate and nostalgic tonality.

The five singers, scoreless, circled the tightly-packed Ensemble Modern in the centre of the stage, but their movement did little to elucidate the cryptic tale. This performance, the UK’s first, brought together the cast from 2007’s Berlin premiere. John Mark Ainsley, looking more Henze-like the older he gets, sang the part of Hippolytus with great beauty and a sensitive ear for text. That Artemis was portrayed by a man, countertenor Axel Köhler, seemed almost irrelevant. Köhler’s rich, firm tone disabused any notions of camp. Maria Riccarda Wesseling’s Phaedra was vivid and human, Marlis Petersen’s Aphrodite exquisitely sung.

All the vocal writing is very testing in terms of range and coloratura, so it's to all the cast's credit that it never sounded less than easy. The multi-instrumentalists of the Ensemble Modern too made light work of a challenging score which called for a host of rumbling giants like the bass trombone, bass clarinet and even the anaconda-shaped contrabass clarinet.

Perhaps they were all encouraged to give that extra ounce more by the beatific presence of Henze himself, concluding his weekend in London with a standing ovation that perhaps acknowledged not just the evening's performance but everything he's given to music over the years.

yes, that IS you-know-who's head:

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Unto ENO a turkey is born and its name is Messiah

Messiah - English National Opera, 27 November 2009

There are more Messiahs than brussels sprouts around at this time of year, so quite why ENO felt the need to offer us yet another one is beyond me. For a company struggling with the recession it doesn't make financial sense either. Who, aficionados aside, wants more than one Messiah per annum? And who wants to fork out up to £90 at the Coliseum when you can pay under half that elsewhere? Unlike its competitors this one is of course staged. But as Handel neither intended the magic of theatre to illuminate his artistry, nor wrote his music to accommodate such impertinence, it's an uphill struggle for Deborah Warner to make any sense of it.

Of course she fails dismally. The singers, in some artful version of their own clothes (Moritz Junge is credited as costume designer) play ordinary people doing ordinary stuff like sleeping, ironing, watching telly and loafing about. Presumably by such humble devices we are supposed to see the humanity and universality of the biblical messages. Tourists may well be intrigued by this glimpse into the everyday life of their host city, but personally I felt patronised and bored. And littering the stage with cute tots might work for the older section of the audience, but perhaps Warner doesn't realise many visit the theatre precisely to escape from that sort of thing. Some excruciatingly obvious acting-out of the birth, nativity and scourging added precisely nothing to the music.

Worse still were the attempts at narrative overlay. What makes Messiah so impossible to stage is the illustrative, discontinuous nature of the texts. Slapping on a story line where it doesn't fit just emphasises the problem. The worst culprit was a Thou shall break them made silly and ironic in order to accommodate the vicar's picnic Hallelujah Chorus which followed. One of the greatest moments in the whole work, vandalised.

The great shame was the amount of time and skill invested in this flawed conception. Elegant, minimal sets, atmospheric lighting and stunning back-projected paintings and cityscapes were only part of it. There was some fine if generally underprojected singing from the soloists Sophie Bevan, Catherine Wyn Rogers, John Mark Ainsley and Brindley Sherratt. Laurence Cummings chose stately tempos which didn't flatter the orchestra's contribution, but a fine balance was struck between period style and the need to fill the vast Coliseum. The chorus, amazingly, made every single word clear, though their sound was top-heavy and lacking in enthusiasm. I wonder why.

Still, Deborah Warner has succeeded in bringing a little festive cheer to the terminally grumpy, which must be some kind of achievement.

one director and one smart kid:

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Surreality Show - ENO's Partenope

Partenope - English National Opera, 9 October 2008

  

Christopher Alden's new ENO production of Handel's Partenope is set in Jazz Age Paris and inspired by the surrealist photography of Man Ray. The opening scene though is more like a creepy echo of Michael Powell's Peeping Tom, as John Mark Ainsley prowls the empty stage with camera at the ready. In a multi-layered visual reference, he's got up like one Man Ray subject, Sergei Eisenstein, disguised as another, André Breton. 

Cripes. I thought we might be in for a brain-taxing evening of the type usually restricted to German opera houses, but fortunately we were soon back on the solidly British ground of transvestism, toilet jokes and repressed sexual desire.

Handel sets Queen Partenope's romantic intrigues against a background of war, but Alden sidesteps this. The only shots come from Ainsley's ever-present camera, the only battles are fought on the card table.

Instead he concentrates on the games of deception and seduction played by Partenope's arty, languid 'court', and gradually unravelled by the all-seeing eye of Ainsley's camera. Only the lens can piece together the truth, in the form of Man Ray's famous portrait of Lee Miller (NSFW) assembled painstakingly, nip by nip, in giant pixels as the opera progresses. Would Handel recognise this? It may send some fans running (there were a few boos for Alden at the end) but it sits neatly with the libretto and the music - some minutely-detailed stage business underlining this.

