Halle Orchestra, Sir Mark Elder conductor. Germán Enrique Alcántara baritone | Simon Boccanegra; Eri Nakamura soprano | Amelia; Iván Ayón-Rivas tenor | Gabriele Adorno; William Thomas bass | Jacopo Fiesco; Sergio Vitale baritone | Paolo Albianil David Shipley bass | Pietro; Beth Moxon mezzo soprano | Amelia’s maid. Chorus of Opera North

Another Verdi opera I’ve never heard a note of before, let alone seen…..I think of the major mature operas it’s really only A Masked Ball, Macbeth and Luisa Miller that I will now not have seen, plus some early ones like Il Due Foscari. This was a collaboration between the Halle and Opera Rara, and is something I guess Sir Mark Elder wanted to do in his final year with the Halle. As you can see from the title this was a performance of the rarer 1857 original version, not the more commonly played 1881 one with dramatic reworkings by Boito – but as I have no knowledge of either version this didn’t really make much impact on me……….

On reflection after performance, this did seem to me to be a work which at least in its 1857 version needed a stage performance to have real impact. The characters seemed for the most part sketchily drawn and it’s not always easy to understand their motivations. Boccanegra for instance doesn’t seem a particularly tyrannical figure – he needs a director’s imagination to surround him with the ‘thugs’ and the “ informers’ who are mentioned in the text – it needed the apparatus of the surveillance state to make the point in a theatre. Likewise I found it difficult to understand what Fiesco was so upset about – after all his daughter, who is Boccanegra’s lover, dies unexpectedly but naturally, not as a result of anything SB does. Adorno seems a cardboard cut out Italian/tenor lover. Paolo is undoubtedly a Macchiavellian figure but nothing seems to happen to him at the end – he gets away with poisoning Boccanegra. Amelia alone seems more fully drawn as a character. Again, the number of male v female singers is striking – apart from Amelia’s maid, who only sings a few lines, Amelia is the only female singer. It makes for a long dark-hued and not fully engaging evening. A lot of the male parts are written in quite a declamatory style, and it’s only Amelia who really offers vocal fireworks during the work – similarly a lot of the music is slow, and there are too few exciting moments with chorus and orchestra at full throttle. There was little attempt during the performance to create any sort of staged interaction between the characters – Fiesco was notably stolid, and others peered at their scores a lot of the time; the only really engaging performances, in terms of stage presence, were by Boccanegra himself and Amelia, though Adorno did his best when not looking at the score.  But I did enjoy some of the music – the end of Scene 2 of the Prelude, with (I think) the RLPO-owned bells making an appearance was notably thrilling; I liked too the finale of Act 1. At other times, it seemed as though a Verdi AI machine was at work, recycling melodies and their accompaniments that are heard to better effect in Traviata or Rigoletto. Sorry……

What I can say more affirmatively is that there was a lot of good singing around. Germán Enrique Alcántara was, I thought, absolutely outstanding as Boccanegra, with a beautiful golden voice, some lovely legato singing and sounding tremendously at home in the role – I would love to hear him sing Mozart (in fact he has sung the Mozart Almaviva at ROHCG).  The Peruvian tenor Iván Ayón-Rivas sounded absolutely idiomatic as Adorno and sung very well. I was very taken by the sonority and depth of William Thomas’ bass voice – he’s clearly going places, though the actual nuancing of what he was singing could do with a bit more work: I wonder if he will be a Hagen or a King Marke in a few years’ time? The Amelia, Eri Nakamura, was good but perhaps less exceptional than some of the men – she dealt with but didn’t sparkle in the (not very many) moments of vocal fireworks; sometimes too her voice felt a bit small for the role, at least in a concert performance, and she had slightly too wide a vibrato at the beginning. The chorus sounded excellent and Mark Elder didn’t – as he had with Force of Destiny at ROHCG –  seem to be taking too slow a pace at any point. The orchestra stumbled a bit at the very beginning but otherwise played very well – it’s interesting how Verdi at this point in his career was moving beyond the bel canto rum-ti-tum accompaniment to create more interesting orchestral sounds, particularly in the strings, which the orchestra and Elder brought out well.

All in all, interesting but I am not sure I will be rushing to repeat the experience. It was interesting to see that the hall was pleasantly full, but certainly not sold out. How ENO can expect to run repeat performances of anything other than 4-5 popular operas (Carmen, Traviata, Butterfly) in Manchester I do not understand

Ruth Gipps Song for Orchestra; Nielsen Violin Concerto; Borodin Symphony No.2. RLPO – Andrew Manze conductor; Johan Dalene violin (Young Artist in Residence)

This was a really good concert. Though it was a far from generous programme, and had at least two works which almost everyone in the audience hadn’t heard live before ( and indeed in my case I had never heard the Borodin live before either) , and which probably they’d be unfamiliar with, the hall was completely full. I sense that even more than with the Halle and Manchester, people in Liverpool are very passionate about ‘their’ orchestra and trust its programming – so will turn out even for the unfamiliar. I have a recording of the Nielsen which I bought a few months ago (the Fabio Luisi one of the complete concertos) but have only heard it once.

I did wonder what the programming logic was here. I thought maybe there was something in the Nielsen related to folk tunes that would correlate to the Gipps and Borodin works. But there isn’t really…and so it was simply an overture/concerto/symphony model.

The orchestra was I thought on outstanding form – they have been extremely well led by Petrenko and now by Hindoyan for a long time – and it shows. There were really sensitive contributions by the first horn and oboe and an impressive sheen to the strings.

The Ruth Gipps piece was very much on ‘cow pat’ territory for the most part, sounding with a plaintive oboe much like Vaughan Williams but there was a central section where the brass stirred and growled from the depths which sounded as though it came from a slightly different voice.

