DIRECTOR – Damiano Michieletto; REVIVAL DIRECTOR, Noa Naamat; SET DESIGNER, Paolo Fantin; COSTUME DESIGNER Carla Teti, LIGHTING DESIGNER, Alessandro Carletti; CONDUCTOR, Antonio Pappano Turridu – SeokJong Baek; Nedda and Santuzza – Aleksandra Kurzak ; Canio – Roberto Alagna; Alfio, Dimitri Platanias; Lola, Aigul Akhmetshina; Mamma Lucia. Elena Zilio; Tonio, Dimitri Platanias; Silvio, Mattia Olivieri; Beppe, Egor Zhuravskii

These are again two works I have been very snobbish about in the past and as far as I can remember I have never seen them live before . I do recall that Rita Hunter once sang Santuzza in the 70’s but I have no memory of going to the ENO to see her, I probably wouldn’t have booked this time, except that I had an evening spare in London before getting a very very early Eurostar train the following morning, and I thought it would be good to see Jonas Kaufmann in a role, plus Ermonela Jaho is a superb singing actor. As luck would have it both were indisposed and couldn’t make it, but we got some excellent replacements instead, as you’ll read below.
Coming to these two works supposedly for the first time, I quickly realised how much particularly of ‘Cav’ I already knew – umpteen recital recordings of the Easter hymn, the Intermezzo, and various big arias have just got lodged in my memory over the years. ‘Cav’, in many ways is the more striking work – it has ‘big tunes’ galore, and an action-packed and clear story, whereas I Pagliacci doesn’t have quite the same level of heightened melodic invention, and I found myself getting a bit confused as to who was who in the ‘play within a play’ sequence, and who precisely Beppe is.
The production I thought was well done. In both cases the setting is the late 1940’s in a Sicilian village and this works well – Alfio comes back from the war with a splendid 40’s car, the costumes and sentiment feels right for this period. There are attempts made to link the two works – posters are going up for I Pagliacci near Mamma Lucia’s bakery in ‘Cav’, and Mamma Lucia seems to make a re-appearance in ‘Pag’. The sets in both works are revolving realistic designs for parts of the village and this works well, particularly in ‘Pag’ so that we can alternate between the village stage and the dressing rooms. The only slightly out of the way part of the production is that it starts in the Prelude of ‘Cav’ with Turridu’s murder and then tells the story of how we got to that point.
The sheer energy of these two works requires first rate singers who can project their character well to an audience in a relatively short period of time. The standout star of both was Aleksandra Kurzak, who is at the peak of her career and can do everything she wants to do with her voice – passionate, quiet, smooth and lustrous, violent, she can do it all in a refined and totally controlled way, with little vibrato and total clarity. Her two tenor leads were quite a contrast – the Canio was Roberto Alagna (her husband) who offered a master class in style – he is in almost the twilight zone of his career and he can no longer belt out the top notes as he once could, but what he does is affecting, beautifully sung, with pointed, clear diction and representing the absolute essence of the tradition of Italian 19th century opera (he also managed to do a cartwheel at one point!). His ‘Cav’ equivalent, SeokJong Baek as Turridu, was ardent and full-on, very different in style and approach but suiting perhaps the intensity of ‘Cav’ better, just as the subtleties of ‘Pag’ are very well-matched to Alagna’s abilities to what he can now deliver so effectively. The other person singing in both operas was Dimitri Platanias as Alfio and Tonio, and he was very good at delivering menace and threat. Lola in ‘Cav’ was sung very well – a beautiful warm, rich mezzo voice – by Aigul Akhmetshina, a young Russian singer. Antionio Pappano kept the orchestra fizzing and full of energy.

Much against my better judgement ans my expectations, a really enjoyable evening…………

Haydn – String Quartet in G minor Op. 20 No. 4; Brahms – Piano Quintet in F minor Op. 34

This was a great concert. The Brahms was magnificently done with energy and passion. The third and first movements had a magnificent sweep, and the second a quiet thoughtfulness. The last – complex, jumpy, moody, an unrelenting outburst of intensity – was also very powerful. More than I usually do, I learned a lot by keeping my eyes open and looking at the interchange between the four players, particularly the way the first violin lifted herself up from the chair whenever she was playing something particularly passionate or lyrical and the way the 1st and 2nd violins worked together. I have heard this work but must listen to it again soon – it’s much more special than I had remembered. The Haydn too was very well played and enjoyable – like its partner the previous evening, it’s a product of his Sturm und Drang period, and is, again, quirky. It opens softly with some enigmatic phrases, followed by a violent outburst and follows up during the movement with unexpected pauses and a false recapitulation – altogether a difficult movement to ‘read’ emotionally. The slow movement is a rather sad theme and variations, touchingly done and the minuet is “alla zingarese” (in Gypsy style). The final Presto continues “scherzando” (jokingly) with “Gypsy” elements and with surprising harmonic and rhythmic twists, before disappearing suddenly in a whisper. All was brilliantly realised by the Quartet

