Intermezzo

Enlightened attitudes

Women are on the retreat in London's Big Three orchestras.  No female conductors appear on the 2013-14 schedules of the LSO, LPO and Philharmonia. That's a 100% drop from 2012-13, when at least Marin Alsop is granted one opportunity with the LPO.

Could it be that Marin Alsop is the only female conductor in the world? Or are women just not cut out to lead an orchestra?

It's a tired old complaint, but it seems the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment have a different answer. And it doesn't involve any excuses.

Out of eleven OAE Southbank concerts so far announced for 2013-14, one is conducted by a woman, and a further three are conductorless events led or directed by female musicians. While four out of eleven doesn't quite add up to gender equality, it's still an impressive one third of of the total.

And it's not a quirk of timing either. Two of the OAE's remaining five 2012-14 Southbank concerts are conducted or directed by a woman - ever closer to that elusive 50%.

So why the difference between the OAE and the rest? There's nothing particularly ladylike about the OAE's female-led repertoire, which ranges from Vivaldi to Schumann, and includes those male bastions Beethoven and Bach. And while there's an argument to be made for engaging the baton-wielding elite likes of Haitink or Rattle rather than some obscure woman, it doesn't hold when you look at some of the younger and less-known male names on next season's rosters.

Could it be that the OAE have simply spotted that some women can do the job, then gone ahead and hired them?

Anna Caterina Antonacci meets the OAE

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment / Anna Caterina Antonacci - Royal Festival Hall, 30 September 2012

'Queens, Heroines and Ladykillers' is the weighty title of the OAE's latest concert series. Inspired by the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, the orchestra celebrate music written about and for women with guests to include Sarah Connolly, Emma Bell and William Christie.

Southbank Centre 2012 - 2013 season revealed

Well, part of it anyway. The Shell Classic International series, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia and OAE details are up.

Highlights are fewer than hoped, but Zurich Opera's Der fliegende Holländer, conducted by Alain Altinoglu and starring Bryn Terfel, is among them.  There's a lot of Strauss too, including the LPO's  final scene of Salome with Karita Mattila and Thomas Hampson.  Anna Caterina Antonacci joins the OAE in a programme that includes excerpts from Les Troyens and rarely-heard Gluck. 

Visiting orchestras are few, presumably for budget reasons, but there's an interesting Brahms/Schoenberg programme from Michael Tilson Thomas and the Vienna Philharmonic, and Ivan Fischer returns with the Budapest Festival Orchestra and some Bartok. Predicatably, there's almost no contemporary music; the LPO's cannily branded 'The Rest is Noise' season, like the book, concentrates on familiar favourites from the first half of the last century.

On sale dates are:
Shell Classic International - Members booking 25 January, General booking 14 Feb
LPO, OAE and Philharmonia - Members 2 February, General 14 Feb

Chamber Music and Piano details have yet to be revealed - the booking dates are Members 28 February and General 6 March.

Salzburg's nozze di Figaro gets the bird

Le nozze di Figaro - Haus Für Mozart, Salzburg, 30 July 2011

Claus Guth's cinematically-inspired 2006 production sets Figaro in funereal Bergmanesque monochrome. Hitchcock's The Birds is referenced in the dead crows and autumnal leaves littering the bare rooms. It looks more like a particularly scary The Turn of the Screw than a Mozart comedy. 

Simon Rattle's late niters

The Berlin Philharmonic are taking a leaf out of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment's book next season.

In the spirit of the OAE and their after-hours Night Shift, the Berlin Philharmonic are trying out late evening concerts in 2011/12. Simon Rattle will conduct five hour-long sessions beginning at 22.30. These will follow regular subscription concerts. Admission will be free for visitors to the earlier concert, and 10 euros otherwise. With regular prices at the Philharmonie topping out at nearly ten times that amount, it's a real bargain.

one night, two Mahlers

London Philharmonic Orchestra / Yannick Nézet-Séguin / Nicholas Angelich - Royal Festival Hall; 
'Night Shift' - Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment  / Vladimir Jurowski - Queen Elizabeth Hall, 19 January 2011

It's not often you get the chance to fit in two concerts on one night. Thanks to the LPO's 20 minute overrun I almost didn't. Luckily the OAE are equally tardy types, so I was able to hotfoot it from Mahler 5 in the Royal Festival Hall to Todtenfeier next door with seconds to spare.

the conductor's wardrobe

This, the OAE's blog reveals, is how their guest conductor Iván Fischer travels.

