Big Prisoner at the Frontline

That's Nikita, tenor Nicky Spence's character in Krzysztof Warlikowski's burningly intense production of Janáček's From the House of the Dead at the Royal Opera. He's seen above in Clive Barda's image harming the basketball-playing 'Eagle' of Salim Sai. But in reality Nicky is the loveliest of men, pure communicative energy with just the right degree of thoughtfulness.

He came along to my Opera in Depth class at the Frontline Club, where we're currently studying From the House of the Dead, on the recommendation of the opera's predictably brilliant conductor Mark Wigglesworth. A regular visitor, Mark has been unable to return this term because he's been preoccupied with three works - the Janáček, a Spanish run of Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking followed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra's concert performance - which I missed, dammit, because I was in Berlin that night hearing another conducting hero, Neeme Järvi, in Rudolf Tobias's massive oratorio Des Jona Sendung (Jonah's Mission) - and Verdi's La forza del destino in his debut at Dresden's Semperoper. He promises to come back in the autumn, by which time his book on conducting will have been published (can't wait for that).

Anyone that Mark recommends to come and speak is going to be a true Mensch like himself, that rare figure who goes beyond just being nice - there are more of that sort in the opera business than you might expect - and is an active force for the good. I include in that gender-unspecific category soprano Tamara Wilson, the great Leonora in MW's ENO Verdi Forza whose appearance as Wagner's Brünnhilde in the final scene of Die Walküre at the Proms Mark generously ascribes to my suggestion - let's hope eventually she performs the entire role for him, by which time Nicky may be up to Siegmund or even Siegfried - as well as our other soprano visitors Sue Bullock (an unreserved admirer of Nicky's work), Anne Evans and Felicity Lott ( I reserve their damehoods because SB should be one too).

Which is a long preamble to saying that Nicky (pictured above, and below with me looking inexplicably quizzical, at the Frontline by David Thompson) and I, from my perspective, got on instantly over the Frontline's fish and chips (best in London?) 'Grounded' is the word I and several students have used - he knows his worth but he's not arrogant in the slightest (that's usually born of insecurity). He learnt the hard way, promised 'fame in a night' with a Universal Classics/Decca record deal where he recorded 'stuff for grannies' and sang for the Queen (etc, etc - I can't say I remember this), but was pulled up short by a devastating review from Rupert Christiansen which sent him straight back to music college to get his voice properly in order over years. So we critics can sometimes have our uses, and Nicky acknowledged that RC, however harsh, had done him a favour.

It was serendipity that Nicky (pictured by Clive Barda above in rehearsal with Graham Clark - the oldest and the youngest members of the Dead House cast together, as Nicky remarked when putting it up on social media) came to be working with Mark again, having sung in two of the four triumphs of Wigglesworth's all-too-short regency, the William Kentridge-directed Lulu (which I saw three times) and the revival of Jenůfa in which he was a memorable Števa; MW was only called in to the Dead House after maverick Teodor Currentzis had pulled out. Nicky knows he gets a level of support and enlightenment from MW not common in conductors. He spoke interestingly about the slow evolution of Warlikowski's vision, in which space was given within the parameters of given scenes that actually worked rather than ending up an incoherent mess (he does a good Warlikowski impersonation).

I need to listen over to the private recording of our two hours in the class for chapter and verse, but suffice it to say for now that Nicky is on the right path towards the bigger Wagner roles. Next step is Loge for Philippe Jordan in Paris - as he pointed out over lunch, listening back to earlier singers of the role, he found them more Helden/lyrical, like Windgassen, than the character tenor we tend to get today - and Strauss's Herod is good semi-Heldentenor role for him, too.

We played excerpts from his superlative Strauss Lieder disc, last in the excellent Hyperion series. Roger Vignoles lured him in with the famous 'Cäcilie', but didn't tell him the rest would be bits and pieces left untouched by previous singers. Yet we agreed that there were some absolute gems here, and both, independently, decided that 'Die Ulme zu Hirsau' was the other track to play. It has a huge range as it depicts the tree growing through a ruined monastery - the piano's ripples are a precursor to Daphne's transformation in the much later opera - and after a heart-leaping modulation quotes Luther's 'Ein feste Burg' for Uhland's lines about 'another such tree at Wittenberg'.

And we finished with the second part of Pavel Haas's Fata Morgana song cycle for voice and piano quintet, an even bigger sing. This connected us to Janáček, since Haas was his pupil and composed the cycle in 1923, the year after his great master had written The Wandering Madman in typically quirky style for chorus to a text by the same poet, Rabindranath Tagore.

The sad connection with From the House of the Dead is that after Janáček's death mercifully prevented him from seeing the horrors of the Second World War, Haas's Jewish background landed him in Terezin (Theresienstadt), where he composed the desperately poignant 'Four Songs on Chinese Poetry' about exile and separation shortly before he was sent to Auschwitz and the gas chambers there in 1944. I had no idea until I just read it that the great Czech conductor Karel Ančerl was there too, and survived the experience, unlike his wife and child. He recounted that he and Haas were lined up before Mengele, who was about to send Ančerl to his death, but when Haas began to cough, chose him instead. The horror of it.

