Intermezzo

Ticciati walks out of opera

Robin Ticciati has had enough of Zurich Opera's controversial new Don Giovanni, pictured above. He has handed his baton in after just two performances, leaving music director Fabio Luisi to conduct the remainder of the long run.

Ticciati himself has not explained his reasons. The opera house say that he didn't like Sebastian Baumgarten's production. The director was heavily booed on opening night - as was Ticciati's conducting of Zurich's La Scintilla period orchestra.

Now, any conductor is entitled to his opinions about a staging, and Ticciati certainly has the weight of public opinion behind him if he doesn't care for this one. But then many conductors are jurassic creatures who take exception to any number of modern productions. The usual practice is to accept it as a job hazard and soldier on with gritted teeth like a good team player to support singers and other staff who in all probability share the sentiments.

But perhaps this particular production is so intolerable that Ticciati is genuinely unable to conduct it. If that's the case, his timing is odd. Baumgarten has been directing opera for nearly twenty years, and always provocatively. So an aesthetically-sensitive conductor should have identified the potential for a problem right at the start - let alone before six weeks of rehearsal and two public performances were up. Intendant Andreas Homoki claims surprise at the decision, saying Ticciati was "sometimes sceptical, but always constructive" during rehearsals.

Could there be more to Ticciati's withdrawal than meets the eye?

In an interesting parallel, Thomas Hengelbrock failed to return to Bayreuth's widely-reviled current Tannhäuser - another Baumgarten production - after his 2011 debut, though he did at least make it through one full run. 

Zurich Opera 2013 - 2014 season revealed

With the new team of Intendant Andreas Homoki and music director Fabio Luisi halfway through their first season, Zurich's programming is showing an increasingly adventurous touch.

The big news for 2013-14 is that Calixto Bieito has been picked to tackle the mammoth Die Soldaten. There will be blood. Homoki and Luisi join forces in a new Fidelio, and Cecilia Bartoli stars in a new Christof Loy Alcina.

Star singers are otherwise thin on the ground, though there is a Salome with Nina Stemme and Evgeny Nikitin and Don Carlo with Rene Pape, Fabio Sartori and Marina Poplavskaya. Fans of the ageless Edita Gruberova can catch her twice -  in La Straniera and Roberto Devereux.

Here's the full list of new productions:

Die Soldaten - d.Calixto Bieito, c.Marc Albrecht

Faust - d.Jan Philipp Gloger, c.Patrick Lange

Fidelio - d.Andreas Homoki, c.Fabio Luisi

Alcina - d.Christof Loy, c.Giovanni Antonini - Cecilia Bartoli

Aida - d.Tatjana Gurbaca, c.Fabio Luisi

Pique Dame - d.Robert Carsen, c.Jiri Belohlavek

Il Ritorno d'Ulisse - d.Willy Decker, c.Ivor Bolton

La Fanciulla del West - d.Barrie Kosky, c.Marco Armiliato

Details are not yet up on the website, but the season brochure can be viewed online.

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.

Kaufmann's cancellations cost dear

Zurich Opera's administrative director Otto Grosskopf has revealed that Jonas Kaufmann's illness earlier in the season cost the house 300,000 Swiss francs (around £200,000), leaving it barely scraping even over the year as a whole. 

Kaufmann cancelled two sold-out gala concerts in May at short notice, forcing then-Intendant Alexander Pereira to scramble for replacements. If he hadn't been able to persuade Edita Gruberova and Leo Nucci to step in, then the overall loss would have been an even bigger 800,000 francs (over half a million pounds) - a significant dent in the 134 million franc annual budget.

"This shows just how much we depend on stars," Grosskopf said.

Bartoli in Otello?

It's the Rossini version of course, from Zurich Opera, and it's being streamed on Medici.tv tomorrow (Thursday) at 6pm. Free!

Swiss go to war - against Bernard Haitink

 
Unprecedented hostilities at Zurich Opera House on Tuesday night. No, they didn't whip out their Swiss Army knives and torment each other with the corkscrew attachment. 

But, most unusually for Zurich, the 80-something conductor of Tristan und Isolde, Bernard Haitink, was roundly booed by a large section of the normally placid Swiss audience.

His offence? The last-minute replacement of the scheduled Isolde, Waltraud Meier, by Barbara Schneider-Hofstetter, following "musical differences".

“Haitink and Meier are two exceptional artists and strong personalities, who express their opinions clearly. They couldn't agree on this project,” Joachim Arnold, marketing head of the opera house, diplomatically explained.

