Intermezzo

Die Meisterbaker

We can only imagine how thrilled Matti Salminen must have been when he learned more than just singing skills were required for his role as Gurnemanz in Cologne Opera's new Parsifal.

Director Carlus Padrissa has deemed that the veteran bass will mix, knead and bake ten loaves of bread during the six-hour show. These will be distributed to the salivating audience at the end.

For anyone who can't wait that long, the opera house is for the first time providing a restaurant service during intermssions.

Swiss Welsh Dutchman in London

Der fliegende Holländer - Oper Zürich - Royal Festival Hall, 15 December 2012

As they've done a few times before, Zurich Opera interrupted their home schedule to bring a concert version of a current show to the Royal Festival Hall - orchestra, singers and all.

This time round, it was their new production of Der fliegende Holländer.  Both London houses have tackled it recently. Neither managed, with all the costumes, curtains and furnishing items at their disposal, anything nearly as thrilling as Zurich gave us with a bare stage  - and a few top-class singers.

Not another election - Die Meistersinger in Zurich

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg - Opernhaus Zürich, 8 May 2010

A good opera production should acknowledge the period of the work's setting, the composer's own times, and the modern day - or so the maxim goes. It seems for this 2003 production Nikolaus Lehnhoff took the advice literally. So his first act is set in a jerkin-riddled Nuremberg that Dürer might recognise, the second in a misty Victorian dreamscape and the last as a contemporary village pageant.

What's on in London in September

Summer is nearly over, and at last the concert calendar is filling up.

Proms and alternatives
The Proms seem to have gone on forever, but it'll all be over for another year on 12 September.

Remaining highlights include Mariss Jansons with the Concertgebouw, Riccardo Chailly with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and the Vienna Philharmonic with Zubin Mehta and Franz Welser-Möst (replacing the scheduled Harnoncourt).

On 4 September there's an unmissable double header - first Matthias Goerne and the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester in Mahler, Ligeti, Schoenberg and Strauss, then a late-night George Crumb special.

Incidentally, operatic highlights for the 2010 Proms - you heard it here first - are expected to include Die Meistersinger with Bryn Terfel, Glyndebourne's Don Giovanni, and a substantial chunk of Tristan und Isolde from the Orchestra of the 18th Century with Ben Heppner.

If you want to skip the ghastliness of the last night - something I cannot recommend too highly - alternatives include the Wigmore Hall season opener which is Die schöne Müllerin from Mark Padmore and Paul Lewis.

Or there's a FREE screening of the 1929 silent movie Piccadilly on an outside wall (don't blame me if it rains) of the Royal Festival Hall accompanied by a new score from composers Suki Mok and Ruth Chan. Following the screening, the score "will become the lynchpin of a cross-artform work incorporating dance, drama and video against a backdrop of the original silent movie".

Opera
The Royal Opera House season opens on 7 September with two concert performances of Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix conducted by Mark Elder and featuring Alessandro Corbelli alongside the hotly-tipped Eglise Gutiérrez and Stephen Costello.

Don Carlo has started rehearsals and promises to turn out even better than first time round. Semyon Bychkov conducts, Jonas Kaufmann is in the title role, and the rest of the cast is much the same as it was first time round, with Marina Poplavskaya, Simon Keenlyside and Ferruccio Furlanetto reprising his definitive Philip.

Don't expect much on stage except the singers in born-again minimalist Christof Loy's new production of Tristan und Isolde. Tristan is Ben Heppner and Isolde Nina Stemme, with Matti Salminen, Michael Volle and Sophie Koch completing the cast. Pappano conducts.

English National Opera's season opens with the much-travelled, highly-praised production of Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre by La Fura dels Baus.

The Arcola Theatre's variable but occasionally brilliant (and cheap) Grimeborn opera festival continues until 5 September. Handel, Poulenc and Mozart are included amongst the mostly contemporary works.

There's an opportunity to hear Rossini's rarely-performed Il Signor Bruschino and La Scala di Seta as well as The Rake's Progress from British Youth Opera between 4 and 12 September.

And Valery Gergiev conducts the LSO in a concert performance of La Damnation de Faust on 22 September, with a cast including Joyce DiDonato, Michael Schade, Thomas Quasthoff and Florian Boesch.

Concerts
The LSO's season opener is on 20 September, with Gergiev conducting Debussy, Dutilleux and Ravel.