So, tomorrow, back to study of Janáček's last masterpiece, his most startling and orchestrally outlandish. Not sure how I'll get a grip on it.* I wanted to buy the orchestral score, but Universal wants over 400 euros for making one up, so I'll have to look on line instead. Next term's operas are (coincidentally) 'ill met by moonlight' - Strauss's Salome and Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Carsen production of which I saw again with great pleasure on Wednesday (pictured above by Robert Workman, a plus against the definite minus of the shoddy, poorly directed Traviata which has just opened - my review has surely squandered the goodwill built up with ENO by ecstatic praise of the Iolanthe, but one shouldn't mince words where incompetence is concerned. Disagreeing with the approach is something else altogether).

If you're interested in joining our summer classes, leave me a message here - I won't publish it but if you leave your email, I'll reply immediately.

*20/3 Yet I think I did - it makes much sense as units governed by searing themes, usually made up of no more than four notes, and in performance you don't notice the joins as one 'scene' segues into another.

Our guide, alongside the online score, was Mackerras's electrifying recording, which can never be surpassed (we'll watch the Chéreau production conducted by Boulez next week). In fact I'd go so far as to say that given the stupendous sound - those timps and the trilling high-wire trumpet at the end of Act One! - and the playing of the Vienna Phil, which can never have gone out on more of a limb, it may be the most stunning of all opera recordings. Left us trembly yesterday afternoon.

ENO Pirates sail on in style

Never understood those detractors who claim Mike Leigh didn't do enough with Gilbert and Sullivan's first out-and-out masterpiece, The Pirates of Penzance, which I loved on its first appearance at ENO two years ago. Indeed, he taught me that it might, after all, be the best, despite some bigger ambitions in parts of Iolanthe, The Yeomen of the Guard and Princess Ida. Less is more in G&S: get the singer-actors to deliver its topsy-turveyness straight, and the fantastical wit will only seem the stronger.

True, there's some campery, but of the innocent sort: the Pirate King and above all the Major General (Andrew Shore, peerless both times round, pictured with Ashley Riches' Pirate King and chorus above in the first of many production images by Tom Bowles) are big kids who love to romp with, respectively, fellow noblemen-gone-wrong and daughters. The mesh of adaptable set and handsome period costumes seems just as clever second time round (everyone loves the Policemen peeking out around the circle-frame).

I went again partly to introduce the youngest godchild by some distance, seven-year-old Mirabel - the rest are now in their early twenties - to the delights of G&S. She seemed gripped throughout, but what she liked I don't know, because she's gone into a shy zone, head buried in books at tea afterwards (which is delightful in itself, especially as they're not of the electronic variety). But her parents and I adored it - indeed, mum Edsy, who's now a fan of Charles Court Opera's bracing reimaginings, constantly reels at the subversiveness of it all. Like so many folk, she'd thought the Savoy Operas were the provenance of polite home-counties am-dram, whereas when done at the highest level they provide the greatest sheer pleasure of which music theatre is capable.

The many newcomers to the cast were all impressive. I wondered if any Mabel could be as delicious and vocally impressive as Claudia Boyle first time round; welcome Soraya Mafi from Lancashire, a coloratura of high style and engaging stage presence (pictured above).

Ashley Riches brings opulent musical skills to bear on the Johnny Deppesque Pirate King, phrasing in long lines (what a classy singer he is). And I want one of them pirate skirts.

There's promise, too, from tenor David Webb as a Frederic more worthy of those girls' gushing about 'manly beauty' than the excellent Robert Murray. And John Tomlinson is nothing diminished as Chief Plod, doing subtle things with the famous song. Conductor Gareth Jones made a real impression with the ENO Orchestra in the Overture, and kept it all on the boil more skilfully than most audience members will have realised. The chorus actually gets its due for once this season; why do I forget until it arrives that 'Hail, Poetry' is such an a cappella stunner, the centrepiece of an Act 1 Finale that otherwise doesn't do much dramatically (think Katisha's entrance, the Fairy Queen's 'curse', to name but two)?

The one improvement on last time is Lucy Schaufer (pictured above with Riches and Webb), musical theatre pro who always knows the right buttons to press, as a Ruth with a very impressive chest-voice-taken-high and an unflinching delivery of west country vowels and consonants. As I've made her acquaintance, I suggested to Edsy that Mirabel might like to go to the Stage Door accompanied by the skull-and-crossbones-touting bear on loan from her school - truculent elephant Mr Panz, who sings G&S style songs already, had to stay at home - to meet her.

Mum was possibly more thrilled, childlike-fashion, at this proposal than daughter, but back we went, and Lucy was swiftly out, absolutely charming in sitting down and signing the programme before going off for a massage between shows (she's wearing the hat, by the way, to keep her hair flat between wig-sportings). We also got to meet Ms Mafi and young Webb, who of course were models of natural friendliness, as I told the family most British singers are in my experience.