*UPDATE* an unofficial record of the incident (booing begins around 3:18):

Der ferne Klang opens in Zurich

Der ferne Klang - Opernhaus Zürich, 9 May 2010

Franz Schreker remains oddly overlooked in London, but interest in his work continues to grow slowly but surely elsewhere. The new Zurich production of his 1912 opera Der ferne Klang isn’t the only one this year – it follows performances in Augsburg and Berlin, and there’s a US premiere in Bard this summer.

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.

Zurich Opera's Roman remains

Agrippina - Zurich Opera / Orchestra La Scintilla / Marc Minkowski - Royal Festival Hall, 17 May 2009

I don't know if many opera houses would dare copy what Zurich Opera did at the Royal Festival Hall on Sunday afternoon. That's bring a whole new opera production - minus sets and costumes but including full cast and orchestra - all the way to London halfway through its first ever run (10 to 26 May). Crazy! But it meant we got to see a superbly rehearsed orchestra, a top flight international cast (the best that deep Swiss pockets could purchase) and a semi-staging alive with the wit and vitality of David Pountney's production.

Pountney sees Handel's tale of scheming Romans as a comic satire. Marc Minkowski agrees. Hairshirt historical purists would have been horrified by his arching phrases, vibrato, and - worst of all - a teeny quote from Chopin's Marche funèbre tucked behind the premature announcement of Emperor Claudio's death. On a plug-in organ no less. How 'correct' it all is remains debatable, but it certainly sounded 'right'.

In front of the orchestra on the unadorned Royal Festival Hall stage and stripped of her Zurich appurtenances of leopardskin coat and hanging carcases, Vesselina Kasarova's Bette Davis style mugging in the title role was as bizarre as her mannered singing with its pronounced register break between velvety chest and gleaming top. But her coloratura was precise, her pianissimi secure, and her every appearance on stage was undeniably captivating.

None of the remaining cast could match her on the scenery-chewing front, but they all threw themselves whole-heartedly into convincing physical portrayals, with some enterprising use of the limited space around the podium and behind the orchestra. There was some impressive singing from the other two mezzos, Marijana Mijanović as the trusting Ottone and Anna Bonitatibus as Agrippina's dim son Nerone. Eva Liebau's sweet Poppea didn't seem much of a schemer compared with Kasarova, but her lovelorn arias were more convincing.

It was a pleasure to hear László Polgár's inimitably sonorous bass as Claudio - and how deftly his heavy instrument handled the ornamentation. Baritone Ruben Drole and countertenor José Lemos as the easily-duped Pallante and Narciso provided some purely comic relief. Even the small parts of Giunone and Lesbo were handled with style by Wiebke Lehmkuhl and Gabriel Bermudez.

In all, it was a demonstration of how much a well-directed staging, however limited by space and equipment, can add to to a concert performance. Not to mention how much more clearly Handel's music is revealed when interpreted with instinct as well as intellect.

Photos from the Zurich production here.

******************** More photos over page ********************

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 .

Zurich - Opera House and more

Den Musen ein Heim, der Kunst eine Stätte (a home for the muses, a place for art) - the motto of Zürich Opera House, engraved above the entrance

Zürich has one of the teeniest of the main European opera houses - just 1100 seats. Musical and production standards are high, as are ticket prices, but even the cheapest seats (about £25) have reasonable sound and views.

Seats can be easily booked online, and few productions seem to sell out ages in advance. There are even a few seats left for Anna Netrebko in La Traviata in April at the time of writing.

The opera house is only about 20 minutes from the airport by taxi, or about double that by train (to Stadelhofen via the Hauptbahnhof), so it's possible to fly in on a Sunday morning, catch the matinee, and return to London on the 20.25 Swiss or 21.25 Easyjet after a swift supper. Booking well ahead, this can, astonishingly, be done all-in for less than a top price seat at Covent Garden. Who said Switzerland was expensive? 

More information and lots of photos over teh page................

Cecilia Bartoli breathes life into Clari

Clari - Opernhaus Zürich, 29 May 2008 

(Go here for loads more photos, including curtain call.)

Fromental Halévy's Clari was in its day little more than a showcase for legendary 19th century diva Maria Malibran. The resuscitation of this almost beyond-obscure opera - its first since its 1828 debut - is down to Cecilia Bartoli's ongoing interest in Malibran's repertoire.

Produced for the Théâtre Italien, the home of Italian opera in Paris, and unlike Halévy's better-known La Juive, it respects the prevailing house style with a massive stylistic debt to Rossini.