It's tempered with some fine gags, the brittle world of the Paris surrealists humanised by Wodehousian bumbling and snifter-fuelled silliness. Despite its three hours, it rarely dragged, and moments of sheer wtf were few and far between.

Of the singers, only Iestyn Davies as Armindo was consistently excellent. He has a secure, honeyed tone, every note faultlessly placed, and his Keatonesque slapstick as Partenope's timid, fumbling suitor was delightfully judged.

Everyone else took a while to hit their mark vocally. Rosemary Joshua was unwaveringly strong in the Nancy Cunard-styled title role, commanding yet agile through her tricky runs.

Christine Rice and Patricia Bardon were frighteningly convincing as the gender bending couple Arsace (male) and Rosmira (female in temporary male disguise), their mutual baiting and spats the emotional core of this production.

Emilio is a smallish part that seemed bigger in this production with John Mark Ainsley constantly creeping around the set, the silent observer. It was a performance of two halves, only the second in total command of intonation, but he compensated for the hesitant vocal start with his enormous presence and well-judged comic timing.

I wasn't hugely impressed by the lacklustre conducting of Christian Curnyn, who substituted speed for any real sense of vigour. It was passable enough, but needed more room to breathe.

Sets and costumes were fabulous, and some praise must also go to the (uncredited) make up team, who enhanced the gender confusion by turning everyone except Ainsley into the image of a Bloomsbury set dyke.

Coming after a run of tawdry musicals and knackered revivals, this shows ENO doing best what it should do best, namely English opera. Yup, even if it was written in Italian. In the back of the net.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Production photos: Catherine Ashmore; Curtain call photos: intermezzo.typepad.com

Too much Poulenc, not enough pipi

Lisa Milne/John Mark Ainsley/Malcolm Martineau - Wigmore Hall, 9 April 2008

Poulenc Cinq poemes de Paul Eluard; Métamorphoses; Le Portrait; Nuage; Chanson de Porcelaine; Mais Mourir; Fiançailles pour rire; Le fraîcheur et le feu   
Heggie Friendly Persuasions
Messiaen 'Trois melodies': Pourquoi; Le sourire; La fiancée perdue
Honegger Saluste du Bartas - 6 Villanelles 
Rosenthal Four songs from 'Chansons de Monsieur Bleu': Quat' et trois sept, L'éléphant du jardin des plantes; Grammaire; La souris d'Angleterre

The title of this recital, 'Poulenc and French tradition', steeled me for its Poulenc-stuffed first half. Even so, with nearly an hour of material packed in, it all got a bit relentless well before the end. No wonder Poulenc song recordings tend to toss in a little Fauré or Debussy for leavening.

This is no reflection on the meticulously prepared singers. The lustrous Lisa Milne, performing without a score, fumbled the odd line, but such is her command of the French language she could flannel it like a native. John Mark Ainsley's pronounciation wasn't quite as idiomatic, but a couple of vowels aside it was spot-on, and he gave the work the sort of thoughtful, intelligent performance it merited.

Poulenc's Louise de Vilmorin settings Fiançailles pour rire lent Lisa Milne the opportunity for some emotional exploration. But the portions of elliptical Éluard surrealism which surrounded it were oversized, and the jumble of word play eventually dragged.

The second half began with a change of pace which might have sat better as a breather in the first half. It was the premiere of Jake Heggie's Friendly Persuasions, four songs (in English) about friends of Poulenc. Endearingly retro and unmistakeably American, it's maybe too much of a Broadway/Poulenc pastiche to carry any real weight, but it was John Mark Ainsley's best performance of the night, measured and just the right side of intense, and the words seemed anything but trite.

In this année Messiaen, the three early songs performed by Lisa Milne may not be masterpieces, but they were fascinating in demonstrating many of his later characteristics in embryonic form. And Saluste du Bartas, winningly displayed by Ainsley, was a bit of a discovery too, showing another side to the often dour Honegger in its sparkling melodies and imaginative harmonies.

The last part of the recital was perhaps the slightest, but definitely the most entertaining. For Manuel Rosenthal's childish Chansons de Monsieur Bleu, John Mark Ainsley landed a couple of epic tonguetwisters perfectly, and Lisa Milne, explaining the éléphant's accident in his culotte, clearly relished the opportunity to make pipi on the stage of the Wigmore Hall, even if only verbally.

Some of the songs were performed for Radio 3 prior to the recital - available for another couple of days here. And it looked as if the whole thing was being recorded anyway, so I'm guessing it may turn up on Radio 3 at some point in the future.

