Sir Mark Elder conductor, Halle Orchestra, Sir Stephen Hough piano: Dvořák Scherzo capriccioso; Stephen Hough Piano Concerto (The World of Yesterday); Butterworth A Shropshire Lad: Rhapsody for Orchestra; Elgar Variations on an Original Theme, “Enigma”

This was Mark Elder’s last appearance in Sheffield as the Halle’s music director so for once the hall in Sheffield was completely full. The audience has spent years not going to the Halle’s concerts, so that City Hall has rarely been more than half full for their appearances, even when Elder was conducting, so it is deeply ironic they only turn up when he’s leaving¬ There was flimflammery from the leader of Sheffield City Council who rocked up with a cardboard copy of a silver dish of the City Hall as a parting present for Elder – which was to ‘be ready in a few weeks’ time apparently'(clearly they had been bounced into this late in the day) – despite having sat on their hands for years in terms of providing better acoustics for the hall. Oh well…..

The audience as always in Sheffield was a mixture – there was a bloke next to me extolling the virtues of the Kleiber Tristan recording with Margaret Price, and at the same time people clapping after noisy variations in the ‘Enigma’.

The very dry dead acoustics in City Hall can play havoc with how an orchestra sounds – the wide shallow stage seems matched by a kind of compression in the sound, and a lack of richness and depth. It is to the huge credit of the orchestra and Elder that despite the acoustics, they sounded full and rounded in sound, and made use of the clarity that the hall undoubtedly possesses to offer some wonderful insights in the Elgar work.

The performance was prefaced by a much better gift than Sheffield Council’s – the Sheffield Music Academy produced a young composer and string players who performed a short piece called Waves, obviously playing on both waves as in water and waves as in saying goodbye to Mark Elder. This was excellent

When the concert finally got going, the Dvorak piece was pleasant enough, and extremely well played, if a bit inconsequential. Stephen Hough’s piece I liked, though I am not sure that it would bear much repeated listening. In a talk before the concert, Hough has described it as originally a film score he’d been commissioned to write, for a film about a pianist in the 1930’s commissioned to write a piano piece by a duchess. I got the impression the film had fallen by the wayside, so Hough reworked the music. The World of Yesterday, the title of the piece, is also the name of an (excellent) memoir by Stefan Zweig, about pre WW1 Vienna, while Hough’s work is a look back at the piano concertos of the 1920s and 30’s – think Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, Bartok, Gershwin etc. The piece was shortish – 22 minutes or so – and didn’t outstay its welcome, with passages both lyrical and glitteringly bright (I seem to remember a duet between the piano and the xylophone at one point).

After the interval, the Halle, and Elder came into its own with the Butterworth and Elgar. The Butterworth provides some sort of link, I suppose, with the Hough piece in terms of nostalgia  – this time for a rural past, though the Butterworth also has anger in its central part, at the waste of young ‘lads’ lives in the Boer War. The Halle produced a glorious sound – wonderful clarinet and horn playing and transforming the usual sound of the hall into something rich and strange.

The Elgar work is a work I have heard Elder conduct several times and my reactions have been the same each time. Up until the finale, the way Elder conducts the piece, and the way the Halle performs it, is remarkably good. There were so many little touches in the orchestration coming out that you never normally hear – some wonderful detail in Ysobel and W.N, and all the tempi well-judged. Elder crafted the climax of Nimrod superbly  -sometimes the horns can blare rather vulgarly, but here they were held back and enveloped in a wonderful mushrooming orchestral sound. Another touch was the more-than-usually audible sound of the side drum in Variation 13 (was it Elgar who talked about a penny rolled around the drum surface?) which coloured the rest of the orchestra’s sadness very effectively. I had the same thought on the finale as when I have heard this team perform it before – that somehow the basic tempo Elder sets for the movement is too slow and becomes flaccid, and not climactic enough; it’s very different from how Elgar himself conducted this movement. I’ll listen again to the radio broadcast on 22 May, and see if I think differently………..

