Meeting Mike Leigh

I hoped, but hardly dared to believe, that one of my great heroes would show up for a pre-performance talk in which I was participating at English National Opera. Mike Leigh's film work has been carved into the consciousness of (most of) my generation, at least in the UK. It even seems from what my goddaughter Rosie May told me that a whole new fanbase is popping up among students for the evergreen Abigail's Party many years after Alison Steadman's Bev first tottered around serving up 1970s party snacks and asking a male guest flirtatiously 'Do you like Demis [Roussos]?': Rosie had heard of a production in which the cast drank in 'real time' so they really were pissed as the show wore on, and she'd seen it onstage elsewhere.

Since then, as well as having a good laugh, I've been touched at various levels by Nuts in May, High Hopes, Naked, Life is Sweet, Secrets & Lies, Vera Drake - and the surprise hit of Leigh's biopic on Gilbert and Sullivan at the time of staging The Mikado, Topsy-Turvy. The stage work less so. I thought Mr Turner was a total masterpiece - DVD review here - and I'd put it up there with Des hommes et des dieux (about the French monks in Algeria kidnapped and murdered by terrorists) and La grande bellezza, Paolo Sorrentino's ambiguous hymn to Rome as one of the three films I've seen over the past five years to have had the greatest impact.All three I imagine I could see again and again.

News that ENO had hooked Leigh to direct The Pirates of Penzance (production photos here by Tristram Kenton; talk snaps by Charlotte van Berckel from ENO's technical department) made me nervous. Would it work? It did, and I felt relieved to be able to praise it very genuinely on The Arts Desk, though maybe you have to be in sympathy with the razor-sharp G&S idiom and how that might most sympathetically be served to 'get' it. Like it or not - I loved it and laughed very loud very often - there was no doubt that time and effort had been put into every move, every grouping. Much surer-footed throughout, in short, than Terry Gilliam's Berlioz, though that had flashes of genius.

The work that had gone into a very polished show with a superlative cast (above, the wondrous Claudia Boyle as Mabel with Jonathan Lemalu as the Chief of Police and his deadpan men) became the more apparent following Mike's arrival the other Wednesday, five minutes before we were due to start, for the talk (by the way, the likely choice had been staff director Elaine Tyler-Hall, which would have meant a necessary woman in the group. But you can't sniff at the company that did materialise).

Christopher Cook, the absolute doyen of animateurs in my opinion and pictured on the right in the top shot, had mapped out a format familiar to these well-planned 45-minute events, which he always steers to perfection: he'd ask me questions for 10 or so minutes about the background and the music, then turn to Mike about the show, then the cover Major-General, Adrian Powter (top shot left), accompanied by vital repetiteur Chris Hopkins, would sing the patter song (Andrew Shore as Stanley Mark One with Joshua Bloom's equally impressive Pirate King pictured here),

and finally there'd be a general discussion and questions. But Mike took control, not at all in an unpleasant way, the minute he arrived, and decided it would be interactive from the start. It was impressive if slightly scary to see his stage management, but reassuring to see how he gave everyone credit (nice nod to the pianist, for example, and no sense of exclusive ego, though you've got to have one well adjusted to the world to do what he does).

So we batted the ball to and fro, I loved every minute, and you can hear the results on this podcast.

After the official business was over, we carried on chatting enthusiastically about G&S shows we'd seen going back some way, what we'd liked and what we hadn't (you'll hear on the podcast how it was a Finborough Theatre production of The Grand Duke which made that ML's first choice for ENO - but he couldn't get the collaborators he wanted to be equally enthusiastic). Needless to say, I'm going back to the ENO Pirates before the end of the run.

And while it's All About Me, and Great British Opera/operetta, here's the film Garsington finally released of the Death in Venice insight evening with Steuart Bedford and Andrew Mackenzie-Wicks. The Gondoliers it ain't, though I love Britten and G&S equally. You could say that the Savoy operas are tied to my childhood, Britten to my very slow coming out starting in my late teens.

Straussian high days and holy days

Tussock time, as in leaping from one pleasure to another, truly began the Friday before last with the annual Europe Day Concert in St John's Smith Square and continued on Sunday and Monday at Glyndebourne. 150th birthday boy Richard Strauss was central to both: for the Rosenkavalier Study Day, obviously, in anticipation of Richard Jones's production opening this afternoon - can't wait - and in the truly surprising component of the European Union Youth Orchestra's yearly marriage with singers from the European Opera Centre (official credit to the European Commission for the concert photos).

