Intermezzo

Even more Don Giovanni at Covent Garden

Don Giovanni - Royal Opera House, 10 September 2008

 

Well, I am pleased to report that musically at least, this second night of the season was a vast improvement on the first. And if the audience wasn't exactly a better one, it was at least a markedly different one.  Downstairs, the familiar tap of Ferragamo against parquet and a faint smell of hairspray marked the return of the queens, counsels and assorted bankers to their rightful boxes. Upstairs, it was socks, sandals and sandwiches as usual.

But back to the music. Covent Garden shows often improve as the run progresses - especially revivals, like this one, where rehearsal time is limited. And in this case, the previous combination of a first night, an unpredictable audience, and being beamed live and in close-up around the world's cinemas can't have helped singers' nerves. The production itself remains by turns tacky and dull, but the performances were so much better second time round.

Most improved was Miah Persson, sweetness and innocence outside, a tumble of hormones within, and this time round, the secure mistress of Zerlina's vocal demands.  Robert Gleadow (still only 24!) was an equally impressive Masetto, and they displayed undisputable physical rapport, wrapping themselves around each other as if the honeymoon had already started.

We were again issued with a pre-show apology for Marina Poplavskaya's health, and again she proved little if anything was wrong. Both Or sai chi l'onore and Non mi dir displayed a tissue-thin top but that was it. Her Donna Anna, emotionally numbed, single-minded in her quest for vengeance, was a smart piece of casting and convincingly acted.

Joyce DiDonato again unravelled thrillingly as Donna Elvira, bewitched and eventually unhinged by Don Giovanni's wiles.

The Dirty Don himself was more problematical - and it wasn't just the stringy ginger wig. Simon Keenlyside has an intelligent and just fundamentally decent air that doesn't sit comfortably with this determinedly anti-intellectual production. He can't match the swarthy feral magnetism of last year's Don Giovanni, Erwin Schrott (wisely he doesn't try). His Don seduces with words, not pheromones, and his seduction arias carried far more weight than the oddly unconvincing murder at the start and the gluttonous debauchery of the finale. The orchestra sped past him in his Champagne Aria but everything else was sung with grace and musicality.

Kyle Ketelsen's robustly sung Leporello, in an even more dreadful wig, was an able counterweight, a properly reluctant partner who conspires in his own oppression simply for the cash. He needed to dig harder for the laughs with this audience than the first, but he got them in the end.

Don Ottavio is not the most dynamic of roles - all he has to do really is sing a couple of arias nicely. Ramón Vargas certainly has the voice, even if it's a bit more Italianate than we might expect for Mozart. He managed a lot better than he had on the first night, lyrical and flowing, just a little pinched at the top, and faded genteely into the background when he wasn't required. Neatly done.

I wasn't quite as thrilled with Sir Charles Mackerras as the critics have been, but he did a more than able job with the modest number (an advantage in itself) of players, including the superbly-drilled onstage bands. Rapport between pit and stage showed a marked improvement, relaxation and co-operation both playing their part, though again it was clear that those who slipped could expect little sympathy from the podium. 

One performer at least has managed to get a few bonus column inches this week - that's MAW Emma Reed who descends to hell with Don Giovanni (minus kit) in a Page 3-style finale, clairvoyantly scripted well before the Sun came on board. Here she is 'without costume' in The Sun, and here's the pearl-clutchers' version from genius of teh Photoshops, OperaChic.

           

Raise your handkerchiefs for András Schiff

András Schiff - Wigmore Hall, 9 September 2008

 

There's always one, isn't there?

This time, it was the total t1t who, like the rest of the audience, sat silent throughout the hundred non-stop spellbinding minutes of András Schiff's Goldberg Variations. Then erupted with an almighty cough about 2 milliseconds after Schiff had struck his last note. Before his fingers had even left the keyboard! 

Was it a set-up? Who knows (- Schiff is notoriously touchy about interruptions - and why shouldn't he be?)

Score-free and pedal-less, the performance had all the Schiff trademarks of intelligence and clarity. He made his points strongly and unequivocally, sometimes controversially. His tuneseeking tendency to cleave to a line could destabilise and unbalance. And though the strange dissonances of variation 25 were quite properly emphasised before resolution, I'm not sure they needed quite the bold caps double underlining they received. But he didn't, as some before him have done, chicken out when it came to the rapidfire super-virtuoso sections, appreciating the need for balance in tempos as in every other aspect of the work. It was a performance that reached the intellect more than the heart perhaps, but still a stunning achievement.

Afterwards, he seemed genuinely touched to receive the Wigmore Medal for his contribution (over 30 years!) to the musical life of Wigmore Hall. And despite his pianothon, he even managed a coherent and graceful speech of thanks, the coughing interloper apparently forgotten.

The Sun comes out for Don Giovanni at the Royal Opera House

Don Giovanni - Royal Opera House, 8 September 2008

 

The opening night of the Royal Opera House season. Officially! We know because big cheese Tony Hall told us so, in an Oscarish pre-show speech that stopped millimetres short of thanking his agent and teh baby jeebus. 

We arrived to find a splashy Sun bus parked at the front door - supposedly, the show was 'only' open to Sun readers, a myth propagated by the Sun's fact-lite press rivals.

But in fact anyone who registered on a special page of the ROH website, as explained here, could apply for tickets. Which would account for the number of familiar faces I spotted in the audience. (My own conscience is clear - I took along a ROH newbie).

But there were welcome absences too - scarcely a rustle of anoraks in the amphitheatre, no gobby tourists, few corporate suits at the bar. In their place, not the lager louts the broadsheets had doomily predicted, but a cleaner, better-dressed and better-behaved class of customer than Covent Garden has seen for a while. Enough looked understandably bewildered by the confusing ROH signage to convince me that few were regulars.  And was that one of the scheme's most vehement opponents, Charlotte "boycott in order" Higgins of the Guardian skulking around the bar? No moral dilemma 'subsidising' "that utterly repellent institution: page bloody three" when you've nabbed a freebie press seat I guess.

In fact, genuine Sun readers may have been outnumbered by journalists. Not just the opera-reviewing habitues, but mike-wielding newshounds, pouncing on Essex families for 'your impressions'.

The huge but unobtrusive cameras in the auditorium itself were part of a Met-style live relay to cinemas across the known universe.

Whether they captured the Royal Opera House at its best is another question. Francesca Zambello's production has a couple of qualities - it's cinematically splashy (my companion appreciated the guidance of the colour-coded costumes), and it strikes the elusive balance between comedy and drama with rare precision.

But despite its flaming wicker and shoals of purposeless extras it never really grips until the final showdown, with the dirty Don spectacularly flanked by burning bathtubs.

