Beethoven ‘Cello sonatas Op 5 no 1 and Op 102 no2

I saw this concert, presumably given by two students or recent graduates from a music college, being advertised on my phone just as my train drew into London from Birmingham. It was a quick dash on the Piccadilly line and a worthwhile 50 minutes or so to experience it.

The acoustics of the church are not ideal for this combination of instruments – sometimes the cello got lost in the general rumble of the piano, but the general gist was clear enough. The two works are 20 years apart and from very different parts of Beethoven’s career. I don’t think I’ve heard the Op5 piece before and enjoyed it very much – the rumbustious first movement , the sense of constant surprise and the vivacious rondo. The fact that it’s only in two movements is an example of Beethoven testing the forms he inherited even at a relatively young age – 27. From what I could tell the performers gave a lively account of it.

The Op 102 piece is full of dynamic extremes – maybe something to do with Beethoven’s increasing deafness. There is an unworldly and beautiful slow movement I hadn’t recalled from occasional previous listening, which is a real point of stillness. The final movement begins a little like one of the Bach cello suites. Altogether an enjoyable and unexpected event!

A note of thanks in passing to the wonderful Choral Scholars of St Martins in the Fields. Later in the afternoon I went to Choral Evensong at St Martins and heard them sing the Evensong parts of Howells’ Collegium Regale settings wonderfully……also a lovely anthem ‘And I saw a new heaven’ by someone called Edgar Leslie Bainton (14 February 1880 – 8 December 1956, a British-born, latterly Australian-resident composer), a new name to me

Ángeles Blancas Gulin, Emilia Marty; Nicky Spence, Albert Gregor; Gustáv Beláček, Dr Kolenaty; Mark Le Brocq, Vitek; Harriet Eyley, Krista; David Stout, Baron Jaroslav Prus; Alexander Sprague, Janek; Alan Oke, Count Hauk-Šendorf. Tomáš Hanus, Conductor; Olivia Fuchs, Director; Nicola Turner, Designer; Robbie Butler, Lighting Director

As I was walking to the Birmingham Hippodrome for this performance, I sadly reflected that this was probably be the last WNO production I would see, unless I was prepared to travel to Wales – their Arts Council budget has been cut to reflect the view that they should stay in Wales in future (possibly making way for ENO in the West Midlands – who knows…..?). I have seen some fine productions in recent years in Birmingham and Liverpool by the WNO – particularly their War and Peace, and their Eugene Onegin.  Both WNO and Scottish Opera seem to be on a roll at present – it is really only ENO that offers a slightly depressing spectacle, despite all the good work they do.

I found this a very moving and compelling production and I was very pleased to have seen it  – the last and only live staged performance I saw was sometime in the 70’s at the ENO – maybe Josephine Barstow as Emilia Marty? – though there was a very good Prom concert performance I went to in 2016 with Karita Mattila in the starring role, conducted by the late Jiří Bělohlávek. It’s – as can be said of many of Janacek’s works – a strange piece; all the legal details can take a while to get your head around (though it’s doable – see below) and the sudden blaze of glorious music at the end is unexpected after much of the work, in which the music tends to trundle along in the background, though always interestingly. There’s a very moving contrast at the end between EM’s expressions of world weariness and the meaninglessness of life, and the amazing music of the last 5-10 minutes, which actually does express something that makes it all worthwhile, that creates beauty that will last forever in a real sense, and not through alchemical potions.

The sets and what we saw on stage was well-conceived but a bit fidgety at times. The three acts had clearly defined locales – lawyers’ office, back of the Opera House, and Prus’ bedroom. There were occasional video images at the rear which were good in the Act 1 prelude but got rather irritating and unnecessary in Act 3. Vertical strips with coloured files on them appeared and disappeared in Act 1 for no particular reason. The central images of the clock in Act 2 and the curtains over the bed in Act 3 worked well. What was embarrassing was the interlude between Act 1 and Act 2, when Mark Le Brocq  – Vitek – came out front while the stage hands changing the set to partly make sure the audience was au fait with the story (this was unnecessary) and, stepping out of role, made a few jokes about the stage hands. This was irritating and disruptive – as I know from my days directing the village pantomime, if a designer starts creating complex sets that disrupt the action, you tell them to go away and re-think. Brechtian alienation, possibly, but it didn’t work. On the other hand, EM’s stage transition from perennially young woman to old age was extremely well done, with the aid of the curtains.