Then it was off to Maison Bertaux for tea and cakes. A pretty good afternoon out, I'd say. If you want to revisit My Evening With Mike Leigh, in the pre-performance talk we shared back in 2015, you can find it on Soundcloud here.

ENO 2016-17: a half-good season

It came as a bit of a shock to see the full list of English National Opera productions for the coming season and realise, as one blogger put it, that the ones you'd heard promising rumours about amount to just about all there is. This is what the reduced schedule looks like in practice, and it's not right for a national opera company. Another commenter pointed out that it's chorus-lite: none for Lulu or Partenope, a big Te Deum in Tosca, the least good bits of The Pearl Fishers, very little in Don Giovanni, men only in Rigoletto. No Britten or Tippett. In fact no opera on the big scale for which ENO was made. The only familiar works offering much chorus presence are The Pirates of Penzance (photo of Mike Leigh's production below by Tristram Kenton) and The Mikado, the latter touring to Blackpool in what looks like a patronising gesture to The Regions (English Touring Opera serves there, of course). Of course if Miller's dazzling-white production turns more people on to opera, so much the better.

Only compare this with Opera North's far more enterprising season: much the best of the major companies from my perspective: plenty for the chorus to do in Billy Budd (men only plus boys, but what choruses), Suor Angelica (women only, but smaller roles, too), The Snow Maiden (oh, if only we got it down here!) and Turandot.

The unknown quantities at ENO are the new operas. Daniel Schnyder's Charlie Parker's YARDBIRD at the Hackney Empire gives us the promise of a very fine American tenor, Lawrence Brownlee - though as everyone is well aware it's time to balance transatlantic visitors with building up a UK-centric ensemble of soloists again. I wouldn't put much money on Ryan Wigglesworth's The Winter's Tale from the few full-scale works of his I've heard - and when I saw him conduct the BBC Symphony Orchestra, he was the second worst non-maestro I've seen there or anywhere else (the worst has to be China-approved Long Yu). How ironic when he bears the same surname as Mighty Mark, one of the world's BEST conductors. I hope, of course, for better on both RW fronts.

The forthcoming Don Giovanni I had the huge pleasure of learning more about at Lilian Baylis House (pictured up top; it's in West Hampstead, a hell of a cycle from West Kensington) when I interviewed Richard Jones, our only visionary opera director (let's say it again in case the message hasn't sunk in), and the wholly delightful and natural Christine Rice (singing Donna Elvira, one of our great three homegrown mezzos - Sarah Connolly and Alice Coote being the other two). This was a selective event for patrons and would-be patrons, and I think we had fun. The period will be, if I remember Richard's words aright '1946-2007' (very specific!), a closed society, deeply religious like the original Spanish milieu.

Richard is giving DVDs to the cast at the first meeting - I forget some of the choices, but Clive Bayley, the Leporello, is getting Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy, which may well be referenced (a certain freeze-frame of Robert De Niro's character greeting Jerry Lewis in a car was mentioned - the two pictured below in another scene). Christopher Purves's protagonist will have no redeeming features about him. RJ recalled a narcissist he met on one ill-fated venture overseas - no naming of either here, for obvious reasons.

It will be Richard's first major Mozart - he took on a Cosi for Scottish Opera during his trainee years at Glasgow's Citizens Theatre, but recalls it with horror. Funny that both Christine and Richard think Cosi tougher than Don G to pull off (I've seen at least three good productions of the former, only one so far of the latter - Deborah Warner's at Glyndebourne). The problem with Don G, our director finds, is how to keep the flow, especially in the second act where you have to hear both Don Ottavio's 'Il mio tesoro' - Don O will not be a wimp, since he's being played by Allan Clayton - and Elvira's 'Mi tradi'.

I imagine Mark Wigglesworth, working with RJ for the first time, will not make that feel a problem, to judge from his pace-perfect Magic Flute. Heading off tonight to hear another who, I'm sure, will keep Flute lively in concert - the inspiring Ivan Fischer, whose Budapest Festival Orchestra has just had its municipal budget cut by three quarters. And we think we have problems with the philistines here in London...

In the meantime, one piece of good news for next season: Ivo van Hove, my new-found hero, is back for three Toneelgroep Amsterdam spectaculars at the Barbican next season, as well as Hedda Gabler at the National and an opera which I can't mention scheduled for a later Royal Opera season. I'm delighted that Toneelgroep's Roman Plays, which I didn't see first time round, will be back, and while I lament missing out on their Scenes from a Marriage, another Bergman-scripted double, of After the Rehearsal and Persona, looks very promising indeed.

Richard Jones had been to see Kings of War, not sure whether on my ardent recommendation or not, and loved it, especially the take on Henry VI (another image from designer Jan Versweyveld, von Hove's long-term partner, shows a bespectacled Eelco Smits surrounded by Janni Goslinga's Queen Margaret, Fred Goessens' Cardinal and Robert de Hoog's Suffolk). Why did they all seem so real, I asked? Because, he said, they've  mostly worked with van Hove since they were 18, and because KoW had a six-month rehearsal period. Utopia in the theatre, if the talent and genius are right.

