Monday 6 October 2014

Go, Girl



Puccini's La fanciulla del West certainly went for gold on the first night of Richard Jones's new production for English National Opera. There's not much I can add to my Arts Desk review, or the BBC Radio 3 Music Matters chat with Tom Service and Alexandra Wilson, about Minnie's return to the original Americanization of David Belasco's The Girl of the Golden West. One thing I ought to admit in a marginally more private sphere is that, once past the thrill of being hurtled into Puccini's sheer showmanship in as brilliant a grab-you-by-the-throat start as any he composed, I wept to the point of sobbing at the miners' yearnings for the folk back home, and at the sheer candid insecurity of Susan Bullock's Minnie (pictured above by Robert Workman for ENO at the end of Act Two with Peter Auty's half-dead Ramerrez and Craig Colclough as the defeated Ramerrez glowering through the window) in the beautifully paced, clinch-postponed scene with the man she loves at the end of the First Act. I love it that Richard, in his typically pithy responses for the Music Matters slot, described the plot as being about 'three people with very low self-esteem'.

The key word about Jones's careful stagecraft is truthfulness, not easy in a piece which can slide into hammy melodrama. It's overwhelmed me to the point of obsessiveness since I saw the show on Thursday, reminding me that any imperfections in the purely vocal qualities of the principals can be far outshone by the lasting impression of a terrific piece of staging. For vocal thrills untroubled by questions of dramatic fidelity onstage, you still have to go back to peerless Birgit Nilsson* on the 1958 studio recording with Teatro alla Scala forces. Her tenor, the now more or less unremembered João Gibin, ain't bad either. But what surely makes this one of the great opera recordings is the perfect theatricality of Lovro von Matačić's conducting. It's all here on YouTube.


What some top-notch singing can be without staging of Jones's peerless know-how and thoughtfulness struck me all too forcibly when I went to see ENO's other new production of the season so far, of Verdi's Otello, two evenings later. I don't doubt that Stuart Skelton will make a great Otello sooner or later. But David Alden's was not the production to help him. Maybe it was an especially lethargic, energy-dimmed Saturday night, but I didn't even get the sense of any outsider status in this tormented warrior to make up for an avoidance of the elephant in the room, the racial issue (which matters less in the opera, certainly, than in Shakespeare, who makes Othello's apartness the crux of Iago's manipulation).

Sadly, there was little dramatic spark until Skelton's protagonist fell to his knees and launched into a suddenly thrilling 'Si, pel ciel marmoreo giuro' (or whatever that is in the rather dreary, antiquated-sounding English translation). Veteran Jonathan Summers backed him up and suddenly we were experiencing again the true theatrical spark (the two below pictured by Alastair Muir for ENO).


For me, that was it. No doubt it wasn't Summers' fault but the production's that Boito's text for Iago's Credo just struck me as downright silly. I didn't see or hear the feistiness many had detected in Leah Crocetto's Desdemona, either. She can do the works, the top and the pianissimi, but I didn't hear much pathos or lower tones in the bright, well-schooled soprano voice; not was there the bearing which can make Desdemona effective even when the voice is lacking (as it certainly wasn't with Crocetto). Alden's mise en scene conveyed very little to me, but the real death blow was the fatal unpaciness of Edward Gardner's conducting. Yes, the orchestra delivered all the detail on top form, but why did we come away at the interval - despite that duet-finale - feeling so torpid? The score should fly like an arrow until the bedchamber scene, which was neither set where it needs to be nor affecting in any way. Here was a case where fine singing and playing didn't constitute the musical supremacy which might have made up for the sheer incoherent movement and apparent indiscipline of the dramatic picture.

Back to school tomorrow - or rather today, since it's now past midnight - but no longer to the City Lit; slight regrets about having sacrificed Fanciulla, which was on the menu there before it all went pear-shaped, in favour of Prokofiev's War and Peace, so as not to be accused of replication. My Opera in Depth course at the Frontline Club kicks off at 2.30pm, and I'm confident about the fabulous resources of the place; this was the right choice. Loyal students, and some new faces, have helped to make it happen. And I'd particularly like to acknowledge the generous support of David Pickard, Laura Jukes and James Hancox at Glyndebourne in giving the course a big push in the house's October e-newsletter which went out on Saturday. On Thursday we'll see how the Nielsen/Sibelius course works at St Andrew's Fulham Fields; for the first week we'll be in the church proper while there's a winetasting in 'our' lecture room.


