La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein, Châtelet, Paris By Francis Carlin Published: October 11 2004 03:00 | Last updated: October 11 2004 03:00 Were the Brits in the audience the only ones to get the allusion? Felicity Lott's Grand Duchess is...
La réhabilitation pour Salieri Au TCE, Cecilia Bartoli se fait l'éblouissante avocate d'un musicien dont la postérité retiendra avant tout les soupçons d'empoisonnement sur la personne de Mozart : Antonio Salieri. Elle consacre l'intégralité d'un récital à celui que Gluck...
La mise en apesanteur divine de "Saint François d'Assise", SDF de la foi LE MONDE | 08.10.04 | 15h02 A l'Opéra Bastille, les tableaux franciscains d'Olivier Messiaen par Stanislas Nordey. Avec cette nouvelle production du Saint-François d'Assise de Messiaen -...
Voznesenskaya - only too human by Neil McGowan La Voix Humaine (concert performance) Vremena Goda Festival Vremena Goda Orchestra/Bulakhov 29 September 2004 Bringing down the curtain on the Vremena Goda Festival this year was the Festival's first-ever operatic offering -...
George Loomis reports on Wagner opera, Russian-style. By George Loomis Published: October 8, 2004 Last spring the Metropolitan Opera gave three complete cycles of Richard Wagner's four-opera saga, "Der Ring des Nibelungen" (The Ring of the Nibelung). It was business...
Tamerlano, Opéra de Lille By Francis Carlin Published: October 6 2004 03:00 | Last updated: October 6 2004 03:00 There should be a golden rule for producers: don't make life difficult for yourself and the audience. In Lille's magnificently restored...
FESTIVAL Marc-Antoine Charpentier à Ambronay Triomphe de la jeunesse Gérard Corneloup [30 septembre 2004] En cette année du bicentenaire de la mort de Marc-Antoine Charpentier, occasion unique de le sortir de l'ombre que lui fait encore Lully, le festival d'Ambronay...
Die Frau ohne Schatten, Tiroler Landstheater, Innsbruck By Larry L Lash Published: September 29 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 29 2004 03:00 It was a strange match: Richard Strauss's hugest, most difficult opera - with one of the largest...
Die Walküre, Metropolitan Opera, New York By Martin Bernheimer Published: September 28 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 28 2004 03:00 For the past couple of decades at the Metropolitan Opera, Die Walküre was the exclusive property of James Levine,...
La Rondine, New York City Opera By Martin Bernheimer Published: September 27 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 27 2004 03:00 La Rondine certainly isn't Puccini's easiest or most successful opera. Completed in 1917, it flutters - sometimes elegantly, sometimes...
Don Giovanni, Lyric Opera, Chicago By Andrew Patner Published: September 21 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 21 2004 03:00 A half century ago, a trio of twentysomething operaphiles offered Chicago what they dubbed a "calling card" production of Mozart's...
Faust, Hong Kong Cultural Centre By Ken Smith Published: September 20 2004 13:25 | Last updated: September 20 2004 13:25 Hong Kong's opera lovers, lacking a full-time opera house and gaining a standing company only in the past year, have...
The Greek Passion, Royal Opera House, London By Andrew Clark Published: September 17 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 17 2004 03:00 All human life is here: prayer and pageant, self-sacrifice and self-righteousness, humour and hypocrisy, feast and famine. Opera...
Tobias and the Angel, English Touring Opera, St John's Church, London By David Murray Published: September 16 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 16 2004 03:00 The composer Jonathan Dove may have called his Tobias, now touring cathedrals and churches,...
Ariadne auf Naxos Music Center, Los Angeles By Allan Ulrich Published: September 15 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 15 2004 03:00 William Friedkin's mounting of the Strauss-von Hoffmannsthal comedy handsomely and wittily confirms the general director Plácido Domingo's belief...
Debussy tout feu tout glace La critique de Jacques Doucelin [15 septembre 2004] Une salle qui tousse à gorge déployée en été, hors de toute épidémie de grippe, au mieux manque d'attention, au pire s'ennuie. Voilà le résultat du transfert...
Ariadne auf Naxos, Welsh National Opera, Cardiff By Richard Fairman Published: September 14 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 14 2004 03:00 The Prologue to Ariadne auf Naxos is all about the backstage shenanigans before a performance - a bit...
CRITIC'S PICK | ANNE MIDGETTE A Star to Shed Light on Janacek's Bleak Operatic Landscape OPINIONS may differ as to what constitutes a highlight at the Metropolitan Opera these days, but few disagreed last season about Karita Mattila's performance as...