Director, Katie Mitchell; Designer, Vicki Mortimer; Lighting Designer; Jon Clark. Conductor, Giacomo Sagripanti. Lucia, Nadine Sierra; Edgardo, Xabier Anduaga; Enrico Ashton. Artur Ruciński; Raimondo Bidebent, Insung Sim; Arturo Bucklaw, Andrés Presno; Normanno, Michael Gibson; Alisa, Rachael Lloyd

My younger self would have found it fairly unbelievable that I would be voluntarily going to a Donizetti opera, but I had heard such good things about this production, about the Lucia singing in it, and because I admire Katie Mitchell’s work, that I decided to travel down to see it  – from a good Lower Slips seat. And in fact I did go several times in the 70’s to Janet Baker singing Maria Stuarda in the ENO production, so I do know that with the right production and singers Donizetti’s works can be a rewarding experience to see and hear.

So…..what to make of it, after all the years?

The director sets the costumes and general atmosphere as Gothic, maybe 1830’s, when the score was written. This is not when the actual opera is set – late 17th century – nor is it when the novel was written, but it serves well enough as a gloomy backdrop to an undoubtedly dark, even grotesque, work. The lighting is predominantly dim, with the exception of that on Lucia in her mad scene, and her dead mother’s ghost, seemingly in a wedding dress(?) who wanders across the stage at various key points of the action. The set design offers an interesting idea – a split screen, essentially two stage, approach, one usually Lucia’s bedroom or withdrawing room so that when one ‘screen’ offers the ‘main’ staging, the other offers sub plot or commentary – thus, while Edgardo and Enrico are arguing in the wedding celebration, we see a very sexually knowledgeable Lucia first bringing her new husband Arturo to bed and then stabbing him to death in mime. The split screen works well though obviously reduces stage space (so the chorus can look cramped at times) and – if like me you’re sitting in the Lower Slips – it can be more than usually frustrating to see what’s going on. The point of the split screen is obviously to ensure that Lucia is absolutely at the centre of what’s happening, even though the story revolves around the fact that, among all these dominating and manipulative men, she absolutely doesn’t at first sight have any agency at all. The director makes Lucia takes control where she can – e.g in her very full-on sexual advances to Edgardo – and very much shows the mad scene as the only way Lucia CAN retain some agency in her own life. Lucia ends up blood-bespattered in a Victorian bath on one side of the stage while Edgardo declares, rather at length, his intention to kill himself. Even at the end in this production therefore Lucia remains centre-stage.  The sets themselves were straightforwardly realistic and natural. They were also quite solid which then required numerous pauses with curtains down to re-arrange them. This impeded the momentum of the work and I found the pauses unhelpful.

So what did I make of it all?

– Though the work is a model of concision compared to many rambling Verdi plots, I did find it overlong, really. Not only the pauses but on occasion the arias as an opportunity for display made me fidgety. I was not gripped by it.  Even the Mad Scene, sadly with flute accompaniment rather than glass harmonica, just went on, for me, too long. The music somehow doesn’t really excite me even when Edgardo and Enrico are having their set-to in Act 2. There is too much of the auto-pilot, in terms of the stylised ending to arias, and also some of the thematic material just sounds to me banal and not appropriate to the emotions being played out on stage

– Specifically, though Nadine Sierra’s singing as Lucia was remarkable- brilliant coloratura, subtle shading of the voice, pinged out top notes – she somehow never reached out to me with her voice or stage presence. She remained a cypher. I wasn’t sure whether this was a result of the work or the singer. I wondered how I might have reacted to someone like Callas in the role….

– The other two male leads, Edgardo and Enrico were both in very strong hands. At one point they seemed to be almost competing as to who could hold on to their top notes the longest. Edgardo in particular had a very good sense of bel canto line and phrasing

– The orchestra sounded much more on the ball than they had done for Carmen a week early – horns and that flute accompanier being notably fine.

