Kahchun Wong conductor, Mariam Batsashvili piano: Ifukube Japanese Suite for Orchestra; Liszt Piano Concerto No.1; Brahms Symphony No.1 This was another very exciting and impressive concert from Kachun Wong and the Halle. The first three concerts I have heard him conducting this season were Mahler/Bruckner-based and I wondered how he would get on with more traditional classical fare like Brahms . Very well indeed is the answer – see below. The logic of putting these works together in the same programme was a bit hard to follow – the Halle announced it as a programme of 1sts. But , anyway, it is clear from some of Mr Wong’s programming this season that he is keen to promote East Asian composers, which is fair enough and very welcome. The Japanese composer Ifukube was featured this evening – apparently he’s written over 300 film scores. I had assumed something vaguely modernist but in fact this was very straightforward – broad dance-like music with strong drumming rhythms, and it fascinatingly both clearly derived from Japanese folk music yet did not in any way feel self-consciously orientalist. There was some extremely good flute playing and some wonderfully raspy brass. Miriam Batsashvilli came on in jacket and trousers looking startlingly like a black-haired female version of Liszt (she has a similar profile). I have grumbled in the past in this blog about the meretricious Liszt concerto but this time I found myself just sitting back and enjoying it, going with the flow. Ms. Batsashvilli sounded a very impressive pianist, though she didn’t remove memories of Yuja Wang at the Proms 3 years ago performing this piece. She did a nice encore in the style of Offenbach, which was good fun. The performance of the Brahms 1 was very impressive. I have not heard a better live one in a long time. It was serious, solid and sensitive, and it didn’t rely on flashy dynamism but seemed to grow organically. The disposition of the orchestra was interesting – split violins, 8 double basses at the back, 5 horns, and timpani to the side at a lower level. This created a rich deep sound – chords emerged from a deep bass. The first movement was taken relatively slowly so that the dotted note rhythms and angular punchy phrases made their full impact. The build up to the recapitulation in the first movement was tremendous in its power. The second movement was relatively fast and light but still very touching – the woodwind excelling themselves here and in the 3rd movement. The last movement was excellent – wonderful horn playing in their big tune, and a hugely impressive slow rendition of the big chorale tune at the end. There were many memorable moments in this movement – I particularly recall the moment towards the end when the horns play their big tune for the last time, where the music dies down slowly and movingly, which was very beautifully and lingeringly played, and the moment about 2 minutes further on when the orchestra slowly but inexorably picks up speed at the start of the coda, which was very exciting indeed. Throughout the Halle sounded wonderful. I really do think the Halle has made an excellent choice in Mr Wong – I hope he stays………….
Conductor, Sir Donald Runnicles; Production, Tobias Kratzer; Stage, Costumes, Rainer Sellmaier; Lighting, Stefan Woinke; Court Kapellmeister Robert Storch, Philipp Jekal; Christine, his wife, Maria Bengtsson; Franzl, her little son, Elliott Woodruff; Anna, the chambermaid, Anna Schoeck; Baron Lummer, Thomas Blondelle; Kapellmeister Stroh, Clemens Bieber; Notary, Markus Brück; Notary’s wife, Nadine Secunde
I had a major panic about this performance the previous evening. I am becoming careless in my old age….. My ticket for Intermezzo I’d printed out on the other side of the one for Arabella – looking casually at the Intermezzo side I suddenly realised that I had booked for the performance 3 nights earlier, the day I went to the Berlin Phil concert. Somehow I had got the dates muddled up in my planning from about 6 months ago. I rushed to the box office, where I found that the Sunday performance had tickets available, that it started at 5pm (much more convenient, given I was getting an overnight train back to London ) and that this was a special ‘World Seniors Day – or something like that – which meant I was able to get a Euros 90 ticket for Euros 29! I have never heard a note of this music before – I have not even got a recording of it. You have to wonder what sort of a compulsion there was in Strauss’ mind to want to write Intermezzo. It was obviously about him and his wife and would raise eyes brows on anyone coming across it in his legacy. His usual collaborator at the period it was written in the 1920s, Hofmannsthal, refused to touch it with a barge pole, and it must have caused many rows with Pauline. In addition, its story would seem to be ephemeral, and unlikely to be of interest after Strauss’ death. Yet somehow this slight comedy about the composer Storch and his difficult wife Christine, got written and perhaps surprisingly has remained part of the standard operatic repertory on stage ever since – even in the UK, Scottish Opera performed it in 2011 and one of the country house opera festivals – maybe Garsington – more recently. But it does seem to me to need special treatment – it doesn’t have the big moments, the melodic richness or the depths of Arabella, Ariadne etc, and it is quite a long piece for its content – with just one interval the evening still lasted over 3 hours. It must also be quite difficult to stage – lots of short scenes (maybe shades of the new art of the cinema here) and lots of musical interludes – in fact Strauss called it a comedy with musical interludes So it needs a special production and at least one special singer to make it all work and feel worthwhile, and it got both in this production. Kratzer threw the works at it – he must have had a budget Covent Garden can only dream of – and he achieved sustained audience engagement, with frequent laughter. As far as I could see he was using the following tools in doing this:
a contemporary setting; no messing about with 20s costumes and Weimar Republic references
substantial use of video. As with his Arabella production, videos were shown with details of what was happening on stage at times. Video was also used for phone calls with people off stage – Storch in his car driving to the airport, Christine calling the Notary’s wife for the Baron to find accommodation for him. Cleverly. given Strauss’ emphasis on them, all the orchestral interludes were shown on a drop-down video screen (this also helped with quick changes of scenery, and obviously fits in with thr whole concept of the opera). There were variations here – once Storch was shown conducting the orchestra rather than Runnicles, aping his conducting mannerisms, and there was also, when Christine and Robert’s relationship was at its stormiest, a video of orchestral parts flying through the air. In addition, a 50s – maybe earlier- film of extracts from Der Rosenkavalier was shown when Christine is packing her bags to leave.