ENO at the Oliviers: winners not present

Congratulations to the English National Opera Chorus and Orchestra for winning the Outstanding Achievement in Opera at the Olivier Awards. I'm sure stupendous Tamara Wilson, Leonora in the company's Force of Destiny, and the evergreen Felicity Palmer, the Countess in last season's Queen of Spades, also nominated, will have been cheering them on.

Yet it's baffling that no-one from either chorus or orchestra was present to claim the award, not having been invited. At the very least the spirited co-leader, Janice Graham, should have been there. Isn't this a very symbol of the gulf between the CEO and Board on the one hand and the 'creatives' who have always delivered through thick and thin on the other?

I understand Martin Fitzpatrick of the Music Staff made a perfectly fine speech about treasuring what they have, presumably ironic when you bear in mind that the majority of the administration who attended have been doing their best to dismantle what makes this company great. It's still not too late to make the right kind of changes. Mark Wigglesworth remains to show the ENO in all its glory in the Jenůfa this season and two more productions in the next. As I predicted last month, the artists will all put up a fight to keep him.

Proud of my colleagues on The Arts Desk, chiefly theatre critic Marianka Swain, for tweeting so trenchantly throughout the event and declaring TAD's allegiance to the ENO cause. And there really is only one (cause): to survive and change, but not at the cost of becoming a part-time company.

STOP PRESS (4/4): Our Tamara - as I think I can say after two hours in her grounded, funny company when she visited the opera class at the Frontline Club - has just won the prestigious Richard Tucker Prize for 2016, following in rather distinguished footsteps (Renée Fleming, Lawrence Brownlee, Stephanie Blythe, David Daniels, Angela Meade, Joyce DiDonato, Michael Fabiano and Jamie Barton). ENO casting has been criticised for over-use of American singers, and it does need to get back to promoting a UK ensemble, but I've NEVER heard Verdi singing like hers at the Coli (and Marjorie Owens's Norma was a good call, too). She'll be back here in July, but doing what I can't as yet say*. Photo above by Aaron Gang.

*Update (1/5) - I can now: the soprano part in Tippett's A Child of Our Time and testing out a bit of Brünnhilde in the final scene of Die Walküre Act 3 with James Cresswell as Wotan: my doing, says Mark Wigglesworth, who's conducting the Prom in question.

The ENO chorus: heard but not heeded

Famous last words: at the end of my Arts Desk reaction in March 2015 to Arts Council England's punishment of English National Opera, I wrote (with apologies for self-quotation): 'the artistic team is doing superlative work under difficult circumstances, delivering time after time. It would be criminal to see it disembowelled. So here's hoping newly-appointed CEO Cressida Pollock can build on what's daringly best about the company rather than plunge in with slash-and-burn techniques.'

'Slash-and-burn', unfortunately, is the way of McKinseyites like Ms. Pollock, according to a distinguished friend of mine who has had many meetings with their ilk during her years of working in the NHS. Said friend pointed out how the policy is to bring an organisation or department ruthlessly to its knees, then move on and wreak havoc somewhere else.

Ms. Pollock (not pictured in the second image by Robert Workman above: that's Elza van den Heever - I think - as Ellen Orford in the ENO Peter Grimes) started off well enough. I liked the look of her at first nights, where she seemed very engaged and to be having fun. She did indeed make a start with reducing ticket prices. Then the bombshell fell, which most of you know all about, from my banging on about it - and I'm not about to stop: 25 per cent reduction in the annual salary of the chorus (pictured up top with astounding new Verdi/Wagner soprano Tamara Wilson in the ENO Force of Destiny), accordant with a season due to run from September to March only.

That is unacceptable, unarguable, wrong. Period. Yes, money has to be saved, but there is no indication that Pollock and the Board have been listening to the alternatives put forward so far by many among the 5,800 petitioners on Change.org (the number is still rising; there's also an Equity petition which 5,000 + have signed to date). Their numbers include singers, directors, conductors, designers, actors and some of us critics. I'm especially proud to have drawn Vladimir Jurowski's attention to the situation. I thought he'd be a Mensch about it once he knew the facts and he was, writing:

 It's an appalling and unfair way of trying to resolve the financial and managerial crisis in which this wonderful company has found itself for way too long!! I have worked with ENO Chorus and know how incredibly dedicated and hard-working they are! And without its chorus no opera company would be able to carry on. It's like cutting off somebody's foot first and then expect this person to participate in running competitions -- either sadism or colossal stupidity!!! Cut its chorus and you'll kill ENO surely! And with the loss of ENO London's and UK's cultural landscape is going to suffer irreparable damage!!! We have been through similar crisis in Berlin several years ago and yet with some COLLECTIVE EFFORT all three(!!!) opera companies have been saved and continue working successfully... What ENO obviously needs now is a new talented Intendant with a new artistic policy and ideas, not a mutilated chorus!! And the Arts Council's silence is both worrying and shameful.