Still, there were enough laughs to hold the audience's attention, mostly supplied by the vast-voiced Kyle Ketelsen, shamelessly mugging as Leporello. Vocally at least he was more imposing than Simon Keenlyside's patchy Don Giovanni.

Joyce DiDonato gave the most consistent and impressive performance of the evening, totally uninhibited as the combustible Donna Elvira. Charles Mackerras took a firm grip on the orchestra, no concessions to any singers' foibles here, and she alone could ride the waves at their crest.

Marina Poplavskaya, suffering we were told from a respiratory infection, struggled with intonation to begin with, but her increasingly weighty voice made a powerful impression in any case, a significant development from her Donna Anna in the same production last year.

Miah Persson's Zerlina was more of a disappointment. She has the requisite sweetness, and began well, but soon strayed way off vocal course - perhaps she's picked up the respiratory bug too. Ramón Vargas also played a game of two halves, in his case a strained, reedy tone which eventually opened out.

But this was a generous audience, and it rewarded the performance with a generous ovation.

I'm back for more on Wednesday (booked long before the Sun offer appeared) - hoping for better singing from some quarters, but I doubt if there'll be a more enthusiastic and less jaded audience in the Royal Opera House for a while.

 

 

 

 

 

Joyce DiDonato opens the season at Wigmore Hall

Joyce DiDonato / David Zobel - Wigmore Hall, 6 September 2008

Vivaldi Col piacer della mia fede from Arsilda, Regina di Ponto; Vedro con mio diletto from Il giustino; Da quel ferro che ha svenato from Il Farnace
Chausson Hébé; Sérénade; Le colibri; Les papillons
Turina Poema en forma de canciones
Copland 8 songs from 12 Songs of Emily Dickinson: Nature, the gentlest mother; There came a wind like a bugle; Why do they shut me out of heaven?; The world feels dusty; Dear March, come in!; Sleep is supposed to be; Going to heaven; The chariot;
Gershwin The Man I Love; By Strauss

Encores - Strauss Composers Aria (Sein wir wieder gut) from Ariadne auf Naxos; Handel Ombra mai fu; Arlen Somewhere over the Rainbow

No-one seems to know (or even really care) whether this year's Royal Opera House opening night-proper is the originally announced 10 September performance or the recently added Sun reader special on the 8 September. Unlike the ROH to miss a wallet-squeezing trick, but it's all a far cry from the hot-breathed anticipation (and gala prices) for the Met's couture-bedecked Reneethon.

But the start of the Wigmore Hall season remains a bit of an Occasion. In an understated way of course. Free drinks for everyone and an extra-long intermission was about as far as it went.

Joyce DiDonato, diva-proper in a clinging black strapless gown with seaweedy ruffles, wasn't going to ease us in with anything too light and frothy. In fact, her programme was pretty audience-challenging stuff, only the Chausson and Gershwin generally familiar. You'd never guess she'd made her name with Rossini, but perhaps that was the point.

The Copland Emily Dickinson settings at the centre of the evening are an acquired taste that I haven't acquired. In the middle of the group, the insouciance of Dear March, come in! was a breath of fresh air between the dour introspection of the rest. So few singers are able to able to do humour effectively (that is, without making you cringe with embarrassment for them) that it was a shame that Joyce, one of the rare few who can, buckled down and got serious for so much of her programme.

Her next gig is the aforementioned is-it-isn't-it Covent Garden season-starter Don Giovanni. Her opening Vivaldi arias - a standard template fast one, slow one and a mad one - provided a hint of the steel she may bring to Donna Elvira. And I was captivated by the her way with the contrastingly languorous Chausson group, the lines spun out on a silver thread.

Her final Gershwin songs supplied the air of festivity that the earlier part of the evening, for all its accomplishment, had lacked. She's a big Judy Garland fan (as she revealed during her encores) who shares Judy's uninhibited joy in performance, and communicates most directly with her audience when freed from the shackles of recital etiquette. Even in the Temple of Song, sometimes it pays to let your hair down.

Joyce is, by the way, a hugely entertaining (and diligent) blogger herself - check out her blog on yankeediva.blogspot.com.

And the recital was recorded for broadcast on Radio 3 on 22 October.

Photo of David Zobel and Joyce DiDonato from Joyce's website, joycedidonato.com: 
  

Berliner Philharmoniker - beautiful isn't always best

Proms 64 and 65: Berliner Philharmoniker / Simon Rattle - Royal Albert Hall, 2 and 3 September 2008

Wagner Tristan und Isolde - Prelude and Liebestod, Messiaen Turangalîla Symphony

Brahms Symphony No.3, Shostakovich Symphony No.10

If you've ever seen photos of Simon Rattle in action, you might assume he just stands there with his gob gated open all night, like an angler fish on the ocean bed. In reality, he talks non-stop, or at least mouths. I wish I could lip read. I'm pretty sure I caught a couple of "help me"s but the rest is a mystery.

I was able to study the Rattle platform manner at close hand on Tuesday night from my surprisingly pricy (£23) seat in the choir stalls, tucked behind the Berlin Philharmonic's gleaming tubular bells and pleasingly close to the Berlin motor itself, the tigerish growl of the basses.

Of course a lot of water can be lost through an open mouth. That's why marathon runners keep theirs shut, and overheated doggies don't.

No wonder Sir Simon needed a mini-break halfway through the hour-plus Turangalîla Symphony to chug back some water behind the piano, coaxing the obliging violas into a bit of quite unnecessary 'retuning' to cover.

It was a wonderfully lucid account of this lengthy and problematical, inherently episodic work. If talent borrows and genius steals, then Messiaen could be a musical Einstein. Rattle drew out the direct quotations from Wagner's Tristan more clearly than I've ever heard before - and of course it did no harm to hear the wellspring itself, exquisitely presented, at the start of the evening.

Messiaen's anointed, Pierre-Laurent Aimard at the piano and Tristan Murail at the ondes Martenot, brought a special authority. Where the work could have tipped over into Gershwin-pastiche vulgarity, Rattle wisely settled on festive exuberance.  

There was a more honed predictability about the second concert. Despite the near-perfection of the orchestra's playing - or perhaps because of it - Rattle seemed content to lay back and bathe in the immaculately polished sound.  While there's nothing wrong with loveliness for its own sake, I find this orchestra at their best when they're nearer the edges of their comfort zone, as they were with the previous night's Messiaen.

 

  

 

No cowpats allowed

PCM 7: Nash Ensemble / Mark Padmore - Cadogan Hall, 1 September 2008

The Monday lunchtime Cadogan Hall chamber concerts may be shoved into the corner of the Proms schedules but they offer up some rare treats.