Haydn – String Quartet in G minor Op. 20 No. 3; Shostakovich – String Quartet No. 1 in C Op. 49’; Mendelssohn – String Quartet No. 3 in D Op. 44 No. 1

I had had an excellent afternoon walking for 3 hours on the South Downs near Lewes with an old friend, and this concert was the perfect end to the day, a really well played and well thought through string quartet concert. The emotional trajectory in the choice of pieces was clear – from very unsettled and quite odd Haydn through the seemingly and superficially graceful ease of the Shostakovitch, with a lot going on under the surface, to the genuinely sunny Mendelssohn. The stand out performance was the Mendelssohn – this quartet is becoming another London bus and I had heard it only two weeks earlier at the Stoller Hall. This was a much, much better played performance – the first violin offering both more sweetness and variation of expression but also with more fire and energy when needed, and all 4 players were producing a much more varied sound – in terms of tone and dynamics – than the Manchester one. There was a big difference! The Haydn was very strange – coming from his Sturm und Drang period, it had none of the ‘gentility’ and charm/wit you might associate with Haydn, The finale came to an abrupt halt that was inconclusive rather than jokey, the first movement stopped and started, went off in unexpected directions and unsettled me. The Shostakovitch seemed elegantly played – but with edge and real propulsive energy in the finale.

I am looking forward to their Haydn and Brahms tomorrow lunchtime – this sounds like a very strong group of players

DIRECTOR, Jan Philipp Gloger; SET DESIGNER, Ben Baur; COSTUME DESIGNER Karin Jud; Conductor Julia Jones; Fiordiligi, Jennifer Davis; Dorabella, Julie Boulianne; Ferrando; Bogdan Volkov; Guglielmo, Gordon Bintner; Despina, Serena Gamberoni; Don Alfonso, Lucio Gallo 

It was lovely to hear Cosi Fan Tutte live again in the opera house – it must be more than 10 years since I last heard it (my Friends account said I went to a performance in 2010 at Covent Garden – if I did, I have zero memory of it), and it was glorious to be reminded of the wonderful moments in the work: the big arias for Fiordiligi and Dorabella, the bounce of the big ensembles, the wonderful music for Despina.  

This production though is problematic because it doesn’t recognise that this is an essentially silly story, with characters little better than puppets, for whom Mozart has written glorious music. Part of the point of the work is the musical compassion Mozart wraps around these characters and this story. Unfortunately, the director, Jan Philipp Gloger, doesn’t take that as a given but creates a play within a play within a play scenario which not only does your head in but is unnecessary, really. The overture shows an 18th century-dressed ‘standard’ cast for Cosi receiving curtain calls. Two arguing couples in modernish dress – the men modern, the women looking more 50’s-ish – are sitting in a stage box arguing about the performance. At the end of the overture Don Alfonso invites them onto the stage to ‘be’ Dorabella, Alfonso, Fiordiligi and Ferrando. The idea therefore is that they are conscious throughout the performance we see of the artificiality of the story, and they are consciously taking part in the acting they are undertaking as a result of their wager with Don Alfonso – if you see what I mean……The sets are then variants on a self-consciously stagey set, not really linked with each other except for sometimes when there are lights at the back as though the auditorium was at the back of the stage, and the linked theme of an inner proscenium arch. The set changes too are very self-consciously done, and there are occasionally irritating Brechtian signs popping up. I thought it was quite clever in its way but it was very difficult to fully appreciate the different layers in any meaningful way, not least because the libretto gives no hint of this interpretation and so the characters don’t speak of it. I suspect maybe Gloger might have fiddled around occasionally with the language of the recitatives, but there is no obvious way – and Gloger doesn’t really seek to create it – we can understand what the couples have ‘learned’ at the end of the work interpreted like this. Some of the sets are quite striking – the Act 1 train station, Act 1 sleazy bar, the Eve tree with the snake around it, the 19^th century pastoral set in Act 2 – and clever, bur really with little ultimate point to them – at times they had an almost Met-like feel of ‘doing it because we can’, like the bedrooms slowly rising from beneath the stage. At the end of the day, I don’t actually feel that Cosi has that silly a story – OK, it is perhaps not very credible that the two women don’t recognise their blokes in disguise, but you just go along with the artifice of the plot and enjoy, as I’ve said, the wonderful music which gives the characters such presence and humanity 