Jurowski and other famous names have left eloquent comments. Cressida Pollock's only 'reply' has been an unconvincing statement on ENO's website (she may have invented a new verb, 'to casualise'). But she's not addressing people directly. Yes, it's sour grapes from me that she hasn't, after a week, replied to an email I sent her. This is poor: let me use the example of the harder-working Kasper Holten at the Royal Opera in terms of a leader who's responded personally, and personably, to everyone I know. Ms Pollock has a PA, doesn't she? But no, not so much as a 'your comments have been noted' reply. (Pictured below: the ENO Pagliacci, brilliantly reworked by Richard Jones as 'Ding Dong!' performed in a northern repertory theatre - high time that returned; photo by Richard Hubert Smith).

This is the message, FYI, not different from what I 've been writing and saying elsewhere, and attempting to be constructive in asking for alternatives.

Hello Cressida (if I may),

I hope by now that you've seen enough proposals of alternative courses to be taken for ENO not to strike at its heart and its morale. It's true that something needs to give, but despite what you've written on the company website, the administration is not down to its bare bones. Does it really need 11 people in one department to raise a mere £5 million, for instance? Why are there no orchestral musicians or company singers on the board?

Perhaps the best way of all for everyone in the company to show goodwill is for all to take a much lower paycut than the one proposed for the chorus, say five per cent for a year or two until things turn round.  

As you will have seen from all three productions Mark Wigglesworth has conducted so far this season, the quality has never been higher. It simply can't be compromised - and above all you don't want to lose the best conductor ENO has ever had.

I should also recommend a proper debate about the issues involved. Contingents like the Friends of ENO feel badly let down by lack of consultation.

Best wishes,

David

The petition's been running for three weeks now, and there's been no sign of a rapprochement. A lot more people's voices need to be heard by the board - including said Friends, whose money the admin is happy to have, but not their thoughts. A student told me of one who was brushed aside by a board member in the last crisis and told to enjoy the opera, not worry his head about accounts (he happened to be a top accountant. Needless to say he withdrew his support).

I mean what I wrote about Wigglesworth as Music Director; he deserves an Artistic Director of similar vision to work with, and soon. The chorus also sang its fairly routine stuff in Bellini's Norma with sheen and passion, and to a huge ovation on first night. They did what Christopher Alden's clunky production asked them to do, and to be fair, he brought them forward on the curtain call for a second ovation. By the way, I'm not anti-Aldens; C's Britten Dream was a radical rethink that worked for me.

Make no mistake, a full-time chorus in a big company is not part of a museum culture but essential for 20th and 21st century masterpieces too: without it, no top-notch Peter Grimes, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Turandot, Julietta (pictured above by Robert Workman) or The Gospel According to the Other Mary, to cite a few essentials among the kind of electrifying music-drama ENO has been doing best for years. So, for the third time of asking - and having sent out a round robin to 150 students, with the result of five bothering to comment, I know it has to be repeated - sign and comment on The Spirit of Lilian Baylis's petition if you haven't done so already.

UPDATE (26/2) The Chorus has voted 100 per cent in favour of a strike after an Equity ballot. They were to be seen and heard earlier this morning outside ACE headquarters.

No sign of a shift from CEO or Board. This list of mostly irrelevant worthies, poorly put together, tells us all we know as to why there needs to be a clean sweep in this part of the ENO admin. Only one member has had any previous hands-on experience of opera companies.

Just read a response from ENO management to the strike proposals. No amount of arguing is going to justify the injustice of making professionals take a nine-month salary per year. No hint, even, of investigating alternative avenues (for alternatives there must be).

SECOND UPDATE (29/2) Not to namedrop, but to point out a further dimension to the argument: I was having supper with four singers of note (to put it mildly) - our beloved friend Linda Esther Gray (pictured above second from left), Valerie Masterson (left), Meryl Drower and Clare Moll - plus other spouses, and they made this point very passionately: that the chorus were such a rock and support to them when they appeared on the ENO stage. They pointed out that such experience and solidarity is especially important for young soloists and were horrified at the prospect of dissolution. Valerie has in fact signed the petition and I urged them to phrase their feelings in comments, but if they don't, this is a record of what they said.

A second e-mail  I sent to Cressida Pollock last week has also so far gone unanswered. And she has not corrected the factual errors on her ENO website statement. This does not bode well for 'listening'. No doubt the management will be trumpeting the nomination of the very chorus it's aiming to destroy, along with the ENO Orchestra, for the Olivier Awards' Best Achievement in Opera. They have to win, don't they? I'm sure Felicity Palmer, Antonio Pappano and Tamara Wilson, the other nominees, will cheer them loudly if they do.

THIRD UPDATE (5/3) Cressida Pollock's latest statement on the ENO site: quite apart from the spin and the unfair misrepresentation of the company's artists' attitude to negotiation, it contains a figure that is categorically wrong, stating ENO's need to survive on an annual budget of £12.38 million. That's the Arts Council subsidy, not the entire figure, which is twice that amount. Not impressive for a McKinseyite from an accountancy firm. The error has not been corrected despite repeated requests.