I can claim some credit for that, since I advised on the programme, marking the Greek Presidency of the European Union, and most of my Hellenic-themed suggestions were adopted. For practical reasons of orchestral size and the lack of a soprano to fit the Straussian bill, the closing scene from Daphne wasn't possible - I'm still having the Haitink/Popp recording played at my funeral - but EUYO supremo Marshall Marcus did adopt the idea of the extraordinary interlude Strauss composed for his performing edition of Mozart's Idomeneo. With only a fragment of Mozart, 'Torna la pace', at its heart, it's seismic and disturbing; my worries about where it might fit in a programme of plums were dispelled at the two-thirds mark, when gravity was required - how could one not think of Strauss looking back at the First World War, and of Ukraine today? - and the segue into Mozart's sublime Quartet, as good an ensemble as he ever wrote and the first great one in his oeuvre.

Vindicated, too, by my suggestion of conductor, the versatile Dominic Wheeler, who was as refined directing Monteverdi, Handel, Gluck, Purcell and Rameau from the harpsichord as he was spirited, yet still precise, in two fabulous Skalkottas dances and Vaughan Williams's Overture to The Wasps (why some punters had a problem with its Englishness I don't understand. Relax, enjoy the generous melodies). Marshall took responsibility for the engaging spatial effects - Monteverdi brass from the gallery, La Musica advancing to the stage from the centre of the hall,  the three orchestras of Rameau's Dardanus Tambourins making for dazzling music theatre. It was his idea to end with the finale of Offenbach's La belle Hélène, and the singers were so relaxed in conveying its comedy. After which we were happy and proud - at least I speak for myself - to stand for the European anthem, Beethoven's Ode to Joy.

Every year there's a revelation among the singers. Tara Erraught, Glyndebourne's Octavian, stood out in 2009*; last year it was young Viennese tenor Martin Piskorski. Here there were two stars in the making. Another Austrian, mezzo Sophie Rennert, is already the finished article, flawless and very moving in Dido's Lament - so she and Piskorski give Conchita Wurst a run for his/her money; Romanian soprano Monica Bancoș is a baby dramatic soprano, giving old-fashioned divadom to 'Divinités du Styx'. Milanese Elsa Galasio engaged as La Musica, while tenor Camille Tresmontant came into his own as Offenbach's Paris in shades. Wonderful at the end to see the young players embracing and kissing, just like they do in Lucerne.

A few shots from the aftershow drinks in the Footstall. Monica with my old friend, singer and pianist Tom Pope, and musical man about town Yehuda Shapiro (from now on the pics, except the one of Peter and Edward, are mine).

Monica and Elsa flanking Dominic Wheeler,

and Elsa and Sophie (a dead ringer for Martine McCutcheon, and a rather better singer).

Can't resist this official shot of the world's leading Ochs, our dear Peter Rose, talking to our equally dear Edward Mendelsohn.

And so from one group of promising young artists to another. I was quite excited to learn that soprano, comedienne and presenter Miranda Keys, whom I met when she was covering Jenufa and appeared at that Study Day, was not only singing Marianne the Duenna in Rosenkavalier but also covering the Marschallin. On Sunday, in a day down in Sussex which started grey but turned out beautiful, she sang the Monologue and launched the trio, while two other covers sang Sophie - Louise Alder, stupendous, could go on now - and Octavian - Rihab Chaieb, lovely presence. Their pianist, Matt Fletcher, has just won the Kathleen Ferrier Accompanist's Prize, and brought down the trio from its climax with terrific artistry. Here he is with Miranda on the left and Rihab right (Louise had left by then to move house).

The magic of Glyndebourne never fails, and I was in seventh heaven entertaining, or so it seemed, a very responsive audience with different voice types in the main roles, from the Marschallin's creator Margarethe Siems up to Kiri, Frederica and Lucia (as good a Marschallin as a Sophie, possibly my favourite on disc in both roles). In the morning Raymond Holden set the scene and Mark Everist shed further fascinating light on the French operetta on which it turns out, courtesy of Count Harry Kessler's diaries, Hofmannsthal and Kessler had based the entire scenario.

