Tosca - Royal Opera House, 6 March 2013
Maurizio Benini clearly knows his way round the score, but spoilt Covent Garden regulars will miss the detail, the variety and the sheer passion that Pappano brings to Tosca. What looked on paper like a routine revival of a warhorse production was instead elevated to the extraordinary by the powerful performances of its central cast.
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Want to know how Rene Pape spent his last summer hols? Starring in a movie, that's how. Of course der Superbass is already a screen veteran, having been the only thing worth watching in Kenneth Branagh's excruciating Magic Flute a few years ago.
Now he plays the Hermit in a new film version of Der Freischütz, shot last year and shortly to be released under the title Hunter's Bride.
The film promises a treat for lovers of 'realistic' opera. Set during the Napoleonic wars, the publicity shots suggest neither corsetry nor cavalry have been scrimped on. The cast is rounded out with an unbeatable group of singing actors - Juliane Banse as Agathe, Michael König as Max, Michael Volle as Kaspar and Olaf Bär as Kilian. And while they were singing on the battlefields of Saxony, Daniel Harding conducted the LSO at Abbey Road.
The Dresden premiere on 4 September promises to be a special event. Instead of herding a gaggle of micro-slebs into a cinema, the movie will be shown on the banks of the Elbe, open air and open to all, with just a few prime spots held back for sale at €15 each. It goes on general release in Germany later this year, but there's no word as yet about the UK (where, to be fair, Der Freischütz has never exactly taken off).
Here's the trailer:
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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.
Continue reading "Not another election - Die Meistersinger in Zurich" »
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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.
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Wozzeck - Bayerische Staatsoper, Nationaltheater, Munich, 17 July 2009
Michael Volle's magisterial performance as Wozzeck is the main strength and the main weakness of Andreas Kriegenburg's production, here in its first revival after opening to ecstatic reviews last November. Wozzeck is a man who has somehow sunk to the bottom of life's bucket. Hapless and hopeless, crushed, humiliated and abused by all around him, he is sustained only by his love for Marie and their young son.
Yet despite all the intelligence and musicality of Volle's singing and all the daring and commitment of his no-holds-barred acting, his rich, commanding baritone suggests one of life's winners.
His rage is terrifying rather than impotent, his creeping lunacy is scary not sad. The production design doesn't help - Wozzeck and his family are sturdy, upright and 'normal', while all around them are seen through Wozzeck's eyes as hideous Grosz-style caricatures. No dramatic issues can detract from the sheer beauty and fluency of Volle's singing, but Angela Denoke was the truly tragic heart of the production. She sang Marie with a compelling humanity, her gleaming soprano locating that elusive combination of vulnerability and sheer dramatic power.
Whether as opera, play or otherwise, Wozzeck/Woyzeck seems remarkably resistant to any treatment thrown at it, and despite the alleged 'difficulty' of the music, Berg's version has the power to captivate even cynics and neophytes. Kriegenburg takes full advantage of this licence, and his production is a marvellously-sustained piece of theatre, along with the previous night's Ariadne auf Naxos one of the best nights I've had in an opera house for ages. The stage is submerged beneath water - Wozzeck's world is cold, damp and supremely uncomfortable. It's supremely evocative - the only criticism is that making an inch or so of water resemble more profound depths involved a lot of intrusively noisy splashing.
Above this, clever lighting makes Marie's grubby room look suspended as if hovering weightless. Wozzeck's son follows him round, a mute leech clutching desperately at his father, breaking away now and again to comment on the drama in stark black graffiti. A black-suited herd slump around, sporting signs demanding work or money, sometimes bearing the weight of the set quite literally on their shoulders. The doctor is strapped and splinted like the result of one of his own experiments; the captain sports a grotesque semi-naked fat suit. If it doesn't quite add up in any rational way, that's because what's set out is Wozzeck's own distorted perception.
Kent Nagano conducted with grace and ease and a forensic eye to detail. He finessed the abrupt gear changes with a light touch, never losing momentum. And he came fully prepared - a stout pair of wellies ensured he could take his deserved place at the curtain call.
As fate would have it, the week's oppressively hot weather gave way to a tumultous thunderstorm as the opera drew to a close. Nobody dared brave it - as the black skies cracked open above, the seasonally-dressed audience crowded into the foyer and on to the stairs to watch Maximilianstrasse turning into a river even deeper than the puddle on stage.
If only I'd had Kent Nagano's foresight. Instead I was forced into a post-opera first. I put up my brolly, slipped off my Alaïas - and waded home barefoot.