At the Royal Festival Hall, Bernard Haitink conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on 23 and 24 September. And on 25 and 26 September Vladimir Jurowski and the LPO tackle Mahler's 2nd Symphony. Anne Sofie von Otter visits on 30 September with songs from her Theresienstadt CD.

At Wigmore Hall, Matthias Goerne continues his Schubert marathon on 18 and 20 September (a different programme on each night).

And on 28 September it's Imogen Cooper's bus-pass birthday concert. She'll be joined by Wolfgang Holzmair, Mark Padmore, Sonia Wieder-Atherton and Paul Lewis.

Royal Opera House 2009/10 season - all the details

Here first! - a full list of all the Royal Opera House's main stage productions for the 2009/10 season.

The 2009/10 Covent Garden season opens with neither bang nor whimper but with a credit-crunching concert performance on 7 September (repeated on 14 September). Makes a change from last year's Sun readers' special I suppose.

The opera in question is Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix, and the conductor is bel canto genius Mark Elder. The cast includes potential Next Big Things Stephen Costello, Eglise Gutierrez and Luciano Botelho, plus the incomparable Alessandro Corbelli, the first of several welcome appearances this season.

The first staged opera of the season is Nicholas Hytner's lego-loving Don Carlo, with - OMG!- Jonas Kaufmann !!! in the title role. John Tomlinson joins him as the Grand Inquisitor, and the rest of the cast is lifted straight from the first run - Marina Poplavskaya, Simon Keenlyside, fans' favourite Ferruccio Furlanetto, Sonia Ganassi and Pumeza Matshikiza.The conductor is Semyon Bychkov.

This season's contribution to the 2013 Wagnerversary is a new Christof Loy production of Tristan und Isolde. Antonio Pappano conducts Ben Heppner, Nina Stemme, Matti Salminen, Michael Volle and Sophie Koch.

Neigh! Francesco Zambello's ghastly Carmen returns in October, with the latest Covent Garden favourite Elina Garanca back for the title role, fighting off Roberto Alagna, Ildebrando d'Arcangelo, and a farmyard full of furry friends. Bertrand de Billy conducts. It's resuscitated again in June 2010 with a distinctly 'B' cast.

October also sees one of Richard Jones's more subtle and effective efforts back on stage - and attractively cast. The shouldn't-work-but-it-does double bill of Ravel's L'Heure Espagnole (Christine Rice, Yann Beuron, Christopher Maltman, Andrew Shore and Bonaventura Bottone) and Puccini's Gianni Schicchi (Thomas Allen, Maria Bengtsson and Stephen Costello) is conducted by Pappano.

Francesco Zambello steps into Tchaikovsky's The Slippers in November. The new production will be conducted by Alexander Polianichko and features some serious talent fresh from the Mariinsky - Olga Guryakova, Vsevolod Grivnov, Larissa Diadkova, Vladimir Matorin and Maxim Mikhailov.

John Schlesinger's elderly Der Rosenkavalier is dusted off in December. Kirill Petrenko conducts and the cast includes Soile Isokoski, Sophie Koch, Thomas Allen and Lucy Crowe.

Littering the December and January schedules is the inevitable La Bohème. This time Andris Nelsons conducts most of the double-cast performances, which begin with Piotr Beczala and Hibla Gerzmava and end with not a few tbc's.

Robert Lepage's intermittently effective Rake's Progress returns in January 2010. Ingo Metzmacher, Toby Spence (a Tom Rakewell tdf), Kate Royal, Kyle Ketelsen and Stephanie Blythe promise much on the musical side.

Female conductor alert! Top Lisboan Julia Jones wields the baton over Jonathan Miller's Cosi fan Tutte in January. The cast includes Charles Castronovo and Sally Matthews.

A new Richard Jones production of Prokofiev's The Gambler in February is conducted by Pappano, with a cast including Roberto Sacca, Angela Denoke, John Tomlinson and Jurgita Adamonyte.

Plácido Domingo's first appearance of the season is as a tenor. Graham Vick's acclaimed production of Handel's Tamerlano (recorded in Madrid and available on DVD con Plácido) makes its first visit to Covent Garden in March with Christianne Stoijn, Sara Mingardo and Christine Schäfer. Baroque specialist Ivor Bolton conducts.

Bill Bryden's family-friendly The Cunning Little Vixen returns in March with Emma Matthews, Christopher Maltman and Emma Bell, though the presence of Charles Mackerras on the podium has to be the main draw.