Clearly a performance of this work stands or falls by the performance of the person playing EM, and Ángeles Blancas Gulin – not a name I’ve come across before – was stunning. She looked the part, she was totally credible in her acting, she sung beautifully when she needed to, and snarled and shrieked at appropriate points. Her voice had subtlety and power – and all in all her performance was overwhelming. The other parts were strongly cast – Nicky Spence, Mark Le Brocq, Alan Oke, to name but three, The orchestra played, as far as I could tell, idiomatically and powerfully and their Music Director Tomáš Hanus is a Janacek specialist who has prepared a critical edition of the score

Bajazet, Jorge Navarro Colorado; Asteria, Ellie Laugharne; Tamerlano, Rodrigo Sosa Dal Pozzo; Andronico, James Hall; Irene, April Koyejo-Audiger. Conductor, Jonathan Peter Kenny with the Old Street Band; Director, James Conway; Set & Costume Designer, Rebecca van Beeck; Lighting Designer, Tim van ’t Hof

This performance was enlivened by the occasional off-stage bang from particularly vociferous fireworks, but didn’t need much explosive encouragement, as it was actually a very lively and enjoyable performance. It provided a very interesting comparison with Ottone. Tamerlano as a work is more extrovert and more ‘dramatic’, though with a downbeat ending. The staging I found a bit tame compared to the Vivaldi pasticcio opera ‘Bajazet’, on basically the same story, seen in early February. The latter was completely gripping, with a demented Tamerlano, and a lot of violence. This staging seemed rather tame by comparison =- there were times when Tamerlano began to get a bit restive but for the most part he looked far too stately. He also didn’t look like the son of a goatherd, as he is described by someone in the opera. Sometimes I also felt that Handel hadn’t quite got the balance of the story’s various components quite right – the death of Bajazet goes on for far too long, for instance.  There was just one set – as there was with the Linbury Theatre performance and arguably not enough use was made of the complete stage and the platform that had been created. The set design was basically a prison-like series of metal (supposedly) grids, some of which could be climbed up with a platform halfway up, interspersed with a set of colourful panels, blue/grey and orange/brown. The only prop was a very small cage for Bajazet at the beginning.

Once again, I just marvelled at the fertility of the music’s invention and the variety of the arias. There are more fast vocal display arias here compared to Ottone, and some of them were very exciting indeed. The stand out performance was Rodrigo Sosa Dal Pozzo as Tamerlano, who had a big presence and a large but very flexible voice, more than capable of producing dazzling runs and un-hooty counter-tenor top notes. Bajazet – Jorge Navarro Colorado – was also very impressive – a good large and again flexible tenor voice. Andronico is another drippy role, and was sung by the same person as had sung Ottone – again he didn’t make much impression but this could have more to do with the music Handel actually gave him than anything else. Neither of the two female roles Asteria, sung by Ellie Laugharne and Irene, sung by April Koyejo-Audiger were outstanding as performances – they didn’t have quite the purity of tone, the ability to float high notes and variety of expression, and the razor-sharp accuracy on runs, that Tamerlano had – but both were nevertheless perfectly adequate and provided some lovely moments. To have – across the board – such excellent singers of all roles in a small, low-budget, touring company, is a huge treat!

The Old Street Band, with I think more musicians (I don’t recall hearing recorders in Ottone) seemed more energised than in Ottone and their playing in some of the display arias was very exciting

On to Alcina next week……………..

The basic messages from the recent announcement of funding from Arts Council England for 2023 to 2026 seem to be bleak – London orchestras’ grants down 10% (plus of course dealing with inflation during those years) except for the RPO and an increase for OAE; regional orchestras given the same funding as in 2022 i.e. again having to absorb inflation; a cut of 10% to Covent Garden, and Opera North given a modest increase (which is good). The only bit of substantively good news is the 20% increase in ETO’s budget.