A superb lunch in Nether Wallop - spicy meatballs, excellent - and chats with Cory Ellison, James Hancox, Lucy Lowe and above all the ever-supportive Christopher Cook, a consummate moderator, all added to the pleasure. Here's CC chatting to singers and accompanist in the Ebert Room.

There was time to spray the singers with my Jo Malone Red Roses cologne, and to dab them with the remains of my rose attar from Kashan. Then at the end the crowds suddenly vanished and, having given my bags to delightful BBC researcher Sinéad O'Neill and her Strauss-knowledgeable partner Nicky to drop off at Pelham House Hotel in Lewes, I wandered the grounds before setting off over the hill to Lewes.

The lakeside, deserted until a couple with dogs appeared in the distance (Gus and Danielle?), had its special magic in mid-May.

The last of the tulips gave a splash of colour in the meadows above

and a lone peony flourished on the other side.

I had to pay homage to the bust of Sir George, who sadly died before the season's start; Gus wrote that he had been listening to Act 1 of Rosenkavalier in the 1965 Glyndebourne recording the night before his death.  Brian Dickie has paid eloquent tribute on The Arts Desk.

Then I inspected the flower beds in the formal garden - iris blooming

and incipient,

a fabulous flock of tulips

and others at the end of the long walk -

before I struck off up the field opposite to inquisitive stares from sheep and lambs.

I've always taken a higher route from the Lewes direction so never realised quite how beautiful this perspective on Glyndebourne and the Downs can be.

A gate at the end leads to the bare and glorious heights

from where, in a blasting wind, trees with raked shadows added features to the bare hills on the other side.

I confess I took a route the wrong side of the golf course and had some retracing of a valley to do

but it was worth it for the moon visible above the trees.

And then a quiet supper and sleep in wonderful Pelham House Hotel, to be greeted the next morning by more clarity from the bedroom window

and off on the 9.15 company bus to film back at the house. Frustrated that the bus filled up before Helene Schneiderman, the Annina who was such vivacious company in Dresden, and the Ochs, Lars Woldt, could get on. There was certainly a buzz outside the theatre before the pre-dress rehearsal, which had been opened to desperate friends and relations who hadn't got tickets. Sitting on a bench before the cameras in the formal garden dominated by the Henry Moore sculpture, I had a luxurious hour to chunter on to Sinéad for a luxurious 90 minute documentary, to be broadcast on BBC Four when it screens the opera on 24 June.

We'll see what they use, but I'm just so glad that with Tony Hall at the helm of the Beeb, the tide may have turned for decent coverage of the arts, and this doc is a real flagship example of good intentions. Coffee with the crew, another bus back to Lewes and back home to prepare the latest Poulenc Carmelites class before pedalling to the City Lit for 4pm. And now a glorious weekend ahead at Glyndebourne: lucky, lucky.

*22/5 Only just found the right year, and this is what I wrote about her: 'Did you know his [Balfe's] Falstaff? I certainly didn’t. (N)Annetta’s cavatina is as good as your average Donizetti number; the Irish mezzo despatched it with sparkling engagement of the audience and a musicality to match Talbot’s'. She looks lovely both in the pictures of that occasion, when she was only 22 - I've closed in on the one of her animation in the Carmen Quintet -

and, indeed, in a fashionplate photo that contradicts a certain journoass's latest piece of rubbish. I wouldn't link to it because I don't want anyone to read the rag in question. I can't stop my mother, but I can try not to feed an all-too visible troll and his paper.

As I've remarked in the comments below, few folk are coming out of Taragate, Dumpygate, call it what you will, with any credit. One treasurable phrase has emerged, applied by La Cieca of Parterre to a certain storm-stirrer: 'hit-whoring windbag'. 'Hit-whoring' will definitely enter my terminology.

Anyway, I've had enough now, just missed a radio summons which I would have resisted anyway, and only want to hear from those who've actually seen the Glyndebourne Rosenkavalier. Which is marvellous: read my more or less uncontroversial, Jones-lovin' Arts Desk review.

Flittermousing around

Been flapping pipistrelle-like to chatter about town all week, from the Austrian Cultural Forum in Knightsbridge on Sunday to the City Lit Monday and Tuesday, the London Coliseum on Wednesday and Western House, BBC outpost behind Langham Place, on Friday. Plus Kew on Thursday not to talk but to be talked to by an enthusiastic mycologist on Thursday, but that's for another entry.