Things may turn even nastier with the arrival of a very aggressive 'negotiator' taking an alleged cut of £800 a day. Not encouraging when said negotiator played a part in the destruction of Scottish Opera as we knew it.

A wise head on young shoulders has just updated a very thoughtful blog entry on the situation here. And here are eloquent words as ever from a known and trusted colleague.

FOURTH UPDATE (17/3)

Wonderful message today from Sir Peter Jonas (pictured), the only administrator in the whole sorry affair to speak sense. OK, so that's because he's very much on the side of Save ENO, but still, this is good.

The Board of ENO do not heed or take kindly to advice and are behaving autocratically and irresponsibly towards the company, employees and art form that they are charged with protecting and supporting. They also fail to raise, from within their numbers and from their network of acquaintances, enough money to take up the financial slack after squeezing the maximum amount of financial income from the company’s work. This is on its own irresponsible. They have also failed to argue and fight ENO’s corner by directly confronting the ACE and by enlisting enough support in the political arena. These failures are impeachable but the sad truth is that it is employees, artists and the art form that will suffer the consequences. Over here, on the continent (deemed as irrelevantly “foreign” by the ENO Board) we have also had out battles to save opera companies over the last 25 years but threatened companies have survived because those responsible for them directly and indirectly as well as artists and committed support staff have fought back continually with civil courage and commitment. ENO is the bedrock of Opera in the UK. If the ACE can starve it to an untimely demise then the future of all opera companies in the UK is threatened and the demise of the once proud Scottish Opera is a frightening precedent !!! Mark Wigglesworth MUST be listened to and needs a strong partner as artistic director who should be, together with him, the internal and external figurehead of the company inspiring great work and fighting for the art form, artists and a clear vision of the future. I have not seen or heard any evidence of vision in the utterances of the ENO Board or management since this crisis was made public. THIS is the true scandal. 

Final footnotes: the strike in Act 1of Akhnaten at the last performance is now off, though the troubles are far from abating, and my crucial interview with ENO Chorus members went up on The Arts Desk earlier this week.

As a reaction to their withdrawn engagement in Sunset Boulevard, not a protest, the ENO Chorus is giving three April performances in London churches conducted by Wigglesworth of the Brahms German Requiem in its London version with two pianos. Full details here.

FIFTH UPDATE (18/3) A deal has been reached, but it's far from ideal, not least because the company will still be part-time with no operas performed between March and June. Details here.

Johannistag

That's actually a leap over the beltane bonfire on midsummer night, a Johannissprung, rather than a celebration of the day itself, but I felt quite like jumping high after 10 weeks with the Opera in Depth students on Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, culminating in our own Johannistag two Mondays back, a good few months before the eagerly-anticipated time itself.

Our constant companions have been three DVDs and snippets from the seven recordings I possess, and over time it became clear which stood out among the others. None of the films matched up to Richard Jones's ENO production throughout. Stefan Herheim's Salzburg staging is far too mannered to home in on the human qualities of its leading characters; we watched wildly overacting chorenes and/or actors around David in Act One and an expressionistic handling of Act Two's opening scenes. McVicar's Glyndebourne show is beautifully filmed by Francois Roussillon, but I already knew its shortcomings, namely some serious miscasting - less in Gerald Finley's Sachs than in the Eva and Walter - and a cramped , unfocused final scene. I used it for the scenes with Beckmesser, since Johannes Martin Kränzle is the real star.

The cameraman for Nikolaus Lehnhoff's Zurich Meistersinger wanders all over the place and tries too many arty angles, but there's definitely a core here. When I saw that team in concert on the South Bank, José van Dam's Sachs seemed a little blunted in timbre, but he's such a sympathetic actor and makes us believe so in Sachs's serious disillusionment that the decision to help his love-rival seems all the more heroic. And who could not warm to Peter Seiffert's Walter? Michael Volle's Beckmesser is all the better, too, for being a real person, the proper mixture of arrogance, nastiness and insecurity. More gravitas needed from Welser-Möst, but there's plenty in an oddly disconcerting - but not unjubilant - final scene with hints of Regensburg's neoclassical Valhalla and the chorus in contemporary casual dress (I see our Lottie in there from time to time, too).

When I compared Parsifals for Radio 3's Building a Library, the leader was crystal-clear: Kubelik's studio recording with a perfect cast, only buried for decades because of Karajan's jealous machinations. And Kubelik's 1967 Meistersinger comes out on top for me, too. I wouldn't chuck out my Karajan, especially for the midsummer night tenderness of Act 2 and the Staatskapelle Dresden sound which seems to move him to more warmth than usual. Norman Bailey is good for majestic Goodall and majestic for bumpy Solti, while the old Kempe moves so easily and has the best Eva in Elisabeth Grümmer. But Kubelik's cast is the best overall, and while Gundula Janowitz is a bit tremulous in the bigger Wagnerian moments, she lights up the conversations and the best quintet since Elisabeth Schumann, Lauritz Melchior, Friedrich Schorr et al for Barbirolli. So three more cheers for Arts Archives in keeping this recording in the catalogues.