The bad news is the removal of funding from ENO, with a transition grant to move to a regional centre, the slashing of WNO by more or less half (presumably meaning it can’t do England touring for the most part), and the halving of Glyndebourne Touring’s budget. Some of the cuts are reasonable – there ARE too many London orchestras, churning out programmes which are insufficiently distinguished from each other. ENO’s re-purposing and removal from London is sad but inevitable – someone more in the know than I am needs to write a think-piece on what went wrong over the last ?20 years. But it is certainly difficult to see a raison d’etre for it in its current form – the problem seems to be a dearthof leadership to do the re-imgining . The peculiarity is WNO’s and Glyndebourne Touring’s massive cuts – presumably intended to create a space for ENO in the provinces (maybe to tie up with Birmingham Opera) and focusing on West Midlands, South and South West plus Cheshire and Liverpool – maybe up the North West coast. Initial noise seemed to think about Manchester as a possible ENO site, but this is daft since that area and points North East are perfectly well served by Opera North. From a UK opera perspective, the net result will be less opportunities for work for UK singers and less opportunities for audiences to see opera – which sounds like a downwards spiral to me…………..

Gismonda, Elizabeth Karani; Adelberto, Kieron-Connor Valentine; Ottone, James Hall; Matilda, Lauren Young; Teofane, Nazan Fikret; Emireno, Edward Jowle. Conductor, Gerry Cornelius, with the Old Street Band. Director, James Conway; Designer, takis; Lighting Designer, Tim van ’t Hof

This was the first of three Handel operas I am intending to go to in just over a week! The ETO is offering three Handel operas in Buxton but I am missing out on Agrippina, which I saw on a Met live broadcast a few years ago and which is also clashing with something else I’m doing.

It was a really cold evening- the first really Autumnal evening this year, with a murky, misty light as I travelled towards Buxton, with a smell of woodsmoke in the air. It seems bizarre that a work first performed 300 years ago and then lost to audiences for the next 250 years should pop up in Buxton to a reasonably sized audience with so little difficulty of access and such a talented cast, at a time of cost-of-living crises and straitened public finances. ETO are a marvellous company and I hope they are not too harmed by the forthcoming Arts Council cutbacks (update – their budget has been increased by 20% for the next triennium but of course, with inflation, that means the budget remains at its current level or so in real terms) .

Ottone’s plot is very convoluted, even by the standards of early 18th century opera. I won’t attempt to describe it in detail, save to say that it’s set in 10th century Italy, and involves multiple cases of mistaken and assumed identity. It is an interesting work, though, in that the opera seria form, and the da capo arias, for once seem quite well-suited to an operatic context where all the 6 main characters are in their different ways isolated and miserable, and the coming together of people at the end, with everyone holding each others’ hands, even the fairly monstrous Gismonda, has real impact on stage. The da capo aria does seem an ideal form for the characters to express their loneliness and melancholy, and their separation from each other. The director ensured there was sufficient reaction between the characters in the recitative sections and, where needed, in the arias, but inevitably there is only so much which can be done to enliven this form of opera for a modern audience (therefore replying heavily on the music and the expertise of those singing and playing it) – there are some moments of wry comedy, mainly associated with Gismonda and her son Adelberto, which were deftly brought out and not over-done. The opera was sung in English, which I think was a good call, even if you only heard maybe 10% of the words – it meant that, with the surtitles giving the general direction of travel, you really did feel you understood what was going on – reading the summary of the plot in the programme book beforehand induced mild panic, and I put it quickly away.

The set worked well – two curved semi-spherical shapes which could be the interior of a palace or a cave wall, and which the singers moved around as needed. The two shapes – see pictures below – could, with the painting on them visible, be made to look like a Byzantine court, but, lit in other ways, were able to become cold and grey – the cave walls and distant sea shores. One or two critics said the lighting was too dim, but that is not how it appeared to me – I thought the lighting created atmosphere but not at the expense of visibility.

As a score, I found the work really enjoyable – I just felt I wished I had heard it more times before. There’s such inventiveness – if not quite in the ‘every aria a hit’ mode of the Messiah – and there was a lot of wonderful music. The highlights for me were Gismonda’s beautiful aria where she reflects on her son (Vieni, o figlio, e mi consola), a wonderful duet between Gismonda and Matilda in the cave (Duet: Notte cara), and an upbeat aria from Ottone when he’s beaten Adalberto in battle.