surprise props and settings – there’s a big taxi on stage at the beginning of the work, there’s an SUV and a small car shown on stage after colliding, and a very funny scene on an aircraft
other gags, most of which I’m beginning to forget. One nice touch is that the other conductor whose nearness of name to Storch causes almost the trouble -Stroh – is made to look astonishingly like Runnicles…..
some liberties with the text – e.g. Christine in this production very definitely has a full-on affair with the Baron The energy of the production was prodigious, and that same wave of energy affected the cast, all of whom dashed around the stage when required, particularly of course Robert and Christine. Philip Jekal was a new name to me but he had a strong warm voice. Thomas Blondelle, who only 2 nights earlier had sung Herod in Salome, portrayed the Baron as a offhand slightly cynical baseball-capped twenty-something lounging around the composer’s house and this was done brilliantly. But the opera stands or falls by the person singing and acting Christine, and Maria Bengtsson was astonishing – a beautiful silvery voice, absolutely a Strauss soprano sound, with some beautiful phrasing and a real luxuriating in the sound of the voice she had at her disposal. But she’s an amazing actor as well and rushed around the stage flirting, screaming, scheming, being tender/flippant, contradictory and quirky in just the way Strauss would have experienced Pauline. Sitting a few rows back from where I was for the other operas (Row 18), the orchestral sound was full and warm – Runnicles was clearly enjoying himself…… I am not sure I would be rushing to see another production of Intermezzo – this production probably made the very best case for it ever and I am very pleased I saw it. Kratzer has also directed Die Frau ohne Schatten recently for Deutsche Oper….now that really would be worth looking out for….. And there’s his Ring of course developing in Munich….
Conductor, Sir Donald Runnicles; director, Tobias Kratzer; stage design and costumes, Rainer Sellmaier; lighting designer, Stefan Woinke; Graf Waldner, Albert Pesendorfer; Adelaide, Doris Soffel; Arabella, Jennifer Davis; Zdenka, Heidi Stober; Mandryka, Thomas Johannes Mayer; Matteo, Daniel O’Hearn; Graf Elemer, Thomas Cilluffo; Graf Dominik, Kyle Miller; Graf Lamoral; Gerard Farreras; Fiakermilli, Hye-Young Moon
I was surprised to learn from the programme that the first performance in Dresden of Arabella was as late as 1 July 1933.I had assumed it was a work of the 1920’s. The one ROHCG performance I can definitely recall hearing live was in 1973,with Silvio Varviso conducting and Arabella sung by Heather Harper, Zdenka by Elizabeth Robson. Matteo was Robert Tear and Mandryka was sung by someone called Raymond Wolansky. I may have gone also to a performance which featured Kiri Te Kanawa as Arabella, conducted by someone called Wolfgang Rennert a year or so later.
I have a wonderful recording of the work – a live performance from Munich, conducted by Keilberth, with Della Casa and Fischer-Dieskau – but have never ever really sat down to listen to it. I was staggered by the beauty of the work and wondered how I had not listened to it more over the years, Anyway, this was the first live performance I had been to for nearly 50 years…..and it was very memorable indeed. This was a quite magical production that – and I have to say straightaway that I have no clear idea of how Kratzer did it (he of the Bayreuth Tannhauser and ROHCG Fidelio) – by the end it seemed to have the humanity, the wisdom, of the great Shakespearean comedies – and that is not what you’d normally expect from a bourgeois comedy set in 1860’s Vienna. Kratzer directed Act 1 as he did Fidelio, in hyper-realistic mode. The exact look of a mid 19th century hotel was captured and I am sure immense research was done to get the clothes and fittings absolutely right. The stage was split into two, sometimes showing the family room on one side and on the other the hotel lobby. However occasionally a screen came down on one side and two video camera assistants filmed aspects of what was going on stage, hugely magnified onto the screens. For me the impact was to enhance the artificiality of this dressing up, which everyone understood was happening on stage and in a way that kept us to some extent at a distance from the characters’ emotions and feelings. Act 2 had the Brechtian trick of having the curtain open when we all filed back after the first interval, again enhancing artificiality. The Act 2 set was a large corridor with doors leading into a dance space where the ball was taking place, and it was in this act that remarkable things started to happen. As Fiakermilli started singing in the midst of the ball, everyone was suddenly in 1930’s costumes (oh no, I thought – I know what’s coming, and they did – Nazi stormtroopers cleared the rabble, but did not make a re-appearance, though given the timing of the premiere, you could easily make a case for the insensitivity of Strauss and Hoffmansthal presenting such a work at that moment in history). However within another 10 minutes or so everyone was in modern costume and stayed that way until the end of the work. The third act was simply a black box, as in the photos below. There were though videos in huge detail on a large screen centre stage – one was of Zdenka in bed with Matteo, filmed in graphic detail (whether via AI or whatever) and another of a 19th century-style duel with pistols between Matteo and Mandryka, with Zdenka running to throw herself in between the two. All the videos were in black and white incidentally. This has had the effect of enhancing the reality of what was happening on stage – which was that individuals, dressed in modern clothes (though designer-led in black and white) were singing about commitment, love and forgiveness in an entirely natural and very moving way, speaking/singing as it were for all of us. All the trappings of opera and dressing up seemed to have fallen away, and left us with something very simple but deep.