We've all of us, I think, been on a high - one student said he left every week walking on air - and we've also been lucky in picking one of the great operatic achievements of recent years. Richard Jones again showed incredible generosity in coming to talk; I little thought, years back, when he picked my brains on Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel, that he'd return the complement with three visits to date. It would be indiscreet to cite his characteristically unexpected views on wider issues, but I can precis a few highlights.

I started by asking him if he found himself moved on first night, as so many of us were again and again. Oh no, he replied, much too worried. About? The minute and a half's scene change in Act Three: it had never been right in rehearsals and he couldn't rest until it worked on the night. He talked a bit about backstories, a part of his work I know from what singers told me about the Glyndebourne Rosenkavalier and from what he himself had told the class about Gloriana. Chief surprise this time was to find out that Sachs's mistress had been absent from Nuremberg for six weeks, which was why he found himself more than usually susceptible to young Eva's charms.

We asked him about changes since the Welsh National Opera production. The last-act set, for a start, and the romping of the principals, finally allowed - Beckmesser included - to step Mozart-like out of character as they held up their historical figures on the placards. And I didn't remember Beckmesser being starkers with only a mandolin to cover his privates. That was thanks to Andrew Shore's willingness, he told us: he'd seen him naked, very movingly, in Tippett's King Priam, suggested it to him and Shore agreed. We must get him along to talk, said Richard: such a nice man, and so many interesting ideas especially about English text (Shore's Beckmesser pictured below with Iain Paterson's revelatory Sachs by Catherine Ashmore for ENO).

Classic Jones: 'the libretto is a bit Rupert Bear' (the other analogy out of the two choicest it would be indiscreet to reproduce). I asked him why Eva's arch line about 'the trouble I have with men' wasn't supertitled: he doesn't like it. Did the audience laugh at it? Not much, I said. Good. And he doesn't care at all for Sachs's self-regarding Tristan/King Marke reference. Would he do it again? No, it doesn't leave enough scope for the director's ideas. The Ring he definitely wants to tackle once more. When he visited to talk about Gloriana, he was looking forward, albeit  to Tristan und Isolde. Now he's rejected it: he spent two months with those two characters in the second act, and couldn't decide what to do with them. Christof Loy's Royal Opera production got it pretty much right, he thought, and that decided it.

I know what big operatic project we can expect next, because we had a dramaturgical pow-wow about it in Carluccio's near the Barbican: Musorgsky's Boris Godunov at the Royal Opera with Bryn Terfel and Pappano (this is hardly confidential news as I've seen it touted in various biographies). Despite agreeing that the Polish act was so wonderful, brought a different atmosphere to the piece, he's since decided on the 1869 original. Apparently my thoughts on the bells in three scenes have been helpful. We talked Sondheim - 'his' cast had just been on a reunion outing to see the film, would love to have been a fly on the wall then - and he's interested in Follies, having had a long chat with the Old Vic's Matthew Warchus (I think because Warchus had done it in New York). Imminently, of course, there's an adaptation of Kafka's The Trial at the Young Vic with Rory Kinnear: our doughty director, after having watched 2000 episodes of a certain telly classic for a putative project in the States, has just spent two weeks agonising over the novel's adaptation.

Meanwhile the opera class moves on to two summer specials: Rossini's Guillaume Tell, which I'd originally thought of devoting a whole term to, and Strauss's Intermezzo, in anticipation of Garsington's production.

Do join us at the fabulous Frontline Club or leave a message here - I needn't send it live - if you want to contact me about it. We kick off again on the 20th. And listen to my Building a Library on Sibelius's Fourth Symphony on Saturday (I wrote something about the background on The Arts Desk). It will be up thereafter in perpetuity* and downloadable as a podcast, so plenty of time to hear it.

*14/4: Here it is in 'clip' form, which presumably outlives the 28 day format. 

Lessons from the Mastersingers

What, you may ask, does this Molièresque bewigged gentleman have to do with Hans Sachs, real-life composer of over 4,370 'master-songs' in addition to several volumes of poems and philosopher-hero of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg? He is none other than Johann Christoph Wagenseil (1633-1708) Doctor and Professor of Law, author of the squat quarto Book of the Master-singers' Gracious Art: its Origin, Practice, Utility and Rules. In the Preface the supposed origin of the Gypsies is also dealt with.

I'd like to say I've read this book so you and my students in the Opera in Depth class don't have to (incidentally, teaching Meistersinger this time round has been immensely enriched by getting a bit closer to Wagenseil). But in fact I haven't had to either, since it seems beautifully summarised in the most disgustingly damp-eaten and smelly volume I've ever purchased off abebooks.uk, Wagner & Wagenseil: A Source of Wagner's Opera 'Die Meistersinger' by one Herbert Thompson, published by Oxford University Press in 1927 and a mere 39 pages long - as opposed to Wagenseil's 433 - plus illustrations by way of appendix several of which I'm reproducing here.