The singers’ diction wasn’t brilliant apart from the baritone singing Emireno. All the singers were good – there were certainly no weak links. Gismonda, sung by Elizabeth Karani, who’s clearly quite an experience singer in major houses, was particularly good, and Nazan Fikret as Teofane floated some beautiful high notes. Lauren Young as Matilda maybe naturally has a slightly abrasive voice but I enjoyed her energy and passion. Adelberto, sung by Kieron-Connor Valentine, and Ottone, James Hall, were both slightly feeble characters dramatically and one almost felt that for the most part Handel had withheld the best music from these roles (although as this performance only ran to 2 hrs 50 mins with interval, presumably at least an hour or so of music was left out). The Old Street Band dug into the music with vigour as most period groups tend to do – a few blips occurred along the way but nothing to take away from a very enjoyable show. Gerry Cornelius didn’t sound as though he was one of the more extreme helter-skelter early music experts, and he let the music surge and relax very well, I thought.

Verdi – Messa da Requiem; Sir Mark Elder conductor; Natalyia Romaniw, soprano; Alice Coote, mezzo-soprano; Thomas Atkins, tenor; James Platt, bass; Hallé Choir and Orchestra

Yet another work I’ve known since I was a teenager but haven’t heard live since the 1970s. I can’t remember who performed it or exactly when I last went to a live performance – I have a feeling it might have been 1972 at the Proms with Jessye Norman in the soprano role. For some reason the lending library recording boxed set I got to know this work from as a teenager didn’t have the LP side with the Libera Me final section of the Requiem on it. This final movement always comes as something of a surprise to me when I listen to it!

I know this work very well (apart from the Libera me) and it has one of the most perfect moments in music I know of in the Sanctus – the brief Hosanna section with the chorus, But I do have a problem with this work – or at any rate how it is often performed (and as it was performed this evening). Verdi’s Requiem concerns the most fundamental questions you can ask yourself, whether from a secular or religious perspective – what have I made of my life? Am I with the sheep or the goats? What will be remembered of me? What lasting good have I done for other people? The only ways of setting these words to music are those which communicate the solemnity, the drama and the tragedy/triumph of those big questions. I always find myself querying those who grumble about the over- operatic stance of the work – since opera as a medium is ideally placed to capture the emotions relating to these issues. It can be serious, comic, tragic, triumphant, with the audience intimately caught up with the drama. The problem with many performances of the Requiem, I think, is that, while things are fine when the choir is singing, or the orchestra given free-rein – the opening of the Dies Irae always sounds to me to be akin to the storm which opens Otello. – issues come with the soloists. The style and the very large role they have to play would indicate that they should treat their roles with dramatic bite and intensity. Unfortunately, both the nature of the words – ancient, Latin, religious – and the context means that often the soloists sing in a rather unengaged generalised manner and this was true of three of the soloists at this performance. The one person who really gave us the sense of a human being asking the questions I’ve outlined, and facing the reality of judgement, was Alice Coote who gave a deeply committed and powerful account with very effective projection of many of the words. She really gave us the sense of a human being struggling with their fate – her snarled “Quem patronum rogaturus,
cum vix justus sit securus” was terrifying. The others were very good but didn’t project anything like the same intensity. James Platt was sonorous, Thomas Atkins (not a name I’ve come across before) had a very good ‘Italianate ‘ tenor voice. Natalyia Romaniw was more than very good – she floated beautiful high long-breathed notes, her silvery voice was a pleasure to listen to but she didn’t really make much of the text, and her head sometimes seemed buried in the score – she wasn’t treating the work as a dramatic event, whereas Alice Coote’s eyes were constantly and intensely on the audience.

The Bridgewater Hall was pretty full for this performance. The line-up of soloists, as I say, was impressive and the Halle Choir large and capable.  The Halle Orchestra sounded splendid – I noted some beautiful bassoon playing and a sumptuous string sound. My only criticism was that the offstage trumpets sounded a bit too distant and ethereal. So, this for me had many aspects of a very good performance but not, I think, a great one.

Production, David Mcvicar; Set Designer, David Mcvicar; Costume Designer, Doey Lüthi; Lighting Designer, Paule Constable. Conductor, Carlo Rizzi. Cast: Medea, Sondra Radvanovsky; Glauce, Janai Brugger; Neris, Ekaterina Gubanova; Giasone, Matthew Polenzani; Creonte, Michele Pertusi

As far as I am aware I have never heard a note of Cherubini’s music. I even had to look his dates up – though I found I was broadly right in my surmise that he was late Classical/early Romantic (1760 – 1842). I must have come across his name when reading Berlioz’s Memoirs long ago too, since he features in them as a disagreeable, stick-in-the-mud Conservatoire head in Paris (where he spent the majority of his life) at loggerheads with Berlioz. He seems to have been around in Paris during the Revolution and managed to both have aristocratic patrons in the 1780’s, and be supported by Napoleon at a later date. So, obviously politically astute….He was also apparently much admired by Beethoven.

