Intermezzo

Dr Dee - an opera ruffly speaking

Dr Dee - Palace Theatre Manchester, 3 July 2011

It’s a stretch (if not a downright cheek) to call Damon Albarn’s Dr Dee an opera – even if the composer does take a Tosca-style plunge from the battlements at the very end. Labels like rock musical don’t fit well either though. Built around vignettes from the life of the Elizabethan mathematician/magician Dr John Dee, it’s an odd hybrid. With a mixture of musical styles, no clear narrative line and surprisingly little singing, it flits from scene to scene without ever settling on anything like a theme, a structure or a story. Something like MTV in other words. And it’s amplified to the point where the volume itself becomes a defining feature.

Die Walkure in Manchester

Mark Elder and the Hallé Orchestra continue their sloooow course through the world's longest and randomest Ring Cycle next year.

2009's Götterdämmerung will be followed in July 2011 by Die Walküre in concert at the Bridgewater Hall. As befitting a cycle with two years between each episode, there will again be an overnight interval between acts. Breaking further with tradition, it's prefaced not by the customary Das Rheingold, but instead a 'dramatic prologue' specially written by Gerard McBurney. (If you can't do without your Rheingold, Opera North come to the rescue). The cast includes Egils Silins as Wotan and Susan Bullock as Brünnhilde.

Booking has already opened - there are loads of seats at the moment, but don't expect them to hang around forever.

Royal Opera House Manchester = dead?

With the news that the Ambassador Theatre Group has bought up a clutch of British theatres, including Manchester's Palace Theatre, could the Royal Opera House's great push northward be thwarted?

The controversial plan involved redeveloping the frankly knackered Palace at a cost of some £80m in order to make it suitable for showing opera and ballet. Unless the ROH have some sneaky deal with ATG up their sleeves (a possibility), it would seem the alternatives are either using an existing venue, such as the purpose-built Lowry, or giving up on the idea altogether.

Wouldn't it be fascinating to find out just how much taxpayers' money has been spent on consultants and reports and projections for a plan which always looked questionable in the first place, and now might be dead in the water?

Royal Opera House's Great Push North - Culture Secretary sticks his oar in

Ben Bradshaw bangs the drum for the Covent Garden invasion

The Royal Opera House's imperialist designs on Manchester have received a boost from the new Culture Secretary, Ben Bradshaw.

In a letter (reproduced below) to the Arts Council England head he says, "The ambition to develop and make available world-class artistic performance outside London is something I fully support."

And he adds his support to the idea of sharing opera and ballet provision with the Lowry, which would help allay local concerns about the impact of the Covent Garden invasion on existing arts provision in the North: "While it would not be appropriate for me to offer a view on what the most appropriate or viable solution might look like, I understand that the Lowry and the ROH have given initial thought to a dual-house approach and I'm keen to ensure this is an arrangement is (sic) fully explored by all parties."

He's keen to sort something out quickly too: "I would hope that significant progress could be made towards an agreed way forward by the end of September".

The government hasn't yet committed any funding to the scheme, which is estimated to cost £110m upfront plus annual running costs. But with the Culture Secretary behind it, and Royal Opera House boss Tony Hall recently appointed to head the Cultural Olympiad, the borders of the Covent Garden empire are looking ripe for a shift northwards - recession or not.

Gotterdammerung in Manchester - the final score

Götterdämmerung - Hallé Orchestra / Elder - Bridgewater Hall Manchester, 9-10 May 2009

Sir Mark Elder conductor    Katarina Dalayman Brünnhilde    Attila Jun Hagen    Peter Coleman-Wright Gunther    Susan Bickley Waltraute    Yvonne Howard Second Norn    Katherine Broderick Woglinde    Leah-Marian Jones Flosshilde    Lars Cleveman Siegfried    Andrew Shore Alberich    Nancy Gustafson Gutrune    Ceri Williams First Norn    Miranda Keys Third Norn    Madeleine Shaw Wellgunde    Hallé Choir    Gentlemen of the BBC Symphony Chorus, London Symphony Chorus Royal Opera House Chorus and Royal Opera House Extra Chorus

The first half of the Hallé's concert Götterdämmerung was very good, but the second, performed on the following day, was extraordinary. It's tempting to view the weekend as one big show with a twenty hour interval, but in reality there was a different sort of electricity in Sunday night's air.

Though after a dismally dull afternoon's football at Old Trafford (even Sir Alex agreed), just the pre-show harp tuning was a comparative thrill.