His ‘touring wardrobe’ is a flight case complete with suit, shirts, iron, ironing board, Nespresso machine - and even a baton drawer.

And here he is, maximally caffeinated and wrinkle-free, ready to double up on double bass:

OAE's Escape From Whore Island

Tickets for the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment's 2010/11 season have gone on sale to Southbank members today (general booking opens on 22 February).

It seems not even a period orchestra can escape the Mahlerversary - Vladimir Jurowski extends the concept of Enlightenment to embrace Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and Todtenfeier with Sarah Connolly on 21 January 2011. Mit ein bisschen Vibrato I hope.

Sir Simon Rattle quits curlin in Berlin to join the Labèque sisters for Mozart's two-piano concerto on 24 June 2011.

But the unquestionable highlight is a concert performance of Mozart's Escape From Whore Island on 24 November. Featuring  Susan Gritton and Malin Christensson, it will be sung in German and accompanied by a freshly-written English narration. It's in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, so tickets are likely to go fast - early booking advised.

shhhhhhhhh

Vladimir Jurowski tells Radio 4's Today programme why it's OK to drink beer and eat crisps in the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment's special late night concerts. And why the traditional silent format will never die.

Listen here. (Incidentally, love the BBC's feedback request: "Do you think classical music performances are too formal?  Let us know using the form below")

You can also listen live to the OAE's Roundhouse gig (Beethoven 7) on 29 January at 9pm here.

Maria di Rohan at the Royal Festival Hall

Maria di Rohan - OAE / Elder - Royal Festival Hall, 7 November 2009

Mark Elder and the OAE spent the week before this concert performance rehearsing and recording Maria di Rohan for the Opera Rara label. The consequent polish and confidence perhaps flattered the work - you rarely hear bel canto played this stylishly in the opera house, let alone on period instruments – but still, it’s remarkably light on cliché and a cut above the usual second-division bel canto potboiler.

Donizetti’s first version of the score, as played here, omits a certain amount of frou-frou the composer added for later performances in Paris and generally taken up since. The result is a propulsive drama that never sits back on its arias for too long, but at the expense of any light relief. There are no pretty tunes, no showpiece cabalettas. A charming almost throwaway duet taken from the second version and presented as a final petit-four demonstrated Donizetti’s later additions were perhaps a little more than a sweet-toothed concession to French taste.

It was cannily cast and sung with finesse, though without that final degree of dramatic conviction that might have turned a thoroughly enjoyable performance into an electrifying one.

Krassimira Stoyanova’s dark, agile soprano negotiated the lines readily enough, but it wasn’t until the second half that she really seemed to engage with the character of Maria, the apex of the opera’s love triangle. Jose Bros brought clarity, a bright nasal tone and seemingly limitless volume to her forbidden crush, Riccardo. But again, nothing really leapt off the page until the second half. Christopher Purves as her honourable husband Enrico had the expressive edge, but some kind of vocal health problem meant his most heroic act of the evening was simply making it to the end. The supporting cast were excellent all round, with Loic Felix as Armando di Gondi particularly impressive.

 

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one small step for treekind

You can now download the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment's concert programees free online, here, starting 3 days before each concert.

The LSO is the only other London orchestra with downloadable programmes that I'm aware of. Wouldn't it be nice if all orchestras followed suit?

Prom 53: Ms Joyce DiDonato meets Mr Senza Vibrato

Prom 53: Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment / Norrington / Joyce DiDonato

The Proms chose to flog the anniversary composer horse to death tonight, with selections from all four of the birthday boys. The prospect of Roger Norrington giving Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony a rigorous clinical examination didn't thrill me, so I skipped the second half in favour of beer. Time and the iPlayer will reveal whether I made the right decision.

