Intermezzo

Even more Don Giovanni at Covent Garden

Don Giovanni - Royal Opera House, 10 September 2008

 

Well, I am pleased to report that musically at least, this second night of the season was a vast improvement on the first. And if the audience wasn't exactly a better one, it was at least a markedly different one.  Downstairs, the familiar tap of Ferragamo against parquet and a faint smell of hairspray marked the return of the queens, counsels and assorted bankers to their rightful boxes. Upstairs, it was socks, sandals and sandwiches as usual.

But back to the music. Covent Garden shows often improve as the run progresses - especially revivals, like this one, where rehearsal time is limited. And in this case, the previous combination of a first night, an unpredictable audience, and being beamed live and in close-up around the world's cinemas can't have helped singers' nerves. The production itself remains by turns tacky and dull, but the performances were so much better second time round.

Most improved was Miah Persson, sweetness and innocence outside, a tumble of hormones within, and this time round, the secure mistress of Zerlina's vocal demands.  Robert Gleadow (still only 24!) was an equally impressive Masetto, and they displayed undisputable physical rapport, wrapping themselves around each other as if the honeymoon had already started.

We were again issued with a pre-show apology for Marina Poplavskaya's health, and again she proved little if anything was wrong. Both Or sai chi l'onore and Non mi dir displayed a tissue-thin top but that was it. Her Donna Anna, emotionally numbed, single-minded in her quest for vengeance, was a smart piece of casting and convincingly acted.

Joyce DiDonato again unravelled thrillingly as Donna Elvira, bewitched and eventually unhinged by Don Giovanni's wiles.

The Dirty Don himself was more problematical - and it wasn't just the stringy ginger wig. Simon Keenlyside has an intelligent and just fundamentally decent air that doesn't sit comfortably with this determinedly anti-intellectual production. He can't match the swarthy feral magnetism of last year's Don Giovanni, Erwin Schrott (wisely he doesn't try). His Don seduces with words, not pheromones, and his seduction arias carried far more weight than the oddly unconvincing murder at the start and the gluttonous debauchery of the finale. The orchestra sped past him in his Champagne Aria but everything else was sung with grace and musicality.

Kyle Ketelsen's robustly sung Leporello, in an even more dreadful wig, was an able counterweight, a properly reluctant partner who conspires in his own oppression simply for the cash. He needed to dig harder for the laughs with this audience than the first, but he got them in the end.

Don Ottavio is not the most dynamic of roles - all he has to do really is sing a couple of arias nicely. Ramón Vargas certainly has the voice, even if it's a bit more Italianate than we might expect for Mozart. He managed a lot better than he had on the first night, lyrical and flowing, just a little pinched at the top, and faded genteely into the background when he wasn't required. Neatly done.

I wasn't quite as thrilled with Sir Charles Mackerras as the critics have been, but he did a more than able job with the modest number (an advantage in itself) of players, including the superbly-drilled onstage bands. Rapport between pit and stage showed a marked improvement, relaxation and co-operation both playing their part, though again it was clear that those who slipped could expect little sympathy from the podium. 

One performer at least has managed to get a few bonus column inches this week - that's MAW Emma Reed who descends to hell with Don Giovanni (minus kit) in a Page 3-style finale, clairvoyantly scripted well before the Sun came on board. Here she is 'without costume' in The Sun, and here's the pearl-clutchers' version from genius of teh Photoshops, OperaChic.

           

Raise your handkerchiefs for András Schiff

András Schiff - Wigmore Hall, 9 September 2008

 

There's always one, isn't there?

This time, it was the total t1t who, like the rest of the audience, sat silent throughout the hundred non-stop spellbinding minutes of András Schiff's Goldberg Variations. Then erupted with an almighty cough about 2 milliseconds after Schiff had struck his last note. Before his fingers had even left the keyboard! 

Was it a set-up? Who knows (- Schiff is notoriously touchy about interruptions - and why shouldn't he be?)

Score-free and pedal-less, the performance had all the Schiff trademarks of intelligence and clarity. He made his points strongly and unequivocally, sometimes controversially. His tuneseeking tendency to cleave to a line could destabilise and unbalance. And though the strange dissonances of variation 25 were quite properly emphasised before resolution, I'm not sure they needed quite the bold caps double underlining they received. But he didn't, as some before him have done, chicken out when it came to the rapidfire super-virtuoso sections, appreciating the need for balance in tempos as in every other aspect of the work. It was a performance that reached the intellect more than the heart perhaps, but still a stunning achievement.

Afterwards, he seemed genuinely touched to receive the Wigmore Medal for his contribution (over 30 years!) to the musical life of Wigmore Hall. And despite his pianothon, he even managed a coherent and graceful speech of thanks, the coughing interloper apparently forgotten.

