It’s Verdi’s bicentenary year and Rolando Villazón has two new CDs to plug — titled somewhat confusingly, ‘Villazón: Verdi’ and ‘Villazón’s Verdi’, the latter a ‘personal selection’ of favourite numbers performed by stars of the past and present.
Nicola Luisotti and the San Francisco Opera Orchestra climbed out of the War Memorial pit, braved the wind whipped bay and held spellbound an audience at Cal Performances’ Zellerbach Auditorium at UC Berkeley.
Paul Dukas’ Ariane et Barbe-Bleue, first heard in 1907, once seemed important. Arturo Toscanini conducted the Met premiere in 1911 with Farrar and later arranged some of its music for a 1947 recording with his NBC Symphony.
Utterly mad but absolutely right — Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos started the Glyndebourne 2013 season with an explosion. Strauss could hardly have made his intentions more clear. Ariadne auf Naxos is not “about” Greek myth so much as a satire on art and the way art is made.
“Man is an abyss. It makes one dizzy to look into it.” So utters Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck, repeating what was also a recurring motif in the playwright’s own letters.
National Opera Company of the Rhine has marked this year’s Benjamin Britten celebration with a remarkably compelling, often gripping new production of the seldom-seen Owen Wingrave.
Once upon a time, Frankfurt Opera had the baddest ass reputation in Germany as “the” cutting edge producer of must-see opera.
Productions of Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto can serve as a vehicle for individual singers to make a strong impression and become afterward associated with specific roles in the opera.
Just in case we were not aware that the evening’s programme was ‘themed’, the Britten Sinfonia designed a visual accompaniment to their musical exploration of night, sleep and dreams.
Poor Aida! She never seems to have anything go her way.
Is it possible to upstage Jonas Kaufmann? Kaufmann was brilliant in this Verdi Don Carlo at the Royal Opera House, London, but the rest of the cast was so good that he was but first among equals. Don Carlo is a vehicle for stars, but this time the stars were everyone on stage and in the pit. Even the solo arias, glorious as they are, grow organically out of perfect ensemble. This was a performance that brought out the true beauty of Verdi's music.
The big names were absent: Duparc, D’Indy, Debussy, Ravel … and while Fauré, Chausson, Roussel and several members of Les Six put in an appearance, in less than familiar guises, this survey of French song of the early 20th century and interwar years deliberately took us on a journey through infrequently travelled terrain.
Composed between 1718 and 1720, Handel’s Esther is sometimes described as the ‘first English Oratorio’, but is in fact a hybrid form, mixing elements of oratorio, masque, pastoral and opera.
Hector Berlioz's légende dramatique, La Damnation de Faust, exists somewhere between cantata and opera. Berlioz's flexible attitude to dramatic form made the piece unworkable on the stages of early 19th century Paris and his music is so vivid that you wonder whether the piece needs staging at all.
St. John’s Smith Square was the site of Elizabeth Connell’s final London concert, intended as a farewell to London on her moving to Australia. It was rendered ultimately final by her unexpected death.
With the building of the Suez Canal, Egypt became more interesting to Western Europeans. Khedive Ismail Pasha wanted a hymn by Verdi for the opening of a new opera house in Cairo, but the composer said he did not write occasional pieces.
Back for its fourth revival, David McVicar’s 2003 production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte has much charm, beauty and artistry.
The economics of the recording companies dictate much that is not ideal. Wagner’s operas were not composed as they were in order to permit the extraction of bleeding chunks, even on those occasions when strophic song forms do occur.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro has a libretto by Lorenzo daPonte based on the French play La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro (The Crazy Day or the Marriage of Figaro) by Pierre Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-1799).
For its world class Easter Festival, Baden-Baden mounted a Die Zauberflöte that owed more to the grey penitential doldrums of Lent than to the unbridled jubilance of re-birth.
Each year, the Wigmore Hall commemorates Franz Schubert’s birthday with a high profile recital. This year, Werner Güra and Roger Vignoles presented a recital which was a timely reminder of what Lieder performance should be.
There always will be more opera fans than Lieder fans, and operatic performance is easier to relate to than the more introverted values of art song. So perhaps in a few years the true art of Lieder will be obliterated. But Lieder and opera are different genres, with different values. Lieder is a Germanic tradition which has its roots not in entertainment so much as in the communication of ideas closer to philosophy and spirituality. Significantly, many great Lieder singers come from a background in Bach. Lieder is an inward art of contemplation, where the action isn’t in a role or external plot but takes place in the soul.