The Nielsen piece I liked a lot – it is formally in two movements, but really there are four – a slow introduction followed by a long movement described as cavalleresco (not quite sure what to make of that, literally ‘chivalrous’ but maybe – ‘swaggering’?)), and then a long slow movement with a quick finale. Its thematic material is good, though it sounded as though Nielsen was overly concerned with making sure the violin wasn’t drowned by the orchestra, and sometimes it was difficult to remember the orchestra was actually present!. There are many touches in the work reminiscent of the symphonies (it was written about the same time as the 3rd) – that Nielsen sense of wide open spaces and a bracing breeze was very much present here. Johan Dalene, a young Swedish violinist aged only 23, was outstanding in giving character to the concerto, from a hushed beginning to great energy in the last movement.  His opening – quiet and gentle – was very different to my recording, though they concurred in their beautiful phrasing of the lovely theme in the opening prelude.  At the end I felt I wanted to listen to this again soon – I’ll put my recording to good use at the weekend. Dalene offered a Bach solo piece as an encore, which again was played with a lot of character (including subtle variations in dynamics and speed.

The Borodin symphony is in one sense a bit of a war horse, with lots of folksy music, very easy on the ear, and with the Polotsvian Dances never far away – yet on the other hand it doesn’t crop up that often in the concert hall (its maybe awkward length, at approx 28 mins, possibly having something to do with this. For me, it was huge fun to hear this live and it made for a genuinely happy experience for everyone – orchestra as well as audience – with lots of smiles. This was the piece that needed the most direction from a conductor and Andrew Manze took up the challenge vigorously – possibly smudging one or two of the lyrical moments on the way, but this was no great matter – it was all very exciting! 

Director, Jude Christian; Designer, Charlotte Henery; Lighting, Ben Ormerod. Conductor, Gerry Cornelius. Manon, Jenny Stafford;  Des Grieux, ? (cover for Gareth Dafydd Morris); Lescaut, Aidan Edwards; Geronte, Edward Hawkins;  Edmondo, Brenton Spiteri

Manon Lescaut is an early work of Puccini’s, composed between 1889 and 1892 (so a very long time before, say, Turandot).This production was truly panned by the critics when it was first put on in London in late February 2024 – I’ve rarely seen such awful reviews, which focused on the incoherence of the production (two stars from the Guardian; The i – “Dump this embarrassing show. The real tragedy in this staging of Puccini’s opera is that it is going on tour” etc etc). Regie-theater, apparently, at its most objectionable and pointless. I have never heard a note of the music or seen a production of this work before, so thought it would still be interesting to go, despite the reviews. And occasionally critics can get things wrong………..However……………..

At a pre-performance talk by the conductor and the in-house staff director, we were told that the director of this production, Jude Christian, was envisaging the setting of the opera as a ‘dystopian nightmare’, dreamed by a young woman who appears sleeping at a desk with angle poise lamp and laptop in front of her at the beginning of the work and at the start of the second half’; she then sings something with a powerpoint projector and screen by her (?) and wanders about the stage for a bit before disappearing and not being seen again. I guess I would have gathered that it was ‘all a dream’, had I not known this beforehand, though of course I will never be sure. The other point that came out was that Ms Christian had not only translated the libretto but had altered some of the wording to give a more feminist perspective – to emphasise that Manon is manipulated by men, is always part of their story rather than having her own. This seems fair enough – Puccini and his librettists’ approach to women is always dubious from a modern perspective and if the opera can be made a bit more real to a contemporary audience by some updating or changing of the language that is fair enough, in my view.

As a work completely new to me, Manon Lescaut didn’t grab me as much as La Rondine had 5 months ago. It has all the Puccini hallmarks – brilliant orchestration, through-composed, plentiful tunes – but doesn’t quite have the immediate impact and the thrill of his later works, which, however manipulative they are, are always moving to see and hear.

So – looking at this from a positive perspective what were the good things about this production?

1. It was sung in what was for the most part sensible contemporary English
2. Three of the principals were excellent, and when the flow of the story enables them to be on their own on stage I was gripped. Jenny Stafford was excellent as Manon – she has a gleaming bright voice which reached top notes effortlessly, she could respond to the text with subtlety, she was able to sing softy and expressively, and, although in a not very flattering dress and having a daft azure/green wig, acted well. She was thoroughly believable. I hope singing this role is an important step in her career. Edward Hawkins as Geronte, tall and with an impressive sonorous bass voice was, despite wearing a completely ridiculous pink sombrero and a pink suit, and given a character (fop with rouge) which minimised his controlling nasty aspect, clearly a very good singer and did his best with the director’s mistaken view of the role. And Aidan Edwards as Lescaut sung out well, and produced an excellent cameo of this ineffective and unhelpful character, manipulating both his sister and Des Grieux for his own advantage. The singer performing Des Grieux was a cover – I think his name was ?Dominic/Desmond Walsh. He took a while to give an impression of feeling comfortable on stage, and his upper range wasn’t really reliable enough  -sometimes he sounded like a true Puccini tenor but at others his voice cracked at the top or sounded strained. His acting was good and his diction clear.  Edmondo, sung by Brenton Spiteri, was good, though again dressed ridiculously – in his case a bright green Mephistophelian costume with a droopy moustache.
3. The small orchestra couldn’t, obviously, produce a really full rich sound given their numbers, but played well and accompanied effectively

