July 2019

I went to a screen showing of the Glyndebourne Barber of Seville recorded in 2016, in Sheffield. The star of the show was definitely the conductor,  Enrique Mazzola, who produced a very zippy, energised and crisply articulated sound from the orchestra; very different from the slightly ploddy and muddy sound I remember from the Coliseum orchestra in the 70’s. They really energised the performance, and the percussion added to the fun rather than overwhelming it. I do think it is a great work, if escapist and ‘light’, and any performance of this standard is going to be hugely enjoyable – and it was. I did have some question-marks though about some – well one – of the singers, though. Almaviva is a bit of a cypher in Rossini but Taylor Stayton did his best, and he handled the decorative elements of the singing very well. Alessandro Corbelli was brilliant as Bartolo – he is a very skilled comedy performer and every gesture, every facial nuance counted.  The Figaro was Bjorn Burger – I thought a bit pedestrian in nuance but did the articulation of his arias very effectively. The most well known singer was Danielle de Niese as Rosina, and I thought her portrayal of the role was a bit over the top – so arrogant, so cross that she became a not very sympathetic figure. The coloratura elements of the singing were done brilliantly  but there wasn’t much lightness and subtlety. The production was decent, but didn’t really do more than play the obvious gags; it wasn’t really very original. Lots of good ensemble work but you couldn’t help feeling it could have been a bit better

I went to see The Tao of Glass in Manchester. The performance I went to was fantastic!!!  It’s a difficult thing to describe – a play with music is a starter, but the ‘play’ is really more of a set of meditations by the actor and director Phelim McDermott on the nature of his relationship with Philip Glass, and some themes of Buddhist and Dao-ist philosophy. He was obsessed by Glass’s music as a teenager, and had a vision of one day working with him; decades later, directing on Broadway, there was a plan to collaborate with Glass and the children’s writer Maurice Sendak on one of the latter’s stories – but Sendak died before this really could get underway. McDermott then sold Glass the idea that we experienced today in the theatre – 10 scenes, each accompanied by a piece of newly composed Glass music. Some of the scenes relate to stories from the Rig Veda or Dao-ist literature and the writings of Lao-Tsu; some of the scenes are from McDermott’s own life, sometimes funny, sometimes almost trivial, but each with a relationship to the underlying ‘going with the flow’ Dao-ist thinking. The scenes in McDermott’s life are enacted with the help of three puppeteers who operate puppets, but also do wonderful things with sheets of plastic, creating with three sheets for instance a credible image of Lao-Tsu walking through the streets and being challenged by a student. I found the most moving of Glass’ music was in response to McDermott’s friend’s theories about their being three levels of consciousness – an everyday, crowded, rational one; a dream level, and a level where ‘the One’, where some sort of unity in the world, the ‘divine’, in Western language, is manifested. The particular scene envisaged someone in a coma, at that third level, and Glass’ music was responding to that; it was actually very moving, despite Glass’ very limited musical ‘vocabulary’. I attach some photos

There were 4 musicians – piano, violin and clarinet and percussion. There was also a self-playing piano revolving round the stage, towards the end,  playing Glass’ own recording, while the musicians supported.  This attracted a very different crowd from the normal Manchester opera/concert scene, and all the better for it