The Importance of Being Earnest , Gerald Barry’s fifth opera, was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and the Barbican, and was first performed in concert, Thomas Adès conducting the London premiere.
‘Beauty is the one form of spirituality that we experience through the senses.’ In Thomas Mann’s, Death in Venice, Plato’s axiom stirs the hopes of the aging, intellectually stale poet, Gustav von Aschenbach, that he may rekindle his creativity.
What better way for Masonic brothers, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Emmanuel Shikaneder to disseminate Masonic virtues, than through the most popular musical entertainment of their age, a happy ending folktale that features a dragon, enchanting flutes and bells, mixed-up parentage, and a beautiful young princess in distress?
There is a sense in which it all began in London, Puccini having been seized in 1900 with the idea of an opera on this subject after watching David Belasco’s play here.
The tenor that the audience most wanted to hear, Plácido Domingo, opened the vocal program with “Junto al puente de la peña” (Next to the rock bridge) from La Canción del Olvido (The song of Oblivion) by José Serrano. He sounded rested and his voice soared majestically over the orchestra.
Tucked away somewhere in the San Francisco Opera warehouse was an old John Cox production of Così fan tutte from Monte Carlo. Well, not that old by current standards at San Francisco Opera.
Rossini's Maometto Secondo is a major coup for Garsington Opera at Wormsley, confirming its status as the leading specialist Rossini house in Britain. Maometto Secondo is a masterpiece, yet rarely performed because it's formidably difficult to sing. It's a saga with some of the most intense music Rossini ever wrote, expressing a drama so powerful that one can understand why early audiences needed "happy endings" to water down its impact
I suppose it was inevitable that, in this Britten Centenary year, the 66th Aldeburgh Festival would open with Peter Grimes.
Die Entführung aus dem Serail at Garsington Opera at Wormsley isn’t Mozart as you’d expect but it’s true to the spirit of Mozart who loved witty, madcap japes.
What a pity! On a glorious — well, by recent English standards — summer’s day, there can be few more beautiful English countryside settings than Glyndebourne, with the added bonus, as alas much of the audience appears to understand it, of an opera house attached.
Described by one critic as “cosmically gifted”, during her tragically short career, American mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson amazed and delighted audiences with the spellbinding beauty of her singing and the astonishing honesty of her performances.
Since its first performance at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo during Venice’s 1643 Carnevale, Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea has been one of the most important milestones in the genesis of modern opera despite its 250 years of unmerited obscurity.
“I wrote it almost without noticing.” So Verdi declared when reminded of his eighth — and perhaps least frequently performed, opera, Alzira. One might say that, since he composed the work, no-one else has much noticed either.
Just when you thought the protagonist was Hoffmann! Who, rather what stole the show?
When is verismo verily veristic? Or what is a virginal girl dressed in communion white doing in the two murderous acts of the Los Angeles Opera’s current production of Tosca? And why does she sing the shepherd's song?
Though 2013 is the bicentennial of the births of Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner, the releases of Cecilia Bartoli’s recording of Bellini’s Norma on DECCA, a new studio recording of Donizetti’s Caterina Cornaro from Opera Rara, and this première recording of Saverio Mercadante’s forgotten I due Figaro, suggest that this is the start of a summer of bel canto.
Wagner’s Lohengrin is not an unfamiliar visitor to the UK thanks, in the main, to Elijah Moshinsky’s perennial production at Covent Garden.
Philip Glass's The Perfect American at the ENO in London is a visual treat, but the libretto is mind-numbingly anodyne.
Recording Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen is for a record label equivalent to a climber reaching the summit of Mount Everest: it is the zenith from which a label surveys its position among its rivals and appreciates an achievement that can define its reputation for a generation.
Few people who love opera in general and bel canto in particular have never heard the comment made by Lilli Lehmann, veteran of the inaugural Ring at Bayreuth in 1876, that singing all three of Wagner’s Brünnhildes—in Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung, respectively, all of which she sang to great acclaim—pales in comparison with singing the title rôle in Bellini’s Norma.
![Sally Dexter (Titania) [Photo by Neil Libbert courtesy of The Glyndebourne Festival]](http://www.operatoday.com/Dexter_Titania_GFO.gif)
Glyndebourne is the epitome of British opera festivals. Seventy-five years ago, John Christie founded the tradition of “country house opera”, where opera can be enjoyed in beautiful settings.
The estate itself is magnificent, but Glyndebourne is distinctive because it’s dedicated to excellence. Christie’s vision was to create “not the best we can do, but the best that can be done anywhere”. Glyndebourne is like Bayreuth, but with wider range.
Celebrating Glyndebourne’s anniversary with The Fairy Queen was a masterstroke, honouring Shakespeare and Henry Purcell, born 350 years ago. This production, conducted by William Christie (no relation to John), conducted by Jonathan Kent and designed by Paul Brown is spectacular in every sense. For Purcell and his contemporaries, opera was meant to be spectacle, to astound audiences with its inventiveness and wit. In the current economic climate, this glorious production may seem extravagant. But baroque is a statement of faith in the power of art to transcend grim reality.