One disappointment was that the BBC Symphony Orchestra management came back to me, after three weeks of persistent e-mailing on my part (some staff were away, others weren't) to check whether we could have the usual student discount, to tell me that wasn't possible for 'privately-run courses'. So with the agitated action that I've been prone to since having to start afresh, I approached the London Philharmonic Orchestra and they'll give us 50 per cent discount on selected concerts next year. I've opted for two classes on 12 and 19 March to cover three Ballets Russes scores being conducted by Jurowski - Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe on the 14th, excerpts from Prokofiev's Chout and Stravinsky's complete 1911 Petrushka on the 21st. One of Bakst's paintings associated with his designs for the original production of Daphnis pictured below.


Then on 23 April we anticipate the last concert in Jurowski's Rachmaninoff: Inside Out series on 29 April. So that's a new start, and I may well add other one-off classes depending on how things go. But it's a fun adventure so far, not least to discover that I can administer my way out of a paper-bag; I have the internet, and xls, to thank for that. Again, my e-mail, if you'd like further details: david.nice@usa.net.

*This is serendipity, since I'm off to Stockholm for the Birgit Nilsson Prize, recipients the Vienna Philharmonic who'll be playing under Muti. I look forward to hearing the reasoning.

28 comments:

Susan Scheid said...

So, you've made some headway on the discounts, it seems. Excellent. Oh do I wish I could listen in on the Nielsen/Sibelius course. I've just ordered up the first two CDs of the Gilbert Nielsen cycle (as well as the Sibelius Edition Theater Music CD—I have all the tone poems and symphonies). I don't know The Girl of the Golden West (though of course I know of it). Sounds like this is an excellent production. Interesting that Gelb was in the audience. Wonder if anything will come of that. Best of luck with the courses--was amused by your nod to good ol' xls. It's been a while since I've had to use it, but I sure would have been lost without it!

David said...

There was a more basic reason for Gelb being in the first-night audience, I later learned: he's married to the (very good) conductor, Keri-Lynn Wilson (I am naughtily reminded of a question our one-time comedienne 'Mrs Merton', Carolyn Aherne, put to Debbie McGee, assistant and then wife of successful magician Paul Daniels: 'so, Debbie, what first attracted you to millionaire Paul?'

Should I discover Moodle? It's just a name to me but it's a way of disseminating lectures, right?

wanderer said...

That Susan Bullock gets it right with Minnie doesn't surprise me one bit. Her Brunnhilde down here was an astoundingly good assumption of all three.

Otello is a mighty challenge for just about everyone, not least the director. It's unusual for you not to seque into the one that sets some benchmark in your memory (as you did with Girl) and wonder then what your recall of great (live) Otellos might be.

David said...

I've never seen an all-round great Otello, wanderer. The night I was supposed to see Domingo with Carlos Kleiber, Placido was unusually off and we got OK-ish Jeffrey Lawton. Antonenko was pretty good - though not as good as SS even in the 'Esultate', which was stunningly secure on Saturday night - in the last Royal Opera revival, with the best possible Desdemona in THE great Verdi soprano de nos jours, Anja Harteros (yes, she performed that night).

My friend Jill recalls Domingo, Kleiber AND Margaret Price... Not sure I've ever seen a convincing Iago. Is the Credo just hokum or can it be as chilling as Hagen's Watch or Claggart's 'Beauty, Handsomeness, Goodness', I wonder?

Domingo I DID see as an astounding 'Dick Johnson' at La Scala with Maazel on electrifying form. The let-down was yodelling Mara Zampieri.

David Damant said...

When Melba visited Verdi in his old age ( she sang through Desdemona with him ) she referred in her memoirs to "that wonderful Indian Summer of his life that gave us Othello and that strange swansong Falstaff" She like the Victorians did not understand the ambiguity of the human predicament.

David said...

Not quite sure I get the point here, David. Are you saying that she didn't understand the ambiguity of the human predicament as expressed in Falstaff? Are you giving that masterpiece and Otello exemption from what I thought you believed about Verdi's operas - that for you they weren't quite up there in that respect? You know how emphatically I disagree sbout that re Macbeth, Rigoletto, Traviata, Simon Boccanegra and Don Carlo especially...

Susan Scheid said...