First up was the rarely-heard Clarinet Quintet by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a fellow student of Vaughan Williams. Its gentle charm is spread rather thinly over its thirty-odd minutes. Although this particular line up of the fluidly-staffed Nash Ensemble was sensitive and well-balanced and most certainly did the work justice, it's not one I'll be rushing to hear again any time soon.

Before Mark Padmore could sing, he had to submit to interrogation on teh Poetry of AE Housman and teh Landscapes of Vaughan Williams by some red-socked, wind-stuffed Uncle Monty from Radio 3 - fascinating for us in the audience, but not the kindest way to prepare for half an hour of singing.

It was also an opportunity to study Mark Padmore's latest hair escapade, this time a number 2/beardlet combo that looked like he'd sprayed his head with superglue and rolled in iron filings. He's lucky the photo hasn't come out too well.

He's an old hand at On Wenlock Edge, and consistently proves that it's one of Vaughan Williams's most underrated works. Its pastoral lyricism is undercut with bitterness and foreboding, brilliantly revealed in the dramatic extremes of Padmore's performance. The arrangement is for strings is sometimes bizarre and exploratory, often penetratingly evocative, and the Nash Ensemble again displayed great sensitivity.

Worth missing lunch for.

Barenboim and West-Eastern Divan Orchestra end their summer in Paris

 West-Eastern Divan Orchestra / Barenboim / Meier / O'Neill / Pape - Salle Pleyel, Paris, 25 August 2008

Schoenberg Variations for Orchestra, Op.31
Wagner Die Walküre, Act I

Just a few days after the Barenboim/Divan Proms, I was in Paris for second helpings - quite literally in the case of the Schoenberg Orchestral Variations, a repeat of the lush, expansive London performance. 

The Parisian audience, totally starved of music for the last month (when they say everything shuts down in Paris in August, they mean it), lapped it up. Despite charging double the regular Salle Pleyel prices (and ouch, that rampant Euro really hurts these days), the concert was a sell-out. A long and over-optimistic returns queue snaked across the entrance as I arrived. A few enterprising punters even waved banknotes hopefully at the incoming ticket holders. Was it really just because there was nothing else on that night? Or had it become, despite low-key publicity, a bit of an Occasion? It was reported that Barenboim had paid Sarko a visit earlier in the day, an encouraging sign. Can you imagine Gordon 'Arctic Monkeys' Brown owning up to having even heard of Daniel Barenboim?

Barenboim's Wagner is of course legendary, and I'm sure Die Walküre and its starry trio of soloists were the main attraction of the evening for many.

Although this was a concert performance, there were no seats and no scores for the singers.

Of the three, Waltraud Meier proved most able to take advantage of this, ignore the surroundings and throw herself into her role, despite the conductor's podium separating her from her Siegmund, Simon O'Neill.  Her ever-unpredictable intonation firmed up as she progressed, and her voice seemed as agelessly smooth as her forehead (compare and contrast if you will with a violinist half her age, left).

O'Neill's sound, clean and hard-edged, is not the biggest voice, but it cut through the orchestra like a laser. A long-breathed "Wälse!" that left him purple-faced was one of several moments that tested his limits, and he looked less at ease with the compromises of the concert format than Meier.  Good Wagnerian tenors are in short supply, and he's definitely in the top drawer. But I find the voice simply efficient, like bleach scouring a blocked drain, and hard to warm to.

Rene Pape was his usual laconic self. Added to this, the part of Hunding lies a little low for him, so it was a less than jaw-dropping performance, but the natural beauty of his voice shone through.

Almost inevitably though, Barenboim was the real star, teasing a thrilling performance from the orchestra, even if it lacked a little of the weight and refinement customary in his Wagner.

I don't think I've ever heard applause quite as shattering and prolonged as what followed. There was an almost instant standing ovation, and few audience members left, even though Barenboim took his time going round each orchestra member thanking them individually. He hugged, he kissed, he shook hands. Another first - I've never seen him smile so genuinely or respond so warmly as he did to the young musicians of the orchestra.

There was to be no encore though - just a speech (in perfect French).

Barenboim started by explaining his extended individual congratulations - it was because it was their "last concert". Leader Michael Barenboim almost jumped out of his seat, then sank back as his father corrected himself "that is, the last concert of the summer".

He went on to say that each musician had shown enormous courage in coming to play in the orchestra.

"It's not a political project, but a third way. We think only that there's no military solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We want to learn to live together".

 

 

All new Gürzenich Orchestra - now with added Stockhausen !!

Prom 48: Gürzenich Orchestra / Stenz / Kirchschlager - Royal Albert Hall, 22 August 2008

Mahler Symphony No.5 
Stockhausen Punkte (1952/1962/1993)
Schubert Ständchen, D921 orch. David Matthews, Bei dir allein, D866/2 orch. Manfred Trojahn, Nacht und Träume, D827 orch. Colin Matthews, Das Lied im Grünen, D917 orch. Detlev Glanert
Beethoven Overture 'Leonore' No.3

This was perhaps the oddest-looking but most fascinating programme at this year's Proms. 

Mahler's Fifth Symphony was premiered by Cologne's Gürzenich Orchestra in 1904, and the first idea for tonight's Prom was to reproduce that programme. Then new orchestrations were commissioned for the Schubert songs, performed at the 1904 concert with piano accompaniment. Conductor Markus Stenz wanted to add something by Cologne-born Stockhausen, as 22 August would have been the exact date of his 80th birthday. So we ended up with a two-interval concert, the old programme sandwiched with Stockhausen.

The big symphony came first, 70-ish minutes of non-stop music, in a reversal of the modern day practice which normally places it at the end. Or was it? We nowadays often programme the new stuff at the start of the night - and that's just what they did in 1904, before soothing the duly baffled Cologne audience with some more familiar Schubert and Beethoven. If nothing else, tonight's programming highlighted that even the most venerable of chestnuts were new once.

As once was Stockhausen's Punkte - but that was nearly sixty years ago. Unremarkably, the ageing Mahler fans who form a large part of the Arena audience came out with the usual lame jokes and mutterings. But to their credit, the vast majority returned from the bar after the interval for the Stockhausen. A few passive-aggressive old bats chose to demonstrate their superior musical tastes by ostentatiously rustling their boiled sweets and Sudoku 'books' throughout, but the vast majority stood there silently and perhaps attentively, prepared at least to give the music a chance.

