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

05 Nov 2019

Haydn's La fedeltà premiata impresses at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama

‘Exit, pursued by an octopus.’ The London Underground insignia in the centre of the curtain-drop at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama’s Silk Street Theatre, advised patrons arriving for the performance of Joseph Haydn’s La fedeltà premiata (Fidelity Rewarded, 1780) that their Tube journey had terminated in ‘Arcadia’ - though this was not the pastoral idyll of Polixenes’ Bohemia but a parody of paradise more notable for its amatory anarchy than any utopian harmony.

Haydn: La fedeltà premiata, Guildhall School of Music and Drama

A review by Claire Seymour

Above: Chorus, Matthew Palmer (Perruchetto) and Adam Maxey (Melibeo)

Photo credit: Mihaela Bodlovic

 

Haydn’s opera mixes seria and buffa elements, and while it delights in ridiculing classical pomp and presumption - the Act 2 finale openly parodies the coro di Furie from Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice - there are also moments of genuine pathos and musical sincerity. First performed at Eszterháza on 25th February 1781, La fedeltà premiata celebrated the reopening of the court theatre after a fire. It was much admired: revised in 1782, it went on to receive 36 performances in four seasons, second only in popularity to Haydn’s dramma eroico, Armida; in 1784 a performance was given, in German translation, by Schikaneder’s troupe in Vienna. Thereafter it fell into obscurity, though the overture remained familiar - in its guise as the finale of his Symphony No.73, La Chasse - and one scene (Celia’s ‘Ah come il core’) was published as a cantata for soprano and orchestra.

The dismantled and dispersed manuscript was eventually ‘rediscovered’ in Turin and in 1968 a complete score was published for the first time by Henle-Verlag. The first modern performance took place at the Holland Festival in 1970, the first UK staged performance occurred as part of the Camden Festival in April 1971, and since then both Glyndebourne (1979) and Garsington (1995) have presented productions, as have some of London’s conservatoires.

If La fedeltà premiata has, like the dozen so operas by Haydn that have survived, struggled to find a foothold in the opera house, then it can’t be denied that Haydn did give his audience at Eszterháza much eventful extravagance and spectacle. Sea-monsters and satyrs are on the rampage. A wild boar separates the heroes from the hysterics, sending the philandering ‘Count’ Perrucchetto - whose name literally means ‘wig-maker’ - clambering up a tree-cum-stepladder, while the noble Fileno shows his mettle by slaying the beast.

Eline Vandenheede, Adam Maxey.jpg Eline Vandenheede (Amaranta), Adam Maxey (Melibeo). Photo credit: Mihaela Bodlovic.

There’s a colourful cast of characters too, including Melibeo, the crooked High Priest (here looking like the Witch-Finder General in his menacing leather coat and gloves, though his spy-goggles were designed to wheedle out faithful lovers than that supposed sorceresses), and Amaranta, a grand ‘lady’ who hails from the sticks but gives herself airs and graces. Flirtatiousness and falsehood seem to be leading to tragedy before an honest swain’s self-sacrifice sees the sea-monster struck by a thunderbolt and its lair transformed into the Temple of Diana: the goddess descends, deus ex machina, the true lovers are re-united and all live happily ever after.

The finer details of the plot of Giambattista Lorenzi’s libretto remained elusive, though, even after this engaging and committed performance of Stephen Barlow’s new production by the postgraduate students of GSMD. In the first scene, Amaranta essentially sets out the stall by reading the inscription on the Temple of Diana which proclaims that, ‘Every year two faithful lovers will be sacrificed to the sea monster until a heroic soul offers his own life. Only then will peace return to the land of Cumae’.

So, the hunt begins for a pair of faithful lovers to appease the goddess of hunting and chastity, the chase being led by Melibeo who has his own lustful eye on Amaranta. The problem is that faithful lovers are in short supply, not least because to publicly declare one’s true devotion would mean certain death. There thus ensues a parade of private professions of love and swift public denials: necessity makes a virtue of fickleness. Essentially Nerina loves Lindoro (Amaranta’s brother), but he loves Celia (who is Fillide in disguise), who in turn loves Fileno (who, for an unexplained reason, thinks Fillide is dead - bitten by a snake, presumably a wry nod to Gluck). Perruchetto loves everyone, especially himself. The intrigues, betrayals and back-tracking pile up until Melibeo, exasperated by the repeated thwarting of his plans to matchmake some lovers whose death will revoke the curse, and by Amaranta’s wild wilfulness, imprisons Celia in a cave with Perruchetto, presumably assuming that she will emerge unchaste. When she insists upon her preserved purity, he determines that they will be serve to satisfy the sea monster anyway, prompting Fileno to offer himself as a sacrifice instead. Cue Diana, waving her magic wand - and skilfully wielding her long-bow to strike the dastardly Melibeo with an arrow.

Ema Nikolovska, Robert Lewis.jpgEma Nikolovska (Celia), Robert Lewis (Fileno). Photo credit: Mihaela Bodlovic.

Barlow suggests that when he read through the libretto, his first thought was that it was essentially an episode of Love Island. Fortunately, his reflections did not stop there, and his production is a charmingly insouciant mishmash of pseudo-antiquity, eighteenth-century Classicism and modern-day motifs - a burlesque which effortlessly blends past and present, exposing the foibles of others and ourselves.