Musically and in terms of the cast’s acting this was a bit of a mixture. The stand-out star was Despina, Serena Gamberoni, who was a great singing actor, completely credible in the role and with a very good voice sensitively handled. I also though Dorabella, Julie Boulianne, had a beautiful voice, and her big Act 2 aria was varied and impressive in line, agility and dynamics. Jennifer Davis could not erase memories of Margaret Price singing this live at Covent Garden in the dim and distant past, but was good enough, as were the men, particularly Don Alfonso. Julia Jones’ conducting I had a lot of problems with – my usual complaint with Mozart conducting: it was all rushed, so that the music didn’t ‘bounce’ properly and, though there was a little boy near me kicking his seat in time to the music, there wasn’t the rhythmic propulsion there should have been. The horns sounded oddly tentative in the big Dorabella aria, and the ensemble was surprisingly often a bit ragged. Even so, there were some beautiful moments from the orchestra, particularly the oboe.

But, while I had all these grumbles, at the end of the day it was so good to hear this work live again (particularly as I’d missed, when I had had Covid, the (I suspect better) production at ENO in March).

Richard Farnes, CONDUCTOR; Sam Brown, DIRECTOR; Bengt Gomér, SET & LIGHTING DESIGNER; Stephen Rodwell COSTUME AND WIGS; Toby Spence, PARSIFAL; Katarina Karnéus, KUNDRY; Robert Hayward, AMFORTAS, Derek Welton, KLINGSOR; Brindley Sherratt, GURNEMANZ; Stephen Richardson, TITUREL. Opera North Chorus and Orchestra

I was meant to be going to a performance of Die Tote Stadt at Longborough on 25 June, which I was very much looking forward to – I have never seen this work live. However the rail strike on 25/6, and the fact that the car was already booked by others for other things meant that I couldn’t make it to Longborough – and anyway I’ve got to a point where I think long distance car journeys are a form of lunacy. Much disgruntled I looked for other things to do and, having applied for a refund for my rail tickets, sold my Longborough ticket to someone else and applied for some sort of cancellation rebate on my hotel booking, I decided that I was justified in thinking that the best thing I could do instead was go to another performance of Parsifal given by Opera North, the last one in their tour given at the Festival Hall in London. This was also an attractive option because when I heard it in Manchester I was suffering from approx 40% hearing loss, now happily restored.
Leaving home at 0800 on Sunday 26/6 by train, I was anticipating problems and delays but in fact the journey was smooth and without disruption.

The performance at the RFH was remarkably good. If anything, the performance of Act 3 was better than in Manchester – or to put it perhaps more precisely, I was moved more. Act 2 was again outstanding. It is on reflection odd that the ON team decided on such a pared back ‘concert’ performance for Act 1 and 3 in this and the BH showing – Act 2 was far more dynamic and I believe more could have been done to make Acts 1 and 3 a bit more interactive and ‘theatrical’. However, musically, it was all splendid. Interestingly the timing of Farnes’ conducting of the work was precisely the same as in Manchester, demonstrating the very clear structural approach he has and the thought which has gone into the speed relationships between the different parts of each act of the opera. There was a capacity crowd and standing ovations plus flowers for the ON orchestra leader, retiring after this concert. I am already formulating some questions for Richard Farnes when he Zooms in to a Manchester Wagner Society in the Autumn……

It seems slightly bonkers that I am going to another live Parsifal, this time staged, in Leipzig, in precisely 17 days’ time (Covid permitting). And at the same time, I’m thinking….maybe that’s it…..coming up to my three score years and ten, the clock is ticking….I’m not aware of any other Parsifal performances coming up. It’s 9 years since the last live performance in the UK (Elder 2013 at the Proms). If so, and that’s it (though I may be wrong, I think it’s unlikely I’ll be around aged 79), as far as my lifespan is concerned, I feel profoundly grateful to have heard so many fine live performances over the last 50 years, conducted by Jochum, Goodall, Horenstein, Solti, Elder, Wigglesworth, Haenchen, Farnes and others, and with/at ROHCG, ENO, Bayreuth, ON and Teatro de Sao Carlos, Lisbon (the last one in a circus tent in the early 80s, while the theatre was being renovated), with Peter Hoffman in the title role and a distinct whiff of elephant dung throughout the performance….I reckon I’ve been in all to about 12 live performances of Parsifal……

Baroque In The North was formed in 2003, initially as a chamber ensemble (Northern Baroque). Their Baroque & Beyond Summer concert series has been aimed at improving access to live music for all and is taking place in venues across Derbyshire in 2022. This concert series has been generously supported by a grant from the Continuo Foundation.