I love the term Moogle--someone should snap that up! The "official" name is MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). There are several platforms available, including coursera and openlearning. Openlearning may be simpler to use; coursera seems to tend to partner with institutions. There are others, as well. Most courses are offered free, though I do see, at least on openlearning, that some that charge, so that's certainly not out of the question. The question, as always, is whether the ratio of effort to reward makes sense! If you wanted to take a look at one, Jonathan Biss's Beethoven Sonatas course is designed very straightforwardly—teacher with piano, basically—and was a big crowd-pleaser. It will be offered again in January. Here's the web address: https://www.coursera.org/course/beethovensonatas

David Damant said...

Sorry - I meant that Melba did not understand Falstaff ("strange swan song") She saw that as strange, whereas it was the only opera in which Verdi saw the ambiguity. (I wish he had been born later, or earlier perhaps) All the other operas including Othello she understood. So her comment on Falstaff reflected her failure to escape from the Victorian failure to understand that the masks of Tragedy and Comedy are the same, though viewed from different angles

There are indeed bits in the other Verdi operas that do show the human predicament in all its dimensions, and those bits peep through. But not in principle. Of course many are in otherwise masterpieces of the first quality - and certainly Othello and Don Carlos. But I yearn for the 18 bars when the Commendatore is dying - philosophically worth more than the whole of Verdi. I know that we are all dead at the end but how do we see our predicament? Verdi does not answer that. Except - o dear! How sad.

I rank the musical establishment of the late 19th Century as tunnel minded. They said that the composer of the Lost Chord - a silly, self indulgent and sentimental piece - UGH - should not waste his time on his comic operas. Of course this is a criticism on the age as a whole, not just of the music. Look at their furniture and their architecture.

Susan Scheid said...

The course "From the Repertoire," the one I took last year, is in session now, so if you signed up (free) you could take a look. This has a more involved structure, but would give you the idea. https://www.coursera.org/course/musichistoryperforms. On open learning, Eric Alan Weinstein, a really nice and smart guy, has an offering coming up in November, also free. It's his first try at an online course, though he's teaching this same course at university right now, I believe. Here's the link to that. https://www.openlearning.com/courses/percyshelley-unbindingprometheus

David said...

Sue, I thought City Lit had referred to Moodle (not Moogle) but I may be wrong. It all sounds a little complicated but I might investigate in due course.

Sir David, you are SO inflexible and even try to pass off opinion as fact. HAVE you thoroughly studied Don Carlo since the last conversation we had on the subject? I think you might argue your case with other Verdi operas, but that one is as full of the ambiguity of the human condition as any opera in the repertoire.

Interesting, as Muti liked to point out - maybe still does - that Verdi had the score of Don Giovanni on the piano at Sant'Agata and even refers to the fall of the Commendatore in the first scene of La forza del destino.

Susan Scheid said...

Oh, sorry David, I misread. Don't know the term, in any event. But of course this is so beside the point of your post. I wish I could weigh in with more knowledge on Verdi operas, but I can say, having seen a few at least once and listened to CDs of the ones I liked best, that it seems to me he takes on the big, complicated human themes and does them real justice in his operas.

David said...

Well, Sue, you know where my loyalties lie. Viva Verdi. And I realise I hadn't answered the first part of wanderer's question: recording-wise, Domingo, Scotto, Milnes, Levine. The old Toscanini with Vinay shows how it should fly. Vickers and Glossop for Karajan are a great partnership in a heartstopping 'Si pel ciel', and Freni's pretty wonderful too. My favourite single track is Domingo singing 'Niun mi tema' at a Royal Opera gala. The 'Desdemona's pierce the heart; on Saturday, they went for nothing.

David Damant said...

Actually, I was a good boy and had a proper look at Don Carlos, and apologise for not putting that in a class of its own amongst Verdi operas in making my comments above. But O Dear ! here I go again. In the ROH performance of Don Carlo the audience was applauding all the time and after the tremendous aria by the King just before the Grand Inquisitor arrives there were shouts of approval. These people go to the opera to hear music they like and to enjoy themselves. They do not think into the music so as to have their emotions purged with pity and terror. So how can one appreciate the analysis of the human predicament where it does appear? OK OK here Damant goes again. Sorry Professor

Is there a live recording of Don Carlos with no audience participation? Impossible I suppose

David said...

Verdi could only do so much to go against the convention of the set piece. Puccini was luckier, living later - by the time of Fanciulla del West there is NO breathing space for applause, not even after 'Ch'ella mi creda' when Rance brutally socks 'Dick', nor was there any last week. Of course if you've got Domingo in the part, however superlative an actor he is - and I remember Juan Pons, the Rance, saying that he had tears in his eyes and was supposed to be brutal - you're never going to stop the voice-lovers going crazy.