I doubt if many were converted - Punkte is one of the early works where musical effect is subsumed to the underlying idea, and the idea sustains more like 27 seconds of music than the 27 minutes it extends over. Although Stockhausen went back later and revised the work, it remains, despite a supple and accurate performance by the Gürzenich, largely dry and unrewarding. "It wasn't flowing" complained a nearby prommer, who unwittingly grasped the Punkt of it all "just a load of different noises with gaps in between".

Stockhausen's legacy is I think better served by the outright sonic manipulation of later works. But Punkte I guess slotted better into this programme, because it deploys relatively conventional orchestral forces. The unconventional but typically thoughtful layout (violins to the right, a harp on each side of the conductor) provided the main foretaste of the spatial soundgames Stockhausen was later to play. 

Orchestrating Schubert lieder is a rather quaint and unfashionable practice, but one that might be worth reviving if cast the songs in a new light.

But all four of the newly-commissioned orchestrations for this evening were dull and formulaic. I've heard more interesting arrangements on ye olde scratchy lieder 78s (and would have been happy to hear these revived - what's the point of revisiting if you're not going to rethink?)

A couple were worse than dull - Colin Matthews' stodgy brass band lullaby for Nacht und Träume entirely missed the point of its hidden death wish, and Detlev Glanert's leaden Das Lied im Grünen had none of the joys of spring.

Careless programme editing didn't help - the text for the Rellstab Ständchen D957 was printed instead of the required (identical in name only) Grillparzer Ständchen D920. (Correct text and original music is here for anyone interested, translation is here, and here's an idea for the editor's Xmas list.)

Angelika Kirchschlager, dressed as everyone's favourite Quality Street, nuts and gooey caramel in a purple wrapper, did her effortful best to project over some unsympathetically dense orchestration. The upper end of her range sparkled. The lower notes, her weak point anyway, often just disappeared. But at least she brought a charm that the grimly serious earlier part of the evening had lacked.

Just when I was thinking the Gürzenich was a fine professional orchestra but nothing more, they surprised by flashing their opera house credentials with a weighty and truly stirring Leonore No.3 Overture to finish, and capped even that with their encore, a nice bit of Parsifal. We were by now more than three hours from the start, but I could happily have stayed for hours more. Why is it only at the Proms, and then only rarely, that we get orchestral concerts of any substantial length?

not so loud Czechs

Prom 47: BBC Symphony Orchestra / Bělohlávek - Royal Albert Hall, 21 August 2008

This was a disappointing evening in many ways, with the sense of an opportunity squandered. One of Dvořák's Slavonic Dances makes an agreeable encore; a stack of eight, particularly when executed with the sort of knackered resignation that was all the BBCSO could muster last night, is about as thrilling as Olympic archery.

But I was more interested in the second half of the programme, a concert version of Janáček's rarely heard opera Osud. Although the programme credited someone for 'concert staging', this seemed to consist only of singers leaving the stage when they weren't required. Otherwise it was largely backs straight, noses in the score, in time-honoured concert performance style.

Just as well really - a large TV screen in the centre of the Arena, facing the performers, blocked a lot of the view for the large number of prommers behind it. I'm not sure why they've suddenly decided they need this for vocal performances at the RAH - there are other (large) screens showing the conductor at the sides, and I've never seen anything similar elsewhere. I'm hoping they'll manage to do without it for the rest of the season - there are enough tall people blocking the view without that to contend with as well.

Osud is an opera with an inconclusive ending about a composer who writes an opera without a last act about a composer whose life mirrors his own. Its drama is elliptical and its libretto often bizarre, but it is redeemed by music as vivid and original as anything else Janáček wrote.

Štefan Margita largely measured up to the technical challenges of the central role of the composer Živny. But there was some wavering and strain at the top, and it needed a voice with more heft and weight than Margita's light and pleasant lyric tenor.

Amanda Roocroft looked terrific in a red strappy gown, but she was barely audible, and unengaging as the composer's love interest, Mila.

Rosalind Plowright, as her crazed mother, was a great improvement - commandingly loud and convincingly bonkers.

The smaller roles, mostly doubled or tripled up, were competently taken, but only Martina Bauerová as Ms Pacovska, Fanča and Souckova really stood out. It struck me that with her native's command of Czech and a clear, resonant tone that easily rode Janáček's extravagant orchestrations, she might have made a better Mila than Roocroft.

The ubiquitous George Longworth, London opera's treble of choice for the past couple of years, took the small part of the child, Doubek - very movingly - but a couple of cracks suggested that this phase of his career may be nearing an end. Still, singers like Peter Auty, Bejun Mehta and even Simon Keenlyside started their singing careers in the short-trousered roles, so there's hope for George yet.

Jordi Savall makes his Proms debut

Proms Chamber Music 5: Jordi Savall - Cadogan Hall, 18 August 2008

Robert de Niro and Neil Tennant Jordi Savall and Rolf Lislevand

Ortiz Passamezzo antico; Folia; Ruggiero Romanesca; Passamezzo moderno
Hume A Souldiers March; Harke, harke; A Souldiers Resolution
Marais Pièces de viole, 3è livre - Prélude; Muzettes I/II; La sautillante
Sanz Jácaras; Canarios
Marais Couplets des Folies d'espagne

What a privilege to spend an hour in the company of the great master of the viola da gamba, Jordi Savall, and how astonishing to discover that after a near-fifty year career he is only now making his Proms debut. 

His technical facility is so ingrained that his instrument seems almost like another limb. But more than that, he has the rare gift of reinventing the music each time he plays it. And that's harder than it seems. The harmonic conventions of his chosen 16-18th century repertoire generate a largely predictable melodic line. But what Savall does is to vary timbre and colour and articulation to such an extent that you truly don't know what's coming next.

So many early music perfomances I've suffered are simply a production line of notes, on a lucky day perked up by a bit of generic sprightliness. Savall on the other hand has technique, scholarship and musicality, his conception encompasses everything from the big picture to the tiniest brushstrokes, and he brings the music completely alive.

With the sympathetic collaboration of Rolf Lislevand on theorbo and guitar (a tiny, twangy relative of the ukulele), he showcased the many guises of the viola da gamba - the near-percussive effects of short, choppy bowing and spiccato in the earlier Spanish work, the longer-bowed, legato styles of the later Marin Marais selections, the novel drum and call effects in Hume's military-inspired pieces.

That we can listen to the Ortiz and Hume works at all is also down to Savall's efforts - he rescued them from dusty library shelves for what was probably their first airing in hundreds of years.

What a tragedy his busy calendar doesn't bring him to London more often.