Caurier and Leiser's lovely Il Turco in Italia is back in April, with Maurizio Benini conducting, and Aleksandra Kursak, Colin Lee, Alessandro Corbelli, Thomas Allen and Ildebrando d'Arcangelo in the cast.

Aida is subjected to the David McVicar magic in April. His new production is conducted by Nicola Luisotti and features Micaela Carosi, Marcelo Alvarez and Luciana D'Intino. Bare naked elephants?

The last of the Big Three, Richard Eyre's subtly intelligent La Traviata, makes its annual appearance in May and July. This time her name's in the programme - Our first Lady of the Camellias is the fabulous former Netrebko sub Ermonela Jaho. Joining her in her long-awaited return to Covent Garden in May are Saimir Pirgu and Dmitri Hvorostovsky. July's 'B' Violetta is Angela Gheorghiu, who makes do with James Valenti and Zeljko Lucic. Yves Abel conducts.

Laurent Pelly's now-legendary La Fille du Régiment returns in May with the unbeatable original cast of Juan Diego Flórez, Natalie Dessay, Alessandro Corbelli and Felicity Palmer back in place. Bruno Campanella conducts.

What would tempt Sir Colin Davis back into the pit? How about David McVicar's Le Nozze di Figaro? Erwin Schrott, Camilla Tilling, Maruisz Kwiecen. Annette Dasch, Soile Isokoski and Christine Schäfer head the strong cast.

Antonio Pappano conducts Laurent Pelly's new Manon, coming to Covent Garden in June with the announced cast including Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazón. Anyone fancy a bet?

In one of those rare operatic fairy stories, June sees a baritone with less than a year's experience thrust into a leading role at Covent Garden. Yes, it's Plácido Domingo again, and this time he's Simon Boccanegra. Antonio Pappano conducts a strong cast including Marina Poplavskaya, Ferruccio Furlanetto and Joseph Calleja. It's the 1991 Elijah Moshinsky production by the way, not the Ian Judge one seen last year.

The season ends in July 2010 with the first revival of David McVicar's controversial Salome. Angela Denoke takes the central role, with Johan Reuter as Jokanaan. Hartmut Haenchen conducts.

No link yet, but more details expected on the Royal Opera House website sometime next week.

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*******UPDATE 22/4*******

The Royal Opera House's press releases are now available on their website. Go here for the summary, here for the opera details and here for the ballet.

Parsifal in Berlin - Domingo flubs it

Parsifal - Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin, 6 March 2009

This Parsifal has the distinction of being the worst production ever mounted at the Berlin Staatsoper, according to my local source. At its 2005 premiere, normal etiquette was inverted - there were apparently so many boos that the handful of applauders were shamed into silence.

On this showing, I didn't think it was that bad. Incompetent, yes, idiotic (a la Barrie Kosky), no. It was movie producer Bernd 'Resident Evil' Eichinger's first (and so far only) venture into the world of opera - and who knows how the Beverly Hills-based millionaire got the gig? Predictably, his Wagnervision incorporates extensive use of video back projections - technically beautifully executed (by Möller and Hinrichs aka fettFilm). The stage is uncluttered, there's no extraneous detail. So far so good.

It's the content that's the problem. A spinning Earth is projected over the first scene, where the squires are hydrocephalic aliens, the main characters your regular medieval types. Then the grail knights appear as ancient Egyptians (possibly - my history's not that good) in a shattered temple. Klingsor's garden is a bare stage, but a window later reveals a sub-aquatic vista - have we dropped beneath the sea?

The last act opens in a 1940's New York park (hyper-realistic, mums with prams, etc) - but then the knights reappear as a Mad Max biker gang on a climbing frame. Evidently time travel is indicated - but why? And why stop at those specific points?

Eichinger goes some way to redeeming himself by getting a few things absolutely right. 

When the bleeding corpse of the very realistic swan he has just shot is presented to Parsifal, he understands the consequences of his actions, that he has taken a life, in a way that no limp hanky or ceramic bird (just a couple of the other productions I've seen) could ever achieve.

And the image of the swan's death-wound is echoed in the posture and flowing white robes of Amfortas. The grail ceremony begins with his heart - rendered in gruesomely accurate form - which he tugs out for communion-style distribution amongst the knights. The connection with Christian ritual is made explicit. Kundry's transformations are simply but effectively indicated with costume changes. It's just the bits in between that are the problem......

