
13 Mar 2007
The Gondoliers — English National Opera
Speaking to a trusted chorus-member friend after this performance, I was told that I had benefited from not having seen this production when new three months ago.
Excellent programming: worthy of Boulez, if hardly for the literal minded. (‘I think you’ll find [stroking chin] Beethoven didn’t know Unsuk Chin’s music, or Heinrich Biber’s. So … what are they doing together then? And … AND … why don’t you use period instruments? I rest my case!’)
On a recent weekend evening the performers in the current roster of the Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera of Chicago presented a concert of operatic selections showcasing their musical talents. The Lyric Opera Orchestra accompanied the performers and was conducted by Edwin Outwater.
On April 6, 2018, Arizona Opera presented an uncut performance of Richard Wagner’s Das Rheingold. It was the first time in two decades that this company had staged a Ring opera.
The 2018 London Handel Festival drew to a close with this vibrant and youthful performance (the second of two) at St George’s Church, Hanover Square, of Handel’s Teseo - the composer’s third opera for London after Rinaldo (1711) and Il pastor fido (1712), which was performed at least thirteen times between January and May 1713.
The Moderate Soprano and the story of Glyndebourne: love, opera and Nazism in David Hare’s moving play
Well, it was Friday 13th. I returned home from this moving and inspiring British-themed concert at the Barbican Hall in which the BBC Symphony Orchestra and conductor Sir Andrew Davis had marked the centenary of the end of World War I, to turn on my lap-top and discover that the British Prime Minister had authorised UK armed forces to participate with French and US forces in attacks on Syrian chemical weapon sites.
This seemed a timely moment for a performance of Stravinsky’s choral ballet, Perséphone. April, Eliot’s ‘cruellest month’, has brought rather too many of Chaucer’s ‘sweet showers [to] pierce the ‘drought of March to the root’, but as the weather finally begins to warms and nature stirs, what better than the classical myth of the eponymous goddess’s rape by Pluto and subsequent rescue from Hades, begetting the eternal rotation of the seasons, to reassure us that winter is indeed over and the spirit of spring is engendering the earth.
This performance of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas by La Nuova Musica, directed by David Bates, was, characteristically for this ensemble, alert to musical details, vividly etched and imaginatively conceived.
In 1969, Mrs Aristotle Onassis commissioned a major composition to celebrate the opening of a new arts centre in Washington, DC - the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, named after her late husband, President John F. Kennedy, who had been assassinated six years earlier.
This is a landmark production of Hans Werner Henze's Das Floß der Medusa (The Raft of the Medusa) conducted by Ingo Metzmacher in Amsterdam earlier this month, with Dale Duesing (Charon), Bo Skovhus and Lenneke Ruiten, with Cappella Amsterdam, the Nieuw Amsterdams Kinderen Jeugdkoor, and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, in a powerfully perceptive staging by Romeo Castellucci.
This was the first time, I think, since having moved to London that I had attended a Bach Passion performance on Good Friday here.
It was a little early, perhaps, to be hearing ‘Easter Voices’ in the middle of Holy Week. However, this was not especially an Easter programme – and, in any case, included two pieces from Gesualdo’s Tenebrae responsories for Good Friday. Given the continued vileness of the weather, a little foreshadowing of something warmer was in any case most welcome. (Yes, I know: I should hang my head in Lenten shame.)
‘In order to preserve the good order in the Churches, so arrange the music that it shall not last too long, and shall be of such nature as not to make an operatic impression, but rather incite the listeners to devotion.’
The white walls of designer Peter McKintosh’s Ikea-maze are still spinning, the ox-skulls are still louring, and the servants are still eavesdropping, as Fiona Shaw’s 2011 production of The Marriage of Figaro returns to English National Opera for its second revival. Or, perhaps one should say that the servants are still sleeping - slumped in corridors, snoozing in chairs, snuggled under work-tables - for at times this did seem a rather soporific Figaro under Martyn Brabbins’ baton.
Time was I could hear the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge almost any evening I chose, at least during term time. (If I remember correctly, Mondays were reserved for the mixed voice King’s Voices.)
Lyric Opera of Chicago’s innovative, new production of Charles Gounod’s Faust succeeds on multiple levels of musical and dramatic representation. The title role is sung by Benjamin Bernheim, his companion in adventure Méphistophélès is performed by Christian Van Horn.
Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a play of the night: of dark interiors and shadowy forests. ‘Light thickens, and the crow/Makes wing to th’ rooky wood,’ says Macbeth, welcoming the darkness which, whether literal or figurative, is thrillingly and threateningly palpable.
Daniel Catán’s widely celebrated opera, Florencia en el Amazonas received a top tier production at the wholly rejuvenated San Diego Opera company.
Four singers were awarded prizes at the inaugural Glyndebourne Opera Cup, which reached its closing stage at Glyndebourne on 24th March. The Glyndebourne Opera Cup focuses on a different single composer or strand of the repertoire each time it is held. In 2018 the featured composer was Mozart and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment accompanied the ten finalists.
It’s sometimes suggested that it was the simultaneous decline of the popularity of Italian opera seria among Georgian audiences and, in consequence, of the fortunes of Handel’s Royal Academy King’s Theatre, that led the composer to turn his hand to oratorio in English, the genre which would endear him to the hearts of the nation.
Speaking to a trusted chorus-member friend after this performance, I was told that I had benefited from not having seen this production when new three months ago.
It would seem that the production has taken a while to come together — fortunately the result is a funny, well-sung, polished family show.
Ashley Martin-Davis’s primary-coloured 1950s stage and costume designs, lit by Paul Pyant, were sunny, fresh and cheerful with an air of La dolce vita. It certainly provided easy escapism from a rainy evening in London in early March! After a slightly weak start, partly the fault of the piece itself, a young and elegant cast brought to life the gondolieri and contadine roles. Toby Stafford-Allen’s red-blooded Giuseppe offset the campery of the chorus choreography, and as Marco, David Curry gave a sincere performance despite not being especially strong of voice (it was a shame that conductor Richard Balcombe didn’t give him a little more flexibility in ‘Take a pair of sparkling eyes’).
They were partnered by Sarah Tynan’s delightful and poised Giannetta, and Stephanie Marshall’s beautifully-sung Tessa (though she did not seem entirely comfortable in the role).
The one new member of the cast (since the show opened in December) was Henry Goodman — a hugely likeable comic actor — as the Duke of Plaza-Toro. At his side, Ann Murray was an imperious Duchess, while Rebecca Bottone’s haughty and limpid-toned Casilda was well-matched with Robert Murray’s ardent Luiz.
The characters in this operetta live in two very different worlds — three if you count the land of Barataria for which the crown is up for grabs — and the single lynch-pin is Don Alhambra del Bolero, the bloodthirsty and lecherous Grand Inquisitor of Spain. Donald Maxwell delivered his dialogue with lip-smacking relish.
The show was practically stolen almost at the end by Deborah Davison’s Inez, who in eight lines of recitative made a greater comic impression than any principal singer besides Donald Maxwell. The chorus were near-impeccable throughout, with tidy choreography and poised phrasing.
Following their disastrous attempt at The Pirates of Penzance a couple of seasons ago, hopes were tentatively high that ENO’s latest Gilbert and Sullivan production might prove a hit to rival Jonathan Miller’s perennially popular staging of The Mikado. While I can’t say that this Gondoliers quite reaches that level, it is an infectiously enjoyable production with a high-quality ensemble cast. This is the sort of show that ENO should be best at. I hope there will be more where this came from.
Ruth Elleson © 2007