A selection from Purcell's Abdelazer suite kicked things off. Norrington oafed around, playing air-violin, spinning round to gurn into the omnipresent BBC cameras - demonstrating perfectly that by the time they're ready for the stage, players of the OAE's standard really don't need a conductor for this type of music. I'd be genuinely interested to know if anyone found his antics amusing. I was simply irritated. It's uplifting to see performers enjoying themselves on stage if it's genuine, but this came dangerously close to self-indulgence and, worse, trivialising the music.

There was less spinning and grinning for Handel's Water Music, still sounding remarkably fresh after all that's been done to it over the years. There's a reason why some works are popular, and enduringly so. My heart sank when I first saw the paired natural horns and natural trumpets, but they played, like the rest of the orchestra, quite exquisitely.

But what I'd really come to hear was Joyce DiDonato performing two Handel arias and a Haydn scena.

She swept on to the stage in a sea-green gown, not a trace of a limp following her recent accident. A radiant and rather nippy Ombra mai fù was followed by Ah, mio cor from Alcina. Not an easy one to sing cold - a web of deep and complex emotions is compressed into just ten lines and ten minutes. Joyce threw herself right into it, maybe a little awkwardly at first, but the music won over and she hit the target with a thrilling intensity.

Haydn's Scena di Berenice is not as tightly focussed, but its extended mad scene presents its own challenges - not least simulating demented abandon whilst maintaining immaculate vocal control over the swooping, skittering lines. Joyce's artistry translated Berenice's futile raging into a performance of assured and quite mesmerising brilliance.  And to give Roger Norrington his due, the OAE whipped up a storm behind her as well.

Joyce's next London appearance (and her last for a while) is a concert performance of Berlioz's La damnation de Faust with the LSO next month - not to be missed.

 Joyce DiDonato discusses her accident:

Joyce DiDonato sings Ah, mio cor:

What's on in London in April

Easter means chocolate, rite? Not at the Royal Opera House, who are serving up a scary brew of gypsy curses and unpredictable tenors as the ancient Il trovatore is resuscitated from 13 April with Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Sondra Radvanovsky, Mikhail Petrenko and Roberto Alagna.

More Bob on 15 April: 'In Conversation with Roberto Alagna' will reveal what it's like being booed off at La Scala, how to marry a vampire and the exact location of the Sonny Crockett outlet store.

Another venerable Moshinsky production opens on 27 April, the dusty dungeons'n'dragons Lohengrin, in possibly its last ever run. Simon O'Neill shares the title role with Johan Botha, Edith Haller makes her ROH debut, and Semyon Bychkov conducts. 

ENO decamp to the Young Vic this month for Katie Mitchell's multimedia assault on Purcell, After Dido: 

"After Dido is an original film and theatre performance directed by Katie Mitchell and the team who made the National Theatre's Waves and some trace of her. It tells the story of four Londoners on the night of a live anniversary radio broadcast of Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas, and is created by an ensemble of singers and actors using cameras, lights and sound effects, whilst the full score of the opera is performed live."

I like that last bit. Comforting.

April is Passion-packed - at the Barbican Riccardo Chailly and the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig present the St Matthew Passion on 5 April with Thomas Quasthoff and Hanno Mϋller-Brachmann, as do the Orchestra of the Age Of Enlightenment at the Royal Festival Hall on 9 April with Mark Padmore and Roderick Williams.

The Barbican's mini Lang Lang fest begins on 20 April when he joins the LSO for the evening. A recital and various smaller-scale events at St Lukes follow.

Meanwhile, the Royal Festival Hall hosts Gustavo Dudamel and the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra on 13 April, with a second performance on 18 April. In between, the orchestra's various ensembles perform (without Dudamel). Returns only for most of these, but there are free rehearsal tickets available on 13 and 14 April if you can get there in the morning, and on 17 April there's a free performance by the brass ensemble at 6pm.

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment present another of their occasional and agreeably relaxed late night concerts in the Queen Elizabeth Hall on 23 April at 10pm. Ed Gardner conducts Mozart and Haydn, and tickets are a positive giveaway at £8, or £4 for students.

Dido and Aeneas and Acis and Galatea and Wayne ----- now UPDATED with photos

Dido and Aeneas / Acis and Galatea - Royal Opera House, 31 March 2009

It was uncharacteristically brave of the Royal Opera House to unleash a choreographer (Wayne McGregor) and the forces of the Royal Ballet on a pair of operas, but it turned out to be a surprisingly successful experiment.

Perhaps not so brave, actually - his Dido and Aeneas had already aired at La Scala. It was the less bold of the two, conventionally staged against a minimal, monumental set, with precisely-drilled dancers doing little more than filling in the gaps between the singing. That it never really got up any steam dramatically is a problem lying partly with Purcell's now fragmentary score, much of which has been lost over the centuries. But the dancing, which could have been used to paste the scraps together, instead seemed to emphasise the disjunctions.

But there was some fine singing, especially from Sarah Connolly as the tragic Queen Dido and Lucy Crowe as her spirited maid Belinda. Iestyn Davies made an impressive Covent Garden debut too, singing sweetly from above through the hole in the roof. Eri Nakamura and Pumeza Matshikiza made a striking pair of conjoined-twin witches - a coup de théâtre that unfortunatly served mostly to emphasise the dry formalism of all around it.

The way Christopher Hogwood and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment fleshed out the score emphasised the sheer originality in Purcell's writing.

Tunes were more to the fore in Acis and Galatea - which includes some of his best ones, like Love in her eyes sits playing, Love sounds th’alarm and the charmingly silly Happy we!

The simple pastoral nymph-meets-shepherd tale was garnished with stuffed sheep and tangled branches, and some all-too-rustic singing as well. The title roles grated under the foghorn tenor of Charles Workman and Danielle de Niese's unwieldy vibrato. Matthew Rose as Polyphemus and Paul Agnew as Damon coped with Handel's demands far more gracefully.

But why couldn't the ROH use British singers for the principal roles too?  - it's not as if they're thin on the ground. Kate Royal not only sings ten times better than de Niese, she's an accomplished dancer too - and the list of great English tenors, starting with John Mark Ainsley and Mark Padmore, just goes on and on.

Perhaps it was just as well that the dance element was more prominent in this half of the evening. Each singing role, including the chorus, had a dancing double, a soul perhaps, expressing the feeling behind the words. Dancing Acis and Galatea (Ed Watson and Lauren Cuthbertson) entwined in sinuous and utterly entrancing pas-de-deux. Behind the lumbering Polypheme was his exquisitely graceful alter-ego Eric Underwood. The dancers' nudey body stockings - part alien, part newborn - emphasised both their vulnerability and their other-worldliness.

It was all too easy to forget this was an opera and concentrate on the movement - more fluid and literally expressive than McGregor's other work, but stamped with his trademark quirky articulations. It was certainly more compelling than the curiously static singers and their fugly costumes (drag-queen Heidi for de Niese, shaggy tramp for Workman). De Niese did at least redeem herself in a beautifully-executed closing dance with Ed Watson, an emphatic reminder that this production is at heart a dance piece with singing tacked on.

 

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Swanning around for Halloween

Yay for seasonally inappropriate programming!

Despite being gifted a name like Vlad, Maestro Jurowski  and his OAE accomplices will be coaxing the bats from the rafters of the Royal Festival Hall this Halloween with the late-nite sounds of, er ......Swan Lake. Coupled with the equally scary Romeo & Juliet.

Do they not have Halloween in Russia, or wut? Mr Pumpkinhead is not amused, though Mr Tchaikovsky is grateful for the exposure.

For anyone who finds Halloween always a trick and never a treat, the concert is a bargain alternative, with tickets at just £8 for an hour of live music (starting 10pm) plus DJ sets. More and booking details here. 

 

ISRAEL 1 BABYLON 0 (after extra time)

Prom 41: Belshazzar - OAE / Mackerras - Royal Albert Hall, 16 August 2008

I know how you got here. User stats reveal that the googlers' favourite is topless opera (yawn, here, NSFW), but seekers of the wisdom of teh internets have landed here via everything from Angela Hewitt dress sense to John Tomlinson naked. One of the searches that crops up sporadically but persistently, who knows why, is Charles Mackerras died.

Eh? I can report conclusively to whoever is interested that Sir Charles Mackerras is not only very much alive, but at the age of 82 dispatching a three hour oratorio in the clammy heat of the Royal Albert Hall with laser focus and the energy of a puppy (and a ninja jacket, but I'm not sure how much that helps).

Here, just a couple of nights after the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra's border-busting visit, we were reminded of how far the roots of Middle Eastern conflict stretch back.

Handel's biblical tale relates the fall of Belshazzar's kingdom of Babylon and the freeing of the Jewish people. It sounds unpromisingly stern stuff and perhaps that's why it's not performed often. But Handel constructed a score as dramatic as any opera, short on the narrative twists and turns, but impeccably characterised, melodic and powerful.

The Arena was half empty despite a near sell-out of the seated areas - often the case when people weigh up the prospect of three hours on their hind legs.

Even so, with a huge TV screen at the front of the Arena - providing a view of the conductor for the soloists while blocking it for a lot of prommers - I couldn't see exactly what Sir Charles was up to. But his taut, driven reading spoke for itself. The pace never slackened and the time just whizzed past.

Vocally the night belonged to the rousing and immaculately-schooled chorus, their many contributions hitting the target every time.

Iestyn Davies, fresh from his convincing Proms performance in The Coronation of Poppaea a couple of weeks back, was the pick of the soloists, a honey-toned countertenor who never lets the stubble show vocally. The searches I've had -  Iestyn Davies wife and Iestyn Davies gay - testify to the range of his appeal.

The other countertenor on stage, Bejun Mehta, provided a bright and flinty vocal contrast and some dashing coloratura work, as did the impressive Rosemary Joshua as Nitocris.

I was less convinced on the night by the murky and occasionally insecurely-placed sound of tenor Paul Groves and bass Robert Gleadow, though on the radio playback they come across considerably better, with colour and dramatic urgency.

This puzzles me, but not quite as much as the quality of the vocal sound in general on the night. Now, I know the Royal Albert Hall has a cavernous, cathedral-like acoustic, but it's rare to hear quite so much of an echo from every single soloist when the sound from the orchestra and chorus was crisp and clear. It's also rare for comparatively light voices to project so cleanly and consistently all night - not a note was lost to an unwise pianissimo.

There were microphones in front of the singers for recording purposes - naturally, as the event was broadcast live - but no speakers to be seen. I very much doubt whether singers at this level would consent to be surreptitiously amplified, but that's honestly what it resembled - loud, trained voices boosted with near-instantaneous playback. It's just how Juan Diego Flórez sounded in the second half of his Proms performance a couple of years back, when he was (openly and unashamedly) miked.

Perhaps it's just that the TV screen at the front - hard, flat, reflective - increased the normal RAH reverberation level. Because in spite of the BBC's recent lapses from probity, the alternative is unthinkable. Isn't it?

 

  

Prom 18: Glyndebourne's Poppaea flashes her bits at the Proms

Prom 18: The Coronation of Poppaea - Glyndebourne Festival Opera - Royal Albert Hall, 18 July 2008

Having decided I'd rather spend four hours in a comfy(ish) seat with a decent view than straining my stilettos to peer through the crowd, I forked out £21 for a choir stalls seat, behind the stage. This isn't always a great place to sit for big orchestral concerts, right on top of timps and tubas which can drown out every other sound.

But for this semi-staged performance of Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppaea (yes, the English title despite being sung in Italian) I ended up mere inches from the action, and what's more, the orchestra were behind the singers. The best seats in the house? For one night only, possibly.

Robert Carsen's original Glyndebourne staging was swagged top to toe in red velvet. The Royal Albert Hall couldn't quite stretch to that, so instead we got a few draped objects scattered strategically around the stage >>>>>

Normally when Glyndebourne visits the Proms, it brings a full sized orchestra with it, so the singers end up squeezed on to a sort of landing strip in the middle.

But with the 20-odd musicians of Emmanuelle Haïm's tiny band shoehorned on to the front of the stage, there was plenty of space left for what turned out to be one of the most complete operatic stagings I've seen at the Proms, not much 'semi' about it at all.

It opened with a cringemaking and redundant bit of comedy 'business': Virtue (got up as a nun see left) and Fortune (glamorously evening-gowned) arguing in the front row of the Arena - from where they were invisible and inaudible to most of the audience (except us lot in the choir, nah).  Did the director not realise the audience would be standing?

Equally irritating was the way Cupid - written into only a couple of scenes - loitered around the stage throughout  like a wasp at a picnic. It may have made sense in the Glyndebourne staging, but it didn't transfer to the Proms. I shall now remember Amy Freston for her annoying arrow-waving intrusion rather than her brief but excellent singing.

Emmanuelle Haïm directed the pared-down Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment from the keyboard, in thinly-scored, unfussy and beautifully translucent arrangements.

Although she'd trimmed the score here and there, only one full scene was sacrificed. I wished she'd pruned more ruthlessly - or at least upped the consistently stately pace here and there. It was a hot fuggy night, half the audience hadn't heard of deodorant, and there there several moments I just wanted her to get on with it.

Vocally, the main draw was Alice Coote, and she didn't disappoint as the coolly psychopathic Nero, a butcher in a dinner suit. An opaque and less intense performance than Coote often gives, but just as enthralling.

Danielle de Niese made a surprisingly good job of Poppea, given that her career seems to be headed down the Katherine Jenkins route.

While her idea of acting secksy is as subtle as a stag party strippergram, the voice had more colour and gleam than previous exposure had suggested. As she pouted and squirmed and ground her sturdy thighs into the prone Nero, the difference between the two performances became painfully obvious though. Coote wants you to believe in her, utterly; De Niese just wants to be admired. Poppea is more than a firecrotched party girl; she's a schemer who uses her body as a tool to pursue her broader ambitions. De Niese's dramatic skills didn't stretch this far. But otherwise, the role didn't tax her limitations, and she was one of the best things about the evening.

Iestyn Davies sang Ottone with remarkably secure tone and excellent projection  - definitely one of the few countertenors with the ability to fill a space the size of the Royal Albert Hall. He bravely sidestepped a cheap laugh, and didn't allow the female disguise he sported for Poppea's attempted murder to overshadow the implications of this desperate act.

Just as well really, because there were men in frocks to spare. Though neither could resist dipping into mannerism, some of the best vocal performances came from the character singers Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke as the Queen Motherly Amalta and Dominique Visse as the Mrs T-like Nurse.

Tamara Mumford as a Nepregko-lookalike Octavia and Marie Arnet as Drusilla also gave able performances, and only Paolo Battaglia's desiccated and uncomfortable-looking/sounding Seneca really disappointed. Cruelly costumed in a thick tweed suit, he must have been envious of the many other characters given dramatic licence to cavort in their underpants on this steamy night. Nero's, Ottone's, Amalta's, Lucan's - we saw 'em all.

The only evidence of airconditioning was the noise it made, like hobnailed elves dancing in the pipes. Now that's one area where the Arena really does score - for some reason it's noticeably cooler than the seated areas on the hottest days.

Listen to the whole concert for the next 7 days on Radio 3 here.

A few reverse-angle photos - the only real disadvantage of the choir seats:

 

 

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:

Simon Rattle shakes some Schumann sugar - Das Paradies und die Peri at the RFH

Schumann's Das Paradies und die Peri  - Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment/Rattle - Royal Festival Hall, 7 December 2007

Speaking about this rarely heard Schumann oratorio earlier in the week, Simon Rattle warned that "to our very puritanical, middle-European ears, people think this is simply too beautiful, the dissonances are too extraordinary. People have a problem with ecstatic music".

And Schumann biographer Robert Haven Schauffler wrote in 1945 that it was “too consistently sweet. After an evening of it you feel as if you had taken a bath in liquid honey.”

