Intermezzo

no substitute

Don Carlo - Royal Opera House, 27 September 2009 and 18 September 2009

Every singer (except Plácido) gets sick now and again, and I got Jonas Kaufmann for two out of the three Don Carlo performances I went too, plus the rehearsal, so I can't complain too much. It was clear at the time of Kaufmann's restrained, mostly marked rehearsal performance that Don Carlo lies at the limits of his capacities. He was wise not to put his voice in jeopardy by attempting the part in anything less than 100% health.

But I can't deny it was a major disappointment to arrive at the Sunday matinee and find he'd been replaced by Alfred Kim, who'd played the part recently in Oslo. Kim is competent and likeable. He hits all the notes cleanly, projects well, acts industriously, and truth be told has a much more Italianate and objectively appropriate voice for the part than either Kaufmann or his predecessor Rolando Villazón.

But he just didn't possess that elusive factor that catches your eye when someone walks on stage and draws your ear to their every word. It's something to do with singing from inside the role rather than merely playing it, and it excuses all sorts of other issues. It's why every single major opera house rushes round chasing after the same 20 or so singers, why nothing (except the recent Barbiere - a miracle) is ever ideally cast.

Alfred Kim (top) and Jonas Kaufmann (below) with Ferruccio Furlanetto:

******* more photos on next page ********

Royal Opera House's Don Carlo faces the Inquisition

Don Carlo - Royal Opera House, 15 September 2009

It’s little more than a year since the Royal Opera House premiered this production, but already the temperature has dropped a few degrees.

The main reason is Semyon Bychkov. Pappano was all heart; Bychkov is all head. Where Pappano offered untrammelled passion, Bychkov’s Don Carlo is thoughtfully structured, scrupulously detailed and immaculately performed (the last time the ROH played this well was in Lohengrin for – Semyon Bychkov). His weighty attentions serve the music well, the drama less so. The issue isn't the idiosyncratic tempos – sometimes super attenuated, sometimes dangerously pacy. At least these make you listen in a new way.The real problem is a lack of flexibility and dramatic response. The music feels superimposed on the drama, when it should be the other way round. The great Carlos/Posa freedom duet was more dutiful than ardent; Philip’s ruminative Act 4 monologue had the air of a prepared speech. There is much to admire – and to think about - but I rarely felt drawn in.

The other big change is in the title role. Rolando Villazon’s Carlos was an impetuous boy; Jonas Kaufmann’s is brooding, serious and totally grown-up. Kaufmann’s Carlos has no hesitation in placing his duty to Flanders above his personal desires. But this is the five act version, whose first act narrates the brief meeting of Carlos and Elisabetta. The first act does so much more than contextualise Carlos’s later moping. It changes the story. His joy (Elisabetta's too) is seen as real, but his later obsession as delusory, while her acceptance of her duty is the only pragmatic solution. Playing out the love story diminishes it. We see it ourselves for what it is, a moment of happiness, and not as Carlos presents it, the pivot of his destiny. And then we see the discrepancy between our view and his, and Carlos too is diminished in our eyes. He is merely evading his responsibilities, even if he doesn't realise it.

Jonas Kaufmann has chosen to emphasise the political and idealistic side of Carlos, and while that's right for the four act version, I don't think it works here (for one thing, it makes the first act into a tacked-on appendage). But having said that, and first act simpering aside, he follows through brilliantly. He is every inch the rebel prince, and his singing was out of this world. His ravishingly beautiful mezza voce was used to great effect, but he could turn up the power too. And who else could look that hawt in puffball shorts and pixie boots?

Inevitably this Carlos has more chemistry with Posa than with Marina Poplavskaya’s Elisabetta. She is much improved from last year's outing. Perhaps she really was indisposed all those times she claimed. Her steel-coated power was complemented this time round by smooth grained tone and accurate (if hard earned) top notes, lending Elisabetta's dutiful sacrifice a noble cast.

Simon Keenlyside sounded better than I have heard him for some time. Evidently a summer's rest has done him good. He is not and never will be a Verdi baritone - the heft and depth simply aren't there. Pairing him with the baritonal tenor of Jonas Kaufmann unfortunately emphasises this. But he compensates intelligently and with unquestionable commitment.

Marianne Cornetti is definitely a Verdi singer, but I doubt if Eboli is her best role. She wobbled gamely through the Veil Song, but her voice is simply too weighty to navigate it with the required agility. O don fatale was quite lovely though, and she has the warmth to generate sympathy. Couldn't the make up department have glammed her up a bit more though? - the revelation that Carlos has mistaken her for Elisabetta raised an understandable laugh from the audience.