I enjoyed this hugely. Musically, too, it was very good indeed, and there were no weak links. Heidi Stober (who only a few weeks ago was at the Coliseum singing the role of Mary in the resurrected Thea Musgrave opera) was outstanding as Zdenka, hugely energetic, singing passionately and powerfully. Albert Pesendorfer (another Bayreuth regular) was a sonorous Graf Waldner, while Doris Soffel (now 77, unbelievable) was a very amusing powerfully voiced Adelaide, whose amorous exploits Kratzer has a lot of fun with). Thomas J. Mayer was an ideal Mandryka – dark-voiced, lively, passionate, good looking; very much the wild man of the woods. Matteo was sung well but looked very dumpy – this might have been deliberate on Kratzer’s part for reasons I can’t quite fathom. Jennifer Davis has a huge role to sing as Arabella and she sung it very well indeed – maybe perhaps without the shadings and creamy tones of a Schwarzkopf or a Janowitz, but by the middle of Act 2 one wasn’t really thinking in canary-fancying terms – she just had become Arabella, and was a wonderfully natural presence on stage. She seems to have gone from strength to strength in the years since I first saw her in ROHCG in 2019(?). I’ve never heard Donald Runnicles conduct anything before and this must be one of his last performances as music director of the Deutsche Oper. It was a beautifully played and paced performance, orchestrally – I had the feeling conducted quite slowly (it ended half an hour later than the scheduled time) but nothing seemed to drag.
I can’t wait for Kratzer’s take on Intermezzo tomorrow
Conductor, Keri-Lynn Wilson; director, Claus Guth; stage design and costumes, Muriel Gerstner; lighting designer, Olaf Freese. Herodes, Thomas Blondelle; Herodias, Evelyn Herlitzius; Salome, Olesya Golovneva; Jochanaan, Jordan Shanahan; Narraboth, Kieran Carrel
I was thinking before the show – should I have explored what else was on in Berlin in the evening? Did I want to see another Salome, after the excellent Lise Davidsen performance last year in Paris? The answer in the event was that I thoroughly enjoyed this performance, particularly musically, though Claus Guth’s production was a bit gnomic, to say the least…..
I think part of the reason for my enjoyment is the concision of Salome, before Hoffmansthal got hold of Strauss (that’s not an original thought – it comes from George Harewood years ago) for it rarely meanders, and the drama keeps being piled on. Another reason is that the surtitles were much easier to read than in Paris, though in Berlin Joakanaan seemed much more versed in the King James Bible. And it is a wonderful sound picture that Strauss consistently delivers, full of colour and strange luscious sounds, but only rarely orientalist .
Claus Guth’s production dates from 2016. Other shows of his I’ve seen, like the ROHCG Jenufa, have been fairly straightforward, if always imaginative, but this was something else……The basic design concept was of some sort of upmarket (mainly men’s) tailoring shop. There are rows of jackets with price tags in the upper platform of the stage, and some sort of counter selling accessories. Downstairs there are dressing rooms and some sofas and armchairs for people to relax into. There are many tailors’ dummies on the stage, often indistinguishable from real people. Herod and Herodias look and dress like comfortable upper-end business proprietors. Salome, mostly, has an Alice in Wonderland look, with an Alice head band (after the scene with Jokanaan) and longish dress. As far as I could make out, what seems to be happening is that Salome has suffered some sort of trauma, probably sexual abuse at the hand of Herod (and after all there are certainly allusions in the text to Herod lusting after his step-daughter). All the people around her are, as it were, just automatons, puppets whose movements and thoughts run along strictly limited lines – in fact at times all of Herod’s ‘court’ (or business associates) stagger jerkily around the stage with puppet-like or robotic movements. They can put on and take off emotions and beliefs like clothes, and are in effect like tailors’ dummies. There are are those who are manipulated and those few, like Herod and Herodias, who manipulate. Salome and (possibly?) Jokanaan alone do not behave in this way but are striving to be more human. Possibly…….One thing that does very affectingly express some of the creepiness of Herod is that there are in fact 6-7 Salome’s who join her at points in the action and run around the stage supporting her. They also feature in the way the Dance of the Seven Veils is presented – several of the little Salomes (they are all carefully graded in size) are accompanied by black masked puppeteers, who support them in their jerky puppet-like movements, and the real Salome too is captured and presented in this way – there seems to a clear link in the way Herod here behaves with sexual abuse. The head of Jokanaan is a tailor’s dummy head, ripped off by Salome.
All this is very well, but it does not entirely explain:
anything about what Jokanaan is about. Although he appears out of the ground almost naked at first, he soon somehow (I think my eyes were on the surtitles at the crucial moment) sprouts a suit and looks very similar to Herod. Is he in fact, in the way he suddenly pops up in the middle of a scene without your really noticing, a figment of Salome’s imagination. Certainly he doesn’t seem to get killed at the end (nor does Salome, who just walks away). Or has he too become a stuffed tailor’s dummy
why Salome is so obsessed with kissing the mouth of the tailor’s dummy
So all in all I wasn’t totally convinced, and I thought overall the Paris production was more convincing and better aligned what was happening on stage with words and music.