The Sun comes out for Don Giovanni at the Royal Opera House

Don Giovanni - Royal Opera House, 8 September 2008

 

The opening night of the Royal Opera House season. Officially! We know because big cheese Tony Hall told us so, in an Oscarish pre-show speech that stopped millimetres short of thanking his agent and teh baby jeebus. 

We arrived to find a splashy Sun bus parked at the front door - supposedly, the show was 'only' open to Sun readers, a myth propagated by the Sun's fact-lite press rivals.

But in fact anyone who registered on a special page of the ROH website, as explained here, could apply for tickets. Which would account for the number of familiar faces I spotted in the audience. (My own conscience is clear - I took along a ROH newbie).

But there were welcome absences too - scarcely a rustle of anoraks in the amphitheatre, no gobby tourists, few corporate suits at the bar. In their place, not the lager louts the broadsheets had doomily predicted, but a cleaner, better-dressed and better-behaved class of customer than Covent Garden has seen for a while. Enough looked understandably bewildered by the confusing ROH signage to convince me that few were regulars.  And was that one of the scheme's most vehement opponents, Charlotte "boycott in order" Higgins of the Guardian skulking around the bar? No moral dilemma 'subsidising' "that utterly repellent institution: page bloody three" when you've nabbed a freebie press seat I guess.

In fact, genuine Sun readers may have been outnumbered by journalists. Not just the opera-reviewing habitues, but mike-wielding newshounds, pouncing on Essex families for 'your impressions'.

The huge but unobtrusive cameras in the auditorium itself were part of a Met-style live relay to cinemas across the known universe.

Whether they captured the Royal Opera House at its best is another question. Francesca Zambello's production has a couple of qualities - it's cinematically splashy (my companion appreciated the guidance of the colour-coded costumes), and it strikes the elusive balance between comedy and drama with rare precision.

But despite its flaming wicker and shoals of purposeless extras it never really grips until the final showdown, with the dirty Don spectacularly flanked by burning bathtubs.

Still, there were enough laughs to hold the audience's attention, mostly supplied by the vast-voiced Kyle Ketelsen, shamelessly mugging as Leporello. Vocally at least he was more imposing than Simon Keenlyside's patchy Don Giovanni.

Joyce DiDonato gave the most consistent and impressive performance of the evening, totally uninhibited as the combustible Donna Elvira. Charles Mackerras took a firm grip on the orchestra, no concessions to any singers' foibles here, and she alone could ride the waves at their crest.

Marina Poplavskaya, suffering we were told from a respiratory infection, struggled with intonation to begin with, but her increasingly weighty voice made a powerful impression in any case, a significant development from her Donna Anna in the same production last year.

Miah Persson's Zerlina was more of a disappointment. She has the requisite sweetness, and began well, but soon strayed way off vocal course - perhaps she's picked up the respiratory bug too. Ramón Vargas also played a game of two halves, in his case a strained, reedy tone which eventually opened out.

But this was a generous audience, and it rewarded the performance with a generous ovation.

I'm back for more on Wednesday (booked long before the Sun offer appeared) - hoping for better singing from some quarters, but I doubt if there'll be a more enthusiastic and less jaded audience in the Royal Opera House for a while.

 

 

 

 

 

Joyce DiDonato opens the season at Wigmore Hall

Joyce DiDonato / David Zobel - Wigmore Hall, 6 September 2008

Vivaldi Col piacer della mia fede from Arsilda, Regina di Ponto; Vedro con mio diletto from Il giustino; Da quel ferro che ha svenato from Il Farnace
Chausson Hébé; Sérénade; Le colibri; Les papillons
Turina Poema en forma de canciones
Copland 8 songs from 12 Songs of Emily Dickinson: Nature, the gentlest mother; There came a wind like a bugle; Why do they shut me out of heaven?; The world feels dusty; Dear March, come in!; Sleep is supposed to be; Going to heaven; The chariot;
Gershwin The Man I Love; By Strauss

Encores - Strauss Composers Aria (Sein wir wieder gut) from Ariadne auf Naxos; Handel Ombra mai fu; Arlen Somewhere over the Rainbow

No-one seems to know (or even really care) whether this year's Royal Opera House opening night-proper is the originally announced 10 September performance or the recently added Sun reader special on the 8 September. Unlike the ROH to miss a wallet-squeezing trick, but it's all a far cry from the hot-breathed anticipation (and gala prices) for the Met's couture-bedecked Reneethon.

But the start of the Wigmore Hall season remains a bit of an Occasion. In an understated way of course. Free drinks for everyone and an extra-long intermission was about as far as it went.

Joyce DiDonato, diva-proper in a clinging black strapless gown with seaweedy ruffles, wasn't going to ease us in with anything too light and frothy. In fact, her programme was pretty audience-challenging stuff, only the Chausson and Gershwin generally familiar. You'd never guess she'd made her name with Rossini, but perhaps that was the point.