It was certainly baffling, but rarely irritating (though the delicious and deceptively alcoholic himbeer bowle I enjoyed at each interval may have affected my twerp-tolerance), and if there were any boos for the production this time round, I didn't hear them.

The only boos (and there weren't many) were directed at Plácido Domingo, possibly here to compensate for pulling out of a couple of earlier stagings. He looked totally unrehearsed, needed a prompter throughout the second act, and missed, cracked or whispered every highish note. And, even with bad light and squinting, there's no way he could pass for a day under 60. But - but - close your eyes - and the voice (or most of it) is still there, burnished and ardent. And the presence is undeniable. The third act, where in this production Parsifal is older as well as wiser, showed him at close to his best though. Despite all his faults, it was an impressive showing.

Waltraud Meier's Kundry, horridly curdled top aside, was unassailable. Her face, strangely inexpressive in recent months, seems to have relaxed and regained its life along with its wrinkles. An all round lack of direction/rehearsal enabled her to craft the part around her own skills. This incoherent production became Kundry's opera by default.

With Rene Pape suffering from some unspecified long-term ailment, Matti Salminen was drafted in at short notice to play Gurnemanz. Wearing his years even better than Domingo, he provided an authoritative anchor, sage and stately. Even if his singing is not the smoothest or loveliest, that's hardly a big drawback in this part.

The standout performance came from an unexpected source. Hanno Müller-Brachmann has an unusually light and lyrical voice for Amfortas, but the flexibility and the range of colour made his physical and spiritual torment devastatingly real and his vulnerability desperately touching.

And of course Daniel Barenboim was reliably unreliable, his graveyard-pace Vorspiel no clue to the abrupt and idiosyncratic tempo shifts he was to apply later on. But somehow it flexed and breathed organically, even if the gear changes were a little too obvious in places. The Berlin Staatskapelle played marvellously for him, and the translucency of sound, the sheer detail, were just astonishing. I look forward to their joint visit to the Royal Festival Hall at the end of the year.

 

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more curtain call photos over teh page..................

Barenboim's Tristan und Isolde in Milan

Tristan und Isolde - Teatro alla Scala, Milan, 28 December 2007

   

The first night of Tristan und Isolde at La Scala was recorded for broadcast, so I was able to check out some quality clips on YouTube (here) before my own visit. This turned out to be quite useful, as my second-row box seat, though hugely €€€, didn't have the greatest of views:

Though with the whole run sold out weeks in advance, I was lucky to get anything at all by booking a mere few days ahead. I just grabbed the only return available.

The square outside the theatre was lit up for the holidays, with falling snowflakes and multi-lingual messages of festive cheer projected on to the buildings' facades :

La Scala really went to town on the programme, a 400 page brick of a hardback book (left) complete with full libretto, 100 pp. of watch ads, cast lists for every La Scala Tristan production evah, etc, etc. Irresistible - so I dropped the required €20.

Before curtain up, an announcement that Ian Storey (Tristan) was indisposto generated an audible collective sharp intake of breath - hope perhaps that he might be replaced by someone the audience had actually heard of? - followed by a collective sigh as the announcer went on to say he was going to soldier on bravely. Bah. 

Vocally, though he was rather uneven, the crux of his ailment seemed to be amnesia - he was loudly prompted through a chunk of the last act.

From the expression on his face at the end, you'd think he was being handed a twenty year sentence without parole rather than the warm applause he actually received. I don't think he's anyone's ideal Tristan, but given the world heldentenor shortage and the barrel-scraping other houses have been forced into, he's really not that bad. And it's hard to fault him as an actor - he hardly twinkles with star quality, but he's a solid and credible performer.

Waltraud Meier made a rather more reliable Isolde, only the very highest notes eluding her. Her steely presence was arresting, though it lacked the vulnerable edge that would have made it touching. Perhaps the curiously well-rested appearance of her forehead (as first spotted by the eagle-eyed OperaChic) creates difficulties in projecting the necessary emotion, hmmm.

A surprise weakness in the cast was the normally reliable Matti Salminen, whose König Marke was more like a befuddled grandad woken inopportunely from a nap than the wronged husband and betrayed friend.

Patrice Chéreau's ohso predictable production caused no offence, but other than camouflaging a few corpulent Wagnerian frames in flattering overcoating, did no real favours either.