Olesya Golovneva is a new name on me, though she obviously from her website is having a very solid career in Germany, mainly in lyrical roles – Bellini, Donizetti and Verdi. She’s certainly not a big Wagner-type voice but she rode the orchestra well at critical moments, and you felt she was singing her heart out. Though not as beautifully or as subtly as Davidsen, she also phrased some of the lyrical moments of her role, and was a much better actor. Thomas Blondelle is another name I’ve not come across before but I found him to be very impressive as Herod – one of the best I’ve see, Evelyn Herlitzius – last heard by me as the Nurse in the Dresden Frau ohne Schatten – was superb as Herodias, and Jordan Shanahan (whom I heard in Bayreuth as Klingsor last summer) was a fine Jokanaan (with a lighter voice than some). The orchestra sounded very fine from where I was sitting – row 13 in the stalls – and Keri-Lynn Wilson as far as I could tell was doing a fine job in keeping the music from being overly-dense, and not getting over-heated too early on (I mean a good sense of structure)
Berliner Philharmoniker: Jakub Hrůša, conductor, Seong-Jin Cho, piano. Janáček: Fate, Suite; Beethoven: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 5 in E flat major op. 73; Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra Sz 116
This was my first visit to the Philharmoniie in Berlin, and it’s as spectacular and impressive a building as everyone has always told me it is – imposing, even beautiful, externally, and the different geometric shapes of the interior constantly surprise and delight you. Acoustically it’s magnificent, offering both clarity and warmth, a bright sound but not overbearing.
For me (although a lot of the pianist’s fans would disagree – they were there in large numbers) the undoubted highlight of the evening was the Bartok. If you have the world’s super-orchestra before you in a concert hall, the best on the planet, what better piece to hear them in than the Concerto, which is precisely designed to show off a virtuoso orchestra. This account just put every other performance I have ever heard of this work into the shade. Whether it was the whispering strings of the first movement, the togetherness and blaze of the brass in the last, the outstanding woodwind in the second and third movement, everything was just extraordinarily well-characterised. Hrusa helped too – as was the case with Jenufa at ROHCG recently, he has a natural feel for the music of central and eastern Europe and can really energise it and give the orchestra an urgent sense of propulsive rhythm. The piece is quirky, constantly going off in different directions and in less inspired hands can get a bit irritating. Here, I just felt I was being taken on a wonderful journey and enjoyed every moment as it passed by, without fussing too much about where it was all heading – I was totally absorbed.
The Janacek piece – an orchestral suite from the opera Osud, is a pot pourri of music from the opera, not necessarily in narrative order. I have heard the work (I think) but can’t remember anything about it. On the plus side, there are great melodies in it and the Czech conductor who put the suite together in the 50’s(astonishingly the work was not heard in its entirety until 1958, despite being composed 50 years earlier) builds up tension and excitement in the extracts chosen. The problem is that there are so many highlights involving tension and excitement that the work rather exhausts itself and ends abruptly, something not even Hrusa’s energetic conducting and this amazing orchestra could disguise.
I may well have been in a minority of one in the audience, but I have to say I didn’t really enjoy the Beethoven. There were several reasons for this. One was that in this hall with such lively sound, a super-orchestra like the Berlin Phil sounded quite aggressive in Beethoven, given the resources deployed – just too big, too loud and Hrusa’s energetic approach simply compounded the problem. Perhaps it is a consequence of age, but I want a performance of Beethoven which allows one to, as it were, reflect on the spaces between the notes, to have a sense that every phrase is precious and needs to be meditated upon. That may be asking for more than is realistic but I felt the soloist rushed too much in the opening and in much of the first movement. The second was also comparatively quick. The third movement was perhaps the best for all concerned and there were some lovely moments there. The sound the pianist produces is limpid and clear but sounds more suited to Chopin than Beethoven. I felt this was a less successful performance of ‘the Emperor’ than the one I heard at the Proms by the pianist’s compatriot, Yunchan Lim. Seong-Jin Cho inevitably played an encore, which I couldn’t quite place – maybe French, maybe Russian – which was worlds away from Beethoven in its driven mechanistic sounds (though maybe not worlds away from THIS Beethoven……)
Budapest Festival Orchestra, Iván Fischer conductor; Igor Levit piano. Prokofiev: Overture on Hebrew Themes arr. for orchestra, Op.34a; Piano Concerto No.2; Prokofiev: Selection from Cinderella Suites
This was a concert I probably wouldn’t have gone to had I not been in London for the evening, prior to getting an early Eurostar train to, ultimately, Berlin [not even with one of Europe’s finest orchestras and an estimable conductor and soloist]. After a mad scramble to work out what to do following the discovery that King’s Cross Underground was closed off, I got to the concert with a few minutes to spare.
Prokofiev I always feel a little unenthusiastic about, somehow – I remember Norman Lebrecht describing a late-night argument with Gergiev about whether or not Shostakovich or Prokofiev was the finer composer. Gergiev argued passionately for Prokofiev – but I’m afraid I just can’t see it….somehow Shostakovich touches the heart again and again in a way Prokofiev just doesn’t.
The Overture on Hebrew Themes was originally scored for a chamber group and even when orchestrated uses a fairly small orchestra. It uses klezmer style music and has an important part for a solo clarinet, who here was foregrounded like a soloist. It was fun, but slight.
The piano concerto I thought I didn’t know at all – though in fact the memorable first melody I’ve definitely heard before. There’s a great deal of sound and fury and I wasn’t really sure where it was all going – this includes a massive piano cadenza which seemed to last half the first movement, Levitt raging up and down the keyboard…..the last movement had a folky tune – maybe connected with the first movement’s opening – which was appealingly simple after all the noise, and as a whole the last movement is perhaps a more traditional ‘piano concerto’ sound. But all in all this work and its emotional trajectory was opaque to me, though it’s clear the demands on the soloist are prodigious, and Levit was more than fully up to them. As an encore Levit played a piece of Schumann – perhaps from Kinderszenen – which was refreshingly spare and quiet after its predecessor, though some RFH overhead speakers gave some odd blurts of feedback at intervals.