I had assumed this would mainly be the 4 Seasons supported by a bit of Bach and Handel, and went along to the concert principally to see if this group might be bookable for my own village church sometime in the future.

In fact, it was very much more interesting than what I was expecting – we heard music by De Boismortier, Rameau, Vivaldi, Telemann, Daquin and Chedeville, played by a harpsichordist, a period instrument ‘cello player, and someone playing a Baroque violin, an alto recorder and a variant form of bagpipes. All of it was new to me, and there was much that was enjoyable and worthwhile to listen to

Although they could have done with, for this particular audience, some opening description of what was meant by Baroque music and what period we were talking about, nevertheless by and large the introductions by the musicians were clear and informative – also scholarly. I had no idea that Louis XIV has generated an enthusiasm for bagpipe music as part of his emphasis on pastoral idylls, that he played them himself, and that he generated a craze for them amongst the French aristocracy, for whom composers wrote bagpipe suites and sonatas

The concert lasted about 70 minutes. It was thoroughly worthwhile

HAYDN Op.33 no.4 in B flat major; DVOŘÁK Selection from Cypresses, B11; ELGAR Early quartet fragments; MENDELSSOHN Op.44 no.1 in D major –  Victoria String Quartet

I have now got my hearing fully restored. How nice to hear things properly….

As you can see this was at the Stoller Hall, part of Chetham’s Music School but having its own independent life as a concert venue as well. It seats about 500 people and has great acoustics, with a platform large enough to seat a chamber orchestra as well as not being too large for a solo performer. It was very far from full for this concert though – 100 people maybe at most

I felt the Quartet was a bit under-powered and not always fully together, even though the 2^nd violin is David Creed, otherwise leader of the Opera North Orchestra, currently immersed in Parsifal, as below. I felt the leader didn’t have enough attack in the faster movements and somehow felt quieter voiced than the other quartet members.

The Haydn was wonderfully quirky – the first movement martial-sounding but never obvious, and constantly twirling off in unexpected directions; the finale great fun, but suddenly veering into pizzicato near to the end and coming suddenly to a final halt. The Dvorak pieces on the other hand I found rather tedious. Why not have a Mozart or another Haydn quartet instead?

The Elgar fragments were – well – fragmented. The most substantial piece was the early (aged 21) Elgar piece played first, somehow immediately more engaging than the Dvorak songs but not really recognisably Elgar – Mendelssohn came to mind. The last two fragments though were mature Elgar and immediately recognisable – and indeed the last piece was an early version of the end of the scherzo and the first subject of the slow movement from the First Symphony. Interestingly, after proceeding more or less exactly like the symphony for most of its length, Elgar suddenly chosen a different rather trivial melody for the second subject of the slow movement; the fragment then comes to an abrupt end, as though Elgar recognised something more was needed

I thoroughly enjoyed the Mendelssohn – the quartet is in his ‘Italian Symphony’ mode. I’ve long been prejudiced against Mendelssohn – the Wagner-generated image of Mendelssohn as a “superficial” musician, and an emotional lightweight, took hold early on in my life and I’ve never really shaken it off. But this was well-crafted, enjoyable, foot-tappable music which I really found myself engaging with. I bought myself a recording of the 0p 44 quartets immediately!

Richard Farnes, CONDUCTOR; Sam Brown, DIRECTOR; Bengt Gomér, SET & LIGHTING DESIGNER; Stephen Rodwell COSTUME AND WIGS; Toby Spence, PARSIFAL; Katarina Karnéus, KUNDRY; Robert Hayward, AMFORTAS, Derek Welton, KLINGSOR; Brindley Sherratt, GURNEMANZ; Stephen Richardson, TITUREL. Opera North Chorus and Orchestra

This was for me a much looked-forward-to concert. The Bridgewater Hall was – as it should have been – full – though interestingly the gallery wasn’t opened up, which is more evidence maybe that this sort of music is getting a diminishing audience, at least in the UK regions (the only really buoyant place I’ve come across since the pandemic audience-wise is ROHCG). The unanswered question is whether this is because of the pandemic and people’s continuing reluctance to be in crowded places, or because people are dying off, because some have just lost the concert going habit over the last few years or because of the cost-of-living crisis, or some combination of some or all of these.