The most satisfying performance came of course from Ferruccio Furlanetto as Philip. Near-perfect. Every note, every gesture conveys absolute authority. He perhaps more than anyone suffered from Bychkov's counter-intuitive pacing though. Unable to linger or rush where the emotions demanded, he was sometimes less convincing than I know he can be. And his showdown with John Tomlinson's unscary Grand Inquisitor didn't pack the wallop it should have done.

Amongst the smaller parts, Robert Anthony Gardiner as the Conte di Lerma really stood out. His singing, most of it terrifyingly exposed, was bright, accurate and rock-solid, and his presence aristocratically relaxed.

I'm going to see a couple more performances, and I'll write more about the production itself then. But suffice to say for now I was surprised at the stagey gesticulation of some of the principals, and at how much fussy micro-managed movement had been imposed on crowd scenes (the auto-da-fé scene was the most egregious example of extraneous chat, clatter and fidgeting). A case of the director working with what was available perhaps, but not quite what you'd expect from Nicholas Hytner.

 

*****  more photos over page  *****

 

Spanish practices

 

Rumours that the first revival of the Royal Opera House's Don Carlo was in even better shape than the original were given some weight by yesterday's dress rehearsal. Half the original cast return - Ferruccio Furlanetto as Philip, Marina Poplavskaya as Elisabetta and Simon Keenlyside as Posa. The new additions are Jonas Kaufmann (Carlos), Marianne Cornetti (Eboli) and John Tomlinson (the Inquisitor).

But it's the new conductor, Semyon Bychkov, who has the most impact. Some of his tempos are unique to say the least - the great third act ensemble is taken at such a clip the singers struggle to keep up. But it's a probing, intelligent perspective, at times revelatory - I suspect it will be controversial. Jonas Kaufmann's performance may be too. I had some reservations, but they can wait given this was only a rehearsal, things may change, etc.

Poplavskaya and Keenlyside bring a greater depth to their characterisations this time round. (Ferruccio Furlanetto is of course unimprovable). Poplavskaya in particular has matured astonishingly in just a year. Her range has extended upwards so she can now actually sing all the notes, and with what power. When she sings, she changes the temperature of the room.

Marianne Cornetti is a lovely sympathetic Eboli, and although John Tomlinson isn't quite as scary-looking as Eric Halvarson was, he sings with the authority of absolute power.

The sets seemed uglier than I remembered them, the lighting brasher and less forgiving - just a concession to the official photographers snapping away? I hope so.

Prom 50: Barenboim's Fidelio

Prom 50: Fidelio - West-Eastern Divan Orchestra / Barenboim - Royal Albert Hall, 22 August 2009

This Prom was, predictably, packed out. So why did the BBC need once again to occupy precious space and block people's views with yet another podium-mounted camera positioned slap bang in the middle of the arena? They already had a battery of equipment stationed at the sides, not to mention a roaming cameraman right in front of the stage for those all important up-nostril shots. The Met, the Royal Opera House and the Berlin Philharmonic, to name just a few, manage to produce professional DVDs with far less gear, all unobtrusively positioned, and without disrupting a large chunk of the audience. But then they're dedicated to music, not to viewing figures.

Year by year the Proms inches further away from its origins as a live performance festival and further towards reincarnation as a BBC-branded TV special 'filmed in front of a live audience'. At least the evening Proms concerts haven’t yet sunk to the depths of the daytime ones, where the audience are instructed not just how and when to applaud, but how loudly to chat amongst themselves to generate the prescribed ‘atmosphere’.

But back to the music. 

This concert performance was punctuated by a mostly pre-recorded English narration from Waltraud Meier as a disillusioned Leonore, some years later, a bitter and apposite reflection on the difficulty of living up to ideals. The choice of opening overture - the Leonore 3 - in itself a backward-looking summary of the opera - emphasised the point, a nostalgic evocation of a past forever lost.

The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra played incredibly well (and this is not an easy score), meeting all of Daniel Barenboim's detailed and demanding requirements, by turns dark, thrilling and joyfully defiant. Barenboim's pushing and pulling and tweaking around sometimes perplexes - but not here. It's as if he has a magic key to Beethoven's secrets. There was not one routine passage, yet everything sounded inexorably right.

The soloists were on this occasion simply outshone by the orchestra. John Tomlinson came out best as a convincing Rocco, an involuntary wobble here and there only adding to the impression of age and inconstancy.

Leonore, as I have previously observed, is not the greatest showcase for Waltraud Meier's vocal skills, lying in her least comfortable range and making unfulfillable demands on her agility. Her pitch was often wildly off but at least her earnest intensity was some compensation, and her dramatic presence is undeniable. She cut a chic figure in a white taffeta wrapover ensemble-thingy, and like her contemporary Renee Fleming, seems able to spin the wheel of time in reverse. A flattering new dark pixie haircut complemented her smooth-browed peachy complexion.