Cinderella I know better, and I once heard a very memorable performance of the complete ballet by Gergiev and the LSO at the Proms. The lovely thing here was Fischer narrating the links between the 10 extracts played in splendidly accented avuncular English. There were some famous moments – the knitting stepsisters, the big waltz of the Prince and Cinderella, the moment when the clocks strike 12 and the final apotheosis – among the pieces chosen but also some less we’ll known ones (and sometimes mildly tedious). It didn’t seem the best selection from the work, on the whole.
Prokofiev wouldn’t, one might have thought, play to this orchestra’s considerable strengths – the big waltz in Cinderella for Prince and Cinderella was about the sole piece in which their gloriously rich string sound was displayed. But throughout I was impressed by the balance and precision of the playing – some incredibly clear and delicate flute playing, for instance, and I was particularly impressed by the sonority of the brass (some wonderful rasping sounds). The encore was the Gavotte from the Classical Symphony, which again highlighted the richness and warmth of the strings.
Although there have been lots of grumbles about the RFH’s acoustics, sitting in the balcony I thought – how much better than the Barbican….. The hall was maybe 70% full – surprisingly small given the eminence of the performers.
This was a short concert which was part of a whole set of concerts and symposia on Shostakovich’s chamber music over the weekend in Sheffield – sadly this was the only event I could actually make…..My knowledge of which Shostakovich Quartet is which is sometimes a bit vague – the only one I know as a number that I can immediately remember themes and movements from is no 8. Otherwise sometimes I recognise them and sometimes I don’t. As soon as no 10 began, I realised I had heard it several times before. It has a melancholy ruminating first movement, a ferocious scherzo, a most beautiful slow movement, and a final movement, which is based on an Armenian lively folk song that can appear both jolly and sinister, relaxed and militarised, and which draws to a ghostly end, repeating themes from the first and slow movements. It’s a product of the 1960s, not a happy time for Shostakovich, who was in declining health, not helped by excessive consumption of cigarettes and vodka. Ensemble 360 played it magnificently, really digging in to the strings in the scherzo and with a lovely warm tone in the slow movement.
No 12 I am not sure I have ever consciously sat down and listened to before, so I’m more impressionistic in my comments here. I liked the first movement, which seemed to move forward in long melancholy waves, surging and withdrawing. and apparently based on an atonal theme that sort of resolves itself at the end of its twelve notes.. the fast second movement was spikier and tougher, also more difficult to keep track of, than the 10th equivalent. There was an extraordinarily violent solo violin pizzicato passage towards the end. The final section like the 10th is bitter-sweet and insouciant,
I think these are the most impressive performances I’ve heard from the string quartet part of Ensemble 360 -I wish I could have heard more of the weekend……….
A photo below of Shostakovich partying in happier times….
Norn 1: Ingeborg Børch; Norn 2: Mae Heydorn; Norn 3: Jillian Finnamore; Siegfried: Peter Furlong; Brünnhilde: Catharine Woodward; Hagen: Simon Wilding; Gunther: Andrew Mayor; Gutrune: Justine Viani; Alberich: Oliver Gibbs; Woglinde: Jillian Finnamore; Wellgunde: Elizabeth Findon; Flosshilde: Mae Heydorn; Waltraute: Catherine Backhouse; Ben Woodward: Music Director and Conductor; Caroline Staunton: Director; CJ Heaver: Producer
Three days of sitting in close proximity to a lot of people snuffling and sneezing has produced the inevitable consequence of my beginning to do the same. Despite not feeling at my best I travelled down to London for this with high expectations – which were in very large part met. In fact I totally forgot about my cold for five and a half hours, and indeed the time spent in York Hall felt nothing like that long, so absorbing was the action.
The Prelude and the first scene of Act 1 both take place within the same curtained space as the last scene of ‘Siegfried’. The Norns are appropriately black-costumed and mysterious, Mae Haydorn a particularly rich-voiced and impressive 2nd Norn (and Rhinemaiden). After the Dawn Music, Brunnhilde was still in her brilliant white bridal dress that she had worn at the end of Siegfried (though it was not the dress she went to sleep in at the end of Walkuere – oh well, that may be asking too much), which she wears throughout Gotterdammerung, while Siegfried was out of his straitjacket and into a normal white T shirt. The curtained space seems to indicate possibly a place of safety, possibly a place of imprisonment or stagnation – it’s not clear. Siegfried seemed to have another psychotic episode immediately after saying goodbye to Brunnhilde, and arrives at the Gibichung Hall in hoodie and the ‘Slayer’ T shirt he wore in Siegfried. He seems in moody adolescent form. The Gibichung Hall has a ‘curated’ exhibition of Walsung artefacts – the dummy Sieglinde caressed in Walkuere, the fire extinguisher Hunding kills Siegmund with, and Mime’s pots and pans. At a slightly later point Gutrune wears the same dress as Sieglinde of blue-ish grey colour. Siegfried scarcely needs a potion to fall for Gutrune (oddly one is prepared but never swallowed, as, in reverse, is also the case in Act 3), again suggesting his sense of disturbance. Gutrune is much feistier than is normally the case, pushing both her brother and Siegfried around physically at points. The Waltraute scene was very effective – Waltraute in the same costume she wore in Walkuere, and Brunnhilde caressing Siegfried’s strait-jacket at the beginning, with flickering lighting when she arrives. The sometimes either confusing or embarrassing scene with Gunther/Siegfried and Brunnhilde was very well handled. Various masked black clad threatening figures appeared (making use of the choristers I think), one of whom was Gunther, while Siegfried sung his lines from the wings.