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Palestrina - Bayerische Staatsoper, Nationaltheater, Munich, 14 July 2009
Pfitzner's Palestrina has a Munich connection - it was premiered here in 1917. Though it's rarely performed nowadays there were plenty of empty seats for this reprise of the January 2009 production. It would appear that even here a slow-moving three hour examination of the role of art in society set around the composition of a papal mass is a hard sell. The harmonies are ear-friendly but the tunes are few. Though Wagner is the main influence and Strauss an obvious point of comparison, conductor Simone Young also draws an interesting parallel with Delius and Vaughan Williams in a programme note - nostalgia for an idealised past was not confined to Little England. Pfitzner, who wrote his own libretto, didn't have Wagner's instinctive flair for drama, and the unevenly-paced story plods forward in grim sequence like a police statement. Entertainment is not its goal. The hundred minute first act is prefaced by an irrelevant sub plot and ends with an angelic visitation - like Fafner's dragon, hard to swallow however it's staged. The second act is an over-ambitious recreation of a session of the Council of Trent - bishops and cardinals in an hour of religious chat. Even Shakespeare couldn't have made that riveting. Only in the third act - so brief it's more like a coda - does the action attain a human scale, as the elderly Palestrina is praised for saving the music of the Church from a reversion to Gregorian chant by composing his own splendid polyphonic mass. Director Christian Stückl has grasped the nature and limitations of the work well, and sets it as a series of stylised, iconographic, largely static tableaux. He does his best to liven it up - he updates the libretto here and there, and the servants' brawl written into Act Two becomes a punch-up between the religious dignitaries (where Michael Volle as cardinal legate Giovanni Morone bashes the bishop live on stage). Unfortunately the main effect is to introduce humour where none was intended. The main beneficiary of this revival is the music itself. Simone Young drew some splendidly light and translucent playing from the oversized orchestra, picking out lines carefully and underlining details. It's a demanding opera to cast, a major obstacle to more frequent productions. The 25-odd named parts were inevitably filled to varying effect, but none let the side down. Munich doesn't always have the big star names, but it does have strength in depth, a handful of reliable regulars, and some canny imports. Christopher Ventris imbued Palestrina with warmth and humanity, in pointed contrast to the formality of the Church's representatives in their stylised robes and panda face paint. Falk Struckmann's blustering Borromeo and Michael Volle's sinister Morone stood out amongst the huge cast, and I was also impressed by the rich baritone of Wolfgang Koch as Luna and the crystalline soprano of Christiane Karg as Ighino. For those who missed out, this very performance was being captured for future DVD release: Here's Palestrina in pictures:
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Lulu - Royal Opera House, 8 June 2009
This was a lot better second time round. With the pressure of opening night behind her, Agneta Eichenholz sang cleanly and securely throughout, Klaus Florian Vogt was more focussed, and the action progressed more confidently. I didn't even notice any amplification on the speaking voices, which I guess means it was done more adeptly this time.
And was it my imagination, or was did the singers move downstage to sing more often? Evidently some changes had been made, because Alwa was murdered (as per Berg's stage directions) this time, instead of committing suicide as Loy had rewritten for the opening night.
There were certainly fewer inaudible episodes. That was partly down to Pappano, who sat on the orchestra every time a singer opened their mouth. Lulu is hardly a classic 'singers' opera' in the bel canto sense, but that's how Pappano treated it, with the orchestra alternately blooming forth gloriously and shrinking into a backing band. Most strange, and often at odds with the drama.
There were, unusually, cameras at the front of the stalls as well as the back to capture this performance, presumably for future DVD release.The clarity of this simply-set production remains its strength, something I suspect will be even more obvious when it's seen on screen.
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Lulu - Royal Opera House, 4 June 2009 (first night)
What is it with opera directors and their fascination with film? Are they all frustrated Steven Spielbergs? Christof Loy isn't quite as nakedly entranced as the likes of Robert Lepage. His new Covent Garden Lulu foregoes the silent film traditionally played over the central interlude (per composer instructions). But the minimalist production embodies the dark tone and moral ambivalence of classic film noir in its laconic, stylised gestures and anonymous visuals. The set, nothing but a long sectioned wall that stretches across the stage like a length of film, underlines the point.
It's a workable concept, but it was a little lost in the vast expanse of the Covent Garden stage (fully visible from wings to flies thanks to unwaveringly stark lighting). With the cast clad in nineties office-wear and nothing but a chair on stage, it looked like a recently-burgled boardroom. Without scene changes or major lighting variations, it was hard to tell when time and location had changed. Some actions became downright incomprehensible - would anyone who didn't know the opera realise that when Alwa picked up an axe after the Painter's suicide he was breaking open an entirely non-existent door to reach the body?