I was, therefore, looking forward to this screening, and, indeed, it was an absorbing evening. Medea really is a transitional work – more fluid and less formulaic than Gluck, but still with some classical structures and turns of phrase. As one of the Met presenters said Cherubini was born into the age of Mozart and Haydn and died in the age of Verdi and Wagner.  The music could sometimes have come straight from Don Giovanni but at other times it is straining forward into Fidelio, Bellini and even beyond to early Wagner. It is rarely performed (though was a vehicle for Callas). The reason for that becomes obvious when you hear the work  – it’s the demands the work makes on the title role. The range required of the person singing Medea is extraordinary – from full dramatic soprano top notes to the low notes you’d expect from a mezzo.  This plus the fact that Medea is much the biggest role in the work means that, as the conductor said in an interval interview, unless you have a great Medea, don’t even contemplate putting on this work.

There are different ways in which this work could be presented by a director:  go for classical Greek, maybe a modern drama on a tug-of-war between divorcing parents over the rights to see and care for their children – or set it at the time and place it was written, revolutionary France. The costumes in this production looked vaguely 1790s – was the intention that Medea was in revolt against the ancien regime (there were a few wigged figures around).? If this was the intention, it wasn’t really carried through in any further coherent detail. The basic set was three sides of the crumbling brick walls of Corinth, their gates here massive, tarnished gilt doors. with another inner space within this. A mirror set above that inner area gave some interesting effects in Act 3, particularly, but didn’t really seem to have any intrinsic connection with the drama. The curtain sometimes separating the outer layer of set from the inner seemed to flap about inconsequentially and open and shut, particularly in Act 3, more than was probably sensible. The fire seemed to be already raging at the beginning of Act 3 – I didn’t really understand why this was so. In short, it looked all in all like a typical Met set – chunky, pleasing on the eye but not in the end doing very much and could have been much pared back

I’ve never heard the various Callas recordings, so have no idea how she compares, but Sondra Radvanovsky seemed to me to fulfil all the requirements of the role, certainly vocally; she was stunning in the heights and depths. Maybe her acting strayed a little bit towards the melodramatic – but then, the whole role is framed in that way, so one can hardly criticise her for that. Fundamentally it was an amazing performance. Her helper, Neris, was warmly sung by Ekaterina Gubanova, and Matthew Polenzani made the most out of the not very pleasant character of Giasone. Glauce, Jason’s new wife., was the one slight disappointment – stolid on stage, with little acting above the crude, and acceptable but not overwhelming singing. The orchestra under Carlo Rizzi played vigorously and eloquently.

James Macmillan, Larghetto for orchestra (2017);  Gerald Finzi, Clarinet Concerto, Vaughan Williams, Symphony No 3 (Pastoral); Brigantes Orchestra – conductor Quentin Clare; clarinet, Emma Johnson; soprano, Laurie Ashworth

I was at this event as a Welcomer at Sheffield Cathedral, one of the various voluntary things I do. My attention had to be a little less than 100% on the music – you’re never quite sure who will wander through the door of the Cathedral during a concert: drunks, completely paralytic football fans as a subset of these, and in this case Chinese and other students and tourists thinking the cathedral was open, and also bunches of young people looking for another event which had been postponed to the following evening….And I was on door duty…..

Nevertheless I did enjoy this concert and thought it quite brave of the orchestra to attempt this in Sheffield, which has fairly conservative musical tastes. A ‘modern’ piece by Macmillan, a mid 20^th century composer I suspect few in the audience will have had much knowledge of , and Vaughan Williams …..

As The Brigantes website has it, “The original Brigantes were a Celtic people; a collection of tribes ruled by Queen Cartimandua in 1st Century Northern England. They populated what is now Yorkshire. The Brigantes were both tribal and cultured, enjoying theatre and music……..The Brigantes Orchestra encapsulates location, culture, unity and the idea that an orchestra is, roughly speaking, a tribe of musicians.” They are in fact as they describe themselves ‘Sheffield’s professional symphony orchestra’ and have a good local following, although this programme, attracting about 160 people, was half their usual audience number.