In Act 2, there’s a novel ending to the Alberich/Hagen scene opening the Act, where Hagen actually kills his father (with the fire extinguisher). The Vassals scene is excitingly staged – it seems quite a relief to suddenly have all these extra people on the stage, and in this case they turn up in silly party hats and blowing whistles. The tensions between Gutrune, Gunther, Siegfried, Brunnhilde and Hagen are well-managed and never at all feel ‘operatic’ (Shaw’s big criticism of this work). There’s a striking twist at the end of the Act where Hagen and Brunnhilde seem to develop a thing for each other and grope passionately – exciting theatre, though I am not wholly sure what the point of it was, except to emphasise Brunnhilde’s passionate nature, and her contempt for Gunther.
Somehow in this production, and I am not quite sure how this was done, the Rhinemaidens in Act 3 seemed to have greater seriousness and prominence than in many productions I’ve seen – the encounter with Siegfried assumed its proper apocalyptic significance. The Rhinemaidens brought Siegfried’s teddy bear along as a sweetener (though there is in fact a reference in the text to the animal he was hunting). As elsewhere in this production, if a spear was mentioned in the text, there was a spear on stage, in this case hanging down from the ceiling ready for Hagen to grab to kill Siegfried. Gutrune, again, seemed a much gutsier figure than normal in her recriminations against Hagen. I guess it was in the last half hour or so that some of the limitations of this very special production were particularly apparent – the volume in Funeral March, particularly from the lone trumpet who was clearly getting tired, was just not enough, and at the end, although there was smoke and red flames, there was little of lighting that showed the green or blue of the enveloping Rhine, or the birth of a new world. There was a surprisingly comic moment when Hagen comes on at the end – like a pantomime villain, he is shoved by the Rhinemaidens (who also quite rightly appear to take possession of the Ring) into a pit on stage.
The audience for this was subtly different to other nights – more people coming who were new to this particular set of performances and were at Gotterdammerung because it was a new production. I saw Anthony Negus and his wife Carmen Jakobi in the bar during the interval, and it would be interesting to get their take on some of the singers new to them appearing this evening – maybe and hopefully some could be used for the Grange Park Ring Negus is conducting from 2026 – 2029……The singing and acting of the main characters were without exception excellent. Peter Furlong was every inch the troubled teenager, with a range of expressions demonstrating his bewilderment or frustrations with the adult world he found himself in. His diction was clear, his singing always memorable, with lots of shading. Catharine Woodward as Brunnhilde was once again authoritative, grand, prodigious of volume and attack, constantly in character and with some sensitive phrasing. Simon Wilding’s Hagen was extraordinarily good – he really commanded the stage whenever he was on it, acting with a rare, malevolent intensity. If his voice could deal with a larger house, he is a Hagen any major opera house would be glad to host. Gunther was generously voiced but also radiated indecision and fatuity. Justine Viani as Gutrune showed both acting talent and a lovely well controlled voice. All the Norns and Rhinemaidens not mentioned hitherto, as well as the chorus, were very good.
All in all I am so glad I saw this ‘Ring’. Perhaps Die Walkuere was the performance I responded to most, but it was all very well worthwhile seeing, and I do hope there were talent-spotters from major artist agencies or opera houses in York Hall over these two cycles who will give some of these singers a chance to excel on bigger stages. I was again sitting a few seats away from Loge and other company members – they were obviously going on to an after-party. I hope they enjoyed themselves……
Siegfried: Peter Furlong; Mime: Holden Madagame; Wanderer: Ralf Lukas; Fafner: Craig Lemont Walters; Alberich: Oliver Gibbs; Woodbird: Corinne Hart; Brünnhilde: Catharine Woodward; Erda: Mae Heydorn; Ben Woodward: Music Director and Conductor; Caroline Staunton: Director; CJ Heaver: Producer . Siegfried: Peter Furlong; Mime: Holden Madagame; Wanderer: Ralf Lukas; Fafner: Craig Lemont Walters; Alberich: Oliver Gibbs; Woodbird: Corinne Hart; Brünnhilde: Catharine Woodward; Erda: Mae Heydorn; Ben Woodward: Music Director and Conductor; Caroline Staunton: Director; CJ Heaver: Producer
I had to dash quickly back to the Peak District for a meeting on Wednesday late afternoon and then back down to London and York Hall from midday on Thursday. I was feeling a bit tired by the time I got to the hall but was immensely refreshed and stimulated by this performance. I have seen 6 performances of Siegfried in the last 15 years in concert or staged form – Halle, ROHCG, Opera North, LPO, Longborough and Bayreuth. (I have no desire to see the Schwarz Bayreuth production again live, but would love to go to a live performance of the Herheim Ring in Berlin and the Milan/Munich ones now developing. In the meantime, Bethnal Green……). Although I did find the Bayreuth performance provided some thrilling singing, and of course the orchestral playing was wonderful, in many ways, taken as an overall experience, the Regents Opera performance was as good if not better than any of those mentioned above.