And the shortage of reverberant surfaces meant that even the most powerful voices disappeared as their owners moved upstage. Miking them for the spoken sections solved half the problem, but it created a grating disjunct with the singing. If only the budget had stretched to walls.
Clearly some of the audience were less than thrilled - unusually lukewarm applause for the production team even included a few boos, a real rarity here.
It left the cast an uphill task to create something more than a concert performance, but they largely succeeded. Clearly well-rehearsed and choreographed to the inch, movement and gesture were as spare as the set, but every one was telling. Apart from the shoes. Nobody wants to wear stilettos for three hours non stop, but what was with all the taking off and putting back on again?
At the centre, Agneta Eichenholz as Lulu was superb in her Covent Garden and role debut. This Lulu is no coquette. She's a beautiful enigma, objectified in the eyes of those who desire her, but incapable of reciprocating. Agneta Eichenholz may look like Jennifer Love Hewitt as Audrey Hepburn but her Lulu was lethally iced. She started so tentatively I seriously worried she might rush off in tears. But she pulled herself together and nailed the impossible, stratospheric coloratura with ever-increasing confidence. At the end, far from spent, she sounded ready to do it all over again.
Michael Volle's robust Dr Schön was the other big hit. An adventurous director's dream, he has a big, heroic sound, he can act, and he's happy to look a bit of a t1t in the service of Art. Quite handy when you're daubed with lipstick and greasepaint in emulation of the lady wife's stage make-up (another touch that eluded my comprehension).
The blindingly-toothed Jennifer Larmore gave a touching and intelligently-nuanced performance as Gräfin Geschwitz, the reverse-image of the iron-clad Lulu in her femininity and vulnerabilty.
Philip Langridge's sleazy, seedy final act Marquis was his third and finest creation of the evening, following an equally-detailed Prince and Manservant.
Some of the other character doublings weren't so clearly differentiated, particularly Will Hartmann's attractively-sung Painter/Negro and Michael Volle's Jack the Ripper. Perhaps this was intentional - they reappeared for the final act wearing the same bloodstained clothes they'd died in way back in Act I. But this would ignore one of the points Berg's doubling makes - not that these characters are reincarnated but that the same kind of people exist in respectable bourgeois society as the shadowy world of pimps and prostitutes. And instead of being murdered by these 'dead' clients, Loy has Alwa slit his own throat, and Geschwitz is allowed to live - more neatly symmetrical perhaps, but again missing the point that those who truly care for Lulu are in the end destroyed.
Peter Rose's bravely-exposed jelly-belly Athlete raised most of the scant laughs of the evening - for his appearance rather than his commanding singing I should add. Klaus Florian Vogt's Alwa swam disappointingly in and out of focus, though the climactic second act encounter with Lulu 'on the sofa where your father bled to death' was done to devastating effect.
The orchestra were clearly well prepared for their trials and played cleanly throughout. Thanks to a kindly benefactor I was sitting much closer to the stage than I usually do - close enough in fact to observe Pappano in action. I didn't realise quite how much noise he makes or how much energy he expends, huffing and grunting and scrabbling his paws like a Jack Russell dreaming of rabbits. Whether it's for the orchestra's benefit or his own is not clear. Balance was exemplary and there was some beautiful detailing here and there. But in making the singers' difficult job easier by holding back when he could have been powering forward, an efficient accompaniment too often substituted for real dramatic tension.
My close quarters also permitted me to note that a couple of times a singer who shall remain nameless unselfconsciously sent great volleys of saliva arcing into the pit as he blasted forth. My advice to the horn section - if you think the roof's leaking, don't stick your tongue out to check...
************** curtain call photos on next page **************
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Parsifal - Bayerische Staatsoper, Nationaltheater, Munich, 23 March 2008
On to my second Parsifal in two days, and my third this month. This infamous Peter Konwitschny production has been illuminating, baffling and enraging audiences since 1995, though this was the first time I'd managed to fit it into my diary.
Even before a note is heard, Konwitschny's central preoccupation is established - the symmetries of the work. For replacing the curtain is a huge screen (above) pasted with multilingual versions of the same message - 'Erlösung dem Erlöser', or 'redemption to the redeemed' - the final words sung in the opera.
Konwitschny doggedly exposes the music's repetitions and binary oppositions, even when this is at the expense of clarity or fidelity to the text. At times it's frustrating or downright silly, as when the grail - here represented by a silent actress playing the Virgin Mary - is reproduced in the second act as a Lourdes-tat statuette, hugged by Klingsor like a teddy bear.
But the themes and leitmotifs are superbly organised around a tree theme.
