Recently in Performances

ETO Autumn 2020 Season Announcement: Lyric Solitude

English Touring Opera are delighted to announce a season of lyric monodramas to tour nationally from October to December. The season features music for solo singer and piano by Argento, Britten, Tippett and Shostakovich with a bold and inventive approach to making opera during social distancing.

Love, always: Chanticleer, Live from London … via San Francisco

This tenth of ten Live from London concerts was in fact a recorded live performance from California. It was no less enjoyable for that, and it was also uplifting to learn that this wasn’t in fact the ‘last’ LfL event that we will be able to enjoy, courtesy of VOCES8 and their fellow vocal ensembles (more below …).

Dreams and delusions from Ian Bostridge and Imogen Cooper at Wigmore Hall

Ever since Wigmore Hall announced their superb series of autumn concerts, all streamed live and available free of charge, I’d been looking forward to this song recital by Ian Bostridge and Imogen Cooper.

Treasures of the English Renaissance: Stile Antico, Live from London

Although Stile Antico’s programme article for their Live from London recital introduced their selection from the many treasures of the English Renaissance in the context of the theological debates and upheavals of the Tudor and Elizabethan years, their performance was more evocative of private chamber music than of public liturgy.

A wonderful Wigmore Hall debut by Elizabeth Llewellyn

Evidently, face masks don’t stifle appreciative “Bravo!”s. And, reducing audience numbers doesn’t lower the volume of such acclamations. For, the audience at Wigmore Hall gave soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn and pianist Simon Lepper a greatly deserved warm reception and hearty response following this lunchtime recital of late-Romantic song.

The Sixteen: Music for Reflection, live from Kings Place

For this week’s Live from London vocal recital we moved from the home of VOCES8, St Anne and St Agnes in the City of London, to Kings Place, where The Sixteen - who have been associate artists at the venue for some time - presented a programme of music and words bound together by the theme of ‘reflection’.

Iestyn Davies and Elizabeth Kenny explore Dowland's directness and darkness at Hatfield House

'Such is your divine Disposation that both you excellently understand, and royally entertaine the Exercise of Musicke.’

Paradise Lost: Tête-à-Tête 2020

‘And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven … that old serpent … Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.’

Joyce DiDonato: Met Stars Live in Concert

There was never any doubt that the fifth of the twelve Met Stars Live in Concert broadcasts was going to be a palpably intense and vivid event, as well as a musically stunning and theatrically enervating experience.

‘Where All Roses Go’: Apollo5, Live from London

‘Love’ was the theme for this Live from London performance by Apollo5. Given the complexity and diversity of that human emotion, and Apollo5’s reputation for versatility and diverse repertoire, ranging from Renaissance choral music to jazz, from contemporary classical works to popular song, it was no surprise that their programme spanned 500 years and several musical styles.

The Academy of St Martin in the Fields 're-connect'

The Academy of St Martin in the Fields have titled their autumn series of eight concerts - which are taking place at 5pm and 7.30pm on two Saturdays each month at their home venue in Trafalgar Square, and being filmed for streaming the following Thursday - ‘re:connect’.

Lucy Crowe and Allan Clayton join Sir Simon Rattle and the LSO at St Luke's

The London Symphony Orchestra opened their Autumn 2020 season with a homage to Oliver Knussen, who died at the age of 66 in July 2018. The programme traced a national musical lineage through the twentieth century, from Britten to Knussen, on to Mark-Anthony Turnage, and entwining the LSO and Rattle too.

Choral Dances: VOCES8, Live from London

With the Live from London digital vocal festival entering the second half of the series, the festival’s host, VOCES8, returned to their home at St Annes and St Agnes in the City of London to present a sequence of ‘Choral Dances’ - vocal music inspired by dance, embracing diverse genres from the Renaissance madrigal to swing jazz.

Royal Opera House Gala Concert

Just a few unison string wriggles from the opening of Mozart’s overture to Le nozze di Figaro are enough to make any opera-lover perch on the edge of their seat, in excited anticipation of the drama in music to come, so there could be no other curtain-raiser for this Gala Concert at the Royal Opera House, the latest instalment from ‘their House’ to ‘our houses’.

Fading: The Gesualdo Six at Live from London

"Before the ending of the day, creator of all things, we pray that, with your accustomed mercy, you may watch over us."