Death in Underpants - Handel's Tamerlano in Munich

Tamerlano - Bayerische Staatsoper, Nationaltheater, Munich, 24 March 2008

Munich normally sticks to the tried and tested team of David Alden and Ivor Bolton for its much-praised Handel operas. For their new Tamerlano, they stuck with Bolton for the conducting, but brought in Pierre Audi to direct, in a production first aired in Sweden.

I wouldn't dare go so far as to say Handel can be boring. But let's just say, in Handel's more diffuse or less than riveting moments, Alden's ability to expound clearly on a point or whip the attention back to the story comes in handy. Here, in Audi's austere yet surprisingly opaque production, even the bare bones of the story suffer.

The defeated Bajazet and his daughter Asteria are captured and held by Tamerlano, who decides he'd rather marry Asteria than his betrothed, Irene. But Asteria and Tamerlano's ally, Andronico, are secretly in love. Asteria's continual refusals prompt Tamerlano to order that she is raped by his slaves. So Bajazet commits suicide, Andronico offers to kill himself too, Tamerlano sees the error of his ways, and all pair off happily, Andronico with Asteria, Tamerlano with Irene.

In Audi's bleak setting, breeched and corseted figures skid around some sort of efficiently-burgled Nordic ballroom. The obligations imposed by defeat and captivity aren't addressed. Bajazet and Asteria seem any other members of this odd society. Courtly manners are everything. There's nothing to suggest Tamerlano's whims are actually enforceable demands. His threats of death and torture seem merely absurd posturing.

When a solitary chair is eventually planted on the bare floorboards, it becomes a beacon of hope for some real action that never materialises. Despite an inordinate amount of rolling and crawling round the floor, there is fundamentally little more to look at than a concert performance. The demands of the da capo arias must be met musically alone - there is nothing in the staging to reinforce the repetition and development.

It's hugely to the credit of the singers, and the reliably refined conducting of Ivor Bolton, that they manage to drag anything out of this torpor. David Daniels played Tamerlano with a piratical twinkle and a bundle of energy, more of an impetuous commander than a ruthless villain, but such were the limits of the production.

John Mark Ainsley had the fearlessness to infuse even the most rapid of coloratura with an astonishing range of expression. His decrepit elderly Bajazet was so physically convincing I could see the surprise in the faces of some audience members as he bounded around like any normal 40-something at the curtain call. This production's Unterhosemoment came in his death scene - a simple touch which underlined Bajazet's age and frailty and so magnified Tamerlano's cruelty. Another few ideas like that would have shaped the production quite differently.

Sarah Fox's Asteria got some of the most beautiful arias in the opera, Se non mi vuol amar and Cor di padre, delivered in a silvery-pure ribbon of liquid sound. Needs to watch how low she bows in a tight corset though >>>>>

Maite Beaumont's voice, deep and velvety as a pint of Guinness, is almost a shock on first hearing. Her Irene had plenty of wit, spirit and defiance, and in Par che mi nasca in seno an arrestingly ample tone coupled with meticulous phrasing.

Mary-Ellen Nesi's Andronico, handsome in looks and voice, and Vito Priante's resonant Leone rounded off the blindingly brilliant cast. It's rare that I can find absolutely nothing to carp about on the musical side, but that's how it was. I don't really do CDs, but I'd buy one of this performance in a heartbeat. It's just a tragedy that it was let down by such a lacklustre production - which led to one of the oddest ovations I've ever heard - mouse-quiet applause as the curtain descended, fading rapidly to silence, then a cup winners' ovation as the singers and conductor came back on. It was no more than they deserved.

Here's a 'behind the scenes' video produced by the Staatsoper, featuring interviews with David Daniels and Ivor Bolton and a few music clips:

Nash Ensemble go the wrong way Around Schubert

Nash Ensemble/John Mark Ainsley - Wigmore Hall, 6 October 2007

Oh dear. Tonight's first performance did not augur well for the remainder of the Nash Ensemble's lengthy 'Around Schubert' season at the Wigmore Hall.

Kicking off with the simplistic early Violin Sonata in D, violinist Marianne Thorsen and pianist Ian Brown failed to convince that this is anything more than a cheery salon piece, with more enjoyment to be gained from playing it than from listening to it.

Next, Brown was joined by tenor John Mark Ainsley and cellist Paul Watkins for a bizarre backseat-driven of Auf dem Strom, where Ainsley's honeyed tone and lyrical grace (the unquestionable highlight of the whole evening) were all too often drowned out by the hectoring, overwrought cello of Watkins. At the end, Thomas Quasthoff leapt up from the audience and shot backstage, presumably to commiserate with the hapless Ainsley.

It left a bitter taste over the pleasant but unremarkable readings of Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata and Beethoven's 'Archduke' Piano Trio which followed. I admire much of the Nash's contemporary work, but on this account their Schubert falls well wide of the mark.