The only really interesting touch was in the detail of the set. Chéreau's usual grim indeterminate wharfside environment was tweaked into a fittingly North Italian ambience with ruddy clay Roman walls and pointy cypress trees. It reminded me of those Italian Renaissance paintings where everything from the birth of Jesus to St Jerome in the wilderness seems to be taking place on a small hillside outside Florence.

If only we could have had some Piero pastels for the costumes instead of, once again, the drab Echo & the Bunnymen rags. Once, this style must have looked new and exciting, but now when every other Wagner production borrows it, isn't it time to try something different?

At least Barenboim was there to save the day (sort of). His long acquaintance with the score paid off in a monumentally structured orchestral performance of immaculate Wiener-like finesse. If at times Barenboim's tempo seemed languorous, it was justified later in framing the contrasting sections, forever inching inexorably to the finishing line.

It was sometimes hard to believe this was 'just' an opera house orchestra, with their lush string sound, polished brass and exquisite balance. The three Vorspiele were an opportunity to just sit back and luxuriate in the sound of the orchestra without the distraction (and that's what it often was) of singers and movement. These were for me the only truly engaging episodes in the whole evening. The orchestra joined Barenboim on stage to take a bow at the end, something they deserved rather more than certain of the singers.

 

Klaus Florian Vogt goes down well in Munich

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg - Bayerische Staatsoper, Nationaltheater, Munich, 31 July 2007
(Münchner Opernfestspiele 2007)

This was Klaus Florian Vogt's night. The last time a performance took my breath away the way this one did was - last time I saw Klaus Florian Vogt actually. In Lohengrin at the Met last May he stunned with the choirboy purity of his voice, its simple beauty. Tonight, the voice was rather different - or maybe he'd adapted his performance to suit his role of Stolzing, which is generally a little lower-lying anyway. Whatever, it retains that remarkable clarity, but the innocent, otherworldly air is replaced by a more centred and inflected delivery. The power is incredible - the voice is so clean, but it slices through the orchestra even when he's not pushing it. When he ups the volume it's simply majestic. It wasn't an entirely perfect performance - he slipped out of focus now and again, but he didn't fail on the big arias.

The audience was a mixture of hardened Wagnerites and night-outers but I think everyone could feel how the atmosphere changed when he sang. He got the most enormous ovation at the curtain call - even he was surprised - the whole place shook with the cheering and stamping.

Ending the Munich Opera Festival with Die Meistersinger is a tradition going back many years. Only the one performance is given each year, so there's no opportunity for the cast to refine their technique. The current production was introduced in 2004. It's framed in simple, fairly literal sets. That's budget-simple, not chic-minimalist simple. Curved walls are turned round to become interiors, plain chairs and tables serve as furniture, props are few. It has a plain, timeless quality that should serve this production well for years to come.

Costumes are modern. Well, modern-ish. This production's Nuremberg is a town through which the winds of fashion have not blown since about 1987. Klaus Florian Vogt is given a ghastly winged and lacquered Lady Di blowdry, which thankfully collapses into waves by the last act. It is complemented by some criminal attire - an Alagna-fest of cuban heels, pleated pants, leather jerkin, and bolo tie. Suprisingly, his hawtness is only lightly compromised by these disasters. His Eva, Camilla Nylund, doesn't notice. She's got her own mullet, airhostess suit and Queen Mother shoes to worry about. The Meistersingers escape lightly with a variety of elegant suits, though David (Kevin Conners) must endure a few teenage styles.

On to the music. What can I say? For most it is not Wagner's finest moment, and there are a few longueurs, but the orchestra under Peter Schneider were magnificent and invested the whole five hours with remarkable purpose and energy.

There were no duds amongst the singers either. It must help that this production sets their characterisations very traditionally. A few modern props are introduced - the scoring of Stolzing's first try-out is done on a powerpoint presentation, Beckmesser accompanies himself for his contest song using a sort of portable beatbox round his neck - but these don't stray far from what was originally intended.

Kevin Conners is perhaps a little on the old side to play the apprentice David, but the voice is a perenially youthful one, and he has the physical lightness and dexterity to make the most of his comic moments.

The other great comedy role of the piece is of course Beckmesser. Here the short and stout Eike Wilm Schulte had us even before he opened his mouth with his strutting goggle-eyed physical characterisation. His full sonorous voice was a joy to the ear. His 'bad' singing was superbly nuanced - without missing a note or hamming it up he managed to be as exquisitely awful as the role demanded.

Matti Salminen was back for his third opera in as many nights, this time as Pogner. He did sound a little tired now and then, but generally it was a fine, dignified performance.