I can see that Manon Lescaut presents a problem for directors. It’s either got to be done straight, in 18^th century costume, or some other way found. It is meant to be verismo – what would verismo look like in the 21^st century?  A contemporary dress production could very easily work, in my view. But this production just didn’t provide an alternative to either approach. The colours were garishly technicolour – pink, gold, brilliant green. The chorus, who also played minor roles, were oddly knowing, somehow, rather arch, and were (at least some of them) dressed up in furry onesies, hopping round the stage like bunnies. There was some very clunky symbolism, relating to the fact that Manon dies of thirst in the US desert – the first act is set in an empty swimming pool, and water wasted, while Des Grieux flings around empty water cooler containers at the beginning of the third. There is some bizarre stuff about golden calves (I thought, but reviewers said dogs) being collectibles and currency in the first two acts. Des Grieux, all in white, arrives in the first act riding a statue of a dolphin. It really didn’t add up – which is fair enough I suppose if you’re envisaging it as a nightmare, but this production really didn’t illuminate the actions of the main characters and the overarching theme of men exploiting and controlling women

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Peter Whelan director. Miriam Allan soprano, Rebecca Leggett mezzo-soprano, Ruairi Bowen tenor, Malachy Frame baritone, Choir of the Age of Enlightenment: Bach: Cantata No.66 `Erfreut euch, ihr Herzen’; Cantata No.6 `Bleib bei uns, denn es will Abend werden’; Bach: Easter Oratorio, BWV.249

The QEH was sold out for this concert – I’ve noticed before that the OAE have a very keen following and they also seem to attract a lot of young people. You wouldn’t normally expect an evening of Bach’s church music to be such a crowd-puller……

The three works were all Easter -related  – the Oratorio, obviously placed, in terms of recitatives, arias and choruses on Easter Sunday, and the other two responses to the lectionary reading for Easter Monday in the Lutheran Church, an account of the travellers on the Road to Emmaus.

Replying to the question I’ve asked myself before – why do people listen to these pieces? Whty are they so popular? I guess one reason is that all Bach’s religious pieces are responding to a story which – however little or much people know of the details –  represents the best and worst of humanity, and offers a whole range of emotions people can respond to. Fear, hope, love, joy, anger, anguish – all expressed in great music, and within a story deeply embedded in our culture – are perhaps the reasons for the popularity Bach’s music clearly has for so many.

With 12 hours absence I have to say one piece rather blends into another in my aural memory. There were some lovely arias with solo instruments prominent alongside the singers – oboe, flute (some spectacular playing there) and solo violin; no less than three swirling Baroque trumpets in the Easter Oratorio, which, together with kettle-drums made a splendidly joyful sound. What most stays lodged in my mind was the duet between fear and hope – for tenor and mezzo in BWV 66. almost operatic in form but sung to one of Bach’s dance tunes.

Peter Whelan’s name seems to crop up increasingly – he conducted the highly watchable and listenable -to Bajazet at Covent Garden a couple of years ago and is conducting another Vivaldi opera – L’Olympiade’ – in May there (which I’m going to). He seems to have the virtues and vices of many conductors who focus on authentic performance styles – great vigour and energy (which made Bajazet extremely exciting to watch and listen to), but a tendency to take the music too fast at times, so that some of the arias didn’t really seem to have enough space to breathe and fully reveal the emotions within them (and in the case of the flute-supported aria seemed to interrupt the player’s flow so that breathing pauses sounded too obvious). All the singers and the chorus were impressive but I’d single out particularly Rebecca Leggett, the mezzo, and Ruairi Bowen the tenor as outstanding  

Cast: Mark Le Brocq Gustav von Aschenbach;  Roderick Williams The Traveller | Elderly Fop | Hotel Manager | Hotel Barber | Leader of the Players | Voice of Dionysus; Timothy Morgan  Voice of Apollo; Antony César Tadzio; Diana Salles The Polish Mother. : Leo Hussain Conductor; Olivia Fuchs Director; Nicola Turner Designer; Robbie Butler Lighting Designer; Tom Rack Circus Consultant

The critical rave reviews for this production brought a completely full-house to Oxford at the New Theatre. I am wondering when the last time I was in that theatre – I have a feeling I saw Janet Baker perform Maria Stuarda here in the mid-1970’s, but certainly I haven’t been there for many years. I suspect some of the crowd had come from London to see this (I saw Ed Gardiner picking up a ticket), and I realised that I should have booked a hotel in Paddington and returned late back to London – a much better use of time……..

I saw Death in Venice first in 1973, during its first London run after the premiere in Aldeburgh that June, and with the same cast, including Peter Pears as Aschenbach, and I saw another performance (?production) again in 1992 with Phillip Langridge. I have listened to extracts since, from the recording I’ve got, and maybe one or two broadcasts, a number of times. So I know the work relatively well, and have always felt, right back from 1973, that in listening to the work, I am in the presence of something which will pass the test of time – as I did, also in 1972/1974, listening to performances of Shostakovich’s 14^th and 15^th symphonies. And here we are, more than 50 years later…….! I still remember my response in 1973 to the magic of the song about Phaedrus, the eeriness of the ballet music for Tadzio and his friends, the glorious sweep of the Venice motif and the bell-like music, the ominous dragging music for the gondolier’s progress, and how immediately they spoke to me.

Listening and seeing it again in 2024, I still found it a gripping experience. The one area where things might drag – the ballet sequences, as conventionally presented – were transformed by the collaboration between WNO and the circus company NoFit State. The latter offer a kind of choreographed set of circus acts, focusing not only on the technical ability and spectacle involved in performing extraordinary movements at the end of a rope or in mid-air, but also on the beauty of movements and sequences. The company provided Tadzio and, I think, three/maybe four of his friends/family members, but obviously Tadzio also has to act, as well as look statuesque and beautiful, and be an amazing circus act, and he did this very well in his non-verbal subtle acknowledgement of Aschenbach’s presence on stage.