My ear problems notwithstanding, expectations were more than met by the reality of this concert. This was musically the best Parsifal I’ve heard since Elder’s at the Proms in 2013. Apart from a few rather underpowered bells, the orchestra sounded fabulous. Richard Farnes conducted a very effective account of the work that had both sensitivity – eg flexible tempi in Act 2 – to support the interaction of the singers and considerable power, as in the Act 3 transition music. Farnes seemed to have a clear and coherent strategy for dealing with the 4 hours of music that allowed its ebb and flow to be accommodated without falling into the inflexibility of a ‘slow’ or ‘fast’ approach – Knappertsbusch/Goodall or Boulez!  Some sections such as the Good Friday music started surprisingly fast, but then slowed down later on., other parts of Act 3 sounded remarkably slow, but it all seemed part of a well-considered whole. Dynamics were also wide – often the orchestra was damped down a bit to give space to the singers on stage, but when appropriate Farnes let them rip to impressive effect – again the transition music in Act3, and also of Act 1, and the end of Act2. If I had one criticism it would be that the ending was marginally too fast- but others might disagree, and it was still very moving! For the obsessives among us, I calculate that the overall performance time was about 4hrs 5 mins, very similar indeed to (4.04) Herman Levi, in Bayreuth in 1882, and a little faster than (4.10) Knappertsbusch, at Bayreuth in 1962 and (4.12) Furtwängler at Bayreuth 1936! It was interesting to read somewhere recently that Farnes was one of the short-listed candidates to replace Pappano at Covent Garden – wouldn’t that be a great idea!!

This was a concert performance but enriched by the recent experience of the same company’s performing the work on stage in Leeds. All of it was very fine but Act 2 was truly exceptional – probably the best I’ve ever seen – because of that stage experience, and the way Parsifal and Kundry related to one another on the concert stage.

There’s endless discussion about what Parsifal as an opera might mean, but to me the basic starting point has to be the Christian story, which is very heavily referenced throughout the work, even though the references are always to ‘Him’, ‘the Saviour’, and nowhere is the name of Jesus used. While Wagner clearly was not an orthodox Christian, there is evidence, as Prof Richard Bell wrote in the programme, that he took Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross extremely seriously, even if he was unconvinced by an overarching Father creator deity.  It is equally clear that simply referencing Buddhism or Schopenhauer is insufficient to explain what this opera is about – and, after all, ‘entering the kingdom of heaven like a little child’ isn’t so different from ” Durch mitleid wissend, der reiner tor”. To me, the issue is that the Grail Knights’ view of religion has ossified so that it has become entirely focused on ritual and the externals of religious observation. Their treatment of Kundry or indeed Amfortas scarcely shows compassion. They seem inward looking and concerned with their own spiritual lives – as in their Communion – to the neglect of the wider world. The distortions of Wagner’s Communion service compared to that of the worldwide church bears this out.

Wagner’s Communion

Standard Church communion text

Take of the bread, turn it confidently into bodily strength and power; true until death, steadfast in effort, to work the Saviour’s will!   Take the wine, turn it anew into the fiery blood of life.   Rejoicing in the unity of brotherly faith, let us fight with holy courage!

So, Father, we remember all that Jesus did, in him we plead with confidence his sacrifice made once for all upon the cross. Bringing before you the bread of life and the cup of salvation, we proclaim his death and resurrection until he comes in glory. …… Lord of all life, help us to work together for that day when your kingdom comes and justice and mercy will be seen in all the earth. Look with favour on your people, gather us in your loving arms and bring us with all the saints to feast at your table in heaven.

I think (hope) you can see that the Grail Knights’ version is distinctly more inward looking. And that is reflected in the perhaps slightly coarse triumphalist music they sing….It is only Parsifal who expresses compassion both for Amfortas and for Kundry. Gurnemanz doesn’t to the same extent. Amfortas’ suffering comes from ‘eros’, from the expression of sexual desire as ‘Will’ and the too easily egotistical activity of sex, as well as of course his actual wound, and Kundry also needs our compassion in the way her life has been cursed (though there’s a question about why Jesus might have wanted to curse her for laughing at him – sounds very un-Jesus like – maybe this is a self-imposed suffering in horror at what she has done?). Act 2 is about the difference between eros and agape – ‘sex and charity’, if you like. In ‘Tristan und Isolde’ Wagner creates a world where Eros is opposed to Thanatos, and where it is a positive thing. In Parsifal Eros is seen as wilful, too much ‘me, me, me’ and it is agape – compassion – that drives personal development, Parsifal breaks out into agape through rejecting Kundry’s kiss and then feels compassion for Amfortas.