I normally approach orchestral music in cathedrals with wariness – often the bath tub reverberations are just too much to deal with. But Sheffield Cathedral is well-suited to orchestras and the sound is surprisingly clear. The Brigantes orchestra isn’t that big, but it sounded very fine in this context.

The first two of these three pieces, if I’m being honest, have a tendency to go on for too long. I was dealing with latecomers for part of the Macmillan,  but was astonished at how many times I thought the piece was coming to an end, only to find the orchestra had surged onwards. I found this piece a bit too bland. The Finzi piece I know a little, and Emma Johnson was an excellent soloist. It has a beautiful slow movement and a jolly tune in the finale. It feels – at any rate compared to VW – a little four-square, a little dull in its orchestration, but it is still an affecting and interesting piece. The Vaughan Williams, though, inhabits a different sound world, a different level of individuality and effectiveness, and the orchestration, particularly in this acoustic, sounded magical. Though I sometimes find it difficult to find my way in this piece, the sonorities sound wonderful and both the solo trumpet player and soprano soloist were impressive. The orchestra sounded as though this piece was more of a challenge for them than the other ones, and there were a couple of moments which were a bit untogether, but in the main the orchestra sounded full-bodied and very impressive in this context.

The whole programme represented a series of reflections on peace and the impact of war, and those attending could look, as they listened, at the very impressive “large-scale installation, created by Peter Walker and composer David Harper, which ….features several thousand paper doves suspended above the nave of the Cathedral. Schools across Sheffield and South Yorkshire have contributed, as have community groups, wellbeing groups, and the general public, by decorating the doves that form the artwork with messages of peace, love, and hope – creating a unique piece that reflects the thoughts and feelings of local people from all faiths, ages, and backgrounds.” (Cathedral web site – picture below)

Leo Hussain, Conductor; Christof Loy, Director; Christian Schmidt, Designer; Olaf Winter, Lighting Designer. CAST: Sinéad Campbell-Wallace, Floria Tosca; Adam Smith,Mario Cavaradossi;  Roland Wood, Baron Scarpia; Msimelelo Mbali, Cesare Angelotti; Lucia Lucas, A Sacristan; John Findon, Spoletta

This was an extremely enjoyable and impressive performance, with singers who in the main I’d never heard of before…….It’s a production that’s been around for a few years in other European opera houses but this was its first outing at the ENO. I was sitting in what I think must be the best value seats for opera in London – the front of the Balcony, where you get the full blaze of the orchestra and at the same time you are nearer to the singers than you would be at Covent Garden in a similar Amphitheatre position . Behind me was an elderly Italian gentleman clearly a little bemused by the audience’s lack of responsiveness after the big arias (he carried on shouting ‘bravi’ solo, nonetheless, and said to me how good he thought the performance was). The house was pretty full and at the end it gave a very rousing and enthusiastic response to the artists. All in all, the evening made me feel more positive about ENO’s future – and in addition you could hear how the singers were giving what they were singing new edge, colour and meaning because they were singing in English.

The production had a simple set for first two acts – two walls, one with a large window, and a floor of black and white squares. This functioned very well as both the church and Scarpia’s dining room and office. The last act offered a small room where Cavaradossi was being held and then the top of the fortress tower – with a wall for Tosca to throw herself off (and she does, more convincingly than in most productions I’ve seen). The interaction between the characters was extremely well handled by director and artists and made for a gripping piece of theatre – for instance the way Scarpia came menacingly close up to Tosca during Visse d’ arte, groping her. Visually too the whites and blacks of the sets were offset by the vividness of costumes. There were some oddities – costumes were partly in modern dress, partly early 19^th century and partly 18th century. Quite what that was about I am not sure – at points in each act a set of painted drapes appeared as well. I guess there was some point being made about characters being knowingly part of a self-conscious piece of theatre (Tosca does indeed commend Cavaradossi for being an excellent actor in handling, as she sees it, the execution) but these points – the drapes and the costumes – while not being coherent were also not really getting in the way of the action either.