Met Stars Live in Concert: Lise Davidsen at the Oscarshall Palace in Oslo

The doors at The Metropolitan Opera will not open to live audiences until 2021 at the earliest, and the likelihood of normal operatic life resuming in cities around the world looks but a distant dream at present. But, while we may not be invited from our homes into the opera house for some time yet, with its free daily screenings of past productions and its pay-per-view Met Stars Live in Concert series, the Met continues to bring opera into our homes.

Precipice: The Grange Festival

Music-making at this year’s Grange Festival Opera may have fallen silent in June and July, but the country house and extensive grounds of The Grange provided an ideal setting for a weekend of twelve specially conceived ‘promenade’ performances encompassing music and dance.

Monteverdi: The Ache of Love - Live from London

There’s a “slide of harmony” and “all the bones leave your body at that moment and you collapse to the floor, it’s so extraordinary.”

Music for a While: Rowan Pierce and Christopher Glynn at Ryedale Online

“Music for a while, shall all your cares beguile.”

A Musical Reunion at Garsington Opera

The hum of bees rising from myriad scented blooms; gentle strains of birdsong; the cheerful chatter of picnickers beside a still lake; decorous thwacks of leather on willow; song and music floating through the warm evening air.

OPERA TODAY ARCHIVES »

Performances

Kurt Weill
13 Dec 2011

Kurt Weill’s Magical Night, Linbury Studio Theatre, London

Buzz Lightyear Meets Hansel and Gretel! Most children who have grown up in the Toy Story era know that toys come alive when left to their own devices.

But the celebrated Pixar films paradoxically avoid the question of what would happen if children unexpectedly encountered their own toys in a state of animation. Kurt Weill’s fascinating 1920s ballet, or more correctly “Children’s Pantomime” (Kinderpantomime), Magical Night (Zaubernacht), his earliest surviving work for the stage, takes that moment as its imaginative starting point.

Kurt Weill's Magical Night now on at the Linbury Studio Theatre of the Royal Opera House, London, has a remarkable history. Written to a scenario supplied by the original choreographer, the otherwise obscure Wladimir Boritsch, it was given three performances at the Theater am Kurfürstendamm, Berlin, in November 1922. In 1925 it received a second production at the Garrick Theatre, New York, but the score was subsequently lost. In the 1990s Meirion Bowen bravely attempted a reconstruction from an incomplete piano rehearsal score, and his version was premiered in Germany in 2000.

But then in 2005 a set of original orchestral parts was discovered in a vault in Yale University Library, and this allowed a much more authentic version of the score to be reconstructed for the Kurt Weill Edition (2008). This was premiered at the Musikfest Stuttgart in September 2010. The ROH production thus represents a bold investment in a largely forgotten work which has only recently become available for performance. It is fair to assume, of course, that Magical Night would almost certainly not have been revived if, by some chance, Weill had died before he composed Die Dreigroschenoper. It is Weill’s name and the knowledge of what he achieved later that generates initial interest and makes revival commercially viable. But this is less a comment on the intrinsic merits of Magical Night than it is on the difficulty of building up a head of steam behind any unknown ballet. Magical Night is not a rediscovered masterpiece, but it is felicitous music with a vital rhythmic pulse that, matched with appropriate choreography, can be an arresting and enchanting theatrical experience: which is exactly what the ROH production offers.

Not that much is known of the original scenario for which Weill wrote his music. In his invaluable Kurt Weill: A Handbook, David Drew was able to suggest (mainly on the basis of press reports) that it went something like this: “As ‘the Girl’ and ‘the Boy’ fall asleep, the Fairy enters and sings her magic spell. One by one the children’s toys, and the characters from their storybooks, are brought to life. Presently, the children themselves become involved in a phantasmagoria where, for instance, Anderson’s Tin Soldier helps rescue Hansel and Gretel. At the end, the Witch is hunted by the assembled company, and at last disposed of. The Fairy then vanishes, the children sink back into a dreamless sleep, and their mother tiptoes into the room to close the curtains.” The Kurt Weill Foundation states that “Directors and choreographers are encouraged to create their own scenarios that are appropriate to the music.”