The Comeback Composer Opera World Taps Handel To Woo New Audiences; Cleopatra in Gold Lamé By HEIDI WALESON The last time Michael Goodman had season tickets to the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, Gerald Ford was president and pet...
Daphne New York City Opera By Martin Bernheimer Published: September 10 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 10 2004 03:00 It took 66 years for Richard Strauss'sDaphne to reach a stage in New York. We must be grateful for belated...
If Belfast in Northern Ireland isn’t a city that immediately springs to mind as a centre of musical excellence then it’s not for want of talent, initiative and professionalism within its cultural community.
It is also a city busy re-inventing itself after decades of internecine strife and is now buzzing with the optimism and investment that is part of the “peace dividend”. At a time of year when many cities in the UK and USA are churning out moderate and sometimes frankly embarrassing renditions of Handel’s great work it was a delight to see last Saturday night that the Ulster Orchestra, under the forward-thinking guidance of Chief Executive David Byers, had invited a top flight international conductor with excellent baroque credentials to meld the undoubted talents of its musicians and chorus with some world class soloists.
Martin Haselböck holds the titles of Vienna Court Organist (shades of Hapsburg splendour there) and Professor of Organ at the University of Vienna, but it is his work throughout Europe and the USA (he’s recently been appointed Music Director of the baroque “Musica Angelica” in Los Angeles) as a conductor of baroque opera and orchestras that he is best known perhaps. With just a couple of days of rehearsal with a slimmed-down Ulster Orchestra and Belfast Philharmonic Choir under Christopher Bell, he obviously gelled most satisfactorily with both, as on both nights before full houses there was evidence of like minds working together to produce a nimble, but supremely eloquent rendition of this iconic work. The modern instrument orchestra played with great Handelian style and flourish without ever over-doing the baroque gesture, whilst the choir was almost immaculate in both intonation and ensemble, with special mention going to the alto section for a particularly creamy tone. No fuzzy diction in the faster passages, crisp enunciation throughout, and a sense of true pleasure in singing came though loud and clear. Messiah is a wonderful platform for solo excellence, but it stands or falls by the quality of its less starry musicians, and Ulster has every reason to be proud of its achievements here – they stand comparison with many higher-profile European ensembles.
With this sort of solid musicianship behind them, it was inevitable that the soloists would have to shine and really live up to their individual billings and we were not disappointed, although on the second night there was perhaps a slightly less ebullient start to proceedings.
Young British tenor Benjamin Hulett is, like his colleagues Deborah York and David DQ Lee, now based in Germany and his warm, agile voice has been noticed there in a range of baroque and classical repertoire. At the Waterfront Hall last night his ease of production was particularly noticeable in the Part Two recitatives and arias such as “Behold and see if there be any sorrow” with some lovely unforced high notes being balanced by darker lower tones.
The one singer in the group who might be termed non-specialist in the baroque was the American baritone Randall Scarlata. However, he had no trouble in fitting into this sound world and indeed demonstrated a similar degree of agility in the coloratura as his colleagues, plus showing some impressive colouring and expression in the more passionate arias, “Why do the nations so furiously rage together” being a prime example.
With the first alto aria “But who may abide” the Belfast crowd got their first taste of the highly promising young countertenor David DQ Lee, who made such an impression this year in the BBC’s Cardiff Singer of the World competition. Just a couple of weeks previously they had enjoyed the more mature talents of Germany’s Andreas Scholl, and in the young Canadian-Korean’s voice local informed opinion found a fascinating comparison to enjoy. Lee’s instrument is more in the modern American tradition of countertenor vocal production, with a warmer, more full-blooded sound than the English/Germanic one, and his operatic experience to date appears to colour his interpretations of these classic alto/mezzo arias, although always with good taste and refinement of line and ornament. Some elegant phrasing and soft, exquisitely-held cadential notes in “He was despised” were particularly impressive.
Deborah York’s Handelian credentials are well known and respected worldwide and if we have heard her less frequently in the UK recently, it is more due to her present residence in Berlin than any lack of demand within in these shores. Her bell-like, almost vibrato-free, soprano is not particularly large, but it has the ability to ping to the farthest corners of a big house, and the 1800 seats of the Waterfront held no terrors for her. She sang “I know that my redeemer liveth” with a particularly glistening tone and was an intriguing contrast to Lee’s more vibrant one in the duet “He shall feed his flock”.
With music and singing of this standard, Belfast and the Ulster Orchestra are up there with the best in Europe and America and Handel was well-served indeed.
Sue Loder © December 2007