Simon O'Neill made a brilliant start with an arresting, needle sharp “Gott, welch Dunkel hier!”, but his big voice doesn't manoeuvre easily around Florestan's rapid lines. When things sped up, he trailed in the orchestra's wake, chasing the notes at the expense of the text.

Gerd Grochowski's Don Pizarro and Viktor Rud's Don Fernando were efficiently sung, but lacking in the necessary authority and presence. Adriana Kučerová's Marzelline and Stephen Rügamer's Jacquino were again efficient, but simply anonymous.

The best singing of the evening came from the back of the hall as the sterling BBC Singers and Geoffrey Mitchell Choir delivered the prisoners' chorus with an intensity and commitment that was often lacking at the front.

 

 

Royal Opera House 2009/10 season - all the details

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Harrison Birtwistle's The Minotaur premieres at Covent Garden ****Now with added T1ts!****

The Minotaur - Royal Opera House Covent Garden, 15 April 2008

It's hard to accuse Sir John Tomlinson of stealing the show when the whole thing was written specially for him. Even so, 45 minutes along, just as it started to drag a little, his first appearance jolted it back into life. Bull-masked and bare-chested, he roared and lowed the Minotaur into being, spotlit alone on the bare stage as the orchestra rose to a clamour beneath him. Talk about making an entrance.

The evening started well enough - glassy black sea rolling on a video screen, sighing strings, bass winds grunting ominously beneath. But then Ariadne and Theseus turned up. In Birtwistle's tale, the pair are grossly unsympathetic. She'll do anything to escape the prison of an island she shares with the Minotaur, including tricking the visiting Theseus into marriage. Theseus isn't interested in anything except the revenge-killing of the Minotaur. Hardly a pair of lovebirds.

Birtwistle's scoring here is almost serene; cool and translucent. The vocal thread leaps and jerks here and there, but never thrills. The spare, minimalist set  - a sun, a sky, a sail - starts to look bare and dull. The joy spreads thin. Twenty minutes in, and I was counting down to the interval. Christine Rice and Johan Reuter sang splendidly and no doubt did what they were supposed to do, but like a family Christmas, the whole thing just probed the powers of human endurance a little too hard.

But with the entrance of the Minotaur, everything shifted up several gears. The music became bristling, abrasive and veryvery loud, with an army of percussionists spilling out from the pit and into the stage side boxes, and two more beating their drums on stage.

In Birtwistle's version of the tale, the Minotaur is not a dumb agent of destruction, he's a deeply sympathetic character, yearning to make sense of himself and his existence. (But managing the odd bit of beastly rape and murder in between).

Trapped in a bullring, egged on by a masked chorus, the Minotaur bellows inarticulately and gores his sacrificial victims with balletic grace. Then alone in a dream and gazing into the mirror of his future, he speaks, or rather sings, a caged handful of circling notes. Tomlinson's face, visible beneath his wire bull mask, emphasises the human shadowed beneath the beast. It's riveting and unsettling.

I still can't decide whether the near-repeat of the sacrifice and mirror-dream scenes increases or diminishes their impact - it's structurally elegant, but does it add anything?

I had more doubts about the Keres, mono-winged goth vultures who descend to feast on the Minotaur's sacrificial leftovers. Amanda Echalaz was brilliantly terrifying as their screeching leader, but shouldn't the Minotaur himself and his killings be the scariest thing on the stage?

Here are the t!ts, and yes they're more like the front of a ship than the front of a page 3 lady, but hay, countertenors can't grow their own. Ariadne had to get the ball of string tip somehow, and Andrew Watts, the Snake Priestess, provided it, gliding skywards, skirts trailing, stuttering in an arresting shriek. It was the closest the evening got to humour, a relief from the intensity of the soul-searching and bloodshed, but far too brilliantly executed to be a mere distraction.

Even the return of Theseus and Ariadne for some more dry interplay couldn't deflate the thrilling dénouement, where mortally wounded by Theseus, the Minotaur finally speaks, becoming human in death, a heartbreaking transformation from Sir John Tomlinson.

Clearly conscious of the responsibility in mounting this major premiere, Pappano had polished the orchestra to Berlin Phil-like perfection. Yes even the horns. I can't recall ever hearing the Royal Opera House orchestra play quite this immaculately - it certainly raises the bar for future productions.

One thing we probably won't see again though is £65 top price tickets - and anyone who imagines ticket prices don't affect the audience mix should have checked out the significant proportion of younger faces in the full house tonight.