La bohème, Royal Opera House, 13.07.08

Composer Giacomo Puccini, Director John Copley

Designs
Julia Trevelyan Oman

Lighting
William Bundy

Conductor
Christian Badea

Rodolfo
Roberto Aronica

Mimì
Cristina Gallardo Domas

Marcello
Franco Vassallo

Schaunard
Roderick Williams

Colline
Matthew Rose

Musetta
Nicole Cabell

Benoit
Jeremy White

Alcindoro
Donald Maxwell

Parpignol
Alan Duffield

Sergeant
Bryan Secombe

Customs Officer
Jonathan Coad

Brahms Symphonies 1 and 2, Lorin Maazel, Philharmonia Orchestra, Southbank, 25.06.08

4.5 stars

Le nozze di Figaro, Royal Opera House, 24.06.08

Conductor Charles Mackerras, Figaro Ildebrando D'Arcangelo, Susanna Aleksandra Kurzak, Bartolo Robert Lloyd, Marcellina Ann Murray, Cherubino Anna Bonitatibus, Count Almaviva Peter Mattei, Don Basilio Robin Leggate, Countess Almaviva Barbara Frittoli, Antonio Donald Maxwell, Don Curzio Harry Nicoll, Barbarina Kishani Jayasinghe

351st performance at the ROH

4.5 stars

Ariadne auf Naxos, Royal Opera House, 19.06.08

Conductor Mark Elder, Primadonna (Ariadne) Deborah Voigt, Composer Kristine Jepson, Music Master Thomas Allen, Dancing Master Alan Oke, Wigmaker Jacques Imbrailo, Lackey Dean Robinson, Tenor (Bacchus) Robert Dean Smith, Zerbinetta Gillian Keith, Harlequin Markus Werba, Scaramuccio Ji-Min Park, Truffaldino Jeremy White, Brighella Haoyin Xue, Naiad Anita Watson, Dryad Sarah Castle, Echo Anna Leese, The Major Domo Alexander Pereira

49th performance at the ROH.

4 stars.

La Gioconda, Tel Aviv Opera, 29.05.08

Der Rosenkavalier, English National Opera, 22.05.08

The Feldmarschallin Janice Watson; Octavian Sarah Connolly; Baron Ochs John Tomlinson; Sophie Sarah Tynan; Herr von Faninal Andrew Shore; Annina Madeleine Shaw; Valzacchi Stuart Kale; Duenna Janice Cairns; Singer Dwayne Jones; Police Commissar Nicholas Folwell; Notary James Gower

Conductor Edward Gardner; Director/Designer David McVicar; Associate Set Designer Michael Vale; Costume Designer Tanya McCallin; Original Lighting Designer Paule Constable; Translation Alfred Kalisch

****

Puccini: Tosca, Royal Opera House, 20.05.08

Cesare Agelotti - Kostas Smoriginas
Sacristan - Enrico Fissore
Mario Cavaradossi - Jonas Kaufmann
Floria Tosca - Martina Serafin
Baron Scarpia - Paolo Gavanelli
Spoletta - Hubert Francis
Sciarrone - Darren Jeffery
Shepherd Boy - Thomas Payne
Gaoler - John Morrissey

Antonio Pappano, conductor

437th performance at the ROH

Almost every time I see a production at the ROH, someone from the cast has had to be replaced, due to illness. "Due to bad reviews, ahem, I mean, illness, Carosi will be unable to sing tonight...", I heard someone saying. Given the number of times this has happened, only for the replacement to be very good, I wonder if they really do fire singers if they get bad reviews. In any case, Serafin was a brilliant Tosca. She started off very well, and improved so much that by the end she was simply stunning, bringing off the final scene with high drama, and, what's more, vocal excellence. Coupled with Kaufmann's Cavaradossi, who, like Serafin got several rounds of applause throughout the opera, this was a thrilling evening. Kaufmann was probably the better of the two, certainly outshining all the other members of the cast, but since they had such a good presence on stage together, their acting and singing worked wonderfully.

The sets were grand and opulent, requiring two half-hour intervals to get everything into place. The first in the side chapel of the church, where the audience laughed at Tosca's jealousy over her lover painting a blonde, blue-eyed Mary Magdalene. The second act is set in Scarpia's home, where Tosca murders the Chief of Police at the end of the scene. The third; the bleak ramparts where the firing squad shoot Cavaradossi. Each one was a brilliant evocation of the requisite atmosphere, simply adding to the excellence of the music and singing.

My only slight complaint would be the children in the first act who of course were directed to over-act: for a few moments, the young choir boys fighting in the side chapel turned the scene into a musical, better suited for one of the theatres down the road than the ROH. Fortunately their singing parts are cut short by the evil Scarpia, played very well by Gavanelli, who relished the swaggering arrogance required by the role. I got the impression a few people would have liked to boo his character at the final curtain call, which is always a good sign: you know they've played the part well.