It’s Act 3 where the ambiguities come – is Parsifal a new ‘Redeemer’ or pointing people to the existing ‘Saviour’, This is unclear and reflects Wagner’s own unorthodox beliefs – does he assume a succession of Christ-like figures, of whom Parsifal is one? The fact that at the end there is a dove – emblematic of the Holy Spirit – hovering overhead might indicate a new Saviour, following the Biblical annunciation of Jesus’s Messiah-ship in the presence of John The Baptist – and also the Mary Magdalene associations of Kundry might support this as well. On the other hand, what Parsifal says to Kundry in Act 3 is My first office I thus perform: Receive this baptism, and believe in the Redeemer!’ – suggests it’s the ‘existing’ Redeemer, Jesus, who is intended. I’m not sure – this is work in progress in my thinking about this great work. Within this context the much commented-on phrase “Erlosung  an dem Erloser” is not such a complicated concept in my view. If referring to Jesus, it is suggesting that Parsifal has purified the Grail Knights’ corrupt practices so that the Saviour can again be fully honoured through the right balance of ritual and compassion; if referring to Parsifal it suggests that he who has changed the lives of others has also had his own life changed irrevocably. How interesting that this term ‘Erlosung’ features throughout Wagner’s oeuvre, from Fliegende Hollander to Parsifal…..Roger Scruton’s take on Parsifal I have always found very helpful: “I suggest that we are redeemed when the taint of wrong relations is washed away, when we can rejoin the community, freely accepting and accepted, able to lead a new life without sin. To achieve this condition we depend on those who can heal our wounds, who can perform the priestly office of retrieving, from the dark places of humiliation, the precious part of ourselves that was then severed from us. The outgoing part of us, the will that seeks to imprint the trials and triumphs of individuality on the world, once ventured forth, only to fall into sin. Redemption does not consist……. in the renunciation of the will, but in the recuperation of the will from tainted relations, and its return to a life of agapē. This work of recuperation cannot be achieved alone. Agapē comes to us from others, and in particular from the great examples of compassion”

Anyway……one final set of comments  – about misogyny. While it is true that you can see all the female figures in the opera as in some way or other symbolically subordinate to the men, this is actually an observation about how the women are controlled by the men rather than a statement of how things SHOULD be, and it is heartbreaking when Kundry is released from that control – OK, by a man, but that raises much wider issues about a Saviour. Work in progress….

In terms of the performers, there were three stand-outs. For me an unexpected star was Kundry – I have never heard the role sung as well as it was by Katarina Karnéus. She had it all – some beautiful phrasing (in ‘Ich sah das Kind an seiner Mutter Brust’), the fire to deliver the ‘Lachte’ notes, and the acting ability to convey the agony she experiences. Brindley Sherratt was an ideal Gurnemaanz – beautiful voice, beautiful diction, imposing presence; this was world class. And Derek Welton’s Klingsor was pure malevolence – a bit over the top, maybe, but strongly sung (I remember him being excellent at Bayreuth in 2017). But Toby Spence as Parsifal and Robert Hayward were in their different ways almost their equal  -Spence had much more vocal strength and projection than I was expecting and conveyed very well the transition from Fool to ? Redeemer/signifier to Redeemer. His Act 2 duet with Karneus was memorable for its intensity. And Hayward was much better than I remember him being in the ON Ring – strong-voiced and Amfortas was well-characterised.

All in all – a great evening!!! And made more enjoyable by the presence of some other Manchester Wagner Society colleagues and an old friend and his partner

This is being broadcast sometime by the BBC – watch out for it!!

BRITTEN Peter Grimes: Four Sea Interludes, ADÈS Inferno Suite, WALTON Belshazzar’s Feast. The Hallé with Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus and Leeds Festival Chorus; Conductor Finnegan Downie Dear, Baritone, Benjamin Nelson

This sounded like a very good concert though my hearing is a bit all over the place till Tuesday afternoon (visit to clinic).

The City Hall copes very well with the bright sounds that these three pieces offer. The Halle sounded in great form and the jazzy inner voices of the Walton came out well. The Britten in particular sounded incisive, passionate and really well characterised, with the complex harmonies of the Sunday morning church scene particularly memorable

The Adès piece I had heard in full last October at Covent Garden and it was remarkable in these extracts from the Inferno section of the ballet how many of the themes and turns of phrase I remembered. It all sounded exceptionally well under the Halle’s playing and this deserves to be a modern classic. It was clearly appreciated by a Sheffield audience not necessarily prone to welcome the new with open arms. The one thing I did think is that maybe Adès needs to consider is how to end this ‘symphony’ of extracts. The penultimate movement is riotous – very accessible and great fun; it drew spirited applause. The final scene -the actual encounter with the devil, in its nullity and blankness – I remember it being very powerful in its listlessness and inertia, in the theatre – but in the concert hall it is too short and not sufficiently audience drawing. It led to confusion at the end as to whether the work was over. I was struck again by how balletic this music is and the obvious influence of the big Tchaikovsky ballets

The Walton I doubt if I’ve heard live since the 70s. I’ve always enjoyed listening to it in the Previn recording from that era, and even seem to remember either Walton conducting it or coming on stage after it in the late 60s at the Proms.

