Intermezzo

Arianna in Creta in London

Arianna in Creta - Academy of Ancient Music / Hogwood - Barbican, 17 May 2009

Two three hour Handel operas in London in one day. Arianna in Creta at the Barbican began just an hour after Zurich Opera's excellent Agrippina ended at the Royal Festival Hall. Neither was anything like full. Why can't venues check each other's diaries?  I'm sure plenty of people picked just one because they didn't have the iron constitution for both. Despite my best intentions, I was wilting before this one even started.

Christopher Hogwood is a more fastidious observer of the exactitudes of historical performance than Monsieur Minkowski. My heart sank at the sight of his natural horns. And it was to prove an astringent reading, probably better appreciated by fresher ears than mine. The splayed notes of the horns aside, it was hard to fault the playing. But Mr Handel was sparing with his tunes in this one and Mr Hogwood is not the sort to pop in a dab of Chopin to jolly things up. Despite the latent dramatic potential of the Theseus and the Minotaur storyline, many stretches proved less than engrossing. It was wonderful to have the rare opportunity to experience a live performance, but I wasn't too surprised to find this was its first UK airing for many years.

The singing though was of almost uniformly high quality, even if with most noses buried in scores it wasn't always as communicative as it might have been.

Filling in for the sick Angelika Kirchschlager as Teseo was Kristina Hammarström, who leapt from note to note with tremendous agility, but remained a little laid back for a monster-slaying hero. The silvery bloom of Miah Persson's soprano enchanted in the title role. Lisa Milne made a bold and assertive Alceste, confidently delivered, and Sonia Prina showcased the most energetic coloratura of the evening in her feisty Carilda. A few wobbly moments from the lone bass were the only intrusion.

If only I'd had a less Handel-packed day, I'm sure I would have appreciated it all more.

 

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Don Giovanni from the Royal Opera House - free online streaming

As previously reported, the Royal Opera House is streaming its recent Don Giovanni in full. The performance is the infamous 8 September "Sun special", which I attended in person, and marked Joyce DiDonato's role debut as Donna Elvira.

Like everything else of interest on the ghastly new website, the link is well-hidden. You can find it yourself on the page http://www.roh.org.uk/video by clicking 'Don Giovanni' in the menu on the left-hand side. Or you can go directly to any of its ten parts via the links below:

Part 1   Part 2    Part 3   Part 4   Part 5   Part 6   Part 7   Part 8   Part 9   Part 10

The technical quality is good on my set up, though in full screen mode the picture is poor and the screen tends to freeze. The sound has clearly been cleaned up. This is mostly sensitively done, though a lot of dynamic contrast has been lost.

Beware there's a Parental Advisory moment at 20:40 of Part 10 (now, how many of you will ff there in the next 10 seconds.........?)

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.

           

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.

 

 

 

 

 

Miah Persson's show must go on

Miah Persson/Roger Vignoles - w19m0R3 H4ll, 19 September 2007

A woman in Miah Persson's condition would have every right to kick off her clogs, spread a little boot polish on her pickled herrings and stick her feet up on the Ikea.

Instead, the impressively gravid Ms Persson (six months at a guess), looking glowing and elegant in a slinky black jersey gown topped with a low cut beaded short sleeved top, managed a full hour on her feet. At a time when many star singers are cancelling for the lamest of excuses (no names...) it's a formidable example.

Although the way she raised her shoulders as she breathed suggested she wasn't entirely comfortable physically, there wasn't a hint of this in her laser-cut accuracy and effortlessly pure tone.

Her programme neatly divided into a mostly German first half and a veritable Scandinavian smörgåsbordetc for the second. Curiously frozen for the first few minutes, perhaps gripped by nerves, she loosened up for a nicely-poised take on Brahms' amusing Vergebliches Ständchen. She blossomed in the Liszt and Strauss selection which followed, displaying her gift for characterisation.

The only familiar song in the Scandinavian second half was Grieg's Solveigs Sang, delivered with great poignancy and a flash of a stunning coloratura expertise sadly not demanded by anything else on the programme. I found some of the Nystroem and Stenhammer songs which filled out the programme more rewarding than others, but there were some gems, particularly Nystroem's atmospheric and charming På Reveln group.

Although on this showing I wouldn't put it past Miah Persson to manage the Barbican Missa Solemnis she's scheduled for next month, I suspect tonight's encores, a Ture Rangström song and Strauss's Zueignung, may be the last we hear of her for a few months.

Fortunately tonight's recital was recorded for broadcast on Radio 3 at 7pm tomorrow, 20 September, and should be available online for a week. (If you're following the online broadcast schedule, the running order of the first two Liszt songs was switched, and the Grieg Fra Monte Pincio omitted altogether.)

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