Gabriela Montero - here's one she didn't prepare earlier

Edinburgh Festival: Gabriela Montero - Queens Hall and The Hub, 12 August 2008

Gabriela Montero has been enjoying a fair amount of attention recently for her improvisatory abilities. But the first of her two concerts at the Edinburgh Festival was an opportunity to see how she'd cope with the standard repertoire in a programme mixing Bach, Chopin, Debussy, Schumann and Liszt.

The 11am start was cruel, and she confessed halfway through that she's 'not a morning person'. But the problem lies deeper than that. The pianist is a sort of translator who has to communicate with both the composer and the crowd. Montero has no problems on the second count - she's a warm, engaging person, sensitive and responsive to her audience. But connecting with the score was another matter.

From the first piece to the last, I had no idea what she was trying to say. The first half was delivered in a consistent cautious mezzoforte, the second thunderingly loud. Everything was inflected with a seemingly random rubato. Pedalling was obedient to the rhythm rather than the phrase. If it wasn't for the sheer technical difficulty of much of her programme, I'd have assumed she was playing it through for the first time. 

Her physical abilities were in no doubt, with tremendous strength, control and articulation apparent across all techniques, and surprisingly few fingering errors considering the technical challenges. I did wonder if she'd simply not practised enough or really thought the scores through. Whatever the reason, the results were not impressive.

There are artists whose gimmicky presentation masks a genuine interpretive talent (I'm thinking of the likes of Lang Lang and Fazil Say) but on this basis I'm not convinced Montero is one of them. Significantly, the only time I sensed any musicality was in the encore, an improvisation based on Flower of Scotland.

Her second show was an all-improvisation late nighter at the Hub in front of a packed crowd. Half of us had belted uphill in the rain after the late-running Dudamel concert at the Usher Hall, and wanted something special to compensate for having to skip the encore.

Here, Montero was in her element. Calling out for themes from the audience, she gave us Yesterday in the style of Piazzolla, a boogie woogie Night & Day and the Alle Menschen werden Brüder bit from the end of Beethoven's 9th in the style of Rachmaninov or perhaps Legrand - a fallback style she slipped into for a couple of folk tunes too. Less successful was a Bach-like take on a snatch of the Moonlight Sonata, where she set herself an inescapable circular trap.

It was undemanding and entertaining, and at a technical level, I think the most skilled improvising I've heard.  But I think I'll do without a second helping.

 

Daniel Barenboim's Divan returns to Proms

Proms 38 and 39: West-Eastern Divan Orchestra / Barenboim - Royal Albert Hall, 14 August 2008

Haydn Sinfonia Concertante in B flat major, for oboe, bassoon, violin, cello
Schoenberg Variations for Orchestra, Op.31
Brahms Symphony No.4
Encore: Wagner Prelude, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

Pierre Boulez Mémoriale (... explosante-fixe ... Originel)
Stravinsky L'histoire du soldat

The surgical-gloved bag checks at the door and the deliberate omission of orchestra members' names from the programme were jolting reminders that for there's more to this mixed Arab-Israeli orchestra than music.

It is I suppose inevitable that the incredible feat of simply creating and sustaining a cross-divide orchestra tends to overshadow the purely musical successes. But gradually, Barenboim has shaped this assortment of musicians - professional and amateur, experienced and novice, young and even younger - into an outstanding orchestra. The fact that tonight's brass section included a few ringers from the Simon Bolivar Orchestra doesn't diminish that achievement.

What is really special about this orchestra is not just that Israeli and Arab sit side-by-side, but that it mixes such a wide range of experience. Tonight one of the Israelis was concertmaster of the Berliner Philharmoniker, Guy Braunstein, and sharing his stand was a ten year old Palestinian prodigy.

When leader Michael Barenboim bust a string in the Brahms, Guy Braunstein, sitting back in the third row, was the one who proffered a violin swap. Playing the last movement on three strings, using every spare moment to unpick the broken string so he could swiftly replace it with the spare in his pocket before the encore, he gave his junior partner a lesson in crisis management he won't forget for a while, on top of all the musical stuff. Where else could a ten year old, however talented, get that sort of training?

And why don't we have something similar in Britain? Bringing together warring nations may be beyond the scope of British orchestras, but putting together a group from mixed musical backgrounds could rejuvenate the approach of the professionals as well as giving the youngsters the sort of practical training they could never receive from any youth orchestra, however good.

They gave Haydn's Sinfonia Concertante an elegant, hard-edged workout, if rather short on charm. Barenboim, with the slightly disdainful air of a man obliged to hold his wife's handbag, occasionally stood back to investigate his pockets or swab himself with a handkerchief. Perhaps he was just demonstrating that the orchestra and soloists were well-enough rehearsed to motor along without his hand at the wheel.

He swung back to full-attention mode and Schoenberg's Variations for Orchestra emerged in luxuriant bloom, at once precisely delineated and expressively glowing, a scorching rebuttal to anyone who claims that twelve tone music is automatically incomprehensible or devoid of all feeling.

A short-breathed opening belied an expansive reading of Brahms' Fourth Symphony.  A balance weighted more toward the formal than the expressive element was perhaps to be expected, and Barenboim's sculptural definition securely contained its romantic sweep. I found myself impressed rather than moved.

It was a shame the enthusiastic applause and cheering had to be accompanied by an undercurrent of booing  - no doubt directed at the political rather than the musical element, but grossly unfair on the musicians.

Having commented that he's usually asked to say what's wrong with the Middle East, Barenboim claimed "you've just heard what’s right with the Middle East” before baiting another tiresome faction of his opponents with a rousing encore of Wagner’s first Meistersinger prelude.

More cheering, more booing, and I wasn't sure if the Palestinian flag unrolled in the Arena was a gesture of support or criticism - either way, it struck a jarringly divisive note next to the hugging and handshaking of the orchestra members.

Most of the orchestra finished for the night at this point, leaving just a handful to return an hour later for the late night concert. This began with the brief shards of Pierre Boulez's Stravinsky tribute Mémoriale (... explosante-fixe ... Originel), followed by the surprise appearance of the composer himself on stage.

Then came another living legend, this time actor/writer/director Patrice Chéreau, reading all the speaking parts in Stravinsky's L'histoire du soldat. This work has too many words and too little music to be improved by such an economically-textured approach, even when the performer is as distinguished as Chéreau. And of course the condensation of all roles into one performer limits spontaneity and removes one layer of engagement. Although Chéreau's performance was powerful and charismatic - or maybe because it was - the music took on the character of interludes to a monologue, illustrative asides. This was far from Stravinsky's intent. It's a difficult work to pull off, and while this performance displayed the content effectively enough, it didn't communicate the essence.