The orchestra played well from the start - no warming up! (Which as you will know, if you have read any other posts on the ROH, is my pet dislike about their playing). Pappano drew a very convincing final flourish from the orchestra, and although I normally appreciate it if the audience can wait until after the final notes to applaud, this time they cut in with genuine enthusiasm - it was simply a brilliant performance. I must add that the last scene, dominated as it is by Cavaradossi's soliloquy was helped enormously by Kaufmann's excellent singing, he really carried the scene into despair, ready for the deceived Tosca to sing of the escape she thinks they will make. The firing squad's gunshots were very real - eliciting a collective jump from the audience.

Kaufmann 5 stars
Serafin 5 stars

Overall: 4.5 stars

Fauré, Chopin and Prokofiev at the Southbank, 17.05.08

Fauré - Pelléas et Mélisande
Chopin - Piano Concerto number 2
Prokofiev - Symphony number 5

Tugan Sokhiev, conductor
Emmanuel Ax, piano
Philharmonia Orchestra

Fauré ****

Warmly played, and with a beautiful flute tone in the famous Sicillienne.

Chopin *****

The highlight of the evening, Ax played with effortless excellence, in his typical note-perfect, precise style, but with beautiful tone, touch ranging from the delicate to the thundering and all with enough flexibility to make him a great Chopin interpreter. In particular it was wonderful to hear a player who could draw out warmth of tone from the left hand parts which are frequently very beautiful in Chopin, but not heard often enough. The final movement was genuinely exciting as he built up a fierce pace which did nothing to harm his legendary accuracy. There seemed to be a brilliant rapport between orchestra, soloist and conductor, and everything seemed to fall inevitably into place. The audience brought him back onto the stage several times - and justly so.

Prokofiev *****

This is a symphony which I had previously heard only in recordings, and somewhat lacklustre ones at that. I felt as if I was hearing the work anew in this performance, which paid special care to each movement, each one a delight, again showing a very strong pairing between orchestra and conductor. I was particularly impressed by the sustained crescendo they produced in the thrilling conclusion to the symphony, which never sounded strained, yet seemed to grow and grow to bursting point. The applause was long and loud, with more than enough time for Sokhiev to single out the chairs and the whole ensemble a couple of times.

These were brilliant, world-class performances!

Janácek, Rachmaninov and Rimsky-Korsakov at the Southbank, 16.05.08

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Kirill Petrenko, conductor

Dejan Lazic, piano

Janácek Sinfonietta

Rachmaninov Piano Concerto 2 in C minor

Rimsky-Korsakov Scheherazade

I had been waiting to hear the Janácek sinfonietta ever since I read the miraculous score when I was studying music A level, but I never quite got around to actually hearing it. It was a wonderful experience to hear those rhythms and melodies had stayed with me all those years, and it was an enjoyable performance. An almost intimidating row of twelve brass players were lined up in the choir behind the orchestra causing a lady behind me to remark "It'll be a good thing to be all the way back here with all that noise going on". Indeed, the opening fanfare is very arresting, but it isn't just a lot of loud brass music. The timbres of the different instruments came out strongly, and there was confident playing the orchestral brass in later movements. Petrenko was proving to be one of those very energetic conductors, juming and twisting one moment, appearing fluid and relaxed the next, then conducting with snapping robotic movements just to prove he can dance in any style he likes. The players seemed to be getting the message, as they followed him quite well, but I think that there was maybe a bit more bravura than control.

Janácek ****

Most of the audience had come for the Rachmaninov, and with a Friday-night, popular audience, there was always going to be wild applause, however good or bad the performance. Unfortunately, I couldn't join in the applause too much this time. It was a really soulless performance. The opening bell-like chords were promising, with Lazic waving his arms with great flair, and, crucially, gaining the kind of volume necessary when playing a Rachmaninov concerto. But there were some fudged chrods just before the orchestra joined him, and it set the tone for the performance: brave, outgoing, but quite rough at the edges. Though mostly technically accurate, Lazic seemed to play at only two dynamics; fortissimo or mezzo forte. This may have been because the orchestra were playing in a similarly brash manner, quite unlike their handling of the Janácek. There wasn't a lot of communication between soloist and orchestra, and though the start and ending of each movement seemed to fall more or less in place, there was never really a lot of coordination in between.

The tempo in the second movement was a little fast for my liking, and the woodwind passed their opening theme between each other with less than pinpoint accurate intonation. The movement seemed to go by inconsequentially; and like all the movements in the entire programme they followed without a break, leaving no time for repose.