Not at all sure I would have gone to see Christopher Alden's largely slated production of Die Fledermaus at English National Opera had I not been included in the latest of Christopher Cook's tight little pre-performance packages before the show, turned as before into the podcast you can listen to here (second entry down). It was better than I'd anticipated, but still not as good as I would have liked. Yet again a heavy-hearted directorial hand sinks a maybe unstageable operetta gaiety.

I determined not to see it before I spoke, hoping to keep the door open on the possibility of something good stagewise after Richard Jones's self-confessed failure of an ENO predecessor and Harry Kupfer's lift-dominated Komische Oper production, which we left halfway through on my birthday back in 1996.

It all works beautifully on the recording which was my first boxed-set purchase in my early teens, Boskovsky's Vienna sparkler with a sardonic Falke from Fischer-Dieskau, Gedda's foppish Eisenstein, experienced Viennese bass buffo Walter Berry, the classy Anneliese Rothenberger's Rosalinde and - peerless, surely - Brigitte Fassbaender's dyke-of-delight Orlofsky. Plus all dialogue masterfully directed by Otto Schenk, whom we last saw in his cups as Lady Bracknell in Vienna's Leopoldstadt Theatre for an all-male production of Bunbury, oder wie wichtig ist es Ernst zu sein and who plays Frosch as a very convincing drunk on the recording.

I snapped the box cover and put the picture up when marking the death of Rothenberger at the age of 85, but no harm in repeating it here as I took it along as a kind of talisman to the talk. Of which more briefly later. The show? Well, Alden C, like his brother, is no stranger to nightmare scenarios - the schoolyard one applied to Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream perhaps the most successful 'rewrite' I've seen - and this was Rosalinde's as set up in the overture and controlled throughout by Dr Falke as Freud (Richard Burkhard, one of the better voices on display, pictured below in the first of Robert Workman's images).

A production should be clear in the telling and not need explaining, but the excellent cover Adele, Clare Eggington, and the Frosch, Austrian actor Jan Pohl, who joined us along with assistant conductor and repetiteur Murray Hipkin enriched our understanding by talking of the three eras: repressed 19th century, unconscious-released Freudian early 20th and totalitarian-nightmare 30s.

Problem? It ain't funny, really, ever. I laughed a bit at some of the wit in the translation by Stephen Lawless and Daniel Dooner, which is much better than many critics have declared (and infinitely better than Pountney's appalling, antique job for the Fidelio). Although I lost the will to live - maybe the point - soon into the party act, I did laugh nervously when Adele slapped Eisenstein about as she worked her way down the staircase with her Laughing Song.

Rhian Lois, though not exactly possessed of a voice you'd like to hear on a recording, is a fabulous musician, hits all the top notes - as had Clare in her two numbers for the talk - and holds her poise throughout. Not so Tom Randle's Eisenstein, who seems lost throughout - though at least shows us what good physical shape he's in when the errant husband strips off to mirror lover Alfred in the reconciliation. And Edgaras Montvidas probably gave the classiest singing of the evening running through a rep which featured, of course, Fidelio and Madama Butterfly, the operas surrounding this one at ENO. Suitably sexy, too, in an offbeat, parodied kinda way.

Poor Julia Sporsén, a fine Julietta last season, didn't do too well with Rosalinde's ought-to-be creamy upper register; surely she's a mezzo? Jennifer Holloway looked good as Orlofsky but had too many embarrassing manic-depressive routines. Even Andrew Shore didn't carry off his humour too successfully as transvestite prison governor Frank - pictured here with Holloway -

and the conducting from Eun Sim Kim was much zestier than I'd been led to believe but lacked the true Viennese lilt. As usual. Lovely wacky party costumes by Constance Hoffman,

especially striking when the entire group of decadents sits on a vast prison bench in the production's main twist, stripping away the curtains to show the bleak reality of 1930s Germany.