All in all I was glad to have seen this work, with fine singers and an excellent production making the best possible case for it, but I am not planning to see it again……

Conductor, Antonello Manacorda; Carmen, Aigul Akhmetshina; Don José, Piotr Beczala; Escamillo,  Kostas Smoriginas; Micaëla, Olga Kulchynska;  Zuniga, Blaise Malaba; Frasquita, Sarah Dufresne;  Mercédès, Gabrielė Kupšytė; Royal Opera Chorus And Orchestra; Director, Damiano Michieletto; Set Designer, Paolo Fantin; Costume Designer; Carla Teti; Lighting Designer, Alessandro Carletti

I travelled to this screening in a rather gloomy frame of mind: ‘planned engineering works’ meant there were no trains to Sheffield, the car wasn’t sufficiently charged to get me there, and the last bus left Sheffield at 21.22. I knew therefore I could only see the first half and a bit of this new Carmen – I saw in the end the first 60%. Also, I had received the previous day the booklet of the new ROHCG season which looked pretty dire – given the budget cuts they were clearly putting on lots of crowd pleasers, and, left to my own devices, I could only see 5 productions I would really want to go to – the new Walkure, the new Semele, the new Turnage opera ‘Festen’, the Tobias Kratzer production of Fidelio, and a double Bernstein bill at the Linbury. I’ll probably go to a few others as dress rehearsals – eg the new Onegin.

I got to know Carmen in the 70’s in the old Coliseum production, initially conducted by Mackerras, and I have only ever seen one since – the 2019 Barry Kosky one, of which I remember little now except for the steps and the gorilla……..Damiano Michieletto directed the current ROHCG Cav & Pag, and there are several similarities between that and this new Carmen. Both involve a revolving central box which can be turned to represent both inside and outside scenes, both have excellent personen-regie with much detailed work with the main singers to create a real sense of interaction and response. Cav & Pag’s direction also included a lot of work with the chorus to create it as almost a set of quite different individuals, not a stylised group – this was less in evidence in Carmen. In both cases the setting is 60’s / 70’s of the 20^th century, and the general appearance of costumes and sets is bright and colourful – lots of reds, greens, blues and pinks. Michieletto’s big idea is to have Don Jose’s mother on the stage as a gloomy menacing presence, representing the forces of conservatism and sobriety against which Carmen so effectively positions herself, and this, I think, works well, particularly when the heavy brooding 5 note fate melody is played. There’s evidence of careful thought at every stage about how all the major characters move, how they react to each other, and how they dress – Micaela for instance is very much of one mind with Don Jose’s mum, and wears owlish glasses and conservative clothes (however at the end of the day, it has to be the singers themselves who have to realise on the stage the director’s guidance, and there was some variable practice here). The smuggling gang was brilliantly realised as were the characters of Frasquite and Mercedes.

The conducting didn’t to me seem to rise much above the routine, and I didn’t get the sense of springy rhythms that a Pappano would have brought. Not for the first time, I asked myself why someone from the UK would not have been a better choice of conductor. Manacorda drove the music hard and this was probably for the best – it complemented the sense of a gripping story being unfolded by the director.

Of the singers – well, Aigul Akhmetshina was quite extraordinary, particularly when seeing her close up. I have rarely if ever seen a singer so fiercely engaged in a part – every facial nuance, every movement, was meaningful and complemented/added to what the singing and orchestra were offering, giving us ever richer and clearer insights into Carmen’s character.  She’s only 28 – if she can immerse herself in other roles in the same way, she has a sensational career before her. I didn’t know quite what to make of Beczala – he has a fine tenor voice, can spin a line beautifully, can clearly rise over the orchestra thrillingly, and his ‘flower song’ was very well done. But as an actor he seemed a bit stiff and unengaged. Of course, that could be, quite legitimately, his view of Don Jose, and fair enough, then – but I sometimes felt almost as though he didn’t quite know what to do with the demonic energy radiating out of every pore from Akhmetshina.  I have heard more sensitive singing of Micaela’s beautiful Act 1 aria than Olga Kulchynska’s, but overall she was very convincing in the role. The chorus, were not that impressive on stage – their actions and expressions tended towards the routine, and credibility suffered from there being too many middle-aged Anglo-Saxon faces to be seen to be a small-town Spanish group of citizens They were also not very incisive or together in their singing in Act 1. The children were well-drilled and funny at first, but became a little arch and irritating after a while.