Death in Venice is one of those works where directors have limited options for trying to impose a concept on a work, and, happily, Olivia Fuchs didn’t try to. The costumes and props made it clear this was set immediately before World War 1, and the production ran very clearly and smoothly, and for the most part intelligibly. The only part that I couldn’t quite understand was the very end – as far as I remember in the Colin Graham production, this had Aschenbach, as in the Visconti film, sitting on a deck chair, dying, and Tadzio continuing to dance, as a remote image of beauty, in the background; in the WNO production, Aschenbach collapses face downwards and Tadzio some way off performs a writhing motion also on the ground. The part that I thought was particularly effectively handled was the Apollo/Dionysus scene, where both contend for Aschenbach’s body – this was genuinely scary, and made very real the difference between those two approaches to being an artist which is at the heart of the opera. The set was straightforward – an effective video screen with images of water, oars, Venice, a library and so forth at the back; black sides and two sets of ladders on either side of the stage for the circus performers – but also on occasion the singers –  to climb.

I found Roderick Williams’ performance in the seven or eight roles he has quite brilliantly done – I hadn’t, having seen him much more on the concert platform, expected him to be so lithe, so mercurial, in stage, and he very clearly presented the menace of the composite character he was playing, with excellently clear diction, and close attention to nuance and inflection of text.  About Mark Le Brocq I was slightly more ambivalent. He’s tall, commands the stage effectively, and has the stamina to cope with being essentially in full view of the audience for over two hours (he also looks curiously in the part like Ian Duncan-Smith). By any normal standards his was an excellent performance of the role. However he is portraying an artist, and an important way he’s got at his disposal to do that in an opera is how he sings  – quality of voice and sensitivity to text and song. Le Brocq’s voice is quite tight and dry – he did a lot with it to shade the text, varying tone and volume, but couldn’t quite summon up poetry in his voice and caress the notes in the way I have heard others, notably, of course Pears, do. The New Theatre essentially doesn’t have a pit – the orchestra almost – but doesn’t – obscures the stage. So it was a particularly excellent aspect of Leo Hussain’s conducting that he kept the orchestra tightly controlled so that words and singing always came across clearly.

It is part of the greatness of this work that it operates on so many different levels. It is a study of personal disintegration (I suspect that’s how most of the audience would take it); also of course a tale with close autobiographical relevance for Britten as well as Mann (who lived in constant fear during WW2 that the Nazis would find and publicise secret diaries left in his abandoned Munich house which recorded his homo-erotic fantasies and encounters with young men); and finally, if we are not in an age now which values the Dionysiac more than ever, , and which may lead to its collapse, I don’t know what the word means………It was great to see it again

Conductor: Christian Thielemann; Director, David Bösch; Stage design Patrick Bannwart; Costumes Moana Stemberger; Lighting Fabio Antoci; The Emperor Eric Cutler; Empress, Camilla Nylund; The Nurse, Evelyn Herlitzius; The ghost messenger, Andreas Bauer Kanabas; A Guardian of the Threshold of the Temple, Nikola Hillebrand; Apparition of a Young Man, Martin Mitterrutzner; The Voice of the Falcon, Lea-ann Dunbar; A voice from above: Christa Mayer; Barak, Oleksandr Pushniak; Barak’s wife,  Miina-Liisa Värelä

I have only ever seen Die Frau ohne Schatten in one production, and that almost 50 years ago. I saw it conducted in 1975 by Solti at ROHCG, with James King as the Emperor, Heather Harper as the Empress, Helga Dernesch as Barak’s Wife, and Donald McIntyre as Barak, and then again in 1976 with almost the same cast but with Walter Berry as Barak.  Both were wonderful performances that have remained vividly in my memory. 

The thirty one year old Fritz Reiner conducted the second ever performance run of Die Frau at the Semperoper in 1919 so there is a real sense of history in a performance of this work here in Dresden. 

This was the first night of a new production, so there was nothing in the way of easily accessible press commentary to find out what line the director might take – and this being the sort of work it is, I would imagine it is a veritable playground for directors to carve meaning out of what is sometimes a confusing symbolically-overloaded plot. It was a great merit of the production that it focused on good story-telling and (just like the Magic Flute) offering a box of magic tricks – it was surprising, in this, the land of regie-theater, to find a clear focus in a production on narrative, and letting the music and words sort out the meanings for themselves. Although I know the music fairly well, I had been wondering what it would be like to see this on stage after so long  – would I think it simply a rather silly work with lots of glorious music. In fact, I think that, despite the portentous supernatural trappings, it is a moving work, a profound work, and I was utterly gripped by it from start to finish, and this was a very good production of it.

For starters it is both exciting and extraordinarily tuneful musically – it must surely have a claim to be Strauss’ greatest work (that would certainly be my view). The orchestra is huge – Wikipedia claims 164 instruments are involved (not players of course): the percussion section includes glass harmonica, 4 timpani, 5 Chinese gongs, cymbals, snare drum, rute, sleigh bells, bass drum, tenor drum, big field drum, triangle, tambourine, 2 castanets, tamtam, whip (slapstick), xylophone, glockenspiel, 2 celestas). The beautiful string upswelling in the orchestra telling of Barak’s affection for his wife in Act 1 was magical, with Thielemann bringing out more passion from the strings than you would have thought possible at the climax of that passage. The duet expressing absence and abandonment by Barak and his wife at the beginning of Act 3 is one of Strauss’ finest creations.  The Nightwatchmens’ chorus at the end of Act 1 is wonderfully moving. The Emperor’s soliloquy in Act 2 with its marvellous solo ‘cello part was another lovely piece of writing. The final sequences of orchestral blaze in the last 10 minutes of Act 3 during transitions between scenes are some of the most exciting pieces of music I know, and the orchestra sounded quite glorious playing them on this occasion – Thielemann seems to have an unerring sense of when to let the orchestra rip to maximum effect. The music of the falcon is among the bleakest and most melancholy I know, while the ‘Water of Life’ music is fascinating, very ambiguous, giving a sense both of beauty and danger. The solo violin music just after the Empress refuses the Water of Life was beautiful – and wonderfully played (though marred by an almighty crash caused by some hidden piece of scenery going into destruct-mode). I wish I could have gone to another one or two performances of this run – it’s such a wonderful work. 

The production had two basic points of reference – the spirit world, with white gauze curtains closing off parts of the stage, and a very down to earth Barak’s kitchen / living room, with wedding portraits on the walls and some splendid dying vats and a washing machine, as well as a couch and a bed. Behind them both is a screen onto which can be projected videos – e.g. fishes for the frying fish sequence and the attractive young men summoned up by the Nurse for the Dyer’s Wife (why doesn’t she have a name?), while in the spirit world there are falcons, gazelles, feathers and human images – but many more as well . There are also some objects/prop, sometimes tongue in cheek where the spirit world is concerned – the Messenger of Keikobad has a cigarette before a ‘difficult conversation’ with the Empress, and there is a rather dodgy lift  which moves between the spirit world and the human world. There is also what could be a comic but in fact is terrifying, puppet falcon, huge, with a wingspan extending across the stage, with blazing lights for eyes, who carries in Act 3 the almost-stone body of the Emperor. There’s plenty of dry ice and on occasion individuals or couples are swallowed up by sudden gaps in the stage. Barak’s house splits into two at the end of Act 2.  The passage where The Dyer’s Wife is being sold a life of untold luxury was brilliantly done in Act 1. Dresses came down on hooks from the flies alongside elegant young women  in approx. ?1920’s Party gowns. But there is no real sense of any alternative reading here – just lots of inventive detail. The only real production ‘alternative reading’ was at the end. The last scene moves from the spirit world to Barak’s house and both couples now appear in ‘human ‘ clothing to sing the final pages.  As the unborn children start singing, after the last orchestral climax, Barak’s house splits apart – in fact with Barak and the Empress on one side and the Emperor and the Dyer’s Wife on the other. The void between the two split parts of Barak’s house contains the Nurse who remains there until the end of the piece looking enigmatic and staring out at the audience. I thought it could mean several things – that peril, and difficulties, and ‘negative experiences’ don’t just stop when you have children; or could it mean that there will be some people who are just not interested in having children and find their fulfilment in other ways. Either way, it’s a perfectly reasonable way to stage the ending. 

Costumes are varied – possibly 1920’s/30’s for Barak and his wife, white cool dresses and suits for the imperial couple, and a cloak for the Nurse.  

What’s it all about? The good thing about this production is that you didn’t need to worry about that – here were two couples with a rather nasty manipulative individual messing with their heads, but all comes out right in the end. That, and some stage magic, was all that was needed to get into the story. But the other reason the opera works is because the characters and what they say and do are deeply believable. Barak is a big, maybe slightly slow, man with simple, strong views; the Dyer’s wife (here with a cigarette never far from her mouth, sharp-tongued, conflicted and also vulnerable); the Empress – privileged but empathetic and in love with her husband; the Nurse, bitter, sarcastic, dismissive – a strong malevolent presence – and the Emperor, more of a cypher than the others, perhaps, but in love with his wife. One thing for sure – someone, whether Hofmannsthal or Strauss, writing this has had a difficult relationship to deal with – the work is a very deeply realistic picture of how poorly men and women can behave – it’s profoundly painful. And that’s what makes it a great opera – its truthful depiction of human emotions and, in the context of 1919, a profound hope for the future represented by the unborn children and all the hope that’s in them. True, there are also time-specific views about how male/female relationships work, and it’s hardly into diversity – but there is enough in the opera that goes beyond passing cultural norms to express something unchanging in human nature that will always be relevant.

The Semperoper cast list had some people in it whose names I hadn’t come across before – e.g. the man playing Barak – but also a number of well-known singers – Camilla Nylund, performing in the Tristan I’m seeing at Bayreuth this summer, and Miina-Liisa Värelä who I heard singing Isolde in the Glyndebourne Proms Tristan performance nearly 3 years ago.  There were three complete triumphs in the 5 major roles and 2 very good performances  – which may have something to do with the way Strauss and Hofmannsthal characterised them. Both for her singing ability and her acting the star performer for me was Miina-Liisa Värelä, who gave a moving account of this character in all her contrariness, her affection and yet irritation with her husband, and sang it fantastically well. Barak was another singer absolutely absorbed in his role, looking every inch the part and shambling his way round the kitchen, and with a warm, rich voice. The Nurse has a lot to do, and sing, and Evelyn Herlitzius was tireless, physically and vocally, performing this character, with great diction and strong projection. I found Camilla Mylund’s voice a bit on the small side for the Empress, but she sang well – beautifully so in Act 3. Her encounter with her father was gripping. Arguably the Emperor doesn’t have that much to do – the usual thankless Strauss tenor role – but he has the power and presence to do what’s needed.

Thielemann and the orchestra were just overwhelming – no other words……………….

A great evening!!

R. Strauss 1918

Conductor: Johannes Fritzsch, Director, Josef E. Köpplinger, Stage design Walter Vogelweider, Costumes Dagmar Morell, Choreography Ricarda Regina Ludigkeit, Lighting Fabio Antoci. Cast: Sarastro, Dimitry Ivashchenko; Tamino, Joseph Dennis; Queen of the Night, Aleksandra Olczyk; Pamina, Elbenita Kajtazi; Papageno, Michael Nagl; First Lady, Roxana Incontrera; Second Lady, Sabine Brohm; Third Lady, Michal Doron; Monostatos, Simeon Esper; Speaker, Martin-Jan Nijhof; Papagena, Christiane Hossfeld