A huge central tree with a roughly papered trunk is white and branched at the start, leaved in yellow paper in the magic garden, and a bare black trunk by the end.
Paper - the manufactured fruit of the tree - is interleaved throughout the production both as motif and as symbol of culture in opposition to nature, as represented by the tree. A single sheet of red paper is suspended over the stage at the start. It drops as Parsifal kills the swan. He is attracted to Kundry from the start in this production, so he presents her with a heart torn from the paper. On parting in the second act, they each take one half of the heart. In the third act, matching up the halves prompts mutual recognition.
The matching overcoats and underpants of Klingsor (John Wegner, left) and Amfortas (Michael Volle, right) graphically exposed lookalike injuries. The text may say Amfortas is wounded in the side, but Konwitschny clearly sees a second castration.
Parsifal shoves aside the healed Amfortas at the end - in disgust that Amfortas yielded to the passion that Parsifal resisted? Parsifal's own comfort at the end appears to lie in Kundry, treated tenderly until her death at the close.
Grating irrelevances like Kundry's toy wooden horse, or Parsifal's Tarzan-like entrance on a swinging vine may only be fleeting moments, but unfortunately they stick in the memory just as long as than the more solid elements of the production and detract quite disproportionately from its overall impact.
At least Kent Nagano's conducting was free of gimmicks. Resonant, measured, OK rather risk averse, it was the polar opposite of what I'd heard a couple of days before in Dresden.
The Bayerische Staatsorchester are a fine bunch of musicians anyway, one of the world's best opera orchestras, but here they excelled themselves in flawlessness and responsiveness.
Nagano never pushed to extremes of tempo or dynamics, or hung on pauses so long that the music framed the silence. But there was always the sense that he knew exactly where he was going, and how each moment related to the next. His delicate emphasis on the music's rhymes and alliterations subtly pointed up this key aspect of Konwitschny's production, making the whole experience a lot more coherent than I suspect it could have been in lesser hands.
It was a truly mature performance that drew Nagano not just applause but Richter-scale, camera-shaking, foot-stamping appreciation, turning most of my photos into a tremulous blur.
Whether it was more down to the production or the performers it's hard to say, but the character of Parsifal himself was more to the fore here than in any other performance I've seen. Nikolai Schukoff, light voiced and slight framed by Wagnerian standards, looks an egregious miscast on paper. His may not be a conventional portrayal, but he was remarkably effective as the savage jungle boy turned Christ figure this concept demanded, and produced power without strain, clear phrasing and a profoundly human dimension. And yes, he ended up in his underpants - rather grubby cut-off longjohns that look as if they haven't been washed since the production debuted in 1995 (right).
Lioba Braun has a smallish voice for a Kundry, but she sang beautifully and intelligently and sympathetically. Her subtle characterisation embodied the unusual degree of femininity and compassion that this production demands.
The mighty Kurt Rydl was alternating nights in Munich and Dresden all week. Quite how he was managing the 500km commute on top of the demanding role of Gurnemanz I don't know, but here as in Dresden, his performance was simply magisterial. Actually, it was even better here, his voice more resonant and alive, his relationship to the other characters more engaged.
Michael Volle was an unusually lyrical Amfortas, a contrast musically if not visually to the Klingsor of John Wegner, whose dark timbre gave him all the menace required without resorting to pantomime theatrics.
As ever in Munich, there is no such thing as a small part, and all the lesser roles were superbly handled by company performers, with singers of the calibre of Aga Mikolaj and Daniela Sindram included amongst the Flowermaidens, and Steven Humes as Titurel.
This is not an undemanding production, either for performers or audience, but it's an incredibly rewarding one that, minor annoyances aside, continues to provoke my thought long after leaving the opera house.
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Salome - Royal Opera House, 29 February 2008
The main problem I had with last week's premiere of Salome at Covent Garden (see here for more) wasn't so much the production itself - it was just that I couldn't see half the bleeding thing. From high up in the cheap amphitheatre seats, the top half of the split-level set was invisible. But thanks to a kindly benefactor I was able to give it another try, this time from centre stalls.
What a difference. Unfortunately for anyone in the cheap seats, those missing few feet of stage space really are critical. What's up there is simply a tableau, a lavish dinner party where sumptuously dressed guests slump drinking and idly passing round a barely-dressed woman to be fondled like a pet. But its casual debauchery emphasised the debasement in the basement, that the grimy bath house/kitchen on the lower level is an inevitable consequence of the decadence above.
The other difference was Thomas Moser. His first night absence due to illness meant that the part of Herod was taken over by Robin Leggate - a competent but by no means stunning performance. Back in the show and on form, Moser's imposing bulk and natural charisma gave Herod the regal presence so missed in Leggate's interpretation, while his sweaty unshaven leer hinted at depravity.