The Copland Emily Dickinson settings at the centre of the evening are an acquired taste that I haven't acquired. In the middle of the group, the insouciance of Dear March, come in! was a breath of fresh air between the dour introspection of the rest. So few singers are able to able to do humour effectively (that is, without making you cringe with embarrassment for them) that it was a shame that Joyce, one of the rare few who can, buckled down and got serious for so much of her programme.

Her next gig is the aforementioned is-it-isn't-it Covent Garden season-starter Don Giovanni. Her opening Vivaldi arias - a standard template fast one, slow one and a mad one - provided a hint of the steel she may bring to Donna Elvira. And I was captivated by the her way with the contrastingly languorous Chausson group, the lines spun out on a silver thread.

Her final Gershwin songs supplied the air of festivity that the earlier part of the evening, for all its accomplishment, had lacked. She's a big Judy Garland fan (as she revealed during her encores) who shares Judy's uninhibited joy in performance, and communicates most directly with her audience when freed from the shackles of recital etiquette. Even in the Temple of Song, sometimes it pays to let your hair down.

Joyce is, by the way, a hugely entertaining (and diligent) blogger herself - check out her blog on yankeediva.blogspot.com.

And the recital was recorded for broadcast on Radio 3 on 22 October.

Photo of David Zobel and Joyce DiDonato from Joyce's website, joycedidonato.com: 
  

Berliner Philharmoniker - beautiful isn't always best

Proms 64 and 65: Berliner Philharmoniker / Simon Rattle - Royal Albert Hall, 2 and 3 September 2008

Wagner Tristan und Isolde - Prelude and Liebestod, Messiaen Turangalîla Symphony

Brahms Symphony No.3, Shostakovich Symphony No.10

If you've ever seen photos of Simon Rattle in action, you might assume he just stands there with his gob gated open all night, like an angler fish on the ocean bed. In reality, he talks non-stop, or at least mouths. I wish I could lip read. I'm pretty sure I caught a couple of "help me"s but the rest is a mystery.

I was able to study the Rattle platform manner at close hand on Tuesday night from my surprisingly pricy (£23) seat in the choir stalls, tucked behind the Berlin Philharmonic's gleaming tubular bells and pleasingly close to the Berlin motor itself, the tigerish growl of the basses.

Of course a lot of water can be lost through an open mouth. That's why marathon runners keep theirs shut, and overheated doggies don't.

No wonder Sir Simon needed a mini-break halfway through the hour-plus Turangalîla Symphony to chug back some water behind the piano, coaxing the obliging violas into a bit of quite unnecessary 'retuning' to cover.

It was a wonderfully lucid account of this lengthy and problematical, inherently episodic work. If talent borrows and genius steals, then Messiaen could be a musical Einstein. Rattle drew out the direct quotations from Wagner's Tristan more clearly than I've ever heard before - and of course it did no harm to hear the wellspring itself, exquisitely presented, at the start of the evening.

Messiaen's anointed, Pierre-Laurent Aimard at the piano and Tristan Murail at the ondes Martenot, brought a special authority. Where the work could have tipped over into Gershwin-pastiche vulgarity, Rattle wisely settled on festive exuberance.  

There was a more honed predictability about the second concert. Despite the near-perfection of the orchestra's playing - or perhaps because of it - Rattle seemed content to lay back and bathe in the immaculately polished sound.  While there's nothing wrong with loveliness for its own sake, I find this orchestra at their best when they're nearer the edges of their comfort zone, as they were with the previous night's Messiaen.

 

  

 

No cowpats allowed

PCM 7: Nash Ensemble / Mark Padmore - Cadogan Hall, 1 September 2008

The Monday lunchtime Cadogan Hall chamber concerts may be shoved into the corner of the Proms schedules but they offer up some rare treats.

First up was the rarely-heard Clarinet Quintet by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a fellow student of Vaughan Williams. Its gentle charm is spread rather thinly over its thirty-odd minutes. Although this particular line up of the fluidly-staffed Nash Ensemble was sensitive and well-balanced and most certainly did the work justice, it's not one I'll be rushing to hear again any time soon.

Before Mark Padmore could sing, he had to submit to interrogation on teh Poetry of AE Housman and teh Landscapes of Vaughan Williams by some red-socked, wind-stuffed Uncle Monty from Radio 3 - fascinating for us in the audience, but not the kindest way to prepare for half an hour of singing.

It was also an opportunity to study Mark Padmore's latest hair escapade, this time a number 2/beardlet combo that looked like he'd sprayed his head with superglue and rolled in iron filings. He's lucky the photo hasn't come out too well.

He's an old hand at On Wenlock Edge, and consistently proves that it's one of Vaughan Williams's most underrated works. Its pastoral lyricism is undercut with bitterness and foreboding, brilliantly revealed in the dramatic extremes of Padmore's performance. The arrangement is for strings is sometimes bizarre and exploratory, often penetratingly evocative, and the Nash Ensemble again displayed great sensitivity.

Worth missing lunch for.