I would have liked to have stayed longer, but I was there long enough to realise how extraordinary Akhmetshina is in the title role

London Philharmonic Orchestra, Vladimir Jurowski conductor. PJ Harris director. Burkhard Fritz tenor, Siegfried; Svetlana Sozdateleva soprano, Brünnhilde; Albert Dohman bass, Hagen; Günter Papendell baritone, Gunther; Sinéad Campbell Wallace soprano, Gutrune; Robert Hayward baritone, Alberich; Kai Rüütel-Pajula mezzo-soprano, Waltraute; Claudia Huckle contralto, 1st Norn; Claire Barnett-Jones mezzo-soprano, 2nd Norn; Evelina Dobraceva soprano, 3rd Norn; Alina Adamski soprano, Woglinde; Verity Wingate soprano, Wellgunde; Angharad Lyddon mezzo-soprano, Flosshilde; London Philharmonic Choir and London Voices

This is, I think, the 5^th live Gotterdammerung I’ve heard in the past 16 years – the others being Halle/Elder (concert), ROHCG/Pappano, Opera North/ Farnes (concert) and the 2022 Valentin Schwarz Bayreuth production.  Few of the principals for this performance are singers I’ve come across before – but I have heard Albert Dohman at Bayreuth singing Hagen, and there is the ever-reliable Robert Hayward as Alberich. I never heard Jurowski’s Rheingold and Valkyrie but I did hear him and the LPO performing Siegfried’ in concert form in early February 2020, and had got tickets for what was supposed to be a complete Ring cycle in February 2021- that, as you can tell by the date, never happened. It’s great that Gotterdammerung at least has now been performed. I had much enjoyed the Siegfried performance more than 4 years ago

I enjoyed this performance hugely, and the 4hrs.45 mins or so of performance seemed to speed by – I was barely conscious of time and of anything dragging. When you listen and see this piece live, in one go, you become more aware of how magnificently concise the work is – not at all sprawling   This altogether was a far more intense experience in fact than either of the two theatre performances I’ve seen of this work in recent years. There were several reasons for this.

The setting of course was a concert performance but nevertheless those responsible for staging (and there was a director and lighting designer credited) had managed to create a coherent stage picture – everyone knew their lines and there were no music stands, the videos screened on the back wall behind the organ were effective and not over-the-top, exits and entrances made sense, there were a few props (a nice touch being a jacket to symbolise the dead Siegfried) or agreed ways of demonstrating something with hands, and there was some simple projected narration. All the singers reacted to each other and were fully ‘in’ their roles, even seeming to look the part though not in costume – for instance Waltraute’s glittery long dress aptly signalled a visitor from another world when she comes to see Brunnhilde. Finally, there was intelligent variation in the performing space between the front of the stage and the choir area, and exits and entrances were all unobtrusively managed. There were a few oddities – why no video of water (which was used in the Rhinemaidens’ scene in Act 3) when Siegfried reaches the Rhine in the Prologue, and why no narrative explaining the last 5 minutes of the opera? – but these were minor issues…..