The baritone, Benjamin Nelson, was very good in projecting the drama, with very clear diction. The Halle wee admirably tight in all the jazzy rhythms, and the racket was indeed colossal in the closing bars! The combined Leeds and Sheffield choruses didn’t quite have the heft one might imagine from such a large group of singers but I have to say that they sounded very effective, with little in the way of flabby sound. I realised how tricky a lot of the harmonies are particularly for the women choristers – it can’t be easy to sing
I also thought their diction was very good. A danger with this work is that the conductor ets over excited and the music moves too fast to really be able to snap and crackle That didn’t happen, but there were some rather exaggerated rallentandos, I thought

The concert did give me though lots of gloomy thoughts on the future of concert going at least in Sheffield. The concert was one that before the pandemic would have had the hall comfortably full, if not packed out. This one 3 years on had swathes of empty seats on the stalls and the gallery was closed off – and this despite two hundred or so choristers with potentially relatives to cheer them on. Part of the problem is the size of the hall – 2200. Part of the problem may be continued nervousness about infection and the pandemic. But it may be that the audience is simply dying off and not being replaced and the other problem that Sheffield has is that it is simply a much smaller place than Manchester and doesn’t have the surrounding conurbations to attract in the way Manchester does. The latter seems to have been much better too at attracting a student audience which is clearly vital for the future. What’s needed really is a smaller building and maybe less ambitious programming – but then that risks a spiralling decline. Before the concert the new Sheffield International concert season was announced. It’s got some big names – Vengerov, Benedetti – but I doubt if it’s going to pack them in. This seems to be very much a regional problem not a London and SE problem, though it will be interesting to see how the Proms fare this year. Sheffield also suffers because unlike Liverpool Birmingham and Manchester it doesn’t have its own ‘ home’ orchestra with the particular loyalty that provokes
To be honest if this concert didn’t pull them in it’s hard to see what would. Too many concerts are recycling the same narrow band of works and despite the whole pandemic experience orchestral managers are just retreating to business as usual.

CAST: Bradley Daley SIEGFRIED; Adrian Dwyer MIME; Paul Carey Jones THE WANDERER; Mark Stone ALBERICH; Simon Wilding FAFNER; Julieth Lozano WALDVOGEL; Mae Heydorn ERDA; Lee Bisset BRÜNNHILDE; CONDUCTOR Anthony Negus; DIRECTOR Amy Lane; SET AND PROPS DESIGNER Rhiannon Newman Brown; LIGHTING DESIGNER Charlie Morgan Jones; COSTUME DESIGNER Emma Ryott

What is it with Wagner and chicken barns?  Other members of the Manchester Wagner Society have long enthused to me about Wagner at the Longborough Festival opera house, and finally this year, with the resumption of full stagings after the pandemic, I decided to give it a go, choosing the Jubilee weekend as an appropriate time to not be in my home village, rightly or wrongly.

I guess part of a true mythic quest involves difficulty and inaccessibility – and indeed Bayreuth in 1876 was a pretty out of the way place – so, being car-less for the weekend I anticipated some difficulties. And difficulties there were – I had blithely booked accommodation at the Fire Services College in Moreton-in-Marsh, without looking too closely at the distances involved. There were no taxis available for the entire weekend in the Cotswolds – they all seemed to be employed in carrying wealthy Cotswolds dwellers to and from Heathrow – so I had to walk one hour 40 minutes to and from Longborough back to Moreton-in-Marsh, in miserable wet weather, the journey back being partly in the dark and a bit scary on the main road, even with a high vis jacket. Difficulties also manifested themselves with the weather at the opera house. The Manchester Wagner Soc people I had agreed to meet had very kindly set up a hamper of food and a gazebo in the grounds. It was very cold…. we had some super meals but dismantling the gazebo and getting drenched in the process before Act 3 of Siegfried took the principle of arduous quest to a new level of extremity. Added to which, my ears were full of olive oil (I’ll not go into the gory details) so my hearing wasn’t always 100%. Thus….lots of trials and tribulations….

So was it all worth it? The short answer is ‘yes’, though with a qualification I’ll mention at the end.  The opera house really did start life as a chicken barn, though now extended and with a range of trailers at the back for artists. It seats 500, the orchestra is mostly located under the stage, there are no flies, no real stage machinery and the stage is small. What makes it special is the proximity (unless you’re sitting in very expensive stalls seats at ROHCG or ENO) of audience to singers and the very special sense of engagement which that creates. It is a very bonkers project indeed to stage Wagner in this set-up and charge high prices but somehow the price seems justified.