Jan-Hendrik Rootering as Sachs disappointed slightly. Sachs is of necessity the still, quiet centre of the piece, around whom the dramas rage. But he's also the motor for change in the community so the part needs a certain vitality. Rootering though went for virtual immobility. With a build that could stop a pig in a corridor, perhaps, like Pavarotti, this was something of a necessity. The vocal performance lacked colour too, though, not to mention reach and power. It wasn't a terrible performance, but next to the other principals, his star inevitably shone less brightly.

Camilla Nylund too lacked impact. Again there was nothing particularly wrong with her performance, but her voice is too shrill to be appealing, and she was frosty and uninvolved.

There are few experiences less pleasant than a long Wagner done badly. But done well, the hours just disappear without you noticing. Today's performance started at 4pm, and when we came out at 10, it was shock to see it was dark. That's how good it was. I practically had to mortgage my ovaries to get the great seat I had tonight, but it was more than worth it.

(More photos here.)

   

Sub-wunderbar Fidelio in Munich

Fidelio - Bayerische Staatsoper, Nationaltheater, Munich, 30 July 2007
(Münchner Opernfestspiele 2007)

I was lucky enough to get good seats for the other operas I've seen this week in Munich. But when I booked at the end of April, only a ceiling-level standing place and a no-view seat were left for Fidelio. I snapped up both and took the standing place for the first half and the seat for the second.

From where I stood I could see only half of the stage. Unfortunately it wasn't the half where most of the action took place. Vision was further restricted by the setting of some scenes in a stage-within-a-stage box. But the ticket was 12 euros - you get what you pay for here.

What I could see revealed an austerely elegant mausoleum-like set in tones of blue-grey. Just offstage was a limestone bathroom with rainfall shower and Philippe Starck fittings-- j/k of course, but it did have that minimalist designer hotel feel. Costumes too were simple and subdued in neutral Armani-like tones. Unless Peter Mussbach had hidden a family of garden gnomes or something on my blind side, it seemed to me a neat concept - less is always more with Fidelio - and I wish I'd been able to get the full effect.

The opening overture was taken ponderously and not without the odd fluff. The orchestra's precision improved later, though conductor Christof Prick (I don't have any joke better than the old Prick in charge of the orchestra one there*) continued to favour taking things slowly.

Fidelio really hinges on the singing, even more so when you can't see the action, and it was a mixed bag here.

Waltraud Meier as Leonore had all the power and breath control of her younger days, but something went sadly awry. It took her three quarters of the opera to warm up, and her intonation was all over the place, sometimes completely obscuring the line she was supposed to be singing. She simply didn't have the high notes either - she shot a mile wide on every single one, and with a voice that powerful, it was a painful experience. There were a few boos at the end (the first ones I've heard all week). I suspect they were directed at her.

Robert Dean Smith was the oddest Florestan I've ever heard. He has that ringing metallic tone the role needs, but it was overlaid with a bleat that would do Andrea Bocelli proud. I couldn't figure out if he'd laid the acting stuff on a bit thick, or if he just does that all the time. Mostly, and in the context of the part, it worked, but it was definitely peculiar. Due to my no-sightline position for the second act, I didn't actually get to see him, but I was unhelpfully informed that (from the half-view standing position) he was on the tubby side for a starving prisoner, and that I wouldn't have fancied him.

Matti Salminen came fresh from his outstanding Daland last night, and as Rocco turned out yet another great performance. Rougher and tougher than Daland, it was a thoughtful and effective characterisation that was the vocal standout of the night.

Aga Miklolaj made a competent enough Marzelline, but none of the other performances made a very positive impression. Martin Gantner as Don Fernando in particular seemed miscast, unable to get down low enough to actually hit his bottom notes.

Despite the variable vocalising, there were a few great moments. Both the prisoners' chorus and the choral finale were beautifully done, with a simple heartfelt quality that mostly eluded the soloists. The high point of the evening came with the pre-finale overture we were thankfully treated to. At last this was Beethoven with some passion, not to mention an exquisitely beautiful flute solo in the middle.

This was the only Fidelio performance of the festival, probably the reason why it sold out so quickly, but in the wake of the high standards elsewhere over the last few days, it was rather a disappointment.

*(I've been told another one - Conducted by Prick? Did they run out of batons?)

A couple of curtain call pics:

and here's my lousy view from upstairs: