Intermezzo

First look at Philip Glass's Perfect American

Philip Glass's latest opera, The Perfect American, premieres tonight at Madrid's Teatro Real. Based on Peter Stephan Jungk's novel of the same name, it presents 13 fictionalised episodes in the life of Walt Disney in a production by Phelim McDermott.

Mickey, Donald and the rest of the cartoon crew are no-shows. In their place are a robotic Abraham Lincoln, an owl attack, and a visit from Andy Warhol.  A largely British cast features Christopher Purves in the principal role.

If you can't wait until it turns up at ENO in June, you can watch it live on 6 February on the Teatro Real's web channel, where it will remain on demand (price from €9.95). It will also be shown later on TVE (Spain), ARTE (France and Germany), WDR (Germany), France Television and NHK (Japan). (UPDATE - to be shown on Mezzo TV too).

 Photos below, video here.

What's on in London in May

There's always plenty on in London musically speaking, but May looks particularly busy.

For starters, at the Royal Opera House, Diana Damrau and Giuseppe Filianoti take a roll in the hay for the first revival of Laurent Pelly's L'elisir d'amore. Il trovatore and Lohengrin are still around too.

At the ENO, David Alden's hotly-anticipated new Peter Grimes opens. Stuart Skelton, Amanda Roocroft, Gerald Finley and Felicity Palmer sing, Edward Gardner conducts. The second new production of the month is film director Abbas Kiarostami's first venture into opera, Così fan tutte.

Purcell's King Arthur is performed in concert at the Barbican on 6 May by Le Concert Spirituel. There are limited *free* tickets for under-26's for this one (check out the freeB link on the Barbican site).

17 May is Handel-fest day. Christopher Hogwood's Academy of Ancient Music bring Arianna in Creta to the Barbican. Miah Persson, Lisa Milne and Sonia Prina appear as originally scheduled, but Kristina Hammarström replaces the previously-announced Angelika Kirchschlager.

The performance starts at 6.30pm, so there should be (just) enough time to get there from Zurich Opera's Agrippina, which begins at 2pm in the Royal Festival Hall. The impressive cast joining Marc Minkowski and Zurich Opera's specialist period ensemble, Orchestra La Scintilla, includes Vesselina Kasarova, Eva Liebau, Marijana Mijanovic and Anna Bonitatibus.

The other operatic event worth mentioning is not in London at all, but in Manchester.  Over two nights, 9 and 10 May, Mark Elder and the Hallé Orchestra perform Götterdämmerung in concert at the Bridgewater Hall, with Katarina Dalayman as Brünnhilde. If this was in London, tickets would go in a flash, but there are still plenty of seats available.  Manchester is clearly a harder sell. It rather underlines the folly of the Royal Opera House's plans to create a Mancunian outpost. Northern opera lovers may be dedicated - there just aren't a lot of them.

On 31 May, Rene Pape joins Vladimir Jurowski and the LPO at the Royal Festival Hall for the UK premiere of Torsten Rasch's 2003 song cycle Mein Herz brennt. This is (loosely) based on the music of headbanging German industrial metallers Rammstein - a fact the Southbank promo guff intriguingly fails to mention. Not as scary as it sounds though, as the source material is engulfed by Jurowski's favoured big-boned retro-nouveau Eastern bloc neo-romanticism (or Vladcore for short).

On a smaller scale, there are lots of recitals this month, including the big one, Anna Netrebko and Dmitri Hvorostovsky at the Royal Festival Hall on 19 May.

At Wigmore Hall Kate Royal sings Schumann and Brahms on 7 May, and there's a solo recital from the great Jordi Savall the day after. On 19 May (the same date as Netrebko/Hvorostovsky unfortunately) Mojca Erdmann, Christian Gerhaher and Gerold Huber tackle Wolf's Italienisches Liederbuch. The Wigmore's busy Haydn weekend begins on 29 May with an András Schiff lecture recital at 2pm.

And there are a few more Wigmore day time events worth mentioning. On 12 May at 2pm there's a *free* recital of Kurtag and Schubert by Jonathan Biss, which will be recorded for the Wigmore's own label. On 18 May at 1pm Anne Schwanewilms sings Debussy, Strauss and Wolf, and on 25 May at 1pm Ingrid Fliter plays Chopin and Schumann.

Philip Glass makes a rare appearance at the Barbican on 26 May for an evening of chamber music.

The fabulous Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain plink and twang at the Cadogan Hall on 5 May.

One of the most intriguing events of the month is a Barbican concert on 30 May. Various artists including the Britten Sinfonia perform the Music of Moondog , and there are companion pre, post and interval events, including an 11.30pm concert at St Giles Cripplegate, Moondog Around Midnight .

Poetry ahoy! - Philip Glass and Patti Smith at St Lukes

Philip Glass/Patti Smith - St Lukes, 19 October 2007

The hot ticket du jour, sold out months in advance, and the only reason why I turned down Plácido Domingo in Die Walküre, was this one-off with Patti Smith and Philip Glass in the tiny and atmospheric St Lukes ex-church.

Described as an "evening of piano and poetry inspired by their mutual passion for the work of seminal beat poet Allen Ginsberg", it was part of the Barbican's 'Glassworks' weekend, a 70th birthday tribute to Philip Glass.

With Glass noodling behind on the piano, Patti delivered a few of her own poems as well as Ginsberg's. Reading with a passionate ferocity and a true musician's rhythm and dynamics, she melted between numbers, warm, equable, funny, spinning anecdotes like a favourite professor. In between the poetry, Philip Glass got a brief rest while Lenny Kaye joined Patti on guitar for a couple of songs.

Although it was nominally a Philip Glass evening, Glass himself played just three of his own works solo. Perhaps it was just as well. Although it's always fascinating to see a composer of Glass's stature performing his own work, it has to be admitted he's not up there with Pierre Boulez as a pianist. After titanically fudging Night on the Balcony, he redeemed himself with hypnotic readings of his Etudes 2 and 10.

The audience was perhaps more of a Philip Glass than a Patti Smith one, 'young people' in the minority. Neatly fitting the demographic was Leonard Cohen (and his gigantic crew) - who sat just inches away from me. He'll be visiting the Barbican for a Q&A on Saturday night (concert ticket holders only).

Some photos here - and thanks to the professional photographer who took them for being kind enough to share.