I still always prefer hearing the miraculous three-part finale to Boheme Act 1 that is 'Che gelida mannina', 'Si, mi chiamano Mimi' and 'O soave fanciulla' on disc; of course they're broken by applause every time in the opera house.

Susan Scheid said...

I'm struck by the comments of both you Davids on live performance interrupted by applause. Interesting to think about the operatic form at Verdi's time leaving more room for that than by the time of Puccini. Had never occurred to me. Is it the case then, that, in Verdi's time, applause after arias was the norm? I feel like an old curmudgeon increasingly when it comes to this, but at the same time, I do wonder why many people go to concerts: is it that they are more interested in the performance of x, y, or z than the actual music? At the Rattle/Berlin Phil performance of Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances, despite the clear program and Rattle's signaling (this is not the end of the piece), many in the audience clapped after each of the first two dances. After the third, the applause erupted almost simultaneously with the first sounding of the tam-tam, so that its dying away was completely covered up. It's not that I'm wishing to stand on ceremony, but I was disappointed not to be able to experience the full effect of that closing.

David said...

I think Puccini was just a little more abreast of Wagnerian developments to try and through-compose: though note that most of his hit arias up to Turandot's 'In questa reggia' are not more than three or so minutes long, so as to fit on a side of a 78rpm.

I have mixed feelings about the applause after movements at Proms. A long concerto movement like the first of Beethoven, Brahms or Tchaikovsky violin concertos seems to justify it. Symphonies, it should be up to the conductor's authority to, say, stop the applause dead at the end of the third movement of the Pathetique and plunge straight into the finale (showman Mariss Jansons just never seems interested in doing that, which marks him down a peg for me). And that must have been infuriating, the applause breaking out over what should be the tam-tam fade to nothing (incidentally, in Rach's score, the tam-tam is marked to resound only, I think - don't have the score here in Stockholm - a quaver or so more than the rest of the orchestra. But I like the tradition that's developed; be interesting to know who started it).

Last Friday I was at an amateur orchestra's performance of the Beethoven Triple Concerto with a professional piano trio, and the audience - well-heeled home counties set, probably never been to a concert before - went wild at the end of the first movement, and on and on as if it was the end. How galled they must have been to find two more (admittedly shorter) movements of the dreariest concerto in the rep between them and the interval refreshments (spectacular).

wanderer said...

Thanks David (the nice one, not that the other isn't), I have been paying attention, and had sought out Domingo Price Kleiber (live ROH, as the one heard by your friend Jill) but it is wickedly expensive on the second hand market so, worshipping at the altar of Kleiber, have settled for the (live) Scala Kleiber Domingo Freni Cappucilli, which just about ticks all the boxes, or all mine.

As for Mariss Jansons, by coincidence, I have been spending the last few days listening to some recently opened Strauss (Ein Heldenleben) and Stravinsky (Firebird and Rite of Spring) with the Concertgebouw, show pieces indeed, and he can do no wrong for these ears - and some of the most excellent live recording I've heard.

Verdi and Melba has sent me rummaging through "I am Melba", where I read that after leaving Milan with a dedicated signed photograph from G Verdi she holidayed in Venice with Tosti (he coached her Desdemona) and there they hired a gondola and harmonium and on a moonlight lagoon she sang Tosti's songs whence soon a "chain of gondolas followed, like a black serpent with a hundred eyes".

At night in a private gondola, one must have a light at the bow - as simple as a candle in a jar - and call out 'Oi' at the approach of an intersection and the effect, on a drizzly moonless night as it was for us, is the stuff of ghosts and haunting memories.

David said...

'At night in a private gondola, one must have a light at the bow' etc: I suddenly had to pinch myself to make sure you hadn't turned into D Damant Esquire. On divas singing extempore, or privately, I sat opposite the delightful, very cultured and funny wife of the great man who's organising the Birgit Nilsson Prize here in Stockholm - at one of the best meals I've ever had in my life, incidentally, in the wonderfully relaxed occasional restaurant of Swedish masterchefs Adam and Albin, their Matstudio. She (Catherine, another Aussie, if I overheard correctly) told me that Birgit sang Grieg's 'Ich liebe dich' at their wedding. The goddess and her husband were two of the 12 guests in Salzburg's Protestant Church. Can you imagine?

I have another Scala live Otello on the laptop: there, the Desdemona is also Margaret Price. But I reckon you need studio silence for the Willow Song.

Love Jansons' Petrushka, his Mahler much less - always skims the surface, IMO, though the Concertgebouw playing is beautifully detailed.

