Recently in Reviews

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.’

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.

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.’

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.

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."

OPERA TODAY ARCHIVES »

Reviews

<em>The Winter’s Tale</em>, English National Opera
05 Mar 2017

A Winter's Tale: a world premiere at English National Opera

The first production of Ryan Wigglesworth’s first opera, based upon Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, is clearly a major event in English National Opera’s somewhat trimmed-down season. Wigglesworth, who serves also as conductor and librettist, professes to have been obsessed with the play for more than twenty years, and one can see why The Winter’s Tale, with its theatrical ‘set-pieces’ - the oracle scene, the tempest, the miracle of a moving statue - and its grandiose emotions, dominated as the play is by Leontes’ obsessively articulated, over-intellectualized jealousy, would invite operatic adaptation.

The Winter’s Tale, English National Opera

A review by Claire Seymour

Above: ENO Chorus and Iain Paterson

Photo credit: Johan Persson

 

Wigglesworth tells the ‘tale’ clearly: swiftly and surely we follow the dismal progress that Leontes’ jealousy initiates. The composer-librettist has pruned and pared Shakespeare’s text, cherry-picking some of the play’s memorable and compelling one-liners - ‘Bitter on my tongue. Bitter in my thought.’ - but compressing and excising ruthlessly (one might feel, at times, mercilessly).

Indeed, the brevity of the opera - there is less than two hours of music - is both its strength and weakness. There is certainly an absorbing singularity of focus. But, Shakespeare’s play is more than one ‘tale’ and the erasures rob the drama of its structural parallels and linguistic richness. Yes, music can restore, represent and reinterpret much that has been removed, but Wigglesworth’s score, though beautiful, seemed on this single hearing to be more illustrative than dramatic.

This opera is not so much a ‘sad tale’ that’s ‘best for winter’, but a ‘serious’ Winter’s Tale. Comedy, romance and pastoral are all largely dispensed with, and so we are not offered the opportunity to revisit the ‘tale’ in different contexts and learn new meanings; this unbalances the structure of the drama, making the reversal and restoration of the final moments less convincing.

For when Shakespeare throws a foundling story into the mix he provides an escape route from the tragic trajectory which up until that point seems unavoidable. ‘Time, the Chorus’ ushers us into a new, natural world, one where Leontes’ mistakes need not be as important as they initially seem. And, though we return from the pastoral idyll in Shakespeare’s final act, the spirit of romance penetrates Sicilia. The ‘resurrection’ of Hermione harks back to myths of gods reborn as well as fairy-tales of ‘sleeping’ maidens. Leontes’ discovery of long-lost friend/daughter/son-brother, and the self-deceiving ‘lies’ that the lovers tell about their regal/non-regal status are the stuff of comedy. These generic echoes surely affect how ‘seriously’ we take Leontes’ jealousy and the statue scene?

Here, though, we have no Autolycus - that tale-teller and singer, rogue agent of Providence and man of masks who brings laughter into the tragedy. The all-singing, all-dancing confidence trickster is also an unwilling agent for good: he defects the Shepherd and Clown from taking the fardel to the King; and when he witnesses the denunciation of Florizel and Perdita by Polixenes, Autolycus decides, though his motives are ambiguous, to take a hand in the action, providing Florizel with his disguise.

Not only does Autolycus provide an antidote to sentiment in the pastoral comedy, he also offers a playful counterpoint to Leontes’ story, paralleling the latter’s self-destructiveness, acquiring a growing moral sense. At his last appearance on stage, Autolycus is declared true by the Clown who knows him to be false, a comic variation on Leontes’ declaration that he sees life in what he knows to be stone; both scenes form part of the pattern of discourses on the potential for regeneration in fancy and faith, and on the truth of art grounded in nature.

Zach Roberts Susan Bickley (c) Johan Persson.jpg Zach Roberts and Susan Bickley. Photo credit: Johan Persson.

In Wigglesworth’s opera the latter theme, surely central to Shakespeare’s play, is outweighed - as is all else - by Leontes’ fanatical jealousy. In the brief second Act in rural Bohemia the debate that Polixenes has with Perdita about the relative merits of nature and art, so eloquently argued and which looks back to the stories of the opening and forwards to the reconciliation of the end, scarcely registers.

Of course, we are not watching Shakespeare’s play, and it is perhaps unfair to judge Wigglesworth opera on anything but its own merits. And, the latter are manifold. I began by noting the clarity and directness of the account and this is in no small part due to the nature of the text, and its setting: the short phrases are singer-friendly, full of open vowels and sympathetically set in a Brittenesque manner. (Indeed, there are more than a few spot-the-Britten-opera moments in the score, not least the reading of the indictment in the oracle scene which echoes Swallow’s interrogation of Peter Grimes.) The brevity of the text does mean that the rich figurative arguments of the language, its ‘poetry’, are lost - along with art and artifice, out go the diverse images of madness/imagination, flowers/fishing, sickness/medicine, lost/found, theatre, cosmology etc. - along with the patterning of particular words such as ‘hand’, ‘faith’, ‘fancy’. There is little difference between the register of the Sicilians and the Bohemians, though Wigglesworth uses the woodwind effectively in the rural act, distinguishing the sound-worlds.

The score is spacious and gentle, by turns lean - just a few instruments, or even orchestral silence - and then more luxurious. The instrumental palette is finely variegated; the Act 3 string intermezzo is tender and beautiful. But, the accompaniment does just that, accompanies; seldom does it create dramatic momentum. With the entry of the admirable ENO chorus - at the end of Act 1 as adulators of Hermione, and as festive Bohemians in Act 2 - there is an injection of impetus through the communal festivities that allow the significant mingling of the low and natural population with the court.

