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

25 Nov 2019

Korngold's Die tote Stadt in Munich

I approached this evening as something of a sceptic regarding work and director. My sole prior encounter with Simon Stone’s work had not been, to put it mildly, a happy one. Nor do I count myself a subscriber or even affiliate to the Korngold fan club, considerable in number and still more considerable in fervency.

Korngold, Die tote Stadt, Bavarian State Opera

A review by Mark Berry

Above: Ensemble

Photo: Wilfried Hösl

 

Some of Korngold’s music I have responded to warmly, some less so. (It would still take some persuasion, though now less than before, to drag me to another performance of Das Wunder der Heliane.) My experience with Die tote Stadt has been mixed too. That, however, is bye the bye, for this new production and still more the performances within it, superlatively conducted by Kirill Petrenko, made for a splendid evening that more or less had me forget reservations hitherto entertained.

Petrenko’s conducting and the playing of the Bavarian State Orchestra could hardly have been bettered. There was no doubting the care taken in his preparation, nor his ability vividly and meaningfully to communicate understanding of the score in the theatre. Once the harmony becomes more interesting, during the second and third scenes, Petrenko showed himself equally alert to its shorter-term expressive potential and, score permitting, longer-term tonal implications. There is greater progress in such terms here than in, say, Schreker’s more harmonically—and dramaturgically—adventurous Die Gezeichneten, which ends up going round and round in circles, having one thank God for Schoenberg and Stravinsky. Petrenko likewise showed skill surpassing that of any conductor I have heard in communicating Korngold’s motivic working as dramatic past, present, and future. The orchestra, moreover, offered a far more variegated sound than I heard from the Vienna Philharmonic in Salzburg in 2005; if that calorific frenzy impressed in its own way, this was ultimately a more revealing sound as part of an overall dramatic conception. Where some performances of what we may broadly call ‘late Romantic’ music—a term I generally avoid on account of chronological absurdity and levelling generalisation—all too readily become congested, here was a panoply of orchestral colour that shifted before our ears so as to suggest, at least during the most skilfully composed passages, ready understanding of Straussian phantasmagoria.

Die_tote_Stadt_c__W._Hoesl (1).jpgPhoto credit: Wilfried Hösl.

For whereas in Salzburg, Willy Decker’s staging (later seen at Covent Garden too) was very much in ‘period’ keeping not only with Korngold but also with George Rodenbach’s Bruges la morte, Fernand Khnopff, et al.—and as such will I suspect greatly have appealed to enthusiasts—Stone’s production offered a welcome contemporary—to us—alternative for those who, like me, find the opera’s laboured symbolism both stifling and a little empty (as well as curiously dated for 1920). Here, Paul’s house (no.37: no evident symbolism to me, though you may know otherwise) is the focus for a cancer bereavement—as we learn when we later behold Marie’s apparition—from which he shows no sign of recovering. One room’s every wall is covered with pictures of her; he hangs her hair in his bedroom; some of the house, furniture covered, goes unused; and so on. His housekeeper, Brigitta, and friend, Frank, are clearly, justifiably concerned. However, a psychonalytical dream sequence appears to offer the route to recovery. Having at least begun to work out some of his issues with Marie/Marietta in a dream in which all manner of strange things can happen and do—the dead town comes into its own, multiplying Doppelgänger, Pierrot-troupes, accusations thrown as freely as underwear, etc.—there is perhaps some hope for the future in what uncannily looks and sounds like the morning of a fresh start. Ralph Myers’s revolving set permits the house to transform itself, almost as if it were turning itself inside out, as do the characters, their acts, and their neuroses. ‘It was all a dream’ may or may not be a satisfactory solution; if not, that remains a problem with the work itself. Stone’s production makes uncommon, if arguably reductive, sense of a text that can readily seem somewhat silly.

Petersen Scheurle Mesak Guether.jpg Marlis Petersen, Corinna Scheurle, Mirjam Mesak, Manuel Günther. Photo credit: Wilfried Hösl.

Vocally, this was unquestionably an evening to savour. Jonas Kaufmann’s voice is a very different instrument from that of a few years ago. Sounding more baritonal than ever, Kaufmann had lost nothing, however, of his ability to float and turn a long line, nor to forge from word and tone that particular, peculiar alchemy of song. In opera, further alchemy is required, of course, with the art of gesture; this was as compelling a stage performance—and I have seen a few—as I have seen from him. Kaufmann’s Paul remembered, lived in, and came close to final suffocation from times past, but in its final freshness, shared in the hope suggested, if only suggested, by Petrenko and Stone alike. Marlis Petersen’s Marietta proved the perfect foil, a high-spirited heir to Strauss’s Zerbinetta, albeit with the vocal reserves and finely spun line of something more Wagnerian. Her acting skills proved just as impressive, as did those of other partners onstage. Jennifer Johnston’s no-nonsense yet compassionate Brigitta, Andrzej Filończyk’s sympathetic and beautifully sung Frank, the rest of an excellent supporting cast, estimable choral forces: all contributed to a dream performance in every sense. In the intelligence of its accomplishment of values both musical and theatrical, I suspect this Munich Tote Stadt will set a gold standard to successors.

Mark Berry

Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Die tote Stadt Op.12

Paul - Jonas Kaufmann, Marietta/Marie’s Apparition - Marlis Petersen, Frank/Fritz -Andrzej Filończyk, Brigitta - Jennifer Johnston, Juliette - Mirjam Mesak, Lucienne -Corinna Scheurle, Gaston/Victorin - Manuel Günther, Count Albert - Dean Power; Director - Simon Stone, Conductor - Kirill Petrenko, Assistant Director - Maria-Magdalena Kwaschik, Set Designs - Ralph Myers, Costumes - Mel Page, Lighting - Roland Edrich, Dramaturgy - Lukas Leipfinger, Chorus and Children’s Chorus of the Bavarian State Opera (chorus director - Stellario Fagone), Bavarian State Orchestra.

Nationaltheater, Munich; Friday 22nd 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):