David Damant said...

In her memoirs ( looks as if Wanderer has them) Melba reports that at a certain point she reached a cross roads in her life with various sign posts....hers was "To Triumph"

As Sherlock Holmes remarked to Dr Watson " I have never regarded modesty amongst the virtues"

David said...

I don't think you would have found Nilsson behaving like that. She was aware of good fortune and some luck - but boy, by all accounts, did she work hard.

Susan Scheid said...

I'll just add a little "diva" snippet. Though not a diva in the classic sense, Anneli H is a diva in her own right. When she asked if I could meet her at a tram stop in Tallinn so she could deliver the Sibelius song CDs for you and for me that could only come, as she so wonderfully put it, "from her hand," she told me a bit about the song "Flickan kom ifrån sin älsklings möte" and sang a bit to demonstrate. That moment is always with me now when I listen to that song.

Catriona said...

Re applause - where it really narks me is in ballet. I am sure that fewer people would be put off ballet if the set pieces weren't structured the way they are. If, as one finished pirouetting, the next pirouetted or jeted on and the orchestra didn't miss a beat, there wouldn't be the yawning cavern which begs to be filled with ritual applause. But no. Pirouette (or whatever) and orchestra stops. Bow. Walk off. Walk back on to acknowledge applause. Bow. And so on. A couple of minutes and the next set piece starts ...

David said...

Oh, I couldn't agree more, Catriona. What joy it is to hear Tchaikovsky's one-minute variations without interruptions on CD, to see how well they fit together (Pas de Six in Act 1 of Sleeping Beauty a case in point). And it seems to me the height of unmusicality to applaud the 54 fouettes, or however many there are, of the Black Swan Pas de Deux on a dominant...

Yet the composers knew what they were letting themselves in for. Nothing quite as bad as the skaters who chop classical masterpieces about for their display.

Anonymous said...

Dear David I am glad you enjoyed TREME, now in its final season. Did you ever check out In Treatment, based on the Israeli series B'Tipul? No sex or violence or lurrve, just a fascinating depiction of an analyst and his clients, presenting the viewer with some amazingly complex, troubled but highly intelligent souls, not least the analyst himself, as his marriage hits problems. John Graham, Edinburgh

David said...

Yes, John, we did check out In Treatment and gave up rather quickly. Perhaps should have stuck with it; the idea is in principle an interesting one, but that world is already so inward looking that the navel-gazing is too much. There are witty scenes in OitNB where the prison counsellor goes for counselling himself and has an anger management attack; most amusing when he tries to re-work what he's learnt on the prisoners.

So here is the nearest we get to some comment on this excellent series - but still wheeling around it. I presume you haven't seen it yet.

Beloved Doctor Savage - well, beloved by me who never had him as a tutor - has just got a new book out, on aspects of early 20th century English music theatre (he never did convince me on Sir John in Love, though I've come round to it since). Reviewed on R3's Music Matters last week. I immediately got in touch, and was a bit embarrassed to have been thought cadging when he offered to send me a copy forthwith (though at £60 I'm not sure I would have pushed the boat out at full price). What a scholar and a gentleman he is.

David Damant said...

Those that dislike applause in the course of a ballet should NOT go Moscow. I was taken several times to the Bolshoi Swan Lake ( Stalin's version) in the 1990s and the audience clapped every time a dancer jumped or revolved. Exhausting.

Susan Scheid said...

Oh, David, I feel badly for not commenting on Orange is the New Black, about which you gave such a great rundown here. We have it queued up, and it's been recommended to us by other friends, too. The anger management bit sounds hilarious, as well. We've not been watching videos as of late, but will probably start in again once the beautiful fall weather ends and those early dark evenings set in.

David said...

David, I think it's more the tradition handed down from the Petipa reworking of 1894, revised by Sergeyev - certainly the one at the Mariinsky uses Drigo's reworking, with silly interpolations of orchestrated Tchaikovsky piano pieces which make nonsense of the last act. I was very pleased to see Svetlanova Zakharova, though, a Swan Queen to the manner born if ever there was one.

Sue, you did comment as much as was fit under the circumstances - ie to say that you'd ordered it up - and I only realised after responding to John that OitnB was part of the previous post, so not necessarily germane here. Anyway, I've had a lively email correspondence with William Ward, an Arts Desk writer and Rome correspondent for Panorama, who's a huge fan (and probably wouldn't want to read that post as he was only half way through Series Two).