The scenario Aletta Collins has devised for the Linbury production follows the broad outline of Drew’s reconstruction, but also makes some telling changes. Anyone wishing to remain in ignorance of the story now being staged should skip the rest of this paragraph. Two young children, Megan and Jason, are playing with their toys just before bedtime; they quarrel, and Megan pulls the tail off Chimpy, Jason’s favorite toy. Their mother tells them to go to bed. At midnight the Pink Fairy comes to life and casts a spell that animates various other toys, too. The toys dance together, not always in perfect accord. The children wake up and get drawn into the dance. Chimpy accuses Megan of pulling off his tail. Megan, upset, withdraws from the group and draws a picture of a witch. The toys try to warn her that this is unwise, but it is too late, and Sarah Good, an evil witch, appears as the physical embodiment of the picture. What happens next is a little unclear, but gradually it becomes obvious that the witch is using her magic to take control of the other characters. She lures Jason into a cooker, and throws in the Pink Fairy for good measure. But the other toys manage to distract the witch and stage a rescue; there is some superb comedy here as Mighty Robot, a Buzz Lightyear-like character, woos the witch through dance. Finally the two children realize that by manipulating Megan’s picture they can take control of the witch. After screwing it up, and throwing her into convulsions, they tear it to pieces, at which point Sarah Good spectacularly explodes in a shower of paper.

Even young children are likely to be reminded of Hansel and Gretel, the story expressly referenced in the original ballet; older ones will probably see a connection to Harry Potter, and adults may recollect The Picture of Dorian Gray and similar tales. The fact that the new Magical Night is so strongly evocative of earlier stories does not diminish it, though; rather it makes it powerfully familiar, expressing ideas which have become part of our collective imagination, our modern myths of evil and possession. It appears to be rather deeper than Boritsch’s playful fantasy, with a more obvious psychological message: just as we can easily create the objects of our fears, so we can destroy them. The ballet enacts the “explanation” of fairy stories that has often been put forward: they help children understand and master their fears.

The new story is not exactly “in” the music. There is no obvious darkening of the sonic landscape as the witch exerts her baleful influence. But Weill’s music throughout has a certain edgy, threatening feel to it—at no point can it be called jolly—and allows, from the beginning, some sinister potential. It is also music that seems to require rather than demand visual realization, supporting rather than dominating the represented action. In this sense visual cues influence what is heard at least as much as auditory cues condition what is seen.

Weill’s original orchestration is brighter, bolder and more percussive than Bowen’s version (which has been recorded). It is less subtle and studied, perhaps not surprisingly, but this works to its advantage. In the early 1920s Weill, who was studying with Busoni, experienced what Richard Taruskin has taught us to regard as the quintessential dilemma of the modern composer: torn between writing “art” music for the cognoscenti in the concert hall or more accessible music for the larger audience at the theatre. Some of that tension is felt in Magical Night, a remarkably sophisticated score for a Kinderpantomime, and it would be fascinating to know what the mature Weill thought of it. But Bowen pushed it too far towards the “art” music side of the dilemma, and it was refreshing to hear that the young Weill actually wanted something brasher and livelier, more popular in tone.

Magical Night is beautifully staged in the perfectly-sized Linbury Studio Theatre. The first part, and the last, take place in a very realistic-looking children’s bedroom. This is literally split in two for the witch’s dramatic entrance, and when her power is at its zenith it is turned inside out, revealing a black shadow-world with all the necessary equipment for her fiendish culinary arts. The dancers and the choreography are superb, with lots of customized moves to distinguish the characters, and abilities, of the different toys.

To get the expert opinion of a child, I brought along my five-year-old daughter, Annie Ashizu, for a second opinion. Being well acquainted with the Toy Story trilogy, as well as Hansel and Gretel, she had more than enough imaginative equipment to be able to grasp, and be absorbed by, Magical Night. Her first words at the end were of the kind to delight any parent keen to introduce their child to the magic of live entertainment: “Papa, I love this theatre [work]. I wish I could see it two times!” She hadn’t said that after The Lion King, her previous benchmark for theatrical greatness, and as we left Covent Garden I couldn’t resist asking her if she thought Magical Night as good as Disney’s epic. “Yes,” she replied unhesitatingly; “actually, it was better!” This may turn out to be the greatest tribute to the success of ROH’s production to be found in any of the reviews. Annie instinctively loved the Pink Fairy and clearly experienced the end of the story as empowering. She talked about the characters all the way home, when she fell asleep her head was still full of them, and she woke up talking of how she had dreamed of being the Pink Fairy. We’ll be going again.

David Chandler

Send to a friend

Send a link to this article to a friend with an optional message.

Friend's Email Address: (required)

Your Email Address: (required)

Message (optional):