Having steeled my puritan ears for the promised ecstasy, I was surprised at the graceful restraint of the scoring. More like being sprinkled with sugar than dunked in syrup.

And although it avoids the solemnity we associate with the oratorio form, it's not all froth either. Episodically ravishing, beautiful even, it is however fleshed out with too many orchestrate-by-numbers passages to deserve labelling as a masterpiece. The near-impenetrable libretto, a word thicket of typically Victorian density, doesn't help its case.

The simple story of the Peri (a Persian fairy) who must devise a gift in order to enter the gates of heaven was narrated by Mark Padmore with interventions from the Peri (Sally Matthews) and other characters, portrayed by Bernarda Fink, Kate Royal, Timothy Robinson and David Wilson Johnson.

The female soloists were thoughtfully co-ordinated in taffeta gowns (left) so it was a pity that only Sally Matthews and Mark Padmore sang from the front of the stage, the other soloists being tucked back with the choir.

I'd never thought of Schumann as a choral writer until now, but the Choir of the Enlightenment had some of the best music, and they made the most of it in a series of luminously coloured passages. The ethereal Nile Spirits chorus, beautifully executed, was exquisite in its detail, and the soaring Blessed Spirits chorus was a suitably ecstatic finale.

The lustrous, knife-sharp soprano of Sally Matthews brought an other-worldly radiance to the part of the Peri. It contrasted with Mark Padmore's grave demeanour, which sometimes seemed at odds with the music. He didn't seem to be on his best form tonight, losing some of the lower notes, and a bit shouty overall.

I've heard Bernarda Fink sing better too, but her second half was better than her rather wobbly first. David Wilson Johnson's rich baritone was a highlight, but unfortunately he didn't have a great deal to do.

Neither did Kate Royal, here on absolutely stunning form, but with only one aria to lend her shimmering silvery soprano to.

Timothy Robinson made a varied impression, never quite as focused and convincing as in his recent hugely impressive Turn of the Screw stint at ENO.

Simon Rattle drove things along with a characteristic enthusiasm, drawing a vigorous and committed performance from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Their raw-textured sound went some to countering any charges of excessive prettiness in the music, but ultimately the writing gripped only sporadically. When it did - there is some strange and wonderful harmonic exposition tucked away in there - it convinced that at least part of the work is worth further exploration.

It wasn't quite enough to persuade that Das Paradies und die Peri is a neglected masterpiece - and it certainly needs a top drawer cast like tonight's to give it any chance at all - but Simon Rattle deserves credit for organising this airing.   

Rattle and Harding go head to head in Friday night battle

"Anyone with open ears is going to be stunned by the overwhelming beauty of the piece"

says Simon Rattle of Schumann's super-rare oratorio Das Paradies und die Peri, which he brings to the Royal Festival Hall this Friday, December 7.

Though he hedges his bets with
"to our very puritanical, middle-European ears, people think this is simply too beautiful, the dissonances are too extraordinary. People have a problem with ecstatic music".

He's gathered a fantastic cast - Bernarda Fink, Sally Matthews, Kate Royal, Mark Padmore and David Wilson Johnson - so he may just prove himself wrong there.

Same night, different place, the Barbican offers stiff competition with the gay jinks of Britten's Billy Budd.

But there will be no rigging, no jigging and definitely no frigging on Captain Daniel Harding's ship - it's a concert version. Which means (I am presuming) we will have the rare privilege of seeing Nathan Gunn (in the title role) with his shirt on. Ian Bostridge and Gidon Saks (a late replacement for the sick John Relyea) fill the other principal roles, but the casting is chiefly interesting for the quality it brings to the smaller parts - Matthew Rose, Andrew Kennedy, Darren Jeffery, Andrew Staples and Roderick Williams to name just a few.

Fortunately an agonising decision can be averted by opting for the repeat of Billy Budd on Sunday 9 December.

For anyone interested in finding out more about the Schumann, Misha Donat leads a talk on Thursday 6 December at 6pm in the Sunley Pavilion of the Royal Festival Hall. Though here there's no way round the fixture clash with the first night of the Royal Opera House's Parsifal, so I'll be giving it a miss.