Against a Claude Lorrain ‘landscape with piping shepherd’ back-cloth, Adrian Linford’s set slopes rakishly down from a tentacle-embossed seascape, across a Delphic shrine, towards the run-down back entrance of a hostelry. A ‘ceiling’ open to the skies enhances the artifice. Amaranta arrives, larger than life in floral mantua and high wig, and precedes to smash her way through the devotional relics, sending floral and edible offerings flying - noisily. Perruchetto wheels in on a roaring motorbike - his ‘luxuriant’ locks trailing behind him in the breeze - in search of a bottle, or two, of Bordeaux and a girl to swig it with. A Cambridge punt, stacked with trunks, tomes and teddy-bear facilitates Fileno’s entrance, his cricket whites gleaming under lighting designer David Howe’s Elysian sunbeams. Nerinda’s polka-dot cigarette pants are a walking advertisement for 50s’ style and the sharp-suited Lindoro matched her for sartorial elegance.

At times the lighting emphasises the artificiality of proceedings, elsewhere the sincerity of the sung sentiments. In the latter stages, several arias are sung just before the soloist leaves the stage, and Barlow foregrounds the theatrical pretence, and the opera’s eighteenth-century origins, by having the singers return to the stage to formally accept the applause post-aria. Similarly, a trap-door provided a welcome store of props as required.

Haydn may be criticised for lacking Mozart’s theatrical nous and insight into human relations. But, his score is wonderful, the seven main characters well-drawn, and the sentiments of any scene or number absolutely clear whatever the surrounding chaos. There is wit and lyricism, and much terrific music for the singers to get their teeth into, and the first of two casts were uniformly excellent. As satyrs and shepherds, the Chorus were equally warm and hearty of voice.

Lara Müller, Damian Arnold.jpgLara Maria Müller (Nerina), Damian Arnold (Lindoro). Photo credit: Mihaela Bodlovic.

As the seria lovers Robert Lewis (Fileno) and Ema Nikolovska (Celia) had a fine ear for the extended lyricism of their arias. Celia may be disguised as a parasol-bearing shepherdess, but her nobility shone through in the pair’s first act cavatina duet, while Nikolovska assured shaped the imaginatively, and challengingly, structured ‘Ah come il core’ in which Celia contemplates her death. Her second aria was beautifully enhanced by an impressive horn solo, and some fine violin and bassoon playing. Lewis pulled off the tricky task of embodying the swooning swain, balancing absurdity - when etching his suicide note into the tree his arrow snaps - and honest heroism in the opera’s final moments. He had a fine way with the recitative. Lara Marie Müller was a pert and natty Nerinda, but she also exploited the tenderness in Haydn’s music. Damian Arnold’s Lindoro employed an occasional, and fittingly self-absorbed, sob in his voice - especially when the melodrama ran high.

Haydn gives Amaranta some strikingly sophisticated arias which suggest there is more to the wild child than initially meets the eye, and Eline Vandenheede impressed in a frenzied rage aria and, especially in the tragic ‘Del amor mio fedele’ in which Amarante’s humanity shone through her humorous excess. Matthew Palmer’s Perruchetto was borderline unhinged but vocally secure and had a musical and dramatic appeal, and madcap energy, which suggested he would make a good Papageno. I’ve admired Adam Maxey’s stage presence and suave, dark baritone in several performances of late and he excelled again as the ugly, unctuous Melibeo, resisting the temptation to overplay his dramatic hand and letting Haydn’s music do the work. Siân Dicker was an exuberant Diana and Mian Shahmir Samee a calm fluting presence.

Conductor Alice Farnham drew crisp playing from the GSMD Orchestra. The overture was brisk and clean, the horn playing vibrant. It’s a long play, and there are some sequences of slow arias which demand concentration and care, but there was no sense of flagging dramatic drive.

In a letter of 1781, Haydn declared his confidence that his operas would be assured of success if only they could be performed in one of the great cultural centres of Europe: ‘… if only they could hear my Operette [L’isola disabitata] and my most recently composed opera, La fedeltà premiata, for I assure you that such work has not yet been heard in Paris, and perhaps not in Vienna either. My misfortune is that I live in the country.’ After this enjoyable evening - imaginative, technically impressive - I couldn’t help think that if only we heard Haydn’s operas more frequently today, in productions so full of witty ingenuity, our own praise for his theatrical endeavours might be less frequently diluted by comparisons with Mozart.

Claire Seymour

Haydn: La fedeltà premiata

Amaranta - Eline Vandenheede, Nerina - Lara Marie Müller, Celia - Ena Nikolovska, Fileno - Robert Lewis, Lindoro - Damian Arnold, Perruccetto - Matthew Palmer, Melibeo - Adam Maxey, Diana - Siân Dicker, Flauto - Mian Shahmir Samee; Director - Stephen Barlow, Conductor - Alice Farnham, Designer - Adrian Linford, Lighting designer - David Howe.

Silk Street Theatre, Guildhall School of Music & Drama; Monday 4 th November 2019.

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):