I think a change of seat helped. I took in the Saturday performance from the circle on the first level - a great view, and, anecdotally, the best sound. But on Sunday in the front stalls the visceral rush from the massed musical forces was overwhelming, even though the unraked seating offered an over-long opportunity to contemplate the array of baldy heads between myself and the shoes of Mark Elder.

And the singers seemed on even better form. Katarina Dalayman's Brünnhilde (a recent Met success too) displays a rare combination of strength, sensitivity and intelligence. So what if she wasn't quite technically flawless. She could hardly have been more moving, especially in the tragic resignation of her final scene. Her noble and magnificent presence dominated both evenings.

Lars Cleveman projected far more convincingly on his second outing (according to a commenter on my earlier post he had a throat problem on Saturday). He offers a different sort of Siegfried to the usual - expressive, understated, sympathetic. How nice not to be shouted at. I'm not sure how it would work on stage, but the beauty of a concert performance is that it doesn't matter.

Attila Jun, Peter Coleman-Wright and the great Andrew Shore made a terrific trio of villains. And how well Jun's dark, thuggish Hagen was complemented by the massed Gibichung chorus (there must have been at least 150 of them) resonating around the hall. Nothing like strength in numbers, and a peculiarity of the acoustic made it seem as if the sound was coming from every direction, like some epic hi-fi demonstration. 

Was this the orchestral highlight? Or was it perhaps the rippling majesty of the Rhine journey interlude? Or the preludes, measured masterpieces each? I think Mark Elder can be excused for lavishing the most attention on the most exposed parts of the work, where splendid detailing was apparent throughout. 

More difficult to pardon was his pre-concert dig at "ghastly, modern productions" - enthusiastically received but hardly constructive. Unless of course his next Royal Opera House engagement - a concert performance of Linda di Chamounix - should be basketed with this Götterdämmerung as a statement of intent. Should be popular with the purse-string pullers at least.

But I digress - it takes nothing away from a magnificent performance that was received with an immediate and lengthy standing ovation all round, and rightly so.

To be broadcast on Radio 3 on 8 and 9 June - and not to be missed.

*UPDATE* - check out the Hallé Choir's Facebook wall for audience comments and more.

 

standing ovation:

 

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Gotterdammerung in Manchester - half time report

Götterdämmerung - Hallé Orchestra / Elder - Bridgewater Hall Manchester, 9 May 2009

Even the first half of Götterdämmerung on its own makes for a long evening by concert hall standards, so it was probably smart for the Hallé to spread the whole opera out over two consecutive nights. Tonight we had the prologue and first act - a non-stop "two hours and seven minutes - approximately" as Mark Elder put it in his pre-match speech.

The highly-polished performance was the result of rehearsing off and on since February. There's a fine balance between rehearsing enough (vital for a band that rarely performs opera) and over-rehearsal, and there were a few points where I sensed a switch to autopilot, but overall they maintained momentum well, with some particularly fine horn work. Mark Elder didn't get bogged down in detail, building steadily and inexorably in broad brush strokes.

One advantage of the two-dayer approach is that singers have less need to conserve their stamina, and Katarina Dalayman's Brünnhilde was powerfully projected. Although her lower range sometimes disappeared beneath the orchestra, her pearly top notes gleamed effortlessly.

Lars Cleveman replaced Ben Heppner as Siegfried at a fairly late stage. He has a more appealing voice than the average heldentenor, neither shouty nor over-metallic, but it was a size too small for Mark Elder's grand dynamics. And next to the imperious Dalayman, he seemed lacking in presence. Susan Bickley's commanding Waltraute could have eaten him for breakfast too. The depth of their sisterly bond and the shallow opportunism of Gunther and Siegfried's brotherhood were neatly contrasted here.

None of the singers seemed over-dependent on their scores, but Peter Coleman-Wright (Gunther) and the booming, brilliantly-named Attila Jun (Hagen) really lived their parts between the notes - and even in the most musically riveting concert performance, that sort of thing really does make a difference.

*UPDATE* - full and final details here

Royal Opera House provides Shameless photoshop opportunity

The Telegraph reports that the Royal Opera House is in talks to create a new £250m opera house oop north. The location is East Manchester, the setting of the TV series Shameless and the home of Manchester City.

Tony Hall, the ROH's chief executive, said he was "excited about how this might progress our programme of getting the work of the Royal Opera House to as wide an audience as possible". Spreading Covent Garden production costs and fulfilling the diversity remit wouldn't hurt either.

Ongoing financing isn't mentioned - though it should be pointed out that ticket income only covers a third of the Royal Opera House's costs, even at £210 a pop . The battle may be not simply to get a new house built, but to secure further funding, adequate to ensure it has a viable future.