Werner Güra first appeared at the Wigmore Hall many years ago, when William Lyne discovered him through Peter Schreier, Güra’s mentor. Superlative recommendations. I remember that concert, when young Güra was so overawed by the formidable reputation of the Wigmore Hall that he tried too hard to please, and didn’t put enough of himself into his performance, though one could hear why Schreier and Lyne were so impressed. Lieder is not about pleasing anyone. It’s about emotional integrity and finding a way into each song that’s uncompromisingly from within. Years later, Güra’s vigorous shock of hair has turned grey, but reflects how he has matured as an artist. Güra and Vignoles chose popular Schubert songs but presented them with intelligence.
Schubert writes so lyrically that’s it’s easy to miss the depths of irony in his music. The lilting melody in Alinde (D904, 1827) is deceptive. Utter sweetness of tone, which Güra sang with exquisite grace. Schubert respects the poet’s device, where the protagonist asks the same question of people he meets, lulling the listener into thinking this is no more than strophic convention. But each answer is evasive. The answer only comes when the protagonist confronts himself: “Von allen Lebend’gen irr ich allein, bang und beklommen”. Vignoles’s playing captured the idea of piano as lute, but this song is no serenade. Güra doesn’t need to exaggerate the twist in the song, other than by shading his voice at the critical word “Da” in the last verse.
In the early Der Fischer (D225, 1815, Goethe) Schubert’s rippling notes describe the sparkling surface of the waters by which the fisherman sits, waiting for a catch. Then a watersprite emerges, scolding him for not respecting her realm. When the rippling melody begins again, Güra lowers his voice so you can “hear” the fisherman, willingly being drawn into the waters and what they symbolize. Again and again, this is a theme in Romantic poetry, which Schubert understands so well — waters as metaphor for the unconscious, for creative renewal beneath surface glitter.
Goethe was Schubert’s favourite poet but he set almost as many poems by Johann Mayrhofer. Schubert’s strange, difficult friend’s text of Der Schiffer (D536, 1817(?)) shows another aspect of Mayrhofer’s style. This time, the boatman is sailing through a storm, but he’s defiant, though soaked to the bone, alert to the dangers of whirlpool and reef. Vignoles evokes the waves vividly, so Güra’s voice rises confidently above the tumult. “Ich hasse ein Leben behaglich entrollt”, he sings (I hate a snuggly enfolding life) and later sings with firm resolve, “Dem Sturme zu trotzen mit männlicher brust” (to brave the storm with a manly heart).
Der Wanderer (D493,1816, Georg Schmidt von Lübeck) is one of the most iconic Lieder of all. The wanderer is an existential loner. “Ich bin ein Fremdling überall”. Psychic emptiness evoked in the dark opening chords, then searching, straining legato. “Wo bist du, wo bist du, mein geliebtes Land?” Güra sang the changing moods with heartfelt sincerity. That floating “immer wo”! There are many superlative performances of this song, but this ranked with the best, for Güra expressed the devastating inner landscape so well. “Dort, wo du nicht bist, dort ist das Glück!”. (there, where you are not, is happiness). Nothing theatrical, but tinged with the dignified pain of experience.
Schubert was one of the first composers to discover Heinrich Heine, and Heine’s ironies inspired some of his finest work. Güra and Vignoles surpassed themselves in the six Heine Lieder from Schwanengesang (D957, 1828). Heine’s Fischermädchen turns the fisherman/nature spirit concept upside down. Perhaps this time the fisherwoman is discovering sensual delights. The charm of the song lies in its purity which Güra sang with genial warmth. Die Stadt was luminously beautiful, yet chilling, for the vision the poet sees is surreal. What waters are those he’s sailing? Where is he heading? Schubert’s setting is nebulous, as if sea and horizon are blurred, as is memory. Güra and Vignoles captured the emotional heart of this song, so nebulous and ambiguous it could almost have been written today.
Big, dramatic songs like Der Atlas and Der Doppelgänger lend themselves to overstatement, and heavy voices need exaggeration to kick them into life, but that doesn’t mean it’s idiomatic. The true horror in these songs, which lies in their psychological truth. The Doppelgänger isn’t a character, he’s a vampire only in spirit. “Still ist die Nacht” sang Güra, sibilants sharply sinister, consonants cutting. Stillness is fundamental to this song, whose interpretation depends on sensitive observation. Güra’s voice curls menacingly, to emphasize the protagonist’s psychic dislocation. Güra shapes the climaxes so they feel like stifled cries of agony, too awful to face. Hence the fragmenting personality, and the significance of the pauses between notes, which Vignoles brought out so well. Schubert’s insight is amazing. Only the shallow hear shallow in Schubert. Güra spits out the words “Du, Doppelgänger!” as if confronting the apparition, “du bleicher Geselle!”. But it’s the final line that really counts, whispered almost sotto voce, “so manche Nacht, in alter Zeit”. With subtle tenderness, Güra reminds us that the protagonist once had a human past, so its annihilation is all the more terrifying.
Anne Ozorio