ENO The Winter's Tale ENO Chorus Samantha Price (c) Johan Persson.jpgENO Chorus and Samantha Price. Photo credit: Johan Persson.

I was surprised, though, that the moment when Polixenes discovers his son’s plans to marry Perdita is elevated by Wigglesworth to a dramatic intensity equal to Leontes’ wrath in Act 1. There is an obvious parallel between Polixenes’ disapproval and Leontes’ unbending assertion that the world bow to his dream, but surely the pastoral convention - especially the interchange of royalty and shepherds - diminishes the potential impact of any ‘threat’? Then, having turned up the temperature of Polixenes’ ‘madness’, Wigglesworth resorts to unaccompanied spoken text for Polixenes, who bellows that Florizel is no longer his child/son/blood. Surely such a climax is deserving of musical representation?

Leigh Melrose and Iain Paterson (c) Johan Persson.jpg Leigh Melrose and Iain Paterson. Photo credit: Johan Persson.

An enormous statue of the jealous tyrant dominates the Sicilian acts, and Iain Paterson was a towering vocal force, wonderfully embodying first the self-consuming grip of Leontes’ obsession and then the pathos of his ‘winter’, spent ‘in shame perpetual’. This performance was all the more impressive given the terseness of the text, for Paterson was deprived of Leontes’ spitting sequences of rhetoric questions and repetitions which have such an unstoppable momentum in the play, convincing him of the veracity of what in fact he knows to be false.

ENO The Winter's Tale Sophie Bevan and Iain Paterson (c) Johan Persson.jpg Sophie Bevan and Iain Paterson. Photo credit: Johan Persson.

Sophie Bevan delivered some fine outbursts of injustice as the wronged Hermione: ‘There is a grief lodged here which burns’ literally scorches itself into the listener’s heart. Bevan’s soprano is big and rich, and she was well-served by Wigglesworth’s melodic writing. I found this Hermione a little too playful, however, when coaxing Polixenes to stay in Sicilia: charged by her husband to persuade his Bohemian friend to stay, she should be warm and companionable, but never in danger of losing her dignity.

Some literary critics have suggested that Hermione stands for divine Grace, or even the figure of Christ, but Bevan’s Hermione did not acquire such ‘grace’ until the final scene (and this seemed inconsistent with the earlier characterisation), when she offered Perdita a blessing. I wasn’t entirely convinced that Bevan really conveyed the tenacity of the mother’s desire to see her child grow and the strength of her belief in the oracle’s story which, when fulfilled redeem all - but the fault may lie with the adaptation and not with the singer.

Leigh Melrose was firm of voice and conviction as Polixenes, and both he and Timothy Robinson, as the trusted counsellor, Camillo, exhibited superbly clear diction. Robinson was a convincing ‘link’ between the rulers, his mannerisms suggestive of the characteristics of the two courts.

Timothy Robinson and Iain Paterson (c) Johan Persson.jpg Timothy Robinson and Iain Paterson. Photo credit: Johan Persson.

Susan Bickley’s Paulina was tough and confident, insistent on telling the king that Hermione is innocent and has delivered a baby girl. Loyal, frank and resourceful, Paulina’s willpower wins through, and Bickley remained ever-watchful fiercely reminding the old king of his dead wife and intimidating him during the stage-managing the denouement.

Audacious happiness radiated from Anthony Gregory and Samantha Price as Florizel and Perdita. This Perdita’s natural grace belied her lowly status and confirmed her royal strain, and Price’s lyric soprano was equally charming. Gregory used his lovely, warm tenor to raise Florizel above the stereo-type of ‘disguised lover-prince’, showing him to be both gallant and headstrong.

In an interview with The Guardian, Kinnear acknowledge the relevance of Shakespeare’s play in the context of current global politics: ‘It hasn’t escaped us that the piece is about regeneration. About how we still hold on to each other despite fractures, how good things can coalesce around those fractures. And yes, we’re doing a piece about an authoritarian, borderline-tyrannical leader who is appalling in his treatment of women, ignorant of nature, and quick to create borders between a neighbouring country. […] The timing of premiering it in February 2017 is slightly discomforting. Talk about opera being relevant.’

Wigglesworth and Kinnear leave us in no doubt about the potentially tragic consequences of humanity’s ineradicable wish to make the world fit our desires. We are pulled into Leontes’ narrow vision and we are repelled by the insanity of his perspective. As king, he can enforce his delusions on others, and it is only the conventions of pastoral and romance which prevent Leontes’ actions spinning into insanity and death. I just wish that this opera had more to say about art’s potential as a ‘healing power’.

Claire Seymour

Ryan Wigglesworth: The Winter’s Tale

Leontes - Iain Paterson, Hermione - Sophie Bevan, Perdita - Samantha Price, Polixenes - Leigh Melrose, Florizel/Court Official - Anthony Gregory, Paulina - Susan Bickley, Antigonus/Shepherd - Neal Davies, Camillo - Timothy Robinson, Mamillius - Zach Roberts, Two Guards - Geraint Hylton, Michael Burke, Servant - Paul Napier-Burrows; Rory Kinnear - director, Ryan Wiggleworth - conductor, Vicki Mortimer - set design, Moritz Junge - costume design, Jon Clark - lighting design, Imogen Knight - movement, Orchestra and Chorus of English National Opera.

English National Opera, London Coliseum; Friday rd March 2017

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):