But did Alden really have to make Pohl do so many weird epileptic routines alongside the usual Nazi-officer cliches? Sorry: I really can't say you should go as I did in the case of the Fidelio, worth it in several coups which don't really happen here. And is there anything in the music which prompts the darkness? Possibly only in the Act 3 Melodrama for Frank's return to his prison; elsewhere not at all. In his little talk demo, Hipkin pointed out that when we first hear the plaintive oboe tune in the Overture, so beautifully decorated in its reprise, we have no idea it's the mock-sadness of Rosalinde in the Act One Trio. He also revealed to me how all three strains of Alfred's Drinking Song are popular 3/4 dances, from quasi-minuet with strong first beat to Ländler and the true Viennese sugariness in 'Glücklich ist, wer vergisst' (and this kind should always have a rush up to the second beat if I understand correctly).

One of many interesting points I dug out for my intro, based on very little deep knowledge of Strauss family history, comes from a rather academically jargonsome article in an excellent special edition of the Österreichische MUSIKZEITschrift by Professor Moritz Csáky, Chair of Austrian History at Graz University:

Some listeners in the already well-educated bourgeois audience were apparently able to recognize the concealed borrowing in the libretto of Die Fledermaus...from Baldasar Gracian's Oracolo manual, recently translated into German by Arthur Schopenhauer: 'Happy he who forgets what can no longer be changed'. As Hermann Bahr [Viennese playwright whom R Strauss originally asked to be the librettist for Intermezzo] and others have stressed, Schopenhauer's works enjoyed a secure place in every bourgeois library 'in which, under the pressure of fashion, every Viennese read Schopenhauer, but not without always listening to a waltz at the same time'.

Other strange but true facts:

Strauss was pulled into the Viennese operetta picture because Offenbach was getting so expensive. First wife Jetty drove him to it because stage works brought royalties and the dance music which all three Strauss brothers wrote for the court balls did not.

I knew he conducted the first ever public performance of a work by Tchaikovsky, the Characteristic Dances, at Pavlovsk in 1865, but not that he gave the Viennese premiere of Wagner's Tannhäuser Overture.

How are these statistics? At Boston's International Peace Jubilee 20,000 singers, 10,000 orchestral musicians and 100 sub conductors tackled waltz arrangements with choral additions.

Mahler's conducting of Die Fledermaus in 1897, his first year as chief conductor of the Vienna Hofoper, won a personal message of congratulations by the Waltz King, then celebrating 50 years of composing. Mahler thought Strauss waltzes brought 'large bills and small change' - unlike Brahms and Wagner, who both adored them - but in 1899 upbraided a tenor who sniffed at having to play the role of Eisenstein thus:

An operetta is simply a small and gay opera, and many classical works come under this heading. The fact that mediocre compositions have been given this title recently makes no difference. Johann Strauss II's work surpasses them in every way, notable in its excellent musical diction, and that is why the administration has not hesitated to include it in its repertoire.

I found what I believe to be many interesting connections, too, in the Sunday study day on 'Mahler and opera', starting with Suppé, whose Die schöne Galathee overture has a gorgeous waltz theme quoted, I believe, towards the end of Das Lied von der Erde's great 'Abschied'. It's very likely the young Mahler conducted the 'mythological operetta' in his first conducting post at the spa town of Hall in the summer of 1881, though we don't know the works he did conduct (the intendant had it in his repertoire). I didn't know Die Drei Pintos, Weber's very incomplete opera for which Mahler composed so much wonderful music; now I do and I want the old recording with Prey and the divine Lucia Popp.

I did know about Mahler's love for The Merry Widow and I had my own connections to make between Verdi, Wagner and the Eighth Symphony before moving on to Mahler's influence on Britten: the Fifth Symphony's second movement and Grimes's pre-storm monologues, the Tenth and the epilogue of Death in Venice.

Back to BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour and my heroine the great Dame Jenni Murray on Friday morning to talk about Verdi just after his 200th birthday. Amused to arrive at Western House among crowds battling for glimpses of Robbie Williams - who escaped out the back - and, can you believe (crowds, I mean), for David Jason, who was going into the studio next to mine. I got three bites of the cherry: on Elisabetta 'I Will Survive' de Valois in Don Carlo, a heroine I wanted to add to the mix; on the Merry Wives of Falstaff; and on the great sopranos in Verdi today (a huge gap of not-great-enough between Freni and now - well, listen: it's on this Friday edition. Jenni does a helpful review of the other Verdi slots of the week at 30m42s; Dr Jane Rutherford and I are introduced at c33m40s).