 

 

This our tempo! Gustavo Dudamel pwns Edinburgh, pwns Proms

Edinburgh Festival: Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra / Dudamel - Usher Hall, 12 August 2008

Prom 37: Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra / Dudamel / Martin Fröst - Royal Albert Hall, 13 August 2008

Edinburgh:
Copland Appalachian Spring
Ravel La Valse
Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique

London:
Ravel La Valse 
Anders Hillborg Clarinet Concerto (Peacock Tales)
Berlioz Symphonie fantastique

What proves that the Dudamel effect is not just the creation of a vampiric media, rejuvenating their tired old classical music coverage with fresh young blood, is that he achieves astonishing results with every orchestra he shakes his stick at.

Here was a case in point. The Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra - professional, refined, elegant - and about as exciting as a secondhand Volvo. But for two nights in a row - and with a long, tiring train ride (and I know, I did it myself) in between - they set an audience alight with their passion and fervour.

In Edinburgh on Tuesday, Appalachian Spring was sprung with the chill vigour of a sleigh ride. La Valse skirled and lurched drunkenly. The Symphonie Fantastique was delivered with the uninhibited inyerface brashness that for once could make you appreciate why it so scandalised and horrified its original audiences. Berlioz would have wept with joy.

I was left with an agonising decision - whether to hang around for an encore, or dash off through the rainy night to my next appointment (a Gabriela Montero late night recital, of which more later). I escaped, and found later I'd missed the two encores the ecstatic audience had demanded.

But luckily there was no such dilemma on Proms night. After the final wild fugue of the Fantastique, and the thunderous applause, the temperature was lowered with the sombre, hymn-like Sangen by by Swedish composer Stenhammar.

And then two minutes later the roof blew off the Albert Hall with a Latin stomp, Tico Tico, that rivalled the Simon Bolivar Orchestra's rendition at last year's Proms. Complete with the never-before-seen spectacle of the middle-aged sensible Swedish brass section tossing their jackets aside and leaping to their feet with their horns in the air.

But there had already been one encore. This came at the end of the first half. Martin Fröst's staggeringly virtuosic reading of Hillborg's (he turned up at the end to take a bow) Clarinet Concerto (complete with masked dance-mime and spooky lighting) was followed by a klezmer-style arrangement that showed off his skills in yet another light. Is he the best clarinettist in the world right now? Probably.

It should be pointed out, for those who care about such things, that I was sitting inches from the front at the Edinburgh concert, the sort of distance where you can hear every violin individually, and there was not a note out of place in the string section.

Sitting just behind the orchestra in the choir stalls at the Prom, I was impressed too by the calibre of the percussion playing. The whole programme was a mighty test of percussion skills, from the fiendish toms in the Hillborg to the massive bells at the end of the Fantastique. Woodwind intonation varied, but you couldn't accuse Dudamel (as some have done)of not knowing his technical stuff.

The Prom is available on the BBC iPlayer, here, for the next seven days. And the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra have a blog  - in Swedish - with some great photos, here.

Edinburgh:

Gustavo Dudamel and Martin Frost:

 

Martin Frost:

Swedish brass do a twirl:

 

  

Two Widows wallpaper over the cracks

Edinburgh Festival: The Two Widows - Edinburgh Festival Theatre, 11 August 2008

Photo: Murdo MacLeod

It was the title that put me off. Specifically, the Widow bit. It has that sickly whiff of chocolate box and cheese. And Smetana, hmmm. I had to be dragged along, and I certainly wasn't tempted to dig out the music before seeing it. What tempted the Edinburgh Festival to pull it from the rarely-performed box is a mystery - perhaps they were hoping for some easy sponsorship?

The Two Widows is, predictably enough, a frothy comedy, moreover a slimly-plotted one that overlays the worst sort of gender stereotyping (Widow #1's shrivelled and self-denying, Widow #2's a fiery-knickered slapper) with grating whimsy.

And the music - when Smetana said he wanted to forego uncouth Czech nationalism and prove he could do the posh French stuff, he meant it. It's music with the crusts cut off.

Surprisingly, Scottish National Opera managed to concoct an excellent evening's entertainment from these unpromising ingredients.

Liberties have been taken in the cause of livening things up. The English translation is often hilarious but strays some way from the literal. The most effective stage business - a running gag where actors behind a fake frame mirror what's happening on stage - is nothing to do with the plot, even by implication. But the orchestra kept up a cracking pace, characterisations were detailed and thoughtful, and the one-room set with its eyesore 'bohemian' wallpaper and hunting trophies was ingeniously transformed from indoors to outdoors with the help of a few potted plants and the power of auto suggestion.

Kate Valentine sparkled as the man-hungry widow Katrina, and though I didn't buy the last minute transformation to golden-hearted matchmaker, I think this is a problem with the writing rather than her performance.

Jane Irwin made the frosty Anežka sympathetic, with her poignant aria the only moment the opera gets more than a millimetre deep.

The men, Nicholas Folwell's blustering gamekeeper and David Pomeroy's ardent suitor Ladislav, were perfectly adequate but could only trail in their wake.

Francesco Corti seemed to have an iron grip over the orchestra, so I was surprised that they drifted apart from the singers as often as they did, most noticeably with the chorus. Perhaps they were all just dazzled by the wallpaper.

   

  

Edinburgh Festival opener Mahagonny fails to rise to the occasion

Edinburgh Festival: The Rise And Fall Of The City Of Mahagonny - Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 8 August 2008

Many operas can withstand a concert performance. Some are even improved by it. But it's hard to appreciate Weill's The Rise And Fall Of The City Of Mahagonny fully without some sort of staging.

Discussions about whether Mahagonny is really an opera tend to revolve around the music, where jazz-inflected songs take the place of classically-constructed arias. But the issue really revolves around the way it was written. Brecht was so much more than a librettist. The detailed stage directions he prepared are not mere garnish, but an essential part of the drama, not replicated in music or text, where foundations are laid and loose ends tied up. When you need to check your programme to follow the action, something's missing. Not that tonight's conductor, HK Gruber, would agree.

He's not a staged opera fan -- "I never could understand what the singers were singing". So he thinks the concert approach benefits the work - in fact his explicit aim, his very own Verfremdungseffekt, is to reproduce the experience of listening to a record at home. In fact it was more like watching a movie with your back to the screen - how much you get out of the experience depends on how many times you've seen it before.

The evening began on a sour note with an interminable pre-concert speech by Festival director Jonathan Mills, rambling defensively about the ongoing building work at the Usher Hall. Enough already! We saw the scaffolding! Get an editor!

