09 Jan 2011
King Roger at Bregenz Festival 2009
Long-dormant operas sometimes rise to meet a new dawn only to then slink away like the creatures of the night they were doomed to be — seductive but dangerous to approach.
Recently in Recordings
Henry Purcell, Royal Welcome Songs for King Charles II Vol. III: The Sixteen/Harry Christophers
The Sixteen continues its exploration of Henry Purcell’s Welcome Songs for Charles II. As with Robert King’s pioneering Purcell series begun over thirty years ago for Hyperion, Harry Christophers is recording two Welcome Songs per disc.
Anima Rara: Ermonela Jaho
In February this year, Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho made a highly lauded debut recital at Wigmore Hall - a concert which both celebrated Opera Rara’s 50th anniversary and honoured the career of the Italian soprano Rosina Storchio (1872-1945), the star of verismo who created the title roles in Leoncavallo’s La bohème and Zazà, Mascagni’s Lodoletta and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.
Requiem pour les temps futurs: An AI requiem for a post-modern society
Collapsology. Or, perhaps we should use the French word ‘Collapsologie’ because this is a transdisciplinary idea pretty much advocated by a series of French theorists - and apparently, mostly French theorists. It in essence focuses on the imminent collapse of modern society and all its layers - a series of escalating crises on a global scale: environmental, economic, geopolitical, governmental; the list is extensive.
Ádám Fischer’s 1991 MahlerFest Kassel ‘Resurrection’ issued for the first time
Amongst an avalanche of new Mahler recordings appearing at the moment (Das Lied von der Erde seems to be the most favoured, with three) this 1991 Mahler Second from the 2nd Kassel MahlerFest is one of the more interesting releases.
Max Lorenz: Tristan und Isolde, Hamburg 1949
If there is one myth, it seems believed by some people today, that probably needs shattering it is that post-war recordings or performances of Wagner operas were always of exceptional quality. This 1949 Hamburg Tristan und Isolde is one of those recordings - though quite who is to blame for its many problems takes quite some unearthing.
Women's Voices: a sung celebration of six eloquent and confident voices
The voices of six women composers are celebrated by baritone Jeremy Huw Williams and soprano Yunah Lee on this characteristically ambitious and valuable release by Lontano Records Ltd (Lorelt).
Rosa mystica: Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir
As Paul Spicer, conductor of the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir, observes, the worship of the Blessed Virgin Mary is as ‘old as Christianity itself’, and programmes devoted to settings of texts which venerate the Virgin Mary are commonplace.
The Prison: Ethel Smyth
Ethel Smyth’s last large-scale work, written in 1930 by the then 72-year-old composer who was increasingly afflicted and depressed by her worsening deafness, was The Prison – a ‘symphony’ for soprano and bass-baritone soloists, chorus and orchestra.
Songs by Sir Hamilton Harty: Kathryn Rudge and Christopher Glynn
‘Hamilton Harty is Irish to the core, but he is not a musical nationalist.’
After Silence: VOCES8
‘After silence, that which comes closest to expressing the inexpressible is music.’ Aldous Huxley’s words have inspired VOCES8’s new disc, After Silence, a ‘double album in four chapters’ which marks the ensemble’s 15th anniversary.
Beethoven's Songs and Folksongs: Bostridge and Pappano
A song-cycle is a narrative, a journey, not necessarily literal or linear, but one which carries performer and listener through time and across an emotional terrain. Through complement and contrast, poetry and music crystallise diverse sentiments and somehow cohere variability into an aesthetic unity.
Flax and Fire: a terrific debut recital-disc from tenor Stuart Jackson
One of the nicest things about being lucky enough to enjoy opera, music and theatre, week in week out, in London’s fringe theatres, music conservatoires, and international concert halls and opera houses, is the opportunity to encounter striking performances by young talented musicians and then watch with pleasure as they fulfil those sparks of promise.
Carlisle Floyd's Prince of Players: a world premiere recording
“It’s forbidden, and where’s the art in that?”
John F. Larchet's Complete Songs and Airs: in conversation with Niall Kinsella
Dublin-born John F. Larchet (1884-1967) might well be described as the father of post-Independence Irish music, given the immense influenced that he had upon Irish musical life during the first half of the 20th century - as a composer, musician, administrator and teacher.
Haddon Hall: 'Sullivan sans Gilbert' does not disappoint thanks to the BBC Concert Orchestra and John Andrews
The English Civil War is raging. The daughter of a Puritan aristocrat has fallen in love with the son of a Royalist supporter of the House of Stuart. Will love triumph over political expediency and religious dogma?
Beethoven’s Choral Symphony and Choral Fantasy from Harmonia Mundi
Beethoven Symphony no 9 (the Choral Symphony) in D minor, Op. 125, and the Choral Fantasy in C minor, Op. 80 with soloist Kristian Bezuidenhout, Pablo Heras-Casado conducting the Freiburger Barockorchester, new from Harmonia Mundi.
Taking Risks with Barbara Hannigan
A Louise Brooks look-a-like, in bobbed black wig and floor-sweeping leather trench-coat, cheeks purple-rouged and eyes shadowed in black, Barbara Hannigan issues taut gestures which elicit fire-cracker punch from the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.