The three main parts were tremendously well-sung. I have never heard of Adam Smith before but his voice is strong, well-grounded – infinitely better than the Radames at ROH the previous evening – capable of subtlety as well and when needed truly stentorian (his cry of ‘Vittoria’ seemed to go on for ever!). He also looks good and moves easily on stage. He was probably the best of the three – but Sinéad Campbell-Wallace was also very effective. She doesn’t have  – at least on this occasion – the ability to float notes quietly, as I remember Angela Georghiou doing last year at ROH, but she has a lovely warm voice, which can also achieve dramatic intensity, and again she is utterly convincing on stage. Roland Wood didn’t overdo things and, again, has a beautiful-sounding voice, which adds a dimension to his portrayal of Scarpia.

The ENO orchestra was on great form, and Leo Hussain (again not a name I’ve come across though he’s clearly been around for a while and has numerous European and US opera productions to his name) had clearly energised them

Director, Robert Carsen; Set Designer, Miriam Buether; Costume Designer Annemarie Woods; Lighting Designer, Robert Carsen And Peter Van Praet. Conductor, Antonio Pappano; Aida, Elena Stikhina; Radames, Francesco Meli; Amneris, Agnieszka Rehlis; Amonasro, Ludovic Tézier; Ramfis, Soloman Howard. Orchestra of the Royal Opera House and Royal Opera Chorus

In my snobbish and silly way, I’ve never really had much time for Aida  –  it is something like 35 years since I last saw it live. I actually went to see it in Egypt outside the Pyramids (there is an open-air stage area there which has hosted many illustrious performers, such as the rock band Police) in 1987 – I think it was the Palermo or possibly the Naples Opera company, with a host of camels and so forth, all the cast in entirely Ancient Egyptian garb looking rather small within the looming massive sets (and of course with the Pyramids there too). My employer was trying to bring out the National Theatre production of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, with Judi Dench and Anthony Hopkins to the same venue (in the end sadly scuppered by a NT stagehands strike) and I was asked to go along to get to understand how a large scale European production could be put on at this open-air venue. I managed to wangle quite an expensive seat, and I also remember saying I ought to see it twice so got a seat for the Luxor performance they were giving as well (and maybe a dress-rehearsal). I must have seen one production at ENO or ROHCG before the Egypt one – was there a Rita Hunter Aida with Mackerras? – but I have no detailed memory of one. It’s I guess a tribute to the staying power of the work that having not heard a note for 35 years except for one live broadcast I remember listening to once in Pakistan, I remember so much of the music.

I had a ticket for the dress rehearsal of this new production, which I couldn’t make because of my coughing fits (see below), so I was pleased to catch up with it via this screening.

The production I thought was very fine indeed. It took the essence of the work – war, captivity, national rivalries, patriotism and loyalty, two women vying for the same man  and translated Egypt into a modern militaristic state, with a supreme leader and what looks like a tricky first lady…..Amneris.. The basic set was a kind of concrete bunker. The chorus were soldiers and the Triumphal March consisted of soldiers lifting up and removing the coffins of their fallen comrades under a large portrait of a ‘Dear Leader’ which was at the back of the stage in several scenes  – a portrait of  the Korean singer who played Pharoah.  Admittedly the production seemed to be a close relative of the ROH Lohengrin – a similar preoccupation with flags, reds, blacks and greys, and the sense of an oppressive state. The ending of the second act with videos of modern warfare was devastating. Other scenes were set in a parade ground with raised stands for the spectators, a memorial to fallen soldiers with names on the back walls  and, powerfully the tomb in the final scene was an armaments store, with rocket heads – making the Priestess’ final words “peace’ very powerful. I don’t think there were any missteps in the sets and the director’s concept.  Maybe it was overegging it a bit, making the work seem more profound than it really is – but it was just so much better than yet another attempt trying to recreate Ancient Egypt. And although I assume it was conceived before Feb 2022, the resonance with the current state of the world is only too obvious

The stand out star for me was Amneris – Agnieszka Rehlis – who combined a very considerable stage presence with a warm rich voice. She threw herself into the role and was utterly convincing in her malice and desperation, as well as her recognition of the power she had as Pharaoh’s daughter. , Elena Stikhina  as Aida was less compelling dramatically but had a beautiful voice that produced some lovely floated high notes, sensitively varied phrasing as well as the dramatic top notes at high volume the role demands.  Radames was a bit of a disappointment – Francesco Meli had little stage presence, wandering around the stage to little effect. It was difficult two see why two very attractive women were throwing themselves at him. He also had some vocal difficulties with the higher range of the role and resorted to falsetto at points. Pappano conducted with his normal vigour and empathy with the orchestra