In terms of this performance there were mostly pluses and a few minor minuses. The huge major plus was Anthony Negus’ conducting and the orchestra. What was notable about Negus’ conducting was the way everything felt ‘right’ in the flow of the music and in the speed relationships of different scenes. In particular the way the 3rd Act was paced felt instinctively right – enough slowness to appreciate the majesty of the music in the Wotan /Erda scene, enough speed to ensure that the Wotan / Siegfried scene didn’t drag  and enough flexibility to encompass both the stillness and wonder of the mountain surrounded by fire and the passion of Siegfried and Brunnhilde. The orchestra in a reduced orchestration (60 rather than 100+) sounded very fine, with some beautiful woodwind and horn playing. The orchestra pit, recessed, as I say, underneath the stage  doesn’t, unlike Bayreuth, have a cowl pushing the sound to the back of the stage before coming into the auditorium with a wonderfully melded feel – this seems to create problems of balance sometimes which are nothing to do with Negus but simply emerge from where particular groups of instruments are sited ( thus some of the climaxes are less overwhelming than they night otherwise be -on the other hand this might just be my olive-oil drenched ears).

The most effective part of the physical staging were the extensive range of video images projected onto the back screen of the set – there were bears, forests, streams, abstract images, sunrises – too many to name all of them. They always enhanced the action on stage, never detracted from it and I am surprised they are not used more often in Wagner productions, given the difficulties of Wagner’s stage directions. The basic set was a series of platforms that looked a bit ramshackle and further constricted a small stage. The problems of this approach were most apparent in the final duet, where Siegfried and Brunnhilde had to declaim to each other stuck on opposite platforms and then totter down steps to perform the final clinch. For the most part though this wasn’t so much of a problem, and of course Mime’s cave should feel constricted and cluttered. There were a few oddities of staging – it wasn’t clear whether there was any deep meaning in Wotan’s bringing Brunnhilde on stage to lie asleep on the rock or whether, given the lack of machinery, this was the only way to get her on stage. Less controversial was Fafner being a top-hatted Victorian Scrooge like figure on crutches – slightly au Chereau. The Woodbird was a very visible figure on stage – human, again, perhaps a little Victorian (possibly a virtuous clerk) – writing in a book and referring to it (maybe the book of nature). It wasn’t clear what her relationship with Wotan was – if the latter was in anyway ‘controlling’ her that would seem to be against the whole concept of the Wanderer’s renunciation of his god-hood. Anyway, it’s a clever idea and fully justified by Wagner’s text.

The best singer and performer was Paul Carey-Jones as Wotan. He’s not got a big voice – I wonder how he would fare in a bigger theatre in this role – and not as dark or as deep as maybe an ideal Wotan should sound. But he sang beautifully and characterfully – good word pointing and sensitive phrasing. Adrian Dwyer’s Mime was also excellent, in its way, but this was quite a quirky reading of the role – not the usual caricature evil dwarf but a tallish languid urban bachelor, maybe slightly hipsterish, in his 40s, amiable on the surface but deeply malevolent underneath. This seems to be not quite what Wagner intended, but in its own terms it was well done. Lee Bisset was one of the most believable and striking Brunnhildes I’ve seen and in her middle and lower ranges her voice was beautiful.  However her high extended notes had a heavy vibrato, and she emitted a graceless  squawk of a top C at the end (on the other hand at least she tried, unlike the one in the LPO performance just before lockdown)

Bradley Daley as Siegfried had of course a thankless task in the role, as every performer taking on ‘Siegfried ‘ does. He didn’t look stupidly old in the role; he was unfailing in vocal and physical energy and sounded much the same at the end of the evening as he did at the beginning. This is all one can reasonably ask any Siegfried to offer. He had a voice that offered not much variation but he did hit the high notes with ease, and he was at times sensitive in the lyrical passages. He made a decent shot of acting the impetuous teenager. All in all, his contribution was significant and appreciated.

There was a rather wobbly Erda, an excellent bright voiced Woodbird, and a resonant Alberich, looking very much like Wotan – the director clearly playing on the licht-Alberich, schwarz-Alberich comparisons in the text.

In short this was a story telling Ring approach and very successful on its own terms.

Would I go again? Yes in both senses – I am going to Die Tote Stadt in two weeks time and I will certainly make plans to go to Gotterdammerung next year. Would I go to a full Ring cycle in 24 or 25. Hmmmm – a week in the Cotswolds tramping backwards and forwards from Moreton or Stow on the Wold might be a bit much……