The conducting of Vladimir Jurowski and the playing of the LPO were of a very high standard. I was able to compare the rendition of the ‘Dawn and Siegfried’s Rhine journey’ and ‘Immolation’ scene with the Vassily Petrenko (another conductor I admire) performances 6 weeks ago at the RAH and there was no doubting the superiority of Jurowski’s handling of the ebb and flow of the music and bringing out its inner voices. The love duet in the prologue was quite slow and measured, with much sweetness of tone from the violins and some beautiful woodwind playing, with a thrilling Rhine Journey to follow. The last 5 orchestral minutes of the work were again grandly slow – one of the most effectively performed endings I’ve heard of this piece, with the Rhinemaidens’ song paced slowly enough to have a real lilt and the ‘redemption’ theme played at a pace appropriate to achieving its full impact. Throughout Jurowski showed this clear and sensitive response to the music  – Act 2 as it should be was fast and furious in the wedding scene, and really exciting; the funeral march imposing and among the best I’ve heard – critically it was given space to unfold and wasn’t pushed along too quickly . I was also aware in the big orchestral set-pieces that Jurowski had been very effective in holding the volume back earlier when accompanying the singers – there were really only a few moments when they were submerged in the orchestral melee. I was also much taken by the clarity of detail, the pacing and the delicacy of the Act 3 scene between Siegfried and the Rhinemaidens, which I can sometimes get a bit restless in listening to but which in this performance was absorbing . There many other glorious moments I could mention – I’ll just highlight the scene in Act 1 with Waltraute where again the pacing allowed all the beauty and majesty and passion of the music to come through.

All this was complemented by a really excellent group of singers, all of whom were totally convincing in their roles. There were four stand-outs, but no weak links: Siegfried, Brunnhilde, Hagen and Gutrune. Burkhard Fritz as Siegfried was very impressive – he had a strong voice, made more of an attempt than quite a few to encompass the lyrical aspects of the role and he hit the top notes fearlessly. The narration in Act 3 was outstanding. Only at the very end was his voice maybe beginning to flag a bit – but that’s understandable in such a demanding role. He had a good stage presence – maybe a bit inappropriately relaxed at times – and conveyed very effectively the complacent unawareness of the doped Siegfried in Act 2.  Svetlana Sozdateleva as Brunnhilde offered a far more absorbing portrayal of the role than many. She has a beautiful warm voice, very effective in the middle and lower registers, and, in the Waltraute scene and the Immolation was very moving indeed, with some beautiful shadings of her voice for, for instance, Ruhe du Gott’. She was also able to cut through the storm of the wedding scene with some powerful upper notes, and portrayed Brunnhilde very clearly and convincingly in all her different moods – tender, imperious, raging. What she does not have is the ability to ping out the very top notes convincingly – she opted out of the high C at the end of the Prologue love duet and there were a couple of notes in the Immolation scene that were wild grabs at an approximate pitch, almost shouted, rather than anything else. To me, this didn’t matter very much, so convincing, so deeply moving, was her overall performance. Albert Dohman as Hagen was about as good as you can get  – he has the right voice, the diction, the height, to be a great singer in this role, and he was! I doubt if I have seen a better Hagen – at least in recent years. He impressed me also at Bayreuth in 2022. And Sinead Campbell Wallace was very effective as Gutrune – a lovely voice, and a very good actor, getting across very effectively to the audience the vulnerability, the innocence, the tragedy of her character. But also Robert Hayward was an excellent Alberich, and there were creditable Rhinemaidens and Norns – plus the chorus was incisive and thrilling in the wedding scene. Gunther Pappendell I am not sure what I would make of in other contexts – perhaps a bit of an under-projected performance and maybe not particularly distinguished vocally -but of course that makes perfect sense as far as Gunther is concerned. I was also very impressed by Kai Ruutel-Pajula as Waltraute – a comanding presence and a gorgeous voice.  

I see that Jurowski is starting a Ring at his new job in Munich – I suspect we shan’t see in London another attempt at the cycle projected for 2021, sadly. Will I be around in London for the next likely live rendition of this at Covent Garden in ?? 2027 or 2028. Who knows….though there is the Regents Opera slimmed down version of the Ring to look forward to in February 2025………..

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