And the first act did little to lift the spirits.  American tenor Anthony Dean Griffey - not coincidentally the only singer here with full-stage experience of the opera - made a spirited Jimmy Mahoney. But other performances, though technically competent, spanned that definitively British range from tentative to apologetic. Despite a fabulous, idiomatic translation (by Michael Feingold) there was little to be gripped by.

But after the interval Susan Bickley's brothel keeper Begbick moved from Home Counties to, well, not quite Deep South, but at least East End. Alan Opie, always a performer of subtle gifts, brought a sly wit to bear on his Trinity Moses. Peter Hoare livened things up with what limited acting he could manage in the space between his chair and his music stand. No one except Griffey really managed a rounded characterisation, but at least the action was conveyed. The strife-strewn Edinburgh Festival Chorus sang for their lives (perhaps literally). The orchestra arose from its slumber and began to mirror HK Gruber's effervescent podium style. It was the start of a terrific performance. But it began more than halfway through.

The applause was massive, but was it largely just for the presence of Edinburgh favourite HK Gruber? His enthusiasm was beyond doubt, but the format and the performance itself won't have won the work many new friends.

HK Gruber with Chorus Master Christopher Bell:

Benjamin's Bolero

Prom 27: BBC Symphony Orchestra / Benjamin - Royal Albert Hall, 6 August 2008

The Proms house band, the BBCSO, have been at it for a couple of weeks now, and the battle fatigue is starting to show. Or is it just me, projecting my increasing weariness of birthday boy Messiaen on to their opener, L'Ascension?  It's too earnest a work to survive such a perfunctory plod. And the string-free first movement cruelly exposed the ragged brass and winds.

I couldn't work up much enthusiasm for Carolin Widmann's accomplished but ultimately timid bash at Stravinsky's Violin Concerto either. The orchestral torpor smothered any attempt she made to break free.

George Benjamin's early Ringed by the Flat Horizon is a dazzlingly precise evocation of a storm erupting over a vast and bare landscape, from ominous rumblings to uncontainable violence. Conducted by the composer himself, it was the highlight of the evening. 

Repeated involuntary subjection has dulled the appeal of Ravel's Pavane pour une infante défunte and Boléro so much that I considered slipping out before they began. I'm glad I didn't.

Benjamin sped through with an immaculate control that extended beyond the orchestra to the audience. His raised hand at the end of the Pavane was duly observed, allowing an applause-free conjunction, the only sound, almost inevitably, the muffled ring of a mobile phone buried deep within some distant pocket. 

Boléro's timbral transformations sounded remarkably fresh if not quite radical, a proto-minimalism that had more in common with Stockhausen's Stimmung than its own contemporaries. And of course Benjamin managed the Olympic dressage of its sustained, expansive crescendo perfectly. There's a world of difference between listening to music - properly - in a concert hall, and merely being exposed to it, as this performance demonstrated.

 

Sweaty Eddie's La Clemenza di Tito at the Barbican

La Clemenza di Tito - OAE/Gardner - Barbican, 26 July 2008

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment immediately sounded a lot better on this outing than they do at their native South Bank, confirming my suspicion that however questionable the Barbican acoustics might be, the Royal Festival Hall's are (despite the refurb) still worse.

As for the rest of the evening, this concert performance knocked the spots off David McVicar's recent ninja yawnathon for ENO (in which conductor Ed Gardner and Alice Coote also featured).

The OAE were immaculately prepared - perhaps a repeat performance this weekend at the Lincoln Center , marking Gardner's New York debut, justified a little extra rehearsal time. They were on thrilling form, playing as if their lives depended on it.

Even though the daily ENO grind is turning Gardner prematurely grey, his floppy-fringed cuteness endures. If only that was enough to move orchestras. I've found his ENO efforts patchy - too often pallid and uninspired - but he surprised me tonight, working up a sweat on the podium and a fire on the stage.

Tito seems to have built up a chorus of apologists recently, all ready to proclaim that it's unjustifiably sidelined, one of Mozart's finest, etc. But it's not. Unlike Die Zauberflöte, so eminently resistant to even the most cack-handed of treatments, when Tito's given a second-rate performance, it sounds like a second-rate opera. This is the first time I've heard it dispatched with the sort of passion and commitment that do it justice.

Of course the soloists played a huge part in this, none more so than Alice Coote, who gave so much more than just singing. In the central role of Sesto, agonisingly torn between self-destructive love for the selfish, ambitious Vitellia and loyalty to the Emperor Tito, she inhabited her part fearlessly and totally.  This was a concert performance, but nothing except the music stand gave a hint that this was anything less than Coote would deliver on the opera house stage. She looked utterly spent as she sank back into her plastic chair at the end of each aria.

Toby Spence as Tito was dressed for St Moritz in January with his white polo neck and thick velvet jacket. But this was London in July, with British (i.e. rubbish) aircon. When he whipped the jacket off and sat astride his chair (to the apparent surprise of the other performers) as he started to interrogate Coote aria-style, I wondered if it was a spot of heat exhaustion. But no - dramatic licence (and very effective) - he put it straight back on again afterwards.

There was a range to his performance that suggested experiment as much as expressive breadth. Not all of it came off - in particular I felt he stressed Tito's benevolence at the expense of his authority - but it was clear he has an ever-growing range of vocal tools, not to mention the ability to keep an audience on the edge of their seats.

Next to the white-hot intensity of these two, Hillevi Martinpelto's studied and refined portrayal of Vitellia inevitably paled a little. Vitellia's mean streak needed a harder edge. But she sang beautifully, every note appropriately shaded, the voice still lustrous and almost girlish. It was 'Mozart singing' in the classic sense, and a pleasure to listen too.

Sarah Tynan was wonderfully cast as the sweet Servilia, the plaintive innocent, and Fiona Murphy too as the doughty Annio.

Matthew Rose's Publio seemed rather lugubrious in comparison to the spirited performances elsewhere, but there's something of that in the character anyway, and his sonorous bass was impressively mobile in the faster passages. 

The Clare College Cambridge Choir were enthusiastic and crisply drilled - a textbook rendition, if not an especially sensitive one, to nitpick.

This concert was announced relatively late, and the Proms always provide stiff competition at this time of year. Even so, it surprised me, given the casting, that it was far from sold out - the whole balcony closed, and empty seats here and there elsewhere. The Barbican sometimes offers up some rather dodgy programming in its annual summer Mozart festival, but this was an overwhelming exception.

Here's one she made earlier: Hillevi Martinpelto sings Deh seh piacer mi vuoi for Charles Mackerras:

Opera Holland Park goes Russian

Iolanta / Pulcinella - Opera Holland Park, 25 July 2008

Tchaikovsky's one-act opera Iolanta may not be his finest moment, but even so, it seems to get less than its fair share of airings. However in classic London bus fashion, this Opera Holland Park staging is closely followed by the London Philharmonic's concert version on 25 October. Jurowski's crew will have their work cut out to better this version though.

