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.