The third movement benefitted from Lazic's confident style, especially the ending, which seemed to bring the orchestra alive.

Rachmaninov: **

Scheherezade was a much better affair than the Rachmaninov, but not as good as the Janácek.

Scheherezade ***

Verdi: Simon Boccanegra, Royal Opera House, 13.05.08

Cond. John Eliot Gardiner, dir. Ian Judge. 101st performance at the ROH.

Paolo Albiani - Marco Vratogna
Pietro - Krzysztof Szumanski
Simon Boccanegra - Lucio Gallo
Jacopo Fiesco - Feruccio Furlanetto (replacing Orlin Anastassov)
Amelia Grimaldi - Natalia Ushakova
Gabriele Adorno - Marcus Haddock
Amelia's maidservant - Louise Armit
Captain - Elliot Goldie

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I expect the Royal Opera House Orchestra to start off shakily at best and sometimes just badly. Thank goodness John Eliot Gardiner had knocked them into form! The opening bars of the prologue were mysterious and beautiful and the strings sounded perfect from the start, handling many phrases with the right degree of delicacy.

The staging was beautiful, but with only a single set for the whole opera, I felt that there was a little lack of energy. The bizarre lowering of a tree so that it hung over the stage and a similar slow lowering of broken part of the palazzo during a mob scene were the only really off moments. Otherwise, lots of firelight torches in the dark added a mysterious touch to the political intrigue.

Ushakova started weakly in the role of Amelia, but she quickly gained confidence and was singing well by the end. One of the highlights of the performance was Gallo in the role of Simon who couldn't quite sing until the end of the opera; he was replaced by an understudy singing at front of stage for the final act, miming on stage. Somehow it worked, and the show went on to a compelling conclusion.

Vratogna was one of the best performers on stage in the role of Paolo; he brought drama to his exit from the mob scene in which it is discovered that he has orchestrated the attempted abduction of Amelia, and was one of the better actors. Gallo and Ushakova did a lot of striding around the stage, and they didn't have too many options on where to go since it remained the same throughout.

I think it would be fair to say that none of the singers performed outstandingly, but the performance came together and was compellingly interesting from start to finish - even throughout the long first half.

In particular, I thought Gardiner did well to carry on through a quiet passage with that ubiquitous Nokia ring tone echoing on endlessly.

Overall: **** - A good show!
Audience: * - Sit still, shut up, and turn your phone off. If it does go off, turn it off quickly, DON'T LET IT RING!

Birtwhistle: The Minotaur, Royal Opera House, 22.04.08

The 3rd performance at the Royal Opera House, cond. Antonio Pappano

The opera opens with a darkly dreaming and yearning passage in the orchestra which was convincingly tense and laden with expectation. A projection of heaving sea swell serves as a periodic reminder of the Minotaur's father, the sea-god Poseidon. The music brilliantly captures the plangent tones of heavy seas. Ariadne (Christine Rice) is walking along a strip of beach and greets the Innocents to Crete as they arrive on a ship under a black sail; they will be sacrificed to the Minotaur. Rice's part was sung mainly along a narrow band of sand near the front of the circular stage. She must choose the first to go in to the Minotaur; but forbids Theseus, who has come to kill the Minotaur, from going in.

The Innocents descend into the labyrinth - the 'cage without a key' - and their terrified cries ring through the labyrinth. They eventually find their way to the Minotaur (John Tomlinson) in a parodied bull ring lined by a jeering chorus flanked by two timpanists punctuating their calls for blood with drum rolls and pounding thuds. The innocents are killed one by one - the Keres, raven-like one-winged women come, drawn to the slaughter, to claim their souls. I felt that the Keres parts were over-acted. Their cries were a little like something you could hear in a pantomime, but their costumes were very effective.

Meanwhile, slaughter makes the beast sleepy, and in dreams he sees himself in a mirror, with his sister and another figure beside him. A recorded voice over intones fragments of meaning which he tries to decipher, tormented by his half-man, half-beast state. In these passages of disturbed and worried sleep, are some of the finest moments of the opera; the Minotaur becomes a more human figure, with worries and torments and emotions which are unexpected.

Eventually, Ariadne finds a way for Theseus to go in to the Minotaur and return if he can kill the beast. She gives him a ball of string and a dagger, after forcing him to promise to take her back to Athens as his bride. Unrelentingly bleak, the point of the opera was not to celebrate the killing of this beast conceived in shame (Ariadne and the Minotaur respectively sing of the shame of their mother giving birth to a monster), but to mourn his conception and damned existence in the cage without a key.

The death scene, again in the parodied bull ring, is relatively straightforward, and the opera closes as one of the Keres comes to reclaim the Minotaur's soul, with another grandiose cry which was more pantomime than opera.