One of the fun spinoffs from appearing on this still much-loved programme, is getting surprise messages from erstwhile ones such as our beloved Linda Esther Gray, who e-mailed from Oklahoma where she's following in her tutor Eva Turner's footsteps as college voice tutor. More from her anon. I thought I'd sign off by doing what others did on the bicentenary birthday day proper, choosing a favourite slice of YouTube Verdi, but as the Abbado or Toscanini recordings of Falstaff Act 1 Scene 2 aren't there - and a fizzing ensemble seemed fairest - I'll have to pass on that one.

Just in case you missed the change up top, the podcast of the ENO Fledermaus pre-performance event chaired by Christopher Cook is now available to listen to here.

Portrait of the artist as opportunist

OK, so that's me messing round on the Leeds Grand Theatre stage, as snapped by my Radio 3 interlocutor, the ineffable Christopher Cook. But I'm talking about Chartkov, lonely protagonist of Nikolay Gogol's The Portrait as translated into music by Mieczyslaw Weinberg (aka Moysey Vainberg) in 1980. The opera, clearly, is no straightforward rendering of the short story, in which the portrait of a Satanic old moneylender is absolutely key throughout. That supernatural aspect wasn't much liked by critic Belinsky, whose more prosaic understanding of a central message about artistic compromise is shared by David Pountney in the Opera North production (the four production photos below by Bill Cooper).

In other words, he sees it more or less exclusively about what happens when a painter sells out, only to discover too late what dedication to real art is all about. Which is fine, up to a point. I like Pountney's central conceit, brilliantly supported by the sets and costumes of Dan Potra, that we start in a rainbow-oiled artist's studio in Petersburg c.1830


only to move forward to what society painters would have had to do in the Socialist-Realist world of the 1930s


and on to Warhol in New York.


That's fine. But, as has become Pountney's wont in more recent extravaganzas, the message is muddied. What are we supposed to make of the cracked-mirror 'portrait', the fact that the old moneylender with the evil eyes never appears, let alone steps out of his frame, to balance the vision of the artist's psyche muse, a leggy girl in bedshirt and high-heeled red shoes? Plus there are some declining old voices in the ensemble: Helen Field's is unbearable to listen to after a while, and I don't think it was just Peter Savidge's temporary indisposition which made his crucial, Death in Veniceish hymn to the true artist in Act Two so unpleasant to listen to (it's a tough sing, and we got a much better stand-in on Thursday, who sadly won't be heard on the broadcast).

Nevertheless it's tenor Paul Nilon's evening, and while this time he didn't have a character as interesting as Michel in Martinu's Julietta to get his teeth into, he did as good a job as he could to stop us wishing that the great Langridge had got hold of the role twenty or so years earlier.


So what of the music? A second hearing, not least because Rossan Gergov got far more impassioned and well-phrased playing out of the Opera North Orchestra than on the previous performance we'd heard, suggested pseudo-profundity in the last act when I'd been led to hope there might be real depths here. But Weinberg still finds inspired touches: the Lamplighter's ever more haunting ballads, in a simple vein that this composer could do so well, the muted violin solo for the evanescent Muse and the symphonic sweep from the A major eulogy in praise of the dedicated artist to Chartkov's panicky peripetaia. It never comes close to the operatic riches I heard once again in Saturday's Met screening of Adams's Nixon in China, so evidently a masterpiece even back in 1988 when I first heard it. But it's stageworthy and interesting. And the more I hear of Weinberg's music, the more I come to respect this composer who lived so much in Shostakovich's shadow after arriving in the Soviet Union from Poland.


Some of this I managed to say in our boxed conversation as we looked out on the splendours of the beautifully-restored Grand Theatre (above) before and during the show: we'll see what transpires when the Radio 3 broadcast is aired in May. I must say that I had a jolly time as always with CC - seen here framed -


as well as with producer Sam Phillips - who indulged me in a second visit to Hansa's Gujarati vegetarian restaurant, where I did indeed get to meet the great lady as I'd hoped - and the rest of the team. And, yes, I love Leeds now; though it seems unfortunate that Opera North couldn't have done more to fill the many empty seats in the Grand with young folk (I saw none on either visit). This is just the sort of piece that could have fired up many a school project.