Wagner's pal and fellow-composer Peter Cornelius secured him a copy from Vienna's Imperial Library. I've already speculated on the unacknowledged debt to Hoffmann, who in the introduction to his magnificently spooky story 'The Song-Contest on the Wartburg' - more Freischütz than Tannhäuser - also mentions Wagenseil and borrows from one of Wagenseil's early chapters on the 'Bards', 'Druids' and 'Prophets' who originated the craft of mastersinging (Nicolaus Klingsohr and Walter von der Vogelweid(e) are among them).

That's all of interest to Tannhäuser, of course. But it's not until we get to a list of 12 old Nuremberg Masters of distinction that the volume's usefulness to Die Meistersinger becomes apparent; the names were taken en bloc, Sixtus Beckmesser included, for the city worthies introduced in Act One of the opera. Then we get a biography of Nuremberg's cobbler-poet Hans Sachs, described by Wagenseil as 'justly esteemed patriarch of the Master-singers'.

Chapter Five, 'Complete Tabulatur of the Master-singers' has rules for the construction of a master-song's 'bar' and 'Abgesang' adapted almost wholesale by Wagner for Kothner's reading just before Walter sings 'Am stillen Herd'. Next are the 'XXII Faults which may be committed, and their punishment'; Wagner puts seven into Beckmesser's blacklist which rebounds on him in Act Two. David gives Walter Wagenseil's observations about 'Scholars' (those not familiar with the Tabulatur), 'Schoolfriends' (those who are), 'Singers' (those who can sing five or six 'Tones)', 'Poets' (those who writes songs to existing 'Tones') and 'Masters' (those who invent 'Tones'). Until I took a proper look at all this, I hadn't appreciated that Sachs takes down only the words of Walter's 'Morning Dream Song' in Act Three, not its music, so Beckmesser can only mangle the text of the sheets he's stolen.

Wagenseil then gives us a list of 222 'Master-tones', inventions of Masters to be sung by others. Some of these appear in David's exhausting list, so beautifully and amusingly illustrated in Richard Jones's production to stop boredom setting in at a perilously early point. It's worth picking out a few gems straight from Wagenseil: 'The Extra-short Evening red tone, by Georg Hagers', 'The Faithful-pelican tone by M. Ambrose Metzger', 'The English-tin tone by Kasper Enderle' and 'The Fat-badger tone by Metzger'.

Chapter Six is entitled 'Of the Master-singers' Manners and Customs, at the Singing School and in convivial meetings'; Wagner reproduces fairly faithfully the methods adapted by the Nuremberg Guild. Only the fact that there used to be four Markers rather than one is altered in the opera.

At the song-competition the Master-elect must sing, in addition to his own composition, the highly-prized 'Four Crowned Tones'. And here's another value to Wagenseil's text and Thompson's splendid precis: both books reproduce the first of the four, 'in long Tone of Heinrich Mügling'/ You probably can't read the words below, a doggerel version of Jacob and his matrimonial experiences, but you should be able to see that the 'bars' begin with a tune very similar to the second theme Wagner gives his Mastersingers in the Prelude.

Invaluable, no? And a treasure that's not been eaten away by the damp of my copy is the fold-out map of old Nuremberg the letter 'm' for St Catherine's Church in which Wagner sets his opening scene - the Mastersingers of Sachs's time actually met at St Martha's - isn't placed alongside any church. but I think it must be one in the lower eastern segment.

I think I've exhausted all possible words of praise for the ENO edition of Jones's superlative Mastersingers - different from the Welsh original, but in no way inferior - in my Arts Desk review. I've booked to go again on the last night, 10 March, and persuaded godson Alexander to leave his studies in Glasgow and come down to see it, because he won't see Wagner better done. Most of my colleagues think so too, esteemed Wagner doyen Michael Tanner in The Spectator being the latest to describe the experience as near-perfect. Any wishes for ENO's immediate demise seem to have badly misfired - not that the company management and image don't have a problem, but if it's All About Art, this is the crowning glory of a wonderful year and a bit.

Richard Jones came to talk to the students for the third time on Monday: it was wonderful, and I need to write about it in more detail, but suffice it to say he thought publicity to change ENO's image could make a huge difference, comparing their hopeless posters and attempts to be taken seriously as 'Opera for the People' with the way the PR department at the Young Vic were on to him the minute he started work on the forthcoming adaptation of Kafka's The Trial with (oh, wondrous) Rory Kinnear.

Anyway, don't miss this opera of operas.A few more pics for you by Catherine Ashmore for ENO: above, the ritual in Act One, Gwyn Hughes Jones's Walther getting hot under the collar at the Masters' closed-mindedness;and below, just before the 'christening' of the Morning Dream Interpretation Song; left to right Iain Paterson (Sachs), Nicky Spence (David), Madeleine Shaw (Magdalene) and Rachel Nicholls (Eva). Love 'em all.

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.