Previously, the only Birtwistle opera I had heard was Punch and Judy, which was premièred decades ago. I would say this is not the kind of music that I would normally choose to listen to. An absence of hummable tunes can put some people off - at least two people left the auditorium during part one, and several sitting near me did not return for part two. But despite this, I found The Minotaur quite musically accessible, with enough repeated and imitated motifs to gain a musical foothold and I began to feel the inevitability of some phrases and the direction of the tonalities. This was also a story well told; it is always a good sign when you are waiting with expectation to hear the next part of a story you know well.

Overall this was an enjoyable evening, absorbing, if very bleak, as I mentioned before. For those able to sit through the ninety minutes of part one, the terser part two will provide a good reward both musically and theatrically.

****

Mendelssohn and Beethoven at the Southbank - The Philharmonia Orchestra, Andreas Haefliger, Christoph von Dohnányi 17.04.08

Coming soon...

Oops... I didn't quite get around to reviewing this properly, but in short: a very enjoyable concert, showcasing von Dohnányi at his best: solid, never trying too hard, just right!

****

Bizet: Carmen, Royal Opera House, 02.04.08

The Prélude opened so fast that an audible murmur arose from the audience, who were caught out talking, not to mention the players who took a few bars to get up to pace. A heady, fast-paced Carmen wouldn’t be a bad thing, but it wasn’t convincing: it was simply too fast. I thought conductor Daniel Oren was presumably quite impatient to get it over and done with, since the start time had been brought forward from 1930 to 1900, but I later realised this was to fit in several parts of the score, which he had decided to butcher by playing as slowly as possible, especially where this was likely to cause a total loss of momentum and atmosphere.

The children overacted to the point of drawing attention to themselves, and they sang so badly in French that I thought it was a joke. Some of the cast spoke it hardly any better, but at least they could sing. In fairness to the children, their part is not that easy, but you would think the chorus master could have had the big idea of hiring an accent coach.

One of Carmen’s big numbers, in the tavern, started off so slowly I thought I might have mistaken it for another number entirely, but no, the wild, bawdy song began at a sluggish pace. It took a four man lift to get her onto the table and make her fall out of synch with the orchestra. Perhaps she was fighting against them to get some speed into the song. It did end at a trot, so perhaps Mr Oren was able to make a concession on this occasion. (Incidentally, I think my partner and I stopped bothering to applaud at this point).

Nancy Fabiola Herrera’s idea of a seductive pose was somewhat lacking in seduction; a kind of bizarre squat which was more bewildering than anything. But at least she had a lot of energy and brazenness, which can never be too far amiss in a Carmen.

The rest of the opera was building up some pace, but it was all too much in the great final act chorus where the entire company welcomes their toréador hero.

Oren brought out the carving knife for the final scene (leave that to Don Jose); he killed all the momentum and passion off by slowing down the score almost to a stop when it should have marched indomitably onwards. Don Jose's final 'Carmen, my beloved Carmen' quietened down to a whisper and failed to grow to anything more than a mezzo forte moan, rather than a fortissimo deranged cry of passion (he has, after all, just killed the woman). The more you diminuendo in that passage, the more crescendo you need to make up for it! I'm not surprised he couldn't sing the phrase loudly enough, though, since the pace had been slowed to gravissimo. In any case, Marcelo Alvarez overacted this scene so that his voice cracked.

Ruined. Why bother to stay for the final chords? As Anthony Holden from The Guardian mentioned in his review, they were drowned out by the applause of the audience anyway because the curtain comes down too early.

The audience were especially bad. One woman’s phone went off four times: LEARN TO TURN IT OFF. Where were the ushers? She even had the barefaced cheek to come back after the interval. A group behind me were talking now and then – of course, everyone thinks it is acceptable to talk at the Opera these days, like it once was in the past. But even worse, one of them was wearing noisy man-made fibres and fidgeted like he had an ants’ nest under his seat. Coughing was in general contained – one woman even waited for moments of applause to cough and blow her nose, instead of adopting the usual strategy of carefully waiting for a quiet moment (who cares about those?) to explode into the silence. A few members of the audience, however, apparently had the plague and coughed loudly and often: remember it only takes one to spoil it for everyone.

Conclusions:

Daniel Oren – I probably won’t go to anything he conducts in the future.

Herrera – I would like to hear her in other mezzo soprano roles, but maybe not see her in seductive ones.

Alvarez – Don’t overact: sing properly. I hear he may have had a cold, like most of the audience.

The flute playing was patchy throughout, even in the famous Intermezzo.

Production: *** (I’m feeling generous).

Audience: ** Poor form.