Tchaikovsky gives the story of the unwittingly blind princess Iolanta, who recovers her sight by sheer willpower after falling in love, a couple of good arias and a few stunning orchestral moments. But long stretches fail to rise to the fantastical opportunities offered by the tale. It's dramatically unbalanced and yields only grudgingly to staging; it's not hard to see why concert versions are frequently favoured. 

Still, the excellent cast made the most of it.

Orla Boylan was the touching heroine and Peter Auty, a clear, ringing tenor her bespectacled love interest, Vaudémont. Mark Stone gave a solid, powerful performance as his friend Robert, and Mikhail Svetlov was characterful and credible as Iolanta's father, King René. It was announced at the start that Toby Stafford-Allen, playing Ibn-Hakia, had a throat infection, but it was hard to tell that anything was wrong. 

The low-budget set, an abstract forest in swirly greens with moody lighting, was uninspiring, but it did the business, allowing the focus to fall on the relationship between Iolanta and Vaudémont.

Preceding the short opera with Stravinsky's Pulcinella, complete with a dance staging, was presumably OHP's idea of giving the audience value for money. Black costumes against a black background were the least of its problems. The insubstantial choreography rapidly became tiresome, the singers took forever to warm up, and only the cleanly articulated performance of the City of London Sinfonia under Stuart Stratford saved me from falling asleep.

 

Gorillaz make Monkey at the Royal Opera House

Monkey: Journey to the West - Royal Opera House 23 July 2008

Is it really an opera? is the question that's been taxing many of the critics. Many of my neighbours in the Grand Tier on opening night seemed to think it was a gig at the Shepherd's Bush Empire. Rolling in after the start time (it kicked off a full ten minutes late) drinks in hand, chatting, checking phones, clambering over the massed knees to wander out for a break whenever they felt like it. It won't wash at Don Giovanni, I tell you.

But to be fair on the middle-aged journalists and BBC types at the heart of this untoward lairiness, the enetertainment form closest to Monkey is the gig - the lavishly primped and choreographed Madonna-style stadium gig, that is.

There's a narrative of sorts - Monkey is, er, on a journey to the west, and he picks up friends and battles foes on his way there. But really it's just an excuse to link together a series of visually spectacular scenes, packed with pole climbers, plate spinners, unicyclists and acrobats.

Set, costume and lighting design are fabulous, like a video game sprung to life, and the full screen video links between scenes are near-seamless.

Whatever my reservations about the rest of the content, it was worth attending for the design alone, and I wasn't the only person who thought so - one of the biggest ovations at the end was given to the Starfish Lady, who did nothing but waft through the air on a wire in the world's greatest-ever starfish costume. Someone should book Jamie Hewlett for the next Ring cycle.

But it was hard to feel any emotional involvement with the characters, and only the stick-twirling, nut-scratching Monkey himself, played by Fei Yang, really came to life.

As for the others, I could gasp at the skills. But when you've seen one plate-spinner, really, you've seen them all.

In spite of a handful of great pop songs - all three of which can be heard on the Monkey MySpace page, here, the musical interest was frustratingly limited.

Damon Albarn seems to have invested his energies into devising fabulous textures - genuinely innovative combinations of eastern, western and electronic instruments that lay a jumble of influences - not just Chinese, but everything from jit to dubstep - over a pop base. But then he just stacks them up, endlessly repeated riffs with no structural or thematic development, not even any of those tiny incremental modifications that make Philip Glass's seemingly repetitive pieces mutate subtly and organically. It was all so promising, but ultimately no more than a soundtrack, with none of the narrative development or emotional resonance of opera.

Ironic then that every operatically-uninclined viewer I've spoken to says they're now tempted to try out a more traditional production at Covent Garden.

Here' s a brief video summary of the show, including production extracts:

Opera Holland Park push the gondola out with La Gioconda

La Gioconda - Opera Holland Park, 22 July 2008

For its annual slice of rare Italian cheese, Opera Holland Park selected Ponchielli’s potboiler La Gioconda. Death, deceit, vengeance and passion all wrapped up in one tortuous plot, which I won't even attempt to explain, as I'm not sure I grasped it totally myself. 

Musically it has its moments, the best known being the beautiful tenor aria Cielo e mar and the ballet interlude Dance of the Hours (aka Allan Sherman's Hello Muddah Hello Faddah). Dramatically, it stretches credulity, and even Martin Lloyd-Evans's grave production failed to prevent titters at the heroine's suicide and other grimly serious moments.

The stark lines of the breeze block set counterpointed the throbbing melodrama of the opera, even if, split by deep 'canals', it did look more like a pair of disused platforms at Waterloo than 19th century Venice.

Carnival masks and traditional costuming provided a more Venetian flavour.

I was less convinced by intermittent Regietheater touches sprinkled like truffle shavings over pizza. The stage full of abandoned shoes the chorus stepped into at the start. The flapping gloves that poked out of a slot later. What did it all mean?

Gwyneth-Ann Jeffers's corseted and cantilevered bewbs provided the main spectacle. Like two baldy men fighting their way out of a box, they were impossible to ignore. As the bunny-boiler heroine, La Gioconda, Jeffers had an uneven night vocally. There were moments of exquisite beauty and great control, perfectly shaded diminuendos and sparkling line, but also more squally top and dodgy pitching than could be overlooked. 

David Soar was the pick of the vocalists and the audience favourite, with a firmly delivered and commanding Alvise, really the only performer who delivered consistently at top level throughout the evening.

You couldn't claim Nuala Willis sang beautifully, but in the character part of La Gioconda's blind elderly mother, her geriatric wobble and rasped witchy curses were astonishingly truthful - it's hard to imagine how this part could be more effectively sung.

There were things to like about all of the cast though. Olafur Sigurdarson as Barnaba improved greatly as the night went on, displaying an energy and commitment that not all the cast could muster. Vadim Zaplechny's Enzo was patchy, the arias delivered indifferently, but he came alive at the big moments and there was a lot of attractive singing there. Yvonne Howard's Laura was a little anonymous, but reliably delivered.

The orchestra threatened to unravel totally during a few fast passages early on, but settled into a sturdy performance. Their highlight was the Dance of the Hours ballet, where Ponchielli switches gear for a few minutes of truly imaginative orchestration and memorable melody. This was the only place where the production really dragged, the dancers failing to hold the attention in quite such a gripping fashion as the singers, despite the odd flaw, managed to.