As I went into the hall I heard one person saying to a friend – ‘Well, Ring productions are always a bit wacky – but then you’d probably think an utterly traditional production was a bit odd too”. True enough, but this comment was interestingly prescient, in that this ‘Siegfried ‘did create more thought-provoking and startling images and reflection than its two predecessors had. I have I think finally got my head around the director’s art concept – this is that an art gallery, a space where art objects are displayed, should be a place of transformation – people are changed by their engagement with the art objects and in a sense the objects are changed by the perceptions of them by observers. In that sense an art gallery stands as an effective metaphor for the sort of personal transformations that happens to (some) characters in the Ring – Wotan, Brunnhilde and Siegfried certainly. It underlies the energy of the Rhinemaidens in Scene 1 of Rheingold, and its perversion can be seen in Valhalla, a place which is against change of any kind.
In the Regents Opera production, Act 1 of Siegfried is set on a fairly bare stage. There’s an armchair and a faulty lamp at one end, and a pit where Mime makes his poisonous soup and Siegfried does his forging. Wotan as Wanderer appears in the guise of an electrician to mend the faulty lamp……Siegfried carries a teddy bear around with him. The forging scene was fairly realistic – there was a process of shaving the sword into small fragments, and beating the metal, plus red sparks flying onto the ceiling of the hall, and an actual sword at the end of it all – though the anvil was I think an art in-joke; it looked like Marcel DuChamps’ porcelain urinal. But it was split at the end of the act…..
Act 2 was very obviously an art gallery setting – in fact the Woodbird in this production was a gallery owner?/hostess?, offering drinks and nibbles, and guiding guests. There were some plinths but also some video screens around the stage, able to show magic fire when the Woodbird refers to this, but also various art images eg of decaying fruit. At the end of the gallery was a red box behind which Fafner lurked. Fafner was effectively presented as a human, with a long spangly golden cloak who, together with lurching slow movements, looked convincingly dragon-like. However what happened to him was less easy to explain – in the Forest Murmurs Siegfried had become more and more disturbed in his behaviour, crouching in foetal position on the ground. To an extent I have never seen in any other production, he seems a tragic figure, unable to shake off the inheritance of having no parents and a difficult childhood. He’s very unlike the New Man as Wagner originally conceived him. As Siegfried kills Fafner, and the latter lays dying, by a very effective theatrical sleight of hand, Fafner suddenly becomes Sieglinde, with her blue dress and a black wig, and then, further, ends up as a baby in a nappy. I’m assuming that killing Fafner suddenly sparks terrible memories of his tragic past in Siegfried. The transformations to Sieglinde and the baby I also found very disturbing, in ways I’m not clear about. The brief scene where Siegfried goes into the cave to find the hoard is oddly handled – Alberich and Mime appear with top hats and sticks doing a vaudeville act…..This suits the character of the music and what they’re saying quite well, but dramatically it’s at odds with everything else in the production – a curious directorial choice.
The first part of Act 3 is an open space, and the Wotan/Erda and Wotan/Siegfried scenes are conventionally, though also effectively, handled. Fascinatingly though, as Siegfried begins to go into the Magic Fire, he is led off stage by two gentlemen in white costumes who look very much like mental health paramedicals. And when he is returned on stage to meet Brunnhilde, he is also in white but with a strange shirt and far too long sleeves that looks something like a strait-jacket. Surprisingly, and in a way unlike other aspects of the production so far, where an object mentioned is an object seen on stage, there is no Nothung and no ring in evidence. In the meantime, during the Fire music, the stage has been transformed into a box with white curtains, and drapes inside, again white. Brunnhilde, also in white, is standing in a corner. The rest of the Act was well, but less controversially, staged, with both characters utterly convincing, and the impact of hearing such thrilling singing close up was overwhelming. There was also an effectively handled move by Siegfried before ‘Das is kein mann’ to prevent the usual laughter. So – an interesting staging, and it will be fascinating to see what happens in Gotterdammerung given Siegfried’s clearly very damaged personality.
Musically the singing and acting were mostly at a high level. Peter Furlong as Siegfried was apologised for at the beginning as singing despite a heavy cold. Notices around the lobby assured us a stand-in was available if needed. In the event he sounded in very good voice throughout (though with the occasional cough when he wasn’t singing) and coping with the impossibilities of this role far better than many of the Siegfried’s I’ve seen over the years. He handled the top notes with ease and amazingly showed little sign of flagging even right at the end, alongside a fresh Brunnhilde. Although obviously in a smaller space than a conventional performance, he really didn’t sound very different from Andreas Schager in this hall, though maybe the latter pays more attention to the lyrical aspects of the role and as a native speaker can project the words more easily – but Furlong sounded to be at that sort of level. As indicated Furlong successfully made Siegfried a more sympathetic and troubled figure than he often appears. Ralf Lukas was quite outstanding as the Wanderer, with, again, detailed attention to text and nuance of musical phrasing (it’s no surprise he studied with Fischer-Dieskau) and a wonderfully noble voice. Catharine Woodward acted very well and her voice was thrilling, top Cs pinged out effortlessly and trills managed better than many. Alberich , as in Rheingold, was forcefully sung and acted – again, something of the East End wide boy about him – while the Woodbird was sung clearly and beautifully. Mae Heydorn was an excellent richly voiced Erda . Holden Madagame’s Mime offered some impressively intense acting but most of the role was delivered in a kind of sprech stimme and there was very little heft to the voice. The pacing of the music drama by Ben Woodward was less manic than in Walkure, and the gradual ratcheting up of tension in Act 1 was particularly well managed. The indefatigable orchestra played extremely well. The one real oddity of the reorchestration is the inability to find a sound that catches anything like the malevolent Fafner sounds of tubas (Wagner and ordinary) in the full orchestra preludes of Acts 1 and 2; the organ/synthesiser sound was far too quiet and timid.