Alfredo Piatti: The Operatic Fantasies (Vol.2) - in conversation with Adrian Bradbury
‘Signor Piatti in a fantasia on themes from Beatrice di Tenda had also his triumph. Difficulties, declared to be insuperable, were vanquished by him with consummate skill and precision. He certainly is amazing, his tone magnificent, and his style excellent. His resources appear to be inexhaustible; and altogether for variety, it is the greatest specimen of violoncello playing that has been heard in this country.’
Those Blue Remembered Hills: Roderick Williams sings Gurney and Howells
Baritone Roderick Williams seems to have been a pretty constant ‘companion’, on my laptop screen and through my stereo speakers, during the past few ‘lock-down’ months.
Bruno Ganz and Kirill Gerstein almost rescue Strauss’s Enoch Arden
Melodramas can be a difficult genre for composers. Before Richard Strauss’s Enoch Arden the concept of the melodrama was its compact size – Weber’s Wolf’s Glen scene in Der Freischütz, Georg Benda’s Ariadne auf Naxos and Medea or even Leonore’s grave scene in Beethoven’s Fidelio.
OPERA TODAY ARCHIVES »
Recordings
Let’s call them “vampire” operas, and one such is the sole operatic creation of Karol Szymanowski, composer and co-librettist (with Jaroslaw Iwasszkiewicz) of King Roger. This DVD set’s excellent booklet essay (written by Christoph Schlüren and translated by J. Bradford Robinson) describes this as an obscure work admired mostly by “connoisseurs and composers.” That might do well to characterize all of Szymanowski’s compositions, with his violin concertos being the pieces most likely to earn an occasional recording and, less often, make a concert hall appearance. The seductiveness of King Roger lies in its texturally rich score, a silky fabric of lushness and languidity, with ecstatic outbursts. The danger is in believing, with its libretto that Schlüren tactfully describes as lacking “dramatic fibre,” that King Roger can hold the stage in any conventional sense.
For the 2009 Bregenz Festival (in its “house” venue, not at the lakeside theater used for the more spectacular stagings), David Pountney, never one for the conventional approach anyway, easily evaded this danger. Pountney’s staging affirms the oratorio nature of the libretto, with what action there is occurring on an oversized flight of white stair-steps that covers the stage practically from side to side and back to front. Szymanowski’s score employs a large chorus, and in act one they troop up and down the stairs in black gowns, surrounding and observing the action of the few key performers. With amazing lighting designs (by Fabrice Kebour), this single set serves as the varying locations of the three acts, but as the narrative never seems concerned with conventional scene setting anyway, this is no detriment.
The booklet omits any synopsis, probably because none is really needed. In a remote time, a King is warned that a stranger has appeared whose presence is both beguiling and alarming the populace. When this man, referred to as the Shepherd, is denounced by the Archbishop as a heretic and threatened with death, the King’s wife Roxana, besotted, asks that the Shepherd be given a chance to demonstrate his good intentions. Soon the Shepherd has enchanted the populace, and by act three, a Dionysian orgy is underway — where the opera suddenly ends, with King Roger apparently now under the sway of the Shepherd and the old order in tatters.
Pountney therefore begins the opera rather solemnly and simply, but things get a bit wild in act two, where the Shepard wears — and not well — the same bold red gown as Roxana. And both gowns have the same ghastly red fabric flower stitched to the front, enough to make Michael Kors’ mouth pucker in disgust (not that Kors’s mouth ever doesn’t do that). In act three, after a wild night, the King sports the dress, or what’s left of it, and quite a lot of smeared blood as well. By the time King Roger raises his blood-smeared arms to the rising sun, the orgy participants have left, leaving the once pristine white stairs sprinkled with crimson.
Thomas Hampson has recorded the title role, and his gorgeous voice and handsome but stiff presence would work well on stage, one would imagine. Here, Scott Hendricks is game, but his instrument is rather ordinary, and he looks no better in his torn gown of red than Will Hartmann does as the Shepard (Hartmann at least gets to wear it intact, though in act three he is down to a rather frightful loincloth). To ask any tenor to create a figure of surpassing physical beauty and charisma is to ask rather too much, and as much appreciated as Mr. Hartmann’s efforts should be, he doesn’t really come up to the role’s requirements. In a role of almost no character definition, Olga Pasichnyk as Roxana does get some beautiful music, especially in an exquisite second act number. Why she should be as bald, if not balder, than her King is not clear to your reviewer.
Conductor Mark Elder clearly relishes the score, as most any conductor would, and the Wiener Symphoniker plays with delicacy and passion as needed. And this is not the amplified monstrosity of an acoustic as heard in the festival’s lakeside venue. Sound and picture are both impeccable.
Those who know — or know of- the opera should surely avail themselves of a chance to see what arguable amounts to a semi-staging, although a stylish and evocative one at its best. And even if one is not among those “connoisseurs and composers” who admire the work and the composer, this is a quality production that will reward the serious opera fan.
Chris Mullins