 My journey to Dresden this time was surprisingly uneventful, given that my previous visit to Germany in November was a bit of a nightmare; DB strikes turned what should have been a 14 hour journey into a 27 hour one to Berlin. I arrived in Dresden this time to the minute on the timetable, after a 14-and-a-half-hour journey from London, covering some of the beautiful Saxon countryside from Eisenach to Erfurt as I travelled. On the morning of this performance, I walked around the old town in Dresden, wandered through some of the large number of Baroque buildings there, and had a very nice waldfruchtcrepe in lieu of lunch. Most of the singers in this performance were new to me, but I think I have heard both Michael Nagl and Aleksandra Olczyk before in these roles at ROHCG

It was a great pleasure to hear this work in the Semperoper – it has beautiful acoustics, which support the singers in giving them a bright forward sound, and which, despite the wide shallow pit, allows them to soar over the orchestra without straining their voices, while at the same time giving that orchestra a warm but clear sound (though we’ll see how the acoustics cope with the performance tomorrow) . The fact that the orchestra is the Dresden Staatskappele in another guise of course helps too – some wonderfully refined playing…..

The work has I think been deliberately chosen to be scheduled at the same time as the run of the new Die Frau ohne Schatten production – two fairy tale operas together, and there is indeed a talk in German on that issue. But I suspect the audience was probably different to that of the following evening – there seemed to be lots of people taking pictures of themselves in the opera house, and groups waving to each other across the auditorium. The audience felt a bit restrained early on, as though it was unsure how to react, but got more into things in Act 2, with more applause and laughter.

The opera begins and ends, and has for the most of the interval sitting in front of the curtain a boy – maybe 12 – with a flute, dressed like a young Tamino. Is this meant to suggest that ‘it’s all a dream’ – a rather tired idea if so? Because of what happens at the end, I thought maybe that the boy is meant to be a Rousseau-like character, emphasising that aspect of the Enlightenment which valued ‘back to nature’, ‘the natural’, the cult of feeling, as against some of the focus on form and wit in the earlier 18^th century.

The set is a bare main stage, with blacked out sides and a large video screen at the rear. There is a profusion of video images – sun, moon, trees, leaves, and of course water and fire for the trials. They are attractive to look at and don’t get in the way. There are some splendid props and dressed up actors – particularly the ostrich when Tamino is playing his flute, and the two giant puppet guards during the trials (why the latter?). There is a snake at the beginning, handled, as in some other productions, like a Chinese New Year dragon with men carrying different parts, and a nice flying cart for the boys. Thus the pantomime element was well catered for and clearly pleased the audience. Rather more obscurely Sorastro’s temple seems to be well-equipped with fluorescent lights which frame both the proscenium and also a cage where Tamino and Papageno have their early trials. The fluorescent lights go alongside a screen with three words on it which came down at intervals in the temple scenes– Nature, Wisdom and something else I couldn’t translate. Tamino’s flute is also fluorescent – a bit like a light sabre, as are Papageno’s bells. Costumes were mainly modern, but with 18 century ball gowns for the three ladies and the Queen of the Night, and a bizarre Afro-like pink wig for Pamina – Papagena has a greenish similar one. The Three Boys have curious pointy hats and shorts.

The director’s Big Idea is that, at the end, Tamino and Pamina shed their newly acquired temple gear and run off together (like the Berlin Meistersinger I saw in November). This fits in with the Rousseau idea and obviously gets round the problem of Sorastro’s misogyny and general over-bearingness – but, like the Berlin Meistersinger, makes me uneasy in that it also negates a lot of the good aspects of Sorastro’s temple. As I’ve said before, what I’d really like to see is Sorastro having a real change of heart on stage about women, but that wasn’t there in this production. They and the two priests did ‘offer the hand of friendship’ to the Queen of the Night and her three ladies, but this was indignantly rejected.

All in all, an effective enough production and with more of a sense of zaniness than some, mostly in good taste and good fun, but not really tackling some of the more difficult aspects of the work – in fact, running away from them, you might say…..

The biggest cheers of the evening, cast-wise, were for the  Queen of the Night, Papageno, and , to a lesser extent, Pamina. As usual, audiences tend to get things right and I was in agreement, though Sarastro was very good too, I thought. Aleksandra Olczyk was superb as the Queen of the Night – note perfect and she made it sound easy! Michael Nagl as Papageno as a genial presence – he didn’t ham the role up but projected warmth and humanity, and had a rich baritone voice as well.  Dimitry Ivashchenko as Sarastro I thought had a very fine voice. Elbenita Kajtazi as Pamina wasn’t as memorable as say Lucy Crowe 5 years ago at ENO but she projected the words well, varied her tone and her ‘Ich fuhls’ was very good in its musicality.  Joseph Dennis as Tamino I thought had almost too large a voice for the role – it didn’t really sound ‘Mozartian’ in the way Stuart Burrows, for instance, used to – and occasionally his voice sounded a bit frayed. But – really – all the cast were very good and I would happily have heard any of them again in their roles. Johannes Fritsch is a Conductor Laureate at Dresden and has pursued a flourishing career in Australia for the last 20 years ago. His Mozart was lively but not rushed, with a clear articulation of all the notes and with a real spring to the rhythms.  

Keri-Lynn Wilson, Conductor; David Alden, Director; Charles Edwards, Set Designer; Jon Morrel, Costume Designer; Adam Silverman, Original Lighting Designer. Jennifer Davis, Jenufa; Susan Bullock, Kostelnicka; Richard Trey Smagur, Laca; John Findon, Steva; Fiona Kimm, Grandmother; Darren Jeffery, Mill Foreman; Freddie Tong, Mayor; Madeleine Shaw, Mayor’s Wife

It was fascinating to experience a theatrical version of this work so soon after Rattle’s January performance. While the LSO played superbly, there’s no doubt that seeing this live in the theatre adds a whole extra dimension to the experience, even if this performance took until after the interval to catch fire – but when it did so was gripping to watch and listen to.