Baroque taste was inspired by the exotic, by the possibilities offered by new worlds “discovered” in Asia, South America and Africa. Thus the first scene, in a conventional 18th century drawing room, cabinets filled with porcelain and a tree of crimson coral. But The Fairy Queen is based loosely on A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, where, in the darkness of night, fairies rule, and the realm of dreams finds release. Bizarre as it may seem, baroque sensibilities bore fruit in Romanticism and in 20th century ideas about the subconscious.
Sally Dexter as Titania and Joseph Millson as Oberon
Oberon and Titania (Joseph Millson and Sally Dexter), and their minions are fairies with attitude, sporting sinister wings like ravens, and black costumes, part evening dress, part bondage gear. They tumble out of the cabinets, invading the rational world. Even Titania isn’t safe : Oberon’s magic potion goes awry, so she falls in love with Bottom, transfigured as an ass.
Shakespeare’s play within a play lends itself superbly to Purcell’s concept of opera as a combination of different forms of theatre — song, masques for dancing, orchestral fantasies, tracts of spoken dialogue and dramatic tableaux. Towards the end, stage overflows into auditorium, players running in through the stalls. William Christie turns to the audience, encouraging them to sing along. At the very end, rose petals fall from the ceiling, engulfing the patrons, a final coup de théâtre which evokes Glyndebourne’s lovely gardens beyond the building.
The workmen-actors enter the drawing room with cleaning tools. Their very bumptiousness is a subversive send up of the bewigged formality with which the tale begins. The play they create, complete with talking wall and cowardly lion is an anarchic parody of theatre, which is itself an illusion of ordinary life. At the performance I attended, Robert Burt who plays Flute who plays Thisbe tore a ligament in one scene, coming on later with a splint and walking stick. It was a wonderful moment where practical reality merged, yet again, into art.
In dreams, symbols hold sway. Literally, in the scene where Titania is wrapped in shrouds of muslin as she falls into deep sleep. Then a giant spider descends from the ceiling, sweeping the queen upwards like prey, suspended dangerously above the stage. It’s a shockingly potent image, dangerous and breathtaking — if the spiders thread should break, the singer might indeed be killed. A giant opium poppy appears alluding to unnatural dreams and again to the implication of danger and death. Titania and Bottom, played by Desmond Barrit, his head now an ass, float away in a boat shaped like a giant pea pod which emerged from the bowels beneath the stage. As if crossing the River Styx, they are ferried by a gondolier with the head of a fish.
Autumn
Purcell’s drama was influenced by the exigencies of his time. Thus the baroque taste for elaborate theatrical illusions, which this production faithfully honors with the extra benefit of modern technology and lighting. The roof opens as huge wooden cut outs of clouds descend. The clouds part to reveal a resplendent Sun King astride a golden Pegasus, wings unfurled. Then, vignettes of each of the Four Seasons. Autumn comes dressed as cabbage and pumpkin, like those paintings of men as vegetables, so popular in baroque times. These tableaux don’t serve the narrative as such, they’re pure spectacle, in true 17th century spirit.
Adam and Eve appear, naked but for well-placed fig leaves under the canopy of a huge golden apple tree. Baroque audiences liked a bit of titillation, but would have understood the Biblical allusion. Eve flirts about and Adam eats an apple, after which the fairies throw them clothing from the wings. Finally the lovers are married - in the right combinations — and there’s a masque where the god of Marriage, Hymen (Andrew Foster-Williams) appears proffering the joys of wedded bliss. Perhaps baroque audiences related to marriage as a symbol of social stability, as opposed to the anarchy of nocturnal mayhem, portrayed earlier in the opera by giant bunnies copulating in myriad ways. Certainly ribaldry runs throughout this opera and even Shakespeare as bard was bawdy.
In peapod boat : Desmond Barrit as Bottom and Sally Dexter as Titania
William Christie led the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in free spirited, vivacious performance. This is the best baroque orchestra in England, so it was wonderful to hear them conducted by Christie, who is usually based in France. Very good singing, too. So many songs and ensembles flow in rapid succession that perhaps it’s better not to single out a few from the overall god work. Lovely dancing, too, and a delightfully athletic Puck (Jotham Annan).
This was an amazing Fairy Queen, which will be almost impossible to translate in the semi-staged performance to come at the Proms in London this summer. Nor will it work in theatres outside Glyndebourne which don’t have its superb facilities, so it won’t be included in the Glyndebourne Touring season. Let’s pray this production will be immortalized on film, so all can share in its glory.
Anne Ozorio
The Fairy Queen runs at Glyndebourne until 8th August 2009. This season at Glyndebourne includes Falstaff, Guilio Cesare, L’Elisir d’amore, Rusalka, Jenůfa, Tristan und Isolde and Così fan tutte. After the summer season, Glyndebourne Touring Opera can be heard in other cities in the United Kingdom. This production can also be heard in semi staged performance at the BBC Proms in London on 19th July 2009 , and will be broadcast internationally and online.
For more information please see the Glyndebourne website.