He brought some balance to a production otherwise dominated by Michael Volle's towering Jokanaan, and made a more credible partner for Michaela Schuster's blowsy Herodias than the trim Leggate did. And the detail in his performance hinted exquisitely at Herod's perversity, as he kissed the dead Narraboth, recollecting his handsomeness, or fed a servant boy with his fingers. Volle aside, there was something cold and disengaging about the first night's spectacle, and in retrospect, I think it was the absence of Moser. Not only because his own performance was superb, but because he allowed the other singers to respond in kind and give their best.
And musical standards generally were higher than they had been on the first night, with Phillipe Jordan taking a bolder view, and a lot more polish from the orchestra.
Just a shame that only those with £110 tickets could appreciate it in full.
Nadja Michael
Nadja Michael again
Michael Volle
Michaela Schuster
Joseph Kaiser and Daniela Sindram
Adrian Thompson, Martyn Hill and Hubert Francis
Philippe Jordan
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Salome - Royal Opera House, 21 February 2008
I feel short changed. The Royal Opera House promised 'scenes of nudity and violence' in their new Salome. A couple of topless extras loll about at the start as if they're waiting for a bra fitting. And when the beefcake executioner emerges at the end with the head of John the Baptist, he's coated in the prophet's blood and absolutely nothing else, a gory birth/death. But that's it, secks'n'violence-wise. Not even a glimpse of Salome in the celebrated seven veils dance - when she drops her frock, it's only to reveal a sensible granny slip underneath.
There are shocks in this production alright, but not the sort that will necessarily gratify the 'topless opera' googlers (and believe me there are plenty around). With a nod to Pasolini's Salò, it's placed in a huge and grubby tiled basement, wine racks one end, urinals the other. Nice. The setting is '30's Italy or something similar. Herod and his guests are in tired looking evening wear, the ladies in jewelled satin gowns. It's an environment so decadent that anything goes, everything is acceptable. Uniformed soldiers loiter and grope barely-dressed women. Immaculate servants tend silently to all needs. No-one really notices or cares when Narraboth neatly kills himself. Salome is not so much the wilful slut as the pitiable product of a fatally corrupted society and (strongly implied) child abuse. Her dance for Herod is played as a series of sick fantasies/games - or maybe a dream sequence of hazily recollections, it's hard to tell. Fatalism is her guide, not sensuality. Her death is inevitable.
OK, so that's the clever bit of this production. On the dumb side, David McVicar has given his set an upstairs level. The wicked geometry of viewing angles meant that those of us way up top in Covent Garden's cheapest seats couldn't actually see what was happening there. From the feet and table legs on view I would hazard that Herod's guests were enjoying dinner. Possibly it was constructed that way as a blindingly ironic comment - the poor gazing upon the rich etc - but I suspect it's more likely to have been a simple design cock up. It would be more forgivable if this was some imported show designed for a different theatre, but at the premiere of an in-house production there's really no excuse.
Musically, Michael Volle (Jokanaan) was the unquestionable star of the night. Huge, wild and hairy, with a voice to match, he filled the stage and, perhaps intentionally, was the only character to project any real warmth. Everyone else had a less than human quality that just left me cold, indifferent either way to their fate.
Nadja Michael was otherwise a better Salome than I'd expected. A fine actress not afraid to throw herself around physically, she writhed gamefully on the floor for much of the night. She got most of the notes and kept her vibrato under control, but her delivery lacked refinement. I know this is a hellish role to cast with all its acting, dancing and visual requirements on top of the singing, but I would simply rather hear a purer, more youthful voice.
Robin Leggate was a last minute replacement for the sick Thomas Moser as Herod, and in the circumstances did a creditable job. The singing was all there, but the presence was neither regal nor imposing, and he faded away when he should have been terrifying. Michaela Schuster didn't have a great deal of sensuality, but the wheedling manipulative side of Herodias came across strongly. Joseph Kaiser's Narraboth was another that didn't make a huge impression, despite there being nothing particularly wrong with his performance. I just felt 'so what' as he stabbed himself.
I imagine if conductor Philippe Jordan could have any heads on a plate, he'd probably pick the horn section. Not his fault there were so many scrappy entrances and bum notes from that quarter. He generally did a competent if somewhat unadventurous job, lacking that sweeping opulence the score demands, though he managed to gather up some steam towards the end.
I'd like to go back and try this again - all the right ingredients are there even if it didn't quite come off tonight. Annoyingly, it looks like a near sell-out already though.
**Update*** - more (including photos) here
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