Of course, as ever, we must bow down to la Ceci for locating this morsel and cranking the mighty wheels that have transformed it from score to show. But make no mistake, this is no lost masterpiece. The style may be Rossini's, but Clari displays little of the maestro's inventiveness, or his melodic gifts. The plot is slim, the libretto borderline cringemaking. It's amenable enough, but even so, it's no surprise that this is its first revival. It requires a mezzo of superhuman abilities and three good octaves to display its one redeeming virtue, a number of spectacular arias. Step forward Cecilia Bartoli.

This Clari's other saving grace is a flamboyant production, effervescent with wit, courtesy of producers Leiser and Caurier, and the talented cast and technical crew. The intelligence, artistry and craftsmanship behind this show flatter Halévy's modest offering almost beyond belief. Technically it's an opera semi seria, but most of the seria is wisely sacrificed in favour of comic momentum, the libretto's bald spots creatively combed over with sumptuous sets and arresting stage business.

The story in brief - Clari is the tale of an innocent peasant girl. Seduced and promised marriage by a louche Duke, she finds herself his kept woman instead. A play staged at her birthday party seems to her to echo her predicament, and makes her realise the shame and distress her father must be suffering. She leaves the Duke and returns to her parents in the country. The Duke meanwhile realises he truly loves her. He follows her and reaffirms his promise of marriage, and everyone lives happily ever after.

And here's how Leiser and Caurier attack it, with Zurich Opera's own photos. Act I begins with the Duke, a moustached and suspiciously camp playboy in tennis whites and glitter hairgel, preparing for Clari's birthday. This guy has cash, and he's spent it on a couple of supersized lime Florence Knoll settees and a corridor full of Matisses and Picassos.

Uniformed in bumblebee stripes, the servants Germano and Bettina rehearse the play they plan to present at the party, and the Duke shows everyone the whopping great scarf-sized diamond necklace he plans to give to Clari.

Off they troll, leaving the stage to Clari. How many divas could pull off a sparkly blue knitted suit with matching shoes and pillbox? Bartoli, in a surprisingly flattering blonde wig, just about manages it, a mere micron away from tranny airhostess. She reminisces about her old life in the country. A tragic aria, beautifully sung of course, but dramatically ohso dull, is subverted by the preposterous slide illustrations that appear framed behind her like thought bubbles.   

The Duke re-enters, now in a hideous gold lame suit and white robe. He tries to interest Clari in some romantic action, but she's starting to have doubts.

The wall behind them rises to reveal a room full of party guests. Some truly fabulous fifties and sixties style costumery here - sourced from vintage suppliers, or faithfully recreated? Who knows. Lucky chorus, anyway.

Clari has changed into a pink prom dress, an iconic complement to la Ceci's figure and personality. And matching shoes - Rene Caovilla? - I couldn't quite catch the sole logo, even with opera glasses. The room's main decoration is a gigantic incongruous King Kong head, studiously ignored by all present.

The servants' play begins. A poor country girl is whisked away to a Duke's castle, while back home, her father laments. It's the 19th c equivalent of reality TV, and even Clari can see the Lesson to be learnt here. She throws herself weeping on the servant acting the father's part, to everyone's surprise. Then she scales the King Kong, which, mysteriously, slides slowly forward. So it's not just a useless piece of ugly furniture after all! Act I ends with her standing on King Kong's shoulder.

Act II is set in a hyper-real and timeless hospital waiting room, complete with institutional chairs, water fountain, and coffee machine. Pyjama-clad oldsters wander in and out. Nurses sit behind a window. Clari's behaviour at the party has embarrassed the Duke, and he leaves her here under Germano and Bettina's observation to detox or rehab or whatever.

Everyone leaves Clari except Bettina, who falls asleep. Alone, Clari despairs of her situation. This is the only truly tragic section of the production, and to be honest, it drags just a weeny bit. The only moments of light relief are a clever touch where a nurse behind the window appears to be playing the harp (which is actually being played in the pit), and Clari's suicide attempt, an attempted injection from a half-gallon syringe.

Clari seizes her opportunity and sneaks out. Germano returns, Bettina wakes. Where is Clari? Bettina was supposed to be watching her. Panic! When the Duke finds she's gone, he decides he really loves her after all, and he'll follow her and find her. Aaahhh.

Act III opens with that surefire crowd pleaser, a real car. Less risky than animals, less overdone than underpants. A good old fashioned coup de théâtre. Coated in sand, it rolls in front of the deliberately crudely-painted mountain backdrop, carrying the Duke and the faithful Germano and Bettina. The Duke is now in a floor length white fur-collared coat. Pure Gunter Sachs 1968, and utterly fabulous.

The Duke sings about how much he loves and misses Clari. This is such a tricksy JDF-test of an aria, and so brilliantly sung by John Osborn, that it almost threatens to upstage everything Clari's done so far. But not quite.