The setting was Eastern Europe Soviet-bloc era – shabby rooms, rectangular multi panelled windows and drab street-fronts in murky greens, greys and off whites, appropriately claustrophobic. There was a white screen at the back in Act 1, behind closed windows in Acts 2 and 3. The window panels rattle violently with the storm as the Kostelnicka returns from killing the baby in Act 2, and the angry crowd bursts through them violently in Act 3 in response to news of the dead baby – both very effective coups de theatres. There was very effective use of sidelighting in Act 2 and 3 to create a sense of menace.  Costumes were 1960s or so with a splendid leather jacket and motor bike for Steva.

As indicated, there was some lack of tension in Act 1 – I am not sure what the problem was, but it was somewhere between or composed of the fact that Laca’s outburst at the end of Act 1 was less violent than it should have been, Jenufa seemed a bit characterless at first, maybe the orchestra was a bit understated and lacking in dynamism, and there was some distinct lack of coordination and precision among chorus and orchestra in the first peasant songs – also the set itself seemed not to “do’ much – it provided a space but not much more. Things improved massively in Act Two which was gripping. Jenufa was very moving as she realised her baby was dead, the set and lighting fully supported the sense of stark horror and darkness in what was happening, and the Kostelnicka was compelling in all she did. Laca was very believable in his mood swings, and seemed much, much less of a cipher than he had done in Act 1. The tension continued at the same level in Act 3, with some superb playing by the orchestra, particularly at the end . Perhaps at the end of the day the recent ROH production is better in terms of its set and direction, but this was still a compelling performance, made more so by being sung in English, which sometimes adds a visceral impact there’s no substitute for.

And ENO had got an excellent cast together for this performance. Like Katarina Dalyman in the Rattle concert performance, Susan Bullock is an ex-Brunnhilde, and it shows in the declamatory power she can bring to bear on the Kostelnicka’s agony after she murders the baby, but she was also capable of singing beautifully quietly as well. Jennifer Davis impressed me as Elsa in Lohengin in Berlin in November (as well as at ROH 2 years ago) but then I found her acting a bit dull, though she was excellent musically. Here she seemed to possess the role in a much fuller way – she projects very easily but powerfully a very ordinary young woman who gradually allows herself to get into a tragic situation and both has the spiritual and emotional strength to cope with it and then rise above it, with compassion for her murdering mother. She was very moving.  Both Richard Trey Smagur, an American tenor, as Laca, and, pleasingly, John Findon, given another big part as Steva, are very big men, which helps with their stage presence. John Findon was perhaps a bit straight-faced and unrelaxed as Steva (by comparison with Nicky Spence, say) but sung the role very well indeed, as did Trey Snagur.  As you would hope with ENO, there were all sorts of excellent singers in the smaller roles, each contributing their part well – not a weak link there. Quite why Keri-Lynn Wilson, a US conductor, was there, I am not sure – she did, as I say above, do a good job and galvanised the orchestra in Acts 2 and 3, but, at the risk of sounding grumpy, there are many British conductors who could conduct this work just as effectively – Leo Hussain, Alpesh Chauhan, and many others – and probably at less cost

Wagner: Die Walküre: Ride of the Valkyries and Wotan’s Farewell and Magic Fire Music; Huldigungsmarsch; Das Rheingold: Abendlich strahlt der Sonne Auge; Götterdammerung: Prologue: Dawn and Siegfried’s Rhine Journey; Act I: Duet; Act III: Siegfried’s Death and Funeral Music, Brünnhilde’s Immolation and Finale; Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: Prelude to Act I and Was duftet doch der Flieder.  Vasily Petrenko, Conductor; Rachel Nicholls, soprano; Peter Wedd, tenor, Derek Welton, baritone

This was a concert designed to recreate one set up by Wagner in 1877 as part of a fund raising effort in the UK to make a dent in the huge debts built up in order to put on the first performances of The Ring in Bayreuth in 1876. Unfortunately, though deemed a great artistic success, the London venture was problematic financially. Only 8 concerts were given, and though the whole London festival made a profit it was only a small one and did not do much to reduce the debts Bayreuth owed.  Wagner had some fairly mind-boggling meetings – he met George Eliot, for instance, and Cosima sat for a portrait by Burne-Jones (which was never finished). Wagner had intended to conduct the first half of each concert but had problems with the tricky acoustics of the RAH and in the end handed most of the conducting over to Hans Richter. However, fearing that the audience would react negatively to not seeing Wagner ‘live’, when he was not conducting, he was put in an armchair at the side of the orchestra looking ‘sphinx-like’ at the audience.

Some of the singers, internationally very well-known, were changed in the months leading up to this concert. Irene Theorin and Andreas Schager – both Bayreuth veterans, whom I had heard in 2022 in the Ring in Bayreuth – were replaced by Rachel Nicholls and Peter Wedd. Rachel Nicholls is a good friend of the Manchester Wagner Society and has given two talks for us – I even had lunch with her once! She was a particularly welcome replacement. Peter Wedd has had a sizeable international career in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, singing roles like Siegmund and Lohengrin. Derek Welton has recently performed Alberich for ENO and I heard him sing Klingsor in 2017 at Bayreuth.

A Wagner concert wholly devoted to the famous ‘bleeding chunks’ is something of a first for me. It is an odd experience to rush with relatively little time to pause (and not much time for audience reaction) from Sachs singing in Act 2 of Meistersinger to the end of Rheingold to the Ride of the Valkyries to the end of Act 3 of The Valkyrie. However – it was precisely listening to recordings of bleeding chunks that got me into Wagner 55 years ago, and the large audience – and of course, this being the RAH  that means LARGE – seemed different to the types usually to be found attending the Barbican for instance – younger, more diverse. Maybe the RPO has made a point of cultivating such audiences over the years and certainly there were people there who clearly both hadn’t heard much of the music before and were knocked out by it,  particularly Brünnhilde’s Immolation scene.