Nerdish readers may note a compendium of Brunnhilde final top C’s in Siegfried here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NGm9l3BnkY&t=111s. I have to say Catharine Woodward was up there with the best of them………
Siegmund: Brian Smith Walters; Sieglinde: Justine Viani; Hunding: Gerrit Paul Groen; Wotan: Ralf Lukas; Fricka: Ingeborg Børch; Brünnhilde: Catharine Woodward; Gerhilde: Charlotte Richardson; Helmwige: Shannon Roberts; Ortlinde: Ella de Jongh; Waltraute: Catherine Backhouse; Schwertleite: Gráinne Gillis; Siegrune: Magdalen Ashman; Grimgerde: Grace Maria Wain; Rossweisse: Caroline Carragher; Ben Woodward: Music Director and Conductor; Caroline Staunton: Director; CJ Heaver: Producer
And so – on with the Ring, and back from the expansiveness of Covent Garden to York Hall …………..and from one form of excellence to another, very different, kind……..This performance for me took flight fairly early on in the first act and never touched the ground again thereafter. There were several reasons for this: Ben Woodward paced the work very well – at quite a fast speed (particularly in Act 1) but the music never sounded hurried or pushed in a way that would narrow its expressive potential; there were some excellent experienced singers who knew how to draw the best out of their voices in the main roles, and, finally, a production which continues to be quirky but is always clear in signposting what is happening on stage and allowing singers to work up their own positions on the characters they are portraying. Under Woodward’s direction, the orchestra sounded supercharged, and there was some wonderfully expressive and exciting playing. The issues I had on Sunday about the orchestra sounding subdued seemed to disappear this evening. And, among many other players, hats off to the wonderfully expressive oboe of Philip Howarth (I should have mentioned on Sunday the composition of the orchestra – 6 violins, 3 violas, 2 cellos, 1 double bass (with an extra one for Gotterdammerung Act 3), 1 each of flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon, interestingly 5 horns, then 1 trumpet, 1 trombone and 1 synthesiser. It is remarkable how full-bodied the sound seemed tonight at the big moments in Act 3.)
The set for Act 1 was almost devoid of plinths but has a fridge with bottles of mead inside, a fire extinguisher, a toaster, and a column with a sword hilt peering out at the top. There is a tailor’s dummy, which Sieglinde caresses and which I assume is a substitute for her lost brother. For Act 2, we were back with the plinths of Rheingold, and small objects were placed on them by Brunnhilde; Hunding places his killer fire-extinguisher on one before being struck down by Wotan. In Act 3 the white blocks were rearranged to create a small rock face for Brunnhilde to lie down on. The Valkyries come on carrying famous paintings – the Mona Lisa, Caspar David Friedrich’s “Wanderer above a sea of fog’, and others. These are all destroyed by Wotan, who punches holes in them when he comes in in fury in Act 3, and he also writes ‘Entartate” (Degenerate) on sticky tape he puts round Brunnhilde. I still haven’t got my head around the whole ‘art’ concept , but there are some articles by the director in the programme which may enlighten me. However, whatever concepts there are in the director’s vision, she is also extremely good, clearly, at letting each character develop in the singer’s imagination, and the fact that no singer looked awkward on stage or at a loss is a tribute to her skills. Costumes for the 6 principals were much better coordinated than in Rheingold – in particular Wotan and Fricka had black/grey shalwar khameezes with a scarf that complemented each other. Sieglinde, Siegmund and Hunding had variants of blue., with Siegmund in contrasting red as well plus combat trousers. Brunnhilde had a costume of black leggings and long shirt plus a wrap which emphasised her girlishness, The Valkyries were a riot of colour, which sort of worked.
All 6 principal singers were first rate. as singing actors. Each of them had seemingly internalised a view of their character, and had ‘become’ it. They acted without self-consciousness and with ease – a credit to the director’s approach. Justine Viani had not stood out particularly as one of the Rheinmaidens but as Sieglinde she was outstanding. She had a wonderful creamy tone to her voice and offered far more shading than many of the other singers, caressing the music at times. Her ‘Du bist der Lenz’ was gorgeous and her cry of thanks in Act 3 for deliverance was sensational. Gerrit Paul Groen was a huge-voiced Hunding and a deep bass, commanding on stage. I liked Brian Smith Walters as Siegmund- he doesn’t have a beautiful voice and occasionally a slight vibrato troubled me, but he had a baritonal quality that is good for Siegmund’s role and he can hit all the high notes with ease. It was no surprise to read he had many of the major Wagner roles for tenor in his repertory. Though it’s a show-off moment, his ‘Walse’ in Act 1 had real intensity and emotion as well as being long and loud! Ralf Lukas again impressed as Wotan – a contained and reflective presence, every word counted and was conveyed in clarity and with pointing. His voice cracked once or twice before the end on high notes, but this was easily forgiven. Catherine Woodward was apologised for as getting over a cold, and once or twice that was evident on low notes. But she has a bright and gleaming, big, voice, dealing with the high notes easily, and able to shade it effectively in the tender moments with Wotan and Siegmund/Sieglinde. She was very convincing in conveying a girlishness and liveliness to Brunnhilde’s character on stage that will doubtless contrast effectively with the maturity of her Gotterdammerung role. Finally while Ingeborg Borch as Fricka in Rheingold was good but here in Walkure she was very effective indeed., commanding and generously voiced as well as utterly convincing in her anger and contempt for Wotan. The Valkyries were a somewhat motley crew in appearance but they all sang and acted well, and were credible.
All in all, I found this an inspiring evening that was on a different level to the preceding Rheingold, and which was roundly cheered by a full house (including Loge, sitting three seats away from me)
John's musical journey 