Off rolls the car, and a swift scene change reveals two grim, cell-like rooms. On the left, welly-clad peasants sing their love of the country life. On the right is a kitchen housing Clari's parents. Mother watches the cooking. Father watches TV, with a pig asleep at his side. The peasants leave and the parents bemoan Clari's fate. Clari appears in wellies and overall, and reveals herself to her surprised mother.

She hides from her father, but when she hears he's about to hang himself out of shame, she rushes out and stops him. The Duke and his retinue arrive, and the Duke seals his favourable intentions towards Clari with a suitcase of money offered to the grateful parents (not in the libretto, but a splendidly cynical touch).

A screen with a cutout heart descends. Clari steps through the heart and sings behind a cardboard cut out bride and groom. The Duke appears and embraces her. Curtain and screen draw back to reveal a stage full of happy peasants and - cutout cows! So Clari must be Swiss! For many in the Zurich audience, this is the happiest part of the happy ending.

Musically and dramatically, this was a performance of incredibly high standards, capped by Bartoli's effortless perfection in the title role and conductor Adam Fischer's empathetic response to her featherweight pianissimos and daring rubato. Warm and engaging, her comic turn never overstepped into buffoonery.

As the Duke, John Osborn's brilliant coloratura and no-stretch high notes made his difficult part sound easy. Eva Liebau's silvery bell-like soprano made for an enchanting Bettina. With stout support from Oliver Widmer as Germano, Carlos Chausson as Clari's father, and Stefania Kaluza as her mother, it was impossible to pick fault with any performance on stage, and the cast quite rightly got numerous curtain calls and (unusually for Zurich) a standing ovation.

The woodwind intonation could have been more accurate - a lot more accurate - but at least Orchestra Scintilla (Zurich Opera's specialist period ensemble) played with verve and enthusiasm, and Fischer never allowed the pace to flag.

lt was one of the best nights I've experienced all year, and a perfect demonstration of just what can be achieved when first rate talents are applied to second rate material. Despite this, I can't see Clari making its way into the repertoire - no-one less than Bartoli could at present do credit to the title role, and this has to be the definitive production. But wouldn't it be wonderful if one of the smaller houses could take this production (and Bartoli) up? It certainly deserves to be seen by more than the four housefuls who caught it in Zurich.

Thanks to the generosity and common sense of Zurich Opera House, I got loads of curtain call and other non-performance pics - find here.

Nina Stemme's refrigerated Rosenkavalier

Der Rosenkavalier - Zurich Opera - Royal Festival Hall, 12 April 2008

Tackling the intensely theatrical Der Rosenkavalier without a full staging is rather like doing Star Wars as a radio play. Disguises, asides, gestures are so integral to the drama. Setting the singers for this concert performance on a small platform behind the orchestra wasn't an entirely successful compromise. It gave them a few inches of space to act and interact, but left them stranded far from the audience. My cheapie stage side seat became an asset -- people seated further back in the main hall had difficulty hearing some of the singers. It may have been the reason a fair number left after the first act, depleting the already far from sellout crowd even further.

Or it may have been the turgid morning-after feeling of the first act. Despite Franz Welser-Möst's crisp pacing, it tended to drag. This arid account couldn't be accused of over-indulgence. Piotr Beczala's brief appearance as the Italian Singer was a welcome highspot, and Alfred Muff's splendid and wily Baron Ochs provided the vital vulgarity that Welser-Möst seemed to fear. Nina Stemme was a commanding Marschallin, but stony cold as a pillar in her white draped Grecian goddess gown. At least she had the sheer power to soar over the orchestra, something the tailcoated Michelle Breedt's otherwise sturdy Octavian lacked.

The second act began a huge improvement. Finally Welser-Möst came out of his shell and injected a little spunk and vitality. A few ensemble problems were a small price to pay. Laura Aikin's bright, pure-toned Sophie complemented Michelle Breedt's warm and mellow Octavian perfectly. The Pavarotti-shaped Rudolf Schasching and Kismara Pessatti manoeuvred perilously around the narrow platform, but provided more comic counterweight as Valzacchi and Annina.

Nina Stemme's switch to a burgundy brocade ensemble for her final act appearance signalled a slight increase in performance temperature. Or perhaps she'd just spilled her interval snack down the white frock, who knows. Her voice positively but there was still no vulnerability, no wistfulness or regret. All passion was left to Octavian and Sophie.

Although the orchestra was buffed to a sheen under Welser-Möst's tight control, and despite some fine individual performances, the evening  - all four hours of it - was an endurance test at times. The danger with sidestepping sentimentality and vulgarity is that sometimes engagement - and entertainment - gets left by the wayside too.