What did I enjoy about it? I think, foremost, listening to Derek Welton and Rachel Nicholls. Welton in particular was outstanding in the extracts he sang, and by that that I mean not only that he had a firmly grounded, big but also beautiful voice, but also that he sang with a lovely sense of legato – no Bayreuth bark here. He has the Rheingold and Wanderer Wotans in his repertoire, and is singing the Walkure Wotan at the Deutsche Oper Berlin this season. Rachel Nicholls, with her right arm in a sling (which can’t help her expressive potential, as she is someone who uses her whole body in singing) was a diminutive but powerful figure. She sounded as though she was not yet fully into her stride during the Act 1 Gotterdammerung duet and in that piece had quite a wide and heavy vibrato, but the Immolation Scene was very movingly sung – the wobble cleared, the words were clearly expressed and she was very noble and touching at the ‘Ruhe du gott’ passage (despite some idiot’s phone going off at that point). She has of course the power to ride over orchestral climaxes easily and thrill with her top notes, securely delivered – all in all I was very impressed by her performance. Peter Wedd, who I haven’t heard before, was perhaps more routine as Siegfried, but his was a perfectly serviceable performance and frankly I am not sure Andreas Schager would have been that much more effective (thought the latter has fantastic stamina and energy)

I have a great deal of time for Vassily Petrenko and admire hugely the performances I have heard him give of Elgar, Rachmaninov, Shostakovich and others. He has also built up the profile and sound of the RPO since he took over as chief conductor 3 years or so ago. I didn’t think Wagner was territory he’d fully got to grips with, though. Tempi were often fast to the point of notes being smudged and not always being clearly articulated and he didn’t always seem to draw out the full power of a Wagner-sized orchestra (having said which the closing moments of Gotterdammerung were tremendous). I hadn’t thought of him as an opera conductor but he does in fact have over 30 operas in his repertoire and has conducted in Munich and the Met, among other places.

Given the audience, I felt perhaps the evening needed a compere giving a bit of explanation and links between the pieces –  perhaps referring to that shadowy figure sitting in an armchair to the extreme left of the stage……

So – an odd and not always wholly satisfying evening, but with some great performances in it to listen to, too, And I did hear a work by Wagner for the first time – the  Huldigungsmarsch written for King Ludwig in 1864 and sounding very much a hack piece, with stray references to Tristan and Lohengrin but mainly a military march.

Bruckner Symphony no 8; Halle Orchestra, Mark Elder

As I have said elsewhere in this blog, I have been lucky to hear several very fine Bruckner 8s live over the years. This performance was the equal, at the very least, of nearly all of them, as I experienced it.

Astonishingly, this run of performances with the Halle is the first time Elder has ever conducted the work. I remember reading somewhere that he felt for a long time he had little to ‘say’ about the work that would warrant his conducting it – though back in 2011 he was saying in an interview that he thought it was one of his 5 favourite symphonies.  It’s very difficult to express what I found so special about this performance but here are some thoughts:

1. Clarity of sound.    It was interesting to see Sir Mark’s arrangement of the orchestra for the Bruckner 8. On an elevated level, there were 3 harps at the centre back, timpani next to them, horns, Wagner tubas and bass tuba to the left and trumpets and trombones to the right. The harps come into startling prominence as a consequence, in the second and third movements. Critically, the splitting of the violins opens a whole new sound world and I heard details of the string writing I’ve never heard before. Likewise, I noted several occasions when Elder was dampening the sound of brass and strings to allow the woodwind to shine through and I heard in general far more of the woodwind inner voices than is normally the case eg in the 2nd movement. The brass wings sounded both distinct from each other because of their raised and varied position when needed and were at the same time able make a gloriously homogenised sound when required. Another instance of clarity was at the very end of the work – the final Wagnerian blaze can sometimes seem a bit of a sonic soup but here the various strands were clearly audible.

2. Narrative. This is difficult to explain but Elder somehow conveys a real sense of the relationship between the different segments of the music as they veer between heaven and something approaching hell in this symphony – which means you feel you are following a deeply involving story. I have rarely felt so deeply the ‘heavenly’ vision of the start of the third movement and the tragic yearning of the second subject of that movement. The whole of the third movement had an arc of narrative I have rarely heard live before and which made it deeply absorbing

3. Shaping. Over the years the Halle and Elder in the late Romantic repertoire have developed an instinctive phrasing of the melodic material of these large works (Wagner, Mahler, Elgar etc) which gives them a sound that blooms and flourishes. The transitions involved in the melodic arcs are often beautifully handled – often a slight rallentando is used as players lean into a melody.

4. Affinity.  There is something very special about the way Elder and the Halle have grown to understand each other.  As you would expect Elder had an open score in front of him, and his conducting is not overly demonstrative, yet he was utterly in control (I heard one very minor early entry, from one of the first violins, throughout all 85 minutes or so)

5. Tempi. These to me sounded spot on – flexible, not mannered, not lumbering, nor too fast. Actually – listening again on the radio on Tuesday 5/3/24 (on I-Player for a month) to the Bridgewater Hall performance, a couple of days before Newcastle, I realised the tempi were in objective terms quite slow and measured. But they came across in Newcastle as exactly the right ones to be using, and didn’t at all drag.

I was pleased that Elder was using the Haas 1939 edition of the work. This allows a couple more minutes of music  to be heard not in the Nowak edition

There was a huge ovation at the end – I heard from comments afterwards that this had been a very special occasion for many. All in all, my day at the big Bruckner Glasshouse weekend was really rewarding, even if it meant afterwards negotiating my way through the crowded Saturday night streets – Newcastle on a Saturday evening is quite something………!